“Is she here?” Wheat said, round-eyed. “Where? Where?”
I said, “It’s Wheaty’s car. It’s in his mom’s name, that’s all.”
Hopp said, “I don’t give a damn whose car it is, we’ll take it back and sell it.”
Elam said, “Ha! That thing isn’t worth five hundred.”
“It is so!” Wheat said, and I shushed him.
“Maybe,” Hopp said, and began what was the closest thing to a speech I ever heard come from those thin, menacing lips, “we could go rent a U-haul truck and back it up to this place and haul everything away. There’s no neighbor on either side. It’ll be dark soon. Some of this stuff looks like antiques to me. And the kitchen appliances and all would help. What do you think?”
What I thought was that the Nizers would feel we had somewhat taken advantage of their hospitality, if we aided Elam and Hopp in looting their lake home, but I had the good sense not to say anything.
Wheat didn’t.
He said, “That’d be stealing!”
Everybody looked at him. Hopp especially.
He said, “But if you guys think it would be best, well...”
Elam said, “No. This antique stuff is a pain in the butt getting fenced. For all the work it’d take emptying this place, we’d come up with peanuts. And some of these lake areas are patrolled pretty regular, ’cause there’s a lot of vandalism and burglaries in any area where you got homes that aren’t in use all the time, cottages like this one, that only get used on good weather weekends. No. Bad idea.”
“You got a better one?” Hopp said.
“Better isn’t the word.” Elam said, and his sinister smile returned. “Winning,” he said, as if it were a magic word.
“Winning?” Hopp said. “That’d take three men, at least!”
Elam nodded toward us.
Hopp got this skeptical look on his face.
Elam said, pleasantly, “How would you boys like to work out what you owe us?”
Wheat and I exchanged a worried look. We had thought, from the way the conversation had drifted, that Elam and Hopp (or anyway, Elam) had accepted the concept of our not owing them anything except $15 each.
I said, “I won’t be involved in anything illegal.”
“Me either,” Wheat said. “Streaking’s where I draw the line.”
Elam blew air out of his cheeks, thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said. “I got to talk to Hopp alone for a minute. We’re gonna go over there a minute and then we’ll be right back. Okay?”
We nodded.
Then they were over whispering in the kitchenette, and Wheat said, “I got to go to the bathroom.”
“Join the club.”
“What do you think they’re talking about?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.”
“Maybe you didn’t realize it, Kitch, but I was scared crapless through all of that.”
“Really? You sure covered it well, Wheat.”
“Maybe, but all I know is one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not ever gonna get involved with those guys in anything again, without first knowing the stakes.”
Which is one of the smartest things I ever heard Wheat say.
I only wish one of us had been listening.
Chapter 17
Elam and Hopp returned from the kitchenette and took their places on their semi-circle couch and faced us. Hopp tried to smile. He didn’t show any teeth. I never saw any of Hopp’s teeth in my life. But he did try to smile, I’ll give him that much. It came off as a fold in the fabric of his face, which was better than a gash, I guess. Elam’s smile was sinisterly unsinister, if you can follow that. Or maybe I was just getting paranoid.
Judge for yourself.
Elam said, “Let me tell you about a little town a few hundred miles from here. In this little town is a little bank. The bank is really just a sort of store-front operation, small, single room. A branch office of a bank from another, little bit larger town nearby. You’d think in such a small town, with less than a thousand people, the bank wouldn’t keep much cash in its vault. You’d be wrong. Because this little town has nearly a dozen businesses. Of course the business district, if you can call it that, isn’t much... one city block, on one side of the street... a little grocery store, an appliance store, a tavern... and you know it’s a little town if there’s only one tavern! The other side of the street is taken up by a filling station that’s next to, or I guess is part of, a repair shop that does more farm machinery repair than auto, and sells farm machinery too. On the north edge of town there’s another filling station, with a cafe. Between the filling station and where that little business district I told you about starts is a grain elevator, a lumber yard and two feed stores. On the other side of the little business district is a Shell oil storage depot, with all kinds of trucks that make all kinds of deliveries in the area. And what that all adds up to is that for a little branch office bank in a little bump-in-the-road town, that bank has some pre-tty heavyweight depositers. Maybe ten, fifteen thousand in that vault, on a weekend. Watched over by a staff numbering two. A manager, and a teller. Ten, maybe fifteen thousand dollars, and two employees lookin’ after it. I tell ya, it’s a crime.”
That was what I was afraid it was.
And I said, “I know what you’re leading up to, and I won’t be part of it. I am not... we are not... no matter how you threaten us... going to take part in robbing a bank.”
“Robbing a bank!” Wheat said. “What bank? Is that what he’s talking about? Robbing a bank? My mom’d die.”
“You might keep her company,” Hopp said, forgetting about trying to smile.
“Hey, now, everybody hold on a second,” Elam said. “I’m not asking you boys to help Hopp and me rob that bank. Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” I asked.
“What, do you think I’m crazy? Do you think I’d take a couple of college kid amateurs on a heist? You boys don’t exactly impress me as a pair that holds up well under pressure. I like the people I work a job with to be a little less high strung than you two.”
“Then why,” I asked, “are you telling us about this bank that’s begging to be robbed?”
“Robbing that bank’ll take four men. It could be done with three, but four’s better. Two guys who’ve worked with Hopp and me before are gonna be getting out of the Ft. Madison, Iowa, state pen in two weeks. We’re gonna do the job with them. But first I got some preliminary work to do. I only got a, you know, fleeting glimpse of this little town, when Hopp and me passed through there one time after knocking off another bank in that same area. I kicked myself in the butt when I saw that little branch bank and all those damn businesses, hell. We’d just got something like six thousand from a bank three times as big, in a town big enough to have cops, and here maybe fifteen thousand was sitting, unguarded.”
Wheat said, “You mean some towns are so small they don’t even have a cop?”
“Some towns are so small,” Elam said, “they don’t even have a whore. So, anyway, I got preliminary work to do. Got to go in that town, in that bank, look things over.”
“Case the joint, huh?” Wheat said.
“Case the joint,” Hopp muttered.
“Yeah, right, kid,” Elam said. “Except even more than that. See, I like having a trial run of a job before I actually pull it. It’s a rule of mine. And that’s where you come in, boys.”
“No,” I said, “it’s where I go out. Wheat, too.”
“Now listen to me,” Elam coaxed. “Just hear me out. All I want you boys to do is fill in for those two friends of ours, who are in the pen and aren’t handy for the run-through.”
“Yeah, Kitch,” Wheat said. “It’s just a sort of dress rehearsal.”