Catch and Release Paperback

by Lawrence Block

  And the Walkers were pros. They weren’t getting rich, but they were making what you could call a decent living, but for the fact that there was nothing decent about it. They always had food on the table and money under the mattress (if not in the bank), and they didn’t have to work too hard or too often. That was what they’d had in mind when they chose a life of crime. So they stayed with it, and why not? It suited them fine. They weren’t respectable, but neither was their father, or his father before him. The hell with being respectable. They were doing okay.

  The years went by and they kept on doing what they were doing, and doing well at it. Jack Walker drank himself to death, and after the funeral George put his arm around his brother and said, “Well, the old bastard’s in the ground. He wasn’t much good, but he wasn’t so bad, you know?”

  “When I was a kid,” Alan said, “I wanted to kill him.”

  “Oh, so did I,” George said. “Many’s the time I thought about it. But, you know, you grow older and you get over it.” And they were indeed growing older, settling into a reasonably comfortable middle age. George was thicker around the middle, while Alan’s hair was showing a little gray. They both liked a drink, but it didn’t have the hold on them it had had on their father and grandfather. It settled George down, fueled Alan, and didn’t seem to do either of them any harm.

  And this wouldn’t be much of a story, except for the fact that one day they set out to steal some money, and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

  It was a robbery, and the details have largely faded from memory, but I don’t suppose they’re terribly important. The tip came from an employee of the targeted firm, whose wife was the sister of a woman Mike Dunn was sleeping with; for a cut of the proceeds, he’d provide details of when to hit the place, along with the security codes and keys that would get them in. Their expectations were considerable. Mike Dunn, who brought in the deal, thought they ought to walk off with a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars. Their tipster was in for a ten percent share, and they’d split the residue in five equal shares, as they always did on jobs of this nature. “Even splits,” George Walker had said early on. “You hear about different ways of doing it, something off the top for the guy who brings it in, so much extra for whoever bankrolls the operation. All that does is make it complicated, and give everybody a reason to come up with a resentment. The minute you’re getting a dollar more than me, I’m pissed off. And the funny thing is you’re pissed off, too, because whatever you’re getting isn’t enough. Make the splits even and nobody’s got cause to complain. You put out more than I do on the one job, well, it evens out later on, when I put out more’n you do. Meantime, every dollar comes in, each one of us gets twenty cents of it.” So they stood to bring in eighteen thousand dollars apiece for a few hours work, which, inflation notwithstanding, was a healthy cut above minimum wage, and better than anybody was paying in the fields and factories. Was it a fortune? No. Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice? Hardly that. But all five of the principals would agree that it was a good night’s work.

  The job was planned and rehearsed, the schedule fine-tuned. When push came to shove, the pushing and shoving went like clockwork. Everything happened just as it was supposed to, and our five masked heroes wound up in a room with five of the firm’s employees, one of them the inside man, the brother-in-law of Mike Dunn’s paramour. And it strikes me that we need a name for him, although we won’t need it for long. But let’s call him Alfie. No need for a last name. Just Alfie will do fine.

  Like the others, Alfie was tied up tight, a piece of duct tape across his mouth. Mike Dunn had given him a wink when he tied him, and made sure his bonds weren’t tight enough to hurt. He sat there and watched as the five men hauled sacks of money out of the vault.

  It was Eddie O’Day who found the bearer bonds.

  By then they already knew that it was going to be a much bigger payday than they’d anticipated. A hundred thousand? The cash looked as though it would come to at least three and maybe four or five times that. Half a million? A hundred thousand apiece?

  The bearer bonds, all by themselves, totaled two million dollars. They were like cash, but better than cash because, relatively speaking, they didn’t weigh anything or take up any space. Pieces of paper, two hundred of them, each worth ten thousand dollars. And they weren’t registered to an owner, and were as anonymous as a crumpled dollar bill.

