Dog Day Afternoon

by Patrick Mann

  He took the phone from her. “Listen, fella, I think you ought to start dinner.”

  “It’s a roast,” the man said. “I never made a roast. It’s expensive and I might ruin it. And then, what do I feed the baby?”

  Joe turned to Ellen and tried to keep his voice soft. “What should he feed the baby?”

  Her lips moved several times, framing and reframing answers. Then, stiffly: “A jar of prunes and a jar of baby chicken. They’re in the fridge. He has to warm them on the stove.”

  Joe transmitted the information and added: “Leave the roast alone, fella. Just send out for some Colonel Sanders, okay? It’s gonna be a long, hard night.”

  “Can I say good-bye to Ellen?”

  Joe handed her the phone and watched her moisten her dry lips. “Hello, Dennis. What? Yes, they have guns.” She glanced hastily at Joe to see if she’d said too much. “I will, Dennis. I have to get off the phone now. What?” Her eyes were fixed now on the middle distance, unseeing. “Well . . . there are a lot of people around and . . . uh . . . kiss the baby for me.” She paused. “I love you too.” She hung up the phone and walked slowly, in that same rigid posture, to join the other two tellers.

  Joe glanced at everyone’s face. The bank people looked somber, down. The real seriousness of the situation had hit them with the last words Ellen had told her husband. Only Sam was unchanged. He winked at Joe. “A million, huh?”

  Joe nodded. “If we play it smart.”

  “I just wanna say one thing, Littlejoe,” Sam began gravely. “I just wanna say that if you think the cops don’t give you credit out there for being strong . . . you know.” He paused and regrouped his thoughts. “I just wanna say if you want one of these people wasted, I can do it right now and throw them out the front door. I’ll be glad to do it, Littlejoe. You know that. Just say the word and . . .” His thought slowly died away.

  Joe watched the effect of this on the rest of them. It was possibly the longest speech he’d ever heard from Sam’s lips, and he knew it wasn’t what it sounded like. It was supposed to be an offer of total cooperation from a buddy, right down the line, everything I have is yours. But Littlejoe could hear the inner message, and it frightened him. Inside the big speech was a small one that said: “I have to kill. Let me do it now. Right now.”

  He knew Sam to be strange, but this glimpse inside the kid was too hairy for comfort. Somebody who has to kill ends up not too choosy about a victim. Even a buddy will do.

  Littlejoe decided to make the best use of Sam’s offer he could. He turned to Boyle and tried to use words the manager would understand without their offending Sam. “You see,” he asked Boyle. “You see the mess we’re in?”

  Boyle nodded slowly, heavily, his Irish face as grave with trouble as Sam’s had been. “We know you guys aren’t kidding,” Boyle managed to say. It was noncommittal, but it told Littlejoe he had got the real message, which was along the lines of “For Christ’s sake, don’t stir up Sam.”

  “Good,” Joe said, trying to sound hearty and confident. “No problems, people. Everybody cooperates and everything works out.”

  “You know,” Boyle began slowly, “there’s no way they can get a million in cash at this hour.”

  “Shit there ain’t.” Joe glanced at the wall clock, and was shocked to find that it was only four in the afternoon. Barely an hour had elapsed. “Banks close their doors at three, but the cops can tap them any time up till five or six at night.” He eyed the manager. “What the hell do you care, anyway, Boyle? Your bank insurance covers you.”

  “I’m worried about the ransom money. If they don’t get it, we’re left here with you.”

  “All night, if it takes all night,” Joe agreed cheerfully. “Don’t tell me they can’t locate the rest of the cash by morning.”

  “It’s just—” Boyle stopped, He sat down on the edge of the desk. His face had gone blank for a moment. “I just want to see my wife and kids again, that’s all.” He glanced at Joe. “It isn’t as if we haven’t cooperated with you.”

  Something odd twisted inside Littlejoe. It wasn’t the animal that slept there. He hadn’t felt that shift beneath his lungs for some time now. Being on top, owning people, controlling everything they did, gave him a sense of power that pleased the beast and kept it comfortably asleep. No, this was something else, some strange little twist that Boyle’s fat mick face did to him, talking about seeing his kids and cooperating.

