1
 

 

 
"YES," Dortmunder said. "You can reserve all this, for yourself and your 
 
family, for simply a ten-dollar deposit."
 
"My," said the lady. She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties, small and 
 
compact, and from the looks of this living room she kept a tight ship. The room 
 
was cool and comfortable and neat, packaged with no individuality but a great 
 
passion for cleanliness, like a new mobile home. The draperies flanking the 
 
picture window were so straight, each fold so perfectly rounded and smooth, 
 
that they didn't look like cloth at all but a clever plaster forgery. The picture they 
 
framed showed a neat treeless lawn that drained away from the house, the neat 
 
curving blacktop suburban street in spring sunshine, and a ranch-style house 
 
across the way identical in every exterior detail to this one. 1 bet their drapes 
 
aren't this neat, Dortmunder thought.
 
"Yes," he said, and gestured at the promo leaflets now scattered all over the 
 
coffee table and the nearby floor. "You get the encyclopedia and the bookcase 
 
and the Junior Wonder Science Library and its bookcase, and the globe, and 
 
the five-year free use of research facilities at our gigantic modern research facility 
 
at Butte, Montana, and-"
 
"We wouldn't have to go to Butte, Montana, would we?" She was one of 
 
those neat, snug women who can still look pretty with their brows furrowed. Her 
 
true role in life would be to operate a USO canteen, but here she was in this 
 
white-collar ghetto in the middle of Long Island.
 
"No, no," Dortmunder said with an honest smile. Most of the housewives he 
 
met in the course of business left him cold, but every once in a while he ran 
 
across one like this who hadn't been lobotomized by life in the suburbs, and the 
 
contact always made him cheerful. She's sprightly, he thought, and smiled some 
 
more at the rare chance to use a word like that, even in interior monologue. 
 
Then he turned the smile on the customer and said, "You write to them in Butte, 
 
Montana. You tell them you want to know about, uh . . ."
 
"Anguilla," she suggested.
 
"Sure," Dortmunder said, as though he knew just what she meant. "Anything 
 
you want. And they send you the whole story."
 
"My," she said and looked again at all the promo papers spread around her 
 
neat living room.
 
"And don't forget the five annual roundups," Dortmunder told her, "to keep 
 
your encyclopedia right up to date for the next five years."
 
"My," she said.
 
"And you can reserve the whole thing," Dortmunder said, "for a simple ten-
 
dollar deposit." There had been a time when he had been using the phrase 
 
"measly ten-dollar deposit," but gradually he'd noticed that the prospects who 
 
eventually turned the deal down almost always gave a visible wince at the word 
 
"measly," so he'd switched to "simple" and the results had been a lot better. 
 
Keep it simple, he decided, and you can't go wrong.
 
"Well, that's certainly something," the woman said. "Do you mind waiting 
 
while I get my purse?"
 
"Not at all," Dortmunder said.
 
She left the room, and Dortmunder sat back on the sofa and smiled lazily at 
 
the world outside the picture window. A man had to stay alive somehow while 
 
waiting for a big score to develop, and there was nothing better for that than an 
 
encyclopedia con. In the spring and fall, that is; winter was too cold for house-
 
to-house work and summer was too hot. But given the right time of year, the old 
 
encyclopedia scam was unbeatable. It kept you in the fresh air and in nice neigh-
 
borhoods, it gave you a chance to stretch your legs in comfortable living rooms 
 
and chat with mostly pleasant suburban ladies, and it bought the groceries.
 
Figure ten or fifteen minutes per prospect, though the losers usually didn't take 
 
that long. If only one out of five bit, that was ten bucks an hour. On a six-hour 
 
day and a five-day week, that was three hundred a week, which was more than 
 
enough for a man of simple tastes to live on, even in New York.
 
And the ten-dollar bite was just the perfect size. Anything smaller than that, 
 
the effort wouldn't be worth the return. And if you went up above ten dollars, 
 
you got into the area where the housewives either wanted to talk it over with 
 
their husbands first or wanted to write you checks; and Dortmunder wasn't 
 
about to go cash a check made out to an encyclopedia company. The few 
 
checks he got at the ten-dollar level he simply threw away at the end of the 
 
day's business.
 
It was now nearly four in the afternoon. He figured he'd make this the last 
 
customer of the day, go find the nearest Long Island Railroad station, and head 
 
on back into the city. May would be home from Bohack's by the time he got 
 
there.
 
Should he start packing the promo material back in his attaché case? No, 
 
there wasn't any hurry. Besides, it was psychologically good to keep the pretty 
 
pictures out where the customer could see what she was buying until she'd 
 
actually handed over the ten spot.
 
Except that what she was really buying with her ten dollars was a receipt. 
 
Which he might as well get out, come to think of it. He opened the snaps on the 
 
attaché case beside him on the sofa and lifted the lid.
 
To the left of the sofa was an end table holding a lamp and a cream-colored 
 
European-style telephone, not normal Bell issue. Now, as Dortmunder reached 
 
into his attaché case for his receipt pad, this telephone said, very softly, "dit-dit-
 
ditdit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit."
 
Dortmunder glanced at it. His left hand was holding the lid of the case up, his 
 
right hand was inside holding the receipt pad, but he didn't move. Somebody 
 
must be dialing an extension somewhere else in the house. Dortmunder frowned 
 
at the phone and it said, "dit." A smaller number that time, probably a 1. Then 
 
"dit," said the phone again, which would be another 1. Dortmunder waited, not 
 
moving, but the phone didn't say anything else.
 
Just a three-digit number? A high digit first, and then two low ones. What kind 
 
of phone number was...
 
911.	The police emergency number.
 
Dortmunder took his hand out of the attaché case without the receipt pad. No 
 
time to pick up the promo papers. He methodically snicked shut the attaché 
 
case snaps, got to his feet, walked to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. 
 
Carefully closing the door behind him, he walked briskly over the curving slate 
 
path to the sidewalk, turned right, and kept on walking.
 
What he needed was a store, a movie-theater, a cab, even a church. 
 
Someplace to get inside for a little while. Walking along the street like this, he 
 
didn't have a chance. But there was nothing as far as the eye could see, nothing 
 
but houses and lawns and tricycles. Like the Arab who fell off his camel in 
 
Lawrence of Arabia, Dortmunder just kept walking, even though he was 
 
doomed.
 
A purple Oldsmobile Toronado with MD plates roared by, heading in the 
 
direction he was coming from. Dortmunder thought nothing of it until he heard 
 
the brakes squeal back there, and then his face lit up and he said, "Kelp!"
 
He turned to look, and the Oldsmobile was making a complicated U-turn, 
 
backing and filling, making little progress. The driver could be seen spinning the 
 
wheel madly, first in one direction and then the other, like a pirate captain in a 
 
hurricane, while the Oldsmobile bumped back and forth between the curbs.
 
"Come on, Kelp," Dortmunder muttered. He shook the attaché case a little, 
 
as though to help straighten the car out.
 
Finally, the driver lunged the car up over the curb, and in a sweeping arc over 
 
the sidewalk and back down, and slammed it to a stop in front of where 
 
Dortmunder was standing. Dortmunder, whose enthusiasm had already faded 
 
somewhat, opened the passenger door and slid in.
 
"So there you are," Kelp said.
 
"There I am," Dortmunder said. "Let's get out of here."
 
Kelp was aggrieved. "I been looking all over for you."
 
"You aren't the only one," Dortmunder said. He twisted around to look out 
 
the rear window; nothing yet. "Come on, let's go," he said.
 
But Kelp was still aggrieved. "Last night," he said, "you told me you were 
 
gonna be today in Ranch Cove Estates."
 
Dortmunder's attention had been caught. "I'm not?"
 
Kelp pointed at the windshield. "Ranch Cove Estates stops three blocks 
 
down there," he said. "This is Elm Valley Heights."
 
Dortmunder looked around at no elms, no valleys and no heights. "I must 
 
have slipped across the border," he said.
 
"I been driving up and down and up and down. I just now gave up, I was 
 
going back to the city, I figured I never would find you."
 
Was that a siren in the distance? "Well, now you found me," Dortmunder 
 
said. "So why don't we go someplace?"
 
But Kelp didn't want to distract himself with driving. He had the engine still 
 
running, but the gear shift was in Park and he had more to say. "Do you know 
 
what it's like, you spend the whole day just driving up and down and up and 
 
down, and the guy you're looking for isn't even in Ranch Cove Estates?"
 
It was definitely a siren, and it was coming closer. Dortmunder said, "Why 
 
don't we go there now?"
 
"Very funny," Kelp said. "Do you realize I had to put a dollar's worth of gas 
 
of my own money in this car, and it was almost full when I picked it up?"
 
"I'll reimburse you," Dortmunder said. "If you'll just use some of it to drive us 
 
away from here." Far down the street was a tiny winking red light, and it was 
 
coming this way.
 
"I don't want your money," Kelp said. He was somewhat mollified, but still 
 
irritated. "All I want is if you say you're gonna be in Ranch Cove Estates be in 
 
Ranch Cove Estates,"
 
There was a police car under the winking red light, and it was coming like hell. 
 
"I'm sorry," Dortmunder said. "From now on I'll do better."
 
Kelp frowned at him. "What? That's not like you, to talk like that. Something 
 
wrong?"
 
The police car was two blocks away and moving fast. Dortmunder put his 
 
head in his hands.
 
Kelp said, "Hey, what's the matter?" He said something else after that, but the 
 
noise of the siren was so loud that his voice was blotted out. The siren shrilled to 
 
a peak of noise, and then modulated all at once into minor key and receded.
 
Dortmunder lifted his head and looked around. The police car was a block 
 
behind them and slowing at last as it neared the house Dortmunder had come 
 
from.
 
Kelp was frowning at the rear-view mirror. "I wonder who they want," he 
 
said.
 
"Me," Dortmunder said. His voice was a little shaky. "Now do you mind if we 
 
go away from here?"
 

 

 
2
 

 

 
KELP drove along with one eye on the empty street ahead and one eye on 
 
the rear-view mirror showing the empty street behind. He was tense but alert. 
 
He said, "You should've told me sooner."
 
"I tried," Dortmunder said. He was being sullen and grumpy in the corner.
 
"You could've got us both in trouble," Kelp said. The memory of the police 
 
car's siren was making him nervous, and nervousness made him talkative.
 
Dortmunder didn't say anything. Kelp took a quick glance at him and saw him 
 
brooding at the glove compartment, as though wondering if it had an ax in it. 
 
Kelp went back to watching the street and the rear-view mirror and said, "With 
 
that record of yours, you know, you get picked up for anything, you'll get life."
 
"Is that right?" Dortmunder said. He was really being very sour, even worse 
 
than usual.
 
Kelp drove one-handed for a minute while he got out his pack of Trues, 
 
shook one out, and put it between his lips. He extended the pack sideways, 
 
saying, "Cigarette?"
 
"True? What the hell kind of brand is that?"
 
"It's one of the new ones with the low nicotine and tars.
 
Try it."
 
"I'll stick to Camels," Dortmunder said, and out of the corner of his eye Kelp 
 
saw him pull a battered pack of them from his jacket pocket. "True," 
 
Dortmunder grumbled. "I don't know what the hell kind of name that is for a 
 
cigarette."
 
Kelp was stung. He said, "Well, what kind of name is Camel? True means 
 
something. What the hell does Camel mean?"
 
"It means cigarettes," Dortmunder said. "For years and years it means 
 
cigarettes. I see something called True, I figure right away it's a fake."
 
"Just because you've been working a con," Kelp said, "you figure everybody 
 
else is too."
 
"That's right," Dortmunder said.
 
Kelp could deal with anything at that point except being agreed with; not 
 
knowing where to go from there, he let the conversation lapse. Also, realizing he 
 
was still holding the cigarette pack in his right hand, he tucked it away again in 
 
his shirt pocket.
 
Dortmunder said, "I thought you quit anyway."
 
Kelp shrugged. "I started again." He put both hands on the wheel while he 
 
negotiated a right turn onto Merrick Avenue, a major street with a good amount 
 
of traffic.
 
Dortmunder said, "I thought the cancer commercials on television scared you 
 
off."
 
"They did," Kelp said. There were now cars both in front of him and behind 
 
him, but none of them contained police. "They don't show them any more," he 
 
said. "They took the cigarette commercials off, and they took the cancer 
 
commercials off at the same time. So I went back." Still watching the street, he 
 
reached out to press the lighter button in. Windshield washer fluid suddenly 
 
sprayed all over the glass in front of him, and he couldn't see a thing.
 
Dortmunder shouted, "What the hell are you doing?"
 
"God damn it!" Kelp yelled and stomped on the brake. It was a power 
 
brake, and the car stopped on a dime and gave them change. "These American 
 
cars!" Kelp yelled, and something crashed into them from behind.
 
Dortmunder, peeling himself off the dashboard, said, "I suppose this is better 
 
than life imprisonment."
 
Kelp had found the windshield wipers and now they started sweeping back 
 
and forth over the glass, flinging gobs of fluid left and right. "We're okay now," 
 
Kelp said, and somebody knocked on the side window next to his left ear. He 
 
turned his head, and there was a heavyset guy in a topcoat out there, shouting. 
 
"Now what?" Kelp said. He found the button that would slide the power 
 
window down, pushed it, and the power window slid down. Now he could hear 
 
that the heavyset guy was shouting, "Look what you done to my car!"
 
Kelp looked out front, but there wasn't anything in front of him at all. Then he 
 
looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a car very close to him in the back.
 
The heavyset guy was shouting, "Come look! Come see for yourself!"
 
Kelp opened the car door and got out. A bronze Pinto was nuzzling the 
 
purple Toronado in the rear. Kelp said, "Well, for Christ's sake."
 
"Look what you done to my car!"
 
Kelp walked down to where the two cars met and studied the damage. Glass 
 
was broken, chrome was bent, and what looked like radiator fluid was making a 
 
green puddle on the blacktop.
 
"I tell you," the heavyset guy shouted, "to go ahead, just go ahead and look 
 
what you done to my car!"
 
Kelp shook his head. "Oh, no," he said. "You hit me from the rear. I didn't 
 
do anything to-"
 
"You jammed on your brakes! How'm I supposed to-"
 
"Any insurance company in the world will tell you the driver in the back is the 
 
one who-"
 
"You jammed on your- We'll see what the cops say!"
 
The cops. Kelp gave the heavyset guy a bland, unworried smile and started to 
 
walk around the Pinto, as though to inspect the damage on the other side. There 
 
was a row of stores on the right here, and he'd already spotted an alley between 
 
two of them.
 
On the way around the Pinto, Kelp glanced in and saw that the storage area in 
 
back was full of open-top cardboard cartons full of paperback books. About 
 
five or six titles, with dozens of copies of each title. One was called Passion 
 
Doll, another Man Hungry, another Strange Affair. The covers featured 
 
undressed girls. There were Call Me Sinner and Off Limits and Apprentice 
 
Virgin. Kelp paused.
 
The heavyset guy had been following him, ranting and raving, waving his arms 
 
around so that his topcoat flapped- imagine somebody wearing a topcoat on a 
 
day like this-but now he stopped when Kelp did, and his voice lowered, and in 
 
an almost normal tone of voice he said, "So what?"
 
Kelp stood looking in at the paperback books. "You were talking about the 
 
cops," he said.
 
Other traffic was now having to detour around them. A woman in a Cadillac 
 
shouted as she went by, "Why don't you bums get off the road?"
 
"I'm talking about traffic cops," the heavyset guy said.
 
"Whatever you're talking about," Kelp said, "what you're gonna get is cops. 
 
And they're likely to care more about the back of your car than the front."
 
"The Supreme Court-"
 
"I didn't figure we'd get the Supreme Court to come out for a traffic 
 
accident," Kelp said. "What I figured, we'd probably get just local Suffolk 
 
County cops."
 
"I got a lawyer to handle that," the heavyset guy said, but he didn't seem as 
 
sure of himself any more.
 
"Also, you hit me from behind," Kelp said. "Let's not leave that out of our 
 
calculations."
 
The heavyset guy looked quickly all around, as though for an exit, and then 
 
looked at his watch. "I'm late for an appointment," he said.
 
"So am I," said Kelp. "What I figure, what the hell, we've got the same 
 
amount of damage on each car. I'll pay for mine, you pay for yours. We put a 
 
claim in with the insurance company, they'll just up our rates."
 
"Or drop us," the heavyset guy said. "That happened to me once already. If it 
 
wasn't for a guy my brother-in-law knew, I wouldn't have insurance right now."
 
"I know how it is," Kelp said.
 
"Those bastards'll rob you deaf, dumb and blind," the heavyset guy said, "and 
 
then all of a sudden boom-they drop you."
 
"We're better off we don't have anything to do with them," Kelp said.
 
"Fine by me," the heavyset guy said.
 
"Well, I'll see you around," Kelp said.
 
"So long," said the heavyset guy, but even as he said it he was starting to look 
 
puzzled, as though beginning to suspect he'd missed a station somewhere along 
 
the way.
 
Dortmunder wasn't in the car. Kelp shook his head as he put the Toronado in 
 
drive. "Oh, ye of little faith," he said under his breath and drove off with a 
 
grinding of metal.
 
He didn't realize he'd carried the Pinto's front bumper away with him until 
 
two blocks later, when he started up from a traffic light and it fell off back there 
 
with one hell of a crash.
 

 

 
3
 

 

 

 
DORTMUNDER had walked three blocks along Merrick Avenue, swinging 
 
his almost-empty attaché case, when the purple Toronado pulled to the curb 
 
beside him again and Kelp shouted, "Hey, Dortmunder! Get in!"
 
Dortmunder leaned down to look through the open right-side window. "I'll 
 
take the train," he said. "Thanks, anyway." He straightened and walked on.
 
The Toronado shot past him, went down a line of parked cars and pulled in 
 
by a fire hydrant. Kelp jumped out, ran around the car and met Dortmunder on 
 
the sidewalk. "Listen," he said.
 
"Things have been very quiet," Dortmunder told him. "I want to keep it that 
 
way."
 
"Is it my fault that guy ran into me in the back?"
 
"Have you seen the back of that car?" Dortmunder asked him. He nodded at 
 
the Toronado, which he was even then walking past.
 
Kelp fell into step beside him. "What do I care?" he said. "It's not mine."
 
"It's a mess," Dortmunder said.
 
"Listen," Kelp said. "Don't you want to know what I was looking for you 
 
for?"
 
"No," Dortmunder said. He kept walking.
 
"Where the hell you walking to, anyway?"
 
"That railroad station down there."
 
"I'll drive you."
 
"You sure will," Dortmunder said. He kept walking.
 
"Listen," Kelp said. "You've been waiting for a big one, am I right?"
 
"Not again," Dortmunder said.
 
"Will you listen? You don't want to spend the rest of your life peddling 
 
encyclopedias around the Eastern Seaboard, do you?"
 
Dortmunder said nothing. He kept walking.
 
"Well, do you?"
 
Dortmunder kept walking.
 
"Dortmunder," Kelp said, "I swear and vow I have the goods. This time I 
 
have a guaranteed winner. A score so big you can retire for maybe three years. 
 
Maybe even four."
 
"The last time you came to me with a score," Dortmunder said, "it took five 
 
jobs to get it, and even when I got it I didn't have anything." He kept walking.
 
"Is that my fault? Luck ran against us, that's all. The idea of the caper was 
 
first-rate, you got to admit that yourself. Will you for Christ's sake stop 
 
walking?"
 
Dortmunder kept walking.
 
Kelp ran around in front of him and trotted backward for a while. "All I'm 
 
asking," he said, "is that you listen to it and come look at it. You know I trust 
 
your judgment; if you say it's no good I won't argue for a minute."
 
"You're gonna fall over that Pekingese," Dortmunder said.
 
Kelp stopped running backward, turned around, glared back at the woman 
 
who owned the Pekingese, and reverted to walking frontward, on Dortmunder's 
 
left. "I think we been friends long enough," he said, "that I can ask you as a per-
 
sonal favor just to give me a listen, just to give the job a look-see."
 
Dortmunder stopped on the sidewalk and gave Kelp a heavy look. "We been 
 
friends long enough," he said, "that I know if you come up with a job, there's 
 
something wrong with it."
 
"That isn't fair."
 
"I never said it was."
 
Dortmunder was about to start walking again when Kelp quickly said, 
 
"Anyway, it isn't my caper. You know about my nephew Victor?"
 
''No.''
 
"The ex-FBI man? I never told you about him?"
 
Dortmunder looked at him. "You have a nephew who's an FBI man?"
 
"Ex-FBI man. He quit."
 
"He quit," Dortmunder echoed.
 
"Or maybe they fired him," Kelp said. "It was some argument about a secret 
 
handshake."
 
"Kelp, I'm gonna miss my train."
 
"I'm not making this up," Kelp said. "Don't blame me, for Christ's sake. 
 
Victor kept sending in these memos how the FBI ought to have a secret 
 
handshake, so the agents could tell each other at parties and like that, and they 
 
never went for it. So either he quit or they fired him, something like that."
 
"This is the guy that came up with the caper?"
 
"Look, he was in the FBI, he passed the tests and everything, he isn't a nut. 
 
He's got a college education and everything."
 
"But he wanted them to have a secret handshake."
 
"Nobody's perfect," Kelp said reasonably. "Hey, listen, will you come meet 
 
him, listen to him? You'll like Victor. He's a nice guy. And I tell you the score is 
 
guaranteed beautiful."
 
"May's waiting for me to come home," Dortmunder said. He could feel 
 
himself weakening.
 
"I'll give you the dime," Kelp said. "Come on, whadaya say?"
 
"I'm making a mistake," Dortmunder said, "that's what I say." He turned 
 
around and started walking back. After a second, Kelp caught up with him 
 
again, smiling cheerfully, and they walked back together.
 
The Toronado had a ticket on it.
 

 

 
4
 

 

 

 
"EVERYBODY FREEZE," Victor snarled. "This is a stickup."
 
He pushed the stop button on the cassette recorder, rewound, and played it 
 
back. "Everybody freeze," the cassette snarled. "This is a stickup."
 
Victor smiled, put the recorder down on his work table, and picked up both 
 
other recorders. All three were small, about the size of a tourist's camera. Into 
 
one of them Victor said, in a high-pitched voice, "You can't do this!" Then he 
 
played that from one recorder into the other, at the same time giving a falsetto 
 
"Eeek!" The scream and the high-pitched remark were then played back from 
 
recorder number three to recorder number two, while in a deep voice Victor 
 
said, "Look out, boys, they've got guns!" Gradually, working back and forth 
 
between the recorders, he built up an agitated crowd response to the stickup 
 
announcement, and when he was satisfied with it he recorded it onto the first 
 
Cassette.
 
The room Victor was in had started life as a garage but had veered. It was 
 
now a cross between a den and a radio repair shop, plus some Batcave. 
 
Victor's work table, littered with recording equipment, old magazines and odds 
 
and ends, was against the rear wall, which was completely papered with covers 
 
from old pulp magazines, pasted on and then shellacked. At the top of the wall 
 
was a rolled-up motion-picture screen, which could be pulled down and hooked 
 
to a gizmo at the back of the work table.
 
The wall to Victor's left was lined with bookcases, filled with pulp magazines, 
 
paperback books, Big Little Books, comic books, and elderly hardcover boys' 
 
books-Dave Dawson, Bomba, the Boy Allies. The wall to his right was also 
 
lined with shelves, these containing stereo components and records, mostly old 
 
sixteen-inch transcription records of radio shows like "The Lone Ranger" and 
 
"Terry and the Pirates." On a small shelf at the bottom were a line of new 
 
cassettes, identified in neat lettering in red ink with such titles as The Scarlet 
 
Avenger Meets Lynxman and "Rat" Duffy's Mob Breaks Out.
 
The last wall, where the garage doors had once been, was now given over to 
 
motion pictures. There were two projectors, an eight-millimeter and a sixteen-, 
 
and shelf after shelf of canned film. Stray bits of unused wall around the room 
 
sported posters for old movie serials-Flash Gordon Conquers the 
 
Universe-and box tops from old cereals- Kellogg's Pep, Quaker Puffed 
 
Rice, Post Toasties.
 
There were no doors or windows visible anywhere in the room, and most of 
 
the central floor space was taken up by fifteen old movie seats, in three rows of 
 
five, all facing the rear wall, the rolled-up screen, the littered work table, and 
 
Victor.
 
Being just thirty years of age, Victor hadn't yet been born when most of the 
 
material in the room had first appeared. He'd discovered the pulps by accident 
 
when he was in high school, had started collecting, and had gradually spread out 
 
to all the sources of adventure in the decades before World War Two. It was 
 
history to him, and a hobby, but not nostalgia. His own youth had been 
 
highlighted by Howdy Doody and John Cameron Swayze, and he had as yet 
 
discovered no twinge of nostalgia within him for either.
 
Maybe it was his hobby that kept him young. Whatever it was, he didn't look 
 
his age. At the most, he might be taken for twenty, but generally the people he 
 
met assumed he was a teenager, and he was still routinely asked for proof of age 
 
whenever he went into a bar. It had frequently been embarrassing, back when 
 
he was with the Bureau, to identify himself to some pinko as an FBI man and 
 
have the pinko fall on the floor laughing. His looks had hampered his Bureau ac-
 
tivities in other ways, too; for instance, he couldn't infiltrate a college campus 
 
because he didn't look old enough to go to college. Nor could he grow a beard, 
 
except some straggling thing that made him look as though he was suffering from 
 
radiation sickness. And when he let his hair grow long, the best he could look 
 
like was the Three Musketeers' mascot.
 
He sometimes thought the reason the Bureau had let him go was just as much 
 
his appearance as the business about the handshake. Once, when he'd been 
 
assigned to the Omaha office, he'd heard Chief Agent Flanagan say to Agent 
 
Goodwin, "We want our men to look clean-cut, but that's ridiculous," and he'd 
 
known they were talking about him.
 
But the Bureau hadn't been the right place for him anyway. It wasn't -anything 
 
like The FBI in Peace and War, or C-Men, or the rest of the literature. They 
 
didn't even call themselves G-men; they called themselves Agents. Every time 
 
he d called himself Agent, Victor had gotten the mental image of himself as an 
 
undercover humanoid from another planet, part of the advance guard sent to 
 
enslave mankind and turn Earth over to the Green Goks from Alpha Centauri II. 
 
It had been a disturbing mental image and had played havoc with his 
 
interrogation technique.
 
Also, consider: Victor had been with the Bureau twenty-three months, and not 
 
once had he held in his hands a submachine gun. He hadn't even seen one. He'd 
 
never broken down a door. He'd never held a loud-hailer to his mouth and 
 
bawled, "All right, Muggsy, we've got the house surrounded." What he'd mostly 
 
done was call Army deserters' parents on the telephone and ask them if they'd 
 
seen their son recently. And he'd also done a lot of filing-really, one hell of a 
 
lot of filing.
 
No, the Bureau hadn't been the right place for him at all. But where-other 
 
than this garage-was the right place? He had his law degree, but he'd never 
 
taken the bar exam and had no particular desire to become an attorney. He 
 
made a small living these days as a dealer in old books and magazines, 
 
completely mail order, but it wasn't a really satisfying existence.
 
Well, maybe this business with his uncle Kelp would turn out to be something. 
 
Time would tell.
 
"You can't get away with that!" he said in a manly voice into the master 
 
cassette, then overlay a high, squealing, "No, don't!" Then he put down the 
 
recorders, opened a drawer of the work table, and took out a small .5-caliber 
 
Firearms International automatic. He checked the clip, and it still contained five 
 
blanks. Switching on a recorder, he fired two quick shots and then a third, at the 
 
same time shouting, "Take that! And that!"
 
"Uh," said a voice.
 
Victor turned his head, startled. A section of bookcase in the left-hand wall 
 
had opened inward, and Kelp was standing in the doorway, looking glazed. 
 
Behind him was a wedge of sunlit back yard and the white clapboard side wall 
 
of the neighbor's garage. "I, uh . . ." said Kelp and pointed in various directions.
 
"Oh, hi," Victor said cheerfully. He waved the gun in a friendly fashion and 
 
said, "Come on in."
 
Kelp pointed in the general direction of the gun. "That uh..."
 
"Oh, it's blanks," Victor said easily. He switched off the recorder, put the 
 
automatic away in the drawer and got to his feet. "Come on in."
 
Kelp came in and shut the bookcase. "You don't want to startle me," he said.
 
"Golly, I'm sorry," Victor said concernedly.
 
"I startle easy," Kelp said. "You shoot a gun, you throw a knife, any little thing 
 
like that will set me right off."
 
"I'll sure remember that," Victor said soberly.
 
"Anyway," Kelp said, "I found the guy I was telling you about."
 
"The planner?" Victor asked with quickening interest. "Dortmunder?"
 
"That's the one. I wasn't sure you wanted me to bring him in here. I know 
 
you like this place kept private."
 
"That's good," Victor said approvingly. "Where is he?"
 
"Down the drive."
 
Victor hurried to the front of the room where the movie projectors and cans 
 
of films were located. A small framed poster for the George Raft The Glass 
 
Key was at eye level on a clear patch of wall; it was hinged at the top, and 
 
Victor lifted it up out of the way and stood close to peer through a small 
 
rectangular pane of dusty glass at the world outside.
 
What he was looking at was the weedy driveway beside his house, with its 
 
two narrow ribbons of old cracked concrete leading down to the sidewalk and 
 
the street. This was an older section of Long Island than either Ranch Cove 
 
Estates or Elm Valley Heights. It was called Belle Vista; the streets were all 
 
straight, and the houses ran mostly to two-story, one-family affairs with front 
 
porches.
 
Down at the sidewalk Victor saw a man. He was walking slowly back and 
 
forth, he was looking down, and he was taking occasional quick puffs on a stub 
 
of cigarette he held in his cupped hand. Victor nodded, pleased at what he saw. 
 
Dortmunder was tall and lean and tired-looking; he had the worn look of 
 
Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra. Victor did a Bogart twitch with the left side of 
 
his mouth, leaned back, and lowered the movie poster again. "That's fine," he 
 
said amiably. "Let's go out and meet him."
 
"Sure," Kelp said.
 
Victor opened the bookcase and bowed Kelp through ahead of him. On the 
 
other side, the bookcase was an ordinary door, with a dusty window in it 
 
covered by a chintz curtain. Victor pulled the door shut and walked with Kelp 
 
around to the front of the garage and down the driveway toward Dortmunder.
 
Victor couldn't help looking back, when he was halfway down the drive, and 
 
admiring his handiwork. From the outside it looked like a perfectly ordinary 
 
garage, except that it was more old-fashioned than most, with its pair of side-
 
hinged doors padlocked in the middle. Anybody who went up to those doors 
 
and looked through the small dusty windows would see nothing but blackness; it 
 
was black felt against plywood six inches from the glass, but he wouldn't know 
 
that. He'd think it was simply dark in there. Victor had tried rigging up a blow-
 
up photograph of a 1933 Ford in there, but he just couldn't ever get the 
 
perspective right, so he'd settled for darkness instead.
 
He faced front again, smiling, and walked with Kelp the rest of the way to 
 
meet Dortmunder, who stopped on the sidewalk, gave them both a sour look 
 
and flicked his cigarette butt away.
 
Kelp made introductions: "Dortmunder, this is Victor."
 
"Hello," Dortmunder said.
 
"Hello, Mr. Dortmunder," Victor said eagerly and stuck his hand out. "I've 
 
sure heard a lot about you," he said admiringly.
 
Dortmunder looked at the hand, then at Victor, and finally shook hands with 
 
him, suddenly saying, "You heard a lot about me?"
 
"From my uncle," Victor said proudly.
 
Dortmunder gave Kelp a look that wasn't easy to define and said, "Is that 
 
right?"
 
"General things," Kelp said. "You know, just general things."
 
"This and that," Dortmunder suggested.
 
"That kind of thing, yeah."
 
Victor smiled at both of them. Dortmunder was just fine, in appearance and 
 
voice and attitude and everything. Just fine. After the disappointment of the 
 
Bureau, he hadn't known exactly what to expect, but so far Dortmunder was 
 
everything Victor could have hoped for.
 
He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. "Well," he said happily, "shall 
 
we go take a look at it?"
 

 

 
5
 

 

 
THE THREE of them sat in the front seat, with Dortmunder on the right. 
 
Every time he turned his head slightly to the left he saw Victor, sitting in the 
 
middle, smiling at him, as though Victor were a fisherman and Dortmunder was 
 
the biggest fish he'd ever caught. It made Dortmunder very nervous, particularly 
 
since this Victor used to be an FBI man, so he kept his head turned to the right 
 
most of the time and watched the houses go by. Suburbs, suburbs. All these mil-
 
lions of bedrooms.
 
After a while Victor said, "Well, we certainly do have a nice day for it."
 
Dortmunder turned his head, and Victor was smiling at him. "Yes," 
 
Dortmunder said and turned away again.
 
"Tell me, Mr. Dortmunder," Victor said, "do you read newspapers much?"
 
What kind of question was that? Dortmunder kept his head turned to the right 
 
and mumbled, "Sometimes."
 
"Any paper in particular?" It was asked in a careless sort of tone, as though 
 
Victor were just making conversation. But it was a weird conversation.
 
"The Times sometimes," Dortmunder said. He watched an intersection go by.
 
"That's sort of a liberal paper, isn't it? Is that what you'd say your politics 
 
were? Sort of liberal?"
 
Dortmunder couldn't help turning and looking at him again, but Victor was still 
 
smiling that same smile, so Dortmunder quick looked away again, saying, 
 
"Sometimes I read the News."
 
"Ah," said Victor. "I see. Do you find yourself in agreement more often with 
 
one paper than the other?"
 
On Victor's other side, Kelp said, "Lay off, Victor. You quit that job, 
 
remember?"
 
"What? I'm just talking."
 
"I know what you're just doing," Kelp told him. "But it comes over like a 
 
third degree."
 
"I'm terribly sorry," Victor said. He sounded as though he meant it. "It's just a 
 
habit you get into. You'd be surprised how hard it is to break."
 
Neither Kelp nor Dortmunder commented.
 
Victor said, "Mr. Dortmunder, I really am sorry. I didn't mean to pry."
 
Dortmunder sneaked another look at him, and for once he wasn't smiling; he 
 
was looking concerned and penitent instead. Dortmunder faced him more 
 
securely and said, "That's okay. Think nothing of it."
 
And Victor smiled again. To the back of Dortmunder's head he said, "I'm 
 
sure glad you didn't take offense, Mr. Dortmunder"
 
Dortmunder grunted, watching houses go by.
 
"After all, if you don't want to tell me your politics, there's no reason why you 
 
should have to."
 
"Victor," said Kelp warningly.
 
"What?"
 
"You're doing it again."
 
"By golly, so I am. Hey, you're supposed to turn there."
 
Dortmunder watched the intersection go by and felt the car slowing.
 
Kelp said, "I'll just make a U-turn."
 
"Go around the block," Dortmunder said.
 
"It's just as easy," Kelp said, bringing the car to a stop, "to make a U-turn."
 
Dortmunder moved his head and gave Kelp a look past Victor's smile. "Go 
 
around the block," he said.
 
Victor, not seeming to notice any tension in the air, pointed out front and said, 
 
"Why not just go down there and turn right? Comes out the same place."
 
"Sure," Kelp said, shrugging, as though it didn't matter one way or the other. 
 
The Toronado started forward again, and Dortmunder turned away from 
 
Victor's smile once more and watched suburban houses go by. They went 
 
through a couple of small shopping areas, each with its own record store and 
 
Chinese restaurant, and stopped at last in front of a bank. "There it is," Kelp 
 
said.
 
It was an old-fashioned bank, done in stone that had turned dark gray over 
 
the years. Like many banks built in the Northeast in the Twenties, it tried its best 
 
to look like a Greek temple, the Twenties being the last decade that Americans 
 
actually worshipped money. Like many suburban banks, the Greek-temple motif 
 
really wasn't suitable to the size of this building; the four gray stone pillars across 
 
the front of it were crammed so close together it was barely possible to get 
 
between them to the front door.
 
Dortmunder spent a few seconds studying that front door, and the pillars, and 
 
the sidewalk, and the storefronts on both sides, and then the front door opened 
 
and two men in work clothes and construction-crew helmets came out, carrying 
 
a tall wooden writing stand, the pens at the end of their chains dangling like 
 
remnants of fringe. "We're too late," Dortmunder said.
 
"Not that bank," Kelp said. "That bank."
 
Dortmunder turned his head again, looking at Kelp past Victor's smile. Kelp 
 
motioned across the street, and Dortmunder ducked his head a little bit-for 
 
one awful second he thought Victor was going to kiss him on the cheek, but he 
 
didn't-and looked across the way at the other bank.
 
At first he didn't see it at all. Blue and white and chrome, something wide and 
 
low-that's all he could make out. But then he saw the sign, spread in a banner 
 
across the front of the thing:
 

 
TEMPORARY HEADQUARTERS
 
Capitalists' & Immigrants' Trust
 
Just Watch Us GROW!
 

 
"What the hell is it?" Dortmunder said.
 
"It's a trailer," Kelp said. "What they call a mobile home. Didn't you ever see 
 
that kind of thing before?"
 
"But what the hell is it?"
 
"It's the bank," Kelp said.
 
Smiling, Victor said, "They're tearing down the old building, Mr. Dortmunder, 
 
and they're going to put the new one up in the same place. So in the meantime 
 
they're running the bank from over there in that mobile home."
 
"In the trailer," Dortmunder said.
 
"They do that kind of thing all the time," Kelp said. "Didn't you ever notice?"
 
"I guess so." Dortmunder frowned past their two faces and through the side 
 
window and past the traffic and across the opposite sidewalk and tried to make 
 
some sense out of what he was looking at, but it was difficult. Particularly with 
 
Victor smiling right next to his left ear. "I can't see anything," Dortmunder said. 
 
"I'll be right back. You two wait here."
 
