Dog Day Afternoon

by Patrick Mann

  “You didn’t tell me,” his mother said at last, “that you needed money.”

  “I need three grand for an operation for Lana. What’re you saying, you got three grand?”

  “I got two hundred and fifty in savings. I—”

  “That only pays for the castration.”

  “What’s the matter with her the way she is, then?” Flo asked. “Didn’t you marry her the way she was? That lovely ceremony down in the Village? Why does she have to get operated on?”

  “Please. I’m going away on the plane. I don’t want to think of you and Lana arguing. You’re supposed to take care of each other.”

  “I told them you were a wonderful boy. Never any trouble.”

  “Told who?”

  “The FBI. They’re very nice men, Joe. They understand. I told them about Goldwater. I said you were never a faggot, never.”

  “And they said?”

  “That you had problems and they understood, and if you came out you’d get the best possible treatment because you protected the hostages.”

  “Beautiful. Next they’ll send in Tina against me. The heavy team.”

  “She comes down here, so help me, I’m gonna mash her brains in,” his mother told him. “Everything in your life was sunlight and roses until you met her. Since then, forget it.”

  “Please get off Tina.”

  “Me? God forbid I say anything against that fat cunt.”

  “Flo!”

  “I knew you wouldn’t need a . . . a thing like Lana if Tina was treating you right.”

  “Ma, this is old stuff.”

  “Come out of that bank.”

  “I can’t. Sam will kill them all.”

  “Then run.”

  “Run? Christ! What dreams you live on!” He tried to cool it. “Did Pop come down?”

  “No, he’s really pissed off. He says he don’t have no son.”

  “He’s right. No more punching bag. He used to whale the living shit out of me. Five years old, he clobbered me with a broom handle. Why did you let him do that, Flo?”

  Her tearful eyes went wide. “He’s your father, Joe. He was doing it for your own good. To make you tough.”

  “Five years old, I’m walking across the room, he lets me have it behind the head. Wham! ‘That’s for nothing,’ he tells me.”

  “To show you it’s a tough life.”

  “It is with sons of bitches like you and him walking around.”

  Her lips trembled. She said nothing for a moment, and then, with an apologetic smile, she said: “I remember how beautiful you were as a little boy. I had such hopes.”

  Joe pulled back as if she had spit at him. “Fuck you. Fuck your hopes.” He turned, and was about to run back into the bank.

  “Wait,” Flo called. “Lana wants to go with you.”

  Littlejoe stopped, his back still to her. “She what?”

  “Isn’t this all for her?” his mother asked.

  As he turned back to her, Joe saw that Baker was leading Lana out into the street. The hooting of the crowd went into falsetto. The whole scene was weird, Joe thought. Not to be believed. Everybody was getting off his rocks like some kind of amateur night, stepping out into the spotlights to play their musical saw or sing “Stardust” or whatever turned them on and made them walk tall. Jesus, he thought, people!

  “Littlejoe, honey,” Lana was saying, “I humbly apologize for all that shit I dumped on your poor head before. I know you got a lot on your mind right now, but—”

  “But you wanna fly to Casablanca free, right?” Joe cut in.

  His glance went to Baker for a moment, and if ever he’d seen a man pretending not to be there, the FBI guy was it. His eyes were averted, although he had a hell of a grip on Lana’s skinny arm.

  “Did I say that, lovie?” Lana simpered. She had fixed up her face a little, and looked halfway presentable now. “I just want to go where you go.”

  For the first time, Littlejoe began to feel that maybe there really was a million dollars, really was a plane waiting. He’d believed Moretti only because he wanted to, but in the back of his mind he’d been worried. Now he believed. If Lana was ready to suck up to him in this outrageous way, even using his stupid mother to help, there really must be ransom and an escape ready to go.

  “Kiss, kiss!” someone in the crowd shouted.

  It came with such force that Joe flinched. He supposed the guy had heard him say that to Moretti. Now it seemed to be the slogan for today.

  “Forget it,” he told Lana. “You come along, it makes you part of the job, accessory. Right now you’re clean. They might get you for wearing too-high heels, but you’re clean on the bank job. Right, Baker?”