  “I know,” Joe heard himself saying. “You people have been great. I got no complaint there. It’s just . . .” He gestured aimlessly, as if trying to shape the air into a convincing excuse. “It’s just that things happen.”

  “You happened,” Marge told him darkly.

  “Okay,” Joe admitted. “But tomorrow you’re crossing the street and a truck with busted brakes happens. You don’t have no guarantees in this life, Marge.”

  She nodded glumly. “Harry,” she said to Boyle, “have you got a cigarette?”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “I want a cigarette.”

  “Marge,” Boyle pleaded, “I’ve never even seen you touch a cigarette.”

  “Right. Now I want a cigarette.”

  “It’s a long night, Marge. Try and hold off.”

  “For some of you,” Joe put in, just to keep things stirred up, “it’ll mean a mystery trip to maybe Algeria.”

  Boyle’s head shook quickly from side to side. He handed Marge a cigarette and lighted it for her. Smoke came out of the burning end of the cigarette. “Puff,” he told her quietly. She touched his hand, and, in return, so quickly Littlejoe almost missed seeing it, he took her hand and squeezed it once.

  “Maybe you two would like to be the lucky passengers?” he pounced.

  “What?”

  “Second honeymoon in Algeria? Don’t tell me there’s nothing going on.” Joe smiled slightly, coldly, trying to cut down whatever was between them to the size of a piece of dirt. “I know what happens in banks. Everybody’s so moral, right? So high-minded. But it’s no different than any other meat rack. You sniff it all day and if you like it, you try some at night.”

  The two of them, Boyle and Marge, looked at him for a long moment. When he finally replied, the manager moved off on a tangent that confused Joe at first. “You don’t have to do that,” Boyle was saying. “You don’t need to take hostages aboard the plane, Joe.” It was the first time he’d used his name. “I’ve been thinking. Once you’re on board, the crew are your hostages. See my point?”

  “That’s how much you know about life, Boyle. Why couldn’t the crew be FBI guys? I need a real hostage to protect us from them too.”

  “Then that’s me,” Boyle said. “I’m the manager. It’s what I’m paid for.”

  “Nah. You’re no good as a hostage.”

  “Why not?”

  “That slob Eddie, our driver, he’s as good to me as you are. Neither one of you is worth shit as a hostage.”

  In the silence, Littlejoe heard Eddie shifting his weight around, shuffling his feet. “Listen,” he said across the bank lobby, “what’s that supposed to mean, Littlejoe? I’m gonna be with you on the plane anyway, right?”

  “Wrong.” Joe turned away from him to face Boyle again. “Neither of you two big, strong men.” He grinned evilly.

  “Not Ellen,” Boyle said. “She’s got a kid. So has Maria. Besides, they’re just working here. But for me, it’s a career. So it makes sense to . . .” He stopped talking.

  “Want a Mediterranean cruise, huh?”

  “I don’t have any illusion you’ll really make it,” Boyle said then. “Do you?”

  Littlejoe sat down on the desk next to him. His legs dangled just off the floor. “As our ace-in-the-hole hostage, you won’t do, Boyle.”

  “Why not? The Chase would be more interested in saving a manager.”

  “Stop kidding yourself.”

  “They’ve invested a lot of money and time in me,” Boyle insisted. “They have to protect their
investment.”

  “Dream on.”

  “It’s also a matter of loyalty. I’ve given them fifteen years of loyalty and they owe me.”

  “They owe you nothing.” Littlejoe shook his head in amazement. “It freaks me out the way grown-up guys with families still don’t know the fucking facts of life.”

  “And you do.”

  “You bet your ass I do,” Joe told him. “The ace-in-the-hole hostage ain’t gonna be no middle-aged bank hack. When the crunch comes, on the landing strip or in the plane, the FBI will chop you up like so much hamburger, Boyle. You’re meat to them, same as Sam and me. You’re expendable. You’re a calculated risk. Shit, do I have to teach you this kindergarten stuff? You read the papers. But when I have a young chick who’s a mother, it’s different. The publicity’s bad if they chill a mother. That they only do in Nam. There they waste mothers by the carload, and babies too. Slopes don’t count. This fine upstanding crying broad Ellen, for instance, she counts. Her they’d kind of hesitate to ice. They still might do it, but they’d hesitate.”

