Secco turned around.
“We’re coming into town-Furia, the woman, Bibby, me-at twelve noon on the dot. There’s to be nobody in the bank, John. Nobody, and I mean that. Have Wally Bagshott leave the bank’s master key to the boxes on the table outside the vault along with the key to the vault.”
“How are you going to open the box without the box-holder’s key?” Secco asked almost absently. “You bringing dynamite?”
“I found Goldie’s key.”
Secco blinked.
“You’re to clear the Green, John, the whole area. I don’t want anybody or anything on the Green or the side streets, no cars, no trucks, no pedestrians, no shoppers. The stores along Main and along Grange down to Freight Street are to be locked and the salespeople sent home. The offices upstairs in the bank building are to be closed and vacated. You got that?”
“Yes,” Secco said.
“Wait, I’m still not through. To make sure there’s no interference I want your men and the troopers to line up around the bank, including the parking lot. But without weapons, John. Repeat: unarmed. They’re to let us go in, get the money out of the vault, and get out and away. What you choose to do after that is on your own conscience. And John?”
“Yes?”
“You can conceal weapons, you can try throwing tear gas into the bank, there are any number of ways you can stop us. But if that’s in your mind I want you to remember: If you don’t do just what I said, Barbara and I die first. Furia won’t let me carry a weapon, he doesn’t trust me. So I’ll be helpless. The Vorshek woman will be outside with Barbara waiting and believe me, John, at the first sign of anything wrong she’ll kill her, she’s worked up a real hate for me because I found the key on her and proved to Furia she was the one stole the payroll from him. They may shoot us anyway after we get clear, like you said. That would be on my head, John. But if you try to queer this, or let the troopers, you’ll be as guilty of our deaths as if you pulled the trigger yourself.
“Okay, John, that’s it.”
Whatever John Secco was thinking-of his responsibilities, of his affections, of victory or defeat as a man and a law officer-the sun on his face did not reflect it.
He raised his arm to the trees.
“You men. We’re leaving.”
Tuesday
The Payoff
“He’s gone off his trolley,” Russ Fairhouse said. “There ain’t, isn’t any precedent for a fool stunt like this, Mrs. Malone. Can’t you do something to stop him?”
“What would you suggest?” Ellen said.
They were in the First Selectman’s office at a front window diagonally across the Green from the bank. Town hall employees were crowded in other windows peering through the vanes of the Venetian blinds. It’s like the last scene in that ghastly movie On the Beach where there’s nothing left on the main street but blowing papers. Ellen had never seen the Green so depopulated, even early Sunday mornings or Saturday nights a half hour after the movies let out. Not a soul but that cordon of state troopers around the bank and they were statues not a muscle moving they didn’t look alive. He’s got to keep his word, John you’ve got to.
“How would I know?” Selectman Fairhouse said. He was a big man running to lard with beautiful hands, he got a manicure once a week at Dotty’s Beauty Salon after hours by special appointment. “All I know is this is not right, Mrs. Malone. It ain’t legal or… hell, it ain’t moral!”
“Neither is a gangster taking a little girl and threatening to kill her.”
“But there are other ways-”
“What ways?”
“Then you approve of your husband’s action?” Fairhouse asked huffily. “I remind you, Mrs. Malone, he’s a paid employee of this town, supposed to be an officer of the law to boot. It makes the whole town look bad!”
“Approve?” Ellen said. “I’ll approve of anything that gets my baby back. Thank God for my husband is what I say. And you can take your town and you know what you can do with it.”
“He’ll go to jail for this!” the selectman said. “If he doesn’t get killed by that hood first.”
She could almost hear him add and I hope he does.
“Would you please let me alone?”
Fairhouse started to say something, changed his mind, stalked back to his desk, sat down, and viciously ripped the end off a cigar. Who wants this headache anyway. Next election they can wish it on somebody else. A lousy town cop to pull a stunt like this. It will whammy the whole administration. It’s all John Secco’s fault. The roof falls in about this and over the hill with you my friend.
Ellen was grateful for his retirement. Her brain was as busy as the Green was empty. You can’t believe your own eyes sometimes, a person finds that out. Those buildings across the Green looked like falsefronts, the whole thing was taking place on a Hollywood back lot. All it needs are a camera and a director and there they come to the background music of the noon whistle from the firehouse.
The black Chrysler sedan went past the town hall at fifteen slow-motion miles an hour.
Ellen got up on her toes and strained.
The blonde woman sat in the rear wearing the Goldilocks mask. There was just the tip of Barbara’s blue hat showing she must have my baby down on the seat oh Bibby Mama’s here. The little monster was in the front seat at the right he had a gun to the head of the driver so the driver must be Loney yes it was she could never mistake the set of his shoulders. Loney was wearing the Baby Bear mask and Furia was wearing the Papa Bear mask. What are they all wearing masks for? It must be that monster’s idea of a rib, a thumb-nose at the fuzz.
I don’t care.
Just let them be safe afterward.
The Chrysler turned left at the corner.
The Chrysler turned left and rolled to a stop on Grange just past the corner of Main, headed the wrong way on the oneway street. Papa Bear got out on the curb side and waved the Colt Trooper, he had the Walther automatic in his left hand and the hunting rifle under his left arm. He was wearing his gloves. The pockets of his Brooks Brothers suit bulged with boxes of ammunition and Malone’s belt with its picket fence of cartridges was strapped about his waist over the jacket.
A sigh like an afternoon breeze off the river went through the troopers. Papa Bear glanced at them and raised the Colt to point into the car. Driver’s seat. The breeze died.
“Okay, Malone.”
Baby Bear opened the driver’s door and slid dutifully out from behind the wheel. He came round the hood of the Chrysler and stopped a yard away from Papa Bear, glancing into the car and saying something reassuring to the child.
Papa Bear waved the Colt again and Goldilocks got out on the sidewalk, she pushed the child ahead of her without letting go, then she shut the car door and backed against it. Immediately she went into a half squat with her left arm about the little girl. In this way she was protected by the body of the car from a rear attack and by the body of the child from a frontal attack. She gripped Furia’s switchblade with the point just touching the child’s throat, it made the slightest dent in the white flesh. Not for the perfidious Lady Goldie this time the gun from the royal arsenal. But the knife would serve nicely as a substitute, every trooper eye said.
The child was in shock or they had fed her a sedative. Her lids kept drooping as she tried to keep her father in focus. The mask he was wearing seemed to confuse her.
Papa Bear looked around. He was in no hurry. His camera eye swiveled the full 360° of emptiness like a panoramic shot. It paused briefly one after another at the empty holsters of the troopers.
When he was through with the inspection he said, “Turn around.” The angle of his masked head jeered at everything.
Baby Bear turned. Papa Bear stepped up to him and touched the muzzle of the revolver to his spine at the third vertebra.