Night My Friend (37 page)

He looked up from the pinball machine and nodded to Tom, who had taken to arriving at the Star Drug earlier in the day since the blonde had started to work there. “What say?”

It was a dull Saturday morning, and both had had dates the night before with high school girls they didn’t particularly care about. For Davy, without a car, it had ended with the familiar stroll home from the movie, with a few unsatisfactory kisses in the doorway of the girl’s home.

“Date last night?” Tom Hasker asked him, his eyes already on the blonde as she bent over for a jug of soft-drink syrup.

“Yeah.” Davy stuck another coin into the machine, not wanting to hear about Tom’s conquests.

“Me too. With Barb. We parked down by the lake. Man, she’s really something!” He lit a cigarette and lounged against the lunch counter. “What you need is a car, Davy. You’re missing all the action.”

“Yeah.”

“Folks still won’t let you have one?”

Davy didn’t answer. The subject had come up again the previous evening, with the usual results. His father had shouted and his mother had wept. It had been like that ever since his older brother had stepped on a land mine halfway around the world and died in a war that Davy didn’t understand. That had happened a year ago, and his parents hadn’t been the same since.

Tom Hasker ordered a Coke from the blonde girl, giving her a special look. “Ever think about just taking off, Davy?”

“If I had the money I damn well would.”

“Even before you finished school?”

“Tomorrow, if I had the money.” And he meant it.

“Come on, let’s go for a ride.”

Davy finished his game and followed Tom Hasker out to the street. He was only seventeen, a year younger than Tom, and he knew he lacked the other’s assured swagger and casual manner with girls. His face had too many pimples still, and his dark brown hair never seemed to fall quite the right way. It was only in Tom’s company that he began to feel the sense of wild freedom that he was certain went along with adulthood.

The top was down on Tom’s car, and they pulled out of the parking lot with a roaring surge of power that caused bystanders to turn and stare. This was the part Davy always liked—the feeling of motion, of the wind in your hair and maybe a girl at your side. It was what life was all about.

“How’d you like to make some money?” Tom asked after a while, driving easily with one hand on the wheel. “Enough so’s you could leave this town and not bother with finishing school or that jazz.”

“You mean stealing hub caps?” Davy asked with a snort.

“This is no hub-cap deal. Does twenty-five thousand bucks sound like hub caps?”

“Twenty-five—”

“You heard me. Twenty-five thousand, split down the middle. With that much you could get yourself a car and take off for New York.”

Davy’s heart was pounding with excitement. “What do we have to do—rob a bank?”

“That’s it, exactly.”

“You’re nuts!”

Tom slowed the car to a stop at the curb. “If you think so, you’d better get out here.”

“Rob a
bank
?”

“Not really a bank. Not inside; anyway. Sort of outside. It’s the easiest job in the world. We just walk away with the dough. No tools, no alarms, no guards, no nothing.”

“That’s a Federal rap, Tom. Hell, I’m not getting mixed up in that!”

Tom Hasker lit another cigarette. “Think it over, Davy. Think it over till tomorrow. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

All the way home Davy thought it over—not really seriously, because he still doubted that Tom was serious, but with that half a mind reserved for daydreams and impossible quests.

To get away, to be gone from that house where only the gloomy memory of a brother’s death lived now among the everyday treasures of a lifetime. To get away…

After supper he walked down to the drug store and waited for the blonde girl to finish work. If only he could offer her a ride home, drive down to the lake and neck with her under the stars… But he had no car, and someone else was there waiting. A neighborhood fellow with a fancy sports car.

What was it? Was his father afraid he’d smash the thing up and be dead like his only brother? Did they think they could keep him alive and innocent by keeping him on foot? He thought some more about Tom’s scheme. Maybe he could just listen to it, and then decide. Just listening to it wouldn’t commit him to anything…

Sunday morning he told his parents he was going to church, but instead he went over to Tom’s house, where he found the older boy washing his car.

“Hi, Davy. Change your mind?”

“Not really. Just tell me some more about it.”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you. Hop in.”

They drove over to a shopping center about three miles away, and Tom parked in the large empty lot.

