Cage's Crew

by Martin Archer

  “Standby,” I said into my Bluetooth mic so Norm would know we were about to blow the safe. A couple of seconds later Tommy screwed a little handle into the top of the box, took a deep breath, and pushed down on it.

  There was loud and distinctive whump from inside the jewelry store.

  Tommy immediately handed me the metal box, said he was going back inside to check out the safe; he told me I should start rolling up the wire and bring everything back inside.

  He was smiling like a kid with both hands in a candy box.

  ******

  The good news was that the door to the safe was hanging off to the side on one hinge and Norm reported that no one seemed to have noticed the explosion; the bad news was that one of the jewelry store’s big front windows was visibly cracked and the whole store, including its display room, which could be seen from street, was filled with smoke. The next person who pulled into the parking lot near the store might see the smoke even though the lights were off in the retail area and the glass was slightly tinted.

  There was no time to lose—or maybe there was because some of the great cloud of smoke and dust would almost certainly billow out if we opened either of the doors to leave with the diamonds and remove the equipment that could be tied to Tommy. I couldn’t decide.

  “Bring the van to the back door and hurry,” I told Norm with intense urgency as I coughed from the effects of the smoke and dust. “Back it in and open the rear door so we can load fast and get the hell out of here. But don’t open the door until I tell you; it’s still smoky as hell in here.”

  I said it into my Bluetooth mic as I was standing in front of the safe hurriedly pulling out the sacks of diamonds and throwing them into the black plastic garbage bags we’d brought for the purpose. I’d expected to find one big sack of diamonds, but there were a number of small sacks. The diamonds apparently had been sorted and graded, or maybe there had always been a number of small pouches. It didn’t matter; we had them and I was damn well going to take them all. There were also numerous small boxes and trays of jewelry.

  While I was standing in the smoke dumping the pouches and jewels into the garbage sacks, a coughing and swearing Tommy was hurriedly moving through the now-receding cloud of smoke and dust to assemble his tools and equipment by the back door.

  “Check the front parking lot,” I shouted at Tommy at one point. “See if anyone’s out there.” There wasn’t.

  ******

  Ten minutes later the smoke and dust had mostly settled and the three of us in our ski masks were hurriedly loading everything into the back of the van. When we finished, we made a final inspection of the store to make sure we’d removed everything we’d brought into it including the empty acetylene tanks. I even flushed the toilet three times and used toilet paper to wipe it and the floor in front of it clean in case either of us had missed. We’d worn gloves and neither ate nor smoked the entire time, but Tommy and I had each pissed and shit at least once.

  “We should be good,” I said as Tommy drove us in his van to where Norm’s car was parked. “But the shit’s going to hit the fan no later than tomorrow morning when the employees come to work.”

  “If not sooner,” offered Norm drily. He had seen the destroyed safe, the effects of the explosion, and the three bodies. Tommy just nodded. I could see that he was still worried about me.

  Chapter Eight

  A much-relieved Tommy was already on the road and heading out of town to some unknown destination by the time Norm had driven me to my “safe” car and we ditched his burner. He had undoubtedly already changed his license plates to those of a new state and pulled the magnetic signs off his van. Tommy had worked through Robbie previously and was confident that his share of the take would be forwarded to him. He also knew the size of his share would be significant. It was little wonder that he was effusive in his enthusiasm once he knew I wasn’t going to eliminate him as a potential witness.

  “Anytime, Cage, anytime. Just let me know. You can always reach me through Robbie or Jack Sloane in Pittsburg.”

  I used my Toyota safe car to drop Norm off at the little airfield where his plane was tied down in the transit parking area and drove off immediately. As soon as Norm got out of the car, I shouted “see you later,” waved goodbye, and began driving away from Phoenix with the garbage bags full of diamonds and assorted jewelry in the suitcases in the back of the SUV I had driven into town from Dallas more than a week earlier.