He got out of the Toronado and walked down the block, glancing into the old 
 
bank building on the way by. It was nearly five o'clock by now, but the interior 
 
was full of men with construction helmets on, ripping things apart in the glare of 
 
the work lights. The bank must be in a hell of a hurry to get the old building 
 
down and the new one up if they were willing to pay that kind of overtime. 
 
Probably nervous about being in the trailer.
 
At the corner, Dortmunder turned left, waited for the light, and then crossed 
 
the street. Turning left again, he strolled along the sidewalk toward the trailer.
 
It was at the end of the block, in the only vacant lot on the street. It was one 
 
of the biggest mobile home units Dortmunder had ever seen, being a good fifty 
 
feet long and twelve feet wide. Set back a yard or so from the regular building 
 
line, it filled the width of the lot, one end flush against the side of a Kresge five-
 
and-dime and the other end almost reaching the sidewalk on the cross street. 
 
The surface of the lot was crushed brick rubble, showing that some other 
 
building had also recently been torn down; the bank had probably timed its own 
 
reconstruction to the availability of a lot nearby.
 
There were two entry doors along the front of the trailer, each with a heavy 
 
set of temporary wooden steps leading up to it, and the "Temporary 
 
Headquarters" sign strung between them. Concrete blocks made a gray 
 
foundation wall from the ground up to the bottom edge of the blue and white 
 
metal shell, and all the letter-slot-style windows were covered on the inside by 
 
venetian blinds. The bank was closed now, but lights could be seen through slits 
 
in the blinds.
 
Dortmunder looked up as he strolled by. A thick sweep of wires connected 
 
the trailer to telephone and power poles both on the main avenue and the cross 
 
street, as though the trailer were a rectangular dirigible, moored there by all 
 
those lines.
 
There was nothing more to see, and Dortmunder had reached the corner. He 
 
waited on the curb for the light again, then crossed the street and went back to 
 
the Toronado, shaking his head as he glanced at the rear of the car. He got in 
 
and said, "Can't tell much from the outside. You thinking about a day operation 
 
or a night operation?"
 
"Night," Kelp said.
 
"They leave cash in there overnight?"
 
"Only on Thursdays." It was Victor who told him that.
 
Reluctantly, Dortmunder focused on Victor. "How come on Thursdays?"
 
"Thursday night the stores are open," Victor said. "The bank closes at three, 
 
but then opens again at six and stays open till eight-thirty. At that hour of night, 
 
there's no simple direct way to get the cash to some other bank. So they lay on 
 
more guards and keep the money in the bank overnight."
 
"How many more guards?"
 
"A total of seven," Victor said.
 
"Seven guards." Dortmunder nodded. "What kind of safe?"
 
"A Mosler. I believe they have it on lease, along with the trailer. It isn't much 
 
of a safe."
 
"We can get into it fast?"
 
Victor smiled. "Well," he said, "time really isn't a problem."
 
Dortmunder glanced across the street. "Some of those wires," he said, "are 
 
alarms. I figure they're tied into the local precinct."
 
Victor's smile broadened. Nodding as though Dortmunder had just displayed 
 
great brilliance, he said, "That's just what they are. Anything that happens in 
 
there after banking hours is recorded down at the police station."
 
"Which is where?"
 
Victor pointed straight ahead. "Seven blocks down that way."
 
"But time isn't a problem," Dortmunder said. "We're going in against seven 
 
guards, the precinct is seven blocks away, and time isn't a problem."
 
Kelp was grinning by now almost as widely as Victor. "That's the beauty of 
 
it," he said. "That's the stroke of genius Victor's come up with."
 
"Tell me," Dortmunder said.
 
"We steal the bank," Victor said.
 
Dortmunder looked at him.
 
Kelp said, "Isn't that a beauty? We don't break into the bank, we take the 
 
bank away with us. We back up a truck, hook onto the bank, and drive it 
 
away."
 

 

 
6
 

 

 

 
WHEN May got home from Bohack's, Dortmunder wasn't there yet. She 
 
stood just inside the front door and yelled, "Hey!" twice, and when there wasn't 
 
any answer she shrugged and slopped on through the apartment to the kitchen, 
 
carrying the two shopping bags of groceries. Being an employee at the 
 
supermarket, she in the first place got a cut rate on some items and in the second 
 
place could lift other items with no static, so the shopping bags were pretty full. 
 
As she once told her friend Betty at the store, another cashier, "I eat all this stuff 
 
and it ought to make me fat, but I have to carry it all home, and that keeps me 
 
thin."
 
"You ought to make your husband come get it," Betty had said.
 
Everybody made the same mistake about Dortmunder being May's husband. 
 
She'd never said he was, but on the other hand she never corrected the mistake 
 
either. "I like to be thin," she'd said that time and let it go at that.
 
Putting the two shopping bags down on the kitchen counter now, she became 
 
aware of the fact that the corner of her mouth was warm. She was a chain 
 
smoker and kept the current cigarette always propped in the left corner of her 
 
mouth; when that area got warm, she knew it was time to start a new cigarette.
 
There was a small callus on the tip of her left thumb, caused by plucking 
 
cigarette embers from her lips, but for some reason her fingertips never callused 
 
at all. She flipped the half-inch butt from her mouth into the kitchen sink with one 
 
practiced wrist movement, and while it sizzled she took the crumpled pack of 
 
Virginia Slims from the waist pocket of her green sweater, shook one up, folded 
 
the corner of her mouth around the end and went looking for matches. Unlike 
 
most chain smokers, she never lit the new one from the old, because the old one 
 
was never big enough to hold onto; this meant a continuing problem with 
 
matches, similar to the continuing problem of water in some Arab countries.
 
She spent the next five minutes opening drawers. It was a small apartment-a 
 
small living room, a small bedroom, a bathroom so small you'd scrape your 
 
knees, a kitchen as big as the landlord's reservation in Heaven-but it was full 
 
of drawers, and for five minutes it was full of the swish-thap of drawers being 
 
opened and closed.
 
She found a book of matches at last, in the living room, in the drawer in the 
 
table with the television set on it. It was a pretty nice set, in color, not very 
 
expensive. Dortmunder had gotten it from a friend who'd picked up a truckload 
 
of them. "The funny thing about it," Dortmunder had said when he'd brought the 
 
thing home, "all Harry thought he was doing was stealing a truck."
 
May lit the cigarette and dropped the match in the ashtray next to the TV. 
 
She'd been concentrating on nothing but matches for five minutes, but now as 
 
her mind cleared she became aware again of the things around her, and the 
 
closest was the TV set, so she turned it on. There was a movie just starting. It 
 
was in black and white and May preferred to watch things in color since it was a 
 
color set, but the movie had Dick Powell in it, so she waited a while. Then it 
 
turned out it was called The Tall Target, and in it Dick Powell played a New 
 
York City policeman named John Kennedy who was trying to stop an 
 
assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln. He was on a train, Dick Powell was, 
 
and he kept getting telegrams, so trainmen kept coming down the corridor 
 
shouting, "John Kennedy. John Kennedy." This gave May a pleasant feeling of 
 
dislocation, so she backed up until her legs hit the sofa bed and sat down.
 
Dortmunder came home at the most exciting part, of course, and he brought 
 
Kelp with him. It was 1860 and Abraham Lincoln was going to his first 
 
inauguration, and that's where they wanted to assassinate him. Adolph Menjou 
 
was the mastermind of the plot, but Dick Powell-John Kennedy-was too 
 
quick for him. Still, it wasn't certain how things would come out.
 
"I just don't know about Victor," Dortmunder said, but he was talking to 
 
Kelp. To May he said, "How you been?"
 
"Since this morning? On my feet."
 
"Victor's okay," Kelp said. "Hi, May, how's your back?"
 
"About the same. It's my legs the last few days. The groceries!"
 
They both looked at her as she lunged to her feet, the cigarette in the corner 
 
of her mouth giving a puff of smoke like a model train as she exhaled. She said, 
 
"I forgot to put the groceries away" and hurried for the kitchen, where every-
 
thing in the shopping bags was wet from the frozen foods defrosting. "Turn up 
 
the sound, will you?" she shouted and quickly put things away. In the living room 
 
they turned up the sound, but they also talked louder. Also, the sound was 
 
mostly sound effects, with little dialogue. Then a heavy voice that sounded as 
 
though it had to be Abraham Lincoln said, "Did ever a President come to his 
 
inauguration so like a thief in the night?"
 
The groceries were away. May walked back into the living room, saying, "Do 
 
you suppose he really said that?"
 
Dortmunder and Kelp had still been talking about somebody named Victor, 
 
and now they both turned and looked at her. Dortmunder said, "Who?"
 
"Him," she said and gestured at the television set, but when they all looked at 
 
it the screen was showing a man standing knee deep in water in a giant toilet 
 
bowl, spraying something on the under part of the lip and talking about germs. 
 
"Not him," she said. "Abraham Lincoln." She felt them both looking at her and 
 
shrugged and said, "Forget it." She went over and switched off the set and said 
 
to Dortmunder, "How'd it go today?"
 
"So-so," he said. "I lost my display. I'll have to go get another."
 
Kelp explained, "Some woman called the cops on him."
 
May squinted through cigarette smoke. "You getting fresh?"
 
"Come on, May," Dortmunder said. "You know me better than that."
 
"You're all alike as far as I can see," she said. They'd met almost a year ago, 
 
when she'd caught Dortmunder shoplifting at the store. It was the fact that he 
 
hadn't tried any line at all on her, that he hadn't even asked for her sympathy, 
 
that had won her sympathy. He'd just stood there, shaking his head, with 
 
packages of boiled ham and American cheese falling out of his armpits, and she 
 
just hadn't had the heart to turn him in. She still tried to pretend sometimes that 
 
he couldn't pierce her toughness, but he could.
 
"Anyway," Kelp said, "we're none of us gonna have to work that penny-ante 
 
stuff for a while."
 
"I don't know about that," Dortmunder said.
 
"You're just not used to Victor," Kelp said, "that's the only problem."
 
"May I never get used to Victor," Dortmunder said.
 
May dropped backward into the sofa again; she always sat down as though 
 
she'd just had a stroke. "What's the story?" she said.
 
"A bank job," Kelp said.
 
"Well, yes and no," Dortmunder said. "It's a little more than a bank job."
 
"It's a bank job," Kelp said.
 
Dortmunder looked at May as though hoping to find stability and reason 
 
there. "The idea is," he said, "if you can believe it, we're supposed to steal the 
 
whole bank."
 
"It's a trailer," Kelp said. "You know, one of those mobile homes? The 
 
bank's in there till they put up the new building.
 
"And the idea," Dortmunder said, "is we hook the bank onto a truck and 
 
drive it away."
 
"Where to?" May asked.
 
"Just away," Dortmunder said.
 
"That's one of the things we've got to work out," Kelp said.
 
"Sounds like you've got a lot to work out," May said.
 
"Then there's Victor," Dortmunder said.
 
"My nephew," Kelp explained.
 
May shook her head. "I never saw a nephew yet," she said, "that was worth 
 
his weight in Kiwanis gum."
 
"Everybody's somebody's nephew," Kelp said.
 
May said, "I'm not."
 
"Every man."
 
"Victor is a weirdo," Dortmunder said.
 
"But he comes up with good ideas."
 
"Like secret handshakes."
 
"He doesn't have to do the job with us," Kelp said. "He just pointed to it."
 
"That's all he has to do."
 
"He's got all that FBI experience."
 
May looked alert. "The FBI's after him?"
 
"He was in the FBI," Kelp said and waved his hand to indicate he didn't want 
 
to explain any more. "It's a long story," he said.
 
"I don't know," Dortmunder said. He sat down wearily on the sofa beside 
 
May. "What I prefer," he said, "is a simple hold-up. You put a handkerchief 
 
over your face, you walk in, you show guns, you take the money, you walk 
 
away. Simple, straightforward, honest."
 
"It's getting tougher these days," Kelp said. "Nobody uses money any more. 
 
There aren't any payroll jobs because there aren't any payrolls; everybody pays 
 
by check. Stores are on credit cards, so they never have any cash either. A bag 
 
of money is a very tough thing to find these days."
 
"Don't I know it," said Dortmunder. "It's all very depressing."
 
May said to Kelp, "Why don't you go get yourself a beer?"
 
"Sure. You?"
 
"Naturally."
 
"Dortmunder?"
 
Dortmunder nodded. He was frowning across at the blank television screen.
 
Kelp went out to the kitchen, and May said, "What do you think of it, really?"
 
"I think it's the only thing that's come along in a year," Dortmunder said.
 
"But do you like it?"
 
"I told you what I liked. I like to go to a shoe factory with four other guys, 
 
walk into the payroll office, walk out with the payroll. But everybody pays by 
 
check."
 
"So what are you going to do?"
 
From the kitchen, Kelp called, "We can get in touch with Murch, have him 
 
check it out. He'd be our driver." They could hear him popping can tops out 
 
there.
 
"I got to go with what's there," Dortmunder said, shrugging. Then he shook 
 
his head and said, "But I really don't like all this razzle-dazzle. I'm like a regular 
 
cowboy and the only place left to work is the rodeo."
 
"So you look it over," May said, "you see how it pans out, you don't have to 
 
commit yourself one way or the other yet."
 
Dortmunder gave her a crooked grin. "Keep me out of mischief," he said.
 
That's what she'd been thinking. She didn't say anything, just grinned back, 
 
and was removing a cigarette ember from her mouth when Kelp came in with 
 
the beer. "Why don't I do that?" he said, handing the cans around. "Give Murch 
 
a call.
 
Dortmunder shrugged. "Go ahead."
 

 

 
7
 

 

 

 
STAN MURCH, in a uniform-like blue jacket, stood on the sidewalk in front 
 
of the Hilton and watched cab after cab make the loop in to the main entrance. 
 
Doesn't anybody travel in their own car any more? Then at last a Chrysler 
 
Imperial with Michigan plates came hesitantly up Sixth Avenue, made the left-
 
hand loop into the Hilton driveway and stopped at the entrance. As a woman 
 
and several children got out of the doors on the right of the car, toward the hotel 
 
entrance, the driver climbed heavily out on the left. He was a big man with a 
 
cigar and a camel's-hair coat.
 
Murch was at the door before it was halfway open, pulling it the rest of the 
 
way and saying, "Just leave the keys in it, sir."
 
"Right," the man said around his cigar. He got out and sort of shook himself 
 
inside the coat. Then, as Murch was about to get behind the wheel, the driver 
 
said, "Wait."
 
Murch looked at him. "Sir?"
 
"Here you go, boy," the man said and pulled a folded dollar bill from his pants 
 
pocket and handed it across.
 
"Thank you, sir," Murch said. He saluted with the hand holding the dollar, 
 
climbed behind the wheel, and drove away. He was smiling as he made the right 
 
turn into 53rd Street it wasn't every day a man gave you a tip for stealing his 
 
car.
 
It was rush hour, and several cabs had to be hustled out of their jocks before 
 
Murch reached Eleventh Avenue. Three times he got the supreme accolade: 
 
Cabbies in his wake opened their doors, put one foot on the pavement, stepped 
 
out, and shook their fists.
 
The West Side Highway was no good at this time of day, as Stan Murch well 
 
knew, but it was possible to make fairly good time if one drove under it, down 
 
along the docks. You had to be willing to go around trucks parked sideways 
 
every block or so, but that was all.
 
The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel was hopeless, as usual, but at rush hour there 
 
just isn't any sensible way to get to Brooklyn, so Murch waited it out, revving 
 
the engine in park and drumming his fingertips on the steering wheel to a stereo 
 
cassette of "Mantovani Swings Bartok for Sleepy Lovers"; these cassettes were 
 
very nice, particularly in a tunnel where the radio couldn't pick up anything.
 
On the other side, Murch paid the toll, angled across seven lanes of fist-
 
shakers, and took an obscure exit marked "Local Streets." While the rest of the 
 
world faced stop-and-go traffic on Flatbush and Prospect Expressway, Stan 
 
Murch angled down through neighborhoods that hadn't seen a strange face since 
 
the Brooklyn Navy Yard closed, and in the general vicinity of Sheepshead Bay 
 
he stopped in front of a metal garage door in a long gray brick wall and honked 
 
three times. A small door beside the garage entrance carried a sign reading "J & 
 
L Novelties-Deliveries." This door opened; a thin black man with a sweatband 
 
around his head leaned out, and Murch waved at him. The thin man nodded, 
 
disappeared, and a second later the metal door began to creak upward.
 
Murch drove into a huge concrete room that looked much like a parking 
 
garage, with metal support pillars spaced all around it. A dozen or so cars were 
 
scattered around the walls, leaving most of the space empty. These were all in 
 
the process of being repainted. A used oil drum next to one pillar was half full of 
 
license plates, most of them from out-of-state. A dozen men, most of them black 
 
or Puerto Rican, were working on the cars; this was obviously an equal-
 
opportunity employer. A battered plastic radio in a far corner raspingly played 
 
WABC, a local shlock-rock station.
 
The thin black man with the sweatband motioned for Murch to leave the 
 
Imperial over against the wall to the right. Murch left it there, went through the 
 
glove compartment on the off chance, found nothing of interest, and walked 
 
back over toward the door. The thin man, who had shut the garage door again, 
 
grinned at Murch and said, "You sure do bring in a lot of cars."
 
"The streets are full of them," Murch said. "Tell Mr. Marconi I'd appreciate 
 
the money in a hurry, okay?"
 
"What do you do with all your money?"
 
"I'm the sole support of my mother."
 
"She isn't back in the cab yet?"
 
"Still got the neck brace on," Murch said. "She could drive, but people 
 
generally don't like to ride in a cab with a driver with a neck brace on. It's a 
 
superstition, I guess."
 
"How long's she got to keep it on?"
 
"Till we settle out of court," Murch said. "Tell Mr. Marconi, will you?"
 
"Sure," the thin man said. "But, by the way, he isn't Mr. Marconi any more. 
 
He changed his name to March legally."
 
"Oh, yeah? How come?"
 
"The Italian-American Defamation League made him do it."
 
"Huh," Murch said. He rolled the new name on his lips:
 
"Salvatore March. Doesn't sound bad."
 
"I don't think he's happy with it, though," said the thin man. "But what's he 
 
gonna do?"
 
"True. See you around."
 
"So long," said the thin man.
 
Murch left and walked four blocks before he found a cab. The driver gave 
 
him a mournful yet frantic look and said, "Tell me you want to go to Manhattan."
 
"I'd like to tell you that," Murch said, "but my mother's in Canarsie."
 
"Canarsie," said the driver. "And I thought it couldn't get worse." He faced 
 
front and headed across the sixth and seventh circles of Brooklyn.
 
After a while, Murch said, "Listen, would you mind a suggestion about the 
 
route?"
 
"Shut your face," said the driver. He said it softly, but he was hunched 
 
forward and his hands were gripping the steering wheel very hard.
 
Murch shrugged. "You're the boss," he said.
 
They got there eventually. Murch gave him a nearly 15 percent tip, in honor of 
 
his mother, and went inside to find his mother walking around without the brace 
 
on. "Hey," he said. "What if I was an insurance adjuster?"
 
You'dve rung the doorbell," she said.
 
"Or looked through the window."
 
"Don't give me a tough time, Stan," she said. "I'm going crazy cooped up in 
 
this house."
 
"Whyn't you go for a walk?"
 
"I go out with that brace on," she said, "kids come up and want to know am I 
 
a publicity stunt for Beneath the Planet of the Apes."
 
"Little bastards," Murch said.
 
"Language."
 
"I tell you what. I'll take tomorrow off, we'll go for a ride."
 
She perked up a bit. "Where to?"
 
"Montauk Point. Break out the maps. Let's figure a route."
 
"You're a good boy, Stan," his mother said, and soon the two of them had 
 
their heads together over road maps opened on the dining-room table. They 
 
were like that when the doorbell rang.
 
"Damn!" she said.
 
"I'll get it," Murch said. "You put on your brace."
 
"I'm using it," she said.
 
Murch looked at her, and she didn't have it on. "What do you mean, you're 
 
using it?"
 
"You put it upside down on the drainboard," she said, "it's just perfect for 
 
drying socks."
 
"Aw, Mom, you don't take this seriously." The doorbell rang again. "What if 
 
that's an insurance adjuster and you've got socks on your neck brace?"
 
"I'll put it on, I'll put it on," she said, and went away to the kitchen, while 
 
Murch moved more slowly toward the front door.
 
It was Kelp out there. Murch opened the door wide and said, "Hey, come on 
 
in. Long time no see."
 
"I figured I'd-"
 
"Mom! Forget it!"
 
Kelp looked a little startled.
 
Murch said to him, "Sorry, I just didn't want her to put her brace on."
 
Kelp tried a smile but went on looking baffled anyway. "Sure," he said. "I just 
 
figured I'd-"
 
Murch's Mom appeared with her neck brace on. "You called me?"
 
"Hey, Mrs. Murch!" said Kelp. "What happened?"
 
"I wanted to tell you to forget it," Murch said.
 
"I couldn't make out what you . . ." She stopped and frowned at Kelp. 
 
"Kelp?"
 
"You hurt your neck?"
 
Disgusted, she said, "I put this thing on for you?"
 
"That's why I called to you," said Murch.
 
Shaking her head as best she could in the brace, she turned away again, 
 
saying, "This thing is cold, and it's wet."
 
Kelp said, "You put it on for me?"
 
Murch said, "Well, if you're gonna put socks on it, it's gonna be cold and 
 
wet."
 
"Wait a minute," Kelp said.
 
"I don't know how much longer I can put up with this," she said and left the 
 
room.
 
Kelp said, "Why don't I go out and walk around the block and then come 
 
back?"
 
Murch looked at him, bewildered. "What for? You feel dizzy or something?"
 
Kelp glanced around. "No, I guess not. Everything's okay, I guess. I must've 
 
come in while there was already a conversation going on."
 
"Something like that," Murch said.
 
"I thought so, yeah."
 
"Well, come on in."
 
Kelp was already in. He looked at Murch and didn't say anything.
 
"Oh, yeah," Murch said. He shut the door and said, "We were just in the 
 
dining room."
 
"I'm busting into dinner? Look, I can-"
 
"No, we were just looking at maps. Come on in." Murch and Kelp went into 
 
the dining room, just as Murch's Mom was coming in from the other direction, 
 
patting her shoulders and saying, "It's my cashmere sweater and it's all wet."
 
Murch said to Kelp, "You wouldn't have something lined up, would you?"
 
"As a matter of fact, I would. You free to look it over tomorrow?"
 
"Oh, hell," said Murch's Mom. "There goes our ride out to the Island."
 
"Out to Long Island?" said Kelp. "That's perfect, that's just what I want, 
 
couldn't be better." He approached the table with all its maps. "Is this Long 
 
Island? Here, let me show you the exact spot."
 
"You two talk," Murch's Mom said. "I've got to go change out of this wet 
 
sweater before I get a stiff neck."
 

 

 
8
 

 

 
WHEN Dortmunder walked into the 0. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam 
 
Avenue at eight-thirty the next night, there was nobody in the place but three 
 
subway motormen, the television set high up on the wall, and Rollo, the 
 
bartender. The television set was showing three people scaling a wall, all 
 
burdened down with coils of rope and little hammers and walkie-talkies; they 
 
were a Negro, a Jew, and a beautiful blond Swedish girl. The three subway 
 
motormen, all Puerto Rican, were talking about whether or not there were 
 
alligators in the subway tunnels. They were shouting back and forth at the top of 
 
their voices, not because they were mad at each other-though they were-but 
 
because their jobs had got them used to talking at that volume. "It's in the 
 
sewers you got the alligators," one of them shouted.
 
"Them scum tunnels we got, you don't call them sewers?"
 
"People bring up alligators from Florida," the first one yelled, "little alligators 
 
for pets, they get tired of them, they flush them down the toilet. But in the sewer, 
 
not in the tunnels. You don't flush toilets into subway tunnels."
 
"Not much, you don't."
 
The third one, the gloomiest of them, shouted, "I run over a rat the other day, 
 
down by Kingston-Throop, this big." And knocked over his beer.
 
Dortmunder strolled on down to the end of the bar while Rollo sopped up the 
 
spilled beer and drew a new one. The motormen started shouting about other 
 
animals that were or weren't in the subway tunnels, and Rollo came heavily 
 
along the bar toward Dortmunder. He was a tall, meaty, balding, blue-jawed 
 
gent in a dirty white shirt and dirty white apron, and, when he reached 
 
Dortmunder he said, "Long time no see.
 
"You know how it is," Dortmunder said. "I been living with a woman."
 
Rollo nodded sympathetically. "That's death on the bar business," he said. 
 
"What you want to do is get married, then you'll start coming out at night."
 
Dortmunder nodded his head toward the back room. "Anybody there?"
 
"Your friend, the other bourbon," Rollo said. "Along with a no-proof-of-age 
 
ginger ale. They got your glass."
 
"Thanks."
 
Dortmunder left the bar and headed for the rear, past the two doors with the 
 
dog silhouettes on them and the sign on one door POINTERS and on the other 
 
door SETTERS and past the phone booth and through the green door at the 
 
back and into a small square room with a concrete floor. None of the walls were 
 
visible because practically the whole room was taken up floor to ceiling with 
 
beer cases and liquor cases, leaving only a small opening in the middle big 
 
enough for a battered old table with a green felt top, half a dozen chairs and one 
 
bare bulb with a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black 
 
wire.
 
Kelp and Victor were seated at the table side by side, as though waiting for a 
 
big-stakes poker game to start. A bottle of bourbon and a half-empty glass 
 
stood in front of Kelp, and a glass with ice cubes and something sparkly and 
 
amber stood in front of Victor.
 
Kelp, cheerful and optimistic, said, "Hi! Murch isn't here yet."
 
"So I see." Dortmunder sat down in front of the other glass on the table, 
 
which was still empty.
 
"Hello, Mr. Dortmunder."
 
Dortmunder looked across the table. Victor's smile made him squint, like too 
 
much sunlight. "Hello, Victor," he said.
 
"I'm glad we'll be working together."
 
Dortmunder's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile, and he gazed 
 
down at his big-knuckled hands on the green felt of the table.
 
Kelp pushed the bottle toward him. "Have one." The bottle claimed to be 
 
Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon-"Our Own Brand." Dortmunder splashed 
 
some in his glass, sipped, made a face and said, "Stan's late. That isn't like him."
 
Kelp said, "While we wait, why don't we work out some of the details on this 
 
thing?"
 
"Just like it was really going to happen," Dortmunder said.
 
"Of course it's going to happen," Kelp said.
 
Victor managed to look worried while still smiling. "Don't you think it'll 
 
happen, Mr. Dortmunder?"
 
Kelp said, "Of course it'll happen." To Dortmunder he said, "What about the 
 
string?"
 
Victor said, "String?"
 
"The crew," Kelp told him. "The group engaged in the Operation"
 
"We don't have the job planned out yet," Dortmunder said.
 
"What plan?" Kelp asked. "We back up a truck, hook on, drive the thing 
 
away. Dump the guards at our leisure, take it someplace else, bust into the safe, 
 
go on about our business."
 
"I think you skipped over a few spots," Dortmunder said.
 
"Oh, well," Kelp said airily, "there's details to be worked out."
 
"One or two," Dortmunder said.
 
"But we have the general outline. And what I figure, we here can handle it, 
 
plus Stan to do the driving and a good lockman to get into the safe."
 
"We here?" Dortmunder asked. He gave Kelp a meaningful look, glanced at 
 
Victor, looked back at Kelp again.
 
Kelp patted the air in a secretive way, hiding it from Victor. "We can talk 
 
about all that," he said. "The question now is the lockman. We know we'll need 
 
one."
 
"How about Chefwick? The model-train nut."
 
Kelp shook his head. "No," he said, "he isn't around any more. He hijacked a 
 
subway car to Cuba."
 
Dortmunder looked at him. "Don't start," he said.
 
"Start what? I didn't do anything; Chefwick did. He got to run that locomotive 
 
in that job with us, and he must've flipped out or something."
 
"All right," Dortmunder said.
 
"So he and his wife went to Mexico on vacation, and at Vera Cruz there were 
 
these used subway cars that were going on a boat to Cuba, and Chefwick-"
 
"I said all right."
 
"Don't blame me," Kelp said. "I'm just telling you what happened." He 
 
brightened suddenly, saying, "That reminds me, did you hear what happened to 
 
Greenwood?"
 
"Leave me alone," Dortmunder said.
 
"He got his own television series."
 
"I said leave me alone!"
 
Victor said, "You know someone with his own television series.
 
"Sure," Kelp said. "He was on a job with Dortmunder and me one time."
 
"You wanted to talk about a lockman," Dortmunder said. Somehow his glass 
 
was empty. He splashed in some more of the Amsterdam Liquor Store's Own 
 
Brand of bourbon.
 
"I have a suggestion," Kelp said. He sounded doubtful. "He's a good man, 
 
but I don't know..."
 
"Who is it?" Dortmunder asked.
 
"I don't think you know him."
 
"What's his name?" When dealing with Kelp, Dortmunder just got more and 
 
more patient as time went along.
 
"Herman X."
 
"Herman X?"
 
"The only thing," Kelp said, "he's a spade. I don't know if you're prejudiced 
 
or not."
 
"Herman X?"
 
Victor said primly, "Sounds like a Black Muslim."
 
"Not exactly," Kelp said. "He's like in an offshoot. I don't know what they 
 
call themselves. His bunch is mad at the people that were mad at the people that 
 
were mad at the people that went off with Malcolm X. I think that's right."
 
Victor frowned into space. "I haven't kept up with that area of subversion," 
 
he said. "It wouldn't be the Pan-African Panthers, would it?"
 
"Doesn't ring a bell."
 
"The Sons Of Marcus Garvey?"
 
"No, that's not right."
 
"The Black Barons?"
 
"The Sam Spades?"
 
Kelp frowned for a second, then shook his head. "No."
 
"Probably a new splinter," Victor said. "They keep fractionalizing, makes it 
 
extremely difficult to maintain proper surveillance. No cooperation at all. I can 
 
remember how upset the agents used to get about that."
 
A little silence fell. Dortmunder sat there holding the glass and looking at Kelp, 
 
who was mooning away at the opposite wall. Dortmunder's expression was 
 
patient, but not pleased. Eventually, Kelp sighed and shifted and glanced at 
 
Dortmunder and then frowned, obviously trying to figure out what Dortmunder 
 
was staring at him for. Then all at once he cried, "Oh! The lockman!"
 
"The lockman," Dortmunder agreed.
 
"Herman X."
 
Dortmunder nodded. "That's the one."
 
"Well," Kelp said, "do you care about him being black?"
 
Patiently Dortmunder shook his head. He said, "Why should I care about him 
 
being black? All I want him to do is open a safe."
 
"It's just you never know about people," Kelp explained. "Herman says so 
 
himself."
 
Dortmunder poured more bourbon.
 
"Should I give him a call?"
 
"Why not?"
 
Kelp nodded. "I'll give him a call," he said, and the door opened and Murch 
 
came in, followed by his Mom, wearing her neck brace. They were both 
 
carrying glasses of beer, and Murch was also carrying a salt shaker. "Hey, 
 
Stan!" Kelp said. "Come on in."
 
"Sorry we're late," Murch said. "Usually, coming back from the Island, I'd 
 
take the Northern State and Grand Central and Queens Boulevard to the Fifty-
 
ninth Street Bridge, but figuring the time of day it was, and I was coming 
 
uptown-sit down, Mom."
 
"Victor," Kelp said, "this is Stan Murch, and this is Murch's Mom."
 
"What happened to your neck, Mrs. Murch?"
 
"A lawyer," she said. She was in a bad mood.
 
"So I figured," Murch said, once he and his Mom were both seated, "I'd just 
 
stick with Grand Central and take the Triborough Bridge to a hundred and 
 
twenty-fifth Street and over to Columbus Avenue and straight down. Only what 
 
happened- His Mom said, "Can I take this damn thing off anyway in here?"
 
"Mom, if you'd leave it on you'd get used to it. You take it off all the time, 
 
that's why you don't like it."
 
"Wrong," she said. "I have to put it on all the time. That's why I don't like it."
 
"Well, Stan, did you go take a look at the bank?"
 
"Let me tell you what happened," Murch said. "Just leave it on, okay, Mom? 
 
So we came across Grand Central, and there was a mess this side of La 
 
Guardia. Some kind of collision."
 
"We got there just too late to see it," his Mom said. She was keeping the 
 
neck brace on.
 
"So I had to go along the shoulder and push a cop car out of the way at one 
 
point, so I could get off at Thirty-first Street and go down to Jackson Avenue 
 
and then Queens Boulevard and the bridge and the regular way after that. So 
 
that's why We're late."
 
"No problem," Kelp said.
 
"If I'd done my regular route, it wouldn't have happened."
 
Dortmunder sighed. "You're here now," he said. "That's the important thing. 
 
Did you look at the bank?" He wanted to know the worst and get it over with.
 
Murch's Mom said, "It was a beautiful day for a drive."
 
"I looked at it," Murch said. He was being very businesslike all of a sudden. 
 
"I looked it over very carefully, and I've got some good news and some bad 
 
news."
 
Dortmunder said, "The bad news first."
 
"No," Kelp said. "The good news first."
 
"Okay," Murch said. "The good news is it has a trailer hitch."
 
Dortmunder said, "What's the bad news?"
 
"It doesn't have any wheels."
 
"Been nice talking to you," Dortmunder said.
 
"Wait a minute," said Kelp. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. What do you mean 
 
it doesn't have any wheels?"
 
"Underneath," Murch said.
 
"But it's a trailer, it's a mobile home. It's got to have wheels."
 
"What they did," Murch said, "they put it in position, and jacked it up, and 
 
took the wheels off. Wheels and axles both."
 
"But it had wheels," Kelp said.
 
"Oh, sure," Murch said. "Every trailer has wheels."
 
"So what the hell did they do with them?"
 
"I don't know. Maybe the company that owns the trailer has them."
 
Victor suddenly snapped his fingers and said, "Of course! I've seen the same 
 
thing at construction sites. They use trailers for field offices, and if it's a long-
 
term job they build foundation walls underneath and remove the wheels."
 
"What the hell for?" Kelp asked. He sounded affronted.
 
"Maybe save strain on the tires. Maybe give it more stability."
 
Murch said, "The point is, it doesn't have wheels."
 
A little silence fell on the group. Dortmunder, who had just been sitting there 
 
letting the conversation wash over him while he basted in his own pessimism, 
 
sighed and shook his head and reached for the bourbon bottle again. He knew 
 
that May believed that planning even an idiot job that wouldn't ever happen was 
 
better than doing nothing at all, and he supposed she was right, but what he 
 
wouldn't give for news right now about a factory that still paid cash.
 
All right. He was the planner-that was his function-so it was up to him to 
 
think about the details as they came along. No wheels. He sighed and said to 
 
Murch, "The thing is sitting on those concrete block walls, right?"
 
"That's right," Murch said. "What they must have done, they jacked it up, 
 
took the wheels off, put the concrete blocks in place, and lowered the trailer 
 
down onto them."
 
"The concrete blocks are cemented to each other," Dortmunder said. "The 
 
question is, are they cemented to the bottom of the trailer?"
 
Murch shook his head. "Definitely not. The trailer's just resting there."
 
"With concrete block all around underneath."
 
"Not on the ends, just along the two sides."
 
A tiny flicker of interest made Dortmunder frown. "Not at the ends?"
 
"No," Murch said. "The one end is against the Kresge's next door, and the 
 
other end they've just got a wooden lattice across it. So they can get in at it, I 
 
guess."
 
Dortmunder turned his head to look at Victor. For a wonder, Victor wasn't 
 
smiling; instead, he was watching Dortmunder with such intensity he looked 
 
paralyzed. It wasn't much of an improvement. Squinting, Dortmunder said, "Is 
 
there ever any time when the bank is empty? No guards at all?"
 
"Every night," Victor said. "Except Thursday, when the cash is in it."
 
"They don't have a night watchman in there?"
 
"They don't keep any cash there at all," Victor said, "except on Thursdays. 
 
Otherwise, there's nothing to steal. And they've got all the normal burglar 
 
alarms. And the police patrol the business streets pretty often out there."
 
"What about weekends?"
 
"They patrol weekends, too."
 
"No," Dortmunder said. "What about guards on the weekends? Saturday 
 
afternoon, for instance. The thing's empty then?"
 
"Sure," Victor said. "With so many shoppers going by on Saturday, what do 
 
they need with guards?"
 
"All right," Dortmunder said. He turned back to Murch and said, "Can we get 
 
wheels someplace?"
 
"Sure," Murch said. No hesitation at all.
 
"You're sure?"
 
"Absolutely positive. There is totally nothing in the automotive line that I can't 
 
get you."
 
Dortmunder said, "Good. Can we get wheels that will lift the damn thing up 
 
off those concrete blocks?"
 
"We may have to rig something," Murch said. "They've got those walls up 
 
pretty high. There may not be any wheels-and-axle combination that big. But we 
 
could attach the axle to a kind of platform and then attach the platform to the 
 
bottom of the trailer."
 
"What about jacks?"
 
Murch shook his head. "What about them?"
 
"We can get heavy enough jacks to lift that thing?"
 
"We don't have to," Murch said. "It has its own jacks, four of them, built up 
 
into the undercarriage."
 
Victor said, "Excuse me, Mr. Murch, but how did you-"
 
"Call me Stan."
 
"Thank you. I'm Victor. How did you-"
 
"Hello. How did you find out about the jacks? Did you crawl under the bank 
 
and look?"
 
Murch grinned and said, "Naw. Down in the corner there's the company 
 
name that built the thing. Roamerica. Didn't you notice that?"
 
"I never did," Victor said. He sounded impressed.
 
"It's a little silver plate near the back," Murch said. "Near Kresge's."
 
His Mom said, "Stan has a wonderful eye for detail."
 
"So we went to a place that sells them," Murch said, "and I took a look at the 
 
same kind of model."
 
"With wheels," Kelp said. He was still taking the business of the wheels as a 
 
personal insult.
 
Murch nodded. "With wheels."
 
