Dog Day Afternoon (27 page)

T
he heavy plate-glass door of the bank was propped open. Littlejoe saw snipers on rooftops begin to nestle in for a steady shot, the muzzles of their high-powered rifles cradled on bits of coping. With the caliber and charge of the slugs they were using in the interests of accuracy, a bullet could easily tear through two people front to back.

The sandwich took one step forward, unsteadily. Joe realized he’d have to count cadence if he was ever to get all of them in step. His life and Sam’s—all their lives, in fact—depended on being squeezed tightly together. He saw that Sam had rammed himself up against Ellen’s tight little behind as closely as if she were a boy.

“Halt!” he called. “When I say ‘left,’ everybody moves their left foot one step forward.” He remembered a wisecrack from Nam. “You all know which one is your left foot?”

“Come on, Littlejoe.” Sam’s voice sounded agonized. Maybe he knew what the problem was, Joe thought, maybe he didn’t. Either way, he was tense, and it wasn’t good when Sam got tense.

“Okay, left. Right. Left. Right. Halt.”

They paused for a moment just outside the bank. Boyle was within a yard of the open limo door. Marge, in the rear, was a yard from the bank door. Joe had draped Sam’s jacket over the middle of the line, from his head forward over Maria’s, Sam’s, and Ellen’s. He hoped it would confuse matters, but he doubted it. He took a deep breath. The smell of fresh bread had begun to nauseate him.

“Joe, for shit’s sake, Joe,” Sam muttered in a tight undertone. “Let’s move it, Joe. Move it.”

The sound of panic turned Sam’s voice into a staccato burst, like a machine gun being fired in short bursts. “Left,” Joe called, “right, left, halt.” Boyle inside. “Okay. Left. Sam, this is it.”

“Quick, man, f-f-Chrissake, quick.”

“Ellen and Sam. In! Move! Go!”

There was a moment of silence. The sandwich that remained consisted of Maria, Joe, and Marge. “Nowicki!” Baker’s voice thundered over a bullhorn. As he had from the very beginning, the FBI man pronounced Joe’s name correctly. Not like a Polack, Joe told himself now, but close enough.

Littlejoe had retained Sam’s vanilla-colored jacket. It was draped over Maria and himself now. He held the carbine cradled in his left arm, his left hand raised to hold the jacket in place.

“Nowicki!”

He knew what was bugging Baker. The Feebie hated to be doublecrossed. He thought he’d made a deal for Joe to sell out Sam. Slowly, letting go of the hem of Sam’s jacket for a moment, Littlejoe extended his arm in the air and proffered his second finger to Baker in a last salute. The crowd loved it.

“Okay,” he muttered in Maria’s ear, “this is our turn,
querida.
Ready, Marge?”

“Any readier and I’d pee in my pants.”

“Snuggle up. Here goes. Left, right, left, right, in!” The three of them tumbled into the rear of the limo and slammed the door shut.

Joe dropped the carbine on the floor and produced Leroy’s .38, which he held to Marge’s head. “Roll down the window.”

When she had he turned to Sam. The muzzle of the Colt .45 automatic had never left Ellen’s temple. In his near panic Sam had pressed the blued metal so tightly to her skin that an angry red showed just beyond the outer corner of her eye. “Home free, Sam,” Littlejoe told him.

“Let’s move this thing, man. We ain’t home free yet.”

The wideness of Sam’s eyes bothered Littlejoe. Cautiously he leaned forward to the open window. “Move it out, Baker!” he shouted. “Otherwise they die right here in the limo!”

“Aw, naw!” the driver said. “No shooting, man. Give me a break.”

“Tell Baker,” Joe suggested.

“Can we start moving?” the driver called out from his window.

“Otherwise, he’s got a hell of a laundry bill,” Joe added in a carrying voice. The crowd broke up with laughter. But the gray Ford refused to budge.

“Please?” the driver called. “I ain’t too proud to beg.”

The Ford’s right-hand door opened and Moretti got out into the glare of the searchlights. As he had when Joe first saw him, hours ago, he gave his cocoa-straw hat a tidy little tug. He moved slowly toward the black Cadillac limo and came to a halt by the open window.

“Joe,” he said then. “You got Baker so pissed off, he’s going to welsh on the deal.”

“What deal?” Sam snapped.

“You see?” Joe told the detective. “Why did you let that fucking Feebie in on the act?”