  The Toyota’s free and clear Texas title was properly signed over to the name on my Vermont driver’s license, Benjamin something or other. It was a good and valid license even though the name and address on it were false. I had gotten it in Burlington a couple of years ago when I went up there to check out joining a crew being put together for a vault job. The driver’s license, a Visa debit card in the same name, and a reasonably priced parking lot that I let a parking lot management company manage were all that had come out of the trip.

  I drove all night and all the next day without ever going more than a mile or two over the speed limit. As soon as it had gotten dark, I’d begun throwing pieces of my disguise and clothes out of the window every hour or so along the way. Most importantly, I took the shotgun apart and dropped the pieces into the Salt River as I crossed the bridge; I kept the new and unused two-shot derringer I’d bought in Dallas to replace the one I had immediately taken apart and ditched after my fiasco in Chicago. Guns are easy to buy in Texas.

  As you might imagine, I was absolutely exhausted when I reached Oklahoma City more than eighteen hours later and checked into a Motel Eight to get some much-needed sleep.

  The next morning, I left the motel and checked into the Four Seasons Hotel three miles away as Benjamin Evans of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a fake name that matched my driver’s license, car registration, and a valid but rarely used Visa debit card that a Chase bank branch had given me when I’d presented my fake driver’s license and opened an account for the Vermont parking lot being managed for me by a local management company.

  As soon as I checked in, I picked up a new cell phone and number at one of Oklahoma City’s several Walmarts and called Pencie to suggest she “fly in to Milwaukee for a couple of days of golf.” She would, in fact, fly into Oklahoma City because that’s where she’d been told to come if I called and mentioned Milwaukee. I wasn’t taking any chances in case someone was listening, not with both the police and the Mob after my ass.

  ******

  It was a much-needed lovely and restful vacation that alternated between sleep, sex, golf, and good food. Every couple of days I’d take some of the diamonds and jewelry out of the trunk of my car and mail them to Robbie in a Priority Mail Flat Rate box. I didn’t bother to insure them. The post office is very dependable. I also called and asked Robbie if he knew anyone who could help me with a couple of special requests.

  Robbie would repackage the diamonds and jewelry into new flat rate boxes and mail them on to the fences in Las Vegas and New Orleans who had agreed to buy them at a recent pawnbrokers convention. According to Robbie, the eye’s of a couple of the association’s members had lit up and they had nodded their understanding and interest when he casually volunteered that he’d heard that someone had a large volume of discounted jewelry and stones for sale if the price was right, an amount far too large for him to handle.

  Each of them had contacted him privately and they’d negotiated without ever writing anything down or saying anything out loud—by holding hands and tapping the palm of Robbie’s hand with fingers once for each one percent they’d pay of each shipment’s wholesale value in used twenty and hundred dollar bills.

  Robbie would securely tape wrapping paper around each Priority Mail box as it arrived and, without ever opening it, in order to keep his hands clean, FedEx it to a potential buyer. The proceeds from the fence would be mailed back to Robbie in one hundred dollar bills in similar fashion. Robbie would open these boxes and repack the cash into new Priority Mail boxes and mail them onward, le
ss the ten percent he retained for his services, according to the arrangements he had with Tommy and me. Robbie was very careful: handling and forwarding stolen diamonds is illegal; handling and forwarding cash is legal.

  I always received Norm’s share of the cash from a job as well as my own. Both Norm’s shares and mine would come in a Priority Mail Fixed Rate box to Robert Anderson at Box 1219, Mailboxes USA, Whittier, California. I would similarly send Norm’s share to one of Norm’s mail drops. It was a system Robbie and I and Norm had used for years in order to work together. Norm and Robbie didn’t know of each other or of Pencie’s existence and never would; the fences similarly didn’t know either the source of the diamonds and jewels or who ended up with the money and never would. It was understood by everyone how extremely severe the consequences would be if they did not perform or revealed anyone else’s name.

  It was a good system with Robbie, FedEx, and the post office providing honest services that enabled others to get away with committing crimes against companies and organizations that could afford them. Robbie, for example, carefully reported his ten percent on his income tax returns as “brokerage service income” which was exactly what it was, and paid taxes on it. He assumed each of the others of us did as well, but he never asked. He considered himself, as he had told me on several occasions, to be functioning as a poor man’s Swiss bank.

