Well, that done it. I cussed ’em all out and I grabbed the pick.
Whang. Whang. Whang.
Whang. Whang.
Whang!
Whenever I done something, I done it. I smashed the dent into a hole.
And in we climbed.
As things come out, we did have some good luck in all that craziness. We come on something we didn’t expect in that vault: long, narrow shelves with little partitions between ’em, like in a post office. And piled high—with Liberty bonds and Victory bonds. They was bonds put out by the U.S. gov’ment to pay for the World War over in Europe, and they was negotiable. Good as money.
Then, in one corner, there she set—a pretty square-faced Packer safe.
If Dago’s kin was right about the payroll, that Packer was stuffed with a helluva lot of money.
“Yessir.” The Dago’s eyes was all lit up. “And the vault’ll muffle the sound.”
Wasn’t two seconds, Frank was stuffing the bonds into our loot bags and the Dago was kneeling in front of the Packer. The Dago was rushing a little, I could hear him breathing fast, and I didn’t like that. But I brung him the whiskey bottle and crouched down next to him.
I wanted to watch ever’ move he made.
First off, he took a bar of Proctor and Gamble soap outa his pocket. Then he mashed it in his hands ’til it was gooey, like beeswax. Then he scrunched it into the cracks around the rim of the safe door. He put in just enough to fill the outside of the cracks but left a little room behind the soap, like a tunnel. At the top of the door he pinched a little lip.
“Gimme the bottle,” he said.
Real careful, I unwrapped it outa the towel and handed it to him. He took out the cork, held the bottle up agin that soap lip, and tipped it. The grease begun to slide down into the tunnel, slow and thick and smooth.
When he’d poured in enough, Dago put the cork back in and handed me the bottle. It was still more’n half full. Then he pulled what he called a “cap” outa his pocket and a length of fuse, what he called “string.”
“String burns a foot a minute,” he said. “You c’n cut it ten seconds, fifteen seconds, twenty, whatever you want. It burns down to the cap, the cap explodes, sets off the grease. I’m gonna do a twenty here, give us plenty of time to get outa the vault, get against the back wall.”
He cut a fuse about four inches, put the cap on it, fit it all careful into that soap lip so one end of the string could slide down into the grease.
“Jus’ gotta light her up, eh, and that’s it.” The Dago looked up to see what Frank was doing. “You done, Frank?”
“Just about.”
“Well, get done and get outa here.”
Frank didn’t need to be told twice. He stuffed the last bundles of bonds into his bag and scrambled outa the hole.
The Dago turned to me. “You wanta go now?”
“What do I do with the grease?”
“Hold it next to your chest. Just make sure you’re against the back wall.”
Hold the bottle agin my chest? More’n half full?
The Dago seen my look. “Don’t worry. Nitro only blows frontways. It ain’t like dynamite. Soon as I torch her, I’m back there with you, boy.”
He smiled back and scratched a match. It sparkled in the dark, lighting up his whole ugly face.
Ever’ hair on my body was starting to stand up on end.
I started to go out the hole, but I couldn’t take my eyes offa that match. The flame was a-flickering, and the Dago’s fingers was just moving right towards that string, just about to torch her and set her a-fizzing … when what do we hear? Slim, and he’s a-hollering. So loud we can hear him all the way into the vault.
“Mob coming! Mob coming!”
“Jesus! We got a rank!” Now it was Frank a-hollering. His head was poking into the hole in the vault door. “Get on out! We got a rank!”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Shut up and get out!”
The Dago quick blowed out his match. I let out a groan. A ‘rank’ is a thief word, for when you been spotted. But something didn’t set right about that “rank.” I can’t say what it was, but something didn’t set right.
I set the half-full bottle of grease on the floor, clawed outa the hole in the vault, and run over to the window. All over the street was lights, dozens of ’em, bobbing up and down like a bunch of lightning bugs. But the lights was on the men’s heads. And they was bobbing away from us, getting smaller and smaller.
They was starting to move in a little line outa town, toward the mine shafts.
“You idiot!” I looked over at Slim. “That’s miners out there. Them lights is on their hats. They’re changing shifts.”
“You sure?” He was panting.
“Sure enough I’m going back in. We’ll wait ’til they’re gone and then we’ll blow this thing.”
“Oh no, you won’t.” That was Frank, and he was talking like he was the boss. “We’re getting the hell outa here. We got enough.”
His ass was already hanging halfway out the window, and Dago was right behind.
“Let’s go!” the Dago hollered. “This place is a jinx.”
