Cage's Crew

by Martin Archer

  Robbie was important to me, maybe even more important than Norm. We’d met years ago when we worked together on a couple of crews, one for a jewelry store in Beverly Hills; the other for a Brinks armored car office in Pennsylvania. I had been one of the crews’ hard men and its planner, Robbie its alarm and entry expert.

  After our second gig together, we’d begun working together periodically and had done so for quite some time until Robbie took a gig with the wrong crew and got put away. Now he was one of the small handful of trusted men I used as telephone answering and contact services—to take messages from guys trying to get in touch with me and for me to contact when I needed a specialist for a job. Over the years I’d gotten in on a number of gigs through Robbie who always seemed to “know somebody” with a possible gig or who was looking for someone with my skills to be part of the crew.

  Robbie himself was no longer doing jobs, and he certainly wasn’t a fence despite owning a rather marginal pawn shop in Oakland. He had done almost five years of hard time in California as a result of a job gone wrong. It was his second felony conviction and he had permanently retired to run his pawn shop as soon as he got out. It was an understandable decision since he liked living in California and the next time he got caught would result in a mandatory life sentence. Doing hard time was difficult enough when you had hope of getting out someday; doing it forever would be impossible for him and he was smart enough to know it. Besides, he was making a lot of money being almost straight.

  These days Robbie was active in the National Pawnbrokers Association and attended all its national and regional meetings. He had a lot of solid contacts as a result of his membership and was appreciated by some of his fellow pawnbrokers because he left it to them to fence stolen goods. He only took payment for his “consulting and referral services” in cash and only made loans on diamonds and jewelry brought legitimately into his shop so he could carefully and honestly record and document them as pawned.

  Robbie wasn’t a fence and never bought stolen goods no matter how good the deal sounded; anyone who wanted to sell something was referred to pawn shops in Las Vegas or elsewhere who he’d “heard might be buying when there was a good deal.” Robbie was careful and honest as far as the cops and Internal Revenue were concerned and I appreciated it. He got ten percent of whatever one of my jobs netted after whoever advanced the money necessary to finance the job got double whatever he had put up to cover its costs.

  I had put up my own money to finance this particular job; I did it myself because I liked to keep things as tight as possible whenever the Mob was involved. In this case, they were the drug buyers who had used diamonds to pay the drug sellers I intend to rob tonight. I was in the alley because I was after the diamonds.

  Robbie and I had worked on a number of crews before Robbie went to prison and then retired. These days Robbie puttered around his rundown pawn shop in an old strip mall and lived alone in a small apartment in the rear. He was always there except when he was away attending pawnbroker conventions; I lived with Pencie in one California’s endless and faceless golf communities in the suburbs when I wasn’t away on a job.

  Pencie liked to play golf when I was “away on business” and had a storefront art gallery that was “open by appointment” and mainly used to launder my cash. When I wasn’t with a crew on a job, which was most of the time, Pencie and I travelled a lot and either paid cash or used her squeaky clean debit and credit cards.

  Norm lived on a ranch in Montana and periodically needed money for his cows and his wife and children, particularly now that his oldest two girls were off to college. He knew how to fly and had his own four-seat plane, an old Piper Cherokee 235 equipped with eighty-four-gallon, extended-range wing tanks. He didn’t file flight plans when he was on a crew and had built himself a nifty metal plate that he could repaint and temporarily install to change his plane’s registration number. Norm had a dirt strip on his ranch with a wind sock and a cheap metal tee-hangar where he could store his plane out of his state’s extreme weather and away from any inquiring eye in the sky.

  Robbie bought his pawn shop in Oakland after he got out and decided to retire. Now he puttered around his dusty pawnshop, made a few small loans and sold unredeemed items such as computers and tools. He lived alone in an apartment in the rear of his shop; when I wasn't on a job, I lived with Pencie in a home in one of Southern California’s endless and faceless suburbs. We traveled a lot, inevitably paying cash wherever possible and primarily using her clean and legitimate credit cards for reservations and identification.

  None of the three of us had the slightest interest in the buying or selling of drugs except to the extent drug wholesalers often received large amounts of cash and diamonds and were not likely to go to the police if some of them went missing—which was why I was about to climb a fire escape ladder in downtown Chicago at three in the morning. Norm and I had taken a very similar gig Jack Douglass had brought to Robbie two or three years ago and it had paid off big for us, which is why I’d decided to go ahead with this one—even though the first one had almost ended in failure when I had to shoot a couple of the Mob guys who were using the diamonds to buy dope. They had made the serious mistake of sticking around to have a drink with the seller and then tried to help him avoid being robbed.

  Mob-related gigs like this one and the earlier one were always iffy because many of the Mob’s made men and their associates have become informants. As a result, only a fool would hit a Mob deal when it was going down for fear that the feds or the local police might arrive or even already be there undercover; only before or after was my firm policy. This gig was like the one a few years ago, an “after.”

