Read Online Thieves Dozen by Donald E. Westlake - Free Book Online Page B

said, “So you’ll tell them not to do that. No radio transmitters, or we kill the hostages.”
    “Well, I suppose,” Dortmunder said doubtfully.
    “What’s wrong
now
?” the robber demanded. “You’re too god-damn
picky,
Diddums; you’re just the messenger here. You think you know my job better than I do?”
    I know I do, Dortmunder thought, but it didn’t seem a judicious thing to say aloud, so instead, he explained, “I just want things to go smooth, that’s all. I just don’t want bloodshed. And I was thinking, the New York City police, you know, well, they’ve got helicopters.”
    “Damn,” the robber said. He crouched low to the littered floor, behind the broken doorframe, and brooded about his situation. Then he looked up at Dortmunder and said, “OK, Diddums, you’re so smart. What
should
we do?”
    Dortmunder blinked. “You want
me
to figure out your getaway?”
    “Put yourself in our position,” the robber suggested. “Think about it.”
    Dortmunder nodded. Hands in the air, he gazed at the blocked intersection and put himself in the robbers’ position. “Hoo, boy,” he said. “You’re in a real mess.”
    “We
know
that, Diddums.”
    “Well,” Dortmunder said, “I tell you what maybe you could do. You make them give you one of those buses they’ve got down there blocking the street. They give you one of those buses right now, then you know they haven’t had time to put anything cute in it, like time-release tear-gas grenades or anyth—”
    “Oh, my God,” the robber said. His black ski mask seemed to have paled slightly.
    “Then you take
all
the hostages,” Dortmunder told him. “Everybody goes in the bus, and one of you people drives, and you go somewhere real crowded, like Times Square, say, and then you stop and make all the hostages get out and run.”
    “Yeah?” the robber said. “What good does that do us?” “Well,” Dortmunder said, “you drop the ski masks and the leather jackets and the guns, and
you
run, too. Twenty, thirty people all running away from the bus in different directions, in the middle of Times Square in rush hour, everybody losing themselves in the crowd. It might work.”
    “Jeez, it might,” the robber said. “OK, go ahead and— What?” “What?” Dortmunder echoed. He strained to look leftward, past the vertical column of his left arm. The boss robber was in excited conversation with one of his pals; not the red-eyed maniac, a different one. The boss robber shook his head and said, “Damn!” Then he looked up at Dortmunder. “Come back in here, Diddums,” he said.
    Dortmunder said, “But don’t you want me to—” “Come back in here!”
    “Oh,” Dortmunder said. “Uh, I better tell them over there that I’m gonna move.”
    “Make it fast,” the robber told him. “Don’t mess with me, Diddums. I’m in a bad mood right now.”
    “OK.” Turning his head the other way, hating it that his back was toward this bad-mooded robber for even a second, Dortmunder called, “They want me to go back into the bank now. Just for a minute.” Hands still up, he edged sideways across the sidewalk and through the gaping doorway, where the robbers laid hands on him and flung him back deeper into the bank.
    He nearly lost his balance but saved himself against the sideways-lying pot of the tipped-over Ficus. When he turned around, all five of the robbers were lined up looking at him, their expressions intent, focused, almost hungry, like a row of cats looking in a fish-store window. “Uh,” Dortmunder said.
    “He’s it now,” one of the robbers said.
    Another robber said, “But
they
don’t know it.”
    A third robber said, “They will soon.”
    “They’ll know it when nobody gets on the bus,” the boss robber said, and shook his head at Dortmunder. “Sorry, Diddums. Your idea doesn’t work anymore.”
    Dortmunder had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t actually
part
of this string. “How come?” he asked.
    Disgusted,