Donald Westlake: Bank Shot

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 everything 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.”