Me and the whiskey bottle was all that was left. What else could I do?
A couple of days later, when I read about the robbery in a newspaper, it said that “Lady Luck had shined on the Arma State Bank.” It said that the robbers’d got some loot, but they’d left more than $200,000 in the safe!
Good godamighty!
Can you believe it that Frank said, “We got enough,” when there was more’n $200,000 right under his nose, right for the taking? Can you believe it, that anybody—a bank robber, a banker, a lawyer, anybody—would ever say, “We got enough”?
FIFTEEN
The more I was getting to see, up close, how thieves go about doing their business, the more I was thinking: it’s a wonder that anything ever gets stole in this world.
It was good luck, and not much more’n good luck, that made our getaway from Arma easy as snap. Nobody’d ranked us, so nobody’d lit after us. But the way I was starting to see it, good luck and bad luck was two sides of the exact same coin, and if all you was doing was flipping coins, you was as likely to get tails as you was to get heads.
And in our business, tails was trouble.
Did I wanta keep working with a bunch of fool ex-cons? And if I did keep working with ’em, how was we gonna do things smarter? Frank was supposed to be the Smart Man, but he was a idiot.
When our car crossed outa Kansas into Oklahoma, on our way back to Texas, we pulled off the main road and went down a dirt lane into a clump of trees. Frank took charge again, like he was the president of a company. He got outa the car with the loot bag and we all crouched on the ground and watched him lick his finger and count out them bonds into four equal piles.
They added up to about $65,000.
“Well, well. I’d say we did alright,” Frank said, all kinda puffed up. “I have a market in Fort Worth, he’ll give me seventy-five cents on the dollar. That’ll give us more than $10,000 each.”
I looked at Frank square. “You blind? We didn’t do nowhere close to ‘all right.’ That concrete vault? Ever’body boogered? And that payroll still back there?”
Frank throwed a eye over at the Dago. “We had the wrong information.”
“Aw, hell, Frank,” the Dago said back. “It wasn’t your nose in my ass going out that window. It was my nose in your ass!” His face was all twisted. And the look he was making was enough to scare little kids. That wasn’t hard for him to do. That buzzard beak. Them pop eyes.
I stood up. I wanted to look down on ’em. On all three of ’em.
“Look-it,” I said, “if we do this again, we gotta use a little of what’s north of our necks. We gotta go in earlier and case the town better. A helluva lot better.”
Now the Dago stood up. He only come to my neck. He pointed his beak up at me. “What? You want ’em staked out for us?”
“I ain’t saying we make a ruckus,” I said back. “All I’m saying is, we case better. We find out the exact setup at the bank. It’s got a vault, or just a setting safe? We find out about the town: if they got a nighthack, what time folks go to bed, what time they wake up. Even where’s the barking dogs.”
Frank was still crouched on the ground. He shuffled some of the bonds, like they was playing cards. “First time any team works together,” he said, “there’s gonna be a few bumps. But listen, we have a good bunch here, us four. And I think, from here on out, we can do the bigger towns.” I knowed by his voice where he was going. “’Course, if we’re gonna work together, somebody’s got to be in the lead. And I put the team together.”
“Yeah, well, Dago does the blows.” That was Slim.
Frank pressed his lips together. “We can’t all be the leader.”
Inside me, I was a-steaming. When it come to judgment, I had it over all of ’em, hands down. And my whole life I always was the head man. Even when I was a kid, even if it was just baseball or throwing jackknives in mumbletypeg, I was the head man. Only problem was: I was still green in this bank-robbing business.
Then I seen the Dago giving Frank a little peepy smile.
“You sure you wanta be the leader, Frank?”
“I’d say it’s only fair.”
“You sure?”
“Fair’s fair.”
“Good.” The Dago pointed his beak down at Frank. “What’s fair if you’re the leader, Frank, is you do the casing. That’s a leader’s job, eh boys?” He looked up at me and down at Slim and back over at Frank. “And you got the whole summer, Frank. We’re moving into the wrong season for blows. Gets too risky when it’s hot out. People keep their windows open, walk around, take in the air. Best if we wait ’til it gets chilly again. ’Til folks hole up. So you got plenty a-time to nose around and find us some marks. Get us a good list by September.”
Frank sucked in his cheeks.
“Sounds good to me.” It was Slim again. Now he stood up. “My turn. I got something else to say here, boys. Way I see it, it don’t matter who’s the leader, all of us has gotta follow a rule. Frank’s the leader, he does the casing, fine by me. But he can’t just do whatever the hell he wants. I say we gotta lay down a law.”
