That was what I was afraid it was.
And I said, “I know what you’re leading up to, and I won’t be part of it. I am not... we are not... no matter how you threaten us... going to take part in robbing a bank.”
“Robbing a bank!” Wheat said. “What bank? Is that what he’s talking about? Robbing a bank? My mom’d die.”
“You might keep her company,” Hopp said, forgetting about trying to smile.
“Hey, now, everybody hold on a second,” Elam said. “I’m not asking you boys to help Hopp and me rob that bank. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” I asked.
“What, do you think I’m crazy? Do you think I’d take a couple of college kid amateurs on a heist? You boys don’t exactly impress me as a pair that holds up well under pressure. I like the people I work a job with to be a little less high strung than you two.”
“Then why,” I asked, “are you telling us about this bank that’s begging to be robbed?”
“Robbing that bank’ll take four men. It could be done with three, but four’s better. Two guys who’ve worked with Hopp and me before are gonna be getting out of the Ft. Madison, Iowa, state pen in two weeks. We’re gonna do the job with them. But first I got some preliminary work to do. I only got a, you know, fleeting glimpse of this little town, when Hopp and me passed through there one time after knocking off another bank in that same area. I kicked myself in the butt when I saw that little branch bank and all those damn businesses, hell. We’d just got something like six thousand from a bank three times as big, in a town big enough to have cops, and here maybe fifteen thousand was sitting, unguarded.”
Wheat said, “You mean some towns are so small they don’t even have a cop?”
“Some towns are so small,” Elam said, “they don’t even have a whore. So, anyway, I got preliminary work to do. Got to go in that town, in that bank, look things over.”
“Case the joint, huh?” Wheat said.
“Case the joint,” Hopp muttered.
“Yeah, right, kid,” Elam said. “Except even more than that. See, I like having a trial run of a job before I actually pull it. It’s a rule of mine. And that’s where you come in, boys.”
“No,” I said, “it’s where I go out. Wheat, too.”
“Now listen to me,” Elam coaxed. “Just hear me out. All I want you boys to do is fill in for those two friends of ours, who are in the pen and aren’t handy for the run-through.”
“Yeah, Kitch,” Wheat said. “It’s just a sort of dress rehearsal.”
“Dress rehearsal,” Hopp muttered.
“That’s right, kid,” Elam said, “you got the right idea. You just stick to the script I give you, and, well, pretend it’s an actual robbery. Otherwise I won’t be able to get a good idea of how the real robbery’ll go.”
“I won’t be part of it,” I said. “Of a robbery or a trial run or anything.”
Elam unbuttoned his jacket.
“I don’t care,” I said. “Threaten all you want. I don’t even think you have a gun under your arm, how do you like that? You just got out of jail. How could you have a gun? I’m too good a poker player to be bluffed, pal. So just run along. Just forget about it and go. Wheat and me will have no part of your bank robbery or anything else.”
Elam opened his jacket a little, as if he was warm and wanted to cool off. The metal of the gun butt caught some of the light of the dying sun from the window behind me and reflected.
I reflected, too. And after reflecting I said, “It’s not like you were asking us to be part of, uh, actually robbing the bank, I mean, it’s just a run-through, after all... .”
Chapter 18
I wouldn’t have got in that car if I’d known it was stolen.
But I thought it was just a car. Just a car Elam and Hopp had arrived in at the lake cottage yesterday. Had I been thinking, and not just operating on automatic pilot, it would have occurred to me that Elam and Hopp had just got out of jail, and this car—a brand-new yellow Mustang—was a model that had not been on sale when Elam and Hopp went into jail a year ago, that had come on the market while they were inside, and since they were broke they couldn’t have bought it yesterday, so of course it was stolen, what else could it be but stolen?
Only none of that occurred to me till I sat in the stolen car in Wynning, Iowa, in front of the Wynning branch office of the nearby Lone Tree bank, at nine o’clock in the morning, waiting for Elam and Hopp to come out.
We had come down from Wisconsin in a two-car caravan, Wheat and me in the copper-color Volks, following Elam and Hopp in the yellow Mustang. I could have made a break for it, I suppose. I probably should have. I think the reason I didn’t was Hopp was turned around in the rider’s seat of the Mustang up ahead of us, staring at us the whole time with a look so full of meanness Peter Lorre could have learned something from it.
Wheat was in a talkative mood, but I wasn’t listening. He was alternating between excitement about our forthcoming adventure, and panic about said adventure’s illegality; but he never got to the hand-waving and my-mom’ll-kill-me stage, so I didn’t try to calm him down or even bother entering into conversation with him. I just drove. I had that crystal-clear, wide-awake feeling you can only have when you haven’t had any sleep for twenty-four hours; you are past being tired, and feel you are alert. You feel you are alert the way a drunk feels he’s witty.
It had been dark when we started out. I’d watched the dawn as we drove through Wisconsin on into Illinois, and the morning was turning out sunny and blue-skied by the time we hit Iowa. Elam kept the Mustang at a steady fifty-five, taking no chances. That was fine with me: I was in no hurry, though at the same time wished to hell it was over. Finally, we crossed a bridge over the Cedar River and Elam took a side road turn-off, which was as expected, since his plan called for a side route into Wynning, rather than taking the regular turn-off a few miles hence.
