“What we come this piece to see. That's it, our ticket to tomorrow.” But Richard didn't get it.
“I don't see anything,” he said.
“Use your magi-nation,” said Lamar.
They were parked at a Denny's Restaurant, just off the interstate ramp.
The sign said Maurine Street. Its lot jammed with cars, the restaurant sat on a small podium of land like the king of everywhere, the remnants of a crowd visible through the double-glass doors out front and the windows that circled it like a bright necklace. At the entrance to the parking lot stood a proud art mo deme sign, turquoise and red; at night, it would blaze like a beacon up to the interstate.
“I just see… a Denny's,” said Richard.
“Ennys,” O’Dell said and giggled.
“Is there a problem here, Aunt Lucy?” said Lamar.
“Aunt Lucy, you trying to take command of the outfit? You got a better idea?”
“But… wouldn't a bank be better? It would certainly be more dignified.”
“Di-fied,” said O’Dell, rocking ever so slightly.
“Well now, let me explain,” said Lamar.
“You got to keep up with the times. Bank robbing ain't what it used to be. A, they keep the big money in the vault, with a time lock so you only got what loose money's up front, sometimes less'n a hundred or so bucks. B, you got the goddamned cameras all over the place. Aunt Lucy, are you listening?”
“Lamar, I'm sure you're right.”
''Then you got silent alarms, you got money packs rigged to explode and cover you with red dye that don't wash off for a week, you got private security services, sometimes you got guards. A bank can be a pickle.”
“I see.”
“Now, a Denny's, in a little as swipe Texas city on a late Sunday afternoon? Let me tell you what you got. You got the big old breakfast money from about a thousand Texas Baptists. Them Baptists, they like to go to church and pray all morning, then stroll on down to Denny's for breakfast.
They shovel down the goddamn home fries and pancakes and eggs and bacon and syrup and butter and coffee like hogs at a trough. They bloat up and begin to belch and pick their teeth. Whole goddamn families. It makes ’em feel close to the Lord, don't ask me why. So 'round about four, you got maybe ten, twelve thousand in small bills in the manager's safe. You got no cameras. You got no guards.
You got no heroes. You got nothing but a staff of assholes what hates their goddamned jobs and ain't about to die for no Denny, whosoever the mother fuck he may be.”
“Enny,” said O’Dell, cheerfully.
“Daddy, I swear, you know everything,” said Ruta Bern.
“You are so smart.”
“Now if you like. Aunt Lucy, we'll drop you off and you can rob a bank while we do this here Texas Denny's.”
“No, Lamar,” said Richard.
“Thank you, Aunt Lucy. Ain't you the sweetest thang.
All right, darling', let's go for a little drive through the neighborhood, then park and you and me head in for a lookiesee. We'll leave the two ladies in the back.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said.
Ruta Beth pulled the car out, turned right into a residential area, turned and turned again, passing by small white houses, well tended, with green lawns. Squares' houses, and now and then a square could be glimpsed, hosing down a mid sized car, pushing a mower, just bullshitting with another square.
Richard looked at them, seeing a lost world flee by. Once he'd had such contempt! The people! Fools and jerks, parvenus and philistines, without a brain in their head, nothing to sustain them but delusions like… baseball… family… work. Yet now their dreariness broke his heart; it looked so comforting.
“Git that long, sad look off your beautiful puss, there, Aunt Lucy,” said Lamar.
“You git to looking that sad and I wonder if you ain't about to make a break on us.”
“Lamar, I was thinking no such thing.”
“Yeah, I heard that before. He acts up, O’Dell, you conk him good.”
Eventually Ruta Beth swung around and they pulled into the Denny's parking lot.
“Okay, you gals stay put for a bit. O’Dell, you tuck that big piece away case anybody looks in. We're going to check the place out.”
Richard watched Lamar get out of the car, stop, and so casually stretch himself as he pulled on a jean jacket over the .45. Then he put his arm around Ruta Beth, and just as casually as a couple of high school kids on a date, the two of them sauntered into Denny's.
Richard sat back, trying to relax. He felt absurd in the getup. And he was bored. But he couldn't get out of the car, because in the open, the fraudulence of his disguise would be obvious. He looked over at O’Dell, who grinned at him with empty, happy eyes. Looking into O’Dell's eyes could make you insane: they were guileless and remote, far removed from concepts such as cause and effect or right and wrong. He was simply a gigantic baby, who needed to be fed and wiped. Lamar brushed his teeth every night, talking to him in that sing-songy voice, baby talk and giggles. Yet in O’Dell there was a kind of innocence. He wasn't evil. He had no choice at all in the matter; he'd probably have been better off in the prison, where at least he was feared and respected, which meant he was left alone; or in a home somewhere, if there'd been money to put him in a home where they could study the strange gaps in his mind that left him mute and empty, yet curiously able to perform small hand-eye tasks like driving or shooting. Left to his own ways and shielded from temptation, he probably wouldn't hurt a flea.
Richard turned from O’Dell and found himself looking into the blank sunglasses of a deputy sheriff.
Lamar sat at the counter, sipping coffee. He looked like any middle-aged cowpoke, Texas style. Behind his shades, his eyes scoped the place out. It was done in green-and brown zigzags, low-intensity colors to soothe people. He checked for entrances: the main one in the front right-hand corner of the building and, around to the side, an emergency exit, painted over. The windows gave a good view of the parking lot, however. His eyes went back to the counter, followed it to the register, which he saw was some kind of computer type deal. He figured when he went to the John, he could carefully check the register and see if there was a silent-alarm button or wire near the cash drawer, rare but not so rare it shouldn't be checked out. Hell, who knew, in goddamned Texas there might be a sawed-off or a six-gun slung under the register. This damned state had guns everywhere!
There was a mirror on the wall, too, probably okay, but he made himself a note to check it out. You put the point of a pencil up against it; if there was a gap between the pencil and its reflection you were okay, but if they touched, it was a one-way job, which would, mean a watcher or maybe even a shooter on the other side.
The kitchen, as usual, was behind the counter, with a long Dutch window through which to slide the plates. Now it held two cooks; on Sunday, at least four, maybe six. All of them black. Would they make a fuss to save the boss man his insured money? Probably not, certainly not older guys.
But a young buck, like the niggers on the yard, busting with come and wanting to show how dead tough they were?
Hmmmm. Would bear watching.
He pivoted slightly to study the layout of the tables. Only one dining room, that was fine, but what wasn't was the dogleg as the greedy bastards that ran the place had set six booths in the hallway that led to the bathrooms and the manager's office as a no-smoking zone. Be hard for one man to cover both the main room, with its fifty or so tables, and the hallway, ninety degrees to the right. The register man could probably cover both; or he himself, as he took the manager back to his office, could cover the hallway. But where would he put his tail gunner? Best place would be in a window booth halfway down. That way, the tail gunner could watch for heroes in the crowd, and take them out if he had to, and also keep an eye tuned to the lot for cops. And there was that back way out, which pleased Lamar if it came to shooting. You never went into guns; you always went away from them, flanked them and dealt with them.
And then the problem with a goddamned wheel man.
With only four players on the crew, and one of them shaky as hell and another a cherry, and the room big, there was no way he could have the wheel man out and running. Needed the crew inside, all of them, even dickhead Richard. Didn't like that at all. Have to park right there at the entrance and run in; but a cop driving by might see the car, engine running, doors opened, empty. That's the sort of thing that set them off. Have to run a
