Two for the Money

by Max Allan Collins

  “Okay,” Nolan said. “Stupid? Of course. But forget about it. Even Flash Gordon gets a hard-on once in a while. The job’s tomorrow, we’ll be splitting up, and that’ll be it. The bitch’ll be Grossman’s problem again. We’ll just hope nobody saw you.”

  “Oh nobody saw us, Nolan.”

  “Good. But Christ, kid, stick to your comic books next time. Like you said once, it’s a safe habit.”

  Nolan poked the burning logs again. With everything going so well, he didn’t want to let this little slip of Jon’s throw him. Nothing to worry about.

  Nothing.

  Not with Jon, anyway.

  But Shelly?

  During the meeting tonight she’d made her move for Nolan, starting with the knowing looks, subtle ones, but there.

  Then her leg, rubbing against his under the table.

  And her hand, running along his leg, then his inner thigh.

  And all the time, the meeting going along smoothly, the girl an innocent child to the uninformed eye, Nolan spelling out details of the plan with his practiced calm.

  So now the meeting was over, and the job hours away.

  Nolan got up from the fireside, grabbed his jacket and went out to the car and got in.

  9

  Shelly was dreaming that she was asleep inside the bank vault, resting on a bed stuffed with thousand dollar bills, but outside the vault someone was knocking, someone was knocking very insistently and trying to pry her awake.

  She jumped into a sitting position, clutched the sheets to her throat.

  Not a dream?

  Not all of it anyway, someone was outside knocking, but who?

  Couldn’t be Grossman, he couldn’t be sex-starved enough to have waited all this time only to break his chastity pact with one night left to go. Besides, she thought, the klutz seemed almost proud of holding out so long.

  And surely not Jon, the poor kid had been so sheepish and guilt-ridden the other night after his “big adventure” with her, that was out of the question.

  Should she be frightened? She shrugged to herself and got out of bed, switching on the lamp next to it. She threw her short terry-cloth robe around her naked body and went to the door. Hell, if it was a rapist out there it ought at least to shape up her sex life a little bit. And as urgent as the knocking sounded, the guy needed it bad.

  “Who’s out there?”

  “Nolan.”

  She cracked the door and looked out over the chain on the night latch. It was Nolan, all right.

  “What do you want? Kind of late for a last minute briefing, isn’t it, chief?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “Huh?”

  “The moves under the table. That beats an engraved invitation all to hell.”

  “Well, I’d like to let you in . . .”

  “Then do.”

  She shrugged again and undid the nightlatch and let him in. Once in he shut the door, threw the Yale lock and put the latch back in place.

  “Okay,” he said, “let’s go to bed.”

  She smiled. “That’s some line you got there, Nolan.”

  “Yes or no?”

  She touched her lips. “Uh, I’ll have to go into the bathroom for a minute, and, uh, freshen up.”

  “All right.”

  When she came back he was sitting on the bed, naked, smoking a cigarette. His body was light tan in color, and leanly muscular. There was an attractive ruggedness to him that the little scars and even the red, puckered place on his side added to rather than took away. The hair on his chest was black mingled with white.

  “You’re beautiful, Nolan,” she said.

  He put out his cigarette. “Take off the robe.”

  She let the terry robe drop to the floor and stepped out of it and joined him on the bed, leaning over to cut the light.

  She felt his arms coil around her, the possessive strength of them pleasing to her, and when his mouth covered hers the kiss was hot and almost savage. He was strong and somewhat rough, but she liked it. She was so tired of boys, so very tired of little boys, and now a man, at last a man was taking her. In spite of the heat of the act, she sensed something cold, something methodical in his lovemaking that, oddly enough, only excited her more. It seemed that for hours those strong hands of his ran up and down her body, over her breasts, cupping her buttocks, coursing up and down over the inner flesh of her upper thighs. When at last she felt his fingers twining in her pubic hair and, finally, slipping in to probe her, she said, “Oh Nolan, God I’m ready, do it now, please do it now.”