"They're really very nice inside," his Mom said. "More roomy than you'd 
 
think. I liked the one with the French Provincial motif."
 
"I like where we live now," Murch said.
 
"I'm not saying buy one. I just said I liked it. Very clean, very nice. And you 
 
know what I thought of that kitchen."
 
Dortmunder said, "If we got wheels on it, could you drive it away from 
 
there?"
 
Murch's beer was only half gone, but the head was gone entirely. Musing, he 
 
shook a little salt into the glass, which restored some head, and passed the 
 
shaker to his mom. "Not with a car," he said. "It's too heavy for that. With a 
 
truck. The cab of a tractor-trailer-that would be best."
 
"But it could be done."
 
"Oh, sure. I'd have to stick to main streets, though. You've got a twelve-foot 
 
width. That's pretty wide for going down back roads. Cuts your possibilities for 
 
a getaway route."
 
Dortmunder nodded. "I figured that."
 
"Also time of day," Murch said. "Late at night would be best, when there's 
 
not so much traffic around."
 
"Well, we'd figure to do it then anyway," Dortmunder said.
 
"A lot depends," Murch said, "on where you want to take it."
 
Dortmunder glanced at Kelp, who looked very defensive and said, "We can 
 
work that out, we can work it out. Victor and me."
 
Dortmunder grimaced and looked back at Murch. "Would you be willing to 
 
try it?"
 
"Try what?"
 
"Driving the bank away."
 
"Sure! Naturally, that's what I'm here for."
 
Dortmunder nodded and sat back in his chair. He didn't look specifically at 
 
anybody, but brooded at the green felt tabletop. Nobody spoke for half a 
 
minute or so, and then Victor said, "Do you think we can do it, Mr. 
 
Dortmunder?"
 
Dortmunder glanced at him, and the intense look was still there. This was 
 
originally Victor's notion, of course, so it was only natural he wanted to know if 
 
he had a workable idea or not. Dortmunder said, "I don't know yet. It begins to 
 
look as though we can take the thing away, but there's still a lot of problems."
 
Kelp said, "But we can go forward, right?"
 
Dortmunder said, "You and Victor can look for a place to stash the bank 
 
while - - ." He stopped and shook his head. "A place to stash the bank. I can't 
 
believe I'm saying a thing like that. Anyway, you two do that, Murch sets up 
 
wheels and a truck or whatever, and-"
 
"There's the question of money," Murch said. "We're gonna need some deep 
 
financing on this job."
 
"That's my department," Kelp said. "I'll take care of that."
 
"Good," Dortmunder said.
 
Murch's Mom said, "Is this meeting over? I got to get home and get this 
 
brace off."
 
"We'll be in touch with each other," Dortmunder said.
 
Kelp said, "You want me to call Herman X?"
 
Murch said, "Herman X?"
 
"Sure," Dortmunder said. "Give him a call. But tell him it isn't a definite set-up 
 
yet."
 
Murch said, "Herman X?"
 
"You know him?" Kelp said. "A lockman, one of the best."
 
Victor suddenly jumped to his feet and extended his ginger-ale glass over the 
 
table. "A toast!" he cried. "One for all and all for one!"
 
There was a stunned silence, and then Kelp gave a panicky smile and said, 
 
"Oh, yeah, sure." He got to his feet with his bourbon glass.
 
One by one the others also stood. Nobody wanted to embarrass Victor. They 
 
clinked their glasses together over the middle of the table, and again Victor said, 
 
loud and clear, "One for all and all for one!"
 
"One for all and all for one," everybody mumbled.
 

 

 
9
 

 

 
HERMAN X spread black caviar on black bread and handed it across the 
 
coffee table to Susan. "I know I have expensive tastes," he said, flashing his 
 
frankest smile at his guests, "but the way I think, we pass this way but once."
 
"Truer words were never spoken," George Lachine said. He and his wife 
 
Linda were the token whites at this dinner party, Susan and the other three 
 
couples all being black. George was in OEO somewhere-not in fund 
 
disbursement, unfortunately-but it was Linda that Herman had his eye on. He 
 
still hadn't made up his mind whether he would finish this evening in bed with 
 
Linda Lachine or Rastus Sharif, whether he felt tonight straight or gay, and the 
 
suspense was delicious. Also the fact that neither of them had shared his bed 
 
before, so it would be a new adventure in. any case.
 
Susan gave George an arch look and said, "I know your kind. Grab all you 
 
can get." Herman thought it unlikely that Susan really wanted George; she was 
 
probably just trying to make Linda angry, since she knew Herman's intentions in 
 
that area.
 
And she was succeeding. While George looked flustered and flattered, Linda 
 
gave Susan a tight-lipped look of hate. But she was too cool, Herman noticed, 
 
to say anything right now. That pleased him; people being themselves always 
 
pleased him. "A dinner party," he had once said, "should be nothing but 
 
undercurrents."
 
This one was. Of the ten people present, practically everybody had been to 
 
bed at one time or another with everybody else-excluding the Lachines, of 
 
course, who were in process of being drawn in right now.
 
And himself and Rastus. How had he let that fail to happen or so long? 
 
Herman glanced over at Rastus now and saw him indolently whispering 
 
something to Diane, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Rastus Sharif; 
 
he'd chosen the name himself, of course, as representative of the full range of his 
 
heritage, both slave and African, and in doing so had made himself a walking 
 
insult to practically everybody he met. Black and white alike had trouble bringing 
 
themselves to call him "Rastus." Looking at him, Herman thought the delay had 
 
probably been caused by his own admiration and envy; how could he go to bed 
 
with the only person on earth he didn't feel superior to?
 
Mrs. Olaffson suddenly appeared in the living-room doorway. "Telephone, 
 
sir."
 
He sat up. "My call from the Coast?" He was aware of the conversations 
 
halting around him.
 
Mrs. Olaffson knew her part: "Yes, sir."
 
"Be right there." Standing, he said, "Sorry, people, this may take a while. Try 
 
to have fun without me."
 
They. made ribald comments in return, and he grinned as he loped from the 
 
room. He had given it out that he was employed in "communications," 
 
sometimes making it seem as though he meant book publishing and sometimes 
 
motion pictures. Vague but glamorous, and no one ever inquired more closely.
 
Mrs. Olaff son had preceded him to the kitchen, and on the way through he 
 
said, "Study door locked?"
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"Mind the fort." He patted her pink cheek, went out the apartment's rear 
 
door and down the service stairs two at a time.
 
As usual, Mrs. Olaffson's timing had been perfect. Just as Herman stepped 
 
out onto the sidewalk of Central Park West the grimy green-and-white Ford 
 
rolled in to the curb by the fire hydrant. Herman pulled the rear door open and 
 
slid in beside Van; as he shut the door, Phil, the driver, started the car moving 
 
again.
 
"Here you go," Van said and handed him his mask and gun.
 
"Thanks," he said and held them in his lap as the Ford headed south toward 
 
midtown.
 
There was no conversation in the car, not even from the fourth man, Jack, 
 
who was the newest, on only his second caper. Driving along, Herman looked 
 
out the side window and thought about his dinner party, the people there, the 
 
way he would spend the latter part of the night, and the menu for dinner.
 
He had planned the menu with the greatest of care. The cocktails to begin had 
 
been Negronis, the power of the gin obscured by the gentleness of vermouth 
 
and Campari. The caviar and pitted black olives to nosh on while drinking. 
 
Then, at the table, the meal itself would start with black bean soup, followed by 
 
poached fillet of black sea bass and a nice bottle of Schwartzekatz. For the 
 
entree, a Black Angus steak sautéed in black butter and garnished with black 
 
truffles, plus a side dish of black rice, washed down with a good Pinot Noir. For 
 
dessert, black-bottom pie and coffee. For after dinner drinks, a choice of Black 
 
Russians or blackberry brandy, with bowls of black walnuts to munch on again 
 
in the living room.
 
Phil pulled to the curb on Seventh Avenue in the upper forties. Herman and 
 
Van and Jack got out and walked away around the corner. Ahead of them, the 
 
Broadway theater marquees shouldered one another to be seen.
 
Ahead on the right was the new rock musical Justice! It had been panned on 
 
the road, it had come into town fully expecting to be a disaster, it had opened 
 
last night, and every last New York critic had given it a rave. The line for 
 
advance sale tickets had been around the block all day; the producers hadn't 
 
expected the cash in-flow and hadn't prepared for it, so the day's receipts were 
 
spending the night in the theater safe. Well, part of the night. One of the brothers 
 
in the chorus had passed the word to the Movement, and the Movement had 
 
quickly assigned Herman and Phil and Van and Jack. They'd met late this 
 
afternoon, looked over the brothers' maps of the interior of the theater, worked 
 
out their plot, and here they were.
 
One usher stood in the outer lobby. He was short and stocky and wore a 
 
dark-blue uniform. He gave Herman and Van and Jack a supercilious look as 
 
they came in through the outer doors and said, "Can I help you?"
 
"You can turn around," Van said and showed him a gun. "Or I can blow your 
 
head off."
 
"Good Christ," the usher said and stepped back into the doors. He also put 
 
his hand to his mouth and blanched.
 
"Now, that's what I call white," Herman said. His own gun remained in his 
 
pocket, but he had taken out the mask and was putting it on. It was a simple 
 
black mask, the kind the Lone Ranger wears.
 
"Turn around", Van said.
 
"Better do it," Herman said. "I'm gentle, but he's mean."
 
The usher turned around. "What do you want? Do you want my wallet? You 
 
don't have to hurt me. I won't do any-"
 
"Oh, be quiet," Van said. "We're all going inside and turn left and go up the 
 
stairs. You first. Don't be cute, because we're right behind you."
 
"I won't be cute. I don't want to be-"
 
"Just walk," Van said. He gave off such an aura of weary professionalism that 
 
his victims almost always fell all over themselves to do what he wanted; not 
 
wanting to expose themselves as amateurs to his jaundiced eye.
 
The usher walked. Van put away his gun and donned his mask. Jack and 
 
Herman were already masked, but a casual observer watching them walk across 
 
the dark rear of the theater behind the usher wouldn't have realized they had 
 
masks on.
 
A herd of people onstage were shouting a song: "Freedom means I got to be, 
 
I got to be, I got to be, Freedom means I got to be. Freedom means you got 
 
to be, you got to be. .
 
The stairs were carpeted in dark red and curved to the right. At the top was 
 
the loge, and Van poked the usher to make him move to the right, behind the 
 
seats and through another door and up a narrow flight of stairs that wasn't 
 
carpeted at all.
 
In the room were six people. Two women and a man were counting money at 
 
tables with adding machines. Three men were wearing the uniform of a private 
 
protective service, including holstered pistols. Van stuck his foot around the 
 
usher's and gave him a shove as they entered the room, so the usher cried out 
 
and went sprawling. It distracted everyone long enough for Van and Jack and 
 
Herman to line up in a row inside the door, guns in their hands and masks on 
 
their faces, establishing that they were already in control.
 
"Hands up," Van said. "That means you, Grandpa," to one of the guards. "I 
 
haven't shot a senior citizen in three months. Don't make me spoil my record."
 
It sometimes seemed to Herman that Van leaned on people because he 
 
wanted them to give him an excuse to shoot them, but most of the time he 
 
realized that Van was playing a deeper game than that. He leaned hard so 
 
people would think he was trying to goad them, so they would think he was a 
 
bad-ass killer just barely in control of himself, and the result was that they were 
 
always just as nice as pie. Herman didn't know Van's entire history, but he did 
 
know there'd never been any shooting on any job the two of them had done 
 
together.
 
Nor would there be on this one. The three guards gave each other sheepish 
 
looks and put their hands up, and Jack came around to take their pistols away 
 
from them. Van produced two shopping bags from under his jacket, and while 
 
he held a gun on the seven civilians in the room-the usher had come up holding 
 
his nose, but it wasn't bleeding- Herman and Jack dumped cash money into 
 
the two bags. They put crumpled paper on top, and Herman glanced almost 
 
longingly at the safe in the corner. He was a lockman-that was his specialty-
 
he could open safes better than Jimmy Valentine. But this safe was already 
 
standing open, and there was nothing in it of any value anyway. He was along 
 
simply as a yegg this time, part of the team.
 
Well, it was for the Cause. Still, it would have been nice if there'd been a safe 
 
around to open.
 
Using the victims' ties and socks and shoelaces and belts, all seven were 
 
quickly tied up and left in a neat row on the floor. Then Jack unscrewed the 
 
phone from its connection on the wall.
 
Van said, "What the hell you doing? Just yank the cord out of the wall. Didn't 
 
you ever see any movies?"
 
"I need an extension in the bedroom," Jack said. He put the phone on top of 
 
the crumpled papers in one of the shopping bags.
 
Van shook his head, but didn't say anything.
 
When they left, they locked the door behind themselves and trotted down the 
 
narrow stairs to pause for a second behind the door leading to the loge. They 
 
could hear the chorus ripping through another song: "I hate bigots! Dig it! Dig 
 
it!"
 
"The line we're waiting for," Van said, "is 'Love everybody, you bastards.'"
 
Herman nodded, and all three listened some more. When the line sounded, 
 
they pushed the door open, walked through, turned left and headed back 
 
downstairs.
 
The timing was perfect. As they came to the foot of the stairs the curtain came 
 
down on Act One, and people started up the aisle for a smoke break. The three 
 
men pulled their masks off and went through the lobby doors just ahead of the 
 
theatergoers. They crossed the lobby, went out to the sidewalk, and the Ford 
 
was half a block away to their left, coming along behind a slow-cruising cab.
 
"God damn it," Van said. "What's the matter with Phil's timing?"
 
"He probably got stuck at a red light," Herman said.
 
The Ford slipped by the cab and stopped at their feet. They slid in, the 
 
sidewalk behind them filled with smokers, and Phil drove them casually but 
 
firmly away from there.
 
The two shopping bags were in the back with Herman and Jack-Van was 
 
up front now-and every time they went over a pothole the damn phone tinkled, 
 
which began to drive Herman up the wall. He was a compulsive phone 
 
answerer, and there was no way to answer this phone.
 
Also, the money was getting to him. He was glad to give his expertise to the 
 
Movement, help the Movement cover its expenses in the time-honored fashion 
 
of the IRA, but at times he could feel his palm itching to hold onto some of the 
 
cash he got for them this way. As he'd told his guests a little earlier tonight, he 
 
had expensive tastes.
 
It wouldn't be so bad if he had some private scores going, but it had been 
 
almost a year since he'd been involved in a non-political robbery, and the money 
 
from that last caper was just about gone. He needed something soon, or he'd be 
 
eating that black bread without the caviar.
 
They were heading up Central Park West when Phil said, "Do I hear a 
 
phone? I keep thinking I hear a phone."
 
Van said, "Jack stole their phone."
 
Herman could see Phil frowning as he drove. "He stole their phone? Why? 
 
Just to be mean?"
 
"I need an extension for my bedroom," Jack said. "Lemme see if I can get it 
 
to be quiet." He took it out of the bag and held it in his lap, and it didn't tinkle as 
 
much after that.
 
Jack having moved the phone had dislodged some of the crumpled paper, and 
 
Herman could see green down in there. A hundred dollars, he thought, for 
 
expenses. But there was no point in it; a hundred dollars wouldn't come near his 
 
expenses.
 
They let him off across the street from his building. They headed on uptown, 
 
and Herman sprinted across the street and inside. He went around to the service 
 
elevator, rode it up to his floor, and pushed the 1 button to send it back down 
 
again when he got off. He entered his kitchen and Mrs. Olaffson said, 
 
"Everything's all right."
 
"Good."
 
"They're getting drunk."
 
"Very good. You can serve any time."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
He walked through the apartment to the living room and noted the shifts that 
 
had taken place in his absence. Several of them, but primarily involving George 
 
and Linda Lachine.
 
George and Susan were sitting together now, George with a rather fatuous 
 
smile on his face while Susan talked to him, and Linda was standing over on the 
 
opposite side of the room, trying to look as though she were admiring the W. C. 
 
Fields print.
 
Rastus and Diane were still together, Rastus now with his hand on Diane's leg. 
 
The tinkling telephone and the reminder of his money worries had put Herman in 
 
a bad mood and left him feeling unable to cope with the complexities that Rastus 
 
would have to offer. So it was heterosexual time; why not?
 
First he had to make some general comments to the general group, who 
 
greeted his return with comments about how long he'd been away. "You know 
 
those people," he said with a dismissing wave of the hand. "They can't do 
 
anything on their own, not a thing."
 
"Problems?" Foster asked. He had come with Diane but seemed uninterested 
 
in leaving with her.
 
"Nothing they can't handle by themselves," he said and gave everybody a 
 
brisk grin as he rounded the coffee table and headed for Linda.
 
But he didn't get there. Mrs. Olaffson appeared again, in a rerun, complete 
 
with the same dialogue: "Telephone, sir."
 
Herman looked at her, for just a second too bewildered to speak. He 
 
couldn't say, "My call from the Coast?" because that was all over now. He very 
 
nearly said, "We've done that bit," but stopped himself in time. Finally, out of 
 
desperation, he said, "Who is it?"
 
"He just said it was a friend, sir."
 
"Listen," Rastus drawled in that Southern-cracker voice he liked to use when 
 
irritated, "ain't we never gonna eat?"
 
"All right," Herman said. To Rastus, to Mrs. Olaffson, to everybody. "I'll 
 
make this one fast," he promised grimly,
 
strode from the room, went down the hall, and bashed his nose painfully when 
 
he turned the knob on the study door without stopping and the door turned out 
 
still to be locked. "God damn!" he said, his eyes tearing and his nose smarting. 
 
Holding his nose-he reminded himself of that usher-he trotted around through 
 
the kitchen and into the study that way. Dropping into the director's chair, he 
 
picked up the receiver and said, "Yes!"
 
"Hello, Herman?"
 
"Yeah, that's right. Who's this?"
 
"Kelp."
 
Herman's spirits suddenly lifted. "Well, hello," he said.
 
"Been a long time."
 
"You sound like you got a cold." 
 
"No, I just hit my nose." 
 
"What?"
 
"Never mind," Herman said. "What's happening?"
 
"Depends," Kelp said. "You available?" 
 
"Never better."
 
"This is still a maybe."
 
"Which is better than a nothing," Herman said. 
 
"That's true," Kelp said with some surprise, as though he'd never thought that 
 
out before. "You know the 0. J. Bar?"
 
"Sure."
 
"Tomorrow night, eight-thirty."
 
Herman frowned. There was a screening he'd been invited to . . . No. As 
 
he'd told his guests, he had expensive tastes, and as he'd told Kelp, a maybe 
 
was better than a nothing. "I'll be there," he said.
 
"See you."
 
Herman hung up and reached for a Kleenex. Smiling, he wiped the tears from 
 
his eyes, then carefully unlocked the study door and went out to the hall, where 
 
Mrs. Olaffson greeted him with "Dinner is ready, sir."
 
"And so am I," he said.
 

 

 
10
 

 

 

 
VICTOR stood smiling in the elevator. This building, on Park Avenue in the 
 
seventies, had been built at the turn of the century, but the elevator dated from 
 
1926 and looked it. Victor had seen identical elevators in old movies-the dark 
 
wood, the waist-high brass rail, the smoke-tinted mirror, the corner light fixtures 
 
like brass skyscrapers upside down. Victor felt embraced by the era of the 
 
pulps and gazed around with a happy smile as he and his uncle rode up to the 
 
seventeenth floor.
 
Kelp said, "What the hell you grinning at?"
 
"I'm sorry," Victor said contritely. "I just liked the looks of the elevator."
 
"This is a medical doctor we're going to," Kelp said. "Not a psychiatrist."
 
"All right," Victor said soberly.
 
"And remember to let me do the talking."
 
Earnestly, Victor said, "Oh, I will."
 
He was finding this whole operation fascinating. Dortmunder had been 
 
perfect, Murch and his Mom had been perfect, the back room of the 0. J. Bar 
 
and Grill had been perfect, and the steps being taken to put the job together 
 
were perfect. Even Dortmunder's obvious reluctance to let Victor participate 
 
was perfect; it was only right that the old pro wouldn't want to work with the 
 
rank amateur. But Victor knew that by the finish he would have had opportunity 
 
to demonstrate his value. The thought made him smile again, until he felt Kelp's 
 
eyes on him, when he immediately wiped the smile away.
 
"It's unusual that I'd even bring you along," Kelp said as the elevator door 
 
opened and they stepped out together into the seventeenth-floor foyer. The 
 
doctor's door, with a discreet name plate, was to the left. Kelp said, "He might 
 
not even want to talk in front of you."
 
"Oh, I hope not," Victor said, laughing boyishly.
 
"If he does," Kelp said, "you go right back to the waiting room. Don't argue 
 
with him."
 
"Oh, I wouldn't," Victor said sincerely.
 
Kelp grunted and went in, Victor following.
 
The nurse was behind a partition on the right. Victor stayed in the background 
 
while Kelp talked to her, saying, "We have an appointment. Charles Willis and 
 
Walter McLain."
 
"Yes, sir. If you'll just take a seat . . ." She pushed a buzzer that let them 
 
through the interior door.
 
The waiting room looked like the scale model of a Holiday Inn lobby. A stout 
 
lady looked up from her copy of Weight Watchers and gave them the glance of 
 
anonymous hostility with which people always look at one another in doctors' 
 
Waiting rooms. Kelp and Victor pawed through the magazines on the central 
 
table, and Kelp sat down with a fairly recent Newsweek. Victor searched and 
 
searched, found nothing at all interesting, and finally settled for a copy of 
 
Gourmet. He sat down with it near Kelp, browsed along, and after a while 
 
noticed that the word "redolent" appeared on every page. He staved of 
 
boredom by watching for its reappearances.
 
But mostly he thought about the robbery and what he and Kelp were doing 
 
here. It had never occurred to him that big-scale robbers had to be financed, 
 
just like anybody else, but of course they did. The preparation of a robbery 
 
involved all sorts of expenses, and somebody had to foot the bill. Victor had 
 
eagerly asked Kelp a thousand questions about that facet of the operation and 
 
had learned that sometimes a member of the robbery team did the financing, in 
 
return for a larger share of the profit, but that more often the financing was done 
 
by outsiders, who put up the money for a guarantee of 100 percent profit, two 
 
dollars for every one, should the robbery turn out to he successful. If the 
 
robbery failed, of course, the financier got nothing.
 
"Mostly what we get," Kelp had said, "is undeclared income. Doctors are the 
 
best, but florists are pretty good, too. Anybody whose line lets them keep some 
 
cash that they don't tell the Feds about. You'd be surprised how many 
 
greenbacks there are in safe-deposit boxes around the country. They're saving 
 
the money for when they retire. They can't really spend it now, for fear the 
 
income-tax people will get after them. They can't invest it anyplace legal for the 
 
same reason. So it just sits there, not earning any interest, getting eaten up by 
 
inflation, and they look around for some way to put it to work. They'll go for a 
 
high risk if they can get a shot at a high return. And if they can be a silent 
 
partner."
 
"That's fascinating," 'Victor had said raptly.
 
"I like doctors best," Kelp had said. "I don't know why, I've just got a thing 
 
about doctors. I use their cars, I use their money. They've never let me down 
 
yet. You can trust doctors."
 
They spent half an hour now in this particular doctor's waiting room. The stout 
 
lady was called in by the nurse after a while and never returned. Nor did any 
 
other patient come out. Victor wondered about that, but later on discovered the 
 
doctor had a different exit, another door that led back to the elevator.
 
Finally the nurse came back, saying, "Doctor will see you now." Kelp 
 
followed the nurse, and Victor followed Kelp, and they all went down a hall to 
 
an examining room-white cabinets, black leatherette examination table. 
 
"Doctor will be right with you," the nurse said, and shut the door behind her 
 
when she left.
 
Kelp sat down on the examination table and let his feet dangle. "Now, let me 
 
do the talking."
 
"Oh, sure," Victor said reassuringly. He wandered around the room, reading 
 
the charts and the labels on the bottles, until the door opened again and the 
 
doctor came in.
 
"Doctor Osbertson," said Kelp, getting to his feet. "This is my nephew, 
 
Victor. He's okay."
 
Victor smiled at Dr. Osbertson. The doctor was fiftyish, distinguished-looking, 
 
well padded and irritable. He had the round face of a sulky baby, and he said, 
 
"I'm not sure I want to be involved in this sort of thing any more."
 
Kelp said, "Well, that's up to you. It looks like a good one, though."
 
"The way the market's been . . ." He looked around, as though he'd never 
 
seen his own examining room before and didn't much like it. "There's no place 
 
to sit in here," he said. "Come with me."
 
They followed him part way back along the same hall and into a small wood-
 
paneled office with two maroon chairs facing the desk. All three sat down, and 
 
the doctor leaned back in his swivel chair, frowning in discontent. "I took a 
 
couple of headers in the market," he said. "Take my advice. Never listen to a 
 
stock tip from a terminal case. What if he turns out to be wrong?"
 
"Yeah, I guess so," Kelp said.
 
"Then my car was stolen."
 
Victor looked at Kelp, who was facing the doctor, his expression showing 
 
sympathetic interest. "is that right?"
 
"Just the other day. Kids, joy-riding. Managed to get into a rear-end collision 
 
somehow."
 
"Kids, huh? Did they get them?"
 
"The police?" The doctor's sullen baby face made a grimacing smile, as 
 
though he had gas. "Don't make me laugh. They never get anybody."
 
"Let's hope not," Kelp said. "But about our proposition."
 
"Then I had to buy some letters back." The doctor waggled his hands, as 
 
though to minimize what he was saying. "Ex-patient," he said. "Didn't mean a 
 
thing, of course, just consolation in her grief."
 
"The terminal tipper's wife?"
 
"What? No, I never wrote her anything, thank God. This one . . . Well, it 
 
doesn't matter. Expenses have been high. That car business was the last straw."
 
"Did you leave the keys in it?"
 
"Of course not." He sat up straight to show how indignant he was.
 
"But you're insured," Kelp said.
 
"You never recover all your costs," the doctor said. "Traveling by cab, 
 
making phone calls, getting estimates . I'm a busy man. I don't have time for all 
 
this. And now you people. What if you're caught?"
 
"We'll do our best to avoid that."
 
"But what if you are? Then I'm out-how much do you want?"
 
"We figure four thousand."
 
The doctor pursed his lips. He looked now like a baby who'd just had his 
 
pacifier plucked from him. "A lot of money," he said.
 
"Eight thousand back."
 
"If it works."
 
"This is a good one," Kelp said. "You know I can't tell you the details, but-"
 
The doctor flung up his hands as though to ward oft an avalanche. "Don't tell 
 
me. I don't want to know! I won't be an accessory!"
 
"Sure," Kelp said. "I know how you feel. Anyway, we think of this one as 
 
being a really sure thing. Money in the bank, you might say."
 
The doctor rested his palms on his green blotter. "Four thousand, you say."
 
"There might be a little more. I don't think so."
 
"You're getting the whole thing from me?"
 
"If we can."
 
"This recession . . ." He shook his head. "People don't come around for 
 
every little thing any more. When I see a patient in the waiting room these days, I 
 
know that patient is sick. Drug companies getting a little stingier, too. Had to dip 
 
into capital just the other week."
 
"That's a shame," Kelp said.
 
"Diet foods," the doctor said. "There's another problem. Used to be, I could 
 
count on gastritis from overeating for a good thirty percent of my income. Now 
 
everybody's on diets. How do they expect a doctor to make ends meet?"
 
"Things sure can get rough," Kelp said.
 
"And now they're giving up cigarettes. The lungs have been a gold mine for 
 
me for years. But not any more." He shook his head. "I don't know what 
 
medicine is coming to," he said. "If I had a son entering college today, and he 
 
asked me if I wanted him to follow in my footsteps, I'd say, 'No, son. I want 
 
you to be a tax accountant. That's the wave of the future, you ride it. It's too 
 
late for me.' That's what I'd tell him."
 
"Good advice," Kelp said.
 
The doctor slowly shook his head. "Four thousand," he said.
 
"That should do it, yes."
 
"All right." He sighed and got to his feet. "Wait here. I'll get it for you."
 
He left the room, and Kelp turned to Victor to say, "He left the keys in it."
 

 

 
11
 

 

 
DORTMUNDER at the movies was like a rock on the beach; the story kept 
 
washing over him, in wave after wave, but never had any effect. This one, called 
 
Murphy's Madrigal, had been advertised as a tragic farce and gave the 
 
audience an opportunity to try out every emotion known to the human brain. 
 
Pratfalls, crippled children, Nazis, doomed lovers, you never knew what was 
 
going to happen next.
 
And Dortmunder just sat there. Beside him May roared with laughter, she 
 
sobbed, she growled with rage, she clutched his arm and cried, "Oh!" And 
 
Dortmunder just sat there.
 
When they got out of the movie it was ten to eight, so they had time to get a 
 
hero. They went to a Blimpie and May treated, and when they were sitting 
 
together at a table with their sandwiches under the bright lights she said, "You 
 
didn't like it."
 
"Sure I did," he said. He pushed bread and sauerkraut in his mouth with his 
 
finger.
 
"You just sat there."
 
"I liked it," he said. Going to the movies had been her idea; he'd spent most 
 
of the time in the theater thinking about that mobile home bank out on Long 
 
Island and how to take it away.
 
"Tell me what you liked about it."
 
He thought hard, trying to remember something he'd seen. "The color," he 
 
said.
 
"A part of the movie."
 
She was really getting irritated now, which he didn't want to happen. He 
 
struggled and came up with a memory. "The elevator bit," he said. The director 
 
of the movie had tied a strong elastic around a camera and dropped the camera 
 
down a brightly lighted elevator shaft. The thing had recoiled just before hitting 
 
bottom and had bounced up and down for quite a while before coming to rest. 
 
The whole sequence, forty-three seconds of it, was run without a break in the 
 
movie, and audiences had been known to throw up en masse at that point in the 
 
picture. Everybody agreed it was great, the high point of film art up to this time.
 
May smiled. "Okay," she said. "That was good, wasn't it?"
 
"Sure," he said. He looked at his watch.
 
"You got time. Eight-thirty, right?"
 
"Right."
 
"How does it look?"
 
He shrugged. "Possible. Crazy, but possible." Then, to keep her from going 
 
back to the subject of the movie and asking him more questions about it, he 
 
said, "There's still a lot of things to work out. But we maybe got a lockman."
 
"That's good."
 
"We still don't have anyplace to take it."
 
"You'll find a place."
 
"It's pretty big," he said.
 
"So's the world."
 
He looked at her, not sure she'd just said something sensible, but decided to 
 
let it go. "There's also financing," he said.
 
"Is that going to be a problem?"
 
"I don't think so. Kelp saw somebody today." He hadn't known May very 
 
long, so this was the first time she'd watched him put together a piece of work, 
 
but he had a feeling with her as though she just naturally understood the situation. 
 
He never gave her a lot of background explanations, and she didn't seem to 
 
need any. It was very relaxing. In a funny way, May reminded Dortmunder of 
 
his ex-wife, not because she was similar but because she was so very different. 
 
It was the contrast that did it. Until he'd started up with May, Dortmunder 
 
hadn't even thought about his former wife for years. A show-biz performer 
 
she'd been, with the professional name of Honeybun Bazoom. Dortmunder had 
 
married her in San Diego in 1952 on his way to Korea-the only police action 
 
he'd ever been in on the side of the police-and had divorced her again in Reno 
 
in 1954 on his way out of the Army. Honeybun had mostly been interested in 
 
Honeybun, but if something outside herself did attract her attention she was 
 
immediately full of questions about it. She could ask more questions than a kid at 
 
the zoo. Dortmunder had answered the first few thousand, until he'd realized 
 
that none of the answers ever stayed inside that round head.
 
May couldn't have been more different; she never asked the questions, and 
 
she always held onto the answers.
 
Now, they finished their heroes and left the Blimpie, and on the sidewalk May 
 
said, "I'll take the subway."
 
"Take a cab."
 
She had a fresh cigarette in the corner of her mouth, having lit it after finishing 
 
eating. "Naw," she said. "I'll take the subway. A cab after a hero gives me 
 
heartburn."
 
"You want to come along to the 0. J?"
 
"Naw, you go ahead."
 
"The other night, Murch brought his Mom."
 
"I'd rather go home."
 
Dortmunder shrugged. "Okay. I'll see you later."
 
"See you later."
 
She slopped away down the street, and Dortmunder headed the other way. 
 
He still had time, so he decided to walk, which meant going through Central 
 
Park. He walked along the cinder path alone, and under a street light a shifty-
 
eyed stocky guy in a black turtle-neck sweater came out of nowhere and said, 
 
"Excuse me."
 
Dortmunder stopped. "Yeah?"
 
"I'm taking a survey," the guy said. His eyes danced a little, and he seemed to 
 
be grinning and yet not to be grinning. It was the same kind of expression most 
 
of the people in the movie had had. He said, "Here you are, you're a citizen, 
 
you're walking along in the park at night. What would you do if somebody came 
 
along and mugged you?"
 
Dortmunder looked at him. "I'd beat his head in," he said. The guy blinked, 
 
and the almost grin disappeared. He looked slightly confused, and he said, 
 
"What if he had, uh, well, what if he was . . ." Then he shook his head, waggled 
 
both hands and backed off, saying, "Nah, forget it. Doesn't matter, forget it."
 
"Okay," Dortmunder said. He walked on through the park and over to 
 
Amsterdam and up to the 0. J. When he went in, Rollo was having a discussion 
 
with the only two customers, a pair of overweight commission salesmen in the 
 
auto-parts line, about whether sexual intercourse after a heavy meal was 
 
medically good or medically bad. They were supporting their arguments mostly 
 
with personal anecdotes, and Rollo obviously had trouble breaking himself free 
 
from the conversation. Dortmunder waited at the end of the bar, and finally 
 
Rollo said, "Now, hold it now, hold it a second. Don't start that yet. I'll be right 
 
back." Then he came down the bar, handed Dortmunder the bottle called 
 
Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon-"Our Own Brand" plus two glasses, and 
 
said, "All that's here so far is the draft beer and salt. His mother let him out by 
 
himself tonight."
 
"There'll be more coming," Dortmunder said. "I don't know how many."
 
"The more the merrier," Rollo said sourly and went back to his discussion.
 
In the back room, Murch was sprinkling salt in his beer to restore the head. 
 
He looked up at Dortmunder's entrance and said, "How you doing?"
 
"Fine," Dortmunder said. He put the bottle and glasses on the table and sat 
 
down.
 
"I made better time tonight," Murch said. "I tried a different route."
 
"Is that right?" Dortmunder opened the bottle.
 
"I went down Flatlands and up Remsen," Murch said. "Not Rockaway 
 
Parkway, see? Then I went over Empire Boulevard and up Bedford Avenue all 
 
the way into Queens and took the Williamsburg Bridge over into Manhattan."
 
Dortmunder poured. "Is that right?" he said. He was just waiting for Murch to 
 
stop talking, because he had something to say to him.
 
"Then Delancey and Allen and right up First Avenue and across town at 
 
Seventy-ninth Street. Worked like a dream."
 
"Is that right?" Dortmunder said. He sipped at his drink and said, "You know, 
 
Rollo's kind of unhappy about you."
 
Murch looked surprised, but eager to please. "Why? Cause I parked out 
 
front?"
 
"No. A customer that comes in and nurses one beer all night long, it doesn't 
 
do too much for his business."
 
Murch glanced down at his beer, and then looked very pained. "I never 
 
thought of that," he said.
 
"I just figured I'd mention it."
 
"The thing is, I don't like to drink and drive. That's why I space it out."
 
Dortmunder had nothing to say to that.
 
Murch pondered and finally said hopefully, "What if I bought him a drink? 
 
Would that do it?"
 
"Could be."
 
"Let me give it a try," Murch said, and as he got to his feet the door opened 
 
and Kelp and Victor came in. The room was very small and very full of table 
 
anyway, so it took a while to bring Kelp and Victor in while getting Murch out, 
 
and during that time Dortmunder brooded at Victor. It seemed to him that 
 
Victor was becoming more and more an accepted part of this job, which he 
 
didn't much like but couldn't quite find the way to stop. Kelp was doing it, but 
 
he was doing it in such a sneaky quiet fashion that Dortmunder never had a clear 
 
moment when he could say, "Okay, cut it out." But how could anybody expect 
 
him to go steal a bank with some clown smiling at him all the time?
 
Murch finally shot himself out of the room, like a dollop of toothpaste 
 
squeezed out of a tube, and Kelp said, "I see Herman isn't here yet."
 
"You talked to him?"
 
"He's interested."
 
Dortmunder brooded some more. Kelp himself was all right, but he tended to 
 
surround himself with people and operations that were just a little off. Victor, for 
 
instance. And now bringing in some guy named Herman X. What could you 
 
hope for from somebody named Herman X? Had he ever done anything in this 
 
line? If he was going to turn out to be another smiler, Dortmunder was just going 
 
to have to put his foot down. Enough smiling is enough.
 
Sitting down next to Dortmunder and reaching for the bourbon bottle, Kelp 
 
said, "We got the financing set."
 
Victor had taken the spot directly across from Dortmunder. He was smiling. 
 
Shading his eyes with his hand, Dortmunder ducked his head a little and said to 
 
Kelp, "You got the full four grand?"
 
"Every penny. The light too bright for you?"
 
"I just went to a movie."
 
"Oh, yeah? What'd you see?"
 
Dortmunder had forgotten the title. "It was in color," he said.
 
"That narrows it. Probably a pretty recent one, then."
 
"Yeah."
 
Victor said, "I'm drinking tonight." He sounded very pleased.
 
Dortmunder ducked his head a little more and looked at Victor under his 
 
fingers. He was smiling, of course, and holding up a tall glass. It was pink. 
 
Dortmunder said, "Oh, yeah?"
 
"A sloe-gin fizz," Victor said.
 
"Is that right?" Dortmunder readjusted head and fingers-it was like putting 
 
down venetian blinds-and turned firmly back to Kelp. "So you got the whole 
 
four thousand," he said.
 