  The man who was trying not to be there nodded once, then decided he had to say something. “That is correct.”

  “So no loot, no Casablanca, baby,” Joe told Lana. “I’ll mail you a check from somewhere sometime.” He started to laugh at the look on her face.

  “Kiss, kiss!” a bystander yelled.

  Joe reached for Lana. Baker, startled, started to pull her back. “It’s okay,” Littlejoe assured him. “Just following orders.” He planted a big kiss on Lana’s wide-rouged mouth.

  The crowd went insane. There were no cries of “faggot!” but simply the kind of wild cheering that accompanies a home run at Shea Stadium. Joe stepped back from Lana and lifted his second finger upward at the crowd. For some reason this drove them to even noisier heights of cheering. Grinning now, and flushed, Joe turned and headed back into the bank.

  23

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Joe said, addressing the damp, tired group inside the bank.

  Sam in his wilted white suit, still looked the nattiest, but Boyle, without a tie, looked like a bum, and Marge, with her blouse half open, looked like a tramp, Joe noticed. Ellen’s eyes kept rolling up into her head from time to time, and Maria, the Puerto Rican woman, continued to say almost nothing. Joe had never figured out—nor had the inclination to check—whether she understood everything that was going on or not. In either event, smart girl, she kept a low profile.

  “Gang,” Littlejoe went on, clowning slightly, “here’s the game plan. We are now dealing directly with the Feds. That man out there in the gray suit who don’t sweat, he’s now handling everything and all of a sudden we got no problems.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam asked. His voice sounded huffy, as if Joe had insulted him.

  “I mean we’re home free. The limo from the airport’ll be here any minute and—”

  “And you’re taking Lana with us,” Sam finished for him, his voice dead with pain.

  “Sam. Come on. I kissed her off. No Lana. Goodbye Lana. Finished.” Littlejoe waited until Sam’s face showed a little less pain. “Would you believe it? We’re ten, fifteen minutes away from freedom. I could call anybody in the whole world, an astronaut, the Pope, any of them. Who do I call?” he asked, dialing a number. He waited. Then:

  “Tina?”

  “Hey, Joey!” Tina’s glutinous voice was hopping with excitement. “I’m watching it all on the TV, Joey!”

  “I want to talk to the kids.”

  “They’re at Stella’s. I sent them over there. Too much excitement.” Tina ran out of breath for a moment, gasped, then rattled on: “Jesus, Joey, I can’t believe what I see. It’s not you. You never hurt anybody in your life.”

  “Tina, I’m in trouble here,” Joe said slowly. “It’s very touchy from here on in,” he added, thinking of the way they wanted to pick off Sam but wouldn’t really worry too much if they shot him too.

  “I blame myself,” Tina surged on, hardly listening. “You been tense. I knew that. Like leaving me at your folks’ house last week. Boy, what a wasted evening. And swiping my father’s car. I could tell—”

  “Shut up!” Joe shouted into the phone. “Will you for once shut your fucking mouth and listen?”

  “See?” she countered. “You’re screaming already with the language. A person
can’t communicate with you. You’re a stranger in your own house.”

  Joe held the telephone away from his ear. He glanced at Boyle. “I needed this?”

  Boyle shrugged. “You dialed the number.”

  Littlejoe put the telephone back to his ear. “. . . because you hurt me,” Tina was saying. “God, how you hurt me. Can you imagine, kissing that . . . thing? In front of the TV an’ all. Did I ever once turn you down, or anything?”

  “Tina.”

  “Did I ever say no, you should get so horny you have to turn to a, to a—”

  “Tina.”

  “What?”

  “Come down here, will you?” Joe asked.

  “Me?” She shrieked so loudly he had to take the phone away for a moment. “Me get shot? You should see it on the TV, Joey. It’s gruesome, I mean it. It’s scary, all them cops and machine guns and cannons and God knows what. You never did have any feeling for what another person is feeling, Joe. You never had a drop of compassion. All my life, I—”

  He slammed the telephone down on her voice.