  In every man’s mind, the numbers changed. The night was going to be worth two and a half million dollars, or half a million apiece. Why, Alfie’s share as an informant would come to a quarter of a million dollars all by itself, which was not bad compensation for letting yourself be tied up and gagged for a few hours.

  Of course, there was another way of looking at it. Alfie was taking fifty thousand dollars from each of them. He was costing them, right off the top, almost three times as much money as they’d expected to net in the first place.

  The little son of a bitch...Alan Walker went over to Alfie and hunkered down next to him. “You did good,” he said. “There’s lots more money than anybody thought, plus all of these bonds.” Alfie struggled with his bonds, and his eyes rolled wildly. Alan asked him if something was the matter, and Mike Dunn came over and took the tape from Alfie’s mouth.

  “Them,” Alfie said.

  “Them?”

  He rolled his eyes toward his fellow employees. “They’ll think I’m involved,” he said.

  “Well, hell, Alfie,” Eddie O’Day said, “you are involved, aren’tcha? You’re in for what, ten percent?” Alfie just stared.

  “Listen,” George Walker told him, “don’t worry about those guys. What are they gonna say?”

  “Their lips are sealed,” his brother pointed out.

  “But—” George Walker nodded to Louis Creamer, who drew a pistol and shot one of the bound men in the back of the head. Mike Dunn and Eddie O’Day drew their guns, and more shots rang out. Within seconds the four presumably loyal employees were dead.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Alfie said.

  “Had to be,” George Walker told him. “They heard what my brother said to you, right? Besides, the money involved, there’s gonna be way too much heat coming down. They didn’t see anybody’s face, but who knows what they might notice that the masks don’t hide? And they heard voices. Better this way, Alfie.”

  “Ten percent,” Eddie O’Day said. “You might walk away with a quarter of a million dollars, Alfie. What are you gonna do with all that dough?”

  Alfie looked like a man who’d heard the good news and the bad news all at once. He was in line for a fortune, but would he get to spend a dime of it? “Listen,” he said, “you guys better beat me up.”

  “Beat you up?”

  “I think so, and—”

  “But you’re our little buddy,” Louis Creamer said. “Why would we want to do that?”

  “If I’m the only one left,” Alfie said, “they’ll suspect me, won’t they?”

  “Suspect you?”

  “Of being involved.”

  “Ah,” George Walker said. “Never thought of that.”

  “But if you beat me up...”

  “You figure it might throw them off? A couple of bruises on your face and they won’t even think of questioning you?”

  “Maybe you better wound me,” Alfie said.

  “Wound you, Alfie?”

  “Like a flesh wound, you know? A non-fatal wound.”

  “Oh, hell,” Alan Walker said. “We can do better than that.” And he put his gun up against Alfie’s forehead and blew his brains out.

  “Had to be,” George Walker announced, as they cleared the area of any possible traces of their presence. “No way on earth he would have stood up, the kind of heat they’d have put on him. The minute the total goes over a mill, far as I’m concerned, they’re all dead, all five of them. The other four because of what they might have picked up, and Alfie because of what we damn well know he knows.”

  “He was in for a quarter of a mil
l,” Eddie O’Day said. “You look at it one way, old Alfie was a rich man for a minute there.”

  “You think about it,” Louis Creamer said, “what’d he ever do was worth a quarter of a mill?”

  “He was taking fifty grand apiece from each of us,” Alan Walker said. “If you want to look at it that way.”

  “It’s as good a way as any to look at it,” George Walker said.

  “Beady little eyes,” Eddie O’Day said. “Never liked the little bastard. And he’d have sung like a bird, minute they picked him up.” The Walkers had a storage locker that nobody knew about, and that was where they went to count the proceeds of the job. The cash, it turned out, ran to just over $650,000, and another count of the bearer bonds confirmed the figure of two million dollars. That made the total $2,650,000, or $530,000 a man after a five-way split.

  “Alfie was richer than we thought,” George Walker said. “For a minute there, anyway. Two hundred sixty-five grand.”

  “If we’d left him alive,” his brother said, “the cops would have had our names within twenty-four hours.”

