“I make it appendicitis, sir. There’s really no danger in that.”
The captain shook his head. “It’s just not my style, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m a man who faces reality.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I tell you this, Lieutenant. This day will end. It can’t go on forever. This day will come to an end. Some day it will.”
“Yes, sir.”
Conversation lagged for a while after that. Even with the twelve coffees and Danish the Lieutenant had given away, there had still been three sets for each man in the mobile headquarters. They hadn’t drunk all the coffee, but they’d eaten all the Danish and were now feeling somnolent and sluggish. The driver fell into a deep sleep, the captain napped, and the lieutenant kept dropping off and then waking up again with a start. The radio man never quite lost consciousness, though he did take his shoes off and rest his head against the window and hold his microphone slackly in his lap.
The morning passed slowly, with undiminished rain and no positive news in any of the infrequent crackling radio contacts from headquarters. Noontime came and went, and the afternoon began heavily to row past, and by two o’clock they were all feeling restless and cramped and irritable and uncomfortable. Their mouths tasted bad, their feet had swollen, their underwear chafed, and it had been hours since any of them had relieved themselves.
Finally, at ten past two, the captain grunted and shifted position and said, “Enough is enough.”
The other three tried to look alert.
“We’re not accomplishing anything out here,” the captain said. “We’re not mobile, we’re not in contact with anybody, we’re not getting anywhere. Driver, take us back to headquarters.”
“Yes, sir!”
As the car started forward, the lieutenant looked out at the diner one last time and wondered if the thing would actually stay in business long enough for him to get that free cheeseburger. He was sorry for the people trying to run the place, but somehow he doubted it.
29
“There they go!” Victor shouted.
“At goddam last,” said Murch’s Mom and started at once undoing the straps on her neck brace.
Dortmunder had been sitting at the table with May, practicing holding his hands together as if he had the cuffs on. Now he cocked an eye toward Victor and said, “You sure they’re leaving?”
“Gone,” Victor said. “Absolutely gone. Made a U-turn out there by the sign and took off.”
“And about time,” May said. The floor around the chair where she was sitting was littered with tiny cigarette ends.
Dortmunder sighed. When he got to his feet his bones creaked; he felt old and stiff and achy all over. He shook his head, thought of adding a comment, and decided just to let it go.
The last four hours had been hell. And yet, when he and Kelp had first seen this spot, it had seemed like a special dispensation from Heaven. The big sign out by the road, the empty gravel parking lot, and a blank space where the diner should be; who could ask for anything more? They’d rushed back to the Wanderlust Trailer Park, where Murch already had the bank attached to the horse van, and quickly they’d brought the whole kit and caboodle over here, except for the stolen station wagon, which they’d left in somebody’s driveway along the way. Victor and Kelp had gone a block or so ahead in the Packard, to watch out for cops, and Murch had followed with the horse van and the bank — his Mom and May riding with him in the cab of the van, Dortmunder and Herman back in the bank. They’d gotten here with no trouble, positioned the bank, parked the van and the Packard out of sight behind it, and gone back to business as usual, the only changes being that Herman had to use battery-operated power tools again and the hearts game had been resumed by flashlight. Also, the rainwater drenching down the metal skin of the bank quickly chilled the interior, and made everybody feel a little stiff and rheumatic. But it hadn’t been terrible, and they’d mostly been in a pretty good mood — even Herman, who had regained his belief in his ability to get into any safe, if given sufficient time.
And then the cops had arrived. Kelp had seen them first, glancing out the window and saying, “Look! Law!”
The rest of them had crowded to the windows and stared out at the police car parked out by the sign. May had said, “What are they going to do? Are they onto us?”
“No.” That had been Victor, always ready with an opinion based on his experiences with the other side of the law. “They’re just on patrol,” he’d said. “If they were interested in us, they’d handle the situation differently.”
“Like — surround the place,” Dortmunder had suggested.
“Exactly.”
Then the one cop had gotten out of the car and come over, and it had turned out their cover was working. Still, it was hard to concentrate with that damn police car everlastingly parked outside the bank you’d just stolen, and the hearts game had finally just dwindled away and stopped. Everybody had sat around, irritable and nervous, and every five minutes or so somebody would ask Victor, “What the hell are they doing out there?” Or “When are they going to go away, for the love of God?” And Victor would shake his head and say, “I just don’t know. I’m baffled.”
When the other police cars started showing up, one and two at a time, the whole crew inside the bank began to bounce around as agitated as kittens in a sack “What are they doing” everybody asked, and Victor kept saying, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
It later turned out, of course, that the other cars had all been delivering orders of coffee and Danish. When Dortmunder had finally come to that understanding, he’d told the others and added, “which means they’re as loused up as we are which gives me hope.”
Still, the time had passed slowly. The extra coffee and 9 Danish they were given by the cops helped a lot — they were all getting pretty cold and hungry by then — but as the hours went by they all began to see themselves either starving or freezing to death, trapped in this stupid bank forever by a bunch of cops who didn’t even know they were in the same county.
Also, Herman was restricted in the attacks he could make on the safe while the police car was parked out front The grinding on the circular hole could continue, but things like explosions had to wait. This made Herman fretful, and he tended to pace back and forth from one end of the bank to the other and snarl at people.
Then there was the business of the neck brace. Murch carried on so much about it that his Mom finally agreed to wear it as long as the police car was out front, but she was supposed to be testy while her head was propped up by the thing, so that made two soreheads prowling around, which didn’t help matters any.
And then, all at once, they left. No reason, no explanation, their departure as abrupt and senseless as their arrival, they up and went. And suddenly everybody was smiling, even Murch’s Mom, who had flung the neck brace into the farthest corner of the bank.
“Now,” Herman said. “Now I get to try what I’ve wanted to do for the last two hours. Longer. Since before noon.”
Dortmunder was walking around in a figure eight, moving his shoulders and elbows, trying to loosen up. “What’s that?” he said.
“That circular groove,” Herman told him. “I think we’ve got it deep enough now, so if I pack the groove with plastic explosive, it just might pop it out of there.”
“Then let’s do it,” Dortmunder said. “Before the Health Department comes around to inspect the kitchen and the bread man starts making deliveries, let’s do it and get the hell out of here.”
“This’ll be a bigger explosion than before,” Herman warned. “I want you to know that.”