his left hand and the hunting rifle under his left arm. He was wearing his gloves. The pockets of his Brooks Brothers suit bulged with boxes of ammunition and Malone’s belt with its picket fence of cartridges was strapped about his waist over the jacket.
A sigh like an afternoon breeze off the river went through the troopers. Papa Bear glanced at them and raised the Colt to point into the car. Driver’s seat. The breeze died.
“Okay, Malone.”
Baby Bear opened the driver’s door and slid dutifully out from behind the wheel. He came round the hood of the Chrysler and stopped a yard away from Papa Bear, glancing into the car and saying something reassuring to the child.
Papa Bear waved the Colt again and Goldilocks got out on the sidewalk, she pushed the child ahead of her without letting go, then she shut the car door and backed against it. Immediately she went into a half squat with her left arm about the little girl. In this way she was protected by the body of the car from a rear attack and by the body of the child from a frontal attack. She gripped Furia’s switchblade with the point just touching the child’s throat, it made the slightest dent in the white flesh. Not for the perfidious Lady Goldie this time the gun from the royal arsenal. But the knife would serve nicely as a substitute, every trooper eye said.
The child was in shock or they had fed her a sedative. Her lids kept drooping as she tried to keep her father in focus. The mask he was wearing seemed to confuse her.
Papa Bear looked around. He was in no hurry. His camera eye swiveled the full 360° of emptiness like a panoramic shot. It paused briefly one after another at the empty holsters of the troopers.
When he was through with the inspection he said, “Turn around.” The angle of his masked head jeered at everything.
Baby Bear turned. Papa Bear stepped up to him and touched the muzzle of the revolver to his spine at the third vertebra.
“We go in,” Papa Bear decreed. “Hup.”
They marched as if a sergeant were chanting cadence up the eight steps of the Taugus National, one behind the other, and went into the bank.
Ellen witnessed the performance through the slats of the town hall window. She saw the Chrysler pull up at the bank the wrong way, she saw Papa Bear get out, she saw her Baby Bear get out, she saw Goldilocks push Barbara onto the walk and grab her and squat with the knife against her throat. Dear Jesus even if she comes away from this alive she’ll need a psychiatrist or at least a good psychologist maybe years of therapy oh I don’t care just let her stay living.
Ellen saw Papa Bear and Baby Bear make their single-file march into the bank.
That was the beginning of the worst. Because the filming stopped. No, that was wrong, they had already shot the film, it was the projection that stopped, cold dead in the machine. The whole scene was the film including the invisible director and cameraman, they were invisibly part of it along with the visibles. The whole picture froze on the screen outside Fairhouse’s window.
Maybe I’m part of it too. And Selectman Fairhouse. And these other people. And the troopers. And the Bears. Maybe we’re all part of it, everyone and everything, the Green, the bank, the uneven rooflines of the two-story buildings north south east and west, even the sky and that sun hanging in it like a prop.
It was all frozen on the screen.
Do the images on the frozen screen know about time? Time had simply stopped along with everything else. When she heard the shots and things began moving again she glanced at her wristwatch for the sake of her sanity and saw that thirteen minutes had passed since the two Bears had marched into the bank.
Shots.
Shots?
They had been faint but sharp reports from across the Green, like a sound effect, a drumstick on the rim of a snare drum. Shot shot-shot.
Shots
Why would Furia be shooting oh he wouldn’t shoot Loney why should he shoot Loney Loney went over to him John Secco told me so…
“Loney.”
As the wail came from her throat Ellen saw the man in the Brooks Brothers suit and the Papa Bear mask burst out of the bank and race down the steps. He had the revolver in his gloved right hand and a bulging canvas bank bag in his left. He ran bent over, almost double.
It was funny how the troopers remained frozen on the film. Couldn’t they see him? He was in front of their noses.
Papa Bear flung the canvas bag in the direction of Goldilocks. She threw up an arm in an instinctive grab but it sailed over her head into the rear seat of the Chrysler and she yanked the door open and scrambled in clutching for it.
Papa Bear scooped up the child as if he meant to break her back.
That was when Ellen Malone heard the casting call.
Wesley Malone in the Baby Bear Mask with Furia at his heels in the Papa Bear mask marched into the bank. The pressure on Malone’s spine increased while Furia looked the situation over. But the bank was a ghost town, he could see that at a glance, no vice-presidents behind the executive desks, no tellers at the windows, no office girls in the rear, everything put away neatly. Like for Sundays.
“Wide open like a broad,” Furia said. “They follow orders good. It’s a crime.” The muzzle prodded. “Don’t you want to know what’s a crime?”
“Whatever you say,” Malone said.
“A wide-open bank. All that bread laying around. Who needs safe deposit boxes with a sweet setup like this?”
“You won’t find any money here,” Malone said.
, “What are you, on the Board of Directors?”
“I know the big squeeze, Bagshott. And Chief Secco. They’re not about to let you walk off with the assets. The cash boxes have been emptied and all the cash is in the big vault, the one with the time-lock.”
“Stay right there.” Furia edged around and got into the tellers’ section. He opened one drawer after another. He banged the last one and came back.
“I can dream, can’t I?” Furia shrugged. “Not a plugged subway token. I’ll have to make out with that twenty- four grand. Okay, fuzz buddy, where’s the safe deposit vault?”
Their steps made lonesome sounds across the floor.
On the desk before the vault lay two keys, one to the steel-barred door, the other to the safe deposit boxes.
“You know something?” Furia said. “I’m going to let you open it.” He stepped back a few feet, Colt and Walther at waist level.
Malone picked up the vault key and unlocked the steel-barred door. He swung it in and stepped aside.
“Not on your fuzz life,” Furia said. “You open the box, pal.”
Malone took the bank’s master key from the desk and went into the vault.
“You’ll need Goldie’s key, too,” Furia said. He had the key in his left glove. He holstered the automatic and jiggled the key down into his palm. He tossed the key to Malone and leaned against the entrance to the vault. “Box number 535.”
Malone began looking for Box 535.
“I’m getting a charge out of this, you know that?” Furia said. “I mean watching a cop pull a bank job. Never thought you’d be doing a no-no like this, huh, Malone? Makes you like one of the bad guys, know what I mean?”
