Bank Shot Read Online Free PDF Page A

any tension in the air, pointed out front and said, ‘Why not just go down there and turn right? Comes out the same place.’
    â€˜Sure,’ Kelp said, shrugging, as though it didn’t matter one way or the other. The Toronado started forward again, and Dortmunder turned away from Victor’s smile once more and watched suburban houses go by. They went through a couple of small shopping areas, each with its own record store and Chinese restaurant, and stopped at last in front of a bank. ‘There it is,’ Kelp said.
    It was an old-fashioned bank, done in stone that had turned dark gray over the years. Like many banks built in the Northeast in the Twenties, it tried its best to look like a Greek temple, the Twenties being the last decade that Americans actually worshipped money. Like many suburban banks, the Greek-temple motif really wasn’t suitable to the size of this building; the four gray stone pillars across the front of it were crammed so close together it was barely possible to get between them to the front door.
    Dortmunder spent a few seconds studying that front door, and the pillars, and the sidewalk, and the storefronts on both sides, and then the front door opened and two men in work clothes and construction-crew helmets came out, carrying a tall wooden writing stand, the pens at the end of their chains dangling like remnants of fringe. ‘We’re too late,’ Dortmunder said.
    â€˜Not that bank,’ Kelp said. ‘ That bank.’
    Dortmunder turned his head again, looking at Kelp past Victor’s smile. Kelp motioned across the street, and Dortmunder ducked his head a little bit – for one awful second he thought Victor was going to kiss him on the cheek, but he didn’t – and looked across the way at the other bank.
    At first he didn’t see it at all. Blue and white and chrome, something wide and low – that’s all he could make out. But then he saw the sign, spread in a banner across the front of the thing:
    TEMPORARY HEADQUARTERS
    Capitalists’ & Immigrants’ Trust
    Just Watch Us GROW!
    â€˜What the hell is it?’ Dortmunder said.
    â€˜It’s a trailer,’ Kelp said. ‘What they call a mobile home. Didn’t you ever see that kind of thing before?’
    â€˜But what the hell is it?’
    â€˜It’s the bank,’ Kelp said.
    Smiling, Victor said, ‘They’re tearing down the old building, Mr. Dortmunder, and they’re going to put the new one up in the same place. So in the meantime they’re running the bank from over there in that mobile home.’
    â€˜In the trailer,’ Dortmunder said.
    â€˜They do that kind of thing all the time,’ Kelp said. ‘Didn’t you ever notice?’
    â€˜I guess so.’ Dortmunder frowned past their two faces and through the side window and past the traffic and across the opposite sidewalk and tried to make some sense out of what he was looking at, but it was difficult. Particularly with Victor smiling right next to his left ear. ‘I can’t see anything,’ Dortmunder said. ‘I’ll be right back. You two wait here.’
    He got out of the Toronado and walked down the block, glancing into the old bank building on the way by. It was nearly five o’clock by now, but the interior was full of men with construction helmets on, ripping things apart in the glare of the work lights. The bank must be in a hell of a hurry to get the old building down and the new one up if they were willing to pay that kind of overtime. Probably nervous about being in the trailer.
    At the corner, Dortmunder turned left, waited for the light, and then crossed the street. Turning left again, he strolled along the sidewalk toward the trailer.
    It was at the end of the block, in the only vacant lot on the street. It was one of the biggest mobile home units Dortmunder had ever seen, being a good fifty feet long and twelve feet wide. Set back a yard