“I had no choice, Joe.” Moretti’s eyes searched for his for some sign that they were talking the same language. The brilliant lights picked out hot stars amid the beads of sweat on his forehead. “This is a national bank. Heisting it’s a federal rap. They let the local cops try their hand, but once they decide to take charge, that’s it. I warned you. I said if you didn’t cooperate with me, you’d be up against the Feds. How does it feel?”

Littlejoe moistened his lips. It was even hotter inside the limo than it had been on the street. “Driver,” he called, “are we air-conditioned? Turn it on, man.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” The motor turned over, and a moment later cool air began to filter back into the rear of the limo.

“Listen, Moretti,” Joe said then. “There is no way Baker would ever get a real man to do what he wanted. There is no human being that low. You know it. I know it. Only Baker don’t know it.”

The detective paused a moment before speaking. “That’s all water over the dam. We’re past that now. We’re into a new phase.”

“Which means?”

Moretti produced a deep Calabrese shrug, lifted up from his very toes. “Only Baker can tell you that.”

“Cut the shit, man,” Sam said. His teeth had started to chatter faintly. “Cut the talk. Let’s move. Otherwise this kid dies.”

“They all die,” Joe told Moretti. “Tell that one to Baker.”

The detective’s glance went past Joe to Sam’s face. He stared for a long moment. Then he turned and went back to the gray Ford. He got in and slammed the door. Joe rolled up the Caddy window.

“This is the coolest I’ve been for hours,” Marge commented. “Harry,” she said, “are we going to last the night?”

The manager sat huddled in a corner of the first rear seat. Sam sat in the middle and Ellen sat on the far end, slumped back against the seat as if she’d been thrown there. “Ask Joe,” Boyle suggested.

“Ask Baker,” Joe corrected him.

“Let’s move, Littlejoe,” Sam chattered. “Let’s moo-ove.”

“Amen, brother,” the driver added.

The four people from the bank, Joe, Sam, and the driver now turned forward to watch the gray Ford. Joe could only guess what was going on inside between Moretti and Baker. Minutes passed.

“Hey, getcha cold beer here!” a vendor chanted.

“We love you, Littlejoe!” a woman’s voice yelled.

“Kiss, kiss!”

“Kiss, kiss!”

“Kiss, kiss!”

At last, slowly, as if reluctant to move, the gray Ford began to inch forward toward the far end of the street. Uniformed police cleared a path through the crowd.

“Hot shit,” the driver said. “Here we go.”

He let the heavy car inch forward. At the other end of the street the police relaxed their guard, and bystanders began to swarm into what had once been the combat zone. The Caddy moved slowly through a thickening crowd of people, like a whale through sprats. Joe glanced left and right, alert to a possible trick. But what could they do now? The moment to have picked them off was past.

Standing between two uniformed cops, Lana leaned forward and made a kissing face, her over-rouged lips opening and closing. Joe failed to respond. The limo was moving slowly, a few feet at a time. Flo’s face loomed on the opposite side of the car. She too pantomimed “kiss, kiss.” Joe faced forward. “How about some speed, man?” he called to the driver.

“Any second now.”

A young gay demonstrator began running beside the limo as it picked up speed. He was carrying a hand-lettered sign:

WE LOVE, LOVE, LOVE YOU, JOE
!

Littlejoe stared straight ahead at the tail lights of the gray Ford. A moment later they had turned out of the block and onto a side street that led to Queens Boulevard. A revolving red beacon on top of the gray Ford began to turn slowly, twiddling long beams of red light. There was a low growl of nearby sirens. Two cops on motorcycles began to keep pace with the limo, one on each side.

Now they were moving along Queens Boulevard as if in a dream, no traffic, not even bystanders. Apparently the entire route had been cleared by traffic cops. Joe saw some of them standing on overpasses, glowering at the small cavalcade of cars and motorcycles.

They were in Rego Park now, his home. Up ahead a TV van was parked on the parallel service road. A camera with a long lens followed the Ford and the Cadillac as they swept past. Tina would be watching, of course, Joe thought, but she didn’t even have to haul her droopy ass to the window. She could see it all on the tube.

They were speeding through Forest Hills, past delicatessens, Chinese restaurants, bagel bakeries, a movie theater. Now they were in Kew Gardens. Never in his life had Littlejoe moved so quickly through the borough of his birth. It was as if, in saying good-bye, the whole place was flashing before his eyes.

“Man, this is slick,” the driver was saying. “I’m doing sixty-five.”

Sam produced a peculiar noise from somewhere in his throat. Joe realized it was Sam’s chuckle. “I feel better.” Sam said then. “Don’t you feel better, Littlejoe?”