  “If I felt that way about law officers, I’d—”

  “Shut up, Boyle,” Joe interrupted, trying not to sound unpleasant. “You just don’t know your ass from your elbow about life. Take the Chase. What do they owe you, man? For fifteen years you been dumb enough to give them loyalty and honesty. That’s so much gravy to them.

  “They’re laughing up their sleeve at you, man,” he went on. “They had your ass for fifteen years and they don’t owe you a fart. Not a fart in the wind. To Chase you’re just meat. Buy it, sell it. What did they buy you for all these years? Are you even making fourteen grand a year now? Sixteen? I don’t think so. And for a chickenshit salary you put out something that money can’t even buy, loyalty. What a sucker play, Boyle.

  “The first time Chase profits dip below a certain point they won’t hesitate to chop you off like any other bad investment. Cut losses. It isn’t even something another human being decides, Boyle. They feed the problem into their computer and, clickety-click, out comes a name. Your name. Get rid of Boyle at fourteen thousand a year. Let some young black or Puerto Rican run the joint at half Boyle’s salary.”

  Littlejoe paused. He saw that Marge was listening to him so intently that she hadn’t puffed even once on her lighted cigarette.

  “Sure he’ll steal you blind, because he isn’t a dumdum like Boyle. But what he steals is a business cost that’s already been passed on to the poor, stupid customer anyway. So who cares? Insurance covers it, and the insurance costs are part of what the customer pays for. Fuck everybody, but start with the poor, loyal Boyles of the world.”

  The lobby was silent for a long time. Joe slid off the desk and walked to a point halfway between Boyle and Marge, at the desk, and the lobby sign, where Sam was still guarding the two younger women.

  “I want you people to listen to some advice,” Littlejoe said then. “The first thing you have to fear is Sam. He kills. The second thing you have to fear is me. I tell Sam who to kill. But the third thing you have to fear is the cops and the FBI. They kill too. At some point we’re gonna march you out there in lockstep to a car or limo or bus. That’s when they’ll draw a bead on Sam and me and try to figure a way to scrag us without getting one of you. Well, there won’t be no way. We’ll be huddled up too close to each other. And that’s your biggest fear of all.”

  “They won’t shoot,” Marge, said, stubbing out her unsmoked cigarette.

  “Pray you’re right.” Joe leaned back against the counter as if surveying his own feudal holding, complete with serfs. “Pray they don’t pull another Attica, where they just went in and shot everybody, including the guards and even some of themselves. When it was over forty-two people were dead with only cop bullets in them. Get it through your heads, people, your biggest danger is out there.”

  15

  At five o’clock, Littlejoe gave everyone permission to sit down somewhere in the bank where he or Sam could watch them. The only comment he got then was from Boyle, who said: “Think they’ve rounded up the million yet?”

  The telephone had been ringing so often that Joe had taken all the phones off their hooks. Now, at a quarter to six, he decided to let the world in again. He had worked out pretty much every angle of the escape, bringing Sam into the planning to keep him distracted from the proximity of people he could shoot. There really wasn’t anything left to chance, Joe told himself. It was an airtight escape.

  He replaced the telephone on Boyle’s desk, and it began to ring immediately. He picked it up.

  “Got the cash, Moretti?” he asked.

  “This is CBS News,” a voice said. “We’d like to interview you. Is this Littlejoe?”

  Joe sat down behind Boyle’s desk and put his feet up on it. “Speaking.”

  “Well, I guess you could say the world is watching you, Littlejoe. At any rate, it’s listening. I’m taping this now and we’ll play it over on the six-o’clock local news. It may even repeat on the Cronkite show at seven.”

  “Big fucking deal.”

  “Uh, look, is there . . . I mean, is it possible to watch the language? This is going on the air.”

  “Blip me, asshole. We’re on tape, ain’t we?”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. Maybe you can tell us, Littlejoe, why you’re doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Robbing a bank.”

