Dog Day Afternoon (25 page)

The police paused for an instant. Then they formed a loose wedge. They shoved forward into the crowd of people. Barricades toppled with shouting bystanders beneath them. A mounted cop charged, club swinging.

Three burly civilians picked up pieces of a shattered wooden barricade. They began swinging them at the cops. One found a sharp splinter of wood. He drove it like a lance at the mounted policeman’s horse. A shower of empty beer cans rattled down. There were cries and screams from the crowd.

Joe stood there, mouth open. It was hard to believe what he was seeing. He glanced back at Sam, standing in the bank window. The kid was holding his gun to Ellen’s head. Joe saw that the girl had fainted. Sam was actually holding her erect.

A television crew of cameraman, sound man, and reporter was cut off. A small flying squad of onlookers had looped past them. They were trying to escape the flailing clubs of the police. The civilians began to beat up the TV crew. A phalanx of cops drove through the swirling mob and rescued them.

Two men were slugged unconscious. They were handcuffed and dragged away. Joe saw Baker and two of his FBI underlings. They stood in the doorway of the insurance office. They conferred briefly, but remained where they stood. A rock hit Moretti on the cheek. Blood started to run down his face in a thin trickle.

He touched his cheek. He inspected his fingers and held the bloody hand in the air. With his other hand he brought the bullhorn to his face. “All right!” His voice boomed out over the melee. “Everybody cool it.” The shouting began to die away. “We have an important announcement,” Moretti said then.

Joe heard the noise almost shut itself off, as if a door had been closed. Even cops in the act of swinging clubs held back, posing, clubs above their heads.

Moretti dabbed at his cheek with a handkerchief. The bleeding had stopped. He nodded to the crowd and put away the bullhorn.

“Thank you for your courteous cooperation,” he said then, in such a tone that the crowd began to laugh. Moretti walked back to Joe. “Make sure Sam doesn’t do anything sudden.”

“He’s okay. It’s them that went crazy, not Sam.”

“Them?” Moretti jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the quiet crowd. “Who are you to call them crazy, Joe? Listen, we got your mother over there. I guess you saw her before. You don’t have to talk to her if you don’t want.”

“I don’t want.”

“Okay. It was Baker’s idea you might want to.”

“Guys like Baker,” Joe said, “think like the shit they print in the
Reader’s Digest.”

Moretti laughed. “I’ll tell him what you said.”

“Listen.”

“Yeah?”

“I guess I better say hello to her.”

Moretti’s eyes went wide. “Now you’re talking like Baker. Hold on a minute.” He returned to the insurance office and went inside. But it was Baker who escorted Flo out onto the street and brought her to the center line. Her face was streaked with crying, mouth set in a half smile. Her hair hadn’t been combed in a while. It looked damp with heat. The crowd began to murmur sympathetically.

“Oh, Christ,” Joe said, “who needs this shit?”

They stood there a yard apart and looked at each other. “What are you doing down here, Flo? You should’ve watched it on TV like everybody else.” She continued to stand there, and, abruptly, more tears welled up. In the glare of the searchlights they could be seen coursing down her long cheeks. “I don’t need you down here,” Joe said.

“You didn’t tell me,” his mother said at last, “that you needed money.”

“I need three grand for an operation for Lana. What’re you saying, you got three grand?”

“I got two hundred and fifty in savings. I—”

“That only pays for the castration.”

“What’s the matter with her the way she is, then?” Flo asked. “Didn’t you marry her the way she was? That lovely ceremony down in the Village? Why does she have to get operated on?”

“Please. I’m going away on the plane. I don’t want to think of you and Lana arguing. You’re supposed to take care of each other.”

“I told them you were a wonderful boy. Never any trouble.”

“Told who?”

“The FBI. They’re very nice men, Joe. They understand. I told them about Goldwater. I said you were never a faggot, never.”

“And they said?”

“That you had problems and they understood, and if you came out you’d get the best possible treatment because you protected the hostages.”

“Beautiful. Next they’ll send in Tina against me. The heavy team.”

