Dortmunder and Victor came along with him, and Dortmunder said to Victor, “Did Stan tell you the situation?”
“Sure. Herman’s having trouble getting the safe open, so we’re going to stay here for a while.”
Herman hunched his shoulders and glowered straight ahead, but said nothing.
As they were climbing up into the bank, Victor said, “That Stan really drives, doesn’t he?”
“That’s his job,” Dortmunder said, and Herman winced at that one, too.
“Boy,” Victor said. “You try to keep up with him boy.”
Inside the trailer, May and Murch’s Mom had set up a couple of flashlights on pieces of furniture so there was some light to work by and were now cleaning the place up a little.
“I think we’ve got a full deck of cards here,” Murch’s Mom told Dortmunder. “I just found the three of clubs over by the safe.”
“That’s fine,” Dortmunder said. He turned to Herman. “You want any help?”
“No!” Herman snapped, but a second later said, “I mean yes. Sure, of course.”
“Victor, you go with Herman.”
“Sure.”
May said to Dortmunder, “We need you to move some furniture.”
While Dortmunder went off to join the spring-cleaning brigade, Herman said to Victor, “I’ve made a decision.”
Victor looked alert.
“I am going,” Herman said, “to attack that safe by every method known to man. All at once.”
“Sure,” Victor said. “What should I do?”
“You,” Herman told him, “will turn the handle.”
26
“Frankly,” May said, the cigarette bobbing in the corner of her mouth, “I could make better coffee than this if I started with dirt.” She dropped a seven of hearts on the eight of diamonds Dortmunder had led.
“I took what they had,” Murch said. “It was the only place I could find open.” He carefully slid a five of diamonds under the seven of diamonds.
“I’m not blaming you,” May said. “I’m just commenting.”
Murch’s Mom put down her own coffee container, frowned at her hand and at last gave an elaborate sigh and said, “Oh, well.” She played the jack of diamonds and drew in the trick.
“Look out,” Murch said. “Mom’s shooting the moon.”
His mother gave him a dirty look. “Mom’s shooting the moon, Mom’s shooting the moon. You know so much. I had to take that trick.”
“That’s okay,” Murch said calmly. “I got stoppers.”
May was sitting by the partially open door of the trailer, where she could look out and see the blacktop street all the way down to the court entrance. It was now ten after seven in the morning and fully light. Half a dozen seedy cars had left here in the last half hour, as residents went off to work, but no one had as yet arrived to question this new trailer’s presence — neither a trailer-court manager nor the police.
While waiting, May and Murch’s Mom were running a rousing game of hearts in the pseudo-breakfast nook they’d set up by the door toward the front end of the trailer, farthest from the safe. Back at the other end, hidden behind a new floor-to-ceiling partition created from sections of counter, Herman was working away steadily at the safe, assisted by the men in groups of two. Kelp and Victor were back there with him now, while Dortmunder and Murch were sitting in at the card game. At eight o’clock, the men would switch.
So far, there had been two small crump sounds from the other side of the counter as Herman had tried minor explosions which had failed to accomplish anything, and occasionally there was the whir of a power tool or the buzz of a saw intermixed with the steady rasp of the circular drill, but up till now very little seemed to be happening. Ten minutes ago, when Dortmunder and Murch had finished their six-to-seven shift, May had asked them how things were going. “I won’t say he hasn’t made a dent in it,” Dortmunder had said. “He’s made a dent in it.” And he’d rubbed his shoulder, having spent most of the previous hour turning a handle in a large circle.
In the meantime, the bank had been made more livable and homelike. The electricity and bathroom were both working, the floor had been swept, the furniture rearranged and the curtains put up on the windows. It was only too bad the bank hadn’t come equipped with a kitchen; the hamburgers and doughnuts Murch had brought back from the all-night diner were almost edible, but the coffee was probably against the anti-pollution laws.
“Anything?” Dortmunder asked.
May had been gazing toward the street, thinking about kitchens and food and coffee. She switched her attention to Dortmunder and said, “No, I was just daydreaming.”
“You’re tired, that’s why,” Murch’s Mom said. “We all are, staying up all night. I’m not as young as I used to be.” She played the ace of diamonds.
“Ho ho,” her son said. “Not shooting the moon, huh?”
“I’m too clever for you,” she told him. “While you big-mouth, I get rid of all my dangerous winners.” She had taken her neck brace off, despite her son’s complaints, and was now hunched over her cards like a gambling squirrel.
“Here comes somebody,” May said.
Dortmunder said, “Law?”
“No. The manager, I think.”
A blue-and-white station wagon had just turned in at the entrance and stopped beside the small white-clapboard office shack. A smallish man in a dark suit got out of the car, and when May saw him start to unlock the office door she put down her cards and said, “That’s him. I’ll be back.”
Murch said, “Mom, put the brace on.”
“I will not.”
They still didn’t have steps for the trailer. May clambered awkwardly down to the ground, flipped a cigarette ember away from the corner of her mouth and lit a new one as she walked down the row to the office.
The man at the sloppy desk inside had the thin, nervous, dehydrated look of a reformed drunk — the look of a man who at any instant may go back to sleeping in alleys while clutching a pint bottle of port. He gave May a terrified stare and said, “Yes, Miss? Yes?”
“We’re moving in for a week,” May said. “I wanted to pay you.”
“A week? A trailer?” He seemed baffled by everything. Maybe it was just the early hour that was getting to him.
“That’s right,” May said. “How much is it for a week?”
“Twenty-seven fifty. Where’s the, uh, where do you have your trailer?”
“Back there on the right,” May said, pointing through the wall.
He frowned, bewildered. “I didn’t hear you drive in.”
“We came in last night.”
“Last night!” He leaped to his feet, knocking a pile of forms slithering from the desk to the floor. While May watched him in some amazement, he raced out the front door. She shook her head and stooped to pick up the fallen papers.
He was back a minute later, saying, “You’re right. I never even noticed it when I … Here, you don’t have to do that.”
“All done,” May said. Straightening, she put the pile of forms back on the desk, causing some sort of seismic disturbance, because another stack of papers promptly toppled off the desk on the other side.
“Leave them, leave them,” the nervous man said.
“I think I will.” May moved over to let him get back to his seat behind the desk, and then she sat in the room’s only other chair, facing him. “Anyway,” she said, “we want to stay for a week.”
“There’s some forms to fill out.” He started opening and slamming desk drawers, doing it far too rapidly to see anything inside them in the milliseconds when they were open. “While you’re doing that,” he said, opening and closing, opening and closing, “I’ll go hook up the utilities.”