Стивен Хантер - G-Man

“She has a point there, Les,” said J.P.

And even Les had to admit, she has a point there.

“Besides,” said Helen, “this’ll be fun.”

As it turned out, Les, who was very brave in a gunfight, was not very good sitting in a grove of trees while his wife robbed a bank. It was the next day. They had stayed the night in Texas, sleeping in the car, driven back across the bridge, and J.P. and Helen had each moseyed into the bank, saw it had a standard layout, with two tellers’ cages, a small administrative area, a corner office for Mr. Big, and a vault in the rear, opened sharply at 10 a.m. and closed at 4 p.m. The money in the tellers’ cages did in fact appear to be quite green, even if there wasn’t much of it, and the few customers were sad old farmers, mostly coming in to pay off loans or explain why they couldn’t.

“It’ll be easy,” Helen trilled on the ride back.

“It should be easy,” said Les glumly. “This sort of thing can go haywire on the tiniest screwup. A customer walks in at the wrong time. An old lady screams. The cop decides to take his coffee break an hour early. It can’t be predicted. That’s why you got to be ready to improvise on a moment’s notice and hope you can do it right. Why, I remember—”

“Okay, honey, we will be on our toes, won’t we, John Paul?”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Bonnie Parker,” said J.P., and they both laughed. But Les didn’t.

They figured mid-afternoon, guessing the sheriff’s deputies would mostly be out in the country on patrol, while the old man himself snoozed off too much lunch in his corner office, and if there was a sheriff around, he’d most likely be snoozing too, in one of his own cells.

They dropped Les at the station at 2 and he went in and bought a chicken salad sandwich the owner’s wife sold, wrapped in waxed paper, a nice cold Coca-Cola out of a machine that suspended various soft drinks in a tub of very cold water, and a newspaper, the Dallas Times Herald , and sat at the picnic table as his wife and friend disappeared.

The time dragged. He forced himself to eat slow, to make the sandwich last, but no matter how long he dragged it out, it was gone, as was the Coca-Cola, by 2:30. Agh, now what? How many times can you read a sports page? How much further can the Cubs fall behind? How many more stupid picture shows can come in? How long can the Division crow about getting Dillinger? All these dramas were revisited in the pages of the Dallas newspaper, and after he’d read all the stories he wanted to, and all that he sort of wanted to, and even a few that he didn’t want to read at all, there was no sign of anybody. But, at the same time, it wasn’t as if Texas cops had raced to the bridge to seal it off, knowing a robbery had taken place.

He checked his watch and saw that it was now well after 3, getting on to 3:30, and now and then a car, more likely a truck, once even a tractor, ambled along and crossed over into the Lone Star State. He could feel his stomach knotting up, clouds of heartburn gas rising through his gorge, inflaming that which they touched, and his mouth and nose were dry, so that the air felt raw and harsh as it went into or out of these orifices.

Where were they?

What the hell was happening?

He bought another drink, but because of the stern architecture of the soda-pop bin, couldn’t get a Coca-Cola out, as other brands blocked them in the racks. He had to settle for a cherry pop, which was way too acidic and only made his various pipes burn more fiercely. He’d sweated through his collar and his Panama hat band, and it occurred to him to loosen his tie, but there were some things he just could not do. Meanwhile, the .45 lolling in leather under his sweaty armpit seemed to grow heavier and heavier.

The geezer who owned the station came out and they chatted a bit, Les claiming to be a haberdashery salesman breaking in a new man on his route before moving himself to a bigger route, and the old fellow listened with no interest in his old gray eyes. His name was McIvens, he was from downstate, his people had always been cow people, but up here you hardly ever saw a cow, it mostly being just small-plot farming. Without the highway here, the whole county would dry up and blow away. Everybody had a story, the story was always sad, but it was the Depression.

Then Les caught a flash of motion as another car emerged from the woods and headed at a brisk pace to the bridge.

In another second, it revealed itself to be a State Police car.

The first problem was the sheriff. He decided not to take his nap in a cell but to park across from the bank, enjoy a pipeful, and perhaps think of better days. Like most country folk, he was content to just be. He sat there motionless, not particularly observant but not asleep either.

“He sure isn’t waiting for a robbery,” said J.P. “He’d have his shotgun out and there’d be boys all up and down the street. It’s just this one old fella waiting for the clock to move but in no particular rush.”

“We can’t just sit here,” said Helen. “Let’s take a drive or something.”

So off they went, a half hour back into Arkansas, then the same half hour back to Mavis. There was the sheriff, still sitting.

“Maybe he’s counting crows,” said J.P.

“Well, then, how about some ice cream?”

“Sounds good to me.”

So they walked back along Main Street and found the drugstore, and it turned out that Helen didn’t feel like ice cream, so she got a Green River at the soda counter and J.P. got a chocolate phosphate. They sat next to the big Coca-Cola dispenser, all red, with the white script of trademark big across it.

“I feel like a traitor to Coca-Cola,” Helen said.

“I do too, but I’ve had so many in my time, I don’t think the Coca-Cola people will hold it against me.”

“They may be keeping track,” Helen said. “They’re everywhere.”

At that point, the sheriff’s car, visible through the window, pulled out of town.

“Well,” said J.P., “looks like we’re up to bat.”

“Let’s go, Mr. Barrow.”

They ambled across Main Street, waiting to let a farmer, with two colored men riding in the back of his truck, pass by. He waved at them, as did the two colored men, showing off fine American hospitality, and J.P. touched his hat brim in response.

The two entered the bank, and Helen pulled her Bonnie-like bucket hat low across her forehead, then inserted a cheroot between her pretty lips. She sure wasn’t going to smoke the awful thing, just as she knew Bonnie hadn’t in the famous picture, but it made her feel all the more Bonnie-like. With the black stockings added to the hat and the cheroot, she thought she looked the role. Looking up, now fully Bonnie Parker, she saw that one of the tellers’ cages was closed and that three people waited in line for the other.

“Okay,” said J.P., slipping his hand inside his suit coat to remove his .45, “let me do the talking. You just—”

“HANDS UP!” screamed Helen, pulling a large .45 Colt revolver from her purse. “This here is a robbery!”

It was amazing! Helen, so quiet and cute her whole life, was suddenly transformed into a demon of energy and command by the liberating surge she felt in stepping beyond the wall.

“Ladies, hands up, dump those purses. Teller, you reach for the sky or I’ll shoot you between the lenses of your glasses. Everybody else, freeze, reach, and pray I don’t lose my temper.”

J.P. did a double take, even as, for emphasis, Helen used her left thumb to ease back the hammer on the big revolver in her right hand, the ominous click of its new position filling the stunned, silent air.

“Clyde, get the cash, and fast!”

“Yes, Miss Bonnie,” said J.P., remembering the Bonnie and Clyde gag, and he dipped beyond the counter, went to the teller’s cage as he unfurled a flour bag from his pocket. He quickly dumped the bills in the bag, then turned to a fellow in a three-piece suit sitting deskbound, hands up.