Donald Westlake: Bank Shot

“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.

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 personal 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.”