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Hang on Bibby baby!

“We’ll take no chances, Wes,” Chief Secco was saying rapidly as he helped Malone into Furia’s clothes. “He fired three shots into Tom Howland, he fired three quick shots at Sergeant Lombard this morning and another three into Hinch, three quick shots one and two-three seem to be his style, so I’ll do it the same, three quick shots one and two-three in here when you’re ready. When this Goldie sees you in Furia’s getup running out of the bank after the shots like with the money-I’ve got a canvas bag for you stuffed with newspaper-she’s got to think Furia killed you in here, which he damn well might have. So it’ll ring true to her. Throw the fake money bag at her, over her head, she’s a greedy one, she’ll let go of Barbara and make a grab for it. Then all you have to do is snatch Barbara up and we’re home free.”

“The troopers, they’ll think I’m Furia-”

“No, they won’t. They won’t interfere till you’ve got Barbara in your arms. Then they’ll jump the woman. The troopers have their orders about this, they know my plan, they’re carrying concealed weapons. It’ll be rough on Ellen, Wes, she’s watching from Fairhouse’s office, I did my best but I couldn’t keep her away, for a few minutes she’s going to think you’re shot. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it’s going to have to be. It’s got to look right.” He yanked Furia’s arms around to his back and snapped handcuffs on the slim wrists. “Just so our hood friend doesn’t come to and spoil it. Let me look at you.”

Malone adjusted the Papa Bear mask.

“You’ll make it. All set?”

He nodded and they left the vault. Malone slapped the Walther into his holster and picked up his Colt Trooper, welcome home. Secco went into a drawer of the desk and dug out a fat canvas bag. Malone took it.

“We go,” Malone said in his old voice, and he sprinted for the door.

The man in the Brooks Brothers suit and the Papa Bear mask burst out of the bank and raced down the steps. He had the revolver in his gloved right hand and a bulging canvas bank bag in his left. He ran bent over, almost double.

The troopers did not move.

Papa Bear tossed the canvas bag at Goldilocks. She flung up an arm in an instinctive grab but the bag sailed over her head into the rear seat of the Chrysler and she yanked the door open and scrambled in clutching for it.

Malone scooped up his child and the troopers came un-glued. Six of them leaped up the steps of the bank and vanished. The rest swarmed over the car. Each man had materialized a hand gun, Malone did not know from where and he did not care. He was too busy making a fuss over Barbara and wondering why she was shrinking from him, he had forgotten that he was wearing the Papa Bear mask. “It’s all right, baby, it’s me, daddy, don’t you remember?”-a stupid thing to say but it was a time for stupidities like that, at least Barbara seemed to think so. At the familiar voice she stopped staring the unbelieving stare he had come to dread and made a pleased sound and slipped her arms about his neck and laid her head on his shoulder as she always did when he carried her up to bed.

Goldie Vorshek was staring at him just as Barbara had, unbelievingly, but as if she could not trust her ears.

She put up no resistance when they took Furia’s switchblade away from her. But when they pulled her out of the Chrysler and reached for the still-closed money bag Goldie hugged it to her breast with both arms like a little girl protecting her dollie and tried to kick and knee every trooper within range. She had two of them writhing on the sidewalk before she was subdued.

Malone watched her capture like the Great Stone Face.

She’s the one fed a nine-year-old the booze.

I hope you burn.

That was when the Rams’ defensive line hit him.

Ellen tore her child from his grasp as he staggered and transferred Bibby to the other arm and with her small fist dealt him a blow on the chest that landed like a sledge. Before he could yelp uncle she closed in on him again and made a vicious swipe at his mask. The mask ripped and it fell apart.

“Loney?”

She began to cry.

“It’s all right for heaven’s sake,” Malone said peevishly, “I forgot about the mask. Wait till I catch my breath. You hit like Rosey Grier.”

“I made you bleed blood Ellen wept, “I’ve got to cut my nails. Let’s go into Sampson’s and get it cleaned. Oh, hell, they’re closed, aren’t they? I left my purse in the town hall like an idiot. Don’t you have a hanky? What are you doing in the monster’s clothes, you look ridiculous. When I saw you run out like that… in his mask… How did you do it, Loney? It was wonderful. Was it John’s idea? I’ll bet it was John’s idea. Oh, there’s John, it was. But you were wonderful too, Loney… “

“And don’t call me Loney!” Malone shouted. “I don’t like that goddam name! I never liked it!”

“Why, Loney, I mean-Wes? You never told me.”

“I’m telling you now! I hate it.”

“Yes, Loney, I mean… Bibby darling, it’s all right. Mama and daddy aren’t fighting.”

She mothered her child while he stripped off the fragments of Papa Bear mask and threw them away in disgust. He felt around in Furia’s pockets until he located a handkerchief. It looked antiseptically clean. For some reason this riled Malone. He applied the handkerchief to his wound still churned up.

After John Secco came the troopers, out of the bank, bringing Furia. Blood was still coming down Furia’s face and he was stumbling along like a robot with a gasket missing, they had to half carry him. His underwear was too big for him and his hairy shanks and bandylegs were pimpled with cold. A trooper came running up with something that looked like a horse blanket and threw it around him. Furia clutched it to him, shivering. His bugged eyes passed over Malone, Ellen, Barbara without recognition, it was Goldie Vorshek they were hunting. They located her in the grip of three troopers in the Chrysler and in a flash he became Man-Mountain Furia, hero of his dreams, too-big underwear, skinniness, goose pimples and all, in a last struggle for status. He kicked and bit and butted and threw himself from side to side with troopers hanging on to his arms and legs, spinning out an endless line of dirty words, the spin whirled up to a screech, it was laughable and somehow sad, too. A trooper finally ended his nonsense with a well-placed sap and they pushed a cooled-off bad man into a state police car, threw the blanket in after him, and sped off. Another police car pulled up and they transferred a sullen Goldie Vorshek to it and then they were gone, too, along with Chief Secco, who gave the Malones a neighborly wave.

Leaving Mr. and Mrs. Wesley Malone and daughter on the empty corner of the empty street facing the empty Green. It never looked so empty, not even when the film stopped cold.

But then Wallace L. Bagshott creeps through the entrance to the upper floor of the bank building into the lobby, he’s been hiding upstairs in Judge Trudeau’s law office. He peers out at the Malones, shakes his head, hurries into his bank, and locks the doors. He’s headed straight for the bottle of Canadian Club parked in the bottom drawer of his desk that he thinks nobody knows about.

Jerry Sampson opens the doors of his drug store and sticks his head out timidly. He’s been hiding behind his prescription counter. He waves over at the Malone family and then wipes his balding head as though it were an August day.

Arthur McArthur Sanford in his Nehru jacket and oriental carpet slippers reopens the stationery and book store, he keeps a running stock of at least three dozen books on display behind an amber translucency, Arthur is a one-man committee to push culture in New Bradford and not getting very far.