Soon we were pulling in behind the yellow Mustang down a gravel drive that led to an abandoned farmhouse, a two-story clapboard gutted by fire and beyond restoration. A barn stood nearby, a paint-peeling, gray building that had been untouched by the fire but was badly sagging and apparently not being used or if so just for storage or something. I parked the Volks on the far side of the barn, so that the car could not be seen from the blacktop road that passed by the farmhouse.
We gathered together, beside the Volks, and Elam told us one more time what it was we were each to do. We were dressed casually, Wheaty and I in cut-off jeans and tank-top tee-shirts, Elam and Hopp wearing unusually bright Hawaiian print sport-shirts and light summer slacks. It seemed odd to me that Elam and Hopp would dress so loudly, and I pointed that out, but Elam explained that the attention of the bank employees would be drawn to the shirts, not the faces of the men wearing the shirts. There was, evidently, a lot of psychology in bank robbing. There was also a lot of attention to detail in Elam’s run-through: Hopp was even going to carry the laundry bag into the bank, rolled up under his arm, the laundry bag that would be used to dump the money in on the real robbery.
Then I got in the Mustang, behind the wheel, while Elam got in on the rider’s side and Hopp climbed in in back. We left Wheat behind with his Volks. All of this was according to plan.
A little more than a mile later we were in Wynning. The side route into town brought us through a middle class residential neighborhood of older homes, ranging from modest one-story clapboards (usually white, with a screened-in porch) to nearly elaborate two-story gothic types, and most of those were white clapboard too, but not always: a red brick house broke the monotony now and again, and some of the less conservative residents had dared to paint their homes a color other than white... you know, something really daring, like a washed-out pastel yellow. Glancing down side streets I saw that the town seemed to be nothing but middle class: the lowliest residence around was an occasional trailer, and those sat in large, well-tended yards.
I also saw a church, or maybe I should call it a chapel; it was M
ethodist, and I thought of my father, and squirmed.
And then the residential area seemed to end before it began, and we were sitting at a stop sign looking out onto the smallest, least active Main Street imaginable.
Down to the right I could see the lumber yard and feed stores Elam had mentioned, with the grain elevator looming behind them; to the left I could see the towers of the oil company’s storage silos. In between was the world’s smallest business district. On the side of the street closest to us was the filling station and garage, where farm machinery was repaired and sold, all of that taking up a small city block. Next to that, across a narrow street, was a city park, which was for the most part a green open area, with a few trees around the edges; there was a small band shell and benches in front of it. The park took up somewhat more space than the nearby filling station and garage, having some room to stretch out, as there was no street cutting between it and its sprawling next-door neighbor, the oil company storage dump. By normal standards, the park was small, but by the standards of this tiny town, it was huge, and I found it somehow refreshing that Wynning, seemingly a very business and industry-oriented little community, had set such a relatively large section of itself aside for a park.
Directly across from the park, but staggered somewhat so that it was also across from the filling station and garage, was the long single block that made up the bulk of Wynning’s business district. On the corner straight across from us, as we sat at the stop sign, was the town’s only bar. Next to the bar was a Clover Farm grocery store.
Next to that was a general store of sorts, apparently a hardware store as much as anything. Then came a large appliance store, and finally, on the other corner, the branch office of the Lone Tree bank.
All of these stores were old; none of them had had their faces lifted. The buildings were brick and the store-fronts were wood and glass. Old, but scrupulously well-maintained. Wynning had looked the same way in 1925.
And clean. The whole damn town was frighteningly clean: you couldn’t find a candy wrapper or crushed cigarette package to save your life.
We could see some cars parked down the street, at the cafe, but the curb in front of the bank and other store-front businesses was empty of cars. It was not what you’d call a hustling, bustling Saturday morning in Wynning.
I pulled up in front of the bank, not directly in front as Elam didn’t want the two bank employees to be able to look out their big glass window and get a good look at the car, but back just a ways. The sidewalk was raised several feet, meaning there was a sort of wall as you got out on the rider’s side, so I left some room, didn’t pull in close.
That was when Elam told me the car was stolen, and to watch myself accordingly, and he and Hopp got out and went into the bank.
Chapter 19
An Iowa Highway Patrol car drew up alongside of me and slowly slid into the space at the curb in front of the stolen Mustang. I shut my eyes. I opened my eyes. The Highway Patrol car was still there.
I hadn’t even gotten over the car being stolen yet, and here was the Highway Patrol already! Terrific.
The patrolman who’d been driving climbed out. He was wearing a faultlessly pressed green-brown uniform, with a badge that the sun glinted off, a tall guy who was trim-looking, in a big-framed, supple, athletic way. He didn’t look much older than me, which should’ve been a comforting thought, I suppose, but it wasn’t: he looked very much like the sort of college jock who got a kick out of doing bodily harm to non-jock sorts like me. He looked very much like Shaker Saltz, as a matter of fact, who, in case you’ve forgotten, is the college jock S.O.B. who got me into all this.