“Is this it?” Davy asked.

“Take a look. What do you see?”

“Nothing. Just an empty lot.”

“Look again. See that branch bank?”

Davy stared through the spotless windshield at the low Colonial brick building near the street. “That one?”

“That one. I’ve got everything planned to the split second, just like we were in the army.”

Davy nodded. He knew he’d never be in the real army. There was some sort of regulation about sole surviving sons being exempt from the draft. Sometimes his father reminded him of that, as if his brother’s death had been partly Davy’s doing. “Tell me about it,” he heard himself say.

“This broad I’ve been taking out—Barb. She works in the bank and she got talking one night. She told me all about it. See that little auto teller unit over the other side of the parking lot? That’s so people can do their banking without leaving their car. Two girl tellers are in that thing all day long.”

“But they’re protected, Tom. They got thick glass and everything.”

“Sure they have! And there’s even a pneumatic tube connecting the auto teller unit with the bank, so they can shoot money back and forth.”

“Then how—?”

“Listen, will you? Every morning the two girl tellers come out the back door of the bank and walk across the parking lot to the auto teller. Nine o’clock sharp! We’ll come out tomorrow and I’ll show you. The money they’ll need for the day is sent to them through the tubes—except on Friday mornings.”

“What happens on Fridays?”

“They need lots of cash for payroll checks. And most of it’s bundled for easy handling. The bundles are too big to fit in the tubes, so the girls carry it to the unit in sacks. No guards, no guns, no nothing. Just two girls with sacks full of money. Barb says they take twenty-five thousand out every Friday morning for the payroll checks.”

“Doesn’t one of the men watch them?”

Tom shook his head. “They used to have a guard go along with them, but nothing ever happened, so they stopped. If they only knew! The whole thing’ll take about ten seconds and we’ll be gone.” Then, “How about it?”

Davy looked down at his hands. “I—I don’t know.”

“We’ll pack some clothes and leave them in the car. We’ll just take off.”

“The cops’ll be watching for the car.”

“So maybe we’ll use another one. I’ll rent one, and then we’ll switch to mine later. They won’t get us—not before we reach New York with all the money in the world.”

“I don’t know, Tom. We’ve never done anything like this.”

“You want to waste your life away in this hick town playing that lousy pinball machine? Or you want to get out and live—have girls like that blonde at Star Drug?”

“I—” All right, he decided suddenly.
All right!
“I’ll do it, Tom.”

“Good. We’ll drive out tomorrow morning and take a look at the girls.”

On Monday morning it rained, a light drizzle driven by a stiff westerly wind into an unpleasant downpour that emptied the streets. Tom drove the car slowly down Maple Street and turned into the big parking lot, bringing the car to rest by the supermarket at the far end.

“There are the girls,” Davy said after a moment. The rear door of the bank had opened and two girls with raincoats over their heads ran out to a waiting car.

“One of the men is driving them over,” Tom said. “But usually they walk. They’ll be walking on Friday.”

“If it doesn’t rain.”

“It won’t. I already checked the weather bureau’s five-day forecast. No more rain in sight the rest of this week.”

Davy glanced at him. “You think of everything.”

“You gotta think of everything. You gotta be watching for the big chance all the time. You know what cops look like—detectives?”

“Big guys with big feet.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not. The F.B.I. agents are usually younger and more ordinary-looking. And the secret service, when they’re walking with the President, always have their coats open so they can draw their guns.”

“Yeah?” Davy knew that Tom could teach him a great deal. He thought of how things would be for them in New York, with all that money. They’d get girls right away, and move into some swell apartment, and maybe after a while get jobs somewhere. But not right away.

“That’s enough for today,” Tom said. “We’ll check it again on Thursday and run through the whole plan.”

“Is one of those girls Barb?” Davy asked suddenly, because he’d just thought of it.

“No. She works inside. Neither of these ever laid eyes on us. Anyway, we’ll have handkerchiefs over the bottom of our faces, like in the Western movies.”

“Everything but guns, huh?” Davy said with a laugh.

Tom Hasker didn’t reply.