  The Swiss banks provided all sorts of personal services for their preferred clients in order to keep them in business. So did Robbie—which was good thing because I had a "special request" related to my plan for dealing with the New York Mob. He would send my special request to a mail drop I set up in Santa Fe a couple of days ago when Pencie and I drove up for a visit because she wanted to see all the art galleries she had read about but had never before had a chance to visit.

  ******

  Pencie smiled and we shared a big hug as she dropped me at the Oklahoma City airport two weeks later in time for me to catch a flight that connected to Albuquerque. “Take care of yourself, Cage,” was all she said as we parted. She would drive back to our home in Southern California in my clean Texas Toyota and register it under my alias as its new buyer, and then sell it, without knowing where I was going or who I was meeting or why. She sort of trusted me and was probably the only person in the world that did or should.

  Norm was already on his way to meet me in Albuquerque. He would fly his own plane, complete with a newly painted and totally false registration number, into a small uncontrolled airfield on the outskirts of the city and we would rendezvous at a cheap downtown motel. Then we’d spend a few days acquiring whatever additional supplies and equipment we might need and drive to Arizona. I’d already decided that we would stay in a suburb south of Phoenix and commute to Tucson each day despite the horrible road between Phoenix and Tucson.

  It didn’t surprise me at all to find Norm waiting for me in the motel’s coffee shop when I came in from the Albuquerque airport in an Uber car. He’d already rented a Chrysler four-door from Hertz for us to use until we could replace it with a newly bought used car from a local Craigslist seller that we could drive to Phoenix and use as our safe car.

  Our reunion at the motel was exactly what you would expect when two men meet again after recently sharing an exciting and mutually profitable big score. We were pleased to see each other and shook hands warmly. Norm had already gotten rooms for us, so he took me to mine and waited while I quickly unpacked. It didn’t take long. I was traveling light and both of us were ravenously hungry and anxious to get to a restaurant and talk.

  After dinner and a long talk about how we might proceed, we went back to our two side-by-side motel rooms with a connecting door between them. It had been a long day of traveling and we were both exhausted. We had talked as we ate dinner about everything from how soon the diamonds and jewelry would be sold and we would begin receiving our money to the chances of the Chicago Cubs reaching the World Series.

  What we were going to do next was pretty much settled by the time we finished eating. Tomorrow we’ll go shopping for the safe car and some guns—legal shotguns from Walmart and a used car with valid plates and a clean title to be our safe car. When we get to Arizona, we’ll buy a couple of burner cars to use locally and immediately abandon after the job. We’d never go near the two burner cars we used on the jewelry store job and left on the street with their keys in the ignition. Norm and I are professionals; we’d never knowingly keep anything that might be used to tie us to a job.

  The jewelry store safe-cracking and the various murders associated with it had disappeared from the Arizona news on the Internet more than a week ago. It was old news. It hadn’t even made the Albuquerque papers.

  ******

  Both Norm and I are early risers. By seven the next morning we were sitting across from each other on the somewhat worn seats of Susan's Pancake House sipping coffee and eagerly waiting for our breakfasts to arrive. They had my favorite—strawberry crepes with whipped cream.

  “Here’s one that looks interesting,” Norm said as he wrote down a telephone number on a scrap of paper and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He was searching the local Craigslist for late model cars on the cheap laptop he’d purchased for cash when he landed for a refueling stop in Carson City and took a taxi into town to go shopping. The laptop would be taken apart and “disappeared” when the job was finished.

  Norm was looking for a car with clean paperwork that we could buy and drive to Phoenix. We’d park it to be the “safe getaway car” we’d use to drive back to Albuquerque after the hit. Whether I’d return with him to Albuquerque or go off in another direction in another safe car would depend on the circumstances. Money was not an issue so we decided to get another safe car in Phoenix just in case we needed two.

