Chapter 22
When I was sure the two Highway Patrolmen weren’t looking, I knocked on the door to the bank, then leaned against the building, eating my cotton candy.
I heard Elam’s voice say, “Things are gettin’ worse ain’t they, kid?”
“Well better isn’t the word.”
The cotton candy made an excellent cover for my talking to Elam. And it tasted pretty good, too. Trouble was I was wolfing it down. I was nervous.
Elam was saying, “What is this, some kind of celebration?”
“Founder’s Day. Centennial.”
“Yeah, yeah, I can just make out the banner over on that damn tent. Ain’t this a problem, though.”
“Elam.”
“Yeah, kid?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Not just yet, kid.”
“What’s stopping me?”
“Just a second. I’ll call Hopp over and let you ask him that.”
“Never mind. You make your point. What do you have in mind?”
“We’re comin’ out. Like I said before, we can’t exactly come outa here with a bag of money over our shoulder. Not at a time like this. So I figure we’ll leave the money inside for now.”
“Inside?”
“Right here in the bank. Can you think of a safer place? I’ll get the key to the front door from the manager, and we’ll just keep the bank locked up, for now.”
And before I could question the logic of that move, the door had eased shut again and I was alone with my cotton candy... and the high school band, concession stands, Highway Patrol...
A minute or so later Elam and Hopp strolled casually out of the bank, shutting the door (with its closed sign hanging in the window) behind them. Elam looked very cool. Hopp was a little wild-eyed, but probably not enough so to alert any innocent bystanders to anything unusual in his character. I had finished my cotton candy and didn’t know what to do with the paper cone the stuff had come wrapped around. I certainly didn’t want to throw it on the sidewalk, not with the cleanliness fetish this town had: getting busted for littering right now would’ve been less than ideal.
Elam gestured over toward the park, at the benches in front of the small bandshell. The only people in the park were the official types, their teenage helpers, and marching band members still taking five. Elam said, “Let’s go over there and sit down a minute and relax.”
That was a good idea. Relaxing was a terrific idea. I figured in a year maybe I would be able to relax again, but why not start trying now?
We picked our way through the marching band members who were standing and chatting and eating tacos and things in the street and sat on the bench in the first row in front of the bandshell, which was close enough to the edge of the street for the trees that surrounded the park to provide shade. So it was relatively cool there, in the shade, on those benches. Comfortable. Birdies were singing. Pretty shafts of sunlight came peeking through the shimmering green leaves of the trees. I thought I was going to barf.
And it wasn’t the cotton candy, either.
It was Elam and Hopp and this snowball that had caught me up on its way down the mountainside in the process of becoming an avalanche.
“Ya look kinda pasty, kid,” Elam said.
“Must be the cotton candy,” I said.
Elam was on my right. Hopp on my left. They began talking through me.
Hopp said, “So what’s the deal?”
Elam said, “We got to leave the money behind. For now.”
“For now?” Hopp asked.
“Right. We can’t stay around here much longer. This damn celebration, Flounder’s Day or whatever, is gonna bring some people into this town, and unless we want to spend all day mingling with the crowd, we better get outa here.”
“What about the money?” Hopp said.
“We’ll come back for it. After dark. After this Centennial thing shoots its wad and the sidewalks of this Podunk get rolled up proper. We just pull up to the bank, use our key to get back in, grab the money and run.”
“Can I say something?” I said.
Elam nodded. “But make it fast, kid.”
“Somebody’s going to miss those two bank employees. They’re bound to be missed. If you come back here later, there’ll be cops all over. Or a trap of some kind. That only makes sense. I think we should all get out and get away from here, while we can.”
“No,” Elam said. “That angle’s took care of. Before we left, we had both of them bank employees call and say they wouldn’t be home till late tonight. The girl was from Iowa City, single, twenty-four, lives with another girl who’s gonna be gone the rest of the weekend, anyway. The man is from here, but he called his daughter and told her he was called out of town on business for the rest of the day.”
“Oh,” I said.
“What now?” Hopp asked.
“We walk out to that farmhouse where Kitch’s goofy pal’s got that car waiting,” Elam said. “The important thing now is we do it before this celebration thing gets going full steam.”
All during this conversation I had been playing with the sticky paper cone from the cotton candy, twisting it around my fingers like a dunce cap that was too small for me. Now, as Elam was talking, telling Hopp we had to get out of here, I spotted a trash receptacle by a tree nearby, and got up to get rid of the paper cone. I tossed it in the can and, as I turned to rejoin Elam and Hopp, I saw something.
I saw that the park had filled up with people.
Behind where we’d been sitting, the benches were full. People were sitting quietly. Quiet as church.
I sat back down between Elam and Hopp, and said, “Uh, don’t look now, boys, but...”
Chapter 23
Hopp said, “We gotta get outa here.”
Elam said, whispering, “Cool it. Leave me think a second.”
Up on the bandshell one of the official types, a man, was fiddling with a centerstage microphone. He was tapping it, blowing into it, even talking into it, anything to try and see if it was on or not, while another official type, a woman, stood out front to see if anything was coming out of the speakers. Finally, in the middle of a sentence, the official type on the stage discovered the mike was now on. His embarrassment (the part of his sentence that came out over the mike was “... wrong with this silly thing?”) drew some titters from the crowd. Then the official type who’d been standing out front, the woman, hollered at one of the teenage helpers to adjust the amplifier, which apparently was off in the bushes somewhere. There followed some feedback and squeals and such until the microphone was adjusted properly.
What this meant, obviously, was that something official... a ceremony or presentation of some kind... was about to take place.
Elam, being no dummy, sensed this and said so.
Hopp said, “Let’s just get up and leave before whatever this is gets started.”
I said, “Good idea.”
Elam’s whisper turned harsh. “We’re in the front row, you dummies...we got to be careful. We got to wait for just the right moment.”
Hopp said, “The right moment is now.”
I said, “I agree.”
I figured the longer we waited, the more chance there was the show would get on the road before we could.
But Elam had his reasons for staying put. He jerked his thumb over toward the place where the park and the street met: the two Highway Patrolmen were standing there, with arms crossed. There was nothing in their faces to suggest they suspected us, or anybody, of anything. They looked bored, actually. Still, I could understand Elam’s hesitation for calling attention to ourselves by getting up and leaving from these front row seats, with the entire town of Wynning sitting and standing behind us.