Bank Shot (2 page)

Dortmunder lifted his head and looked around. The police car was a block behind them and slowing at last as it neared the house Dortmunder had come from.

Kelp was frowning at the rear-view mirror. ‘I wonder who they want,' he said.

‘Me,' Dortmunder said. His voice was a little shaky. ‘Now do you mind if we get away from here?'

2

Kelp drove along with one eye on the empty street ahead and one eye on the rear-view mirror showing the empty street behind. He was tense but alert. He said, ‘You should've told me sooner.'

‘I tried,' Dortmunder said. He was being sullen and grumpy in the corner.

‘You could've got us both in trouble,' Kelp said. The memory of the police car's siren was making him nervous, and nervousness made him talkative.

Dortmunder didn't say anything. Kelp took a quick glance at him and saw him brooding at the glove compartment, as though wondering if it had an ax in it. Kelp went back to watching the street and the rear-view mirror and said, ‘With that record of yours, you know, you get picked up for anything, you'll get life.'

‘Is that right?' Dortmunder said. He was really being very sour, even worse than usual.

Kelp drove one-handed for a minute while he got out his pack of Trues, shook one out, and put it between his lips. He extended the pack sideways, saying, ‘Cigarette?'

‘True? What the hell kind of brand is that?'

‘It's one of the new ones with the low nicotine and tars. Try it.'

‘I'll stick to Camels,' Dortmunder said, and out of the corner of his eye Kelp saw him pull a battered pack of them from his jacket pocket. ‘True,' Dortmunder grumbled. ‘I don't know what the hell kind of name that is for a cigarette.'

Kelp was stung. He said, ‘Well, what kind of name is Camel? True
means
something. What the hell does Camel mean?'

‘It means cigarettes,' Dortmunder said. ‘For years and years it means cigarettes. I see something called True, I figure right away it's a fake.'

‘Just because you've been working a con,' Kelp said, ‘you figure everybody else is too.'

‘That's right,' Dortmunder said.

Kelp could deal with anything at that point except being agreed with; not knowing where to go from there, he let the conversation lapse. Also, realising he was still holding the cigarette pack in his right hand, he tucked it away again in his shirt pocket.

Dortmunder said, ‘I thought you quit anyway.'

Kelp shrugged. ‘I started again.' He put both hands on the wheel while he negotiated a right turn onto Merrick Avenue, a major street with a good amount of traffic.

Dortmunder said, ‘I thought the cancer commercials on television scared you off.'

‘They did,' Kelp said. There were now cars both in front of him and behind him, but none of them contained police. ‘They don't show them any more,' he said. ‘They took the cigarette commercials off, and they took the cancer commercials off at the same time. So I went back.' Still watching the street, he reached out to press the lighter button in. Windshield washer fluid suddenly sprayed all over the glass in front of him, and he couldn't see a thing.

Dortmunder shouted, ‘What the hell are you doing?'

‘God
damn
it!' Kelp yelled and stomped on the brake. It was a power brake, and the car stopped on a dime and gave them change. ‘These American cars!' Kelp yelled, and something crashed into them from behind.

Dortmunder, peeling himself off the dashboard, said, ‘I suppose this is better than life imprisonment.'

Kelp had found the windshield wipers and now they started sweeping back and forth over the glass, flinging gobs of fluid left and right. ‘We're okay now,' Kelp said, and somebody knocked on the side window next to his left ear. He turned his head, and there was a heavyset guy in a topcoat out there, shouting. ‘Now what?' Kelp said. He found the button that would slide the power window down, pushed it, and the power window slid down. Now he could hear that the heavyset guy was shouting, ‘Look what you done to my car!'

Kelp looked out front, but there wasn't anything in front of him at all. Then he looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a car very close to him in the back.

The heavyset guy was shouting, ‘Come look! Come see for yourself!'

Kelp opened the car door and got out. A bronze Pinto was nuzzling the purple Toronado in the rear. Kelp said, ‘Well, for Christ's sake.'

‘Look what you done to my car!'

Kelp walked down to where the two cars met and studied the damage. Glass was broken, chrome was bent, and what looked like radiator fluid was making a green puddle on the blacktop.

‘I tell you,' the heavyset guy shouted, ‘to go ahead, just go ahead and look what you done to my car!'