"Yeah. A funny thing about that..
 
The door opened and Murch came back in. "It's all set," he said. He was 
 
smiling, too, but it was easier to live with than Victor's. "Thanks for setting me 
 
straight," he said.
 
"Glad it worked out," Dortmunder said.
 
Murch sat down in front of his beer and carefully salted it. "Rollo's okay when 
 
you get to know him," he said.
 
"Sure he is."
 
"Drives a Saab."
 
Dortmunder had known Rollo for years but hadn't known about the Saab. "Is 
 
that right?" he said.
 
"Used to drive a Borg-Ward. Sold it because he couldn't get parts when they 
 
stopped making the car."
 
Kelp said, "What kind of car is that?"
 
"Borg-Ward. German. Same company that makes Norge refrigerators."
 
"They're American."
 
"The refrigerators, yeah. The cars were German."
 
Dortmunder finished his drink and reached for the bottle, and Rollo opened 
 
the door and stuck his head in to say, "There's an Old Crow on the rocks out 
 
here asking for Kelp."
 
"That's him now," Kelp said.
 
"A darkish fella."
 
"That's him," Kelp said. "Send him on in."
 
"Right." Rollo gave a bartender's glance around the table. "Everybody set?"
 
They all murmured.
 
Rollo cocked an eye at Murch. "Stan, you got enough salt?"
 
"Oh, sure," Murch said. "Thanks a lot, Rollo."
 
"Any time, Stan."
 
Rollo went away. Dortmunder glanced at Murch, but didn't say anything, and 
 
a minute later a tall lean guy with dark-brown complexion and a very modest 
 
Afro came into the room. What he looked most like was an Army second lieu-
 
tenant on leave. He was nodding slightly and grinning slightly as he came in and 
 
shut the door, and Dortmunder wondered at first if he was on something; then he 
 
realized it was just the self-protective cool of somebody meeting a group of 
 
people for the first time.
 
"Hey, Herman," Kelp said.
 
"Hey," agreed Herman quietly. He closed the door behind him and stood 
 
there jiggling ice in his old-fashioned glass, like an early arrival at a cocktail 
 
party.
 
Kelp made the introductions: "Herman X, this is Dortmunder, that's Stan 
 
Murch, that's my nephew Victor."
 
"How are ya."
 
"Hello, Mr. X."
 
Dortmunder watched Herman frown slightly at Victor and then glance at 
 
Kelp. Kelp, however, was busy being host, saying, "Take a seat, Herman. We 
 
were just talking about the situation."
 
"That's what I want to hear about," Herman said. He sat down to 
 
Dortmunder's right. "The situation."
 
Dortmunder said, "I'm surprised I don't know you."
 
Herman gave him a grin. "We probably travel in different circles."
 
"I was just wondering what your experience is."
 
Herman's grin broadened into a smile. "Well, now," he said. "One doesn't 
 
like to talk about one's experiences in front of a whole room of witnesses."
 
Kelp said, "Everybody's okay in here. But, Dortmunder, Herman really does 
 
know his business."
 
Dortmunder continued to frown at Herman. It seemed to him there was 
 
something of the dilettante about this guy. Your ordinary run-of-the-mill heavy 
 
could be a dilettante, hut a lockman was supposed to be serious, he was 
 
supposed to be a man with a craft, with expertise.
 
Herman glanced around the table with an ironic smile, then shrugged, sipped 
 
at his drink and said, "Well, last night I helped take away the Justice receipts."
 
Victor, looking startled, said, "From the Bureau?"
 
Herman looked baffled. "From the bureau? It was on tables; they were 
 
counting it."
 
Kelp said, "That was you? I read about that in the paper."
 
So had Dortmunder. He said, "What locks did you open?"
 
"None," Herman said. "It wasn't that kind of a job."
 
Victor, still trying to work it all out, said, "You mean down at Foley Square?"
 
This time, Herman's frown was deep and somewhat hostile. "Well, the FBI is 
 
down there," he said.
 
"The Bureau," said Victor.
 
Kelp said, "Later, Victor. You're confused."
 
"They don't have any receipts at the Bureau," Victor said. "I should know. I 
 
was an agent for twenty-one months."
 
Herman was on his feet, the chair tipping over behind him. "What's going on 
 
here?"
 
"It's all right," Kelp said, fast and soothing. He patted the air in a gesture of 
 
reassurance. "It's all right. They fired him."
 
Herman, in his mistrust, was trying to look in seven directions at once; his eyes 
 
kept almost crossing. "If this is entrapment-" he said.
 
"They fired him," Kelp insisted. "Didn't they, Victor?"
 
"Well," Victor said, "we sort of agreed to disagree. I wasn't exactly fired 
 
precisely, not exactly."
 
Herman had focused on Victor again, and now he said, "You mean it was 
 
political?"
 
Before Victor could answer, Kelp said smoothly, "Something like that. Yeah, 
 
it was political, wasn't it, Victor?"
 
"Uh. Sure, yeah. You could call it . . . I guess you could call it that."
 
Herman shrugged his shoulders inside his sports jacket, to adjust it. Then he 
 
sat down again with a relieved smile, saying, "You had me going there for a 
 
minute."
 
Dortmunder had learned patience at great cost. The trial and error of life 
 
among human beings had taught him that whenever a bunch of them began to 
 
jump up and down and shout at cross-purposes, the only thing a sane man could 
 
do was sit back and let them sort it out for themselves. No matter how long it 
 
took. The alternative was to try to attract their attention, either with explanations 
 
of the misunderstanding or with a return to the original topic of conversation, and 
 
to make that attempt meant that sooner or later you too would be jumping up 
 
and down and shouting at cross-purposes. Patience, patience; at the very worst, 
 
they would finally wear themselves out.
 
Now, he looked around the table at everybody smiling in new 
 
comprehension-Murch was salting his beer again- and then he said, "What 
 
we had in mind for this job was a lockman."
 
"That's what I am," Herman said. "Last night, I was just filling in. You know, 
 
helping out. Usually I'm a lockman."
 
"For instance."
 
"For instance the People's Co-operative Supermarket on Sutter Avenue 
 
about three weeks ago. The Lenox Avenue office of the Tender Loving Care 
 
Loan Company a couple weeks before that. Smilin Sam Tahachapee's safe in 
 
the horse room behind the Fifth of November Bar and Grill on Linden 
 
Boulevard two days before that. The Balmy Breeze Hotel safe in Atlantic City 
 
during the Retired Congressmen's Convention the week before that. The Open 
 
Hand Check Cashing Agency on Jerome Avenue the-"
 
"You don't need work," Kelp said. He sounded awed. "You got all the work 
 
you can handle."
 
"Not to mention money," Murch said.
 
Herman shook his head with a bitter smile. "The fact is," he said, "I'm broke. 
 
I really need a score."
 
Dortmunder said, "You must run through it pretty quick."
 
"Those are Movement jobs," Herman said. "I don't get to keep any of it."
 
This time Victor was the only one who understood. "Ah," he said. "You're 
 
helping to finance their schemes."
 
"Like the free-lunch program," Herman said.
 
Kelp said, "Wait a minute. These are Movement jobs, so you don't get to 
 
keep the money. What does that mean exactly? Movement jobs. You mean 
 
they're like for practice? You send the money back?"
 
Victor said, "He gives the money to the organization he belongs to." Mildly, 
 
he said to Herman, "Which movement do you belong to, exactly?"
 
"One of them," Herman said. To Kelp he said, "I don't set any of those things 
 
up. These people that I believe in-" with a glance at Victor-"that your 
 
nephew would know about, they set them up, and they put together the group 
 
that does the job. What we say is, we're liberating the money."
 
"I think of it the other way around," Kelp said. "I think of it that I'm capturing 
 
the money."
 
Dortmunder said, "What was the last job you did on your own? Where you 
 
got to keep the loot?"
 
"About a year ago," Herman said. "A bank in St. Louis."
 
"Who'd you work with?"
 
"Stan Devers and Mort Kobler. George Cathcart drove."
 
"I know George," Kelp said.
 
Dortmunder knew Kobler. "All right," he said.
 
"Now," Herman said, "let's talk about you boys. Not what you've done, I'll 
 
take Kelp's word for that. What you want to do."
 
Dortmunder took a deep breath. He wasn't happy about this moment. 
 
"We're going to steal a bank," he said.
 
Herman looked puzzled. "Rob a bank?"
 
"Steal a bank." To Kelp he said, "You tell him."
 
Kelp told him. At first Herman sort of grinned, as though waiting for the punch 
 
line. Then, for a while, he frowned, as though suspecting he was surrounded by 
 
mental cases. And finally he looked interested, as though the idea had caught his 
 
fancy. At the end he said, "S0 I can take my time. I can even work in daylight if 
 
I want."
 
"Sure," Kelp said.
 
Herman nodded. He looked at Dortmunder and said, "Why is it still just a 
 
maybe?"
 
"We don't have any place to put it," Dortmunder said. "Also, we have to get 
 
wheels for it."
 
"I'm working on that," Murch said. "But I may need some help."
 
"A whole bank," Herman said. He beamed. "We're gonna liberate a whole 
 
bank."
 
Kelp said, "We're gonna capture a whole bank."
 
"It comes to the same thing," Herman told him. "Believe me, it comes to the 
 
same thing."
 

 

 
12
 

 

 
MURCH'S Mom stood smiling and blinking in the sunlight in front of 
 
Kresge's holding her purse strap with both hands, arms extended down and in 
 
front of her so that the purse dangled at her knees. She was wearing a dress 
 
with horizontal green and yellow stripes which did nothing to improve her figure, 
 
and below that yellow vinyl boots with green laces all the way up. Above the 
 
dress she wore her neck brace. The purse was an ordinary beige leather affair, 
 
which went much better with the neck brace than with the dress and boots.
 
Standing next to a parking meter, peering at Murch's Mom's image in an 
 
Instamatic camera, was May, dressed in her usual fashion. The original idea was 
 
that May would be the one in the fancy clothes and Murch's Mom would take 
 
the pictures, but May had absolutely refused to buy the kind of dress and boots 
 
Dortmunder had in mind. It also turned out that Murch's Mom was one of those 
 
people who always take pictures low and to the left of what they were aiming at. 
 
So the roles had been reversed.
 
May kept frowning into the camera, apparently never being quite content with 
 
what she saw-which was perfectly understandable. Shoppers would come 
 
along the sidewalk, see Murch's Mom posing there, see May with the camera, 
 
and would pause a second, not wanting to louse up the picture. But then nothing 
 
would happen except that May would frown some more and maybe take a step 
 
to the left or right, so the shoppers would all finally murmur, "Excuse me," or 
 
something like that, and duck on by.
 
At last May looked up from the camera and shook her head, saying, "The 
 
light's no good here. Let's try farther down the block."
 
"Okay," said Murch's Mom. She and May started down the sidewalk 
 
together, and Murch's Mom said under her breath, "I feel like a damn fool in 
 
this get-up."
 
"You look real nice," May said.
 
"I know what I look like," Murch's Mom said grimly. "I look like the Good 
 
Humor flavor of the month. Lemon pistachio."
 
"Let's try here," May said. Coincidentally, they were in front of the bank.
 
"Okay," Murch's Mom said.
 
"You stand against the wall in the sunlight," May said.
 
"Okay."
 
Murch's Mom backed up slowly across the brick rubble toward the trailer, 
 
and May backed up against the car parked there. This time, Murch's Mom held 
 
the purse at her side, and her back was against the trailer wall. May took a fast 
 
picture, then stepped forward two paces and took a second one. With the third, 
 
she was at the inner edge of the sidewalk-too close to get all of Murch's Mom 
 
in the picture and with the camera angled too low to include her head.
 
"There," May said. "I think that's got it."
 
"Thank you, dear," Murch's Mom said, smiling, and the two ladies walked 
 
around the block.
 

 

 
13
 

 

 
DORTMUNDER and Kelp quartered around the remoter bits of Long Island 
 
like a bird dog who's lost his bird. Today's car was an orange Datsun 40Z with 
 
the usual MD plates. They drove around under a sky that kept threatening rain 
 
but never quite delivered, and after a while Dortmunder began to grouse. "In the 
 
meantime," he said, "I'm not making any income."
 
"You've got May."
 
"I don't like living on the earnings of a woman," Dortmunder said. "It isn't in 
 
my makeup."
 
"The earnings of a woman? She's not a hooker, she's a cashier."
 
"The principle's the same."
 
"The interest isn't. What's that over there?"
 
"Looks like a barn," Dortmunder said, squinting.
 
"Abandoned?"
 
"How the hell do I know?"
 
"Let's take a look."
 
They looked that day at seven barns, none of them abandoned. They also 
 
looked at a quonset hut that had most recently contained a computer-parts 
 
factory which had gone broke, but the interior was a jumble of desks and 
 
machinery and parts and junk, too crowded and filthy to be useful. They also 
 
looked at an airplane hangar in front of a pock-marked blacktop landing strip-
 
a onetime flying school, now abandoned, but occupied by a hippie commune, as 
 
Dortmunder and Kelp discovered when they parked out front. The hippies had 
 
mistaken them for representatives of the sheriff's office and right away began 
 
shouting about squatters' rights and demonstrations and all and didn't stop 
 
shouting until after Dortmunder and Kelp got back in the car and drove away 
 
again.
 
This was the third day of the search. Days one and two had been similar.
 
*************
 
Victor's car was a black 1938 Packard limousine, with the bulky trunk and 
 
the divided rear window and the long coffin-like hood and the headlights sitting 
 
up on top of the arrogant broad fenders. The upholstery was scratchy gray 
 
plush, and there were leather thongs to hold onto next to the doors on the inside 
 
and small green vases containing artificial flowers hanging in little wire racks 
 
between the doors.
 
Victor drove, and Herman sat beside him and stared out at the countryside. 
 
"This is ridiculous," he said. "There's got to be something you can hide a trailer 
 
in."
 
Casually, Victor said, "What newspapers do you read mostly, Herman?"
 
*************
 
Dortmunder walked into the apartment and sat down on the sofa and stared 
 
moodily at the turned-oft television set. May, the cigarette in the corner of her 
 
mouth, slopped in from the kitchen. "Anything?"
 
"With the encyclopedias," Dortmunder said, staring at the TV, "I could've 
 
picked up maybe seventy bucks out there today. Maybe a hundred."
 
"I'll get you a beer," May said. She went back to the kitchen.
 
*************
 
Murch's Mom brooded over the pictures. "I never looked so foolish in my 
 
life," she said.
 
"That isn't the point, Mom."
 
She tapped the one in which she appeared headless. "At least there you can't 
 
tell it's me."
 
Her son was hunched over the three color photographs on the dining-room 
 
table, counting. The lace holes in the boots and the stripes on the dress made a 
 
ruler. Murch counted, added, compared, got totals for each of the three 
 
pictures, and at last said, "Thirty-seven and a half inches high."
 
"You sure?"
 
"Positive. Thirty-seven and a half inches high."
 
"Can I burn those pictures now?"
 
"Sure," Murch said. She gathered up the pictures, and as she hurried from the 
 
room he called, "Did you get rid of that dress?"
 
"You know it!" she sang out. She sounded almost gay.
 
*************
 
"The way I figure it," Herman said, riding along in Victor's car, scanning the 
 
countryside for large abandoned buildings, "what we got to deal with here is 
 
three hundred years of slavery."
 
"Myself," Victor said, pushing the Packard slowly toward Montauk Point, 
 
"I've never really been political."
 
"You were in the FBI."
 
"That wasn't for politics. I always thought of myself as being involved in 
 
adventure. You know what I mean?"
 
Herman gave him a quizzical look and then a slow grin. "Yeah," he said. 
 
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
 
"For me, adventure meant the FBI."
 
"Yeah, that's right! See, for me, it was the Movement."
 
"Sure," Victor said.
 
"Naturally," said Herman.
 
*************
 
"I don't like that sound," Murch said. Sitting there behind the wheel, head 
 
cocked, listening to the engine, he looked like a squirrel driving a car.
 
"You're supposed to be looking for abandoned buildings," his Mom said. She 
 
herself was turning her head slowly back and forth, like a Navy pilot looking for 
 
shipwreck survivors.
 
"You hear it? Ting, ting, ting. You hear it?"
 
"What's that over there?"
 
"What?"
 
"I said, what's that over there?"
 
"Looks like some kind of church."
 
"Let's go look at it."
 
Murch turned in that direction. "Keep your eye peeled for a gas station," he 
 
said.
 
This current car-he'd had it seven months-had started life as an American 
 
Motors Javelin, but since he'd owned it Murch had changed some things. By 
 
now, looks aside, it bore about as much similarity to a Javelin as to a javelin. It 
 
growled like some very large and savage but sleepy beast as Murch steered it 
 
through bumpy streets of prewar one family housing toward the church with the 
 
sagging roof.
 
They stopped out front. The lawn was weedy, the wooden walls needed 
 
painting very badly, and a few of the window panes were broken. "Let's take a 
 
look," Murch's Mom said.
 
Murch shut off the ignition and listened attentively to the silence for a few 
 
seconds, as though that too could tell him something. Then he said, "Okay," and 
 
he and his Mom got out of the car.
 
Inside, the church was very dim; nevertheless, the priest sweeping the central 
 
aisle saw them at once and hurried toward them, clutching his broom at port 
 
arms. "Yes? Yes? Can I help you?"
 
Murch said, "Never mind," and turned away.
 
His Mom explained, "We were wondering if this place was abandoned."
 
The priest nodded. "Almost," he said, looking around. "Almost."
 
*************
 
"I think I have an idea," May said.
 
*************
 
Kelp said, "Excuse me, Miss. I wanted to open an account."
 
The girl, her head bent beneath a towering bouffant hairdo, didn't pause in her 
 
typing. "Have a seat, and an officer will be right with you."
 
"Thank you," Kelp said. He sat down and glanced around the interior of the 
 
bank, as a bored man will do while waiting.
 
The safe was down at the Kresge end and more impressive-looking than 
 
Victor had implied. It filled practically the whole width of the trailer down there 
 
at the end, and the door-which was ajar-was admirably large and thick.
 
The customer portion of the bank was separated from the rest by a chest-high 
 
partition, with here and there an entrance door through it. If one were to take the 
 
top off the trailer and look inside, this chest-high partition would form a letter C, 
 
long and thin and with right angles instead of curves. The customer area was the 
 
part enclosed by the C- the right half of the middle of the trailer. At the top of 
 
the C was the safe, down along the side of the C were the tellers, and the thick 
 
bottom of the C contained the desks of the three bank officers. The girl in the 
 
bouffant hairdo was at a smaller desk outside the C; she and the elderly bank 
 
guard were the only employees in the customer section.
 
Kelp cased the joint, and then he memorized it, and then he got up and read 
 
the pamphlets for auto loans and credit cards, and then he looked around the 
 
place again to be sure he remembered it all, and he remembered it all. He'd 
 
planned on actually opening an account, but finally that seemed superfluous, so 
 
he got to his feet and told the girl, "I'll come back after lunch."
 
The hairdo nodded. She kept typing.
 
*************
 
"Why," Herman said, "from the outside it looks like any other garage."
 
Victor nodded, smiling. "I thought you'd like it," he said.
 
*************
 
Dortmunder came out of the bedroom wearing black sneakers, black trousers 
 
and a long-sleeved black shirt. In one hand he was holding a black cap, and 
 
over his forearm hung a black leather jacket. May, who was hemming curtains, 
 
looked up and said, "You off?"
 
"Be back pretty soon."
 
"Break a leg," May said and went back to her sewing.
 

 

 
14
 

 

 
THE railroad-station parking lot had cars in it all night long on weekends, and 
 
this was Friday night, so there was no problem. Victor and Herman arrived in 
 
Victor's Packard, parked it and strolled over to the waiting room. This was the 
 
Long Island Railroad, which had been the best in the world since November of 
 
1969. The waiting room was open and lit, since late trains came out here from 
 
the city on Friday nights, but the ticket office was closed. Victor and Herman 
 
wandered around the empty waiting room reading the notices until they saw 
 
headlights; then they went back outside.
 
It was the Javelin, growling contentedly to itself as though it had just eaten a 
 
Pinto. Murch was driving and Dortmunder was beside him. Murch slipped the 
 
Javelin into a parking space-it was done like a samurai sheathing his sword, the 
 
same sense of ceremony-and then he and Dortmunder got out and walked 
 
over to join the other two.
 
Dortmunder said, "Kelp isn't here yet?"
 
Victor said, "Do you suppose he had some trouble?"
 
"Here he comes," Herman said.
 
"I wonder what he brought me," Murch said as the truck headlights made the 
 
turn into the parking lot.
 
The town all around them was fairly well lit but basically empty, like a movie 
 
set. Traffic was light to moderate with people homeward bound from their 
 
Friday-night outings, and the occasional Nassau County police car was 
 
interested in drunken drivers, automobile accidents and potential burglary of 
 
downtown stores, not vehicles moving in and out of the railroad-station parking 
 
lot.
 
Kelp pulled to a stop next to the waiting men. His style of driving was in deep 
 
contrast with Murch, who seemed to do no physical labor at all but to operate 
 
his cars by thought control. Kelp, on the other hand, even after the truck had 
 
come to a stop, could still be seen in there for several seconds turning the wheel 
 
and shifting the gears, pushing and pulling and shoving and only gradually himself 
 
coming to a stop, like a radio that keeps broadcasting for a few seconds after 
 
you switch it off, while the tubes cool.
 
"Well," said Murch, in the manner of a man withholding judgment but not 
 
expecting much.
 
It was a good-sized truck, a Dodge, with a box about fifteen feet long. The 
 
doors and sides carried the company name: Laurentian Paper Mills. In 
 
addition, the doors bore the names of two cities: "Toronto, Ontario-Syracuse, 
 
New York." The cab was green, the box dark brown, and it had New York 
 
plates. Kelp had left the motor running, and it gug-gugged like any truck engine.
 
Now, as Kelp opened the door and climbed down to the pavement, carrying 
 
a brown shopping bag, Murch said to him, "What was it attracted you to this 
 
thing? In particular, I mean."
 
"The fact that it was empty," Kelp said. "We don't have to unload any 
 
paper."
 
Murch nodded. "Well," he said, "it'll do."
 
"There was an International Harvester I saw," Kelp told him, "with a nice 
 
racing stripe on it, but it was full of model cars."
 
"This one'1! do," Murch said.
 
"If you want, I'll go back and get that one."
 
"No," Murch said judiciously, "this one will do just fine."
 
Kelp looked at Dortmunder and said, "I don't believe I've ever met such an 
 
ingrate in my life."
 
"Let's go," Dortmunder said.
 
Dortmunder and Kelp and Victor and Herman got up into the back of the 
 
truck, and Murch closed the van doors after them. Now the interior was pitch-
 
black. Dortmunder felt his way to the side wall and sat down, as the others were 
 
already doing. A second later, the truck lurched forward.
 
The worst moment was the bump coming out of the parking lot. After that, 
 
Murch moved them along pretty smoothly.
 
In the dark, Dortmunder wrinkled his nose and sniffed. "Somebody's been 
 
drinking," he said.
 
Nobody answered.
 
"I can smell it," Dortmunder said. "Somebody had a drink."
 
"I can smell it, too," Kelp said. From the sound of his voice, he was just 
 
across the way.
 
Victor said, "Is that what that is? A funny smell, almost sweet."
 
Herman said, "Smells like whiskey. Not Scotch, though."
 
"Not bourbon either," Kelp said.
 
"The question is," Dortmunder said, "who's been drinking?" Because it was a 
 
very bad idea to drink while out on a job.
 
"Not me," Kelp said.
 
Herman said, "That's not my style."
 
There was a little silence, and suddenly Victor said, "Me? Fleck, no!"
 
Dortmunder, said, "Well, somebody's been drinking."
 
Herman said, "What do you want to do, smell everybody's breath?"
 
"I can smell it from here," Dortmunder said.
 
"The air is full of it," Kelp said.
 
All at once Herman said, "Wait a second. Wait a second, I think I know. . . 
 
Just wait a second." From the scrambling sound, he was getting to his feet, 
 
moving along the wall. Dortmunder waited, squinting his eyes in the darkness but 
 
still unable to see a thing.
 
A thudding. Herman: "Oops."
 
Victor: "Ow!"
 
Herman: "Sorry."
 
Victor (garbled a bit, as though he had fingers in his mouth): "That's okay."
 
Then there was a hollow drumming sound, and Herman laughed. "Sure!" he 
 
said, obviously pleased with himself. "You know what it is?"
 
"No," Dortmunder said. He was getting very irritated that the drinker 
 
wouldn't own up to what he'd done and starting to suspect it was Herman, now 
 
trying to distract them all from the question with a lot of foolishness.
 
Herman said, "It's Canadian!"
 
Kelp sniffed loudly and said, "By God, I think you're right. Canadian 
 
whiskey."
 
More hollow drumming, and Herman said, "This is a fake wall. Up- here 
 
behind the cab, it's a fake wall. We're in a goddam smuggler's truck!"
 
Dortmunder said, "What?"
 
"That's where the smell's coming from, back there. They must have broken a 
 
bottle."
 
Dortmunder said, "Smuggling? Prohibition's over."
 
"By golly, Herman," Victor said excitedly, "you've stumbled on something 
 
important!" Never had he sounded more like an FBI man.
 
Dortmunder said, "Prohibition's over."
 
"Import duties," Victor explained. "That isn't directly the Bureau's 
 
responsibility, that's Treasury's department, but I do know a bit about it. There 
 
are outfits like this strung all across the border. They smuggle Canadian whiskey 
 
into the States and American cigarettes up into Canada, and they make a pretty 
 
profit in both directions."
 
"Well, I'll be," said Kelp.
 
"Uncle," Victor said, "where exactly did you get this truck?"
 
Kelp said, "You're not in the Bureau any more, Victor."
 
"Oh," Victor said. He sounded slightly confused. Then he said, "Of course 
 
not. I was just wondering."
 
"In Greenpoint."
 
"Of course," Victor said musingly. "Down by the piers."
 
There was another thud, and Herman cried, "Ouch! Son of a bitch!"
 
Dortmunder called, "What happened?"
 
"Hurt my thumb. But I figured out how to get it open."
 
Kelp said, "Any whiskey in there?"
 
Dortmunder said warningly, "Wait a minute."
 
"For later," Kelp said.
 
A match flared. They could see Herman leaning through a narrow partition in 
 
the front wall, holding the match ahead
 
of himself so they could make him out only in silhouette.
 
"Cigarettes," Herman said. "About half full of cigarettes."
 
Kelp said, "True?"
 
"Swear to God."
 
"What brand?"
 
"L and M."
 
"No," Kelp said. "I'm not mature enough for them."
 
"Wait, there's some others. Uhhh, Salem."
 
"No. I feel like a dirty old man when I try to smoke a Salem. Springtime fresh 
 
and all, girls in covered bridges."
 
"Virginia Slims."
 
"What?"
 
"Sorry."
 
"That's May's brand," Dortmunder said. "I'll take some of them with me."
 
Kelp said, "I thought May got them free at the store."
 
"That's right, she does."
 
"Ow," Herman said, and the match went out. "Burned my finger."
 
"You better sit down," Dortmunder told him. "You're choppin' up your hands 
 
pretty good for somebody's gonna open some locks."
 
"Right," Herman said.
 
They rode along in silence awhile, and then Herman said, "You know, it really 
 
stinks in here."
 
Kelp said, "Everything happens to me. I looked at this truck, it said 'paper' 
 
on the side, I figured it would be nice and clean and neat."
 
"It really smells bad," Herman said.
 
"I wish Murch wouldn't jounce so much," Victor said. He sounded small and 
 
distant.
 
Dortmunder said, "How come?"
 
"I think I'm gonna be sick."
 
"Wait," Dortmunder urged him. "It's only a little farther."
 
"It's the smell," Victor said miserably. "And the jouncing."
 
"I'm beginning to feel that way, too," Kelp said. He didn't sound healthy.
 
Now that the idea had been suggested, Dortmunder too was starting to feel 
 
queasy. "Herman," he said, "maybe you ought to rap on the front wall, signal 
 
Murch to stop a minute."
 
"I don't think I can get up," Herman said. He too was sounding very unhappy.
 
Dortmunder swallowed. Then he swallowed again. "Just a little longer," he 
 
said in a strangled voice and kept on swallowing.
 
Up front, Murch drove along in blissful ignorance. He was the one who'd 
 
found this place, and he'd worked out the fastest and smoothest route to reach 
 
it. Now he saw it, up ahead, the tall green fence around the yard, surmounted by 
 
the sign reading, "Lafferty's Mobile Homes-New, Used, Rebuilt, Repaired." 
 
He slowed to a stop in the darkness just beyond the main entrance, got out of 
 
the truck, walked around to the back, opened the doors, and they shot out of 
 
there like they'd been locked in with a lion.
 
Murch said, "Wha . . ." but there wasn't anybody to ask; they'd all run across 
 
the road to the fields on the other side, and though he couldn't see them, the 
 
sounds they were making reminded him of clambakes. The endings of 
 
clambakes.
 
Puzzled, he looked into the interior of the truck, but it was too dark to see 
 
anything in there. "What the hell," he said, making it a statement because there 
 
was nobody around to ask a question of, and walked back up to the cab. In his 
 
usual check of the glove compartment he'd seen a flashlight, which he now got 
 
and carried back to the rear of the truck. When Dortmunder came stumbling 
 
across the road again, Murch was playing the light around the empty inside of 
 
the truck and saying, "I don't get it." He looked at Dortmunder. "I give up," he 
 
said.
 
"So do I," said Dortmunder. He looked disgusted. "If I ever  tie up with Kelp 
 
again, may I be put away. I swear to God."
 
Now the others were coming back. Herman was saying, "Boy, when you go 
 
out to steal a truck, you pick a real winner."
 
"Is it my fault? Can I help it? Read the truck for yourself."
 
"I don't want to read the truck," Herman said. "I never want to see the truck 
 
again."
 
"Read it," Kelp insisted. He went over and banged the side. "It says paper! 
 
That's what it says!"
 
"You're gonna wake everybody in the neighborhood," Herman said.
 
"It says paper," Kelp whispered.
 
Murch said to Dortmunder quietly, "I don't suppose you're going to tell me 
 
about this."
 
"Ask me tomorrow," Dortmunder said.
 
Victor came back last, rubbing his face and mouth with a handkerchief. 
 
"Wow," he said. "Wow. That was worse than tear gas." He wasn't smiling at 
 
all.
 
Murch shone the flashlight around the inside of the truck one last time, and 
 
then shook his head and said, "I don't care. I don't even want to know." Still, 
 
on the way back up to the cab, he did pause to read the side of the truck, and 
 
Kelp had been absolutely right; it said "paper." Murch, looking put-upon, got 
 
into the cab again and shut the door behind him. "Don't tell me," he muttered.
 
Meanwhile the other four, also looking put-upon, were getting their gear from 
 
inside the truck; they'd traveled light the first time out of it. Herman had a black 
 
bag similar to the kind doctors used to carry, back when they made house calls. 
 
Dortmunder got his leather jacket and Kelp got his shopping bag.
 
They all went from the truck over to the fence, where Kelp, looking pained, 
 
reached into the shopping bag and pulled out half a dozen cheap steaks, one at a 
 
time, and threw them over the fence. The others all faced the other way, and 
 
Kelp's nose wrinkled at the smell of food, but he didn't complain. Very quickly 
 
after he started throwing the steaks over, they heard the Doberman pinschers 
 
arrive on the other side and start snarling among themselves as they gobbled the 
 
meat. Murch had counted four of them in his daytime visit here; the other two 
 
steaks were just in case he'd missed a couple.
 
Now Herman carried his black bag over to the broad wooden gate in the 
 
fence, hunkered down over the several different locks, opened the bag and went 
 
to work. For quite a while, the only sound in the darkness was the tiny clink of 
 
Herman's tools.
 
The idea was, this operation must not exist. The people who worked at 
 
Lafferty's Mobile Homes were not to realize tomorrow morning that they'd 
 
been burgled tonight. This meant that Dortmunder and the others couldn't just 
 
bust through the locks but had to open them in such a way that they would still 
 
be usable afterward.
 
While Herman worked, Dortmunder and Kelp and Victor sat on the ground 
 
nearby, their backs against the green wooden fence. Gradually their breathing 
 
grew more regular and they got some flesh tone back in their faces. None of 
 
them spoke, though once or twice Kelp looked on the verge of a declamation. 
 
However, he didn't deliver it.
 
This part of Long Island, quite a distance out from the city, was semi-rural 
 
between the patches of housing developments. The private estates were on the 
 
north side; down here, junkyards, car dealers, small assembly plants and Little 
 
League baseball diamonds were interspersed amid weedy fields and off-brand 
 
gas stations. There were housing developments within a mile of here in three 
 
different directions, but no residences in this particular area at all.
 
"All right," Herman said quietly.
 
Dortmunder looked along the fence. The gate was hanging slightly open, and 
 
Herman was putting his tools away in his black bag. "Okay," Dortmunder said, 
 
and he and the others got to their feet. They all went inside and pushed the gate 
 
closed behind them.
 
Murch had made the right count on the dogs; all four of them were sound 
 
asleep, and two of them were snoring. They would wake up in an hour or so 
 
with a splitting headache, but the Lafferty's people wouldn't be likely to notice 
 
anything tomorrow morning, since dogs like this never do have much by way of 
 
a sweet disposition.
 
The interior of Lafferty's looked like an abandoned city on the moon. If it 
 
hadn't been for the big boxes of the mobile homes spaced here and there, it 
 
would have been an ordinary junkyard, with its piles of used parts, some 
 
mounds of chrome reflecting the dim light and other mounds of grimy dark 
 
machinery parts like a wrecked spaceship a thousand years after the crash. But 
 
the mobile homes looked almost like houses, with their high walls and their 
 
narrow windows and doors, and the way they were canted and leaning here and 
 
there around the lot made it look as though this city had been abandoned after 
 
an earthquake.
 
There were floodlights mounted on fairly high poles around and about, but 
 
they were so broadly scattered that most of the interior was in a kind of fitful 
 
semi-darkness. However, there was enough light to see the paths through the 
 
rubble, and Dortmunder had been here with Murch yesterday afternoon, so he 
 
knew what spot to head for. The others followed him as he walked straight up 
 
the main road, gravel crunching under their feet, and then made a right turn at a 
 
pile of chrome window frames and headed straight for a mountain of wheels.
 
Victor suddenly said, "You know what this is like?" When nobody 
 
responded, he answered his own question, saying, "It's like those stories where 
 
people suddenly shrink and get very small. And here we are on the toymaker's 
 
bench."
 
Undercarriages. Stacked up higher than their heads, and spreading out 
 
sloppily to left and right, were dozens of undercarriages salvaged from defunct 
 
mobile homes. Over to the right was another pile of separate wheels, without 
 
their tires-to follow Victor's toymaker analogy, the stack of round metal 
 
wheels looked like markers in some board game similar to checkers-but it was 
 
the complete undercarriages that Dortmunder had in mind. These too were 
 
minus tires but were otherwise complete-the two wheels, the axle, the metal 
 
framework to attach the whole thing to the bottom of a trailer.
 
Dortmunder was wearing his leather jacket now, and from the pocket he took 
 
a metal tape measure. Murch had given him minimum and maximum dimensions, 
 
both in width and height, and Dortmunder started with the easiest undercar-
 
riages, the ones off to the side of the main heap.
 
Most, it turned out, were too small, generally in the way of being too narrow, 
 
though Dortmunder did find one good set among those just lying on the ground. 
 
Kelp and Herman rolled that one away from the rest, so they could keep track 
 
of it, and then all four of them started dismantling the hill of undercarriages, 
 
Dortmunder measuring each one as they got it down. The damn things were very 
 
heavy, being totally metal, and for the same reason made a lot of noise.
 
Finally another set came within the usable range of measurements, and that 
 
too was set aside. Then they rebuilt the hill-aside from being heavy and loud, 
 
the undercarriages were also all dirty and grimy, so that by now all four men 
 
were heavily grease-smeared-and when they were done Dortmunder stepped 
 
back, panting, and surveyed their work. It looked just about the same as before, 
 
the removal of two sets of wheels not changing the appearance of the pile in any 
 
significant way.
 
All that remained now was to roll the undercarriages down to the gate and 
 
out. They pushed them along, Dortmunder and Kelp on one and Victor and 
 
Herman on the other, and they clattered and banged and made one hell of a lot 
 
of noise. It disturbed the dogs, who groaned and moved around in their sleep 
 
but didn't quite wake up.
 
Murch was standing by the open rear of the truck when they came out. He 
 
had the flashlight in his hand again, but tucked it away in his jacket pocket when 
 
he saw them. "I heard you coming," he said.
 
They were still rolling the wheels over from the gate to the truck. "What?" 
 
shouted Dortmunder, over the racket.
 
"Forget it," Murch said.
 
"What?"
 
"Forget it!"
 
Dortmunder nodded.
 
They loaded the wheels into the back of the truck, and then Dortmunder said 
 
to Murch, "I'll ride up front with you."
 
"So will I," Herman said very fast.
 
"We all will," Kelp said, and Victor said, "Darn right." Murch looked at them 
 
all. "You can't fit five people up there," he said.
 
"We're going to," Dortmunder said.
 
"It's a floor shift."
 
"Don't worry about it," Kelp said.
 
Herman said, "We'll manage."
 
"It's against the law," Murch said. "Two people in the front seat of a floor-
 
shift vehicle, no more. That's the law. What if a cop stops us?"
 
"Don't worry about it," Dortmunder said. He and the others turned and 
 
headed for the cab, leaving Murch to shut the rear doors. Murch did and came 
 
around to the left side of the cab to find the other four all jammed into the pas-
 
senger seat like college students in a phone booth. He shook his head, made no 
 
comment, and stepped up behind the wheel.
 