  For better or worse, Norm and I had accepted the gig and the job was underway. Some hours earlier, if the information Robbie had received from Jack Douglass was correct, a large amount of diamonds had been handed over to pay for a large amount of heroin. The drugs were long gone, but the diamonds and the man who had them were in Room 3207. If it had been a sting or a real deal gone bad because of an informant, the police and the feds would have taken the deal down when the diamonds and drugs changed hands.

  Chapter Two

  I slid the little handheld night vision scope out of my hoodie’s pouch as soon as I finished counting the steps down the alley, and used it to look up at the fire escape and around the alley. The alley was clear, and I was pretty much right where I should be under the descending fire escape ladder.

  Now all I had to do was make the last fifteen feet of so of ladder descend so I could climb up the fire escape to the thirty-second floor. I unrolled the foul smelling sleeping blanket we’d bought off of a street-sleeping bum in Detroit to get the nylon line with its attached grapple that I had concealed in it. The grapple’s metal prongs were wrapped in duct tape so they wouldn’t clang against the rusty and grime-encrusted metal of the fire escape when I threw it.

  My first underhand toss missed and it thudded on to the ground in the darkness when the line snarled. So did my second. The third was the charm; it hooked the ladder two steps up from the bottom and I pulled it down. There was a lot of squeaking and scraping as the rusted and little-used fire escape ladder slowly came down until it almost touched the alley’s dirty concrete. The noise the ladder made as it came down sounded deafening to me in the otherwise quiet night.

  I paused for a couple of seconds and stood silently in case the sound of the rusted ladder coming down had attracted attention. It hadn’t, so I quickly climbed the dangling ladder. I couldn’t see the rust that covered it, but I knew it was there because I could feel the roughness of the rusted metal through my gloves. The ladder came down to about three feet above the alley and swayed back and forth as I began to climb. The swaying was a bit disconcerting but it didn’t make the climb impossible; I doubt anyone hurrying down because of a fire would even notice that the ladder swayed.

  When I reached the first landing, I stepped off the ladder and stopped to listen and to once again look around usin
g the night vision scope. Nothing. Just the inevitable and strangely reassuring background noise of a sleeping big city in the dead of the night. So I pulled the fire escape ladder back up and rolled the grappling hook in the smelly blanket to once again conceal it.

  I left the rolled up blanket on the landing when I started slowly and carefully climbing up the stairs bolted on to the side of the hotel. I wasn’t abandoning it; I would carry the blanket roll and its contents away when the job was over. My plan was to use the fire escape to get away by going out the way I’d come in. Norm would drive into the alley and pick me up when I whispered “okay” into the mic of my Bluetooth. Our call would stay connected until the job was done. That way we could instantly communicate in an emergency.

  I had thought long and hard about taking another hard man in with me as backup. In the end, I decided against it. Homeless men sleeping rough didn’t usually run in pairs and two such men walking together late at night might attract attention. Instead, I’d work the gig alone just as I had worked the similar job Douglass had brought to Robbie a few years ago that had paid off so handsomely. Besides, having only two men in the crew would make my cut larger just as it was last time, and I knew from the woman that there would only be one man in the room. One man? No problem. I wouldn’t need backup.

  ******

  Thirty-two floors is a long way to climb up the side of a building on its fire escape under any circumstances, particularly when it’s pitch dark, the wind is gusting intermittently, and the metal steps are wet and greasy. I held on to the railing with my gloved hand and climbed quietly, counting the landings as I moved up from floor to floor.

  My heart sped up and I could feel the rush of adrenaline as I finally reached the landing of the thirty-second floor. There was, as I had expected, a solid metal door without a handle exiting out on to the fire escape. That’s when things first started to go wrong.

  I had expected to find a keyhole I could pick with the lock picks I was carrying or, failing that, get through the door with the little battery-powered lock picker I had in the pouch of my hoodie. I even had a big tube of silicon to shoot into the key hole to hold down the rattling noise of the lock picker. A keyhole on each of the metal exit doors was what we’d seen on the lower level doors when Norm and I had driven down the alley three days ago. The door to the thirty-second floor, however, had no such keyhole to allow entrance from the outside. It was solid.

  I had no choice. I’d have to use the heavy metal pry bar I’d brought with me—and it was wrapped up in the dirty blanket thirty-two floors down. It had been too big to fit in my hoodie so I’d carried it wrapped up in the blanket roll along with my grapple and its line.

  “Goddamn it,” I muttered silently under my breath. “I should have brought it with me.”

  Five minutes later, I was ready to pry the door open even though I was still puffing from walking all the way down the fire escape steps and all the way back up. Until now, except for pulling down the fire escape ladder, I’d been so silent I probably could have walked right past someone standing in the dark without being seen. No more. I jammed the edge of the bar between the door and the door jamb and wiggled it to get it in as far as possible. So far, I’d been mostly quiet. That was about to change big time, and perhaps disastrously.

  I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, placed the sharp edge of the pry bar into the crack between the door and the door frame, and began to push—and got ready to run like hell if an alarm sounded despite the fifteen thousand dollars I'd sent to Robbie to have someone visit the hotel three days earlier and disconnect the door alarms.