Kelp shook his head. ‘Oh, no,' he said. ‘You hit me from the rear. I didn't do anything to –'

‘You jammed on your brakes! How'm I supposed to –'

‘Any insurance company in the world will tell you the driver in the back is the one who –'

‘You jammed on your – We'll see what the cops say!'

The cops. Kelp gave the heavyset guy a bland, unworried smile and started to walk around the Pinto, as though to inspect the damage on the other side. There was a row of stores on the right here, and he'd already spotted an alley between two of them.

On the way around the Pinto, Kelp glanced in and saw that the storage area in the back was full of open-top card-board cartons full of paperback books. About five or six titles, with dozens of copies of each title. One was called
Passion Doll
, another
Man Hungry
, another
Strange Affair.
The covers featured undressed girls. There were
Call Me Sinner
and
Off Limits
and
Apprentice Virgin.
Kelp paused.

The heavyset guy had been following him, ranting and raving, waving his arms around so that his topcoat flapped – imagine somebody wearing a topcoat on a day like this – but now he stopped when Kelp did, and his voice lowered, and in an almost normal tone of voice he said, ‘So what?'

Kelp stood looking in at the paperback books. ‘You were talking about the cops,' he said.

Other traffic was now having to detour around them. A woman in a Cadillac shouted as she went by, ‘Why don't you bums
get
off the road?'

‘I'm talking about
traffic
cops,' the heavyset guy said.

‘Whatever you're talking about,' Kelp said, ‘what you're gonna get is cops. And they're likely to care more about the back of your car than the front.'

‘The Supreme Court –'

‘I didn't figure we'd get the Supreme Court to come out for a traffic accident,' Kelp said. ‘What I figured, we'd probably get just local Suffolk County cops.'

‘I got a lawyer to handle that,' the heavyset guy said, but he didn't seem as sure of himself any more.

‘Also, you hit me from behind,' Kelp said. ‘Let's not leave that out of our calculations.'

The heavyset guy looked quickly all around, as though for an exit, and then looked at his watch. ‘I'm late for an appointment,' he said.

‘So am I,' said Kelp. ‘What I figure, what the hell, we've got the same amount of damage on each car. I'll pay for mine, you pay for yours. We put a claim in with the insurance company, they'll just up our rates.'

‘Or drop us,' the heavyset guy said. ‘That happened to me once already. If it wasn't for a guy my brother-in-law knew, I wouldn't have insurance right now.'

‘I know how it is,' Kelp said.

‘Those bastards'll rob you deaf, dumb and blind,' the heavyset guy said, ‘and then all of a sudden
boom
– they drop you.'

‘We're better off we don't have anything to do with them,' Kelp said.

‘Fine by me,' the heavyset guy said.

‘Well, I'll see you around,' Kelp said.

‘So long,' said the heavyset guy, but even as he said it he was starting to look puzzled, as though beginning to suspect he'd missed a station somewhere along the way.

Dortmunder wasn't in the car. Kelp shook his head as he put the Toronado in drive. ‘Oh, ye of little faith,' he said under his breath and drove off with a grinding of metal.

He didn't realise he'd carried the Pinto's front bumper away with him until two blocks later, when he started up from a traffic light and it fell off back there with one hell of a crash.

3

Dortmunder had walked three blocks along Merrick Avenue, swinging his almost-empty attaché case, when the purple Toronado pulled to the curb beside him again and Kelp shouted, ‘Hey, Dortmunder! Get in!'

Dortmunder leaned down to look through the open right-side window. ‘I'll take the train,' he said. ‘Thanks, anyway.' He straightened and walked on.

The Toronado shot past him, went down a line of parked cars and pulled in by a fire hydrant. Kelp jumped out, ran around the car and met Dortmunder on the sidewalk. ‘Listen,' he said.

‘Things have been very quiet,' Dortmunder told him. ‘I want to keep it that way.'

‘Is it my fault that guy ran into me in the back?'

‘Have you seen the back of that car?' Dortmunder asked him. He nodded at the Toronado, which he was even then walking past.

Kelp fell into step beside him. ‘What do I care?' he said. ‘It's not mine.'

‘It's a mess,' Dortmunder said.

‘Listen,' Kelp said. ‘Don't you want to know what I was looking for you for?'