The only real problem was when he tried to shift into fourth; there seemed to 
 
be six or seven knees in that spot. "I have to shift into fourth now," he said, 
 
speaking with the even patience of somebody who has decided he isn't going to 
 
run amok after all, and a lot of grunting and grumbling took place from the mass 
 
beside him as it retracted all its knees, leaving him just enough room to move the 
 
shift lever into high.
 
Fortunately, there weren't many traffic lights on the route he'd worked out, so 
 
he didn't have to change gears very often. But the jumble beside him gave a 
 
four-throated groan every time they went over a bad bump.
 
"I am trying to figure out," Murch said conversationally at one point, frowning 
 
out the windshield as he spoke, "how this up here can be better than that back 
 
there." But he wasn't surprised when no one answered him, and he didn't repeat 
 
the remark.
 
The bankrupt computer-parts factory that Dortmunder and Kelp had found 
 
was at last up ahead on the left. Murch drove in there and around to the loading 
 
platform at the back, and they all got out again. Herman got his bag of tools 
 
from the interior of the truck, unlocked the loading platform door, and by the 
 
light of Murch's flashlight they cleared enough space in the rubble for the two 
 
sets of wheels. Then Herman locked the place up again.
 
When it was time to go, they found Murch walking around the interior of the 
 
truck, shining his flashlight in the corners. "We're ready," Kelp told him.
 
Murch frowned at them, all four standing on the loading platform looking in at 
 
him. "What's that funny smell?" he said.
 
"Whiskey," Kelp said.
 
"Canadian whiskey," Herman said.
 
Murch gave them a long look. "I see," he said very coldly. He switched off 
 
the flashlight, came out onto the platform and shut the rear doors. Then they all 
 
got into the cab again, Murch on the left and everybody else on the right, and 
 
headed back for where they'd left their cars. Kelp would bring the truck back to 
 
where he'd picked it up.
 
They drove for ten minutes of grunting silence, and then Murch said, "You 
 
didn't offer me any."
 
"What?" said the hodgepodge beside him.
 
"Never mind," Murch said, aiming at a pothole. "It doesn't matter."
 

 

 
15
 

 

 
AT TWENTY after four on Sunday morning, the world still dark with 
 
Saturday night, a police patrol car drove slowly past the temporary headquarters 
 
of the local branch of the Capitalists' & Immigrants' Trust. The two uniformed 
 
patrolmen in the car barely glanced at the trailer containing the bank. Lights were 
 
always kept on in there at night and could be seen through the slats of the 
 
venetian blinds over all the windows, but the patrolmen knew there was no 
 
money inside the trailer, not a dime. They also knew that any burglar who 
 
thought there was money in there would be sure to trip the alarm when he tried 
 
to get in, no matter what method he chose; the alarm would sound down at the 
 
station house, and the dispatcher would inform them on their car radio. Since the 
 
dispatcher had not so informed them, they knew as they drove by that the C&I 
 
Trust trailer was empty, and therefore hardly looked at it at all.
 
Their confidence was well placed. The entire trailer was wired against 
 
burglary. If an amateur were to jimmy open a door or smash the glass in a 
 
window, that would naturally sound the alarm, but even a more experienced man 
 
would be in trouble if he tried breaking and entering around here. For instance, 
 
the entire floor of the trailer was wired; should a man cut a hole in the bottom to 
 
come in that way, he too would trip the alarm. Same with the roof and all four 
 
walls. A sparrow couldn't have gotten into that mobile home without alerting the 
 
people down at the station house.
 
The patrolmen, as they drove by, paid more attention to the old bank building 
 
across the way. There had already been some thievery of building materials from 
 
over there, as well as vandalism, though why anybody would want to cause 
 
damage to a building that was being torn down anyway was a puzzlement. Still, 
 
theirs was not to reason why, so they shone their spotlight over the façade of the 
 
old bank building as they passed, saw nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary, 
 
and drove on.
 
Murch let them get a block away and then stepped down from the cab of the 
 
truck parked just around the corner on the side street, next to the end of the 
 
trailer. Tonight's truck, marked "Hoity Toity Garment Delivery," had been much 
 
more thoroughly inspected by Kelp before making delivery, and Murch had by 
 
now had last night's conundrums explained to him, so tonight everybody was in 
 
a much better mood. Murch, in fact, apologetic for having given the group a 
 
bumpier ride home than necessary last night, was going out of his way to be 
 
cheerful and helpful.
 
In the back of the garment delivery truck, in addition to Dortmunder and Kelp 
 
and Herman and Victor, were the two sets of wheels for the trailer, now much 
 
changed. The boys had spent Saturday afternoon at the defunct computer-parts 
 
plant, putting new tires on the wheels and building up the undercarriages with 
 
plywood and two-by-fours to get them just the right height. By now they 
 
weighed almost twice as much as before and filled most of the interior of the 
 
truck.
 
Murch, having opened the rear doors, said, "The cops just went by. You 
 
should have a good half hour now before they come back."
 
"Right."
 
It took all five of them to get the wheels down onto the ground and drag them 
 
over to the trailer. Dortmunder and Murch unhooked the wooden lattice that 
 
closed off the end of the trailer, moved it to one side, and then all five of them 
 
shoved and heaved the two sets of wheels into place-one way back near the 
 
Kresge's wall, the other up near the front end. Then Murch wrestled the lattice 
 
back into position by himself, left it unhooked, and went oft to sit in the cab of 
 
the truck and keep an eye on things.
 
Under the trailer, the four of them had taken out pencil flashlights and were 
 
looking around for the jacks. There was one jack folded up against the trailer 
 
bottom near each corner, and one man to each jack. They were held up there 
 
by clips screwed into place, but each man was also equipped with a 
 
screwdriver, and it didn't take long to get the things unclipped, fold them down, 
 
and crank them till the bottom plates-which looked like duck feet-were 
 
placed firmly on the brick rubble underneath. All of this was being done in a 
 
space three feet high. It would have been easier if they could have moved 
 
around on their knees, but the brick rubble made that impossible, so they 
 
waddled around like ducks themselves, in tune with the appearance of the jack 
 
plates.
 
Once they had all whispered back and forth that they were ready, 
 
Dortmunder started a rhythmic slow counting, doing one turn on his jack crank 
 
with each number: "One . . . two
 
three . . . four . . ." Each of the others turned at the same rhythm, the idea 
 
being that the trailer would be lifted straight up, with no canting or angling that 
 
might inadvertently set oft an alarm. For a long time, though, the trailer didn't lift 
 
at all. Nothing happened except that the duck feet crunched deeper and deeper 
 
into the brick rubble.
 
Then, all at once, the bottom of the trailer went sprong! It was like an oven 
 
cooling and the metal side contracting. They all four of them stopped turning, 
 
and while Dortmunder and Victor froze, Herman and Kelp both lost their 
 
balance from astonishment and unexpectedly sat down hard on the rubble. 
 
"Ow," whispered Kelp, and Herman whispered, "Damn."
 
They waited half a minute, but nothing else happened, so Dortmunder said 
 
softly, "Okay, we'll go on. Twenty-two .
 
twenty-three . . . twenty-four . .
 
"It's coming!" Victor whispered excitedly.
 
It was. All at once illumination from the corner streetlight made a thin crack 
 
between the bottom of the trailer and the top of the concrete block wall along 
 
the front.
 
"Twenty-five," Dortmunder said. "Twenty-six . . . twenty-seven . .
 
They stopped at forty-two. There was now nearly two inches of air between 
 
trailer bottom and concrete block top.
 
"We'll do the back wheels first," Dortmunder said.
 
This was difficult. Not because it was complicated hut because space was 
 
tight and the undercarriage was heavy. A broad metal strip was already mounted 
 
beneath the trailer at each end, to take the undercarriages. The strips contained 
 
bolt holes, but they hadn't been able to judge ahead of time where to put the 
 
corresponding holes in the built-up under-carriages, so now they had first to 
 
position each undercarriage and mark the location of the bolt holes and then 
 
move the undercarriage-without ramming it too hard or too often into any of 
 
the jacks-and place it so Herman could make the holes with a battery-
 
operated drill. Then they put the wheel assembly back against the metal strip, 
 
propped it up with extra rubble stuffed under the tires, and put on the bolts and 
 
washers and nuts, six bolts to each undercarriage.
 
It took an hour to get this far, and twice in that time the patrol car ambled by. 
 
But they were too busy to notice, and since they were using their flashlights 
 
sparingly and shielding the light as much as possible the police also remained un-
 
aware of them.
 
Finally they had the wheels on, and the ground beneath smoothed again, and 
 
now they went back to the jacks. When all four of them were ready, they 
 
started cranking back down, Dortmunder giving the count again, beginning with 
 
"one," not "forty-two."
 
There was no sprong on the way down, and the count ended at thirty-three. 
 
They clipped the jacks back into place and restored the screws, and then 
 
Dortmunder crawled out from under to check the relationship between the 
 
bottom of the trailer and the top of the concrete block wall. They had blown the 
 
tires up extra hard, figuring they could let a little air out in order to lower the 
 
trailer an inch or so if need be, but as it turned out they didn't have to. The 
 
weight of the trailer was enough to use up practically all the leeway they'd left so 
 
that there was maybe half an inch at the lattice end of the front wall and 
 
practically no space at all down at the Kresge end, where the safe was. Maybe 
 
an eighth of an inch.
 
Dortmunder checked the back, and it was the same there, so he went down 
 
to the open end and called softly, "It's okay. Come on out." They'd been 
 
waiting in there to be told to let air out of this tire or that.
 
They came out, Herman carrying his black bag, and while Dortmunder and 
 
Victor hooked the lattice back in place Herman and Kelp went around front to 
 
finish the job. Herman had a tube of tub caulk, the rubbery stuff that squeezes 
 
out soft and never does entirely harden, and while he moved along the wall, 
 
squirting this into the crack between the trailer and the concrete blocks, Kelp 
 
followed him, smearing dirt onto the caulk to make it blend into the concrete. 
 
They did the same thing in the back and then joined the others, who were 
 
already in the truck. Murch, who had come out of the cab for the purpose, 
 
closed the doors behind them and trotted back up front to drive them away from 
 
there.
 
"Well," Dortmunder said as they all switched on their pencil flashes so they 
 
could see one another, "I'd say we did a good night's work."
 
"By golly!" Victor said excitedly. His eyes sparkled in the light. "I can hardly 
 
wait till Thursday!"
 

 

 
16
 

 
JOE MULLIGAN stumbled on his way into the bank and turned to glare at 
 
the top step. This was the seventh consecutive Thursday he'd been on this job; 
 
you'd think by now he'd know the height of the steps.
 
"What's the matter, Joe?"
 
It was Fenton, the senior man. He liked the boys to call him Chief, but none of 
 
them ever did. Also, even though they didn't have to be on duty till eight-fifteen, 
 
Fenton was always on the job no later than eight o'clock, standing right by the 
 
door to see if any of the boys were going to be late. Still, he wasn't such a bad 
 
old bird; if you did happen to be late any time, he might give you a word or two 
 
on the subject himself, but he wouldn't ever report it to the office.
 
Mulligan tucked down his dark-blue uniform jacket, readjusted his holster on 
 
his right hip, and shook his head. "Getting stumble-footed in my old age," he 
 
said.
 
"Now me, I feel like I got a spring in my step tonight," Fenton said, grinning, 
 
and he rocked up onto the balls of his feet for a second to show what he meant.
 
"I'm glad for you," Mulligan said. As for himself, he would be very pleased-
 
as always on these Thursday nights
 
-when it came around to nine o'clock and the last of the bank employees 
 
had gone home and he could sit down and relax. He'd spent a lifetime on his 
 
feet and believed there would never be a spring in his step again.
 
He had arrived tonight at eight-fourteen, according to the clock on the wall up 
 
behind the tellers. All the other guards were here already except Garfield, who 
 
tromped in a minute later-just under the wire-smoothing that Western-
 
marshal mustache of his and looking around as if he hadn't decided for sure 
 
whether to guard the bank or hold it up.
 
Mulligan had by this time taken up his usual Thursday. evening post, against 
 
the wall near the pretty girl at the courtesy desk outside the counter. He'd 
 
always been partial to pretty girls. He was also partial to her chair and liked to 
 
be the nearest one to it.
 
The bank was still open and would be until eight-thirty, so for the next fifteen 
 
minutes it would be very crowded, what with its normal complement of 
 
employees and customers added to by the seven private guards, Mulligan and 
 
the other six. All seven wore the same police-officerlike uniform, with the 
 
triangular badge on the left shoulder reading Continental Detective Agency. 
 
Their shields, embossed with CDA and their number, were also police-like, and 
 
so were their gun belts and holsters and the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Police 
 
Positive revolvers within them. Most of them, including Mulligan, had been 
 
police officers at one time and had no trouble looking natural in the uniform. 
 
Mulligan had been on the force in New York City for twelve years but hadn't 
 
liked the way things were going and had spent the last nine years with 
 
Continental. Garfield had been an MP, and Fenton had spent twenty-five years 
 
as a cop in some city in Massachusetts, retired on half pay, and was working for 
 
Continental now as much to keep himself occupied as to augment his income.
 
Fenton was the only one with any additional insignia on his uniform; the two 
 
blue chevrons on his sleeves meant he was a sergeant. The CDA had only the 
 
two uniformed ranks, guard and sergeant, and used sergeants only where a job 
 
called for more than three men. They also had an Operative classification, which 
 
was for plainclothes work, a job toward which Mulligan did not aspire. He 
 
knew that being a Continental Op was supposed to be glamorous, but he was a 
 
flat-foot, not a detective, and content to remain so.
 
At eight-thirty the regular bank guard, an old man named Nieheimer, not a 
 
CDA man, locked both bank doors and then stood by one of them to keep 
 
unlocking it again for the next five minutes or so, letting the last customers out. 
 
Then the employees did their closing paperwork, put all the cash away in the 
 
safe, covered the typewriters and adding machines, and by nine o'clock the last 
 
of them-that was always Kingworthy, the manager-was ready to go home. 
 
Fenton always stood by the door to watch Kingworthy out and be sure the 
 
manager locked up properly on the outside. The way the system worked, the 
 
alarm could be switched on or oft only with a key on the outside; once 
 
Kingworthy left, the guards inside couldn't open either door without sounding 
 
the alarm down at police headquarters. For that reason, all seven guards brought 
 
lunch bags or lunch buckets. There was also a men's room at the front end of 
 
the trailer, the end farthest from the safe.
 
Nine o'clock. Kingworthy left, he locked up, Fenton turned and said what he 
 
said every Thursday night: "Now we're on duty."
 
"Right," Mulligan said and reached for the courtesy desk's chair. Meanwhile, 
 
Block was going down to get the folding table from where it was stored by the 
 
safe, and the others were all heading for their favorite chairs. Within a minute, 
 
the folding table was set up in the customer area of the bank, the seven guards 
 
were in seven chairs around it, and Morrison had pulled the two fresh decks 
 
from his uniform pocket-one deck with blue backs, the other with red-and 
 
they were all taking handfuls of change from their pockets and slapping them 
 
down on the table.
 
Seven cards were dealt around, with the high card to be the first dealer, and 
 
that turned out to be Dresner. "Five-card stud," he said, put a nickel in the pot 
 
and started to deal.
 
Mulligan was sitting with his back to the safe, facing the front of the trailer; that 
 
is, the part with the officers' desks. The tellers' counter was to his right, the two 
 
locked doors to his left. He sat with his legs spread wide, both feet flat on the 
 
floor, and watched Dresner deal him a five of hearts up. He looked at his hole 
 
card, and it was the two of spades. Morrison bet a nickel-it was nickel limit on 
 
the first card, dime after that, twenty cents on the last-and when it came 
 
around to Mulligan he very quietly folded. "I don't believe this is going to be my 
 
night," he said.
 
It wasn't. By one-thirty in the morning he was losing four dollars and seventy 
 
cents. However, Fox occasionally dealt draw poker, jacks or better to open, 
 
and at one-thirty he did it again. In draw, each player anted at the beginning, so 
 
they started oft with a thirty-five-cent pot. When no one could open and Fox 
 
had to deal out another hand, they all anted again. Still no one could open, and 
 
when Mulligan looked at his third hand and saw three sixes in it there was 
 
already a dollar five in the pot. To top it off, Fenton on his right opened, with a 
 
quarter, the maximum bid. Mulligan thought of raising, but decided to keep as 
 
many players in as possible, so just called. So did Garfield and Block. Two 
 
dollars and five cents in the pot now.
 
It was time for the draw. Fenton, the opener, took three new cards; so he had 
 
only the one high pair, jacks or over, to begin with. Mulligan considered; if he 
 
took two cards, they'd all suspect he had trips. But he was known to be a man 
 
to try for straights and flushes, so if he took only one card they'd think he was at 
 
it again. In addition to the three sixes, he had a queen and a four; he threw away 
 
the four and said, "One card."
 
Garfield chuckled. "Still trying, eh, Joe?"
 
"I guess so," Mulligan said and looked at another queen.
 
"An honest three," Garfield said. So he, too, was starting with only a pair-
 
probably aces or kings, hoping to just beat out Fenton's openers.
 
"A dishonest one," Block said. Which was either two pair, or an attempt to 
 
buy a flush or a straight.
 
After the draw, the maximum bet was fifty cents, and that's what Fenton bet. 
 
So he'd improved.
 
Mulligan looked at his cards, though he hadn't forgotten them. Three sixes 
 
and two queens-a very nice full house. "I believe I'll just raise," he said and 
 
plucked a dollar bill from his shirt pocket and dropped it casually among the 
 
coins in the pot.
 
Now there was three fifty-five in the pot. Mulligan had put in a dollar-forty, 
 
meaning he could win two dollars and fifteen cents if nobody called his raise.
 
Garfield frowned at his cards. "I'm kind of sorry I bought," he said. "I'm just 
 
gonna have to call you, Joe." And put in his own dollar.
 
"And I'm just gonna have to raise," Block said. He put in a dollar and a half.
 
"Well, now," Fenton said. "I bought a second little pair, but I suddenly don't 
 
believe they'll win. I fold."
 
The pot now had four dollars and sixty-five cents in it that Mulligan hadn't put 
 
in there. If he just called-and if he won-he would be within a nickel of 
 
breaking even on the night. If he lost, he would be down another two dollars and 
 
forty cents, all in one hand.
 
"The hand of the night," Morrison said disgustedly, "and I'm not in it."
 
"I'd just about trade places with you," Mulligan said. He kept staring at his 
 
hand and thinking. If he actually raised another half dollar, and got even one call, 
 
and won, he'd be ahead on the night. On the other hand .
 
Well, what did those two have? Garfield had started with a high pair and had 
 
taken three cards and improved -meaning more than likely either triplets or a 
 
second pair. In either case, nothing to worry about. Block, on the other hand, 
 
had taken only one card. If he'd been buying to a straight or flush, and if he'd 
 
bought, Mulligan's full house would beat him. But what if Block had started with 
 
two pair and had bought a full house of his own? Mulligan's full house was 
 
based on sixes; that left a lot of higher numbers for Block to come up with.
 
Garfield, sounding nervous and irritated, said, "Are you going to make up 
 
your mind?"
 
It was, as Morrison had said, the hand of the night. So he ought to play it that 
 
way. "I'll raise half a dollar," he said.
 
"Fold," Garfield said in prompt disgust.
 
"Raise you right back again," Block said, dropped a dollar in the pot, and 
 
smiled like the cat that ate the canary.
 
A higher full house. Mulligan was suddenly very depressed. It couldn't be 
 
anything else; it had to be a higher full house. But he'd come this far . . . "I'll 
 
call," Mulligan said wearily and shoved in yet another half dollar.
 
"King high flush," Block said, spreading the cards out. "All diamonds."
 
"By God!" Mulligan cried and lifted his hand over his head to slap it down in 
 
the middle of the table with the full house showing; but just as his arm reached 
 
the top of its swing, he was suddenly jerked backward, up over the chair and 
 
onto the suddenly bouncing floor. And as he went flailing back, his legs kicked 
 
up into the under part of the table and sent it too flying; nickels and dimes and 
 
cards and guards exploded in all directions, and a second later the lights went 
 
out.
 

 

 
17
 

 

 
AT THIS HOUR on a Thursday night there were three police dispatchers on 
 
duty down at the station house. They sat in a row at a long continuous table, 
 
each one equipped with three telephones and a two-way radio, all three facing a 
 
big square panel of lights built into the opposite wall. The panel was four feet on 
 
a side, edged with a wooden frame, and looked like the kind of thing hung in the 
 
Museum of Modern Art. Against a flat black background, sixteen rows of 
 
sixteen frosted red bulbs stuck out, each with a number painted on it in white. At 
 
the moment none of the bulbs were lit, and the composition might have been 
 
titled "Tail Lights at Rest."
 
At 1:37 A.M. a tail light lit up-number fifty-two. At the same time, a very 
 
annoying buzzing sound started, as though it were time to get out of bed.
 
The dispatchers worked in strict sequence, to avoid confusion, and this 
 
squeal-which was what the fuzz called the buzz-was the property of the man 
 
on the left, who pushed a button that stopped the noise, at the same time saying, 
 
"Mine." Then, while his left hand reached for one of the phones and his right 
 
hand switched the radio to send, he quickly glanced at the typewritten list on the 
 
table in front of him, under a piece of glass, and saw that number fifty-two was 
 
the temporary branch of Capitalists' & Immigrants' Trust.
 
"Car nine," he said, while with his left hand, still holding the phone receiver, he 
 
dialed the number seven, which was the captain's office, currently occupied by 
 
the senior man on duty, Lieutenant Hepplewhite.
 
Car nine was the regular patrol car past the bank, and tonight the men on duty 
 
were Officers Bolt and Echer. Bolt was driving, very slowly, and had driven past 
 
the bank just five minutes ago, not long before Joe Mulligan was dealt his three 
 
sixes.
 
Echer, the passenger right now, was the one who answered the call, 
 
unhooking the mike from under the dashboard, depressing the button in its side, 
 
saying, "Car nine here."
 
"Alarm at C and I bank, Floral Avenue and Tenzing Street."
 
"Which one?"
 
"It's on the corner of both of them."
 
"Which bank."
 
"Oh. The temporary one, the new one, the temporary one."
 
"That one, huh?"
 
Ambling, it had taken five minutes to come this far from the bank. Flat out, 
 
siren screaming, red light flashing, it took less than two minutes to get back. In 
 
that time, Lieutenant Hepplewhite had been informed and had alerted the men 
 
downstairs on standby, who were playing poker as it happened, though nobody 
 
had had a full house all night. "The colds are card," Officer Kretschmann said in 
 
disgust at one point, and the others hardly even noticed; he did that kind of thing 
 
all the time.
 
Two other patrol cars, on beats farther away, had also been alerted and were 
 
rushing toward the scene. (The standby men alerted at the station house were 
 
not as yet rushing toward the scene, though they had stopped playing poker and 
 
had put on their jackets and guns; having been alerted, they were standing by.) 
 
The dispatcher who had handled the squeal was staying with it, answering no 
 
other calls until car nine should report.
 
"Uhhhh," said the radio. "Dispatcher?"
 
"Is this car nine?"
 
"This is car nine. It isn't here."
 
The dispatcher felt a sudden instant of panic. The trouble wasn't there? He 
 
looked again at the red light, which was still lit even though the buzzer was off, 
 
and it was number fifty-two. He looked at his typewritten sheet, and fifty-two 
 
was the temporary bank. "Well, it was there," he said.
 
"I know it was here," said car nine. "I saw it only five minutes ago. But it isn't 
 
here now."
 
The dispatcher was by now completely bewildered. "You saw it five minutes 
 
ago?"
 
"Last time we went by."
 
"Now wait a minute," the dispatcher said. His voice was rising, and the other 
 
two dispatchers looked at him oddly. A dispatcher was supposed to stay calm. 
 
"Wait a minute," the dispatcher repeated. "You knew about this trouble five 
 
minutes ago and you didn't report it?"
 
"No no no," car nine said, and another voice behind it said, "Let me have 
 
that." Then it apparently took over the microphone, becoming louder when it 
 
said, "Dispatcher, this is Officer Bolt. We are at the scene, and the bank is 
 
gone."
 
There was silence from the dispatcher for several seconds. On the scene, 
 
Officer Bolt stood next to the patrol car, holding the microphone to his mouth. 
 
He and Officer Echer both gazed at the place where the bank had been-
 
Officer Echer in a glazed manner, Officer Bolt in an aggravated and brooding 
 
manner.
 
The low concrete block walls were there, but above them was nothing but 
 
space. Wind blew through the air where the bank had been; if you squinted, you 
 
could almost see the structure standing there, as though it had become invisible 
 
but was still present.
 
To left and right, wires dangled like hair from the telephone and power poles. 
 
Two sets of wooden steps led up to the top of the concrete block wall and 
 
stopped.
 
The dispatcher, his voice nearly as thin as the air where the bank had been, 
 
finally said, "The bank is gone?"
 
"That's right," Officer Bolt said, nodding in irritation. From far away he could 
 
hear more sirens coming. "Some son of a bitch," he said, "has stole the bank."
 

 

 
18
 

 
INSIDE the bank, everything was chaos and confusion. Dortmunder and the 
 
others hadn't bothered about springs, shock absorbers, none of the luxuries; 
 
wheels had been their only concern. Since they were now moving pretty fast, the 
 
result was that the bank dipped and swooped and bounced pretty much like a 
 
kite at the end of a string.
 
"I had a full house!" Joe Mulligan wailed in the darkness. Every time he 
 
managed to get to his feet some chair or some other guard would come bowling 
 
along and knock him over again, so now he was just staying down, hunkering on 
 
hands and knees and bawling his announcement into the darkness. "You hear 
 
me? I had a full house!"
 
From somewhere in the confusion-it was like being in an avalanche in an 
 
aquarium-Block's voice answered: "For Christ's sake, Joe, that hand is 
 
dead!"
 
"Sixes full! I had sixes full!"
 
Fenton, who had been quiet till now, suddenly shouted, "Forget poker! Don't 
 
you realize what's happening? Somebody's stealing the bank!"
 
Until that moment, Mulligan actually hadn't realized what was happening.
 
With his mind occupied on the one hand by his full house and on the other 
 
hand by the difficulty of simply keeping his balance in this jouncing darkness and 
 
not getting beaned by a passing chair, it hadn't until just that instant occurred to 
 
Mulligan that this disaster was anything more than his own personal disaster at 
 
poker.
 
 Which he couldn't very well admit, particularly not to Fenton, so he shouted 
 
back, "Of course I realize someone's
 
stealing the bank!" And then he heard the words he'd just said and spoiled the 
 
effect by squeaking, "Stealing the bank?"
 
"We need light in here!" Dresner shouted. "Who's got a flashlight?"
 
"Get them venetian blinds up!" Morrison yelled.
 
"I have a flashlight!" Garfield shouted, and a spot of white light showed, 
 
though the confusion it revealed wasn't much more informative than darkness. 
 
Then the light swooped
 
down and away, and Garfield shouted, "I dropped the goddam thing!" 
 
Mulligan watched its progression, the bouncing white light, and if there'd been 
 
wor4s under it they could have sung along. It seemed to be headed his way, and 
 
he braced himself to make a grab for it, but before it got to
 
him it suddenly disappeared. Went out, or something.
 
However, a few seconds later somebody at last got a venetian blind opened, 
 
and it was possible at last to see, in the illumination of streetlights whipping by 
 
outside. Intervals of darkness and light succeeded one another at great speed, 
 
like a flickering silent movie, but it gave light enough for Mulligan to crawl on all 
 
fours through the scattered furniture and sprawled guards and rolling nickels 
 
over to the tellers' counter. He crawled up that and thus reached his feet. Feet 
 
braced wide, both arms stretched out across the counter and fingers gripping the 
 
inner edge, he looked around at the shambles.
 
Down to his left, Fenton was also clinging to the counter, in the angle where it 
 
made a turn to go past the courtesy desk. Sitting on the floor with his back to 
 
the courtesy desk and his hands braced to both sides was Morrison, wincing at 
 
every bump. Across the way, clutching the neck-high windowsill where the 
 
venetian blind was up, hung Dresner, trying to make some sense out of the night 
 
scenes flashing past the window.
 
What about the other direction? Block and Garfield were in a tight embrace in 
 
the corner where the counter-with the safe past it-met the wall of the trailer; 
 
sitting there, locked together, half buried under furniture and debris since the 
 
general trend of everything loose was to head toward the rear of the trailer, they 
 
looked mostly like a high-school couple on a hayride.
 
And where was Fox? Fenton must have wondered the same thing, because he 
 
suddenly yelled, "Fox! Where'd you get to!"
 
"I'm here!"
 
It was Fox's voice all right, but where was Fox? Mulligan gaped around, and 
 
so did everybody else.
 
And then Fox appeared. His head emerged above the counter, down by the 
 
safe. He was on the other side of the counter. Hanging there, he looked 
 
seasick. "Here I am," he called.
 
Fenton saw him, too, since he yelled, "How in God's name did you get in 
 
there?"
 
"I just don't know," Fox said. "I just don't know."
 
Block and Garfield were now coming back toward the middle space, both 
 
traveling on all fours. They looked like fathers who didn't yet realize their sons 
 
had grown bored with piggyback and gone away. Garfield paused in front of 
 
Fenton, hunkered back, looked up like the dog on the old Victrola record 
 
labels, and said, "Shall we try to break out the door?"
 
"What, leave?" Fenton looked enraged, as though somebody had suggested 
 
they surrender the fort to the Indians. "They may have the bank," he said, "but 
 
they don't have the money!" He let go with one arm to gesture dramatically at 
 
the safe. Unfortunately, the bank made a right turn at the same instant and 
 
Fenton suddenly ran across the floor and tackled Dresner, over at the window. 
 
The two of them went crashing, and Block and Garfield rolled into them.
 
Turning his head to the left, Mulligan, who had retained his grip on the 
 
counter, saw Morrison still sitting on the floor against the courtesy desk and still 
 
wincing. Turning his head to the right, he saw that Fox's head was no longer on 
 
top of the counter, nor anywhere else in view. He nodded, having expected as 
 
much.
 
From the scramble across the way, Fenton's voice rose:
 
"Get off me, you men! Get off me, I say! That's a direct order!"
 
Mulligan, his chest against the counter, looked over his shoulder at the rest.
 
An awful lot of legs were flailing over there, and they still hadn't sorted 
 
themselves out when suddenly the flickering light stopped, and they were in 
 
darkness again.
 
"Now what?" Fenton wailed, his voice muffled as though somebody possibly 
 
had their elbow in his mouth.
 
"We're not in the city any more," Morrison shouted. "We're in the country. 
 
No streetlights."
 
"Get off me!"
 
For some reason it all seemed quieter in the dark, though just as jouncy and 
 
chaotic. Mulligan clung to the counter like Ishmael, and in the darkness they 
 
eventually sorted themselves out across the way. Finally Fenton, panting, said, 
 
"All right. Everybody present?" He then called the role, and each of the six 
 
pantingly answered to his name- even Fox, though faintly.
 
"All right," Fenton said again. "Sooner or later they're going to have to stop. 
 
They're going to want to get in here. Now, they may shoot the place up first, so 
 
what we have to do is all of us get in back of that counter. Try to keep a desk or 
 
some other piece of furniture between you and any outside wall. They have the 
 
bank, but they don't have the money, and as long as we're on the job they 
 
aren't going to get the money!"
 
It might have been an inspiring speech if it hadn't been slowed down by all the 
 
panting Fenton was doing, and if the rest of them hadn't had to hold onto the 
 
walls and one another for dear life while listening to it. Still, it did recall them all 
 
to their duties, and Mulligan heard them now crawling toward the counter, 
 
panting and bumping into things, but making progress.
 
Mulligan had to go by his memory of the place, since he couldn't see his hand 
 
in front of his face. Or wouldn't have been able to if it was there and not 
 
clutching the counter. As he remembered the layout, the nearest entrance 
 
through the counter was down to his right, toward the safe. He moved that way, 
 
sidling along, keeping both hands firmly on the counter edge.
 
He too was panting, which he could, surely understand, given the exertion 
 
required simply to keep on his feet, but why should he be so sleepy? He'd been 
 
working a night shift for years; he hadn't gotten out of bed yesterday until four in 
 
the afternoon. It was ridiculous to feel sleepy. Nevertheless, it would feel very 
 
good to sit down, once he got around behind this counter. Wedge himself in next 
 
to a filing cabinet or something, relax a little. Not actually close his eyes, of 
 
course-just relax.
 

 

 
19
 

 
"CALLING all cars, calling all cars. Be on the lookout for a stolen bank, 
 
approximately eleven feet tall, blue and white
 

 

 
20
 

 
DORTMUNDER, Kelp and Murch were the only gang members present at 
 
the actual theft of the bank. Kelp, earlier that evening, had picked up a tractor-
 
trailer cab without its trailer near the piers in the West Village section of 
 
Manhattan and had met Dortmunder and Murch with it on Queens Boulevard in 
 
Long Island City, just across the 59th Street bridge from Manhattan, shortly 
 
after midnight. Murch had done the driving after that, with Kelp sitting in the 
 
middle and Dortmunder on the right, resting his elbow on the open windowsill. 
 
Below his elbow read a company name: Elmore Trucking. The cab had North 
 
Dakota plates. Stuffed inside with them, amid their feet as they headed east out 
 
Long Island, were a twenty-five-foot coil of black rubber garden hose, several 
 
lengths of thick heavy chain and a carpenter's tool kit.
 
They arrived at the bank at one-fifteen and had to move a car parked in the 
 
way. They pushed it down in front of a fire hydrant and took its place and 
 
waited silently with the lights and engine off until they saw the patrol car-car 
 
nine-drive by just after one-thirty. Very quietly then they backed the cab up to 
 
the trailer and left its engine idling but lights off while they hooked the two parts 
 
together.
 
Which was a little complicated. The tractor cab was of the sort that fits under 
 
the front of a cargo-carrying trailer equipped only with rear wheels; that is, the 
 
cab's rear wheels normally served as the front wheels of any trailer it towed, 
 
with the front section of the trailer resting on the low flat rear section of the cab. 
 
But this particular trailer, the bank, being a mobile home instead of a cargo 
 
transporter, wasn't set up for that kind of rig, having instead a kind of modified 
 
V hitch in front, which was supposed to lock onto a ball at the rear of the towing 
 
vehicle. So Dortmunder and Kelp and Murch had to attach the two together 
 
with the loops of chain, shushing each other at every rattle and clank, squeezing 
 
links shut with the pliers from the tool kit in order to complete the loops and 
 
attach trailer to cab with four heavy circles of chain.
 
One end of the garden hose was then stuck into the cab's tailpipe, and while 
 
Kelp wrapped lots of black tape around the hose and that end of the pipe 
 
Dortmunder stood on the rear of the cab and shoved the other end through an 
 
air vent high in the trailer wall, so the cab exhaust would now go into the bank. 
 
More tape was used to fasten that end of the hose in place, and to keep the 
 
length of it flat against the front of the trailer all the way down, and to attach the 
 
extra coils of hose to the rear superstructure of the cab.
 
All of which had taken only three or four minutes. Murch and Kelp got back 
 
into the cab, Kelp carrying the tool kit, and Dortmunder made one last check 
 
before trotting around and swinging up into the cab on the right side. "Set," he 
 
said.
 
"I'm not gonna start slow," Murch said. "We're gonna have to jerk it loose 
 
and then go like hell. So hold on."
 
"Any time," Kelp said.
 
"Now," Murch said, threw it in first, and jumped on the accelerator with both 
 
feet.
 
The cab lunged forward like a dog that had backed into a hot stove. There 
 
was a grinding noise that none of them heard over the engine roar, and the bank 
 
snapped its moorings-these being the water pipe in and the sewage pipe out of 
 
the bathroom. As water spurted up from the broken city water pipe like Old 
 
Faithful geyser, the bank slid away leftward over its concrete wall, like a name 
 
card being slipped out of a slot in a door. Murch, not wanting to turn before the 
 
bank's rear wheels had cleared the concrete blocks, tore straight ahead across 
 
the side street, began to spin the steering wheel only as his front tires thumped 
 
up over the curb on the other side, and as Kelp and Dortmunder both yelled and 
 
waved their arms he angled the cab leftward so it just missed the bakery 
 
windows on the corner, drove catty-corner across the sidewalk at the 
 
intersection, thumped down off the curb again on the other side, shot out across 
 
the main street at a long angle, straightened out at last on the wrong side of the 
 
street, and took off.
 
Behind them, the left rear wheel of the bank had just nicked the edge of the 
 
concrete block wall, but aside from an extra jounce it caused no obvious 
 
damage, though it did loosen a couple of the screws holding the rear wheels to 
 
the bottom of the trailer. The bank followed the cab, thumping and bumping up 
 
and down over curbs, missing the bakery windows by even less than the cab 
 
because it was so much wider, and shuddered and rocked from side to side as it 
 
swept on away down the street in the cab's wake. An automatic cutoff valve 
 
had already shut down the water from the main line into this spur, and the geyser 
 
had stopped.
 
Murch had planned his route with the greatest care. He knew which 
 
secondary streets were wide enough to allow the bank passage, which major 
 
streets could be traveled for brief periods without the likelihood of running into 
 
traffic. He made left turns and right turns with a minimum use of brakes or lower 
 
gears, and behind him the bank rocked and reeled and occasionally took 
 
corners on two wheels but never did go over. The greatest weight in the thing 
 
was the safe, which was at the back, which gave it more stability the faster 
 
Murch drove.
 
Kelp and Dortmunder and the tool kit, meanwhile, were all over each other. 
 
Dortmunder surfaced at last to shout, "Are they on our tail?"
 
Murch gave a quick look to the outside mirror. "Nobody back there at all," 
 
he said, and took a left turn so hard it popped the glove-compartment door 
 
open and a package of No-Doz dropped into Kelp's lap. Kelp picked it up in 
 
trembling fingers and said, "Never did I need you less."
 
"Then slow down!" Dortmunder yelled.
 
