Dog Day Afternoon (19 page)

Moretti had crossed the white line in the middle of the street. “Put it down, you stupid bastard,” he told the cop. The young man blinked, almost winced, but held his pose.

Suddenly the street broke up into bits and pieces of action. Joe saw cops run for Leroy, throw him to the pavement. One cop got his foot on Leroy’s back. Two others grabbed his arms. One shoved a shotgun against his eye.

Moretti reached him at this point. He began batting away at the uniformed cops, trying to get them to release Leroy. One of them was frisking Leroy for weapons. Another yanked his arms behind him and locked handcuffs in place.

Joe locked the door and moved back into the bank. “There,” he told Boyle, “there’s your law.”

16

T
hinking about it as he checked what each person inside the bank was doing, Littlejoe decided that if he’d been one of the hostages, or a dumdum like Eddie, he’d long ago have been bored to sleep. But, being the leader, the one who had to dream up the ideas and give the orders, he found he felt more alive, more wide-awake, more
real
than ever before in his life. This was what he’d been born for, obviously. To lead. To be obeyed.

He checked Boyle, sitting behind a desk in the far corner of the lobby, talking quietly to Marge. Joe wasn’t afraid they were plotting anything. Both of them knew better than that. They were probably wondering if they could get out of this alive to continue their little middle-aged affair. Probably they both had families they went home to at night. But there was always the motel along the way from five to seven. “Late work at the office, dear.”

Littlejoe wondered what Marge could see in a bald guy with a thickening middle like Harry Boyle. He had a little style, a touch of class, maybe, but handsome he wasn’t. What Boyle saw in Marge, of course, anybody could see.

Littlejoe’s monitoring glance shifted to Ellen, sniveling quietly into a soaked Kleenex, Sam watching her as intently as ever. Joe felt a warm rush of emotion about Sam. He was more than a good kid. He was a man. He was to be relied upon. Maybe he was a little funny about jail. You could understand that, after what’d happened to him there. Maybe some people would think he was a killer type or something. Joe did not. Sam had his odd spots, but he was solid, the right guy in the right place.

As for Eddie . . . where was he?

Joe frowned. He pulled the .38 out of his belt and moved toward the back of the lobby, where Sam and Ellen were. “What’s with Eddie?”

Sam jerked the muzzle of the .45 Colt in the direction of the vault. “Back there out of sight.”

Joe glanced around. “With Maria?”

“I guess.”

Joe’s frown deepened. He could feel the creases deepen between his eyebrows, and he made a conscious effort to smooth out the skin there. He didn’t want to grow up with a permanent frown like his shitty old man. “Eddie?” he called into the rear of the bank. “What’s up?”

After a long moment he heard a snicker. “Me.”

Joe’s glance locked with Sam’s. “He’s in the vault with Maria?”

Sam nodded. “Want me to look?”

“You keep these monkeys covered. I’ll look.” Littlejoe moved behind the lobby sign and turned toward the vault. Even from that angle, his line of sight slanted through the bars of the vault door, he could see that Maria was on the floor on her back. As he came abreast of the vault entrance, he saw that Eddie was on his knees straddling her, his weight holding down her torso, his hands on her arms, his erect cock ramming up against her face, her nose, into her eyes.

Hearing him, Eddie turned to gloat at Joe. His face was red, skin damp. His lips looked wet. He was breathing hard, but not uncomfortably so. “This spic cunt won’t give head,” he complained.

“Please, mister.” Maria’s lips parted for an instant. “Please.”

As a spectator sport, a way of spending the afternoon if your TV set wasn’t working, Littlejoe thought, he could think of a hundred better things to do than watch this dumb ox brutalizing a broad half his size and weight.

“How’d you manage to get this far, Eddie,” he asked, “without her yelling for help?”

“Easy,” the driver bragged. “She knows if she opens it even a crack, she eats the whole thing.”

“You gotta be careful with Puerto Rican women, Eddie,” Joe said, keeping his voice serious. “They try to stay very pure. She’s gonna bite your head off for you.”

A shadow of doubt crossed Eddie’s heated face, then flickered out. “No way, man.”

Littlejoe backed away from the vault. The entire conversation had been carried on at a pitch he felt sure no one in the bank had heard. This Eddie, this was what came of picking up unknown helpers at the last minute. If he ever got out of this alive and loose, he was going to give his cousin Mick a piece of his mind, saddling him with this animal.

“Sam,” he said as he moved out into the lobby. “You wanna see something that belongs in a zoo?”

“That one?” Sam cocked his head in Eddie’s direction. “What’s going on?”

“Take a look. I’ll guard everybody.”

Sam lowered the .45 to his side and started toward the vault. Joe raised the Police Positive and showed it to everyone. “We’re still thinking of your greater comfort and convenience, folks. Just hang easy and nobody dies.”

“Bruto animale!”
Sam cursed.

Joe tried to see what was happening in the vault. After a moment he heard a single noise, once, a kind of
thock!
He stepped back to see what was happening. Sam had hold of Eddie’s leg and was pulling him that way out of the vault, like a giant beached whale.

The fact that Eddie didn’t seem to object to this was explained a moment later when Eddie’s face came into view as Sam dumped him where everyone in the lobby could see him. Sam had obviously clouted Eddie’s chin and cheek with the side of the Colt, holding it flat so that its weight knocked Eddie almost unconscious. Eddie groaned now and touched his cheek where blood was rilling up.

“Hey!” he whimpered. “Looka this?”

Sam grabbed his hair and pulled him into an upright position, his back against the far wall of the lobby. “You fucking animal,” he said.

