“I don’t know about puh-purlayed letters, whatever it is,” Dortmunder said. “But I do know about robbery. You don’t — when you knock over a bank, you don’t live in it after you knocked it over, you go away someplace else. I mean that’s just the way it’s done.”
Herman said, “But wait a minute, Dortmunder. We haven’t knocked it over yet. That goddam safe is giving me trouble. And if we stay here, we can hook into the electricity supply, I can use decent tools, I can really do a job on that mother — uh, on that safe.”
Dortmunder frowned, looking around the interior of the bank. “It makes me nervous to stay here,” he said. “That’s all I can tell you, maybe it means I’m old-fashioned, but it makes me nervous.”
May said, “It isn’t like you to give up. It just isn’t your style.”
Dortmunder scratched his head and looked around some more. “I know,” he said. “But this is not a traditional robbery. You go in, you get what you came for, you go away. You don’t set up housekeeping.”
“Just for one day,” Herman said. “Just till I get into that safe.”
Dortmunder kept scratching, then suddenly stopped and said, “What about connecting up? The electricity and the plumbing. When they do it, what if they have to come inside?”
“We don’t need the plumbing,” Murch’s Mom said.
“After a while we will.”
May said, “They have to connect it up; it’s the sanitary laws.”
“There you are,” Dortmunder said.
Herman said, “We’ll do it ourselves.”
Dortmunder looked at him with true annoyance. Everytime he’d safely relegated the idea to the Impossible shelf, somebody had to come along with another suggestion. He said, “What do you mean, do it ourselves?”
“Connect everything up,” Herman said. “You and me and Murch, we can do it ourselves right now. Then it’s all done, and when the manager comes around in the morning Mrs. Murch goes out, or May goes out, somebody, and we pay him off. And if he wants to know how come everything’s already connected up, we tell him we got in late at night, we didn’t want to disturb anybody, so we did it ourselves.”
May said, “You know, if we took this counter apart, and put this piece on top of that piece, and ran it across here, then you could open this door and somebody outside wouldn’t see anything strange at all. Just like a corridor in the trailer.”
Murch’s Mom said, “Down here, we could move this stuff out of the way, and take that chair and that chair and that table, and put them around this way like this, and then somebody could stand outside this door, too, and what would it be?”
“A disaster,” Dortmunder said.
“A breakfast nook,” Murch’s Mom said firmly.
“They can’t search every trailer on Long Island,” Herman said. “They may come around to the trailer parks, the cops —”
“You just know they will,” Dortmunder said.
“But they won’t be looking for a green trailer with Michigan license plates and curtains in the windows and a couple nice middle-aged ladies that answer the door.”
“And what if they say they want to come in?”
“Not now, Officer,” May said, “my sister’s just come out of the shower.”
“Who is it, Myrtle?” Murch’s Mom called in a high falsetto. “Just some police officers,” May called back, “wanting to know if we saw a bank go past here last night.”
Dortmunder said, “You two ladies could get accessory. You could wind up working in a state-pen laundry.”
“Federal pen,” Murch’s Mom said. “Bank robbery is a Federal rap.”
“We’re not worried,” May said. “We’ve got everything figured.”
“I can’t tell you,” Dortmunder said, “how many guys I met behind bars that said the exact same thing.”
Herman said, “Well, I’m going to stay, that’s all. That goddam safe is a challenge to me.”
“We’re all going to stay,” May said. She looked at Dortmunder. “Aren’t we?”
Dortmunder sighed.
“Somebody coming,” Herman said.
Murch’s Mom doused the flashlights, and the only illumination was the red glow of May’s cigarette. They heard the car approach, they saw its headlights flash by the windows. The engine stopped, the door opened and closed, and a few seconds later the bank door opened and Murch stuck his head in. “Set?” he called.
Dortmunder sighed again as Murch’s Mom switched the flashlights back on. “Come on in here, Stan,” Dortmunder said. “Let’s talk.”
24
Victor said:
“Steelyeyed Dortmunder surveyed his work. The wheels were under the very floor of the bank itself. Hungry, desperate men, their hat brims pulled low, his gang had worked with him beneath the shield of night to install those wheels, turning the innocent-appearing bank into an…
ENGINE OF GREED!
“I myself had been one of those men, as recounted in the earlier tale, Wheels of Terror! in this same series. And now, the final moment had come, the moment that had filled our every waking thought for all these days and weeks of preparation.
“‘This is the payoff,’ Dortmunder snarled softly. ‘Tonight we get the whole swag.’
“‘Right, boss,’ whispered Kelp eagerly, his scarred face twisting into a brutal smile.
“I repressed a shudder at that smile. If my companions but knew the truth about me, how that smile would alter its effect! I wouldn’t last long with this crew of desperate ruffians, if ever they penetrated my disguise. I was known to them as Lefty the Lip McGonigle, late of Sing Sing, a tough customer and no friend of the law. I had used the McGonigle monicker twice before, once to capture the evil Specter of the Drive-In! and once to invade the criminal-infested precincts of the dread Sing Sing itself, that time to solve the slaying of the stoolie Sad Sam Sassanack, in the adventure later related under the title Brutes Behind Bars!
“And now, I was Lefty the Lip yet again, in the course of my duty to my God and my Nation as –
SECRET AGENT J-7!
“None of Dortmunder’s hoods had ever seen my real face. None knew my real name. None knew the —”
“Victor?”
Victor leaped, dropping the microphone. Spinning around in his chair, he saw Stan Murch standing in the open bookcase, framed by the night behind him. Victor was so deeply into his story line by this time that he recoiled when he realized he was looking at one of Dortmunder’s men.
Murch took a step forward, his expression concerned. “Something the matter, Victor?”
“No no,” Victor said shakily, shaking his head. “You just — you just startled me,” he added lamely.
“Kelp told me this was where I’d probably find you,” Murch said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Yes, of course,” Victor said inanely. Looking down, he saw that the cassette was still running and switched it off. “This is where I am,” he said aimlessly.
“There’s been a problem at the bank,” Murch said. “We all got to assemble again.”
“Where?” Victor asked interrogatively.
“At the bank.”
“Yes, but where’s the bank?” Victor pursued puzzledly. He had last seen the bank in the high-school football field and didn’t know precisely where it would be kept for the rest of the night.
“You can follow me in your car,” Murch said. “You ready?”
“I suppose so,” Victor said uncertainly, looking around the garage. “But what’s gone wrong?” he asked belatedly.
“Herman says it’s a new kind of safe, it’ll take him all day to break into it.”
“All day!” Victor exploded, aghast. “But surely the police” — “We’re setting it up with a front,” Murch said. And then added, “We're in kind of a press for time, Victor, so if you could” — “Oh, of course!” Victor said abashedly. He leaped to his feet, then picked up the cassette and microphone and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. “Ready,” he announced earnestly.