"Nothing to worry about," Murch said. His headlights showed a pair of cars 
 
parked up ahead, opposite each other, both too far out from the curb, leaving a 
 
space that was under the circumstances very small. "Everything under control," 
 
Murch said, jiggled the wheel as he went through, and simply amputated the 
 
outside mirror from the car on the right.
 
"Uh," said Kelp. He dropped the No-Doz on the floor and shut the glove 
 
compartment.
 
Dortmunder looked past Kelp at Murch's profile, saw how absorbed it was, 
 
and understood there was no way right now to attract Murch's attention without 
 
actually setting up a roadblock ahead of him. And that might not do it, either. "I 
 
trust you," Dortmunder said, since he had no choice, and sat back in the corner 
 
to brace himself and to watch the night thunder at their windshield.
 
They drove for twenty minutes, mostly heading north, sometimes heading east. 
 
Generally speaking, the south shore of Long Island, which faces the Atlantic 
 
Ocean, is less prestigious than the north shore, which faces Long Island Sound, 
 
a mostly enclosed body of water protected by the island on one side and 
 
Connecticut on the other. In taking the bank from the south-shore community it 
 
had serviced so well, arid in heading north with it, Murch and Dortmunder and 
 
Kelp were moving by gradual stages from smaller older houses on narrower 
 
plots of land to larger newer houses on broader plots of land. Similarly, 
 
westward, toward New York City, the houses were poorer and closer together, 
 
but eastward they were richer and farther apart. In going both east and north, 
 
Murch was giving this branch of the C&I Trust a literal kind of upward mobility.
 
They were also moving into an area where there was still undeveloped land 
 
between the towns, rather than the undifferentiated sweep of suburb that 
 
characterized the section where they'd started. After twenty minutes, they had 
 
crossed a county line and were on a deserted bit of cracked and bumpy two-
 
lane road, with a farmer's field on the right and a stand of trees on the left. "This 
 
is close enough," Murch said, and began tapping the brake. "God damn it," he 
 
said.
 
Dortmunder sat up. "What's the matter? Brakes no good?"
 
"Brakes are fine," Murch said through clenched teeth, and tapped them some 
 
more. "Goddam bank wants to jackknife," he said.
 
Dortmunder and Kelp twisted around to look through the small rear window 
 
at the bank. Every time Murch touched the brakes, the trailer began to slue 
 
around, the rear of it moving leftward like a car in a skid on ice. Kelp said, "It 
 
looks like it wants to pass us."
 
"It does," Murch said. He kept tapping, and very gradually they slowed, and 
 
when they got below twenty miles an hour Murch could apply the brakes more 
 
normally and bring them to a stop. "Son of a bitch," he said. His hands were still 
 
clawed around the wheel, and sweat was running down his cheeks from his 
 
forehead.
 
Kelp said, "Were we really in trouble, Stan?"
 
"Well, I'll tell you," Murch said, breathing slowly but heavily. "I just kept 
 
wishing Christopher was still a saint."
 
"Let's go take a look at things," Dortmunder said. What he meant was that he 
 
wanted to go stand on the ground for a minute.
 
So did the others. All three got out and wasted several seconds just stomping 
 
their feet on the cracked pavement. Then Dortmunder took a revolver from his 
 
jacket pocket and said, "Let's see how it worked out."
 
"Right," Kelp said, and from his own pocket took a key ring containing a 
 
dozen keys. Herman had assured him that one of those keys would definitely 
 
open the bank door. "At least one," he'd said. "Maybe even more than one." 
 
But Kelp had said, "One will do."
 
So it did. It was the fifth key he tried, while Murch stood back a few feet with 
 
a flashlight, and then the door swung outward. Kelp stayed behind it, because 
 
they weren't sure about the guards inside, whether the carbon-monoxide truck 
 
exhaust had knocked them out or not. They had made careful calculations on 
 
how much of the cubic-foot capacity the gas would fill after x minutes and x + y 
 
minutes, and were certain they were well within safety limits. So Dortmunder 
 
called, "Come out with your hands up."
 
Kelp said, "The robbers aren't supposed to say that to the cops. The cops 
 
are supposed to say it to the robbers."
 
Dortmunder ignored him. "Come out," he called again. "Don't make us drill 
 
you."
 
There was no response.
 
"Flashlight," Dortmunder said quietly, like a doctor asking for a scalpel, and 
 
Murch handed it to him. Dortmunder moved cautiously forward, pressed himself 
 
against the wall of the trailer, and slowly looked around the edge of the door 
 
frame. Both his hands were in front of himself, pointing the gun and the flashlight 
 
at the same spot.
 
There was no one in sight. Furniture lay scattered all over the place, and the 
 
floor was littered with credit-card applications, small change and playing cards. 
 
Dortmunder waggled the flashlight around, continued to see no one, and said, 
 
"That's funny."
 
Kelp said, "What's funny?"
 
"There's nobody there."
 
"You mean we stole an empty bank?"
 
"The question is," Dortmunder said, "did we steal an empty safe."
 
"Oh oh," Kelp said.
 
"I should have known," Dortmunder said, "the first second I saw you. And if 
 
not you, when I saw your nephew."
 
"Let's at least look it over," Kelp said.
 
"Sure. Give me a boost."
 
All three of them climbed up into the bank and began to look around, and it 
 
was Murch who found the guards. "Here they are," he said. "Behind the 
 
counter."
 
And there they were, all seven of them, stuffed away on the floor behind the 
 
counter, jammed in amid filing cabinets and desks, sound asleep. Murch said, "I 
 
heard that one snoring, that's how I knew."
 
"Don't they look peaceful," Kelp said, looking over the counter at them. "It 
 
makes me woozy myself just to look at them."
 
Dortmunder too had been feeling a certain heaviness, thinking it was the 
 
physical and emotional letdown after a successful job, but all at once he roused 
 
himself and cried, "Murch!"
 
Murch was half draped over the counter; it was hard to tell if he was looking 
 
at the guards or joining them. He straightened, startled by Dortmunder's shout, 
 
and said, "What? What?"
 
"Is the motor still on?"
 
"My God, so it is," Murch said. He reeled toward the door. "I'll go turn it 
 
off."
 
"No no," Dortmunder said. "Just get that damn hose out of the ventilator." He 
 
gestured with the flashlight toward the front of the trailer, where the hose had 
 
been pumping truck exhaust into the trailer for the last twenty minutes. There 
 
was a strong smell of garage inside the bank, but it hadn't been enough to warn 
 
them right away not to fall into their own trap. The guards had been put to sleep 
 
by carbon monoxide, and their captors had almost just done the same thing to 
 
themselves.
 
Murch staggered out into the fresh air, and Dortmunder said to Kelp, who 
 
was yawning like a whale, "Come on, let's get these birds out of here."
 
"Right, right, right." Knuckling his eyes, Kelp followed Dortmunder around 
 
the counter, and they spent the next few minutes carrying guards outside and 
 
depositing them in the grass by the side of the road. When they were finished 
 
with that, they hooked the door open, propped the trailer windows open, and 
 
got back into the cab, where they found Murch asleep.
 
"Oh, come on," Dortmunder said, and joggled Murch's shoulder hard enough 
 
to bump his head into the door.
 
"Ow," Murch said and looked around, blinking. "What now?" he said, 
 
obviously trying to remember what situation he was in.
 
"Onward," Kelp said.
 
"Right," Dortmunder said and slammed the cab door.
 

 

 
21
 

 
AT FIVE past two, Murch's Mom said, "I hear them coming!" and raced to 
 
the car for her neck brace. She barely had it on and fastened when the 
 
headlights appeared at the end of the stadium, and the cab and bank drove 
 
across the football field and stopped on the drop cloth. Meanwhile, Herman and 
 
Victor and May were standing by with their equipment ready. This high-school 
 
football stadium was open at one end, so that at this time of night it was both 
 
accessible and untenanted. The stands on three sides, and the school building 
 
beyond the open side, shielded them from curious eyes on any of the 
 
neighborhood roads.
 
Murch had barely stopped the cab when Victor was setting up the ladder at 
 
the back and Herman was climbing the ladder with his roller in one hand and 
 
paint tray in the other. Meanwhile, May and Murch's Mom had started, with 
 
newspapers and masking tape, to cover all sections on the sides that wouldn't 
 
get painted-windows, chrome trim, door handles.
 
There were more rollers and ladders and paint trays. While Victor and Murch 
 
helped the ladies mask the sides, Kelp and Dortmunder started painting. They 
 
were using a pale-green water-base paint, the kind people use on their living-
 
room walls, the kind you can clean up afterward with plain water. They were 
 
using this because it was the fastest and neatest to apply, it was guaranteed to 
 
cover in one coat, and it would dry very quickly. Particularly in the open air.
 
In five minutes, the bank wasn't a bank any more. It had lost its "Just watch 
 
us GROW!" sign somewhere along the way and was now a pleasing soft green 
 
color instead of its former blue and white. It had also gained Michigan license 
 
plates appropriate to a mobile home. Murch drove forward till it was off the 
 
drop cloth, and then the drop cloth was folded up and put into the paint-
 
company truck that had been stolen this afternoon for just this purpose. The 
 
ladders and rollers and paint trays were stowed away in there, too. Then 
 
Herman and May and Dortmunder and Murch's Mom climbed up into the 
 
trailer, the ladies both carrying packages, and Kelp drove away in the paint-
 
company truck, followed by Victor in the Packard. Victor had brought the 
 
ladies out here and would take Kelp home after he ditched the truck.
 
Murch, alone in the cab now, made a sweeping U-turn and drove out of the 
 
football field. He drove more slowly and carefully now, both because the 
 
urgency was gone and because his Mom and some other people were in the 
 
back.
 
What they were doing in the back, May was putting up on the windows the 
 
curtains she'd been making all week. Murch's Mom was holding the two 
 
flashlights that were their only illumination, and Dortmunder was cleaning up the 
 
mess a bit while Herman was squatting on the floor in front of the safe, looking it 
 
over and saying, "Hmmmmm." He didn't look pleased.
 

 

 
22
 

 
"A BANK doesn't just disappear," Captain Deemer said.
 
"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.
 
Captain Deemer extended his arms out at the sides as though he would do 
 
calisthenics and wiggled his hands. "It doesn't just fly away," he said.
 
"No, sir," said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.
 
"So we have to be able to find it, Lieutenant."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
They were alone in the captain's office, a small and deceptively quiet life raft 
 
in a sea of chaos-the eye of the storm, as it were. Beyond that door, men were 
 
running back and forth, scribbling messages, slamming doors, making phone 
 
calls, developing heartburn and acid indigestion. Beyond that window, a massive 
 
bank hunt was already under way, with every available car and man from both 
 
the Nassau County police and the Suffolk County police. The New York City 
 
police in both Queens and Brooklyn had been alerted, and every street and road 
 
and highway crossing the twelve-mile long border into the city was being 
 
watched. There was no land exit from Long Island except through New York 
 
City, no bridges or tunnels to any other part of the world. The ferries to 
 
Connecticut from Port Jefferson and Orient Point didn't run at this time of night 
 
and would be watched from the time they opened for business in the morning. 
 
The local police and harbor authorities at every spot on the Island with facilities 
 
big enough to handle a ship that could load an entire mobile home on it had also 
 
been alerted and were ready. Macarthur Airport was being watched.
 
"We have them bottled up," Captain Deemer said grimly, bringing his hands 
 
slowly together as though to strangle somebody.
 
"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.
 
"Now all we have to do is tighten the net!" And Captain Deemer squeezed 
 
his hands shut and twisted them together, as though snapping the neck off a 
 
chicken.
 
Lieutenant Hepplewhite winced. "Yes, sir," he said.
 
"And get those sons of bitches," Captain Deemer said, shaking his head from 
 
side to side, "that woke me up out of bed."
 
"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Hepplewhite said and flashed a sickly grin.
 
Because it had been Lieutenant Hepplewhite who had awakened Captain 
 
Deemer out of his bed. It had been the only thing to do, the proper thing to do, 
 
and the lieutenant knew the captain didn't blame him personally for it, but 
 
nevertheless the act had made Lieutenant Hepplewhite very nervous, and 
 
nothing that had happened since had served to calm him down.
 
The lieutenant and the captain were different in almost every respect-the 
 
lieutenant young, slender, hesitant, quiet and a reader, the captain fiftyish, 
 
heavyset, bullheaded, loud and illiterate-but they did have one trait they shared 
 
in common: Neither of them liked trouble. It was the one area in which they even 
 
used the same language: "I want things quiet, men," the captain would tell his 
 
men at the morning shape-up, and at the night shape-up the lieutenant would 
 
say, "Let's keep things quiet, men, so I don't have to wake the captain." They 
 
were both death on police corruption, because it might tend to endanger the 
 
quiet.
 
If they'd wanted noise, after all, New York City was right next door, and its 
 
police force was always looking for recruits.
 
But it was noise they had tonight, whether they liked it or not. Captain 
 
Deemer turned away from the lieutenant, muttering, "It's just a goddam good 
 
thing I was home," and went over to brood at the map of the Island on the side 
 
wall.
 
"Sir?"
 
"Never mind, Lieutenant," said the captain.
 
"Yes, sir."
 
The phone rang.
 
"Get that, Lieutenant."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
Hepplewhite spoke briefly into the phone-he stood beside the desk, not 
 
wanting to sit at it in the captain's presence- and then put the caller on hold 
 
and said, "Captain, the people from the bank are here."
 
"Have 'em come in." The captain kept brooding at the map, and his lips 
 
moved without sound. "Tighten the net," he seemed to be saying.
 
The three men who entered the office looked like some sort of statistical 
 
sampling, a cross-section of America perhaps; the mind boggled at the attempt 
 
to see them as a group connected with one another.
 
The first in was portly, distinguished, with iron-gray hair and black suit and 
 
conservative narrow tie. He carried a black attaché case, and fat cigar tips 
 
protruded from his breast pocket. He looked to be about fifty-five, prosperous, 
 
and used to giving orders.
 
The second was stocky, short, wearing a tan sports jacket, dark-brown 
 
slacks and a bow tie. He had crewcut sandy hair, horn-rimmed glasses, leather 
 
patches on the elbows of his jacket, and carried a brown briefcase. He was 
 
about forty and looked thoughtful and competent in some specialty.
 
The third was very tall and very thin, with shoulder-length hair, deep sideburns 
 
and Western-sheriff mustache. He was no more than twenty-five and wore a 
 
yellow pullover polo shirt, tie-dye blue jeans and white basketball sneakers. He 
 
carried a gray cloth bag of the kind plumbers use, which clanked when he put it 
 
down on a chair. He grinned all the time and did a lot of bobbing in place, as 
 
though listening to music.
 
The portly man looked around with a tentative smile. "Captain Deemer?"
 
The captain remained by the map but looked over with brooding eyes and 
 
said, "That's me."
 
"I am George Gelding, of C and L"
 
The captain gave an irritated frown. "Seeing-eye?"
 
"Capitalists' and Immigrants' Trust," said Gelding. "The bank you lost."
 
The captain grunted, as though he'd been hit in the chest with an arrow, and 
 
lowered his head like a bull deciding to get mad.
 
Gelding gestured to the man with the bow tie and leather elbow patches. "This 
 
is Mr. Albert Docent," he said, "of the company which provided the safe 
 
employed in that particular branch of our bank."
 
Deemer and Docent nodded at each other, the captain sourly, the safe man 
 
with a thoughtful smile.
 
"And this," Gelding said, gesturing to the young man with the hair, "is Mr. 
 
Gary Wallah, of Roamerica Corporation, the company which provided the 
 
trailer in which the bank has recently been housed."
 
"Mobile home," Wallah said. He grinned and nodded and bounced.
 
"Mobile, at any rate," Gelding said and turned back to the captain, saying, 
 
"We are here to offer you whatever information and expertise may be of help to 
 
you."
 
"Thank you."
 
"And to ask if there have been any further developments."
 
"We have them bottled up," the captain said grimly.
 
"Have you really?" said Gelding, smiling broadly and taking a step forward, 
 
"Where?"
 
"Here," the captain said and thumped the map with the back of one meaty 
 
hand. "It's only a question of time."
 
"You mean you still don't know exactly where they are."
 
"They're on the Island."
 
"But you don't know where."
 
"It's only a question of time!"
 
"It is approximately one hundred miles," Gelding said, with no attempt to 
 
soften his tone, "from the New York City line across Long Island to Montauk 
 
Point. In spots, the island is twenty miles wide. In land area, it is larger than 
 
Rhode Island. This is the area in which you have them bottled up?"
 
In moments of stress, the captain's left eye tended to close, and then open 
 
again, and then slowly close again, then pop open once more, and so on. It 
 
made him look as though he were winking, and in his youth he had inadvertently 
 
picked up more than one young lady that way; in fact, it still did pretty well for 
 
him.
 
But there were no young ladies here now. "The point," the captain told the 
 
banker, "is that they can't get oft the Island. It's a big place, but sooner or later 
 
we'll cover it."
 
"What are you doing so far?"
 
"Until morning," the captain said, "the only thing we can do is patrol the 
 
streets, hope to find them before they get the thing under cover."
 
"It is almost three in the morning, well over an hour since the bank was stolen. 
 
Surely they're under cover by now."
 
"Maybe. At first light, we spread out more. Before we're done, we'll look 
 
inside every old barn, every abandoned factory, every empty building of any 
 
kind on the whole Island. We'll check all dead-end roads, we'll look into every 
 
bit of woods."
 
"You're talking, Captain, about an operation that will take a month."
 
"No, Mr. Gelding, I'm not. By morning, we'll have the assistance of Boy 
 
Scout troops, volunteer fire departments and other local organizations all over 
 
the Island to help in the search. We'll use the same groups and the same tech-
 
niques as when we're looking for a lost child."
 
"The bank," Gelding said frostily, "is somewhat larger than a lost child."
 
"That can only help," Captain Deemer said. "We'll also have assistance from 
 
the Civil Air Patrol in scanning from the skies."
 
"Scanning from the skies?" The phrase seemed to take Gelding aback.
 
"I say we have them bottled up," Captain Deemer said, his voice rising and his 
 
left eyelid lowering, "and I say it's only a question of time till we tighten the 
 
net!" And he did that chicken-killing gesture again, making Lieutenant Hepple-
 
white in his unobserved corner wince once more.
 
"All right," Gelding said grudgingly. "Under the circumstances, I must admit 
 
you seem to be doing everything possible."
 
"Everything," agreed the captain and turned his attention to Gary Wallah, the 
 
young man from the mobile home company. The strain of having to deal as allies 
 
with somebody who looked like Gary Wallah caused the captain's head to 
 
lower into his neck again and his left eyelid to flutter like an awning in an on-
 
shore breeze. "Tell me about this trailer," he said, and despite his best intentions 
 
the sentence came growling out as though instead he'd said, "Up against the 
 
wall, kid." (He didn't use bad language in uniform.)
 
"It's a mobile home," Wallah said. "It isn't a trailer. A trailer is a little thing 
 
with wheels that you rent from U-Haul when you want to move a refrigerator. 
 
What we're talking about is a mobile home."
 
"I don't care if you call it a Boeing 747, boy," said the captain, no longer even 
 
caring about the growl in his voice, "just so you describe it to me."
 
Wallah didn't say anything for a few seconds, just glanced around the room 
 
with a little smile on his face. Finally he nodded and said, "Right on. I'm here this 
 
time to cooperate, that's what I'll do."
 
Captain Deemer closed his mouth firmly over the several things it occurred to 
 
him to say. He reminded himself that he really didn't want to fight with 
 
everybody on his own team, and he waited in controlled impatience for this god-
 
dam draft-dodging useless hippie pot-smoking disrespectful radical son of a 
 
bitch bastard to say whatever it was he was going to say.
 
In a neutral tone, Wallah said, "What Roamerica leased to the bank was a 
 
modified version of our Remuda model. It's fifty feet long and twelve feet wide 
 
and is usually made up as a two- or three-bedroom home in a variety of styles, 
 
but mostly either Colonial or Western. But in this case it was turned over to the 
 
bank with no interior partitions and without the usual kitchen appliances. The 
 
normal bathroom was put in; that is, the fixtures only, no walls or decor. The 
 
modifications done at the factory consisted mostly of installing a full burglar 
 
alarm system in the walls, floor and roof of the unit and strengthening the floor at 
 
the rear portion. This what you want, Cap?"
 
Instead of answering directly, Captain Deemer looked over at Lieutenant 
 
Hepplewhite to see if he was taking all this down the way he was supposed to; 
 
he was taking it down, but not the way he was supposed to. That is, instead of 
 
sitting at the desk like a normal human being he was standing beside it, bent 
 
over, pencil flying across paper. "Goddamit, Lieutenant," the captain shouted, 
 
"sit down before you get a humpback!"
 
"Yes, sir." The lieutenant zipped into the chair, then looked attentively toward 
 
Wallah.
 
The captain said, "You got all that so far?"
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"Good. Go ahead, buh-"
 
Wallah raised an eyebrow and one side of his mustache. "Hello?"
 
"Nothing," the captain said grumpily. "Go ahead."
 
"Not much more to tell. It has the usual wiring in it, to be attached to regular 
 
commercial power company lines. It has baseboard electric heating. The 
 
bathroom fixtures feed out through the bottom of the unit and are adaptable to 
 
local plumbing codes. Roamerica delivered the unit to the site, connected up all 
 
power lines, water lines, sewage lines, burglar alarm lines, removed the wheels, 
 
leveled the-"
 
"Removed the wheels?" The captain's left eye was completely shut now, 
 
maybe for good.
 
"Sure," Wallah said. "It's standard procedure if you're going to-"
 
"Are you telling me that goddam trailer didn't have any wheels?"
 
"Mobile home. And natu-"
 
"Trailer!" the captain yelled. "Trailer, trailer goddam trailer! And if it didn't 
 
have any goddam wheels, how did they get it away from there?"
 
Nobody answered. The captain stood panting in the middle of the room, head 
 
hulked down between his shoulders, like the bull after the matador's assistants 
 
have finished with him. His left eye was still closed, perhaps permanently, and his 
 
right eyelid was beginning to flutter.
 
Lieutenant Hepplewhite cleared his throat. Everybody jumped, as though a 
 
hand grenade had gone off, and they all stared at him. In a small voice he said. 
 
"Helicopter?"
 
They continued to look at him. Several slow seconds went by, and then the 
 
captain said, "Repeat that, Hepplewhite."
 
"Helicopter, sir," Lieutenant Hepplewhite said in the same small voice. And 
 
then, hesitant but hurrying, added, "I just thought maybe they had a helicopter 
 
and they might have come down and put ropes around it and-"
 
The captain glowered with his one good eye. "And take it off the Island," he 
 
finished.
 
"Too heavy," Wallah said. He opened his gray cloth plumber's bag and took 
 
out a toy mobile home. "Here's a scale model of the Remuda model," he said. 
 
"Remember now, it's fifty feet long. This one is pink and white; the stolen one is 
 
blue and white."
 
"I see the color," the captain growled. "You're sure it's too heavy?"
 
"No question."
 
"I've got a question," the captain said. Somehow he seemed to be holding 
 
the toy. Shifting it back and forth from hand to hand in some irritation, he said to 
 
Lieutenant Hepplewhite, "Phone the Army base. Find out if a helicopter could 
 
do the job."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"And get in touch with some of the men on the scene. Have them wake 
 
neighbors, find out if anybody heard a helicopter around there tonight."
 
"Definitely too heavy," Wallah said. "And too long and awkward. They just 
 
couldn't do it."
 
"We'll find out," the captain said. "Here, take this damn thing."
 
Wallah took back the toy. "I thought you'd be interested," he said.
 
"It's the real one I'm interested in."
 
"Exactly," said the banker, Gelding.
 
Lieutenant Hepplewhite was murmuring on the phone. The captain said, 
 
"Now, if they didn't take it by helicopter, the question is how did they take it? 
 
What about these wheels you took off, where would they be now?"
 
"Stored in our assembly plant in Brooklyn," Wallah said.
 
"You're sure they're still there?"
 
"Nope."
 
The captain gave him the full voltage of his one good eye. "You're not sure 
 
they're still there?"
 
"I haven't checked. But those aren't the only wheels in the world; they could 
 
have gotten wheels anywhere."
 
Lieutenant Hepplewhite said, "Excuse me, Mr. Wallah."
 
Wallah looked at him in amused surprise-probably at being called mister.
 
"The Army sergeant would like to talk to you."
 
"Sure," said Wallah. He took the phone from Hepplewhite, and they all 
 
watched him lift it to his face and say, "What's happening, man?"
 
The captain turned resolutely away from the conversation, and while the 
 
lieutenant answered the other phone, which had suddenly started to ring, he said 
 
to Gelding, "Don't you worry. It doesn't matter how they did it, we'll catch up 
 
with them. You can't steal a whole bank and expect to get away with it."
 
"I certainly hope not."
 
"Sir?"
 
The captain turned a mistrustful eye on the lieutenant. "What now?"
 
"Sir, the bank had been resting on a foundation of concrete blocks. The 
 
officers on the scene have found tub caulking on top of the blocks."
 
"Tub caulking on top of the blocks."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"And they decided to report that."
 
The lieutenant blinked. He was still holding the phone. Next to him, Gary 
 
Wallah was in conversation on the other phone with the Army sergeant. "Yes, 
 
sir," the lieutenant said.
 
The captain nodded. He took a deep breath. "Tell them thank you," he said in 
 
a soft voice and turned to Albert Docent, the safe-company man, who hadn't as 
 
yet contributed anything. "Well, what good news do you have for me?" he said.
 
"They'll have a hell of a time with that safe," Docent said. Above the bow tie, 
 
his expression was clean-cut, dutiful and intelligent.
 
The captain's left eye fluttered slightly, as though it might open. He nearly 
 
smiled. "Will they?" he said.
 
Gary Wallah said, "The sergeant wants to talk to one of you people." He was 
 
offering the phone indiscriminately to both Captain Deemer and Lieutenant 
 
Hepplewhite.
 
"You take it, Lieutenant."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
Once again, they all watched and listened as Hepplewhite spoke with the 
 
sergeant. His part of the conversation was mostly "Uh huh" and "Is that right?" 
 
but his audience kept watching and listening anyway. Finally he finished and hung 
 
up and said, "It couldn't be done by helicopter."
 
The captain said, "They're sure? Positive?"
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"Good," said the captain. "Then they're still on the Island, just like I said." He 
 
turned back to Docent, the safe man. "You were saying?"
 
"I was saying," Docent said, "that they'll find that safe a tough nut to crack. 
 
It's one of the most modern safes we make, with the latest advances in heat-
 
resistant and shock-resistant metals. These are advances that come from 
 
research connected with the Vietnam war. It's one of the ironic benefits of that 
 
unhappy-"
 
"Oh, wow," said Gary Wallah.
 
Docent turned to him, firm but fair. "All I'm saying," he said, "is that research 
 
has been stimulated into some-"
 
"Oh, wow. I mean, wow."
 
"I've heard all your arguments, and I can't say I entirely disagree with-"
 
"Wow, man."
 
"At this time," George Gelding said, standing at attention and looking very 
 
red-faced, "when some person or persons unknown have stolen a branch of the 
 
Capitalists' and Immigrants' Trust, and our brave boys are dying on far-flung 
 
battlefields to protect the rights of likes of you who-"
 
"Oh, wow."
 
"Now, there's much to be said on both sides, but the point
 
"I see those flaaaaag draped coffins, I hear the loved ones in their cottages 
 
and on the farms of America-"
 
"Like, really, wow."
 
Captain Deemer glowered at them all through the remaining slit of his right 
 
eye. A bellowed shut up might attract their attention-all three were talking at 
 
the same time now-but did he want them to shut up? If they stopped arguing 
 
with one another, they'd just start talking to the captain again, and he wasn't 
 
sure he wanted that.
 
In the middle of the melee the phone rang. Captain Deemer was aware of 
 
Lieutenant Hepplewhite answering it, but that didn't have much interest for him, 
 
either. More tub caulking, he supposed, this time in the ears of his officers.
 
But then Hepplewhite shouted, "Somebody saw it!" and the argument 
 
stopped as though somebody had switched off a radio. Everybody-even the 
 
captain-stared at Hepplewhite, sitting there at the desk with the phone in his 
 
hand, grinning at them with happy excitement.
 
Gelding said, "Well? Well?"
 
"A bartender," Hepplewhite said, "closing up for the night. He saw it go by, 
 
about quarter to two. Said it was going like hell. Said there was a cab off a big 
 
tractor-trailer rig pulling it."
 
"Quarter to two?" the captain said. "Why the hell didn't he report it till now?"
 
"Didn't think anything of it. He lives in Queens, and they stopped him at a 
 
roadblock going through. That's when he found out what happened and told 
 
them he'd seen it."
 
"Where was this?"
 
"On Union Turnpike. They've got a roadblock set up there, and-"
 
"No," Captain Deemer said. Patiently he said, "Where did he see the bank?"
 
"Oh. Up by Cold Spring."
 
"Cold Spring, Cold Spring." The captain hurried to the map, looked at it, 
 
found Cold Spring. "Right on the county line," he said. "They're not trying to get 
 
off the Island at all. Heading the other way, up toward Huntington." He spun 
 
around. "Get that out to all units right away, Lieutenant. Last seen at one forty-
 
five in the vicinity of Cold Spring."
 
"Yes, sir." Hepplewhite spoke briefly into the phone, broke the connection, 
 
dialed the dispatcher's room.
 
Gelding said, "You seem pleased, Captain. This is a good sign, eh?"
 
"The best so far. Now if we can only get to them before they open the safe 
 
and abandon the bank-"
 
"I don't think you have to worry too much about that, Captain," Albert 
 
Docent said. In the heat of the argument his bow tie had become twisted, but 
 
now he was calm again, and straightening it.
 
Captain Deemer looked at him. "Why not?"
 
"I was telling you about the advances that have been made in safe 
 
construction," Docent said. He glanced at Wallah, who said nothing, and looked 
 
at the captain again to say, "Given any force that will open that safe without 
 
destroying the contents, whether nitroglycerine, acid, laser, diamond-tip drill, any 
 
of the safe cracker's arsenal of equipment, it will take those thieves a minimum 
 
of twenty-four hours to break it open."
 
Captain Deemer broke into a broad smile.
 
"Captain," said the lieutenant. He was excited again.
 
Captain Deemer turned the broad smile on him. "Yes, Hepplewhite?"
 
"They found the seven guards."
 
"Did they! Where?"
 
"Asleep on Woodbury Road."
 
The captain was already turning toward his map, but he stopped and frowned 
 
at the lieutenant. "Asleep?"
 
"Yes, sir. On Woodbury Road. In a ditch beside the road."
 
Captain Deemer looked at Albert Docent. "We're going to need twenty-four 
 
hours," he said.
 

 

 
23
 

 

 
"OH, I can do it," Herman said. "That isn't the question."
 
"Tell me the question," Dortmunder said, "because I'm dying to ask it."
 
They had come to rest now. Murch had delivered them to an open slot in the 
 
rear of the Wanderlust Trailer Park, a kind of nomadic village far out on Long 
 
Island. The owners of the Wanderlust lived elsewhere, in a proper house, and so 
 
wouldn't be aware of the freeloader until tomorrow morning; as for the 
 
occupants of the other mobile homes here, some of them might have been 
 
awakened by the sound of the truck engine going past their units, but it isn't 
 
unheard of for people to arrive or leave a trailer park in the middle of the night.
 
Murch had now departed with the truck cab, which he would ditch about 
 
fifteen miles from here, at the spot where they'd already stashed the Ford station 
 
wagon that would be their getaway car. May and Murch's Mom had finished 
 
giving the place a gloss of hominess, and the idea now was that Herman would 
 
have been working on the safe since they'd left the football stadium and would 
 
have it open by the time Murch got back with the Ford. Only now Herman was 
 
saying he wouldn't.
 
"The question," Herman explained, "is time. This is a newer safe than I've 
 
seen before. The metal is different, the lock is different, the door is different, 
 
everything is different."
 
"It'll take longer," Dortmunder suggested.
 
"Yes."
 
"We can wait," Dortmunder said and looked at his watch. "It isn't even three 
 
o'clock yet. Even if we're out of here by six, six-thirty, we're still all right."
 
Herman shook his head.
 
Dortmunder turned and looked at May. They were still moving around by the 
 
light of flashlights, and it was hard to read May's expression, but it wasn't hard 
 
at all to read Dortmunder's. "I been kept out of mischief," Dortmunder said.
 
"That's one thing for sure."
 
"Herman," May said, coming forward, the cigarette bobbing in the corner of 
 
her mouth, "Herman, tell us. How bad is it?"
 
"Lousy," Herman said.
 
"How lousy?"
 
"Terrible lousy. Rotten lousy."
 
"How long would it take to open the safe?"
 
"All day," Herman said.
 
"That's wonderful," said Dortmunder.
 
Herman looked at him. "I'm as happy about this as you are. I take pride in my 
 
work."
 
"I'm sure you do, Herman," May said. "But the point is, sooner or later you 
 
could open it."
 
"Given time. The original idea was I'd have all the time I wanted."
 
Dortmunder said, "We couldn't find a place to put this goddam thing under 
 
cover. All we could do was this-paint, curtains on the windows, put it in a 
 
trailer camp. They'll find the thing this morning, but we should have it 
 
camouflaged enough so we're clear and home and dry before they do. If we 
 
leave no later than six, six-thirty."
 
"Then we leave without the cash," Herman said.
 
May turned to Dortmunder. "Why do we have to leave?"
 
"Because they'll find this thing."
 
Murch's Mom came forward, carrying the flashlights. "Why will they?" she 
 
wanted to know. "It's like The Purloined Letter, we've got a trailer hidden in a 
 
trailer camp. We've changed the color, we put license plates on, we put curtains 
 
on the windows. How are they gonna find us?"
 
"Sometime in the morning," Dortmunder said, "the owner or the manager of 
 
this place will come along, and he'll know this trailer doesn't belong here. So 
 
he'll come knock on the door. And then he'll look inside." Dortmunder waved 
 
an arm to indicate what that owner or manager would see.
 
Murch's Mom already knew what the interior looked like, but she obediently 
 
flashed her light around anyway and said, "Mmmmm." Not very encouraging. 
 
Mobile homes come in a lot of different styles, colonial and French Provincial 
 
and Spanish and Victorian, but no one so far has decided to live in a trailer done 
 
up as Suburban Bank.
 
May squinted past cigarette smoke and said, "What if we pay rent on it?"
 
They all looked at her. Dortmunder said, "I missed a couple words there, I 
 
think."
 
"No, listen," she said. "This slot is empty anyway. You look out that door, 
 
you'll see maybe five other empty slots. So why don't we just stick with the 
 
trailer, and when the owner comes around in the morning we pay him his fees? 
 
Pay him his rent for a couple days, a week, whatever he wants."
 
Herman said, "That's not bad."
 
"Sure," Murch's Mom said. "Then it really is The Purloined Letter. They'll 
 
be looking for us, and looking for the trailer, and we'll be in the trailer in a trailer 
 
camp."
 
"I don't know about puh-purlayed letters, whatever it is," Dortmunder said. 
 
"But I do know about robbery. You don't
 
- when you knock over a bank, you don't live in it after you knocked it over, 
 
you go away someplace else. I mean that's just the way it's done."
 
Herman said, "But wait a minute, Dortmunder. We haven't knocked it over 
 
yet. That goddam safe is giving me trouble. And if we stay here, we can hook 
 
into the electricity supply, I can use decent tools, I can really do a job on that 
 
mother- uh, on that safe."
 
Dortmunder frowned, looking around the interior of the bank. "It makes me 
 
nervous to stay here," he said. "That's all I can tell you, maybe it means I'm old-
 
fashioned, but it makes me nervous."
 
May said, "It isn't like you to give up. It just isn't your style."
 
Dortmunder scratched his head and looked around some more. "I know," he 
 
said. "But this is not a traditional robbery. You go in, you get what you came 
 
for, you go away. You don't set up housekeeping."
 
"Just for one day," Herman said. "Just till I get into that safe."
 
Dortmunder kept scratching, then suddenly stopped and said, "What about 
 
connecting up? The electricity and the plumbing. When they do it, what if they 
 
have to come inside?"
 
"We don't need the plumbing," Murch's Mom said.
 
"After a while we will."
 
May said, "They have to connect it up; it's the sanitary laws."
 
"There you are," Dortmunder said.
 
Herman said, "We'll do it ourselves."
 
Dortmunder looked at him with true annoyance. Everytime he'd safely 
 
relegated the idea to the Impossible shelf, somebody had to come along with 
 
another suggestion. He said, "What do you mean, do it ourselves?"
 
"Connect everything up," Herman said. "You and me and Murch, we can do 
 
it ourselves right now. Then it's all done, and when the manager comes around 
 
in the morning Mrs. Murch goes out, or May goes out, somebody, and we pay 
 
him off. And if he wants to know how come everything's already connected up, 
 
we tell him we got in late at night, we didn't want to disturb anybody, so we did 
 
it ourselves."
 
May said, "You know, if we took this counter apart, and put this piece on top 
 
of that piece, and ran it across here, then you could open this door and 
 
somebody outside wouldn't see anything strange at all. Just like a corridor in the 
 
trailer."
 
Murch's Mom said, "Down here, we could move this stuff out of the way, 
 
and take that chair and that chair and that table, and put them around this way 
 
like this, and then somebody could stand outside this door, too, and what would 
 
it be?"
 
"A disaster," Dortmunder said.
 
"A breakfast nook," Murch's Mom said firmly.
 
"They can't search every trailer on Long Island," Herman said. "They may 
 
come around to the trailer parks, the cops-"
 
"You just know they will," Dortmunder said.
 
"But they won't be looking for a green trailer with Michigan license plates and 
 
curtains in the windows and a couple nice middle-aged ladies that answer the 
 
door."
 
"And what if they say they want to come in?"
 
"Not now, Officer," May said, "my sister's just come out of the shower."
 
"Who is it, Myrtle?" Murch's Mom called in a high falsetto. "Just some police 
 
officers," May called back, "wanting to know if we saw a bank go past here last 
 
night."
 
