Дональд Уэстлейк - Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

So I took everybody’s order. The man with the sideburns recommended the roast beef plate, which Joe and I both took, and the woman in the tweed skirt said the turkey diet plate was first-rate for anyone concerned with calories; Jerry took that. For the rest, it was a standard run of hamburgers, BLTs, and so on. Plus the usual run of coffees, with two teas; Jerry, and the man in the red tie.

I turned the list over to Phil, who looked at it, picked up the phone, turned to the Rolodex, stopped, looked at the list again, hung up the phone, and said, “I’m not gonna order out for ten people. There’s only three, four people here at night. They’ll know something’s going on.”

“Excuse me,” the man with the sideburns said. “You could certainly go out and get the food yourselves, but in fact we occasionally do have up to a dozen people here through the dinner hour, in connection with audit or internal inventory or other procedures.”

I knew I’d be the one sent out, I just knew it. So I said, “What do they care at the luncheonette? They’ll just bring the order over, that’s all.”

“Not the luncheonette,” the man with the sideburns said. “Durkey’s, around the corner on Massena Street.”

“I know,” I said. “Durkey’s.”

Joe also came over to the desk where Phil was sitting. We three were clustered together now, with the four prisoners way the heck over on the other side of the room. Joe said, “You know, we better send out. We’ve seen them in the evening, you and me we both have, and they really do send out. And if we don’t tonight, with the lights on in the bank and all, maybe somebody’ll notice something and get a cop to check into it.”

“The last thing we want,” the man with the sideburns said, “is a shoot-out, or a hostage-type situation.”

That was the last thing I wanted, too. I said, “I tell you what. Order for five, and I’ll go out and get for the other five.”

“Don’t go to the luncheonette,” the man with the sideburns advised me. “Go to Dur—”

“I know, I know. Durkey’s, around the corner on Massena Street.”

I thought he was slightly offended — not used to being interrupted, from the look of him. “That’s right” he said stiffly.

Meanwhile, Phil was thinking over my proposition. “Fine,” he said at last. “You get five, I’ll call for five.”

“Right.”

So then we sat down and split the list into two parts, so that Phil would phone for all the larger items like roast beef plates, and I’d be getting the hamburgers. “I won’t call for five minutes,” Phil said. “Give you a little lead time.”

“Fine.” I put the list in my pocket and glanced at the man with the sideburns, but he didn’t tell me to go to Durkey’s around the corner on Massena Street. In that silence I walked up front again where I explained to Eddie — he was one of the hamburgers and regular coffees — that I was going out to collect a partial order, but that the rest would be delivered. He said, “Where do I get the money to pay for it?”

“Ask Phil.” I had cash on me, and planned to be reimbursed.

“Okay,” he said, and unlocked the door to let me out. As I was going through he said, “Take your mask off.”

“Oh! Right.”

So I went around the corner to Durkey’s and put in my order. People were sitting around, eating, waiting for food. I’m in the middle of committing two bank robberies, I thought; what do you people think of that? They didn’t think much of it.

I considered calling Marian, telling her to pack a bag and gas up the VW, and then the two of us would make a run for the border. Into Canada, get a job, establish a new name, make a new life. Never return, never be a party to this bank robbery again.

My package was handed to me. I paid for it, and went back to the bank. As I was sorting it out on one of the desks, and figuring out who owed me what, the other half was delivered, and Eddie came back to get the cash to pay for it. So Phil walked into the vault and came out with two twenty dollar bills. “Don’t give him too big a tip,” he warned Eddie, and handed me the other twenty. “Here. You paid out of your pocket, right?”

“This is too big a tip,” I said.

He laughed. “Take it, take it,” he said. So I took it, and he said, “See? You get nervous ahead of time, but not during the job. Am I right?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“I got you figured out pretty well, Harry,” he said.

“You sure do,” I said. Then we all sat down and ate, and as I said to the man with the sideburns later, he was absolutely right: there was no comparison between Durkey’s and the luncheonette. “This roast beef plate is delicious,” I told him, as I was finishing it. “Thanks for recommending it.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “We may have differences of opinion on some financial matters, but that doesn’t mean we can’t treat one another like human beings.”

It’s really encouraging to hear a banker talk like that.

By two in the morning, it had become obvious we weren’t going to get into the Western National vault but Phil and Joe kept refusing to give up, no matter what reports Jerry and Billy staggered out with, and so another hour went by and it was after three before we finally gave up.

Before that we’d had our visit from the police. That was around eleven-thirty. Eddie had just previously come back to report that a patrol car had gone by three times in the last twenty minutes, and that he had seen the two occupants looking curiously at the lit-up interior of Fiduciary Federal. “Don’t worry,” Phil told him. “We’re covered.”

“I’m not worried,” Eddie said.

I didn’t entirely believe him when he said it, but I must admit he carried off the police visit with assurance and calmness. They stopped just in front of the typewriter truck out front, and both of them got out of their car. They walked over to the door, which Eddie unlocked and opened in order to greet them. They asked where Duffy was, and Eddie said Duffy was home with the flu, which was going around again at that time. They asked what was happening to keep people at the bank so late, and Eddie told them it was some kind of audit. Then they just hung around, chatting, and it was obvious that while they weren’t exactly suspicious they weren’t exactly satisfied either.

In the back, Jerry and Billy had suspended operations with the laser, and were panting together near the vault anteroom doorway, where they reminded me of a team of stagecoach horses who have just outrun the band of Indians. At the partition, Phil and Joe and I listened to everything that was happening up front So, I presume, did our four prisoners.

Finally, Phil muttered, “We got to take care of this.” He went over to the man with the sideburns and, speaking quietly, said, “You know the cops on this beat, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And they know you.”

“I assume so.”

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” Phil said. “You’re going out where they can see you. Just walk across where they can see you, pick up a piece of paper off a desk or something, turn around and walk back here. On the way over, nod at them. You’d nod at them, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Fine. Nod at them.”

“Very well,” he said, and nodded. “Now?”

“Sure now.”

The man with the sideburns got to his feet, brushed the wrinkles out of his suit, adjusted his tie and glasses, cleared his throat, and took a step.

Phil said, “I didn’t threaten you.”

The man with the sideburns stopped, and looked back at Phil.

Phil gave him a grin, from under his mask. It scared even me, and I was on the guy’s side. “I don’t have to threaten you,” he said.