“We all feel better,” Boyle cut in.

“Baker don’t feel better,” Joe amended.

The gray Ford swerved right onto the approaches to the Van Wyck Expressway. The cavalcade edged over, road by road, and sped toward the airport. Green-and-white signs heralded its approach. They were only a few miles away, speeding through the hot night from Kew Gardens into Jamaica.

Up ahead, the sign for the airport loomed big. The gray Ford turned into a cloverleaf that led to the Belt Parkway, but before it could feed into the arterial the car swerved into a service road that ran alongside a high cyclone fence. A moment later it slowed at an open gate, manned by four armed airport guards. It turned in, and the limo followed closely behind. The motorcycles fell back. The sirens were silent.

Littlejoe peered into the darkness ahead. They seemed to be on some sort of deserted runway. He could see a plane standing there in the distance, but he couldn’t tell what kind it was. Suddenly the gray Ford stopped.

“What now?” Joe asked nobody in particular.

“I’m stopping, man,” the driver told him.

After the long burst of turnpike speed, the sudden stop felt strange to Joe. He had been lulled by the speed. Now all the old anxieties swarmed over him again. “What’re they doing?”

“They’re out of the car,” Boyle said. “They’re, uh, talking on those little radios.”

“Can I leave you gentlemen and ladies now?” the driver asked.

“Shit you can, man.”

“I got a nice life,” the driver went on, more to himself than to anyone in the car. “I got a nice young chick for an old lady. Everybody meets me likes me. I feel real good with my life, you know? I just want it to go on, man.”

“Nobody’s interested,” Joe told him.

“Look!” Sam yelped.

The landing lights of the plane had been turned on. Now the immense craft was taxiing toward them. It looked huge, with its four engines, a 707 or DC-8, Joe decided, more than enough range for an ocean hop.

“It’s there, Sam!”

Joe watched Baker striding toward the limo. When he got to the Caddy, Joe had rolled the window partway down. “There’s your jet, Nowicki. I want your hostages now.”

“Kiss, kiss!”

“I want your hostages or you don’t get the jet.”

“Then you get dead hostages.”

“I cannot let a multi-million-dollar aircraft out of my authority without some sign from you that you’re willing to respect our arrangement.”

“Oh.” Joe thought about it for a minute. “Okay, Baker, take Boyle and Marge.” He nudged Marge. “Out of the car, baby. It was great fun, but it was just one of those things. Boyle, move.”

The two older bank people moved stiffly. Now Joe’s gun was pressed to Maria’s head, and Sam’s continued to bore into Ellen’s temple. “Baker,” Littlejoe called, “these two young ladies are mothers of small children. You—”

“You only need one of them, Nowicki.”

“Two is better than one.”

Marge and Boyle stood outside now, watching the interchange. Baker snapped something at a subordinate, who stepped forward to lead the two bank people away. “No,” Marge said. “These are my girls. I’m not leaving till I see how this works out.”

“Marge,” Littlejoe said, “you know I gotta do it this way.”

“You don’t need both of them,” she argued. “Give me Ellen. My God, hasn’t she been through enough? She’s out on her feet.”

“That makes it easier to handle her.” Littlejoe watched Sam for a moment in the strange half light coming from the aircraft’s landing lamps. He knew what would happen if he took Ellen away from Sam. They were welded. They were one. Ellen represented Sam’s only chance of keeping alive and out of jail.

“Baker,” he called, “where’s the money? Pass over the ransom and you get Maria.”

The FBI man conferred briefly with his assistant, who left for the gray Ford. “Where’s Moretti?” Joe asked idly.

“He’s not in charge,” Baker reminded him. “I am.”

“Think he’ll make lieutenant?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“You wouldn’t? I think once you turn in your report, he’ll be lucky if they let him keep his sergeant’s stripes.”

The other FBI man returned with a valise, which he handed to Baker. “It’s all here,” Baker said, handing it through the car window.

Littlejoe snapped open the valise. He spent a moment contemplating the banded packets of tens and twenties. So far so good. He wondered about letting Maria go, but realized abruptly that he had to let her go sometime. So long as Sam’s .45 was pressed to Ellen’s head, there was no real worry, was there?

“Okay,” he told Maria.
“Vamos ahora.”

As she left the car, Littlejoe could see that, all along, she had been holding her rosary beads. She stood next to Baker and looked back into the car. “I am praying for you,” she said then.