He pulled the Colt sideways in a tight arc and, pivoting like a golfer, slammed the muzzle into Eddie’s left eye. Blood spurted from the skin across Eddie’s temple. He started to slump to his right.

Sam brought the Colt around in a backhand swing and smashed it across the bridge of Eddie’s nose, straightening him upright on the floor and producing a new wound somewhere inside the nose, which began to pump blood out of Eddie’s right nostril.

Eddie leaned forward slightly, knuckles on the floor, to lever himself up onto his feet. Sam took a step back and flicked the Colt up against Eddie’s chin. The front sight of the gun punched into the flesh of the throat, producing a kind of bluish-black puncture. As Eddie’s head hit the back wall, the thump rattled a sign on the wall over his head that announced to everyone that their deposits were insured for up to $15,000 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Littlejoe glanced past Eddie’s bloody head, to see Maria, on her knees, watching wide-eyed through the open gate of the vault. He swung around to keep the rest of the bank people covered.

“We’re moving right along, folks,” he said. “Just a technical problem with Eddie’s cock, that’s all.”

“Now I’m taking him out,” Sam announced. He had taken another step back, and raised the Colt with great calmness until it pointed at Eddie’s gory face.

“No, Sam.”

“He goes.”

“Sam, the shot. Remember what I said about shots.”

“This
stronzo
dies.”

“Not now.”

“I gotta kill him, Littlejoe. You promised.”

“When did I do that, baby?” Joe said in a soothing voice.

He watched Sam’s cherub face darken from the blood pumping within. His eyes had gone coal black, and his pretty mouth had frozen into a line of stone. He was having trouble breathing, almost as much trouble as Eddie was through his blood-clotted nose. Joe had never seen Sam this way. But, then, he had never seen Sam under real pressure of any kind.

“You fire a shot,” he told Sam, “and you could end up killing all of us.” Joe moistened his paper-dry lips. “The cops could go ape if they hear a shot from inside, figure we’re killing hostages and come in shooting.”

“So?”

“Whadya mean so?”

“So fucking what?” Sam asked coldly.

Littlejoe took a step toward Sam. The boy pivoted until the .45 was aimed at Joe’s abdomen. “Watch it, Littlejoe. If we all go, we all go.”

“We don’t have to.”

Sam’s eyes burned almost out of control for a moment, as if his inner vision of the way they would all go was too powerful, too luscious, too glorious to forsake. “Watch it, Littlejoe,” he said again, his voice as dry as ashes. “Just . . . watch it.”

But the fire had gone out of his words. Joe could hear it die away. After a moment, the Colt lowered slightly, until it was aimed at Eddie’s groin. “You really want me to let this animal live,” Sam said then, musingly, as if not quite sure of Joe’s sanity.

“I don’t care if he lives or dies. I just don’t want any shots.”

Sam nodded then. “Okay, baby, no shots.” He seemed to get shorter for a moment. Littlejoe couldn’t tell what had happened, then saw that Sam was bending at the knees like a skier.

In the next second he jumped high in the air. An instant later he was coming down full force with both clog heels on Eddie’s exposed penis. He landed with a thud that rocked the FDIC sign again. Eddie screamed, choked on his own blood, and fainted.

Sam stepped back daintily out of the puddle that was Eddie. He reached down, managed to find an arm, and lugged Eddie back into the vault. He returned a few moments later, leading Maria with him and looking pleased with himself.

“That’s a lot better now, huh, Littlejoe?”

The beatific smile on his face seemed to light up the lobby.

17

“. . . and that is the situation up to this hour, a complete standoff with a million dollars and the lives of four innocent people at stake. This is Ron Aronowitz, CBS News, Queens, New York.”

Joe sighed unhappily and snapped off the television set. “No Oscar. No Emmy. No Tony. Huh, Sam?”

Sam shrugged. “You looked pretty good out there, though, Littlejoe.”

“I was squinting too much. That fucking sun. That heat.”

“Too bad you didn’t have your good threads on.”

“That’s all right,” Joe assured him. “Anybody knows me could recognize me. They must’ve all seen it, huh? Tina. My mother, Flo. Probably Lana seen it, too. It’s a red-letter day, baby.” His face grew solemn. “I’m just sorry you didn’t get on camera, Sam. Next time, okay?”

“Maybe they don’t give us no next time.”

“You’re kidding. We call the turns, baby. We tell them, not them us. You want to be on TV, Sam? Just say the word.”

“I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“They feed you questions. It’s easy.”

“For you, Littlejoe, not for me.”

“Whatever you want.” Joe let the subject drop. Sam was a little easier to talk to now that he’d bloodied up Eddie. He seemed calmer, happier.

Of course, as someone to rely on, Sam was finished, Littlejoe told himself. From being a Rock of Gibraltar, he’d turned into a maniac of some kind. The way he’d finished off Eddie was not a sane thing to do. It went a long way beyond what a good kid would do to help a buddy. And it didn’t do Eddie a whole hell of a lot of good.

Of course, in another way, Joe mused, Sam’s burst of near-killing was a big help. It told the bank people they could expect no mercy. It got that lump of shit, Eddie, out of the way. And it saved them from having to cut the son of a bitch in on the caper, or worry about what to do with him later.

So Sam was insane. And I’m profiting from it, Littlejoe reminded himself. That’s what life is really all about, huh?

Even the violence of the cops was working for him, Joe thought. That scene with Leroy had been worth a couple of hours of lecturing. It sort of held up a mirror for everybody to see their lives in.

Establishment idiots like Boyle—and Marge, too, for that matter—got a good look at the establishment’s prize protectors. A terrific lesson, right? They knew they couldn’t expect anything outside but terror and death. And inside was Sam.