‘No,' Dortmunder said. He kept walking.

‘Where the hell you walking to, anyway?'

‘That railroad station down there.'

‘I'll drive you.'

‘You sure will,' Dortmunder said. He kept walking.

‘Listen,' Kelp said. ‘You've been waiting for a big one, am I right?'

‘Not again,' Dortmunder said.

‘Will you listen? You don't want to spend the rest of your life peddling encyclopedias around the Eastern Seaboard, do you?'

Dortmunder said nothing. He kept walking.

‘Well, do you?'

Dortmunder kept walking.

‘Dortmunder,' Kelp said, ‘I swear and vow I have the goods. This time I have a guaranteed winner. A score so big you can retire for maybe three years. Maybe even four.'

‘The last time you came to me with a score,' Dortmunder said, ‘it took five jobs to get it, and even when I got it I didn't have anything.' He kept walking.

‘Is that my fault? Luck ran against us, that's all. The idea of the caper was first-rate, you got to admit that yourself. Will you for Christ's sake stop walking?'

Dortmunder kept walking.

Kelp ran around in front of him and trotted backward for a while. ‘All I'm asking,' he said, ‘is that you listen to it and come look at it. You know I trust your judgment; if you say it's no good I won't argue for a minute.'

‘You're gonna fall over that Pekingese,' Dortmunder said.

Kelp stopped running backward, turned around, glared back at the woman who owned the Pekingese, and reverted to walking frontward, on Dortmunder's left. ‘I think we been friends long enough,' he said, ‘that I can ask you as a personal favor just to give me a listen, just to give the job a look-see.'

Dortmunder stopped on the sidewalk and gave Kelp a heavy look. ‘We been friends long enough,' he said, ‘that I know if you come up with a job, there's something wrong with it.'

‘That isn't fair.'

‘I never said it was.'

Dortmunder was about to start walking when Kelp quickly said, ‘Anyway, it isn't my caper. You know about my nephew Victor?'

‘No.'

‘The ex-F.B.I. man? I never told you about him?'

Dortmunder looked at him. ‘You have a nephew who's an F.B.I, man?'

‘
Ex
-F.B.I. man. He quit.'

‘He quit,' Dortmunder echoed.

‘Or maybe they fired him,' Kelp said. ‘It was some argument about a secret handshake.'

‘Kelp, I'm gonna miss my train.'

‘I'm not making this up,' Kelp said. ‘Don't blame me, for Christ's sake. Victor kept sending in these memos how the F.B.I. ought to have a secret handshake, so the agents could tell each other at parties and like that, and they never went for it. So either he quit or they fired him, something like that.'

‘This is the guy that came up with the caper?'

‘Look, he was
in
the F.B.I., he passed the tests and everything, he isn't a nut. He's got a college education and everything.'

‘But he wanted them to have a secret handshake.'

‘Nobody's perfect,' Kelp said reasonably. ‘Hey, listen, will you come meet him, listen to him? You'll like Victor. He's a nice guy. And I tell you the score is guaranteed beautiful.'

‘May's waiting for me to come home,' Dortmunder said. He could feel himself weakening.

‘I'll give you the dime,' Kelp said. ‘Come on, whadaya say?'

‘I'm making a mistake,' Dortmunder said, ‘that's what I say.' He turned around and started walking back. After a second, Kelp caught up with him again, smiling cheerfully, and they walked back together.

The Toronado had a ticket on it.

4

‘Everybody freeze,' Victor snarled. ‘This is a stickup.'

He pushed the stop button on the cassette recorder, re-wound, and played it back. ‘Everybody freeze,' the cassette snarled. ‘This is a stickup.'

Victor smiled, put the recorder down on his work table, and picked up both other recorders. All three were small, about the size of a tourist's camera. Into one of them Victor said, in a high-pitched voice, ‘You can't do this!' Then he played that from one recorder into the other, at the same time giving a falsetto ‘Eeek!' the scream and the high-pitched remark were then played back from recorder number three to recorder number two, while in a deep voice Victor said, ‘Look out, boys, they've got guns!' Gradually, working back and forth between the recorders, he built up an agitated crowd response to the stickup announcement, and when he was satisfied with it he recorded it onto the first cassette.