Dortmunder said, "You two ladies could get accessory. You could wind up 
 
working in a state-pen laundry."
 
"Federal pen," Murch's Mom said. "Bank robbery is a Federal rap."
 
"We're not worried," May said. "We've got everything figured."
 
"I can't tell you," Dortmunder said, "how many guys I met behind bars that 
 
said the exact same thing."
 
Herman said, "Well, I'm going to stay, that's all. That goddam safe is a 
 
challenge to me."
 
"We're all going to stay," May said. She looked at Dortmunder. "Aren't we?"
 
Dortmunder sighed.
 
"Somebody coming," Herman said.
 
Murch's Mom doused the flashlights, and the only illumination was the red 
 
glow of May's cigarette. They heard the car approach, they saw its headlights 
 
flash by the windows. The engine stopped, the door opened and closed, and a 
 
few seconds later the bank door opened and Murch stuck his head in. "Set?" he 
 
called.
 
Dortmunder sighed again as Murch's Mom switched the flashlights back on. 
 
"Come on in here, Stan," Dortmunder said. "Let's talk."
 

 

 
24
 

 

 
VICTOR said:
 
"Steelyeyed Dortmunder surveyed his work. The wheels were under the very 
 
floor of the bank itself. Hungry, desperate men, their hat brims pulled low, his 
 
gang had worked with him beneath the shield of night to install those wheels, 
 
turning the innocent-appearing bank into an. . .
 

 
ENGINE OF GREED!
 

 
"I myself had been one of those men, as recounted in the earlier tale, Wheels 
 
of Terror!, in this same series. And now, the final moment had come, the 
 
moment that had filled our every waking thought for all these days and weeks of 
 
preparation.
 
"'This is the payoff,' Dortmunder snarled softly. 'Tonight we get the whole 
 
swag.'
 
"'Right, boss,' whispered Kelp eagerly, his scarred face twisting into a brutal 
 
smile.
 
"I repressed a shudder at that smile. If my companions but knew the truth 
 
about me, how that smile would alter its effect! I wouldn't last long with this 
 
crew of desperate ruffians, if ever they penetrated my disguise. I was known to 
 
them as Lefty the Lip McGonigle, late of Sing Sing, a tough customer and no 
 
friend of the law. I had used the McGonigle monicker twice before, once to 
 
capture the evil Specter of the Drive-In! and once to invade the criminal-
 
infested precincts of the dread Sing Sing itself, that time to solve the slaying of 
 
the stoolie Sad Sam Sassanack, in the adventure later related under the title 
 
Brutes Behind Ears!
 
"And now, I was Lefty the Lip yet again, in the course of my duty to my God 
 
and my Nation as -
 

 
SECRET AGENT J-7!
 

 
"None of Dortmunder's hoods had ever seen my real face. None knew my 
 
real name. None knew the-"
 

 
"Victor?"
 
Victor leaped, dropping the microphone. Spinning around in his chair, he saw 
 
Stan Murch standing in the open bookcase, framed by the night behind him. 
 
Victor was so deeply into his story line by this time that he recoiled when he 
 
realized he was looking at one of Dortmunder's men.
 
Murch took a step forward, his expression concerned. "Something the matter, 
 
Victor?"
 
"No no," Victor said shakily, shaking his head. "You just
 
-you just startled me," he added lamely.
 
"Kelp told me this was where I'd probably find you," Murch said. "That's 
 
why I'm here."
 
"Yes, of course," Victor said inanely. Looking down, he saw that the cassette 
 
was still running and switched it off. "This is where I am," he said aimlessly.
 
"There's been a problem at the bank," Murch said. "We all got to assemble 
 
again."
 
"Where?" Victor asked interrogatively.
 
"At the bank."
 
"Yes, but where's the bank?" Victor pursued puzzledly. He had last seen the 
 
bank in the high-school football field and didn't know precisely where it would 
 
be kept for the rest of the night.
 
"You can follow me in your car," Murch said. "You ready?"
 
"I suppose so," Victor said uncertainly, looking around the garage. "But 
 
what's gone wrong?" he asked belatedly.
 
"Herman says it's a new kind of safe, it'll take him all day to break into it."
 
"All day!" Victor exploded, aghast. "But surely the police- "We're setting it 
 
up with a front," Murch said. And then
 
added, "We're in kind of a press for time, Victor, so if you could- "Oh, of 
 
course!" Victor said abashedly. He leaped to his
 
feet, then picked up the cassette and microphone and stuffed them in his 
 
jacket pocket. "Ready," he announced earnestly.
 
They left, Victor carefully switching off the lights and locking the door behind 
 
himself, and the two of them walked down the dark driveway to the street. 
 
While Murch got into the station wagon parked there, Victor hurried across the 
 
street to the garage he rented from a neighbor, in which he kept his Packard. 
 
This was a more modern garage than his own, with an electronically operated lift 
 
door that he could raise or lower by touching a button on the dashboard of the 
 
car. For several months he'd been trying to get up enough nerve to- ask his 
 
neighbor's permission to do some work on the outside of the building, but so far 
 
hadn't developed sufficient courage. What he wanted to do was make the front 
 
look like a seemingly abandoned warehouse, without doors, so that a section of 
 
wall would appear to lift when the dashboard button was pushed. There were 
 
two difficulties with this conception. First, he didn't know what cover story to 
 
give the owner for wanting to make the change, and, second, a seemingly 
 
abandoned warehouse would look definitely out of place in this neighborhood-
 
particularly in somebody's back yard. Still, it was a pleasant idea, and he might 
 
yet be able to work something out.
 
At night, though, the effect was almost as good with the building just the way it 
 
was. Victor entered through the side door of the garage, switched on the dim 
 
red bulb he'd installed in the overhead light fixture, and by its darkroom-like 
 
illumination removed the plastic cover from the Packard, folding it like a flag and 
 
then putting it away on its shelf. Next he got into the car, took the cassette and 
 
microphone from his pocket and put them on the seat beside him, and started 
 
the engine. The Packard motor grumbled quietly but menacingly in the enclosed 
 
space. Smiling to himself, Victor turned on the parking lights only and pushed the 
 
button that caused the door to slide up. With a distinct sense of drama, he 
 
tapped the accelerator and steered the Packard out into the night, then pushed 
 
the button again and watched in the rear-view mirror as the door folded down 
 
once more behind him, the red-lit view of the garage interior narrowing from the 
 
top and at last disappearing completely. Only then did he switch on his 
 
headlights.
 
Murch seemed impatient. He was revving the engine of the stolen station 
 
wagon, and the instant Victor and the Packard reached the street he shot away 
 
from the curb and dashed away down the street. Victor followed at a more 
 
stately pace, but soon had to pick it up a little if he was going to keep Stan in 
 
sight at all.
 
The first time they were stopped at a red light, Victor ran the tape back a bit 
 
in the cassette, found the spot where he'd left off, and took it from there, 
 
dictating into the microphone as he followed Murch and his scuttling station 
 
wagon across Long Island:
 
"None of Dortmunder's hoods had ever seen my real face. None knew my 
 
real name. None knew the truth about me, and it would be curtains for me if 
 
they did!
 
"Now, gimlet-eyed Dortmunder nodded in satisfaction. 'Forty-eight hours 
 
from now,' he boasted evilly, 'that proud bank will be ours! Nothing can stop us 
 
now!'"
 

 

 
25
 

 
"IF YOU'LL put the flashlight on my work," Herman said, "things'll go a lot 
 
faster."
 
"Sure," Kelp said. He adjusted the beam. "I was shielding it with my body," 
 
he said.
 
"Well, don't shield it from me."
 
"Okay," Kelp said.
 
"And don't breathe down the back of my neck like that."
 
"Right," Kelp said. He moved half an inch.
 
Suddenly into Herman's head came the replay of a television commercial from 
 
a few years back: Sure, you're irritable. Who wouldn't be? But don't take it out 
 
on him. Take. -Take what? What was the product? Sounds like it should have 
 
been pot, but it probably wasn't.
 
The distraction of that chain of thought was a pleasant interlude, three or four 
 
seconds long, which calmed him perhaps as much as the forgotten product 
 
would have done. Herman took a deep, slow breath, to calm himself even more, 
 
and returned his attention to the task at hand.
 
He was squatting right now like a Masai warrior in front of a black metal box 
 
emerging from the ground directly in front of the hitch end of the bank. Power 
 
and water and sewer lines terminated in this box, and it was Herman's simple 
 
job at the moment to remove the padlock from the lid and open the box. And it 
 
was taking too long.
 
"Normally," Herman said, speaking more gently than before, but still with a 
 
rasp of irritation he couldn't quite get rid of, "I'm very good at locks."
 
"Sure," Kelp said. "Naturally."
 
The padlock clicked and jittered in Herman's long, thin fingers. "It's just that 
 
safe," he said. "It's shaken my self confidence."
 
"You're still the best," Kelp said. Not in a boosting way, but conversationally, 
 
as though commenting on the weather.
 
The padlock skittered away from Herman's fingers and tick-ticked against the 
 
metal lid. "I'm also very good at self-analysis," he said. His voice quivered again 
 
with barely controlled rage. "I figure out just where I'm at. And-" his voice 
 
rising, speeding up-"it doesn't do a goddam bit of good!"
 
"You'll be fine," Kelp said. He patted Herman on the shoulder.
 
Herman flinched away from the touch like a horse. "I am going to get this 
 
thing," he said grimly and sat down on the ground in front of the box. Legs 
 
folded tailor-fashion, he leaned over the box till his nose was almost touching the 
 
lock.
 
"I'm having a little trouble," Kelp said, "keeping the light on the work."
 
"Shut up," Herman said.
 
Kelp knelt beside him and beamed the light principally at Herman's right eye, 
 
which was glaring at the lock.
 
The problem was, they didn't want to break it. In the morning, they would tell 
 
the trailer-court owner or manager that they'd found the thing unlocked and just 
 
hooked everything up themselves. If he saw his padlock in normal condition, he 
 
probably wouldn't raise a fuss. But if he found it broken, he might not believe 
 
the story, and then he might make trouble.
 
That was the problem about why the padlock had to be picked rather than 
 
plucked. The deeper problem, Herman's continuing inability to pick it, was very 
 
simply caused by that son-of-a-bitch safe. Half a dozen small tools from his 
 
black bag were already spread across the box lid, and he was poking away at 
 
the padlock's keyhole with yet another small tool right now-the other end of 
 
which was currently endangering his eye-and he just couldn't keep his mind on 
 
what he was doing. He'd slip the tool into the padlock and his eyes would glaze 
 
as his mind drifted back to consider once again the safe inside the bank. He had 
 
no saw or drill- including the diamond tip-that would get through that metal. 
 
He had stripped away the combination plate and mechanism, but it had led 
 
nowhere. He had tried peeling the door and had bent his favorite medium-length 
 
bar. An explosion strong enough to rip open the safe would also destroy 
 
everything inside it and would probably open the trailer up like an avocado at 
 
the same time.
 
What it came down to was the circular hole. For the circular hole, you 
 
attached a suction clamp to the side of the safe, with a central rod extending 
 
straight out. An L-shaped arm swung from the rod, with a handle at the elbow 
 
and a clamp at the wrist for drill bits. A bit was put in place, so that it scraped 
 
against the side of the safe, and then the handle was turned in a large circle, over 
 
and over and over again. As each bit was worn away, a new one was added. It 
 
was the slowest and most primitive kind of safe-cracking, but it was the only 
 
thing that could possibly work against that goddam bastard son of a bitch- The 
 
padlock. His mind had drifted again, and he'd just
 
been sitting there on the ground, poking aimlessly into the keyhole with the 
 
small tool. "God damn it," he muttered, and clenched his teeth, and gripped the 
 
padlock so hard his fingers ached.
 
The thing was, sometimes you had to go back to basics. Herman knew the 
 
most sophisticated ways to get into safes and vaults and had used them all at one 
 
time or another. The ELD, for instance, Electronic Listening Device; attach it to 
 
the front of the safe, put the earphones on and listen to the tumblers while you 
 
turn the combination. Or ways of putting just a little plastic explosive in two 
 
places at the edge of the door, where the hinges are on the inside, and then 
 
going next door and setting them off by radio signal and coming back to find the 
 
door lying on its face on the floor and not a sheet of paper wrinkled inside. Or- 
 
The padlock. He'd done it again. "Rrrrrrr," Herman said.
 
"Here comes somebody."
 
"That was me growling."
 
"No. Headlights." Kelp switched off the flashlight.
 
Herman looked around and saw the headlights turning in from the highway. "It 
 
can't be Murch already," he said.
 
"Well," Kelp said doubtfully, "it is almost four o'clock."
 
Herman stared at him. "Four o'clock? I've been at this, I've been here for . . . 
 
? Give me that light!"
 
"Well, we're not sure it's them yet." The headlights were slowly approaching 
 
past the darkened trailers.
 
"I don't need the goddam light," Herman said, and while the headlights came 
 
up close enough to show the car behind them, and the car parked, and Murch 
 
got out, Herman picked the padlock by feel alone, and when Kelp next turned 
 
the flashlight on, Herman was putting his tools away. "It's done," he said.
 
"You got it!"
 
"Of course I got it." Herman glared at him. "What do you sound so surprised 
 
for?"
 
"Well, I just. . . Uh, here's Stan and Victor."
 
But it was just Murch. He strolled over and gestured at the black box and 
 
said, "You get it open?"
 
"Listen," Herman said angrily, "just because I'm having trouble with that safe . 
 
.
 
Murch looked startled. "I just wanted to know," he said.
 
Kelp said, "Where's Victor?"
 
"Here he comes now," Murch said and gestured with his thumb toward the 
 
court entrance as another pair of headlights made the turn. "He really hangs well 
 
back," Murch said. "I was surprised. I almost lost him a couple times."
 
Dortmunder had come out of the bank and now walked over to say, "There's 
 
a hell of a lot of talk out here. Let's keep it down."
 
"The padlock's open," Herman told him.
 
Dortmunder glanced at him and then looked at his watch. "That's good," he 
 
said. There was no expression in either his face or his voice.
 
"Look," Herman said aggressively, but then didn't have anything else to say 
 
and just stood there.
 
Victor came over, walking slightly lopsided and looking stunned. "Boy," he 
 
said.
 
Dortmunder said, "Let's go inside where we can talk. You boys be able to fix 
 
things up out here?"
 
Kelp and Murch would be doing the tie-in of power and water and sewer 
 
lines. Kelp said, "Sure, we'll work it out."
 
"You've got some bent pipes there," Dortmunder said, "where we ripped 
 
them when we took the bank."
 
"No problem," Murch said. "I brought some pipe in the car. We'll rig 
 
something up."
 
"But quiet," Dortmunder said.
 
"Sure," Murch said.
 
The efficiency all around him was making Herman nervous. "I'm going in and 
 
work on that safe," he said.
 
Dortmunder and Victor came along with him, and Dortmunder said to Victor, 
 
"Did Stan tell you the situation?"
 
"Sure. Herman's having trouble getting the safe open, so we're going to stay 
 
here for a while."
 
Herman hunched his shoulders and glowered straight ahead, but said nothing.
 
As they were climbing up into the bank, Victor said, "That Stan really drives, 
 
doesn't he?"
 
"That's his job," Dortmunder said, and Herman winced at that one, too.
 
"Boy," Victor said. "You try to keep up with him . boy."
 
Inside the trailer, May and Murch's Mom had set up a couple of flashlights on 
 
pieces of furniture so there was some light to work by and were now cleaning 
 
the place up a little.
 
"I think we've got a full deck of cards here," Murch's Mom told Dortmunder. 
 
"I just found the three of clubs over by the safe."
 
"That's fine," Dortmunder said. He turned to Herman. "You want any help?"
 
"No!" Herman snapped, but a second later said, "I mean yes. Sure, of 
 
course."
 
"Victor, you go with Herman."
 
"Sure."
 
May said to Dortmunder, "We need you to move some furniture."
 
While Dortmunder went off to join the spring-cleaning brigade, Herman said 
 
to Victor, "I've made a decision."
 
Victor looked alert.
 
"I am going," Herman said, "to attack that safe by every method known to 
 
man. All at once."
 
"Sure," Victor said. "What should I do?"
 
"You," Herman told him, "will turn the handle."
 

 

 
26
 

 
"FRANKLY," May said, the cigarette bobbing in the corner of her mouth, "I 
 
could make better coffee than this if I started with dirt." She dropped a seven of 
 
hearts on the eight of diamonds Dortmunder had led.
 
"I took what they had," Murch said. "It was the only place I could find open." 
 
He carefully slid a five of diamonds under the seven of diamonds.
 
"I'm not blaming you," May said. "I'm just commenting."
 
Murch's Mom put down her own coffee container, frowned at her hand and 
 
at last gave an elaborate sigh and said, "Oh, well." She played the jack of 
 
diamonds and drew in the trick.
 
"Look out," Murch said. "Mom's shooting the moon."
 
His mother gave him a dirty look. "Mom's shooting the moon, Mom's 
 
shooting the moon. You know so much. I had to take that trick."
 
"That's okay," Murch said calmly. "I got stoppers."
 
May was sitting by the partially open door of the trailer, where she could look 
 
out and see the blacktop street all the way down to the court entrance. It was 
 
now ten after seven in the morning and fully light. Half a dozen seedy cars had 
 
left here in the last half hour, as residents went off to work, but no one had as 
 
yet arrived to question this new trailer's presence-neither a trailer-court 
 
manager nor the police.
 
While waiting, May and Murch's Mom were running a rousing game of hearts 
 
in the pseudo-breakfast nook they'd set up by the door toward the front end of 
 
the trailer, farthest from the safe. Back at the other end, hidden behind a new 
 
floor-to-ceiling partition created from sections of counter, Herman was working 
 
away steadily at the safe, assisted by the men in groups of two. Kelp and Victor 
 
were back there with him now, while Dortmunder and Murch were sitting in at 
 
the card game. At eight o'clock, the men would switch.
 
So far, there had been two small crump sounds from the other side of the 
 
counter as Herman had tried minor explosions which had failed to accomplish 
 
anything, and occasionally there was the whir of a power tool or the buzz of a 
 
saw intermixed with the steady rasp of the circular drill, but up till now very little 
 
seemed to be happening. Ten minutes ago, when Dortmunder and Murch had 
 
finished their six-to-seven shift, May had asked them how things were going. "I 
 
won't say he hasn't made a dent in it," Dortmunder had said. "He's made a dent 
 
in it." And he'd rubbed his shoulder, having spent most of the previous hour 
 
turning a handle in a large circle.
 
In the meantime, the bank had been made more livable and homelike. The 
 
electricity and bathroom were both working, the floor had been swept, the 
 
furniture rearranged and the curtains put up on the windows. It was only too bad 
 
the bank hadn't come equipped with a kitchen; the ham. burgers and doughnuts 
 
Murch had brought back from the all-night diner were almost edible, but the 
 
coffee was probably against the anti-pollution laws.
 
"Anything?" Dortmunder asked.
 
May had been gazing toward the street, thinking about kitchens and food and 
 
coffee. She switched her attention to Dortmunder and said, "No, I was just 
 
daydreaming."
 
"You're tired, that's why," Murch's Mom said. "We all are, staying up all 
 
night. I'm not as young as I used to be." She played the ace of diamonds.
 
"Ho ho," her son said. "Not shooting the moon, huh?"
 
"I'm too clever for you," she told him. "While you big-mouth, I get rid of all 
 
my dangerous winners." She had taken her neck brace off, despite her son's 
 
complaints, and was now hunched over her cards like a gambling squirrel.
 
"Here comes somebody," May said.
 
Dortmunder said, "Law?"
 
"No. The manager, I think."
 
A blue-and-white station wagon had just turned in at the entrance and 
 
stopped beside the small white-clapboard office shack. A smallish man in a dark 
 
suit got out of the car, and when May saw him start to unlock the office door 
 
she put down her cards and said, "That's him. I'll be back."
 
Murch said, "Mom, put the brace on."
 
"I will not."
 
They still didn't have steps for the trailer. May clambered awkwardly down to 
 
the ground, flipped a cigarette ember away from the corner of her mouth and lit 
 
a new one as she walked down the row to the office.
 
The man at the sloppy desk inside had the thin, nervous, dehydrated look of a 
 
reformed drunk-the look of a man who at any instant may go back to sleeping 
 
in alleys while clutching a pint bottle of port. He gave May a terrified stare and 
 
said, "Yes, Miss? Yes?"
 
"We're moving in for a week," May said. "I wanted to pay you."
 
"A week? A trailer?" He seemed baffled by everything. Maybe it was just the 
 
early hour that was getting to him.
 
"That's right," May said. "How much is it for a week?"
 
"Twenty-seven fifty. Where's the, uh, where do you have your trailer?"
 
"Back there on the right," May said, pointing through the wall.
 
He frowned, bewildered. "I didn't hear you drive in."
 
"We came in last night."
 
"Last night!" He leaped to his feet, knocking a pile of forms slithering from 
 
the desk to the floor. While May watched him in some amazement, he raced out 
 
the front door. She shook her head and stooped to pick up the fallen papers.
 
He was back a minute later, saying, "You're right. I never even noticed it 
 
when I - . . Here, you don't have to do that."
 
"All done," May said. Straightening, she put the pile of forms back on the 
 
desk, causing some sort of seismic disturbance, because another stack of papers 
 
promptly toppled off the desk on the other side.
 
"Leave them, leave them," the nervous man said.
 
"I think I will." May moved over to let him get back to his seat behind the 
 
desk, and then she sat in the room's only other chair, facing him. "Anyway," she 
 
said, "we want to stay for a week."
 
"There's some forms to fill out." He started opening and slamming desk 
 
drawers, doing it far too rapidly to see any. thing inside them in the milliseconds 
 
when they were open. "While you're doing that," he said, opening and closing, 
 
opening and closing, "I'll go hook up the utilities."
 
"We already did that."
 
He stopped, with a drawer open, and blinked at her. "But it's locked," he 
 
said.
 
May took the padlock out of her sweater pocket, where it had been 
 
stretching the material even worse than her usual cigarettes. "This was on the 
 
ground beside it," she said and reached forward to put it on a pile of papers in 
 
front of him. "We thought it might be yours."
 
"It wasn't locked?" He stared at the padlock in horror, as though it were a 
 
shrunken head.
 
"Nope."
 
"If the boss . . ." He licked his lips, then stared at May in mute appeal.
 
"I won't tell," she promised. His nervousness was making her nervous, too, 
 
and she was in a hurry to get finished with him and out of here.
 
"He can be very . . ." He shook his head, then glanced down at the open 
 
drawer, seemed surprised to see it open, then frowned at it and drew out some 
 
papers. "Here they are," he said.
 
May spent the next ten minutes filling out forms. She wrote that the trailer had 
 
four occupants: Mrs. Hortense Davenport (herself); her sister, Mrs. Winifred 
 
Loomis (Murch's Mom); and Mrs. Loomis' two sons, Stan (Murch) and Victor 
 
(Victor). Dortmunder and Kelp and Herman did not exist on the forms May 
 
filled out.
 
The manager grew gradually calmer as time went by, as though slowly getting 
 
used to May's presence, and was even risking shaky little smiles when May 
 
handed over the last of the forms and the twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents. "I 
 
hope your stay at Wanderlust is just great," he said.
 
"Thank you, I'm sure it will be," May said, getting to her feet, and the 
 
manager suddenly looked terrified again and moved all his extremities at once, 
 
causing great land shifts of paper on his desk. May, baffled, looked over her 
 
shoulder and saw the room filling with state troopers. May stifled a nervous start 
 
of her own, but she didn't need to; the manager's contortions had riveted the 
 
troopers' attentions.
 
"Well, bye now," May said and walked through the troopers-there were 
 
only two of them after all-toward the door. The thump behind her was either 
 
the padlock or the manager hitting the floor; she didn't turn to see which, but 
 
kept going, and strode hurriedly up the gravel drive toward the bank. As she 
 
approached it, she saw it suddenly rock slightly on its wheels, and then settle 
 
down again. Another of Herman's explosions, she thought, and a few seconds 
 
later a puff of white smoke came out a vent on the trailer roof. They've picked 
 
a Pope, she thought.
 
Dortmunder was waiting in the doorway to give her a hand up. "Whoop, 
 
thanks," she said. "The cops are here."
 
"I saw them. We'll get back of the partition."
 
"Right."
 
Murch's Mom said, "Let's not get those cards mixed up. Everybody hold 
 
onto your own hand."
 
Murch said, "Mom, will you please put the brace on?"
 
"For the last time, no."
 
"You could blow the whole case for us right here."
 
She stared at him. "I am standing in a stolen bank," she said, "which is about 
 
nine felonies rolled into one already, and you're worried about a lawsuit with an 
 
insurance company?"
 
"If we get picked up on this thing," Murch said, "we'll need all the cash we 
 
can lay our hands on for the defense."
 
"That's a cheerful thought," May said. She was standing by the door, looking 
 
out toward the office.
 
Dortmunder had gone around behind the partition to join Herman and Kelp, 
 
and now all sound stopped from back there. A second later, Victor came out 
 
and said, "So they're here, are they?" He had a big smile on his face.
 
"Just coming out of the office," May said. She shut the door and went over to 
 
look out a window instead.
 
"Remember," Victor said, "they can't come in without a warrant."
 
"I know, I know."
 
But the troopers made no attempt to come in. They walked down the gravel 
 
roadway between the lines of trailers, looking this way and that, and gave the 
 
green-painted bank no more than a passing glance.
 
Victor was watching out another window. "It's starting to rain," he said. 
 
"They'll want to get back in their car."
 
It was, and they did. A slight sprinkle had developed, and the troopers 
 
walked a bit faster on their way back down the line of trailers toward their car. 
 
May, looking up, saw heavy clouds coming on fast from the west. "It's really 
 
going to come down," she said.
 
"What do we care?" Victor said. "We're warm and dry inside this bank 
 
here." He looked around with that big smile on his face and said, "They even 
 
have electric baseboard heat."
 
Murch's Mom said, "Are they gone?"
 
"Just getting in their car," May said. "There they go." She turned from the 
 
window, and now she too was smiling. "I suddenly realize," she said, "that I was 
 
very nervous." She took the stub of cigarette from her mouth and looked at it. "I 
 
just lit this," she said.
 
"Let's play cards," Murch's Mom said. "Dortmunder! Come on out and play 
 
cards."
 
Dortmunder came out, Victor went back in with Herman and Kelp, the four 
 
outside sat down to play cards again, and Murch's Mom shot the moon. Murch 
 
said, "See? See? I told you!"
 
"So you did," Murch's Mom said. She smiled at her son and riffled the cards 
 
as she shuffled.
 
Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door. Everybody at the table 
 
stared, and May quickly got up to look out the nearest window. "It's somebody 
 
with an umbrella," she announced. It was really pouring out there now, puddles 
 
everywhere.
 
"Get rid of him," Dortmunder said. "I'll go back by the safe again."
 
"Right."
 
May waited till Dortmunder was out of sight, then opened the door and 
 
looked out at the nervous manager, more nervous than ever and miserable-
 
looking under the black umbrella. "Uh," May said. How could she avoid inviting 
 
him in, with all that rain?
 
He said something, but the drumming of the rain on both the bank roof and his 
 
umbrella drowned out the words. May said, "What?"
 
Shrilly, he yelled, "I don't want any trouble!"
 
"That's wonderful!" May shouted back. "Neither do I!"
 
"Look!"
 
He was pointing down. May leaned forward, getting her hair wet, and looked 
 
at the ground beside the trailer, and it was pale green. "Oh, for God's sake," she 
 
said and looked to left and right. The bank was blue and white again. "Oh, good 
 
Christ," she said.
 
"I don't want any trouble!" the manager shouted again. May took her head in 
 
from the rain. "Come on in," she invited.
 
He took a step back, shaking his head and his free hand. "No no. No 
 
trouble."
 
May called to him, "What are you going to do?"
 
"I don't want you here!" he yelled. "The boss would kick me out! No trouble, 
 
no trouble!"
 
"You won't call the police?"
 
"Just go away! Go away and I won't call them and it never happened!"
 
May tried to think. "Give us an hour," she said.
 
"Too long!"
 
"We have to get a truck. We don't have a truck here."
 
His quandary was making him so nervous he was hopping from foot to foot, 
 
as though he had to go to the bathroom. Maybe, with all the rain beating down, 
 
he did. "All right," he yelled at last. "But no more than an hour!"
 
"I promise!"
 
"I'll have to unhook you! The water and electricity!"
 
"All right! All right!"
 
He fidgeted out there until she realized he was waiting for her to shut the door. 
 
Should she thank him? No, he didn't want thanks, he wanted reassurance. "You 
 
won't have any trouble!" she yelled at him, and waved, and shut the door.
 
Dortmunder was standing beside her. "I heard," he said.
 
"We'll have to take it somewhere else," she said.
 
"Or give up."
 
Herman and Kelp had wandered out from behind the partition. Herman said, 
 
"Give up? I've just begun to fight!"
 
Kelp said, "What's the problem? How'd he tip to us?"
 
May told him, "We used water-base paint. The rain washed it off."
 
Herman said, "We can't give up, that's all. We just have to take it someplace 
 
else."
 
Dortmunder said, "With every cop on Long Island out looking for it. And with 
 
the green paint gone. And with no place in mind to put it."
 
Murch said, "And no truck to drive it anywhere."
 
Kelp said, "That's never a problem, Stan. Trucks are never a problem. Trust 
 
me."
 
Murch gave him a glum look.
 
Victor said, "In this rain, there won't be much of a search."
 
"When you're looking," Dortmunder said, "for something fifty feet long and 
 
twelve feet wide, colored blue and white, you don't need much of a search."
 
May had been silent during all this, thinking about things. She had no particular 
 
craving for money herself, and so didn't care so much about the contents of the 
 
safe as that the job be successful. Dortmunder was gloomy enough in his natural 
 
state; life with him if this robbery failed would be about as cheerful as a soap 
 
opera. "I tell you what," she said. "I got us an hour here."
 
The lights went off. Gray and rainy illumination seeped in through the 
 
windows, depressing everyone even further.
 
"An hour," Dortmunder said, "is just enough time for us all to go home and get 
 
to bed and make believe none of this ever happened."
 
"We have two cars." May said. "We can spend that hour looking for 
 
someplace to move. If we don't find anything, we give up."
 
"Fine," Herman said. "And I'll keep working on the safe." He hurried back 
 
behind the partition.
 
"It's getting cold in here," Murch's Mom said.
 
"You'd be warmer with the brace on," her son said.
 
She gave him a look.
 
Dortmunder sighed. "The thing that scares me," he said, "is that we probably 
 
will find a place."
 

 

 
27
 

 
DORTMUNDER said, "I suppose it's unfair to blame you for this job."
 
"That's right," Kelp said. He was driving, and Dortmunder was in the front 
 
seat beside him.
 
"But I do," Dortmunder said.
 
Kelp gave him an aggrieved look and faced front again. "That isn't fair," he 
 
said.
 
"Nevertheless."
 
They had until nine-thirty to get back to the bank, and it was now about nine-
 
fifteen. Kelp and Dortmunder and Murch had started out in this station wagon 
 
together, until Kelp had found a truck big enough to do the job. It said 
 
HORSES on the sides, and the interior had a slight smell of stable to it, but it 
 
was empty. Kelp had started it up and turned it over to Murch, who had taken it 
 
away to the trailer court. Now, Kelp and Dortmunder were roaming the earth 
 
looking for somewhere to move the bank. Victor and Murch's Mom were doing 
 
the same thing in Victor's Packard.
 
"We'd better get back," Dortmunder said. "We aren't going to find anything."
 
"We might," Kelp said. "Why be so pessimistic?"
 
"Because we covered all this ground last week," Dortmunder said, "and there 
 
wasn't any place to hide the bank then. So why would there be someplace 
 
now?"
 
"Just five minutes more," Kelp said. "Then we'll head back."
 
"You can't see anything in this rain anyway," Dortmunder said.
 
"You never know," Kelp said. "We might get lucky."
 
Dortmunder looked at him, but Kelp was concentrating
 
-	on his driving. Dortmunder considered several things he might say, but 
 
none of them seemed adequate, so after a while he turned his head and looked 
 
out the windshield at all the rain and listened to the wipers clicking back and 
 
forth.
 
"It's really coming down," Kelp said. "I see it."
 
"You don't usually get a rain like this on a Friday,"
 
Kelp said.
 
Dortmunder looked at him again.
 
"No, I mean it," Kelp said. "Usually you get this kind of a rain on a Sunday."
 
Dortmunder said, "Are the five minutes up?"
 
"One minute to go. Keep looking for a place."
 
"Sure," Dortmunder said and looked out the windshield again.
 
The only good thing was the absence of cops. They'd seen a couple of patrol 
 
cars, but no more than normal; the search was obviously being hampered by the 
 
rain.
 
It seemed to Dortmunder, sitting there in the stolen station wagon while Kelp 
 
optimistically dragged him around through all this rain on a wild goose chase, 
 
that this was the story of his life. His luck was never all good, but it was never all 
 
bad either. It was a nice combination of the two, balanced so exactly that they 
 
canceled each other out. The same rain that washed away the green paint also 
 
loused up the police search. They stole the bank, but they couldn't get into the 
 
safe. On and on.
 
Dortmunder sighed and looked at his watch. "Your minute is up," he said.
 
Reluctantly, Kelp said, "Okay, I guess so." Then he said, "I'll take a swing 
 
around and head back that way."
 
"Go straight back," Dortmunder said.
 
"I don't want to go back the same roads. What's the point of that?"
 
"What's the point of the whole thing?"
 
"You're just depressed," Kelp said. "I'll turn right at that light up there and 
 
swing back that way."
 
Dortmunder was about to tell him to make a U-turn, but memories arose and 
 
he changed his mind. "Just so we're back by nine-thirty," he said, though he 
 
knew they wouldn't be.
 
"Oh, sure," Kelp said. "Definitely."
 
Dortmunder slumped in the corner and fantasized a return to the trailer in 
 
which May would meet him at the door by saying, "Herman opened it!" Then 
 
Herman would appear, smiling, holding handfuls of money. "Well, I got it," he'd 
 
say. Murch's Mom would be seen kicking her neck brace into the rain, shouting, 
 
"We don't need that lawsuit money any more!" Victor would stand in the 
 
background, smiling, as though waiting his turn to come forward and recite "The 
 
Boy Stood on the Burning Deck."
 
Kelp slammed on the brakes, and the station wagon skidded dangerously to 
 
the right. Dortmunder, jolted out of his daydream and practically into the glove 
 
compartment, shouted, "Hey! Hey, watch it!" He stared out front, and there was 
 
nothing in front of them; just the top of a hill they'd been driving up, a long 
 
gradual slope with nothing at the top, no reason at all for Kelp to slam his brakes 
 
on that way.
 
"Look at that!" Kelp shouted and pointed at nothing.
 
But Dortmunder looked instead out the rear window, saying, "You want 
 
another rear-end collision? That's your trademark? What the hell are you 
 
doing?"
 
"All right, I'll drive off the road. But will you take a look at that?"
 
Kelp drove the station wagon onto a gravel parking lot, and Dortmunder at 
 
last looked at what he was so excited about. "I see it," he said. "So what?"
 
"Don't you get it?"
 
"No."
 
Kelp pointed again. "We put the trailer right there," he said. "See what I 
 
mean?"
 
Dortmunder stared. "Well, God damn it," he said.
 
"It'll work," Kelp said.
 
Dortmunder couldn't help it; against his better judgment, he was smiling. "Son 
 
of a bitch," he said.
 
"That's right," said Kelp. "That's absolutely right."
 

 

 
28
 

 
"I HATE RAIN," Captain Deemer said.
 
"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Hepplewhite.
 
"I always have hated rain," Captain Deemer said. "But never as much as 
 
today."
 
The two officers were in the back seat of the patrol car the captain was using 
 
as his mobile headquarters during the search for the elusive bank. In the front 
 
were two uniformed patrolmen, the driver on the left and a man to operate the 
 
radio on the right. The radio was the contact not only with the precinct but also 
 
with other cars and with other organizations engaged in the bank hunt. Unfortu-
 
nately, what the radio was mostly contacting was static, a fuzzing and bussing 
 
and crackling that filled the car like the aural expression of the captain's nervous 
 
system.
 
The captain leaned forward, resting one heavy hand on the seat-back near the 
 
driver's head. "Can't you do any. thing with that goddam radio?"
 
"It's the rain, sir," the radio man said. "The weather is doing this."
 
"I know goddam well the goddam weather is doing it," the captain said. "I 
 
asked you can't you do anything about it."
 
"Well, we get pretty good reception when we're on a hill," the radio man said. 
 
"Driving along the flat, though, all I get is this static."
 
"I hear it," the captain said. He poked the driver on the shoulder and said, 
 
"Find me a hill."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
The captain leaned back and brooded at Lieutenant Hepplewhite. "A hill," he 
 
said, as though hills were in themselves an insult.
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"A mobile headquarters, and I can't contact anybody unless I stand still on a 
 
hilltop. You call that mobile?"
 
Lieutenant Hepplewhite looked tortured as he tried to figure out whether the 
 
proper response was yes, sir or no, sir.
 
Neither was needed. Captain Deemer faced front again and said, "You found 
 
a hill yet?"
 
"I believe there's one up ahead, sir," said the driver. "Hard to tell in this rain."
 
"I hate rain," said the captain. He glowered out at it, and no one spoke as the 
 
mobile headquarters started up the long gradient of the hill. The radio spackled 
 
and fizzed, the windshield wipers swish-clicked, the rain drummed on the car 
 
top, and the captain's right eyelid fluttered soundlessly.
 
"Shall I pull in by the diner, sir?"
 
The captain stared at the back of the driver's head and considered leaning 
 
forward and biting him through the neck. "Yes," he said.
 
"I guess the insurance company paid off," the radio man said.
 
The captain frowned. "What are you talking about?"
 