  The door came out slightly and, to my great relief, there was no alarm—so I used the screwdriver I’d been carrying in the hoodie’s pouch to hold the door out while I shoved the sharp edge of the pry bar even deeper into the crack to take the pressure off the screwdriver. Then I put the screwdriver back in my hoodie pouch and once again pushed against the bar, this time using all my strength and weight. The door finally began to come away from the door frame, but only in the middle.

  With another silent curse under my breath, I inserted the edge of the bar in the crack lower down and began the process once again. This time there was a loud crack and the bottom of the door popped loose and moved partially clear of the door frame. I put my ear up against the door and listened. Nothing. No voices and no room doors opening; at least so far as I could tell there was no response to the noise I’d made. So I repeated the process higher up on the door. There was another sharp crack and a bit of a scraping sound as the upper part of the door broke loose from the door frame.

  Once again I listened, this time while I was putting on my ski mask and adjusting it so I could see. Still nothing. I instinctively checked my pockets to assure myself that I still had the five electronic door cards Robbie had mailed to me at one of my rarely used rental mailboxes at a private mailbox company many miles away from where Pencie and I actually lived.

  When I had reassured myself that I had the cards, I reinserted the sharp edge of the crowbar once again, applied pressure by pushing on the other end with both hands, and slowly pried the metal exit door all the way open. It creaked as it opened out towards the landing. I again listened and, this time, I was able to look into the hotel hallway through the crack between the door and the door frame. I could see a room number through the crack: 3216. At least I had the right floor.

  I waited and listened while I rested for a moment and quietly laid the crowbar on the landing. When I finally stopped breathing heavily, I took a deep breath, reached both of my hands into the narrow opening between the door and the door frame, and pulled. The door creaked and groaned with the familiar sound of metal being scraped against metal as it opened.

  ******

  I slipped into the brightly lit hallway and pulled the now-warped fire exit door as closed as I could get it without pulling it into the frame. It creaked slightly as I did, but not nearly so loudly as it did when I opened it.

  The hallway I entered was properly lit and carpeted as might be expected for a luxury hotel. This was the time and place where I knew I’d be most vulnerable. If anyone came out of a room or the elevator and saw my ski mask, I’d have to run for it and the job would be permanently blown.

  My heart was pounding and my black rubber-soled running shoes didn’t make a sound as I moved hurriedly down the hallway to the door to Room 3207, listened at the door to the room for a moment, and silently began inserting the electronic cards with my left hand. In my right hand I held one of the special thin-wire tools hotels use to get into a room when its guest cannot be roused. I’d open the door a crack and thread it through the door opening and use it to lift off the guest’s safety latch.

  The third card made an audible click and the colored light on the lock changed from red to green. Robbie’s note that accompanied the master entry cards, which I had promptly burned as I always do with such notes, warned me that I would likely have no more than a few seconds before the electronic door lock would reset automatically, and usually with another audible click.

  I stepped as far as I could to the side of the door and still be able to reach out with my left hand to turn the doorknob and push it slightly open, just enough so I could thread wire of my safety latch tool through the crack in the door with my right hand. I knew I’d have to hold it open with one hand while I used my hotel tool with the other to unhook the safety latch.

  The door opened without a sound as I turned the door handle and started to insert the safety latch tool. That’s when the hair on my arms prickled as my brain began sending danger signals—the door's safety latch should have been on and it wasn’t.

  I silently slid the tool back into my hoodie’s big, hand-warming pouch, adjusted the weapon I had strapped to my wrist, and pulled out my pistol. My homemade silencer was already attached to it.

  ******

  Before I entered the room, I stood to one side, darted a fast look through the open door, and quickly pulled my head back ju
st in case. The light on the little hotel desk was on, apparently as a night light. I saw nothing alarming with my quick look, and there was no response. The room was silent. Clothes were haphazardly strewn on the couch where they’d been thrown when the occupant took them off to go to bed. Everything looked normal.

  A moment later, I stepped inside the room with my pistol in my hand and slowly and quietly closed the door to the hallway behind me. There was a soft but audible click as the door closed. The suite was messy with a pair of pants thrown on the little sofa and the bedroom door was cracked open a few inches. The bedroom was dark. Everything looked good and I thought I could hear someone breathing in the bedroom.

  I started to push the door to the darkened bedroom open—and immediately wished that I hadn’t. The dim light from the lamp on the desk was enough to let me see both the man crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood and the dim shape of a man standing there in the semi-darkness holding a cell phone up to his ear and pointing a silenced pistol right at me.

  The rapid phut, phut, phut of the man’s pistol was actually quite loud as three tremendous blows to my chest and stomach caused me to involuntarily throw up my hands and stagger backwards out of the doorway and on to the carpeted floor of the suite’s dimly lit sitting room. My pistol went flying.

  “I got one of them,” the man said into the phone as he walked forward to the bedroom door to finish me off.

  I was on my back and my right hand was up as if it would somehow ward off the “make sure” bullet the shooter clearly intended to deliver as he stalked through the bedroom door. He was a big and bulky middle-aged man with a swarthy complexion and an excited and pleased look on his face.