The blonde in the drug store called herself Candy, and by Wednesday afternoon Davy had worked up the courage to ask her for a date. “A movie, maybe? Tonight?”

She eyed him uncertainly while washing glasses. “You don’t have a car, do you?”

“We could go close by. Maybe tonight, after you finish work.”

“Tonight! Heavens, no! I only date on weekends.”

“Oh.” He didn’t know where he’d be on Friday night. “Well. I’ll ask you again.”

She smiled and went back to the glasses. He strolled over to the pinball machine but decided he didn’t really want to play it. He didn’t want to do much of anything, except get away, far away.

On Thursday morning they parked on the street and watched the two young girls—one blonde, the other a lively redhead—prancing across the asphalt lot to the auto teller unit. “I like that redhead,” Tom remarked. “Maybe when we hold them up we should just say, ‘Your money or your honor!’ and let them choose.”

He laughed, then noticed that Davy was frowning. Davy asked, “What do you mean, hold them up? I thought we were just going to grab the dough and scram.”

Tom reached over to open the glove compartment. “You grab the dough. I’ll just show them this to give them a little scare.”

“Tom!”

It was a blue-steel revolver with worn grips and a look of hard usage. “Don’t worry. It’s not loaded,” Tom said, trying to reassure him.

“But—where did you get it?”

“I found it. With my father’s things.” Tom’s father, a plant guard at a local factory, had died of a heart attack the previous year.

“You didn’t tell me anything about a gun!”

“So I’m telling you now. It’s just to scare them.”

Davy could feel his heart pounding, feel the empty yawning of his stomach. Somehow the fact of the robbery hadn’t seemed real until that moment. “No,” he said.

“What difference does an empty gun make? Maybe I won’t even use it.”

“Promise you won’t. Promise, or I’m out.”

Tom looked at him steadily. “You’re in, Davy. It’s too late to be out now.”

“All right, I’m in! But no gun!”

“I’ll have it with me. I promise I won’t use it unless I have to.”

Davy had to be content with that. He stared grimly through the windshield, watching the girls as they unlocked the auto teller unit and went inside.

Tomorrow. So soon—tomorrow.

Davy didn’t sleep well that night. He tossed in the humid darkness and thought about it—his last time in this bed, in this house. What would New York be like? What would the girls be like there? Were they all like in the magazines, with short skirts and big smiles, posing against traffic signs in the latest fashions?

He got out of bed early, at the first hint of daylight, and took a shower. He went over again in his mind the plan that Tom had outlined the night before, picturing the details as they would take place. It was a good plan—foolproof.

Tom would use a rented car and park it near the exit. Then he would follow the girls from the bank, while Davy approached from the other direction. The whole thing would take less than a minute. He wondered abstractedly, as he had before, whether Tom had told the girl, Barb, what he planned. But that didn’t really matter. They’d be far away before she or anyone could spread the alarm.

He mumbled something to his mother at breakfast, trying to avoid a conversation. “Really, Davy, the summer’s almost gone and you don’t have a job or anything. I wouldn’t mind so much if you were going to summer school and learning something.”

“I’m learning,” he answered, his mouth full of toast.

“Where? At the Star Drug? And I want you staying away from those girls around there, you hear? They’re nothing but—”

He got up and left the table, not hearing any more of it. After today he’d never have to listen to any more of it.

Already the day was warming, and he knew as he hurried along the sidewalk that by noon the temperature would hit ninety. There’d be one more visit home, to pick up the overnight bag he’d carefully packed the night before and hidden in his room. Then, away. Tom would abandon the rented car somewhere and they’d meet again at the convertible, which would be parked near the high school stadium.

Easy. A cinch. Foolproof.

But his heart was beating fast when he neared the bank. He felt in his pocket for the handkerchief he’d use as a mask, glanced around for a sign of Tom and the rented car.

Did they rent cars to eighteen-year-olds that easily? And this early in the morning? And wouldn’t Tom have to make a deposit on it?

As he turned it over in his mind, Davy knew suddenly and clearly that Tom had no intention of renting a car. The car would be stolen, as would the money. He wondered why the sudden realization bothered him somehow.