Макс Коллинз - Shoot the Moon (and more)

“Really? You sure covered it well, Wheat.”

“Maybe, but all I know is one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not ever gonna get involved with those guys in anything again, without first knowing the stakes.”

Which is one of the smartest things I ever heard Wheat say.

I only wish one of us had been listening.

Elam and Hopp returned from the kitchenette and took their places on their semi-circle couch and faced us. Hopp tried to smile. He didn’t show any teeth. I never saw any of Hopp’s teeth in my life. But he did try to smile, I’ll give him that much. It came off as a fold in the fabric of his face, which was better than a gash, I guess. Elam’s smile was sinisterly unsinister, if you can follow that. Or maybe I was just getting paranoid.

Judge for yourself.

Elam said, “Let me tell you about a little town a few hundred miles from here. In this little town is a little bank. The bank is really just a sort of store-front operation, small, single room. A branch office of a bank from another, little bit larger town nearby. You’d think in such a small town, with less than a thousand people, the bank wouldn’t keep much cash in its vault. You’d be wrong. Because this little town has nearly a dozen businesses. Of course the business district, if you can call it that, isn’t much... one city block, on one side of the street... a little grocery store, an appliance store, a tavern... and you know it’s a little town if there’s only one tavern! The other side of the street is taken up by a filling station that’s next to, or I guess is part of, a repair shop that does more farm machinery repair than auto, and sells farm machinery too. On the north edge of town there’s another filling station, with a cafe. Between the filling station and where that little business district I told you about starts is a grain elevator, a lumber yard and two feed stores. On the other side of the little business district is a Shell oil storage depot, with all kinds of trucks that make all kinds of deliveries in the area. And what that all adds up to is that for a little branch office bank in a little bump-in-the-road town, that bank has some pre -tty heavyweight depositers. Maybe ten, fifteen thousand in that vault, on a weekend. Watched over by a staff numbering two. A manager, and a teller. Ten, maybe fifteen thousand dollars, and two employees lookin’ after it. I tell ya, it’s a crime.”

That was what I was afraid it was.

And I said, “I know what you’re leading up to, and I won’t be part of it. I am not... we are not... no matter how you threaten us... going to take part in robbing a bank.”

“Robbing a bank!” Wheat said. “What bank? Is that what he’s talking about? Robbing a bank? My mom’d die.”

“You might keep her company,” Hopp said, forgetting about trying to smile.

“Hey, now, everybody hold on a second,” Elam said. “I’m not asking you boys to help Hopp and me rob that bank. Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” I asked.

“What, do you think I’m crazy? Do you think I’d take a couple of college kid amateurs on a heist? You boys don’t exactly impress me as a pair that holds up well under pressure. I like the people I work a job with to be a little less high strung than you two.”

“Then why,” I asked, “are you telling us about this bank that’s begging to be robbed?”

“Robbing that bank’ll take four men. It could be done with three, but four’s better. Two guys who’ve worked with Hopp and me before are gonna be getting out of the Ft. Madison, Iowa, state pen in two weeks. We’re gonna do the job with them. But first I got some preliminary work to do. I only got a, you know, fleeting glimpse of this little town, when Hopp and me passed through there one time after knocking off another bank in that same area. I kicked myself in the butt when I saw that little branch bank and all those damn businesses, hell. We’d just got something like six thousand from a bank three times as big, in a town big enough to have cops, and here maybe fifteen thousand was sitting, unguarded.”

Wheat said, “You mean some towns are so small they don’t even have a cop?”

“Some towns are so small,” Elam said, “they don’t even have a whore. So, anyway, I got preliminary work to do. Got to go in that town, in that bank, look things over.”

“Case the joint, huh?” Wheat said.

“Case the joint,” Hopp muttered.

“Yeah, right, kid,” Elam said. “Except even more than that. See, I like having a trial run of a job before I actually pull it. It’s a rule of mine. And that’s where you come in, boys.”

“No,” I said, “it’s where I go out. Wheat, too.”

“Now listen to me,” Elam coaxed. “Just hear me out. All I want you boys to do is fill in for those two friends of ours, who are in the pen and aren’t handy for the run-through.”

“Yeah, Kitch,” Wheat said. “It’s just a sort of dress rehearsal.”

“Dress rehearsal,” Hopp muttered.

“That’s right, kid,” Elam said, “you got the right idea. You just stick to the script I give you, and, well, pretend it’s an actual robbery. Otherwise I won’t be able to get a good idea of how the real robbery’ll go.”

“I won’t be part of it,” I said. “Of a robbery or a trial run or anything.”

Elam unbuttoned his jacket.

“I don’t care,” I said. “Threaten all you want. I don’t even think you have a gun under your arm, how do you like that? You just got out of jail. How could you have a gun? I’m too good a poker player to be bluffed, pal. So just run along. Just forget about it and go. Wheat and me will have no part of your bank robbery or anything else.”

Elam opened his jacket a little, as if he was warm and wanted to cool off. The metal of the gun butt caught some of the light of the dying sun from the window behind me and reflected.

I reflected, too. And after reflecting I said, “It’s not like you were asking us to be part of, uh, actually robbing the bank, I mean, it’s just a run-through, after all...”

I wouldn’t have got in that car if I’d known it was stolen.

But I thought it was just a car. Just a car Elam and Hopp had arrived in at the lake cottage yesterday. Had I been thinking, and not just operating on automatic pilot, it would have occurred to me that Elam and Hopp had just got out of jail, and this car — a brand-new yellow Mustang — was a model that had not been on sale when Elam and Hopp went into jail a year ago, that had come on the market while they were inside, and since they were broke they couldn’t have bought it yesterday, so of course it was stolen, what else could it be but stolen?

Only none of that occurred to me till I sat in the stolen car in Wynning, Iowa, in front of the Wynning branch office of the nearby Lone Tree bank, at nine o’clock in the morning, waiting for Elam and Hopp to come out.

We had come down from Wisconsin in a two-car caravan, Wheat and me in the copper-color Volks, following Elam and Hopp in the yellow Mustang. I could have made a break for it, I suppose. I probably should have. I think the reason I didn’t was Hopp was turned around in the rider’s seat of the Mustang up ahead of us, staring at us the whole time with a look so full of meanness Peter Lorre could have learned something from it.

Wheat was in a talkative mood, but I wasn’t listening. He was alternating between excitement about our forthcoming adventure, and panic about said adventure’s illegality; but he never got to the hand-waving and my-mom’ll-kill-me stage, so I didn’t try to calm him down or even bother entering into conversation with him. I just drove. I had that crystal-clear, wide-awake feeling you can only have when you haven’t had any sleep for twenty-four hours; you are past being tired, and feel you are alert. You feel you are alert the way a drunk feels he’s witty.