“She comes down here, so help me, I’m gonna mash her brains in,” his mother told him. “Everything in your life was sunlight and roses until you met her. Since then, forget it.”

“Please get off Tina.”

“Me? God forbid I say anything against that fat cunt.”

“Flo!”

“I knew you wouldn’t need a . . . a thing like Lana if Tina was treating you right.”

“Ma, this is old stuff.”

“Come out of that bank.”

“I can’t. Sam will kill them all.”

“Then run.”

“Run? Christ! What dreams you live on!” He tried to cool it. “Did Pop come down?”

“No, he’s really pissed off. He says he don’t have no son.”

“He’s right. No more punching bag. He used to whale the living shit out of me. Five years old, he clobbered me with a broom handle. Why did you let him do that, Flo?”

Her tearful eyes went wide. “He’s your father, Joe. He was doing it for your own good. To make you tough.”

“Five years old, I’m walking across the room, he lets me have it behind the head. Wham! ‘That’s for nothing,’ he tells me.”

“To show you it’s a tough life.”

“It is with sons of bitches like you and him walking around.”

Her lips trembled. She said nothing for a moment, and then, with an apologetic smile, she said: “I remember how beautiful you were as a little boy. I had such hopes.”

Joe pulled back as if she had spit at him. “Fuck you. Fuck your hopes.” He turned, and was about to run back into the bank.

“Wait,” Flo called. “Lana wants to go with you.”

Littlejoe stopped, his back still to her. “She what?”

“Isn’t this all for her?” his mother asked.

As he turned back to her, Joe saw that Baker was leading Lana out into the street. The hooting of the crowd went into falsetto. The whole scene was weird, Joe thought. Not to be believed. Everybody was getting off his rocks like some kind of amateur night, stepping out into the spotlights to play their musical saw or sing “Stardust” or whatever turned them on and made them walk tall. Jesus, he thought, people!

“Littlejoe, honey,” Lana was saying, “I humbly apologize for all that shit I dumped on your poor head before. I know you got a lot on your mind right now, but—”

“But you wanna fly to Casablanca free, right?” Joe cut in.

His glance went to Baker for a moment, and if ever he’d seen a man pretending not to be there, the FBI guy was it. His eyes were averted, although he had a hell of a grip on Lana’s skinny arm.

“Did I say that, lovie?” Lana simpered. She had fixed up her face a little, and looked halfway presentable now. “I just want to go where you go.”

For the first time, Littlejoe began to feel that maybe there really was a million dollars, really was a plane waiting. He’d believed Moretti only because he wanted to, but in the back of his mind he’d been worried. Now he believed. If Lana was ready to suck up to him in this outrageous way, even using his stupid mother to help, there really must be ransom and an escape ready to go.

“Kiss, kiss!” someone in the crowd shouted.

It came with such force that Joe flinched. He supposed the guy had heard him say that to Moretti. Now it seemed to be the slogan for today.

“Forget it,” he told Lana. “You come along, it makes you part of the job, accessory. Right now you’re clean. They might get you for wearing too-high heels, but you’re clean on the bank job. Right, Baker?”

The man who was trying not to be there nodded once, then decided he had to say something. “That is correct.”

“So no loot, no Casablanca, baby,” Joe told Lana. “I’ll mail you a check from somewhere sometime.” He started to laugh at the look on her face.

“Kiss, kiss!” a bystander yelled.

Joe reached for Lana. Baker, startled, started to pull her back. “It’s okay,” Littlejoe assured him. “Just following orders.” He planted a big kiss on Lana’s wide-rouged mouth.

The crowd went insane. There were no cries of “faggot!” but simply the kind of wild cheering that accompanies a home run at Shea Stadium. Joe stepped back from Lana and lifted his second finger upward at the crowd. For some reason this drove them to even noisier heights of cheering. Grinning now, and flushed, Joe turned and headed back into the bank.

23

“L
adies and gentlemen,” Joe said, addressing the damp, tired group inside the bank.

