Carella had not seen him.
But the Deaf Man’s appearance on the sidewalk was the signal for Roger and Danny to start their car and head for the teller’s window, which they did now with frightening alacrity. Similarly, it was the signal for Florence to move her car across the mouth of the bank’s driveway, and the Deaf Man was dismayed to see that she had learned her job only too well, and was proceeding to perform it with all possible haste. Carella was talking to the bank guard, who looked extremely puzzled, as well he might when presented with two detectives in the space of fifteen minutes, each of whom claimed to be the same person. The Deaf Man figured the jig was up. He did what any sensible master criminal would have done in the same situation. He got the hell out of there, fast.
A lot of things happened in the next few minutes.
Following the guard to the manager’s office, Carella heard glass shattering on his right. He turned and saw a man smashing the car teller’s window with a sledge hammer. He did what any sensible crack detective would have done in the same situation. He drew his revolver and fired at the man, and then ran to the counter and fired across it at a second man, sitting in the driver’s seat of a car outside the window. In that instant a third man came running out of the manager’s office carrying two sacks of cash. The bank guard, thinking he had somehow lived through all of this before, in the not-too-distant past, nonetheless drew his own pistol and began firing at the man with the cash, whom he had previously met as Detective Carella; it was all very confusing. He hit the vault door, he hit the door to Mr. Alton’s office, and he also hit Mr. Warshaw, the assistant manager, in the right arm. But he did not hit the man carrying the sacks of cash. The man dropped one sack, pulled a pistol from his coat pocket, and began spraying the center aisle with bullets. He leaped the counter, and was heading for the broken teller’s window when Carella shot him in the leg. He whirled and, dragging himself toward the window, fired at Carella, shoved the frightened car teller out of his way, and attempted to climb through the broken glass to where one of his colleagues lay dead at the wheel of the car. Carella felled him with his second shot, and then leaped the counter himself and rushed to the broken window. The man who had smashed it with the sledge hammer was badly wounded and trying to crawl up the driveway to where a car engine suddenly started. Carella leaned out and fired at the car as it pulled away, tires screeching. One of the lady tellers screamed. A uniformed policeman rushed into the bank and starting firing at Carella, who yelled, “I’m a cop!” And then the bank was swarming with policemen from the 86th and private security officers, all of them answering the alarm for the second time that day. Two blocks away from the bank, the lady driving the getaway car ran a traffic light and was stopped by a patrolman. She tried to shoot him with a.22 caliber revolver she pulled from her purse, so the patrolman hit her with his nightstick and clapped her into handcuffs.
Her name was Florence Barrows.
Florence had once told the Deaf Man that she’d never met a man she could trust and didn’t expect anyone to trust her, either.
She told the detectives everything she knew.
“His name is Taubman,” she said, “and we had our meetings in a room at the Hotel Remington. Room 604. I’d never met him before he contacted me for the caper, and I don’t know anything else about him.”
This time, they had him.
They didn’t expect to find anybody at the Hotel Remington, and they didn’t. But now, at least, they had a name for him. They began going through all the city directories, encouraged by the scarcity of Taubmans, determined to track down each and every one of them until they got their man — even if it took forever.
It did not take nearly that long.
Detective Schmitt of the 86th Squad called while they were still going through the directories and compiling a list of Taubmans.
“Hey, how about that?” he said to Carella. “Son of a bitch really did try to bring it off at eleven, huh?”
“He sure did,” Carella said.
“I understand he got away, though,” Schmitt said.
“Yeah, but we’ve got a lead.”
“Oh? What’ve you got?”
“His name.”
“Great. Has he got a record?”
“We’re checking that with the I.S. right this minute.”
“Good, good. Is it a common name?”
“Only eleven of them in the Isola directory. Five in Calm’s Point. We’re checking the others now.”
“What’s the name?” Schmitt asked.
“Taubman.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Carella said. There had been a curious lilt to Schmitt’s voice just then, a mixture of incredulity and mirth. “Why?” Carella asked at once.
“Didn’t you say the guy was deaf?”
“Yes, I did. What...?”
“Because, you know... I guess you know... or maybe you don’t.”
“What?”
“It’s German. Taubman.”
“So?”
“It means the deaf man. ‘Der taube mann.’ That means ‘the deaf man’ in German.”
“I see,” Carella said.
“Yeah,” Schmitt said.
“Thank you,” Carella said.
“Don’t mention it,” Schmitt said, and hung up.
Carella put the phone back onto its cradle and decided to become a fireman.