  The whole thing was over in less than five minutes. She lay back exhausted as he climbed off, stretching her arms out crucifix-style, feeling both used and satisfied.

  She stared at the ceiling for a while and when she looked over at him again he was dressed, and she didn’t even have her breath back yet.

  “Aren’t you . . . aren’t you going to stay with me tonight?” She knew with the job so close he couldn’t, but she felt she should ask.

  He put on his jacket and went to the door.

  “Now that you laid all three of us,” Nolan said, “maybe you can get your mind on the job.”

  The door slammed and she sat staring at it.

  Three

  1

  Half a block down from the parked station wagon, on the opposite corner of the one-way street, was the bank, two tall stories of whitestone with three fat Grecian columns chiseled out of its face. Hanging out from it over the flow of traffic was an electric sign that alternated the time with the temperature on a field of black.

  Nolan sat in front on the rider’s side, Grossman next to him behind the wheel, Jon in back resting chin on folded hands on the seat between the two men.

  Jon said, “How much longer?”

  Nolan glanced out at the electric sign. Under the red letters proclaiming “Port City Savings and Trust” the little white dots on the black field were making a 40. He waited till the white dots disbanded and regrouped as 2:10 and said, “Ten more minutes.”

  “They closed at two,” Grossman said.

  “Give them time,” Nolan said. “They got customers to move out.”

  Grossman nodded; so did Jon, who was chewing his thumbnail. They looked like a couple of young strangers to Nolan in their clean-cut hair and light-tinted sunglasses and business suits.

  He dug out a cigarette and lit.

  So far so good, he thought. Nobody’s wet their pants yet.

  Sandy Baird smoothed her white blonde hair and looked around her and realized that even though she’d lived in Port City all of her nineteen years and had been inside the bank, why, probably trillions of times, she’d never really seen it before.

  When she’d come in at eight that morning, her first morning, it was like she’d just walked in for the very first time!

  Oh, a lot of it looked familiar, the bank officers off to the right behind a steel railing, each at his individual desk and work area; the savings and loan people over to the left with the same set-up as the officers but a bigger working area; and the squared-off section that took up the whole middle of the room, with the tellers’ windows on each side of it, one side facing the officers, the other facing savings. The last was the only thing that had really, you know really looked different to Sandy. All of a sudden that squared-off area where the tellers worked seemed like a barricade, you know, a fort, like they were expecting Indians or something.

  And when she got behind it, actually back inside the “fort” (she would think of it as that, call it that from now on, she just knew) she could have almost fainted! All those files and typewriters on little stands and metal trays with official bank sacks on them and partitions and adding machines and she just knew she was going to foul up, she just knew it. And one of the first things she’d heard when she got there that morning (it was from Anita Welch, she was that girl who had to get married her junior year) was, “Kid, you’re out of luck. Today’s the first Monday of the month, and kid, you’re in for it. We al
l are!” Here she’d been so hoping her first day would be a slow one, kind of an average easy-to-get-in-the-swing-of-it day.

  She sat on the stool and watched Elaine count her money out (“Prove up,” Elaine called it), but so far Elaine hadn’t shown her much of anything, really, hardly explained a thing. Of course, the morning had been frantic, with businesses making their deposits from weekend trade, so Sandy figured Elaine hadn’t really had the chance to explain anything. Maybe it was her imagination, but she had the idea that Elaine had something on her mind, a boyfriend maybe, or maybe it was just her time of the month (and of course she didn’t know Elaine well enough to ask about something as personal as that).

  Sandy had hoped to get with Anita or one of the other girls she’d known in high school, or Sally, who used to work with her at Food Mart a couple of summers back. But Sandy didn’t know this Elaine Simmons at all, didn’t even know where she was from, certainly not Port City, unless she’d gone to the Catholic school or something, or she could’ve just moved here recently.

  Sandy guessed this Elaine was nice enough, but she’d hardly said a word, only when Sandy made a point of asking.