Sam in his wilted white suit, still looked the nattiest, but Boyle, without a tie, looked like a bum, and Marge, with her blouse half open, looked like a tramp, Joe noticed. Ellen’s eyes kept rolling up into her head from time to time, and Maria, the Puerto Rican woman, continued to say almost nothing. Joe had never figured out—nor had the inclination to check—whether she understood everything that was going on or not. In either event, smart girl, she kept a low profile.

“Gang,” Littlejoe went on, clowning slightly, “here’s the game plan. We are now dealing directly with the Feds. That man out there in the gray suit who don’t sweat, he’s now handling everything and all of a sudden we got no problems.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam asked. His voice sounded huffy, as if Joe had insulted him.

“I mean we’re home free. The limo from the airport’ll be here any minute and—”

“And you’re taking Lana with us,” Sam finished for him, his voice dead with pain.

“Sam. Come on. I kissed her off. No Lana. Goodbye Lana. Finished.” Littlejoe waited until Sam’s face showed a little less pain. “Would you believe it? We’re ten, fifteen minutes away from freedom. I could call anybody in the whole world, an astronaut, the Pope, any of them. Who do I call?” he asked, dialing a number. He waited. Then:

“Tina?”

“Hey, Joey!” Tina’s glutinous voice was hopping with excitement. “I’m watching it all on the TV, Joey!”

“I want to talk to the kids.”

“They’re at Stella’s. I sent them over there. Too much excitement.” Tina ran out of breath for a moment, gasped, then rattled on: “Jesus, Joey, I can’t believe what I see. It’s not you. You never hurt anybody in your life.”

“Tina, I’m in trouble here,” Joe said slowly. “It’s very touchy from here on in,” he added, thinking of the way they wanted to pick off Sam but wouldn’t really worry too much if they shot him too.

“I blame myself,” Tina surged on, hardly listening. “You been tense. I knew that. Like leaving me at your folks’ house last week. Boy, what a wasted evening. And swiping my father’s car. I could tell—”

“Shut up!” Joe shouted into the phone. “Will you for once shut your fucking mouth and listen?”

“See?” she countered. “You’re screaming already with the language. A person can’t communicate with you. You’re a stranger in your own house.”

Joe held the telephone away from his ear. He glanced at Boyle. “I needed this?”

Boyle shrugged. “You dialed the number.”

Littlejoe put the telephone back to his ear. “. . . because you hurt me,” Tina was saying. “God, how you hurt me. Can you imagine, kissing that . . . thing? In front of the TV an’ all. Did I ever once turn you down, or anything?”

“Tina.”

“Did I ever say no, you should get so horny you have to turn to a, to a—”

“Tina.”

“What?”

“Come down here, will you?” Joe asked.

“Me?” She shrieked so loudly he had to take the phone away for a moment. “Me get shot? You should see it on the TV, Joey. It’s gruesome, I mean it. It’s scary, all them cops and machine guns and cannons and God knows what. You never did have any feeling for what another person is feeling, Joe. You never had a drop of compassion. All my life, I—”

He slammed the telephone down on her voice.

Outside the crowd had begun to chant something rhythmic. Littlejoe couldn’t get the gist of it. He went to the door and poked his head out into the street. The air was cooler. Now he could see that behind the mob at one end of the street was a new group of bystanders, holding placards, one of which read:

GAY IS BEAUTIFUL
!

As the new people caught sight of Littlejoe, one young man shouted: “Joe! Joe! You are gorgeous, Joe!”

Littlejoe stepped back into the shelter of the doorway as a TV crew rushed over to film a confrontation between the young man who had shouted and some older onlookers who were telling him to get lost.

“I don’t care!” the young man was screaming at the top of his voice. “That man has put an end to all that pansy limp-wrist shit. You know what I hope? I hope he shoots it out with the cops. I hope he takes some with him.”

Behind him a group of six young men and two young women were busily hoisting a longer banner into place, suspended from three poles. When they finally got it arranged it read:

WE LOVE YOU, LITTLEJOE
!