  “Twenty-four hours? He’da been singing the second they got the tape off his mouth.”

  Eddie O’Day said, “You got to wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “How much singing he already done.” They exchanged glances.

  To Mike Dunn, George Walker said, “This dame of yours. Alfie was married to her sister?”

  “Right.”

  “I was a cop, I’d take a look at the families of those five guys. Dead or alive, I’d figure there might have been somebody on the inside, you know?”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “They talk to Alfie’s wife, who knows what he let slip?”

  “Probably nothing.”

  “Probably nothing, but who knows? Maybe he thought he was keeping her in the dark, but she puts two and two together, you know?”

  “Maybe he talked in his sleep,” Louis Creamer suggested.

  Mike Dunn thought about it, nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  Later that evening, the Walkers were in George’s den, drinking scotch and smoking cigars. “You know what I’m thinking,” George said.

  “The wife’s dead,” Alan said, “and it draws the cops a picture. Five employees dead, plus the wife of one of them? Right away they know which one was working for us.”

  “So they know which direction to go.”

  “This woman Mike’s been nailing. Sister of Alfie’s wife.”

  “Right.”

  “They talk to her and what do they get?”

  “Probably nothing, far as the job’s concerned. Even if Alfie talked to his wife, it’s a stretch to think the wife talked to her sister.”

  Alan nodded. “The sister doesn’t know shit about the job,” he said.

  “But there’s one thing she knows.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She knows she’s been sleeping with Mike. Of course that’s something she most likely wants kept a secret, on account of she’s a married lady.”

  “But when the cops turn her upside-down and shake her...”

  “Leads straight to Mike. And now that I think about it, will they even have to shake her hard? Because if she figures out that it was probably Mike that got her sister and her brother-in-law killed...”

  George finished his drink, poured another. “Her name’s Alice,” he said. “Alice Fuhrmann. Be easy enough, drop in on her, take her out. Where I sit, she looks like a big loose end.”

  “How’s Mike gonna take it?”

  “Maybe it’ll look like an accident.”

  “He’s no dummy. She has an accident, he’ll have a pretty good idea who gave it to her.”

  “Well, that’s another thing,” George Walker said. “Take out Alfie’s wife and her sister and there’s nobody with a story to tell. But I can see the cops finding the connection between Mike and this Alice no matter what, because who knows who she told?”

  “He’s a good man, Mike.”

  “Damn good man.”

  “Kind of a loner, though.”

  “Looks out for himself.” The brothers glanced significantly at each other, and drank their whiskey.

  The sixth death recorded in connection with the robbery was that of Alfie’s wife. Mike Dunn went to her home, found her alone, and accepted her offer of a cup of coffee. She thought he was coming on to her, and had heard from her sister what a good lover he was, and the idea of having a quickie with her sister’s boyfriend was not unappealing. She invited him upstairs, and he didn’t know what to do. He knew he couldn’t afford to leave physical evidence in her bed or on her body. And could he have sex with a woman and then kill her? The thought sickened him, and, not surprisingly, turned him on a little too. He went upstairs with her. She was wearing a robe, and as they ascended the staircase he ran a hand up under the robe and found she was wearing nothing under it. He was wildly excited, and desperate to avoid acting on his excitement, and when they reached the top of the stairs he took her in his arms. She waited for him to kiss her, and instead he got his hands on her neck and throttled her, his hands tightening convulsively around her throat until the light went out of her eyes. Then he pitched her body down the stairs, walked down them himself, stepped over her corpse and got out of the house.

  He was shaking. He wanted to tell somebody but he didn’t know whom to tell. He got in his car and drove home, and there was George Walker with a duffle bag.

  “I did it,” Mike blurted out. “She thought I wanted to fuck her, and you want to hear something sick? I wanted to.”

  “But you took care of it?”

  “She fell down the stairs,” Mike said. “Broke her neck.”

  “Accidents happen,” George said, and tapped the duffle bag. “Your share.”

