They were also moving into an area where there was still undeveloped land between the towns, rather than the undifferentiated sweep of suburb that characterized the section where they’d started. After twenty minutes, they had crossed a county line and were on a deserted bit of cracked and bumpy two-lane road, with a farmer’s field on the right and a stand of trees on the left. “This is close enough,” Murch said, and began tapping the brake. “God damn it,” he said.

Dortmunder sat up. “What’s the matter? Brakes no good?”

“Brakes are fine,” Murch said through clenched teeth, and tapped them some more. “Goddam bank wants to jackknife,” he said.

Dortmunder and Kelp twisted around to look through the small rear window at the bank. Every time Murch touched the brakes, the trailer began to slue around, the rear of it moving leftward like a car in a skid on ice. Kelp said, “It looks like it wants to pass us.”

“It does,” Murch said. He kept tapping, and very gradually they slowed, and when they got below twenty miles an hour Murch could apply the brakes more normally and bring them to a stop. “Son of a bitch,” he said. His hands were still clawed around the wheel, and sweat was running down his cheeks from his forehead.

Kelp said, “Were we really in trouble, Stan?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Murch said, breathing slowly but heavily. “I just kept wishing Christopher was still a saint.”

“Let’s go take a look at things,” Dortmunder said. What he meant was that he wanted to go stand on the ground for a minute.

So did the others. All three got out and wasted several seconds just stomping their feet on the cracked pavement. Then Dortmunder took a revolver from his jacket pocket and said, “Let’s see how it worked out.”

“Right,” Kelp said, and from his own pocket took a key ring containing a dozen keys. Herman had assured him that one of those keys would definitely open the bank door. “At least one,” he’d said. “Maybe even more than one.” But Kelp had said, “One will do.”

So it did. It was the fifth key he tried, while Murch stood back a few feet with a flashlight, and then the door swung outward. Kelp stayed behind it, because they weren’t sure about the guards inside, whether the carbon-monoxide truck exhaust had knocked them out or not. They had made careful calculations on how much of the cubic-foot capacity the gas would fill after x minutes and x + y minutes, and were certain they were well within safety limits. So Dortmunder called, “Come out with your hands up.”

Kelp said, “The robbers aren’t supposed to say that to the cops. The cops are supposed to say it to the robbers.”

Dortmunder ignored him. “Come out,” he called again. “Don’t make us drill you.”

There was no response.

“Flashlight,” Dortmunder said quietly, like a doctor asking for a scalpel, and Murch handed it to him. Dortmunder moved cautiously forward, pressed himself against the wall of the trailer, and slowly looked around the edge of the door frame. Both his hands were in front of himself, pointing the gun and the flashlight at the same spot.

There was no one in sight. Furniture lay scattered all over the place, and the floor was littered with credit-card applications, small change and playing cards. Dortmunder waggled the flashlight around, continued to see no one, and said, “That’s funny.”

Kelp said, “What’s funny?”

“There’s nobody there.”

“You mean we stole an empty bank?”

“The question is,” Dortmunder said, “did we steal an empty safe.”

“Oh oh,” Kelp said.

“I should have known,” Dortmunder said, “the first second I saw you. And if not you, when I saw your nephew.”

“Let’s at least look it over,” Kelp said.

“Sure. Give me a boost.”

All three of them climbed up into the bank and began to look around, and it was Murch who found the guards. “Here they are,” he said. “Behind the counter.”

And there they were, all seven of them, stuffed away on the floor behind the counter, jammed in amid filing cabinets and desks, sound asleep. Murch said, “I heard that one snoring, that’s how I knew.”

“Don’t they look peaceful,” Kelp said, looking over the counter at them. “It makes me woozy myself just to look at them.”

Dortmunder too had been feeling a certain heaviness, thinking it was the physical and emotional letdown after a successful job, but all at once he roused himself and cried, “Murch!”

Murch was half draped over the counter; it was hard to tell if he was looking at the guards or joining them. He straightened, startled by Dortmunder’s shout, and said, “What? What?”

“Is the motor still on?”

“My God, so it is,” Murch said. He reeled toward the door. “I’ll go turn it off.”

“No no,” Dortmunder said. “Just get that damn hose out of the ventilator.” He gestured with the flashlight toward the front of the trailer, where the hose had been pumping truck exhaust into the trailer for the last twenty minutes. There was a strong smell of garage inside the bank, but it hadn’t been enough to warn them right away not to fall into their own trap. The guards had been put to sleep by carbon monoxide, and their captors had almost just done the same thing to themselves.

Murch staggered out into the fresh air, and Dortmunder said to Kelp, who was yawning like a whale, “Come on, let’s get these birds out of here.”

“Right, right, right.” Knuckling his eyes, Kelp followed Dortmunder around the counter, and they spent the next few minutes carrying guards outside and depositing them in the grass by the side of the road. When they were finished with that, they hooked the door open, propped the trailer windows open, and got back into the cab, where they found Murch asleep.

“Oh, come on,” Dortmunder said, and joggled Murch’s shoulder hard enough to bump his head into the door.

“Ow,” Murch said and looked around, blinking. “What now?” he said, obviously trying to remember what situation he was in.

“Onward,” Kelp said.

“Right,” Dortmunder said and slammed the cab door.

21

At five past two, Murch’s Mom said, “I hear them coming!” and raced to the car for her neck brace. She barely had it on and fastened when the headlights appeared at the end of the stadium, and the cab and bank drove across the football field and stopped on the drop cloth. Meanwhile, Herman and Victor and May were standing by with their equipment ready. This high-school football stadium was open at one end, so that at this time of night it was both accessible and untenanted. The stands on three sides, and the school building beyond the open side, shielded them from curious eyes on any of the neighborhood roads.

Murch had barely stopped the cab when Victor was setting up the ladder at the back and Herman was climbing the ladder with his roller in one hand and paint tray in the other. Meanwhile, May and Murch’s Mom had started, with newspapers and masking tape, to cover all sections on the sides that wouldn’t get painted — windows, chrome trim, door handles.

There were more rollers and ladders and paint trays. While Victor and Murch helped the ladies mask the sides, Kelp and Dortmunder started painting. They were using a pale-green water-base paint, the kind people use on their living-room walls, the kind you can clean up afterward with plain water. They were using this because it was the fastest and neatest to apply, it was guaranteed to cover in one coat, and it would dry very quickly. Particularly in the open air.

In five minutes, the bank wasn’t a bank any more. It had lost its “Just watch us GROW!” sign somewhere along the way and was now a pleasing soft green color instead of its former blue and white. It had also gained Michigan license plates appropriate to a mobile home. Murch drove forward till it was off the drop cloth, and then the drop cloth was folded up and put into the paint-company truck that had been stolen this afternoon for just this purpose. The ladders and rollers and paint trays were stowed away in there, too. Then Herman and May and Dortmunder and Murch’s Mom climbed up into the trailer, the ladies both carrying packages, and Kelp drove away in the paint-company truck, followed by Victor in the Packard. Victor had brought the ladies out here and would take Kelp home after he ditched the truck.