Donald Westlake: Bank Shot

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?”

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 —”