  At the moment, the plan was for us to drive to Phoenix and buy a couple of local cars with Arizona plates to use on the job and a second safe car. We would fill each of them with gas and with water and snacks and then park it so it would be immediately available when it was time to leave.

  If all went well, we would drive the safe car with New Mexico plates out of Phoenix and back to Albuquerque as soon as the job in Tucson was over. Alternately, of course, I could leave Arizona in the other safe car or Norm might use it to drive back to Albuquerque before I talked to Martini and then fly in to pick me up as soon as I finished “talking” to him. Hiding out in a local motel room or newly rented house or apartment after we hit Martini was not an option; that was inevitably the first place the police and Mob would look.

  Carson City was also where Norm bought the new phones and telephone numbers we would need for our business in Tucson. Norm knew that he and I would need new pre-paid burner cell phones, so he’d taken advantage of a package deal the Carson City Verizon store was offering and bought four new cell phones and new numbers “for my family” as well as a couple of Bluetooths with ear buds and mics. They’d replace the phones we had ditched along the way as we were leaving Phoenix. The clerk was very helpful. He set them up so the phones could speed-dial each other and showed Norm how to hook them into the two Bluetooths.

  Norm and I had decided that first thing after we finished breakfast, before we went shopping for a car, we would drive in Norm’s Hertz rental to the nearest Walmart to buy a pair of 12-gauge automatic shotguns, hunting licenses, and four boxes of #6 birdshot “for the coming hunting season.” We wanted to look like honest hunters or skeet shooters so we would, of course, buy regular shotguns, not those with pistol grips or tactical handles. After we buy the shotguns, one or the other of us would duck into a local gun shop and separately buy a box of the buckshot with which we’d load our newly acquired weapons.

  The birdshot was strictly for show in case we were stopped; the buckshot was for business and what we’d actually load when the time came to discuss matters with Roberto Martini who, as I knew from talking to the late Helen Douglass, was doing business in Tucson as Robert Martin to his customers and “Big Bobby” to his crew.
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br />   As usual, we’d pay cash for the cars and everything else. And we could—at my request, Robbie had sent a Priority Mail box to an Oklahoma City mail drop I had set up while I was waiting for Pencie. In the box was some of the money I was due from the diamonds along with my special request for another hard-to-get FBI identification card and badge.

  One of Robbie’s pawnbroker friends had been happy to provide the badge and an FBI identification card with a good picture of me on it for only six thousand dollars. The badge itself, of course, was also a fake, but much better than the one I’d shown Helen Douglass. I figured I might need it to fool Martin who probably had seen a real one from time to time, or to use it to bluff my way past the police. The note Robbie sent with the ID card and badge said they had been made by the same companies who made the real ones and should be good so long as no one actually ran the numbers on them. I tore up the note and flushed it down a toilet.

  ******

  “Not bad,” was Norm’s comment to the anxious seller, a middle-aged woman who apparently was babysitting her grandchildren, when he returned from taking her non-descript grey Honda SUV for a test ride. I had waited with her because she couldn’t leave her grandchildren and had seemed more than a little anxious about letting two strange men drive off in her car.

  Norm and I had immediately picked up on the woman’s anxiety. He was the car guy, so I’d given a resigned sigh and asked if I could wait with her “so George wouldn’t be distracted while he checks out your car.” It was a major concession so far as I’m concerned because I absolutely can’t stand children, especially young ones like her grandchildren, who constantly shriek and scream all the time.

  Fortunately, the three kids, all girls, had quickly gotten bored with listening to the two of us make small talk about the weather; they’d run off to the swing set or toys or whatever the hell she had in her backyard for them to play with. Their harried grandmother had promptly left me alone and hurried after them. As a result, and to my great relief, I got to stand alone in the driveway in the shade of the garage and wait for Norm to return with her car. The heat was terrible; just the act of getting out of our rental car and standing in the shade caused me to sweat profusely. I was just starting to get back in the rental car to turn on the air conditioning when Norm returned.