Enchanted Isle by James M. Cain Read Free Book Online

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,