The thing was, sometimes you had to go back to basics. Herman knew the most sophisticated ways to get into safes and vaults and had used them all at one time or another. The ELD, for instance, Electronic Listening Device; attach it to the front of the safe, put the earphones on and listen to the tumblers while you turn the combination. Or ways of putting just a little plastic explosive in two places at the edge of the door, where the hinges are on the inside, and then going next door and setting them off by radio signal and coming back to find the door lying on its face on the floor and not a sheet of paper wrinkled inside. Or — The padlock. He’d done it again. “Rrrrrrr,” Herman said.
“Here comes somebody.”
“That was me growling.”
“No. Headlights.” Kelp switched off the flashlight.
Herman looked around and saw the headlights turning in from the highway. “It can’t be Murch already,” he said.
“Well,” Kelp said doubtfully, “it is almost four o’clock.”
Herman stared at him. “Four o’clock? I’ve been at this, I’ve been here for …? Give me that light!”
“Well, we’re not sure it’s them yet.” The headlights were slowly approaching past the darkened trailers.
“I don’t need the goddam light,” Herman said, and while the headlights came up close enough to show the car behind them, and the car parked, and Murch got out, Herman picked the padlock by feel alone, and when Kelp next turned the flashlight on, Herman was putting his tools away. “It’s done,” he said.
“You got it!”
“Of course I got it.” Herman glared at him. “What do you sound so surprised for?”
“Well, I just… Uh, here’s Stan and Victor.”
But it was just Murch. He strolled over and gestured at the black box and said, “You get it open?”
“Listen,” Herman said angrily, “just because I’m having trouble with that safe …”
Murch looked startled. “I just wanted to know,” he said.
Kelp said, “Where’s Victor?”
“Here he comes now,” Murch said and gestured with his thumb toward the court entrance as another pair of headlights made the turn. “He really hangs well back,” Murch said. “I was surprised. I almost lost him a couple times.”
Dortmunder had come out of the bank and now walked over to say, “There’s a hell of a lot of talk out here. Let’s keep it down.”
“The padlock’s open,” Herman told him.
Dortmunder glanced at him and then looked at his watch. “That’s good,” he said. There was no expression in either his face or his voice.
“Look,” Herman said aggressively, but then didn’t have anything else to say and just stood there.
Victor came over, walking slightly lopsided and looking stunned. “Boy,” he said.
Dortmunder said, “Let’s go inside where we can talk. You boys be able to fix things up out here?”
Kelp and Murch would be doing the tie-in of power and water and sewer lines. Kelp said, “Sure, we’ll work it out.”
“You’ve got some bent pipes there,” Dortmunder said, “where we ripped them when we took the bank.”
“No problem,” Murch said. “I brought some pipe in the car. We’ll rig something up.”
“But quiet,” Dortmunder said.
“Sure,” Murch said.
The efficiency all around him was making Herman nervous. “I’m going in and work on that safe,” he said.
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.