“But where are Pal and Bud?”
“They’re dead, they’re shot. Who the hell cares where they are? Mandy, will you get going? Will you get us the hell out of here?”
I started, then saw that the door was still open. I said, “Rick! Will you close the door? Will you pull it shut? Will you slam it?”
He tried to but was wedged in on the floor, the basket on top of him, his legs sticking up in the air, so he couldn’t move. And money, packs of ones and fives and tens and twenties, done up in rubber bands, in paper tape, and loops of string, were all over the floor, fouling my gas and clutch and brake. But somehow, at last, I got to the corner and turned right to get out of sight, when, thank God, the door swung shut though it didn’t slam, and when I looked, the back door was closed though not slammed shut. As I turned the light was still red, but still no cars were there. A guy ran out of the bank, but I pulled ahead and out of his sight. At the next corner I turned right again, to double back in the direction we’d been in. Rick was still on the floor, but he felt what I was doing and started to wail. I said, “It’s OK, if anything’s on our tail, it’s the last thing they’d expect.”
I ran two blocks with no cars showing behind, then caught open country, or vacant lots anyhow, on both sides of the road, with no one in sight. I stopped, jumped out, ran around, and yanked open both doors. I grabbed the basket, and it was almost too much for me, too heavy for me to lift. But I wrapped both arms around it and pushed it in back, on the floor in front of the seat, the way it had been in the first place, as far over as I could slide it. Then I pulled him out by the feet. I told him, “Get in there! Get in back, quick!” I wanted him in with the money, and at lease he did what I said. I slammed both doors, ran around again and got in, then started up. I ran a block or two, then cut back and got on Wilkens. I was near the Colypte plant but ran past it to the bank, and soon as the light turned, past it. A squad car was out front, an officer standing beside it, talking into a mike, with people gathered around, maybe fifteen or twenty. One or two of the men, who had on gray cotton jackets, looked to be from the bank. As I passed, no one paid any attention to me, and Rick kept whispering, “What do you know about that? What do you know about that?”
“Now, at last we can talk! What happened?”
“What didn’t happen! My God!”
I realized he still couldn’t talk and didn’t press him too hard, then turned left, to head for Frederick — Frederick Road I’m talking about. But then I suddenly realized I didn’t quite know where I was and went in to ask at the next filling station I came to. I almost died when the guy reached for my door handle to throw off the lock on the hood, because that stuff was still lying around, the money, on the floor, where it had fallen out of the basket and I’d kicked it away from my pedals. I slapped my hand over the door and said, “Oil’s OK, thanks. Fill her up — it’ll take six, I think.” So he turned from the door to the hose, and as he opened the tank a TV started to talk, from the other side of the car, inside the filling station: “...All three men were dead on arrival at University of Maryland Hospital, both of the bandits and Lester Bond, the guard, whom one of the bandits shot after being shot himself, taking aim from the floor...” I asked for Frederick Road, after paying for my gas, and when I had straight where I was, I drove on. I said, “Rick, did you hear him? That announcer on TV? Not only Pal and Bud, but the bank guard, he’s dead too.”
“I heard him. That’s bad.”
“I still don’t know what happened.”
At last he started to talk: “You know how they had it lined up? Well, that’s exactly how they did it, and it went like it was greased. A girl came in and Bud made her lie down out there by the customers’ desk, and when a guy came in, he made him do the same. Then, soon as Pal handled the tellers, making them open those carts, they marched right out to Bud and lay down beside the girl, the one on the floor already. Then the girl that Pal picked out to pitch the money in, she commenced doing her stuff, me holding the basket for her until it was almost full and getting so heavy I was wondering if I could hang on to it. Then she went out and lay down, and Pal and I went out through the gate, the one in the railing that runs across the bank from the tellers’ windows, in front of a bunch of desks that the secretaries sit at. And Pal said to me, ‘OK, Chuck, out.’ To the car, shove the dough in, get in, and wait!’
“That he half-whispered, but Bud cut in on him quick: ‘I got ten people here on the floor, two from outside and eight from the bank, but not no goddam guard!’ He roared it and kept on: ‘Not no guy with a gun! Where the hell did he go? Where is he?’
“Well he found out soon enough.
“He was still roaring at Pal when a guy popped out of a door, one that leads to rooms in back, his face all lathered up except one side was shaved, a razor in his hand and a gun under his arm, with straps running off from the holster, over his shoulder and around his chest. The look on his face said he’d come at the sound of Bud’s roaring, from shaving himself in the men’s room. Bud saw him and fired, but not soon enough. Because soon as he saw what was up, he ducked back of the railing and then leveled his gun on it, using it for a gun rest so he could sight. He fired and Bud went down. By that time Pal was firing his gun from the other side of the bank. But he had no target to shoot at and almost at once fell. And then, Mandy, I had the worst moment of my whole life, as I woke up that I would be next. I dropped the basket and started to run. But then I knew I had to have it, for protection so I wouldn’t be killed, to keep it between me and him, between my back and the gun. I grabbed it by one hand and muscled it onto my back, then started running again. And he started shooting again. I could feel the chock of bullets and hear their zing as they hit the tin, but none of them went through, thank God. I made the door and got out, and know nothing about the rest, him being shot by Pal, if Pal was the one that did it, or any of it, except me falling into the car, still holding the basket to me so I wouldn’t be hit by the shots.”
He stopped and I kept driving on, but pretty soon I told him, “Bud was sore about it, Pal messing up the count of the bunch there at the phone booth. It’s all he talked about at the Holiday Inn while you were away from the table.”
“He had reason to be.”
By now I was close to the cross-street that the alley ended on, and I said, “Rick, we’ll have to switch cars pretty soon, so will you transfer the money? From the basket to the bag? So we can carry it?”
“Mandy, to hell with the money! Let’s get out of here! Let’s, for Christ’s sake, not have any retakes of that nightmare there in the bank, when I thought I was going to die! Let’s ditch this car, blow, and wipe today out if we can!”
“You mean walk off and leave the money?”
“It’s hot! It can get us the gas chamber! That guard is dead, and they can pin it on us! It’s not who did it, it’s who was in it!”
“Then, OK, get out!”
“...What did you say?”
“I say if that’s all the nerve you got, then get out, git! But I’m not getting out! I’m not leaving this dough! It’s ours and I mean to keep it!”
“Who says I don’t have any nerve?”
“I do! You’ve lost any nerve that you did have!”
“Listen, there’s more to it than you know about!”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like what they were fixing to do — to us!”
“Who was fixing to do?”
“Those two guys that got killed!”