Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    â€˜I don’t know how much longer I can put up with this,’ she said and left the room.
    Kelp said, ‘Why don’t I go out and walk around the block and then come back?’
    Murch looked at him, bewildered. ‘What for? You feel dizzy or something?’
    Kelp glanced around. ‘No, I guess not. Everything’s okay, I guess. I must’ve come in while there was already a conversation going on.’
    â€˜Something like that,’ Murch said.
    â€˜I thought so, yeah.’
    â€˜Well, come on in.’
    Kelp was already in. He looked at Murch and didn’t say anything.
    â€˜Oh, yeah,’ Murch said. He shut the door and said, ‘We were just in the dining room.’
    â€˜I’m busting into dinner? Look, I can –’
    â€˜No, we were just looking at maps. Come on in.’
    Murch and Kelp went into the dining room, just as Murch’s Mom was coming in from the other direction, patting her shoulders and saying, ‘It’s my cashmere sweater and it’s all wet.’
    Murch said to Kelp, ‘You wouldn’t have something lined up, would you?’
    â€˜As a matter of fact, I would. You free to look it over tomorrow?’
    â€˜Oh, hell,’ said Murch’s Mom. ‘There goes our ride out to the Island.’
    â€˜Out to Long Island?’ said Kelp. ‘That’s perfect, that’s just what I want, couldn’t be better.’ He approached the table with all its maps. ‘Is this Long Island? Here, let me show you the exact spot.’
    â€˜You two talk,’ Murch’s Mom said. ‘I’ve got to go change out of this wet sweater before I get a stiff neck.’

8
    When Dortmunder walked into the O. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue at eight-thirty the next night, there was nobody in the place but three subway motormen, the television set high up on the wall, and Rollo, the bartender. The television set was showing three people scaling a wall, all burdened down with coils of rope and little hammers and walkie-talkies; they were a Negro, a Jew, and a beautiful blond Swedish girl. The three subway motormen, all Puerto Rican, were talking about whether or not there were alligators in the subway tunnels. They were shouting back and forth at the top of their voices, not because they were mad at each other – though they were – but because their jobs had got them used to talking at that volume. ‘It’s in the sewers you got the alligators,’ one of them shouted.
    â€˜Them scum tunnels we got, you don’t call them sewers?’
    â€˜People bring up alligators from Florida,’ the first one yelled, ‘little alligators for pets, they get tired of them, they flush them down the toilet. But in the sewer, not in the tunnels. You don’t flush toilets into subway tunnels.’
    â€˜Not much, you don’t.’
    The third one, the gloomiest of them, shouted, ‘I run over a rat the other day, down by Kingston-Throop, this big.’ And knocked over his beer.
    Dortmunder strolled on down to the end of the bar while Rollo sopped up the spilled beer and drew a new one. The motormen started shouting about other animals that were or weren’t in the subway tunnels, and Rollo came heavily along the bar toward Dortmunder. He was a tall, meaty, balding, blue-jawed gent in a dirty white shirt and dirty white apron, and when he reached Dortmunder he said, ‘Long time no see.’
    â€˜You know how it is,’ Dortmunder said. ‘I been living with a woman.’
    Rollo nodded sympathetically. ‘That’s death on the bar business,’ he said. ‘What you want to do is get married, then you’ll start coming out at night.’
    Dortmunder nodded his head toward the back room. ‘Anybody there?’
    â€˜Your friend, the other bourbon,’ Rollo said. ‘Along with a no-proof-of-age ginger ale. They got your