  Joe shifted uncomfortably. Was this guy for real? Weren’t TV reporters supposed to have a brain? “What do you want?” he asked. “Banks is where they got money. You want to steal, you go where the money is, right?”

  “But why do you need to steal? Do you have some sort of compulsion?”

  Joe put his hand over the phone. “Sam,” he said, “this creep is not to be believed.” Then, into the phone: “It’s a compulsion to eat, asshole. To buy clothes and have a place to live. That’s why I steal.”

  “Couldn’t you find a job?”

  “A job doing what? You want to drive a cab, you gotta join a union. Dig ditches? Run a jack-hammer? Name it and they got a fucking union. Bank teller? I been a bank teller at a hundred and five bucks a week to start. What do you make, Mr. Newsman?”

  “Well, we’re talking about you, Littlejoe. You’re the one everybody’s interested in.”

  “What gave you that idea? You’re talking to me because you’re paid to fill the air with stuff. It’s hot entertainment, right?”

  “You’re news, Littlejoe.”

  “If you had to pay an entertainer to fill this slot, what would it cost? A Steve Allen? A Pamela Mason? A Jackie Susann? Christ, you’re getting off cheap with me. What do they pay you?”

  The man stopped talking for a moment. “You’re not talking,” Joe pointed out. “You’re not doing your job, Mr. Newsman. How much are you paying me to fill up your air time?”

  “You want to be paid for . . .”

  “Fucking ay right, dumdum. Sam and me are dying in here. We got innocent people in here, and all of us may die. They’re gonna murder us the second they line us up in their sights.” Joe winked at Sam and covered the telephone again. “Get it on the record,” he told Sam. “Warn everybody what the cops plan to do. It gives us a little extra margin of safety, right?”

  “Right on, Littlejoe.”

  “How is that gonna look on TV?” Joe asked the interviewer. “We got young girls, the mothers of babies. We got a guard with a bad heart. We got Marge, a zoftig number. We got a man with a family who thinks the Chase won’t let him down after fifteen years of loyal slavery. When the cops start chopping us into catfood, how will that look on TV, huh?”

  “You could give yourself up.”

  “You ever been in prison?”

  “No, Littlejoe, I—”

  “Then talk about something you fucking well know about.”

  “Littlejoe, I know we can blip your words, but it’d get your message across a lot more meaningfully if you’d, uh, moderate your language.”

  “You d
on’t want to hear this shit anyway.”

  “We have footage and tape on your talk with Sergeant Moretti. But we’d like a little backup here in which you explain why you’re doing this.”

  “Money,” Joe said. “Lots of it.”

  “Another thing that’s puzzled a lot of people, Littlejoe, is why you want your wife dragged into this. Are you planning to take her with you on the plane?”

  “Yeah. To Stockholm.” Joe was grinning.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You think I’d tell you?”

  “One of the things that’s delayed matters, as we understand it, Littlejoe, is that the police are having some difficulty locating her.”

  Joe glanced up at the clock. It showed five minutes to six P.M. “Better hustle your ass if you want to make the news.”

  “Can you give CBS News some additional clue that we can pass along to the police to facilitate her—”

  “Do kids watch the Six O’Clock News?”

  “I’m not abs—”

  “Wee-wee!” Joe called. “Poo-poo! Ca-ca! Up your giggies, kiddies!” He hung up the phone and sat there for a moment, grinning at the tips of his shoes on top of Boyle’s desk. “Hey, Boyle, is there a TV in the bank?”

  “In the storeroom,” the manager said wearily. “Three cartons. Leftover premiums from our new-account blitz.”

  “Which is Maria?” Joe asked. He looked at a dark-eyed young woman who had said nothing so far. “You?”

  “Yes.”

  Littlejoe heard a faint Puerto Rican inflection. “Get one of those TVs from the storeroom. Anybody hungry?”

  Marge looked up. “Why?”

  The telephone rang. “Watch this,” Joe told her. He picked up. “Moretti?”

  “It’s about time you answered that phone, Joe.”

  “I been busy with CBS News,” Joe bragged. “Listen, I got a hungry crew here. Send in about four jumbo pizzas, okay? Two plain, one with sausage, one with anchovies, right? And a dozen cans of beer. My treat.”