Little Ed gaped at the General, admiration mixing with the amazement on his face.
Bobby wasn’t nearly so impressed.
“On TV the bank robbers always get away from the scene of the crime as fast as they can,” he objected.
The General was scornful. “I seen that too. But if you’ll remember, the cops are always chasing right in behind them with their sirens on and lights flashing, the crooks run themselves into a roadblock, and the rest is commercials.”
With a dramatic jerk, the General raised his left wrist in front of his nose and watched the second hand sweep around the dial for several minutes. “Now, men. synchronize your watches. I’ll count down from ten and when I get to zero it will be 0800 hours. Ten... nine... eight...”
Little Ed shook his watch to make sure it was running and pulled out the stem, turning the big hand forward two minutes.
“...three... two... one. Blast off!”
“You were going to say zero,” Bobby reminded him.
“It don’t matter none, Bobby,” Little Ed assured him, anxious to get going so he would have plenty of time to find the right car. “I got the time. Let’s start cruisin’ for those wheels.”
An hour and a half later. Little Ed pulled into position ‘Y,’ the supermarket parking lot. He noted with satisfaction that the fuel gauge still registered two needles above the full mark. This time the General wasn’t going to be able to find one thing wrong with the car.
Bobby parked beside him and the General disappeared with his shopping bag.
Minutes later he reappeared. “I got the plates,” he whispered loudly. “You guys shield me while I make the switch.”
They were running well ahead of schedule when they got to North Park Mall. “All right, Bobby — you steal the other plates,” the General ordered. “And, damn it, make sure they’re odd. This is an odd day, remember — we don’t want no hassle when we get up to the gas pump.”
“Right, General,” Bobby said.
He was back by a quarter after ten with the plates. “What we going to do until one o’clock. General?” he wanted to know. “Sit in a car that’s all kinds of hot?”
The General looked momentarily confused. “Well... uh... that’s part of the strategy. We separate and shop around like we don’t know each other. I’ll go to a radio shop and get them to show me one of those jobs with the police bands so we can reconnoiter the enemy. Then we meet back here at twelve thirty-five hundred hours on the dot.” He got out and sauntered casually toward the entrance of the shopping mall.
Bobby looked at Little Ed. “I suppose it’s too early for a beer.”
“I don’t think the General would like us drinking on the job.” Little Ed slid out of the car. “See you around.”
Little Ed had shopped with Bobby before and always lost him by the second aisle — but this time, when they were trying to avoid each other, every store he went into Bobby was the first guy he saw. Finally they settled down together and had some enchiladas with draft beer to wash it down. “After all,” Bobby pointed out, “we ain’t robbed the bank yet.”
When they got back to the car, the General was waiting impatiently. “It is twelve thirty-eight hundred hours,” he grumbled.
“No sweat,” Bobby said, ignoring the perspiration dripping from the General’s chin. “We’ll make it in plenty of time.”
The bank job went down smoother than anything they’d seen on TV. They skinned off their ski masks and threw them in the back seat with the loot as Little Ed turned into the alley. There Bobby and the General switched plates and they were pulling into line for gas before they heard the first siren.
As two police cars whipped by with their rhythmic hoots, the General slapped Bobby and Little Ed on their backs. “What d I tell you?” he crowed exuberantly. “Strategy! They never gave us a second glance.”
By then they were sandwiched in, the car behind practically crawling over their rear bumper and three more back of that. As the minutes crept by and police cars continued to scream past them, Little Ed began to worry. Being trapped in a long line of cars, all sitting on empty and forcing every inch of progress, didn’t seem quite as brilliant as it had earlier.
“How much did we get?” he asked, trying to distract his thoughts from the idea that BANK ROBBER was printed on his forehead and any second someone was going to point at him, yelling for the cops.
“I didn’t take the time to count,” the General drawled. “Do you think we should drag it out and let everybody get a peek?”
“No!” Little Ed’s legs started to shake and he was having trouble holding his foot steady on the brake. The car ahead moved up and the car behind honked. He jerked, his foot slipped off the brake onto the accelerator, and the car jumped like a rabbit. He managed to get his foot back on the brake just in time to avoid hooking bumpers and the car rocked alarmingly before hunkering down on its shocks.
“Blast it!” Bobby yelled. “All we need is to hit somebody with cops all over the place! Can’t you be more careful?”
The more Little Ed tried to control the twitching in his leg muscles, the more he shook. The General told him to put it in Park so they could switch drivers, and took over the wheel himself.
When they got to the pumps, the gas jockey said, “Fill it up?”
The General nodded.
“Say, ain’t you the guys who come in for gas yesterday? The ones with the wrong number on your tags?”
The General looked up, opened and then closed his mouth, unable to find anything to say.
“But you don’t work here,” Little Ed managed to protest. “You work down the street.”
The guy nodded. “Work there mornings, here afternoons. None of these stations got enough gas to pump all day. But it’s O.K. You got the right kind of number on your plates today. Different car though.”
The General found his voice. “Just fill it up! Unleaded, like before.”
“Sure, fella.”
Whistling cheerfully, he pulled off the gas cap, stuck in the nozzle, and started the pump. Then he walked back. “I guess I was pretty hard on you guys yesterday. We have to take a lot of bull, you know — people hollering about phony shortages and stuff. Hell, we can’t do nothin’ about it, and sometimes my temper gets a little short. Just to show there’s no hard feelings I’ll check under the hood and wash your windshield.”
Before the General could assure him he didn’t expect any special treatment, the attendant was raising the hood. Just then the pump cut off and the guy’s head came up like he’d been shot.
“What the hell!” he yelled. “That’s less than three bucks, Mister! You think this is some kind of game? There’s a six-dollar minimum. All them other cars sittin’ on Empty and you take up space in the line!” His shout reached a full block. “These guys — first they come in odd when they’re supposed to be even, next they top off their tank when it ain’t a quarter empty! It’s guys like them that cause all the trouble!”
Little Ed looked back at the mob forming behind them and wondered where the little old lady with the silvery blue hair had found the rope she was knotting into a noose.
“Let’s get out of here,” he pleaded, but it was too late. A police car pulled in, blocking them at the pump.