  “I thought we weren’t gonna divvy it for a while.”

  “That was the plan, yeah.”

  “Because they might come calling, and if anybody has a lot of money at hand...”

  “Right.”

  “Besides, any of us starts spending, it draws attention. Not that I would, but I’d worry about Eddie.”

  “If he starts throwing money around...”

  “Could draw attention.”

  “Right.”

  “Thing is,” George explained, “we were thinking maybe you ought to get out of town for a while, Mike. Alfie’s dead and his wife’s dead, but who knows how far back the cops can trace things? This girlfriend of yours—”

  “Jesus, don’t remind me. I just killed her sister.”

  “Well, somebody can take care of that.” Mike Dunn’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

  “If you’re out of town for a while,” George said, “maybe it’s not a bad thing.” Not a bad thing at all, Mike thought. Not if somebody was going to take care of Alice Fuhrmann, because the next thing that might occur to them was taking care of Mike Dunn, and he didn’t want to be around when that happened. He packed a bag, and George walked him to his car, and took a gun from his pocket and shot him behind the ear just as he was getting behind the wheel.

  Within hours Mike Dunn was buried at the bottom of an old well at an abandoned farmhouse six miles north of the city, and his car was part of a fleet of stolen cars on their way to the coast, where they’d be loaded aboard a freighter for shipment overseas. By then Alan Walker had decoyed Alice Fuhrmann to a supermarket parking lot, where he killed her with a homemade garrote and stuffed her into the trunk of her car.

  “Mike did the right thing,” George told Eddie O’Day and Louis Creamer. “He took out Alfie’s widow and his own girlfriend, but he figured it might still come back to him, so I gave him his share and he took off. Half a mill, he can stay gone for a good long time.”

  “More’n that,” Eddie O’Day said. “Five hundred thirty, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, round numbers.”

  “Speaking of numbers,” Eddie said, “when are we gonna cut up the pie? Becau
se I could use some of mine.”

  “Soon,” George told him.

  Five-thirty each for Louis Creamer and Eddie O’Day, $795,000 apiece for the Walkers, George thought, because Louis and Eddie didn’t know that Mike Dunn had not gone willingly (though he’d been willing enough to do so) and had not taken his share with him. (George had brought the duffle bag home with him, and stashed it behind the furnace.) So why should Eddie and Louis get a split of Mike’s share?

  For that matter, George thought, he hadn’t yet told his brother what had become of Mike Dunn. He’d never intended to give Mike his share, but he’d filled the duffle bag at the storage facility in case he’d had to change his plans on the spot, and he’d held the money out afterward in case the four of them wound up going to the storage bin together to make the split. As far as Alan knew, Mike and his share had vanished, and why burden the lad with the whole story? Why should Alan have a friend’s death on his conscience?

  No, George’s conscience could carry the weight. And, along with the guilt, shouldn’t he have Mike’s share for himself? Because he couldn’t split it with Alan without telling him where it came from.

  Which changed the numbers slightly. $530,000 apiece for Alan, Louis, and Eddie. $1,060,000 for George.

  Of course we knew who’d pulled off the robbery. Alfie’s wife had indeed suffered a broken neck in the fall, but the medical examination quickly revealed she’d been strangled first. Her sister had disappeared, and soon turned up in the trunk of her car, a loop of wire tightened around her neck. Someone was able to connect the sister to Mike Dunn, and we established that he and his clothes and his car had gone missing. Present or not, Mike Dunn automatically led to Creamer and O’Day and the Walkers—but we’d have been looking at them anyway. Just a matter of rounding up the usual suspects, really.

  “Eddie called me,” Alan said. “They were talking to him.”

  “And you, and me,” George said. “And Louis. They can suspect all they want, long as they can’t prove anything.”

  “He wants his cut.”

  “Eddie?”

  Alan nodded. “I asked him was he planning on running, and he said no. Just that he’ll feel better when he’s got his share. Mike got his cut, he said, and why’s he different?”