And he was walking back to me. Kind of stretching, rolling his neck around, limbering up like a wrestler getting ready for a match. He was wearing sunglasses, the wrap-around goggle type, and the sun glinted off them, same as his badge. His teeth were shiny white and the sun glinted off them, too.
Only he wasn’t smiling. He just had his lips pulled back across his teeth, getting ready to speak. To me. He pushed his Highway Patrol hat back on his head and let me look at the fringe of military trim blond hair on his tanned, shiny forehead. He leaned forward and said, “I notice you have an out of state license.”
“YES!” I shouted. And realizing I’d shouted, grinned feebly, tried to disguise how hard I was breathing, said a prayer for my bladder, and repeated, with superficial calm, “Yes.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, in a flat tone of a voice.
“Wrong? Wrong?”
“You nervous about something?”
“No, no, no, no, no, nervous about something? No.”
He sighed. “Well you’ll have to move your car.”
“Move my car?”
“I would if I were you. Unless you’re here for the day.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“I’m waiting for a couple friends,” I said. “They’ll just be a couple minutes. I can move it then, if that’s all right.”
“Suit yourself,” the patrolman shrugged, and walked back to his car and joined his partner.
I had no idea what was going on.
I was still upset about Elam’s last-second revelation that I was sitting in a stolen car, and now, less than a minute later, here was a Highway Patrolman telling me to move that car, but was he really? I couldn’t tell if he was telling me to move it, or suggesting. And why would a Highway Patrolman want me to move a car parked on the Main Street of Wynning, Iowa, on a Saturday morning, at nine o’clock?
I glanced around, looking for a clue. The street was still deserted. Had the street been cleared for some reason? I had just assumed—we all had just assumed—the street was simply quiet. Wynning was not exactly your teeming Metropolis, after all. The only signs of activity were some teenage kids over on the far side of the park, pitching a big tent, a tent big enough to hold a meeting in.
Was that somehow significant?
I stepped out of the car and took a look at the bank. Because of the raised-up sidewalk I couldn’t see the bank from the car, hadn’t really got any sort of look at it yet at all.
I saw that the venetian blinds on the store-front window of the branch office bank were drawn. I hadn’t noticed whether they’d been drawn when we drove up or not. Maybe Elam and Hopp had drawn them; maybe that was part of their side of the run-through. They hadn’t told Wheat and me any of the stuff that would happen inside the bank; we just assumed they’d go in there, get change for a twenty or cash a check or something, and, you know, just get a general look around at the lay-out of the place and all.
And then I noticed the “Closed” sign hanging in the window of the door. And the shade was pulled on that window, too.
What?
I knew that according to Elam’s instructions I was to sit in the car with the motor running. I knew that Elam had insisted I stay put, and under no circumstances was I to enter or even approach the bank. But something was drastically wrong here.
I leaned back in the car, switched off the motor, and hopped up on the sidewalk.
They’d been inside four minutes.
I looked in the big store-front window, to the side of the venetian blinds, where there was just a crack you could see through to the inside of the bank.
I saw Elam standing in front of the teller counter with a gun in his hand. I saw Hopp behind the counter, standing in the doorway of the open vault, stuffing packets of money into the laundry bag. I saw the tops of the heads of two people, one man, one woman, both of whom were sitting on the floor behind the counter. They were apparently tied up and, I supposed, gagged.
I took two or three dazed steps back away from the window and turned around, head spinning, and said, “That’s a trial run?”
The Highway Patrol officer on the rider’s side looked up at me from his car and said, “Did you want something?”
“NO!” I shouted. And grinned feebly, and repeated, “No.”
Chapter 20
By now you must b
e wondering why these two Highway Patrolmen didn’t find my behavior suspicious. I was wondering that myself. Evidently they thought I was just another nut who got nervous around police types, and let it go at that. Evidently they had other things on their minds.
Meanwhile, I stood there on the sidewalk teetering between the Wynning branch office of the Lone Tree bank and those two unpleasant vehicles, the Highway Patrol car and the stolen Mustang, wondering what to do. Oh, I had options, sure, but when your options revolve around a bank in the process of being robbed, a Highway Patrol car and a stolen Mustang, you find yourself unable to do much of anything, except maybe stand there on the sidewalk, teetering.
I considered just walking away. Hoofing it on out to that burned-out farmhouse where Wheat waited, Wheat and his Volks, Wheat and his beautiful, not stolen Volkswagen. It wouldn’t be like I’d driven off and left Elam and Hopp behind. If I left the key in the Mustang’s ignition, it wouldn’t be like I’d left Elam and Hopp in the lurch.
Would it?
But suppose I did walk away. Elam and Hopp would come out of the bank with a bag of money in one hand and a gun in the other, and there could maybe be shooting, and did I want to be responsible for that? That would be like seeing an accident coming and not yelling “Look out!”
Furthermore, Elam and Hopp, teed off at me for deserting them, would probably immediately tell the patrolmen where to find Wheat and me.
Shoot The Moon (and more) Page 7