Donald Westlake - Bank Shot

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.

“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!”