The Heavenly Table(31)

Leonard had endured a thousand such insults and harangues in silence over the years, but, as many tyrants realize too late, even a spineless toady sometimes has his limits. Although Francis Gilbert would have never dreamed that his son-in-law had the grit for such a scheme, Leonard had been slowly and methodically draining the bank coffers for the past eleven months, in preparation for his escape to gaudy, wide-open San Francisco. Once there, he planned, in no particular order, to become a complete fop, seek out the best ophthalmologist on the West Coast, and knock up the first woman with a good set of childbearing hips who’d spread her legs for him. Only one more thing was needed to perfect his plan, and that was a scapegoat.

And so, when the awkward and grubby trio entered the bank just a few minutes after Leonard unlocked the door, and announced their felonious intentions, it was all he could do not to welcome them with open arms. In fact, he almost felt sorry for them, as he watched the short fat one trip on the doorjamb, and the youngest accidently spill over a spittoon on his way to guard the front window with a shotgun. It was obvious to the bank manager that the oldest, tall and serious in a black frock coat a bit too big for him, was the brains behind the operation, but even he, after pulling a pistol from the waist of his ragged overalls, seemed at a loss over what to do next. Afraid that some customer might walk in and spoil everything, Leonard took it upon himself to hurry the heist along, first showing them the empty vault, and then dumping the money from the two cash drawers into a bag and setting it on the counter. After that, to give them time to make their getaway and also to cover his own ass, he pretended to faint.

The Jewetts were already two miles out of town by the time Leonard moseyed up the street to the sheriff’s office. On the way there, he went over the story he planned to tell one more time in his head, and then squeezed his eyes shut in front of Ollie’s Livery until the tears were practically cascading down his pale cheeks. Everyone in Farleigh knew that he bawled like a baby over the slightest upset, and he figured that anything less than full-scale blubbering might arouse suspicion. And what did it matter? After nine years of ridicule, what were one or two more embarrassments? He had thirty thousand dollars hidden under the floorboards on the back porch at home, and only he and the robbers knew how little cash had actually been in the bank that morning. Within a few days, he would be on a train bound for the West Coast with a suitcase of money and the last laugh.

The sheriff, Earl Cotter, a potbellied man with greasy gray hair and a vein-streaked nose shaped like a cork, was sitting at his desk leafing through a seed catalog when Leonard walked in wiping at his eyes. He shook his head at the powder-blue parasol the bank manager carried and the white carnation stuck in his buttonhole. Cotter was just about to ask Leonard why he was carrying a goddamn umbrella when there hadn’t been a drop of rain in three weeks, when it suddenly occurred to him that the man never left his post before lunchtime. Never. “What are you doin’ over here?” he said, furrowing his brow.

Leonard took several deep breaths as he wiped at his face with a handkerchief, then let out a sigh and whimpered, “It was awful. I thought for sure I was a dead man.”

Before the bank manager could finish his report, Cotter leaped up from his desk and grabbed a shotgun from the rack behind him. Hurrying to the door, he stepped out warily and pointed the gun up and down the street. But there wasn’t a sign of anything out there except for the Phillips boy bouncing on his damn pogo stick on the wooden walkway in front of Cinderella Vanbibber’s house. After the way she had harassed him since spring about birds landing on her fence posts, he was a little surprised the old bitch hadn’t already sent her maid over with a complaint about it. “How long since this happened?” he shouted at Leonard through the open doorway.

“Oh, fifteen, twenty minutes ago. No more than thirty.”

The sheriff walked back into the office, a dumbfounded look on his face. “And you just now tellin’ me!”

“Well, Earl, it takes a while to count to a thousand, even for a banker.”

“Count to a thousand? What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“That’s what I was told to do and I did it,” Leonard said. “You weren’t there, Sheriff. They were killers if I ever saw one.”

Cotter rolled his eyes. “I doubt very much if you’ve seen many killers in your lifetime, Leonard.”

“Well, I seen three this morning, I can tell you that.”

“So they was packin’ guns, was they?”

“Had ’em pointed right at me,” Leonard said, as he watched the sheriff pull open a desk drawer and rummage around for his pistol and holster.

“Anybody else see them?”

“No, I’d just unlocked the door when they barged in threatening to murder me.”

“How much they get?”

“All of it.”

“Jesus Christ, boy, how much was that?”

“Thirty thousand,” Leonard replied without batting an eye. “Thirty thousand, three hundred, and fifty-four, to be exact.”

“Lord, have mercy!” Cotter shrieked. “Ol’ Gib will probably cry his own self when he hears about this.” He hurried to load the gun. His fingers started to tremble just thinking about how Francis Gilbert would react if the thieves got away; he’d once seen him, over the course of several weeks, drive a clerk named Henry Loomis to suicide over an accounting mistake that amounted to sixteen cents. Outside, the sound of the pogo stick got a little closer. He dropped a bullet and dug in the drawer for another one.