  “Say,” Sandy said, “at lunch I heard one of the girls say you got your hair cut and styled this weekend.”

  Elaine looked over her shoulder and paused in the counting of bills. “Yeah, you like it, honey?”

  “Oh yes, it’s really nice. You know, it’s really you.”

  Elaine smiled, and Sandy thought the smile was kind of funny-strange, like her remark’d been something to laugh at or something.

  “It’s really me,” Elaine said, and returned to her counting.

  Shelly stacked the bills and thought to herself: ironic, today her last day and she proved to the penny in no time flat.

  “Oh, Elaine,” the new girl said.

  Shelly turned around in the window and tried to remember the new girl’s name. Uh, Sandy, yes, that was it. “What, Sandy, honey?”

  “I noticed something peculiar.”

  “Oh?”

  “All day long the vault’s been open. You know, just open.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t they worry about, well, bank robbers and stuff?”

  Today of all days, she thought, to be saddled with a dumb blonde recruit. She put on a pleasant smile and said, “Bonds’re kept in there, honey, and we’re always going in and out all the time getting them. Also sometimes a teller runs out of cash and has to go in for more. See, there’s a time lock on the vault, which’d be a bitch to have to fool around with all day long. So it’s left open so bank personnel like you and me can go in and out as we please.”

  The girl had lowered her eyes when Shelly said “bitch” and still held them down when she said, “Can you say anything around here and get away with it?”

  “No, honey,” Shelly said. “If one of the officers hears you say ‘twat’ you got to go in the back room and show him yours.”

  The girl giggled and (Shelly couldn’t believe it) blushed.

  Well, she thought, shaking her head, takes all kinds. She smiled to herself. And then some kinds take.

  She glanced over at Mr. Rigley. How would he handle the robbery? He looked so cool sitting over there behind his big metallic bank-president’s desk, his short-cut black hair with just a hint of sideburns, his nut-brown sunlamp tan, his tailor-made pinstriped banker’s suit, all the components of a handcrafted, perfectly constructed machine. This year’s model of the Young Exec, body by Fisher.

  Every girl in the bank wanted a try at getting that in the sack, whether they’d admit it or not, and Shelly would admit it, though she had a feeling that under fire old eight-by-ten-glossy Rigley would melt down into a puddle of yellow gunk when faced with three real men. Which in spite of all their faults Gross and Jon and Nolan were.

  Her mind flashed briefly to the night before.

  “What’cha smiling about, Elaine?”

  “Oh, nothing, honey.”

  “Gee, I don’t mean to be nosey or anything, but you’re grinning like the cat that ate the canary.”

  “More like the pussy that got ate.”

  “E-laine!”

  The buzzer sounded, which meant someone was being let in the side door, and Shelly looked over and watched Anita Welch greet the three business-suited men to see what it was they wanted after hours. The three men were Nolan, Jon and Grossman.

  “Listen, honey,” Shelly said, fighting a flutter in her stomach, “maybe I better start showing you some of the ropes.” She opened her drawer. “Well, where shall we start. Oh. Okay.” She picked out a packet of bills. “This, hon, is bait money.”

  There was nothing wrong with his desk, George Rigley thought, that couldn’t be solved by its having an office around it.

  That was the problem, having to sit over here along the wall with all the damn vice-presidents as if being president didn’t make any difference at all.

  It was the Midwest, he supposed, maybe there they feel the president has got to be where people can get to him all the time, walk in the front door and get a nice folksy down-home eyeful of the prez. A lot of bull, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t work his tail to the bone to become a bank president by age forty-two just so he could sit out in the open and have farmers stroll by and say, “Hey.”

  But the bank was growing, bursting at the seams, really, and the future was looking bright, what with the upcoming changeover from state to federal bank and all. Pretty soon that paint store next door would be torn down and some of that additional space would finally be had, and he was going to push for an office if it was the last thing he got that damn board to put through. Privacy, gentlemen, he said to himself, going over the speech he’d had in mind for a long time now, privacy is essential to the executive banker, easy accessibility to the bank’s chief officer is a liability, and not, gentlemen, not an asset. . . .

