At the other end of the scale, and the table, there was Billy Glinn, absentmindedly snapping chicken bones and crunching through his food as though he’d wind up by eating the plates. Jerry Bogentrodder became silly and giddy in Marian’s presence, coming on with her in the style of a collegian who has drunk too much at his first beer party. Max also came on with her, though both more subtly and more seriously; I was beginning to feel a bit ambivalent about that fellow.
As to the others, Phil and Joe spent most of the evening talking shop with one another: guns, alarms, lawyers, stolen goods. And Eddie Troyn kept popping in and out of his Captain Robinson persona-never in quite far enough to call me Lieutenant, but in enough for me to recognize the genial authoritarian style. And Bob Dombey, our host, was so clearly madly in love with his wife and his home, so patently proud of both, that the great warmth of his feeling filled the room with a kind of amber Dickensian glow.
Afterwards, Marian and I rode to her place in her Volkswagen, and she said, “I keep thinking it has to be a put- on. I know you’re a practical joker, and this is a whole elaborate rib. No way on Earth those people are crooks.”
“Oh, they’re crooks, all right,” I said. I hadn’t mentioned the bank robbery, or the stings by which the others supported themselves, and though I was tempted now I once more refrained. Even with Marian I didn’t feel that trust could be one hundred per cent.
“Some of them I can believe,” she said. “Like that monster Billy Whatsisname.”
“Glinn.”
“Right. And Eddie Troyn, your Army friend. He seems crazy enough to commit anything. And Max Nolan; I knew a long time ago he couldn’t be trusted.”
That made me feel better. “There,” I said. “That’s half of them already.”
“Bob Dombey,” she said. “That’s no more a criminal than Santa Claus.”
“You ought to meet Andy Butler,” I said. “You can’t tell a book by its cover, honey.”
“That’s catchy,” she said.
“Don’t be a smartass.”
“And Jerry Whatsisname,” she said. “What did he do, cheat in an exam?”
“He’s a burglar and an armed robber,” I said, “and a general strongarm man.” I considered telling her that between one and three of the men at that dinner party had recently voted to murder the both of us, but that too I thought was best kept to myself. And I wondered which of them it had been, and just how close a margin I was alive by.
Conversation flagged after that. We arrived at Marian’s, and in the bedroom I said, “Be sure to set the alarm for four-thirty. I have to get back to the prison.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think- I would have been better off going to Mexico with Sonny.”
“No you don’t,” I said, and a while later she said. “All right, I don’t.”
34
FRIDAY, JANUARY 14th, five days after the Dombey dinner party. Five o’clock in the afternoon. Once again I sat in the window booth at the luncheonette, staring in dulled terror toward the bank past Billy Glinn’s profile. Once again we were assembled here, Phil and Jerry and Billy and I, to rob that bank over there and that other bank over there, and this time so far as I could see we were going to do it. I kept praying for a miracle, such as that both banks would suddenly become swallowed by a hole in the ground, but no miracles were occurring. In half an hour the typewriter truck would arrive, with Joe and Eddie and the second typewriter Max had stolen for this operation, and we four would leave this table and walk across the street with our hands on the guns in our coat pockets, and we would rob those two banks.
Oh, God.
I had wanted to do something, I would have been willing to do something, but what was there to do? Another round of stink bombs would be a coincidence just too strong for somebody with the quick exasperated intelligence of a Phil Giffin to accept, and I did not want him thinking any more about practical jokers.
But what else was there? My mind seemed to work exclusively in the well-worn groove of practical jokes, and whenever I tried to come up with a scheme for thwarting the bank robbery it turned out to be no more than another practical joke. I was in the position of a man forbidden to operate within his specialty.
In fact, I had reached the stage now where my mind was teeming with nothing but practical jokes: jokes I’d done, jokes I’d heard of, tricks I’d pulled as a teenager and before. All sorts of foolish things. Phone somebody and ask if they’re on the bus line: “Yes, we are.”
“Well, you better get off, there’s a bus coming.” Hang up and giggle. Phone a tobacconist and ask, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Well, let him out, he’ll suffocate.”
Hang up and giggle. Call six cab companies and have them all send cabs to the same address, usually a disliked teacher. Hang up and giggle. Call-
It came to me. My head lifted, it was almost as though I’d heard the sudden faint ting of a bell. I looked at the luncheonette clock, and it was ten past five. Was there time? It had to happen before the truck got here, or we’d be worse off than ever.
I had to chance it. “I think I’ve got a nervous bladder,” I said. I had to say that because I’d already been to the men’s room twice in the past hour. Getting to my feet, I said, “I’ll be right back.”
'‘Right,” Phil said.
The rest rooms were at the back, through a door and down a corridor to the left. At the end of the same corridor were the two pay phones. I fumbled a dime out of my pocket, dropped it in one of the phones, and then realized I didn’t know the number. I hung up, got the dime back, found the phone book on a shelf underneath the phone, and looked up the Federal Fiduciary Trust. Got it.
“Fedrul Doucheeary.”
“The manager, please.”
“Who's calling please?”
“The man who planted the bombs in your bank,” I said. I looked over my shoulder, but the corridor was empty.
There was a tiny silence, and the female voice at the other end said, very quietly, “Would you say that again, sir?”
“You Establishment pigs are about to go up in smoke,” I said. “I’m calling from the Twelfth of July Movement, we’re the ones that made the raid on Camp Quattatunk, and we planted a couple bombs in that bank of yours this afternoon. They’re going off at five-thirty. We don’t kill people, just money and pig Establishment banks. So this is a friendly warning. Get your asses out of there before five-thirty.”
“One, uh, one moment, please.” She believed me; I could hear the jittering nervousness in her voice. “I’ll put you on hold,” she said.
A sudden vision came to me of the call being traced. “No, you won’t,” I said. “I gave you the word, so just heed what I said. Up the Revolution!” And I hung up.
I did have a nervous bladder. After a visit to the men’s room, I returned to the table and sat down and looked out at a perfectly quiet normal street scene. It was eighteen minutes past five. There was no one visible inside the bank except the guard, who was standing by the front door with his usual calm.
What the hell had happened to that girl? Maybe she hadn't believed me, after all. But how could she take such a chance?
Twenty after. Twenty-three after. Why wasn’t something happening?
“By God,” Phil said, “I believe it’s gonna work this time.”
“Me, too,” I said.
Twenty-five after. Twenty-six after.
Jerry said, “Here comes the truck.”
“He’s early!” I said, and I just couldn’t keep the protest out of my voice.
“Just as well,” Phil said. “We’ll go in and get the fucking thing over with before something else goes wrong.”