  Outside the crowd had begun to chant something rhythmic. Littlejoe couldn’t get the gist of it. He went to the door and poked his head out into the street. The air was cooler. Now he could see that behind the mob at one end of the street was a new group of bystanders, holding placards, one of which read:

  GAY IS BEAUTIFUL!

  As the new people caught sight of Littlejoe, one young man shouted: “Joe! Joe! You are gorgeous, Joe!”

  Littlejoe stepped back into the shelter of the doorway as a TV crew rushed over to film a confrontation between the young man who had shouted and some older onlookers who were telling him to get lost.

  “I don’t care!” the young man was screaming at the top of his voice. “That man has put an end to all that pansy limp-wrist shit. You know what I hope? I hope he shoots it out with the cops. I hope he takes some with him.”

  Behind him a group of six young men and two young women were busily hoisting a longer banner into place, suspended from three poles. When they finally got it arranged it read:

  WE LOVE YOU, LITTLEJOE!

  Joe grinned and waved at them until the cameramen noticed him and their lenses swung around to record his reaction shot. An instant later the banner wavered and dropped as some of the original bystanders charged it and knocked it down.

  Joe stepped back inside the bank. “Folks, this is my day!” he exulted. “Did you see that banner?”

  “Who could miss it?” Marge asked. “What I want to see is the airport limo.”

  The grin faded from Joe’s face. In all the excitement he had forgotten that the arrival of the limo would be the moment of greatest danger. He was determined to doublecross Baker and, by putting Sam in the middle of the line of people getting into the car, to protect him from sharpshooters.

  At the same time he knew that, with orders to shoot, the snipers might try to pick Sam off anyway. Chances were not, but you never knew with real killer types. That meant someone else would get it, probably the one in front or behind Sam. It wasn’t an easy decision to make.

  “What’s up?” Boyle asked, watching his face.

  “Nothing.”

  “Something.”

  “Nothing. Say, tell me, you got a notary?”

  Marge held up her hand. “I’m the notary. You want to, uh . . .” Her voice died away. The inside of the bank was unusually quiet, although outside the two sections of the crowd were busily screaming at each other. It had an odd effect on Joe, as if what was happening in here, amid deadly silence, was a matter of life and death. Which it was, of course.

  “Lemme dictate it,” he told Marge. “You write it. I sign it. You notarize it, okay?”

  “Shoot, I mean, uh, go ahead.”

  “Start it off with all that being-of-sound-mind-and-body shit, okay?”

  Marge drew a piece of paper and pen to her and began to write. “Go ahead.”

  “To my darling wife, Lana, I leave three thousand from my life-insurance policy for a sex-change operation. Got that?”

  “Operation. Right.”

  “To my sweet wife, Tina, I leave the rest of the insurance, seven gran—seven thousand, to take care of my children and make sure they remember me.”

  “. . . member me. Right.”

  “To my mother . . .” Joe stopped and sighed. “You never understood me, even though you tried. I’m me. I’m different. I leave you my stamp collection. It’s worth something.”

  The bank lobby was terribly quiet, except for faint shouting from outside. Sam had come over to listen to the dictating of the will. He nodded now and then, as if in approval.

  “I want a military funeral,” Joe said, “to which I am entitled free of charge. God bless everyone till we are joined in the hereafter, sweet Lana, my Tina, dearest Lori and Larry and my mother.” He fell silent for a moment. “Okay. Lemme sign it.”

  “Littlejoe,” Sam said then in a small voice, “it’s a will, ain’t it?”

  “Right.”

  “You ain’t gonna die.”

  “No way of knowing that, Sam, baby. It’s a long flight over water.” He turned to the rest of them. “And just when I let my Blue Cross lapse.”

  “Nobody’s getting killed,” Boyle said. “We’re going to do just what we’re told to do and nobody’s going to shoot, either, not you boys and not the men outside.”

  “From your lips to Baker’s ear,” Littlejoe intoned. He was feeling great now. Dictating the will had cheered him up a lot. He turned to Sam and clapped him on the shoulder. “You wanna make your will, man? I know a cute notary does it cheap.”