  “Sir?”

  “Uh, what is it, Anita?”

  “There are three gentlemen to see you.” The dark-haired girl leaned across the desk and peered over the round plastic frames of her glasses. “Examiners, sir,” she whispered.

  “Thank you, Anita,” he said. “Show them over.”

  He glanced toward the steel railing a few feet away and watched as the girl took his message to the three men standing there. They wore dark suits with vests and colorful ties and carried briefcases. The man talking with Anita was considerably older than the other two; he was a mustached man with nearly white hair and an angular face. Like his young assistants, (Rigley naturally assumed the older man was in charge, head examiner and two assistants being the pattern these examining teams followed) he had on sunglasses, though after a moment he removed his and put them in his breast pocket, while the younger two left theirs on; typical of young ones, Rigley thought, to strive for an executive cool with snobbery like that, almost pitiful from glorified accountants like these.

  Yes, they were examiners, all right. Damn examiners, always showing up when least expected, and a special nuisance with the damn changeover coming up (but expansion was good, that was good).

  But hell, a man never had any privacy.

  Jon hoped nobody noticed his trembling. He tried to steady the hand that clutched the briefcase handle. He trailed behind Nolan as the secretary led them through the little steel door in the railing over to the president’s desk. Grossman didn’t seem to be nervous at all, had been real close-mouthed all day. Nolan wasn’t even sweating, not a bead showing; but Jon, Jon’s stomach was upside down.

  “Mr. Rigley,” Nolan was saying.

  Jon worked at getting an official look on his face.

  “How do you do?” the bank president was saying, rising momentarily and sitting back down. The bank president was very handsome, a fraternity boy grown up.

  “My name is Bill Leonard,” Nolan said. “Sam may have mentioned me to you.”

  Jon swallowed. Sam was the name of one of the state examiners Shelly had met a month ago, the last time a leg
itimate examining team had come around the bank.

  “Yes he has,” the president was saying (a bullshitter from word go, Jon noted). “I didn’t realize you federal boys worked out of the same office as Sam and those other fellas. I assume you’re federal, since Sam told me he wouldn’t be coming around anymore, what with the changeover.”

  “We don’t work out of the same office as Sam,” Nolan said, “but we keep in close touch. And as you know, with this switch from state to federal, Port City’s been a common point of interest of late.”

  “Of course,” Rigley said. “Oh, I don’t believe I got the names of the other two gentlemen.”

  “Benton,” Grossman said.

  “Newman,” Jon said, hoping it didn’t come out a squeak.

  “I think you’d better take a look at our credentials,” Nolan said.

  Rigley grinned. His teeth were large and white and reminded Jon of toothpaste commercials. “That’s right, isn’t it,” he said, “you’re checking up on me as much as anything today, aren’t you. Let me see your papers, then.”

  Nolan reached in his jacket pocket and flipped open the bogus credentials; Grossman and Jon did likewise. Rigley kept the grin going, barely glancing at the credentials, waving them off.

  “One must be careful,” Nolan said. “In a bank a person can’t take things for granted.”

  “Well, if you won’t be hard on me in your report,” Rigley said, “I think I can admit to taking you three for examiners on first look. If I can’t tell an examiner on sight by now I probably never’ll be able to.”

  “True enough,” Nolan said.

  “Where shall we begin, gentlemen?” Rigley rose again.

  “Our main interest is to see how your employees are doing in the process of changing over to a federal bank, and, also, to proceed with an orderly and routine examination. We would, however, like to take advantage of this situation by getting all of the Port City Savings and Trust personnel together to brief them on the changes that will be taking place when you become First National Bank of Port City.”

  Rigley lifted his palms and said, “Shall we start with the meeting then?”