"The diner, sir," the radio man said. "They had a bad fire last year, burned to 
 
the ground."
 
"Well, it's back now," Lieutenant Hepplewhite said.
 
"Doesn't look open," the radio man said.
 
The captain wasn't feeling kindly toward irrelevancies. "We're not here to talk 
 
about the diner," he said. "We're here to contact headquarters."
 
"Yes, sir," everybody said.
 
The diner was set back from the road, fronted by a gravel parking lot, with a 
 
large sign out by the road, reading, MCKAY'S DINER. The driver parked 
 
near this sign, and the radio man went to work on contacting headquarters. After 
 
a minute, the static receded and a tinny voice was heard, as though they'd 
 
reached somebody who lived in an empty dog-food can. "I've got 
 
headquarters," the radio man said.
 
"Good," said the captain. "Tell them where we are. Where the hell are we?"
 
"McKay's Diner, sir."
 
The captain lowered his head, as though he might charge. "When I say where 
 
are we," he said, "I do not want an answer I can read off a sign right outside the 
 
goddam window. When I say where are we, I want to know-"
 
"Near Sagaponack, sir," the radio man said.
 
"Near Sagaponack." "Yes, sir."
 
"Tell headquarters that."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"Find out what's going on, if anything." "Yes, sir."
 
"Tell them we'll be here until further notice."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"Until the bank is found, or the rain stops, or I go berserk."
 
The radio man blinked. "Yes, sir," he said.
 
"Whichever comes first."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
The captain turned to Lieutenant Hepplewhite, who was looking very pale. 
 
"Even as a child I hated rain," the captain said. "I used to have a Popeye doll 
 
that you could punch and it would fall over and come back up again. It was as 
 
tall as I was, with a weighted bottom. Rainy days, I used to take that Popeye 
 
doll down in the basement and kick the shit out of it."
 
"Yes, sir," said the lieutenant.
 
The captain's eyelid drooped. "I'm getting tired of hearing 'Yes, sir' all the 
 
time," he said.
 
"Yessss," said the lieutenant.
 
The radio man said, "Sir?"
 
The captain turned his heavy head.
 
"Sir," the radio man said, "I told headquarters our position, and they said 
 
there's nothing to report."
 
"Of course," said the captain.
 
"They say the search is being hampered by the rain."
 
The captain squinted. "They took the trouble to point that out, did they?"
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"Uh," said Lieutenant Hepplewhite warningly. The captain looked at him. 
 
"Lieutenant?"
 
"Nothing, sir."
 
"What time is it, Lieutenant?"
 
"Ten-fifteen, sir."
 
"I'm hungry." The captain looked past the lieutenant at the diner. "Why don't 
 
you go get us coffee and Danish, Lieutenant? My treat."
 
"There's a sign in the window says they're closed, sir."
 
The radio man said, "Probably not ready to open yet after the fire. Their other 
 
place got burned right to the ground."
 
"Lieutenant," said the captain, "go over there and knock on the door and see 
 
if there's anybody in there. If there is, ask them if they can open up just enough 
 
to give us coffee and Danish."
 
"Yes, sir," said the lieutenant. Then, hurriedly: "I mean, uh-"
 
"And if not coffee and Danish," said the captain, "then whatever they can do 
 
for us we'll appreciate. Will you tell them that, Lieutenant?"
 
"Uh . . . I will, sir."
 
"Thank you," said the captain and leaned back in the corner to brood out the 
 
window at the rain.
 
The lieutenant got out of the car and was immediately drenched right through 
 
his uniform raincoat. It was really pouring, really and truly coming down like 
 
nobody's business. Lieutenant Hepplewhite slogged through puddles toward the 
 
diner, noting just how closed it looked. Besides the hand-lettered CLOSED 
 
sign in one window, there was the absence of any lights in there.
 
The whole structure had an aura about it of being not yet ready to do 
 
business. Charred and blackened remnants of the previous diner were all around 
 
the new one, not yet cleared away. The new one was still on its wheels, with no 
 
skirting of any kind; looking through the underneath space, Lieutenant 
 
Hepplewhite could see the wheels of a car and a truck parked behind the diner, 
 
the only indication that there might be somebody around here after all.
 
What struck the lieutenant most about this diner was an atmosphere of failure 
 
all around it. It was the kind of small business you looked at, and you knew at 
 
once they'd go bankrupt within six months. Partly, of course, it was the ram and 
 
the general gloom of the day that did that, and partly it was the new diner sitting 
 
on the ashes of the old; but it was also the windows. They were too small. 
 
People like a diner with big windows, the lieutenant thought, so they can look 
 
out and watch the traffic.
 
There were two doors in the front of the diner, but no steps up to either one. 
 
The lieutenant splashed along to the nearest and knocked on it and anticipated 
 
no answer at all. In fact, he was just about to turn away when the door did open 
 
slightly and a thin middle-aged woman stood looking out and down at him. She 
 
had a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, which waggled as she said, "What do 
 
you want?"
 
"We were wondering," the lieutenant said, "if we could get some coffee and 
 
Danish." He had to put his head back and look up when talking to her, which 
 
was uncomfortable under the circumstances. The bill of his cap had protected 
 
his face from the rain, but now he was practically drowning in it.
 
"We're closed," the woman said.
 
Another woman appeared, saying, "What is it, Gertrude?" This one was 
 
shorter and wore a neck brace and looked irritable.
 
"He wanted coffee and Danish," Gertrude said. "I told him we were closed."
 
"We are closed," the other woman said.
 
"Well, we're police officers," the lieutenant started.
 
"I know," said Gertrude. "I could tell by your hat."
 
"And your car," said the other woman. "It says 'Police' on the side."
 
The lieutenant turned his head and looked at the patrol car, even though he 
 
already knew what it said on its side. He quickly looked back and said, "Well, 
 
we're on duty here, and we were wondering if you could maybe sell us some 
 
coffee and Danish even if you aren't one hundred percent open." He tried a 
 
winning smile, but all he got for it was a mouthful of rain.
 
"We don't have any Danish," the irritable woman in the neck brace said.
 
Gertrude, being more kindly, said, "I'd like to help you out, but the fact is, we 
 
don't have any electricity yet. Nothing's hooked up at all. We just got here. I'd 
 
like a cup of coffee myself."
 
"It's getting damn cold in here," said the irritable woman, "with that door 
 
open."
 
"Well, thanks anyway," said the lieutenant. Gertrude said, "Come around 
 
when we're open. We'll give you coffee and Danish on the house."
 
"I'll do that," said the lieutenant and slogged back through the puddles to 
 
report, saying, "They don't have any electricity, Captain. They're not set up for 
 
anything yet."
 
"We can't even pick a hilltop right," the captain said. To the radio man he 
 
said, "You!"
 
"Sir?"
 
"Find out if there's any patrol cars around here."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"We want coffees and Danish."
 
"Yes, sir. How do you like your coffee?"
 
"Light, three sugars."
 
The radio man looked ill. "Yes, sir. Lieutenant?"
 
"Black, one Sweet 'n Low."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
While the radio man took the driver's order, the captain turned to the 
 
lieutenant and said, "One sweet and what?"
 
"It's a sugar substitute, sir. For people on diets."
 
"You're on a diet."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"I weigh about twice as much as you, Lieutenant, but I'm not on a diet."
 
The lieutenant opened his mouth, but once again no response seemed exactly 
 
right, and he didn't say anything.
 
But silence, this time, was also a mistake. The captain's brows beetled, and 
 
he said, "Just what do you mean by that, Lieutenant?"
 
The radio man said, "I put in the order, sir."
 
It was a timely distraction. The captain thanked him and subsided again and 
 
brooded out the window for the next ten minutes, until another patrol car 
 
arrived, delivering the coffee and Danish. The captain cheered up at that, until 
 
the second patrol car arrived two minutes after the first, bringing more coffee 
 
and Danish. "I should have guessed," the captain said.
 
When the third and fourth patrol cars with shipments of coffee and Danish 
 
arrived simultaneously, the captain roared at the radio man, "Tell them enough! 
 
Tell them to stop, tell them it's enough, tell them I'm near the breaking point!"
 
"Yes, sir," said the radio man and got to work on the phone.
 
Nevertheless, two more patrol cars arrived with coffee and Danish in the next 
 
five minutes. It was the captain's belief that discipline was best maintained by 
 
never letting the ranks know when things louse up, so they had to accept and 
 
pay for and say thank you for each and every shipment, and gradually the mobile 
 
headquarters was filling up with plastic cups of coffee and brown paper bags full 
 
of Danish. The smell of the lieutenant's wet uniform combined with the steam of 
 
diner coffee was becoming very strong and fogging up the windows.
 
The lieutenant pushed several wooden stirrers off his lap and said, "Captain, I 
 
have an idea."
 
"God protect me," said the captain.
 
"The people working in that diner don't have any electricity or heat, sir. 
 
Frankly, they strike me as born losers. Why don't we give them some of our 
 
extra coffee and Danish?"
 
The Captain considered. "I suppose," he said judiciously, "it's better than me 
 
getting out of the car and stamping all this stuff into the gravel. Go ahead, 
 
Lieutenant."
 
"Thank you, sir."
 
The lieutenant gathered up one carton-four coffees, four Danish-and 
 
carried them from the car over to the diner. He knocked on the door, and it was 
 
opened immediately by Gertrude, who still had a cigarette stuck in the corner of 
 
her mouth. The lieutenant said, "We got more food delivered than we wanted. I 
 
thought maybe you could use some of-"
 
"We sure could," Gertrude said. "That's really sweet of you."
 
The lieutenant handed up the carton. "If you need any more," he said, "we've 
 
got plenty."
 
Gertrude looked hesitant. "Well, uh . . ."
 
"Are there more than four of you? I mean it, we're loaded down with the 
 
stuff."
 
Gertrude seemed reluctant to say how many of them were in the diner-
 
probably because she didn't want to strain the lieutenant's generosity. But finally 
 
she said, "There's, uh, there's seven of us."
 
"Seven! Wow, you must really be working in there."
 
"Oh, yes," she said. "We really are."
 
"You must be in a hurry to open up."
 
"We really want to open it up," Gertrude said, nodding, the cigarette waggling 
 
in the corner of her mouth. "You couldn't be more right about that."
 
"I'll get you some more," the lieutenant said. "Be right back."
 
"You're really very kind," she said.
 
The lieutenant went back to the patrol car and opened the rear door. "They 
 
can use some more," he said and assembled two more cartons.
 
The captain gave him a cynical look. He said, "You're delivering coffee and 
 
Danish to a diner, Lieutenant."
 
"Yes, sir, I know."
 
"It doesn't strike you as strange?"
 
The lieutenant paused in his shuffling of coffee containers.
 
"Sir," he said, "my basic feeling about this whole business is that I'm actually 
 
in a hospital somewhere, undergoing major surgery, and this day is a dream I'm 
 
having while under the anesthetic."
 
The captain looked interested. "I imagine that's a very comforting thought," he 
 
said.
 
"It is, sir."
 
"Hmmmmm," said the captain.
 
The lieutenant carried more coffee and Danish to the diner, and Gertrude met 
 
him at the door. "How much do we owe you?"
 
"Oh, forget it," the lieutenant said. "I'll take a free cheeseburger some time 
 
when you're doing business."
 
"If only all police officers were like you," Gertrude said, "the world would be 
 
a far better place."
 
The lieutenant had often thought the same thing himself. He gave a modest 
 
smile and scuffed his foot in a puddle and said, "Oh, well, I just try to do my 
 
best."
 
"I'm sure you do. Bless you."
 
The lieutenant carried his happy smile back to the patrol car, where he found 
 
the captain in a sour mood again, beetle-browed and grumpy. "Something go 
 
wrong, sir?"
 
"I tried that anesthetic thing of yours."
 
"You did, sir?"
 
"I keep worrying how the operation's going to come out."
 
"I make it appendicitis, sir. There's really no danger in that."
 
The captain shook his head. "It's just not my style, Lieutenant," he said. "I'm 
 
a man who faces reality."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"And I tell you this, Lieutenant. This day will end. It can't go on forever. This 
 
day will come to an end. Some day it will."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
Conversation lagged for a while after that. Even with the twelve coffees and 
 
Danish the Lieutenant had given away, there had still been three sets for each 
 
man in the mobile headquarters. They hadn't drunk all the coffee, but they'd 
 
eaten all the Danish and were now feeling somnolent and sluggish. The driver fell 
 
into a deep sleep, the captain napped, and the lieutenant kept dropping off and 
 
then waking up again with a start. The radio man never quite lost consciousness, 
 
though he did take his shoes off and rest his head against the window and hold 
 
his microphone slackly in his lap.
 
The morning passed slowly, with undiminished rain and no positive news in 
 
any of the infrequent crackling radio contacts from headquarters. Noontime 
 
came and went, and the afternoon began heavily to row past, and by two 
 
o'clock they were all feeling restless and cramped and irritable and 
 
uncomfortable. Their mouths tasted bad, their feet had swollen, their underwear 
 
chafed, and it had been hours since any of them had relieved themselves.
 
Finally, at ten past two, the captain grunted and shifted position and said, 
 
"Enough is enough."
 
The other three tried to look alert.
 
"We're not accomplishing anything out here," the captain said. "We're not 
 
mobile, we're not in contact with anybody, we're not getting anywhere. Driver, 
 
take us back to headquarters."
 
"Yes, sir!"
 
As the car started forward, the lieutenant looked out at the diner one last time 
 
and wondered if the thing would actually stay in business long enough for him to 
 
get that free cheeseburger. He was sorry for the people trying to run the place, 
 
but somehow he doubted it.
 

 

 
29
 

 
"THERE they go!" Victor shouted.
 
"At goddam last," said Murch's Mom and started at once undoing the straps 
 
on her neck brace.
 
Dortmunder had been sitting at the table with May, practicing holding his 
 
hands together as if he had the cuffs on. Now he cocked an eye toward Victor 
 
and said, "You sure they're leaving?"
 
"Gone," Victor said. "Absolutely gone. Made a U-turn out there by the sign 
 
and took off."
 
"And about time," May said. The floor around the chair where she was sitting 
 
was littered with tiny cigarette ends.
 
Dortmunder sighed. When he got to his feet his bones creaked; he felt old and 
 
stiff and achy all over. He shook his head, thought of adding a comment, and 
 
decided just to let it go.
 
The last four hours had been hell. And yet, when he and Kelp had first seen 
 
this spot, it had seemed like a special dispensation from Heaven. The big sign 
 
out by the road, the empty gravel parking lot, and a blank space where the diner 
 
should be; who could ask for anything more? They'd rushed back to the 
 
Wanderlust Trailer Park, where Murch already had the bank attached to the 
 
horse van, and quickly they'd brought the whole kit and caboodle over here, 
 
except for the stolen station wagon, which they'd left in somebody's driveway 
 
along the way. Victor and Kelp had gone a block or so ahead in the Packard, to 
 
watch out for cops, and Murch had followed with the horse van and the bank-
 
his Mom and May riding with him in the cab of the van, Dortmunder and 
 
Herman back in the bank. They'd gotten here with no trouble, positioned the 
 
bank, parked the van and the Packard out of sight behind it, and gone back to 
 
business as usual, the only changes being that Herman had to use battery-
 
operated power tools again and the hearts game had been resumed by flashlight. 
 
Also, the rainwater drenching down the metal skin of the bank quickly chilled the 
 
interior, and made everybody feel a little stiff and rheumatic. But it hadn't been 
 
terrible, and they'd mostly been in a pretty good mood-even Herman, who 
 
had regained his belief in his ability to get into any safe, if given sufficient time.
 
And then the cops had arrived. Kelp had seen them first, glancing out the 
 
window and saying, "Look! Law!"
 
The rest of them had crowded to the windows and stared out at the police car 
 
parked out by the sign. May had said, "What are they going to do? Are they 
 
onto us?"
 
"No." That had been Victor, always ready with an opinion based on his 
 
experiences with the other side of the law. "They're just on patrol," he'd said. 
 
"If they were interested in us, they'd handle the situation differently."
 
"Like- surround the place," Dortmunder had suggested.
 
"Exactly."
 
Then the one cop had gotten out of the car and come over, and it had turned 
 
out their cover was working. Still, it was hard to concentrate with that damn 
 
police car everlastingly parked outside the bank you'd just stolen, and the hearts 
 
game had finally just dwindled away and stopped. Everybody had sat around, 
 
irritable and nervous, and every five minutes or so somebody would ask Victor, 
 
"What the hell are they doing out there?" Or "When are they going to go away, 
 
for the love of God?" And Victor would shake his head and say, "I just don't 
 
know. I'm baffled."
 
When the other police cars started showing up, one and two at a time, the 
 
whole crew inside the bank began to bounce around as agitated as kittens in a 
 
sack "What are they doing" everybody asked, and Victor kept saying, "I don't 
 
know, I don't know."
 
It later turned Out, of course, that the other cars had all been delivering orders 
 
of coffee and Danish When Dortmunder had finally come to that understanding, 
 
he'd told the others and added, "Which means they're as loused up as we are 
 
Which gives me hope"
 
Still, the time had passed slowly The extra coffee and 9 Danish they were 
 
given by the cops helped a lot-they were
 
all getting pretty cold and hungry by then-but as the hours went by they all 
 
began to see themselves either starving or freezing to death, trapped in this 
 
stupid bank forever by a bunch of cops who didn't even know they were in the 
 
same county.
 
Also, Herman was restricted in the attacks he could make on the safe while 
 
the police car was parked out front The grinding on the circular hole could 
 
continue, but things like explosions had to wait. This made Herman fretful, and 
 
he tended to pace back and forth from one end of the bank to the other and 
 
snarl at people
 
Then there was the business of the neck brace. Murch cared on so much 
 
about it that his Mom finally agreed to wear it as long as the police car was out 
 
front, but she was supposed to be testy while her head was propped up by the 
 
thing, so that made two soreheads prowling around, which didn't help matters 
 
any.
 
And then, all at once, they left. No reason, no explanation, their departure as 
 
abrupt and senseless as their arrival, they up and went. And suddenly everybody 
 
was smiling, even Murch's Mom, who had flung the neck brace into the farthest 
 
corner of the bank.
 
"Now," Herman said. "Now I get to try what I've wanted to do for the last 
 
two hours. Longer. Since before noon."
 
Dortmunder was walking around in a figure eight, moving his shoulders and 
 
elbows, trying to loosen up. "What's that?" he said.
 
"That circular groove," Herman told him. "I think we've got it deep enough 
 
now, so if I pack the groove with plastic explosive, it just might pop it out of 
 
there."
 
"Then let's do it," Dortmunder said. "Before the Health Department comes 
 
around to inspect the kitchen and the bread man starts making deliveries, let's 
 
do it and get the hell out of here."
 
"This'll be a bigger explosion than before," Herman warned. "I want you to 
 
know that."
 
Dortmunder stopped figure eighting. Voice flat, he said, "Will we survive it?"
 
"Oh, sure! Not that big!"
 
"That's all I ask," Dortmunder said. "My wants are simple."
 
"Take me about five minutes to set up," Herman said.
 
It took less. Four minutes later, Herman made everybody get around on the 
 
other side of the partition from the safe, explaining, "This might throw a little 
 
metal around."
 
"Good," Dortmunder said. "I feel like doing the same thing myself."
 
They all waited out in the main part of the bank while Herman, out of sight, 
 
did his final bit of work. After a few seconds of silence, they watched him back 
 
slowly into view around the end of the partition, holding a length of wire in each 
 
hand, gently drawing the wires after him. He looked at the others over his 
 
shoulder. "Everybody set?"
 
"Blow the damn thing," Dortmunder said.
 
"Right." Herman touched the exposed ends of wire together, and from the 
 
other side of the partition came a Krack! The bank rocked, much more than 
 
with the earlier explosions, and a stack of empty plastic coffee containers fell off 
 
the desk over in the corner where May had left them. "Got it," Herman said, 
 
smiling all over his face, and a bit of gray smoke came curling around the edge of 
 
the partition.
 
They all crowded around the partition to look at the safe, and damn if it didn't 
 
have a round hole in the side. Kelp shouted, "You did it!"
 
"God damn!" Herman cried, delighted with himself, and everybody 
 
pummeled him on the back.
 
Dortmunder said, "Why's the smoke coming out of there?" They all got quiet 
 
again and looked at the wisp of smoke curling up from the hole. Herman said, 
 
"Wait a minute now," and stepped forward to take a quick look around on the 
 
floor. Then he turned to Dortmunder, outraged, and said, "You know what 
 
happened?"
 
"No," Dortmunder said.
 
"The goddam metal fell inside," Herman said.
 
Kelp had gone over to look in the hole, and now he said, "Hey. The money's 
 
on fire."
 
That caused general panic, but Dortmunder pushed his way through the mob 
 
and took a look inside, and it wasn't as bad as all that. The hole in the side of 
 
the safe was perfectly round and about a foot in diameter, and inside there was a 
 
round piece of black metal the same size, like a midget manhole cover except 
 
much thicker, and it was resting on stacks of money, and it was setting them on 
 
fire. Not very much, just browning and curling them around the edge of the 
 
circle. However, a couple of little flames had already puffed into life, and if left to 
 
themselves they would spread and eventually all of the money would turn into 
 
ashes.
 
"Okay," Dortmunder said, partly to calm the people behind him, partly to 
 
challenge the fates. He took off his right shoe, stuck it in through the hole and 
 
began to slap the fire out.
 
"If only we had water," Victor said.
 
Murch's Mom said, "The toilet tank! We haven't flushed since we left the 
 
trailer park, the tank should still be full !"
 
That had been another problem, four hours stuck in here without toilet 
 
facilities, but now this one too turned out to be a blessing in disguise. A coffee-
 
container brigade was set up, and pretty soon Dortmunder could put his shoe 
 
back on and pour water on the smoldering bills instead. It took only four 
 
containers, and the last ember was out.
 
"Wet money," Dortmunder grumbled and shook his head. "All right, where's 
 
the plastic bags?"
 
They'd brought along a box of plastic garbage-can liner bags to carry the 
 
money in. May got them now, pulled one out of the box, and Dortmunder and 
 
Kelp started filling it with charred bills, wet bills and good bills while May and 
 
Victor held the bag open.
 
And then Murch's Mom shouted, "We're moving!"
 
Dortmunder straightened, his hands full of money. "What?"
 
Murch came running around the partition, looking much more agitated than 
 
Dortmunder had ever seen him. "We're rolling," he said. "We're rolling down 
 
the goddam hill, and we're out of control!"
 

 

 
30
 

 
KELP pushed the door open and watched countryside going by. "We're 
 
going out on the road!"
 
Behind him, Herman shouted, "Jump! Jump!"
 
How fast were they going? Probably no more than five or ten miles an hour, 
 
but to Kelp's eyes the pavement going by beneath his feet was just a blur.
 
But they had to jump. There were no windows in the front of the bank, so 
 
they couldn't see where they were headed, whether they were going to crash 
 
into something or not. They weren't going very fast yet because the slope wasn't 
 
at all steep here, but the bank was angling toward the road, and down a ways 
 
farther the hill did get a lot steeper, and then they'd go too fast to jump. So it 
 
had to be now, and at this door Kelp was first.
 
He jumped. Off to his right, uphill, he was aware of Victor jumping from the 
 
other door. Then Kelp hit the pavement, lost his footing, sprawled and rolled 
 
over twice. When he sat up, he had a new big tear in his right trouser knee, and 
 
the rest of the gang was spread out downhill, all sitting and lying on the pavement 
 
in the rain, with the bank rolling on away from them, on the road now and 
 
picking up speed.
 
Kelp looked the other way, to see how Victor was doing, and Victor was on 
 
his feet already and hobbling back toward the diner site. Kelp couldn't figure 
 
that out for a second, and then he realized Victor was going after the Packard. 
 
To give chase, to get the bank back!
 
Kelp got to his feet and limped off in Victor's wake, but hadn't even reached 
 
the gravel driveway yet when the Packard came tearing up and squealed to a 
 
stop beside him. He climbed in, and Victor gunned the motor again. He was 
 
going to stop for Dortmunder, who was next, standing there with the plastic bag 
 
full of money in his hand, but Dortmunder urgently waved them on, and Kelp 
 
said, "Don't stop, Victor, they'll come along in the van."
 
"Okay," Victor said and tromped on the accelerator.
 
The bank was far away down the long slope. It was rainy, it was mid-
 
afternoon, and they were far out on Long Island, three things that helped to give 
 
them an empty road when they needed it. The bank, whizzing down the exact 
 
middle of the two-lane road, straddling the white line, happily met no traffic 
 
coming the other way.
 
"It's gonna go over at that curve," Kelp said. "It'll crash down there, but we 
 
should have time to get the rest of the money out."
 
But it didn't go over. The curve was banked, angled properly, and the bank 
 
rolled around it with no trouble at all- around and out of sight.
 
"God damn it!" yelled Kelp. "Catch up with it, Victor."
 
"I will," Victor said. Hunched over the wheel, his attention fixed on the road 
 
ahead, he said, "You know what I think happened?"
 
"The bank started to roll," Kelp said.
 
"Because of the explosion," Victor said. "That's what I think did it. You felt 
 
the way that made it rock. It must have started it, and we were on top of a hill, 
 
and once it was moving it just kept going."
 
"It sure did." Kelp said. He shook his head. "You can't believe how irritated 
 
Dortmunder is going to be," he said.
 
Victor snapped a glance at the rear-view mirror. "Not behind us yet," he said.
 
"They'll be along. Let's worry about the bank first."
 
They reached the curve, spun around it, and saw the bank well out in front. 
 
There was a small town at the base of the hill, a little fishing community, and the 
 
bank was headed straight for it.
 
But Victor was gaining. Also, as the road leveled out at the bottom, the bank 
 
began slowly to lose its momentum. When it ran the red light in the center of 
 
town it wasn't doing any more than twenty-five miles an hour. A woman 
 
crossing guard blew her whistle at the bank as it went through the light, but it 
 
didn't stop. Victor slowed, seeing the woman in her police-like uniform and 
 
white crossing-guard belt, and seeing the red light, but as he reached the 
 
intersection the light turned green and he accelerated again. The woman had 
 
whistled herself breathless, and as they went by she was standing in the rainy 
 
gutter, panting, her shoulders heaving, her mouth open.
 
"It'll stop soon," Kelp said hopefully. "There isn't any slope here at all."
 
"That's the ocean," Victor said, nodding ahead.
 
"Oh, no!"
 
The end of the street was a pier, jutting out a good thirty feet into the water. 
 
Victor caught up with the bank just before it trundled out onto the pier, but it 
 
didn't matter; there was no way of stopping it. One fisherman in yellow rubber 
 
slicker and rain hat, sitting on a folding chair, looked up and saw the bank 
 
coming and leaped straight from his chair into the ocean; the bank, en passant, 
 
flipped his chair after him. He had been the only occupant of the pier, which now 
 
the bank had to itself.
 
"Make it stop!" Kelp cried as Victor slammed the Packard to a halt at the 
 
beginning of the pier. "We've got to make it stop!"
 
"No way," Victor said. "There's just no way."
 
The two of them sat in the Packard and watched the bank roll inexorably out 
 
along the rumbling boards of the pier to the very end and quietly, undramatically, 
 
roll off the outer edge and drop like a stone into the water.
 
Kelp groaned.
 
"One thing," Victor said. "It was beautiful to watch."
 
"Victor," Kelp said. "Do me one favor. Don't say that to Dortmunder."
 
Victor looked at him. "No?"
 
"He wouldn't understand," Kelp said.
 
"Oh." Victor looked out the windshield again. "I wonder how deep it is out 
 
there," he said.
 
"Why?"
 
"Well, maybe we could swim down to it and get the rest of the money."
 
Kelp gave him a pleased smile. "You're right," he said. "If not today, maybe 
 
sometime when the sun's shining."
 
"And it's warmer."
 
"Right."
 
"Unless," Victor said, "someone else sees it there and reports it."
 
"Say," Kelp said, frowning out the windshield again. "There was somebody 
 
on the pier."
 
"There was?"
 
"A fisherman, in a yellow raincoat."
 
"I didn't see him."
 
"We better take a look."
 
The two of them got out of the car and walked through the rain out onto the 
 
pier. Kelp looked over the edge and saw the man in the yellow raincoat climbing 
 
up the scaffolding along the side. "Let me give you a hand," he called and knelt 
 
to reach down to him.
 
The fisherman looked up. His face looked astonished. He said, "You won't 
 
believe what happened. I don't believe it myself."
 
Kelp helped him up onto the pier. "We saw it go," he said. "A runaway 
 
trailer."
 
"It just come right along," the fisherman said, "and threw me in the ocean. 
 
Lost my chair, lost my tackle, damn near lost myself."
 
"You kept your hat anyway," Victor pointed out. "Tied under my chin," the 
 
fisherman said. "Was there anybody in that thing?"
 
"No, it was empty," Kelp said.
 
The fisherman looked down at himself. "My wife told me," he said. "She said 
 
this wasn't no day to fish. I'll be goddamned if she wasn't right for once."
 
"Just so you didn't get hurt," Kelp said.
 
"Hurt?" The fisherman grinned. "Listen," he said. "I come out of this with the 
 
kind of fish story you just can't top. I wouldn't care if I got a broken leg out of 
 
it."
 
"You didn't, did you?" Victor asked.
 
The fisherman stomped his booted feet on the planks of the pier; they 
 
squished. "Hell, no," he said. "Fit as a fiddle." He sneezed. "Except I do believe 
 
I'm coming down with pneumonia."
 
"Maybe you ought to get home," Kelp said. "Get into some dry things."
 
"Bourbon," the fisherman said. "That's what I need." He glanced away 
 
toward the end of the pier. "Damnedest thing I ever saw," he said and sneezed 
 
again and went off shaking his head.
 
"Let's take a look," Kelp said. He and Victor walked out to the end of the 
 
pier and stared down into the rain-spattered water. "I don't see it," Kelp said.
 
"Here it is. See it?"
 
Kelp looked where Victor was pointing. "Right," he said, catching a glimpse 
 
of the thing, like a blue-and-white whale down there in the water. Then he 
 
frowned, peering at it, and said, "Hey, it's moving."
 
"It is?"
 
The two of them squinted in silence for ten seconds or so, and then Victor 
 
said, "You're right. It's the undertow, taking it away."
 
"I don't believe it," Kelp said.
 
Victor looked back toward shore. "Here comes the rest of them," he said.
 
Kelp reluctantly turned and saw the other five getting out of the horse van. 
 
They came trailing out onto the pier, Dortmunder in the lead. Kelp put a sickly 
 
smile on his face and waited.
 
Dortmunder came up and looked into the water. "I don't suppose you two 
 
are out here for a tan," he said.
 
"No," said Kelp.
 
Dortmunder nodded at the water. "It went in there, right?"
 
"That's right," Kelp said. "You can see it. . ." He pointed, then frowned. "No, 
 
you can't any more."
 
Victor said, "It's moving."
 
"Moving," Dortmunder echoed.
 
"Coming down the hill," Victor said, "the wind shut the doors again. I don't 
 
suppose it's completely airtight, but it is closed up pretty good, and it must have 
 
just enough air in it to make it buoyant enough not to be stuck in the mud or the 
 
sand on the bottom. So the undertow's moving it."
 
The others had come up by now. May said, "You mean it's going away?"
 
"That's right," Victor said.
 
Kelp felt Dortmunder looking at him but wouldn't acknowledge it. He kept 
 
staring into the water instead.
 
Murch's Mom said, "Where's it going to?"
 
"France," Dortmunder said.
 
Herman said, "You mean it's gone for good? After all that work?"
 
"Well, we got some of the money anyway," Kelp said and looked around 
 
with the sickly smile on his face again. But Dortmunder was already walking 
 
away along the pier toward the shore. One by one, the others followed him, and 
 
the rain rained down all around.
 

 

 
31
 

 

 
"TWENTY-THREE thousand, eight hundred twenty dollars," Dortmunder 
 
said and sneezed.
 
They were all in the apartment, his and May's. Everybody had changed 
 
clothes, with May and Murch's Mom both in clothing belonging to May, and all 
 
five men in Dortmunder's clothes. They were also all sneezing, and May had 
 
brewed up a lot of tea with whiskey in it.
 
"Twenty-three, almost twenty-four thousand," Kelp said brightly. "It could 
 
have been worse."
 
"Yes," Dortmunder said. "It could have been Confederate money."
 
Murch sneezed and said, "How much is that apiece?"
 
Dortmunder said, "First we pay off the financier. That's eight thousand, 
 
leaving fifteen thousand, eight hundred twenty. Divided by seven, that's two 
 
thousand, two hundred sixty bucks apiece."
 
Murch made a face as though something smelled bad. "Two thousand dollars? 
 
That's all?"
 
Herman and Murch's Mom sneezed simultaneously.
 
"We'll spend more than that in medical bills," Dortmunder said.
 
Victor said, "Still, we did the job, you have to admit that. You can't call it a 
 
failure."
 
"I can if I want to," Dortmunder said.
 
"Have some more tea," said May.
 
Kelp sneezed.
 
"Two thousand dollars," Herman said, and blew his nose. "I spill that much."
 
They were all in the living room, sitting around the money, the charred bills 
 
and wet bills and good bills all stacked in different piles on the coffee table. The 
 
apartment was warm and dry, but the smell of wet clothes and disaster filled the 
 
air from the bedroom.
 
Murch's Mom sighed. "I'll have to start wearing that brace again," she said.
 
"You lost it," her son told her accusingly. "You left it in the bank."
 
"So we'll buy a new one."
 
"Another expense."
 
"Well," Kelp said, "I guess we might as well divvy the loot and go on home."
 
"Divvy the loot," Dortmunder echoed and looked at the paper on the coffee 
 
table. "You got an eye dropper?"
 
"It isn't that bad," Kelp said. "We didn't come out of it empty-handed."
 
Victor got to his feet and stretched and said, "I suppose this would be more 
 
like a celebration if we'd gotten the rest of the money."
 
Dortmunder nodded. "You could say that."
 
They split up the cash and departed, everybody promising to send back the 
 
borrowed clothes and reclaim their own. Left to themselves, Dortmunder and 
 
May sat on the sofa and looked at the four thousand, five hundred twenty 
 
dollars left on the coffee table. They sighed. Dortmunder said, "Well, it did give 
 
me something to think about, I have to admit it."
 
"The worst thing about a cold," May said, "is the way it makes the cigarettes 
 
taste." She plucked the ember from the corner of her mouth and flipped it into 
 
an ashtray but didn't light a new one. "You want some more tea?"
 
"I still got some." He sipped at the tea and frowned. "What's the percentage 
 
of tea and whiskey in this thing?"
 
"About half and half."
 
He drank a little more. The warm steam curled around his nostrils. "You 
 
better brew up another pot," he said.
 
She nodded, starting to smile. "Right," she said.
 

 

 
32
 

 

 
"IT'S on the Island," Captain Deemer said. "It's somewhere on this goddam 
 
Island."
 
"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Hepplewhite said, but faintly.
 
"And I'm going to find it."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
The two of them were alone in the unmarked patrol car, a black Ford, radio-
 
equipped. The captain was driving, and the lieutenant was beside him. The 
 
captain hunched over the wheel, his eyes constantly moving as he drove back 
 
and forth and up and down and all over Long Island.
 
Beside him, the lieutenant's eyes were unfocused. He wasn't looking for or at 
 
anything, but was practicing once more the speech that he would never make to 
 
the captain. In its latest form it went: "Captain, it's been three weeks. You're 
 
letting the precinct go to hell, you've become obsessed with this missing bank, 
 
all you do is spend all the daylight hours, seven days a week, driving around 
 
looking for that bank. It's gone, Captain, that bank is gone and we are never 
 
going to find it.
 
"But, Captain, even if you are obsessed and can't get out of your obsession, 
 
I'm not. You pulled me off night duty, and I loved night duty, I loved being the 
 
man behind the desk at night in the precinct. But you put that idiot Schlumgard in 
 
there in my place, and Schlumgard doesn't know what the hell he's doing, and 
 
morale is going to hell. If I ever do get my job back, Schlumgard will have 
 
undone everything I've tried to do.
 
"But the point is, Captain, it has been three weeks. The New York City 
 
police stopped cooperating after four days, which means the bank could have 
 
been taken out of our jurisdiction anytime in the last two and a half weeks, which 
 
means it could be anywhere in the world by now. I know your theory, Captain, 
 
that the bank was hidden sometime that first night, that the crooks emptied the 
 
safe in the first day or two and went away and just left it there, but even if you're 
 
right, what good does it do? If they hid it so well we couldn't find it in the first 
 
few days, when we had search parties combing the entire Island, two of us are 
 
not going to find it by driving around in a car three weeks later.
 
"Which is why, Captain, I feel I must tell you that I have come to a decision. If 
 
you want to go on looking for the bank, that's up to you. But either you let me 
 
go back to my regular duties, or I'll just have to talk to the Commissioner. Now, 
 
Captain, I've gone along with you on every-"
 
"You say something?"
 
Startled, the lieutenant snapped his head around and stared at the captain. 
 
"What? What?"
 
Captain Deemer frowned at him, then faced the road again. "I thought you 
 
said something."
 
"No, sir."
 
"Well, just keep your eyes open."
 
"Yes, sir."
 
The lieutenant looked out the side window, though without any hope. They 
 
were climbing a hill, and just ahead was the sign for McKay's Diner. The 
 
lieutenant remembered the free cheeseburger he'd been promised, and smiled. 
 
He was about to turn his head toward the captain and suggest they stop for a 
 
snack when he saw the diner was gone again. "Well, I'll be darned," he said.
 
"What?"
 
"That diner, sir," the lieutenant said as they drove by. "They went out of 
 
business already."
 
"Is that right." The captain didn't sound interested.
 
"Even faster than I thought," the lieutenant said, looking back at the space 
 
where the diner had been.
 
"We're looking for a bank, Lieutenant, not a diner."
 
"Yes, sir." The lieutenant faced front, began again to scan the countryside. "I 
 
knew they wouldn't make it," he said.