Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Humour
ISBN: 9780445403444
Publisher: Popular Library
Published: 1973-12-31T11:00:00+00:00

22

THE LYING AWAKE was bad enough, but the nightmares were worse. I spent the rest of that night in the gym, on a cot in a room also occupied by Eddie and Phil and Jerry, and every time terror drove me up out of dreams into consciousness I could only stare in wonder at those three, sleeping soggily—and in Jerry’s case noisily— through all the bombs and fires of my imagination. In sleep I was chased by long-nosed tanks with lives and minds of their own, I was captured by soldiers who turned into policemen who turned into Joy Boys on some black roof somewhere, I was shot, blown up, set fire to, set on by dogs, set every way but loose.

At seven I was up, completely unrefreshed; I’d never been so exhausted in my life. I went through breakfast like a mule who's been hit on the back of the head with a rock, and then staggered away to my own sweet cell, far from the gym, far from the cares of the world, and there slept until one in the afternoon, deep, dreamless sleep from which I emerged in sudden brand-new terror, thinking, We rob the bank today!

Today; good God. We had the laser. Max Nolan and Joe Maslocki had found the spot right out on the street where the Twin Cities Typewriter man parked his truck every day, never later than five minutes past five, and they now had a key to fit its ignition. The typewriter had been obtained, a guard uniform for Eddie Troyn was on tap, there were more than enough guns for the whole gang, and the names and addresses and home phone numbers of the principal bank employees were all written down in a notebook in Phil’s hip pocket. A surprise prison inspection, or “shakedown” as they called it, would definitely not happen today to throw a crimp in the plans, not right afer one had been performed last night. There was nothing at all to stop the robbery from happening. Today.

At five-thirty this afternoon. Four and a half hours from now. I jittered out of bed, shaking and quaking, and scurried off to the gym.

Bob Dombey was there. He and Max would be staying in the gym, minding the store as it were, while the rest of us went out to commit our double felony. If I could somehow have wangled that assignment for myself I maybe wouldn't have minded it all as much. It was the thought of actually being in the bank, a gun in my hand, terrified customers cowering before me, that turned my knees to jelly. And my stomach to jelly. And my brain to jelly.

Bob, looking as shifty-eyed and weaselish as ever, was actually in a pretty good mood. “You haven’t met my wife yet, have you?” he said.

“Eh?” In my condition, I could hardly remember that he was married. “Oh. Wife. No.”

“She’d like to meet you,” he said. “You two ought to get along, Alice is a real reader.

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