Parker stood looking around the room. It was a new bank with a low ceiling, which was good. There were only three straight customers in the bank, which was also good.
The two guards came back in, carrying the strongbox between them, one hand each. The clipboard man followed them, looking prissy and bored. Weiss crumpled up his deposit slip, put it in his pocket, and walked to the door. Parker went over to the bank guard and said, “Do you have a notary public here?”
His talking to the guard was the signal for Andrews to reach into his pocket and push the button on the little radio machine in there. Weiss was standing by the door, behind the armored car men and the clipboard man. If all was going right, Uhl was driving slowly down the block toward the bank right now, one hand holding that grenade.
The guard said, “Are you a deposi— ” and the wastebasket by the lottery window blew up.
It was a huge noise, loud enough to give everybody in the bank a brief headache, and with it came a flash of yellow and white, and then flames were licking up the front of the counter toward the lottery window. On the heels of the explosion, one of the women employees screamed.
Parker had been standing so the guard’s back was to the lottery window. At the explosion the old man spun around, startled, and Parker took out his revolver and clipped him with it behind the ear.
While the old man was still falling Parker spun around and held down on the two armored-car men. He shouted, “No heroes!” He knew Andrews had a gun on the bank officer and would quickly herd him into a corner away from telephones. He knew Weiss was behind the armored car men to let them know they were in a crossfire. And Uhl, at the sound of the explosion, was to drop the grenade out of the passenger-side window so it would roll under the armored car and was then to pull directly in front of the armored car and wait. In ten seconds, the grenade would start spewing black smoke. There wasn’t much breeze today; the smoke would quickly billow out and surround the armored car and puff all around the bank entrance.
While Parker was shouting, Weiss was shouting also. Andrews was on his feet, waving an automatic and shouting at the employees, “It’s a stickup! Don’t move! Don’t move!”
The armored-car men were professional enough to know when to fold a hand. Neither of them reached for a gun.
Parker said, “Put the box down. Now move over that way. Hands on top of your heads.” He motioned the gun at the clipboard man. “You too.”
“You can’t — “
Weiss kicked the clipboard man in the butt. “Hurry up, shorty,” he said. The clipboard man was about four inches taller than Weiss.
Parker and Andrews hurried over to the strongbox and each grabbed a handle. Weiss kept everybody covered. Parker went first, the heavy strongbox dragging him back, bumping into the back of his legs. He could see the smoke through the glass door, so Uhl was doing his job.
The smoke was everywhere, greasy and black, smelling of creosote. You couldn’t see a thing, but Parker didn’t have to see anything. He angled to the right, Andrews in his wake with the other end of the box, and they plunged through the smoke, Parker’s hand out in front of him, till the heel of his hand hit the side of the car.
It took him a few seconds to figure out what part of the car he had, but then he moved quickly forward to the rear door, opened it, and clambered in with the strongbox banging against his heels. Andrews came piling in after it, and then Weiss rushed up out of the smoke, blundered the front door open, and jumped in.
Uhl burned rubber, taking off before either door was shut. For the first second or two he couldn’t have been able to see a thing, but he tore out of the smoke as though God had told him personally there wasn’t going to be anything in front of him, and there wasn’t.
Everybody was done working now but Uhl, and Uhl had rehearsed his part so often he could almost do it asleep. Right at the corner, left at the alley halfway down the block, right at the next street, and then four blocks straight. They wouldn’t hit a traffic light till then, and Uhl would be able to judge it from four blocks away and not have to stop for it. It was twenty minutes past ten in the morning, a dead time for traffic, so they’d be able to make any speed they wanted.
At that traffic light they’d make a left turn, and from there it was less than half a mile to the outskirts of town, where they’d stashed the other car. And after that a ten-minute drive to the farm, where they could hole up and wait for the fever to cool in the outside world.
Parker and Andrews straightened themselves out in the back seat, the strongbox lumping huge between them, leaning half on the seat and half on the floor. Andrews patted it, smiling, and said, “How much do you think?”
“Maybe forty,” Parker said. “Maybe sixty. Maybe a little more.”
“Not bad for a morning’s work,” Andrews said, forgetting the three weeks preparation.
Uhl, relaxed at the wheel now, glanced in the rear view mirror and said, “Shoot the lock off. Let’s see how much it is.”
“When we get to the farm,” Parker said.
“Why not now?”
Weiss, up front with Uhl now said, “George, you want a bullet ricocheting around in the car? Where’s your sense?”
“Oh, yeah,” Uhl said, and made the right turn out of the alley. Four blocks away the light was red. Uhl drove at about thirty.
Parker turned his head and looked out the rear window. A couple of cars way back, moseying along. No pursuit. It would take them a while to get organized in all that smoke.
A siren. Everybody tensed, and then a police car shot across their path two blocks ahead, going from left to right, not slowing or anything. Everybody relaxed again.
Weiss said, “Going to the bank.”
“Too late,” Uhl said. “All the money’s gone.” The light turned green up ahead, and he accelerated.
Three
Parker kept one hand pressed flat on the strongbox. The last half mile to the farmhouse was over rutted dirt road, and the box tended to jounce. Parker said, “You can take it easy now.”
“I’m anxious to know how much we got,” Uhl said, but he slowed down some.
Everything had gone fine. The stolen car with its stolen plates had been abandoned behind the burned-out diner on the highway where they’d left the other car, this two-year-old Chevy, pale blue. They’d switched cars, carrying the strongbox over to this one, and then Uhl had driven sedately the rest of the way, never more than a couple of miles over the speed limit. One other police car had gone by, siren screaming, racing into the town they’d just left, but that was all the law they’d seen.
The farmhouse was gray, small, old, leaning, and weather-beaten. The porch roof was half fallen in, and only two window-panes were still unbroken. It stood on top of a bare hill, the dirt road passing at the foot of the hill and continuing on who knew where. Vague old grooves in the grass led upward to the right from the road, showing where another dirt road had once existed between here and the house. If you looked closely you could see where the grass had been recently mashed down by tires going up there, but the dirt road was seldom traveled and too bumpy to allow the people in a passing car to watch anything very closely. And at the top, around behind the sagging house, stood a sagging barn, big enough and empty enough inside for both this Chevy of Uhl’s and Andrew’s Mercury.
Uhl drove up the hill now, in low gear so the tires wouldn’t leave skid gouges in the grass, and at the top he steered around the house and came to a stop in front of the barn. Weiss hopped out and dragged open the barn doors, and Uhl drove into the clammy, cool darkness inside the barn. He turned the key in the ignition and smiled over his shoulder at Parker and Andrews saying “Home free.”