Richard Stark
The Sour Lemon Score (1969)
ONE
One
Parker put the revolver away and looked out the windshield. The bank was half a block away along the sunny street. Andrews hadn’t come out yet.
Next to Parker the driver, a man named George Uhl, rubbed his palms on the steering wheel and said, “What’s taking him so long? Where is he?” It was a cool day, the temperature around seventy, but there was sweat on his forehead.
From the back seat Benny Weiss leaned forward and put a hand on Uhl’s shoulder, saying, “Take it easy, George. Phil knows what he’s doing; he’s a good man. He’s got to be sure nobody sees him do it, that’s all.”
Uhl nodded rapidly. “I’m just worried about the armored car,” he said. “It’ll be here and gone— “
“No, it won’t, George. We’ve got a good five minutes. Relax, boy. Phil’s a good man.”
Parker listened to them, gauging them from the conversation. If Uhl was going to fall apart the whole operation was out the window. When Andrews came out of the bank they’d just turn around and drive away.
George Uhl was the only one Parker had never worked with before. A fairly young man of about thirty, tall and very thin and with receding black hair, he was Weiss’s man, brought in and guaranteed by Benny, and that was why he worked so hard now to soothe Uhl and keep him calm.
Benny Weiss himself was always calm. A short man, stocky, his clothing generally as rumpled as if he’d just taken a crosscountry bus trip, he’d been in this line of work thirty years now and was as excitable as a tailor facing a ripped seam. Parker had worked with him a few times over the years, and Weiss had always been solid, dependable and sure.
Still, Uhl was going to have to support his own weight. He was the driver and he had to be reliable. It had happened more than once in the world that a driver had gotten spooked and taken off in the middle of a job, leaving the rest of the string to dangle on a sidewalk someplace, loot in their hands and nowhere to go. So Parker listened to the other two talk, and considered scratching this entry right now.
Benny Weiss said, “Here he comes, George.” He patted Uhl’s shoulder. “See? Everything’s okay.”
“I see him,” Uhl said. He sounded sullen, as though mad at himself for having gotten edgy. “I’m okay, Benny,” he said.
“Sure you are,” Weiss said.
Parker looked out through the windshield at Phil Andrews walking down the sidewalk toward the car. With the red wig and the sunglasses on, he was hard to recognize even when you knew it was him. Parker had watched him make himself up at the farm before they left, and it had been a good job, a subtle changing of the planes and textures of his face, using theatrical makeup in addition to the wig. When he’d finished he’d turned to Parker, grinning slightly, and said, “Meet my friend the bank robber.” Because it was the face he put on before every job.
Phil Andrews was younger than Benny Weiss but had been a pro fifteen years at least, and the strange thing about him was that he’d never taken a fall. He’d never even been picked up on suspicion. The pro who never fell at all was the rarest of rare birds, and the reactions of other pros to Phil’s streak took two extremes. There were those who wanted him in on every job they did, considering him good luck and a guarantee of safety for everybody else involved, which he wasn’t; and there were those who refused to work with him on the grounds that he was overdue for a fall, the law of averages was going to have to catch up with him someday. As for himself, Parker didn’t believe in luck, good or bad. He believed in nothing but men who knew their job and did it, and Phil Andrews was one of those.
He got into the car now, sliding into the back seat beside Benny Weiss, saying, “All set.” He was the only one in any kind of disguise. The others all had prints and pictures on file and warrants out against them under one name or another. Being connected to one job more or less wouldn’t make that much difference if they ever did get picked up.
Parker turned sideways in the seat, facing Uhl, so he could see everybody. “The question is,” he said, “is George going to spook?”
Uhl looked at him in astonishment. “Me? Why?”
Weiss said,”Parker, of course not. George is okay.”
Andrews said “What’s wrong?”
Parker told him, “George was being nervous.”
Uhl said, “You aren’t nervous?”
“My face is dry,” Parker said.
Uhl’s hand went to his wet forehead. “I sweat a lot,” he said. “It don’t mean anything.”
Weiss said, “Parker, a case of the jitters ahead of time, that’s only natural. I get butterflies myself.”
“I don’t want to come out of that bank,” Parker said, “and find no car.”
Uhl said angrily, “What are you talking about? You think I’m an amateur, for the love of God? I’ve driven half a dozen times. I drove for Matt Rosenstein — you think he’d take a chance on somebody? You come out of that bank, I’ll be right out front. Right in front of the armoured car, where we said.”
Parker turned and looked at Andrews. Phil was studying Uhl’s face. He met Parker’s eye and shrugged. “It’s just stage fright,” he said. “I think he’s probably okay.”
Uhl gave him a belligerent grin. “I wouldn’t want to bust your string,” he said.
Andrews looked at him without humour. “That’s right,” he said. “You wouldn’t.”
Parker said, “Here it comes.”
They looked out of the window and saw the dark blue armored car roll by. It pulled into the “No Parking” space in front of the bank, and two men got out of the cab.
Andrews said, “If we’re going to do it, I’ve got to move.”
Parker nodded. “Go ahead,” he said.
Two Parker was the last one into the bank. Andrews had gone first, getting out of the car again and walking down to the bank, going in just as two men in suits and with clipboards came out of the bank to meet the men from the armored car. They’d conferred out in the sunlight a minute, studying their clipboards, and then all four went inside again.
That was when Weiss moved. Getting out of the car, he clutched Parker’s shoulder and muttered in his ear, “George is okay.” Parker just nodded, and Weiss got out, shut the door, and went away to the bank, getting there just as the two uniformed armored-car guards came back out of the bank. There was a little mix-up at the door, and then Weiss was in and the guards were out. They went over and knocked on the rear door of the armored car.
Parker and the others had cased this one for three weeks and they knew the system cold by now. The coins went in first, in gray canvas sacks. The olive-green strongbox went last, carrying paper.
He watched the guard inside the armored car hand out the sacks of coins to the two outside. One of the men with the clipboards had hurried out after them and stood beside them now, pencil poised, checking things off.
The grenade was on the seat between Parker and Uhl. Parker patted it and said, “You remember how this works?”
“I’m all right now,” Uhl said irritably. “I had a touch of the jitters. It never happened to you?”
“Never,” Parker said. He opened the door and got out of the car and walked down to the bank. The guards had carried the coins in now, escorted by the man with the clipboard, and the guard inside the armored car had locked his door again.
Parker went into the bank. Weiss was standing at one of the counters on the left wall, making out a deposit slip. Andrews was talking to the lone bank officer at the desks on the right, asking him about traveler’s checks. There was nobody at the state lottery window in the far corner.
The guards came out of the vault area empty-handed, followed by the man with the clipboard. They walked past Parker and went outside again.
Three tellers’ windows were open, two regular and the lottery window, all with female tellers. Two more female employees were at the calculating machines in back. Beside the clipboard men — one in the vault, the other outside with the armored car — and the bank officer to whom Andrews was talking, the only other male employee was the bank guard, an elderly man with a puffed-up pigeon chest and a dark blue uniform full of fold creases. His wife had ironed the shirt and folded it and put it away in a drawer, so when he took it out and put it on it had a checkerboard of creases all over it.