  “A will? Me?”

  “Your folks’re still around.”

  For the first time in several hours, Sam’s mouth turned up slightly at one corner, in what was for him a bit of a smile. “Fuck ’em.”

  “Got that?” Joe asked Marge.

  “Smart-ass,” she responded primly, shaking her head. She handed him his will, and when he had signed it she stamped the bottom of the page, filled in the stamped legend, signed it, and embossed a seal over the whole inscription. “I’d like to see somebody break that will,” she said then.

  She folded it twice and started to hand it to Joe. He refused to take it. She looked around her, confused. Then, finally, she tucked it into a Number Ten envelope and sealed it. On the outside she wrote “To Whom It May Concern,” and propped it on her telephone. “There.”

  Joe found himself wondering how to line up everyone when the limo came. He decided not to try, but just to make sure Sam was protected. He had no illusions that, once they shot Sam, he himself would have the guts to keep going. He had started Sam in motion originally, but Sam was now keeping the whole job moving. Boyle had read something of his worries from his face.

  Sam now moved closer to him, as if what he had to say was not for other ears. “It’s like the crunch, huh, man?”

  Littlejoe brightened for a moment at the businesslike sound of the word. “Yeah, crunch,” he said. “But between us, baby, we’re too tough to crumble, right?”

  Sam shrugged, a neat, minimal gesture. “Either that or a lot of other people crumble with us.”

  Joe nodded vigorously. “Right, baby. Right.” He could hear how false his own voice sounded. Joe wondered why he was bothering to protect Sam now, when, obviously, he’d already decided to sell him out in some other way. But delay the moment. Put off the betrayal. Not now. Not in front of people like Boyle and Marge, who thought he was pretty hot stuff.

  Christ, if only Moretti were back in charge. The detective stood for something you could deal with, the thing that kept this crummy city turning over, without which it would have frozen into a pile of ice: compromise. That was what New York was all about. You never brought things to a total face-off. You always left room to maneuver. Baker didn’t understand that, never would. Dealing with Baker got things done fast, all right. But sometimes you didn’t want speed.

  “Sweet Jesus, here it is,
” Ellen moaned. Her huge eyes protruded slightly as she stared out the window of the bank.

  Littlejoe turned to see a long black Cadillac limousine, six doors, luggage rack on the roof, moving slowly through the crowd and into the center of the combat zone. It had been hurriedly requisitioned from somewhere, and the side of the vehicle still bore a garishly lettered sign reading:

  TOTAL RELAXATION BATHS—

  OUR HOSTESSES MAKE LIFE WORTH LIVING—

  24 HOURS NO WAITING

  Joe went to the window to stare at the vehicle of his release.

  Baker, Moretti, and several other men were converging on the limousine as the driver got out. He stood, confused for a moment, holding a clipboard. He was a tall black in broad Afro hairdo and a sleeveless sheepskin jacket, dark glasses and pants with a flare as wide as an evening skirt. Joe noticed that his boots had rhinestone buckles. He went outside and moved toward the driver.

  “Keep back,” he yelled at the FBI and police.

  The driver held out his clipboard. “You the relief driver, man?” Joe asked.

  Joe moved past him and began lifting seats, searching under them for bombs or guns. He checked the glove compartment, then moved into the capacious rear of the limo.

  “Hey, man, like, somebody gotta sign me out, you know?”

  “Stick with me,” Joe muttered. “Help me with these seats.”

  Together they searched a while longer. “What’s all the pig doing out after dark?” the driver asked then.

  “Some guys are holding up this bank.”

  “No shit? They still in there?”

  “Guns,” Joe assured him solemnly. “Hostages. Smile, you’re on TV.”

  “I be goddamned.” Joe gave him a long, slow smile, and the driver’s eyes lit up. “Hey! You the bandit, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shee-it.” He glanced around for the cameras.

  “Fun, huh?” Joe asked. “Here, lemme sign your sheet.” He did so and handed it back to the driver. “That was on TV, too.”