“A law?” Frank didn’t like that, I could tell.
“Law, rule, order. Whatever you wanta call it. We don’t look out for each other, who’s gonna look out for us? We all know it, it’s a dangerous business we got here. So here’s the rule. Traps shut. Nobody talks to nobody about nothing. Not to your friends, not to kin, not to skirts. And if somebody leaks, he’s gotta pay the price.”
The Dago throwed Slim a pop-eye. “Saying what?”
Slim pointed a finger next to his ear. “Saying this.”
Nobody said nothing.
“Good,” said Slim. “Let’s shake on it.”
After that Arma job, the four of us monkeyed around in Fort Worth, spending a little of our loot.
Slim was the silliest of us four. He went out and bought him three dozen shirts, all shiny silk, all colors of the rainbow: pink, yellow, blue, purple, orange, red. Some of ’em had stripes like a candy cane, some of ’em had polka dots. They was $25 each. And what a waste of good money! Putting a silk shirt on a plug like Slim was like putting lipstick on a mule.
But I did go out and buy me some new clothes too.
First off, I went to Stebbins & James, a fancy men’s clothes store. And when the salesman seen the roll of bills I pulled outa my pocket, thick as my fist, he “yessired” me all over the map. He fitted me with three top-of-the-line suits—tight around the waist with big lapels, trousers skinny as pipestems. After that, I went to a haberdashery and picked up three fedoras with rolled brims and dents in the crowns—what I called “ace dude” hats. Then I went to a shoe store and bought me four pairs of low-slung, lace-up Oxfords made out of what they called “Scotch brogue” leather.
Lemme tell you what, the first time I went out in them new clothes, was I stepping high! My heels made a nice click-clack, click-clack on the wood sidewalks. And damn if I didn’t look slick! I cocked that dude hat and I tipped it to ever’body and ever’thing that passed my way—men, women, kids, mules.
Meantime, I’d hardly made a dent in my share. I sent off a coupla envelopes to Ma and wrote her I’d got a “good job in oil country.” And there was bundles left. Bundles and bundles. I kept ’em hid in a little iron box under the bed in a room I’d rented, and ever’ so often, I’d pull that box out and pick up a few of the biggest bundles and hold ’em in my hand.
’Course, you know what kept going through my head?
I shoulda had three times more!
Hell. If it-a been me in the lead, that Arma State Bank woulda been all cleaned out.
I had some work to do.
On a hot Monday in June, I got on the telephone and called up Frank. “If you get going with that mark hunt right off,” I said, “I’ll help you out.” Then I called the Dago. “Dago, being you’re the best box-blower around, can you teach me about safes so I’ll know what to look for?”
It worked with both of ’em—the slug and the stump.
The Dago got a big kick outa being my “teacher.” First off, he give me a history lesson. He got some paper and drawed pictures of the way the old-time robbers worked. Way on back, see, you could just punch open a lot of the bank safes. You’d take a hammer and whang the combination off, then put a pin in there, hit a lick and, Blam! But later on, the banks got wise and put trigger locks on. When you busted the combination, you’d hear a whump!, the pins’d go in all around the door, and lock the thing up.
The Dago said it was about nineteen and oh-five, or nineteen and oh-six, that bank robbers first started using nitroglycerin.
He said the best safes to blow was square ones. Some of ’em, you do it with just one shot of grease. Others of ’em, you had to shoot a little at a time. He drawed me pictures. But the Dago said bigger banks was starting to get a kind of round safe that screwed into the walls, and that you couldn’t blow. He called ’em “lugs,” because they was just big round lugs of steel. Wasn’t no rims in ’em to put in the grease.
Still, he said there was enough banks around with them old-fashioned square safes to keep us busy for a long time. ’Course, sometimes the safes was in vaults, like in Arma. But he said lots of vaults had flimsy doors you could blow off with nitro, just like you’d blow a safe. I told him to draw me pictures of which vaults was which; I didn’t wanta have to peck through another one with a ax.
He done that.
Then me and Frank went at it.
I bought me a road atlas and drawed red circles around little towns all the way up into the Middle West. I let Frank do the driving, so he’d feel like the boss. But in ever’ town we hit, I’d buy him a newspaper and tell him to relax. I wanted to do the detail work.
First off, I’d case the bank, or banks, if there was two. I’d go in with a ten-dollar bill and ask to break it. And I’d eyeball ever’thing in that bank: what kinda vault they had, what kinda safe they had, where the windows was. And when the clerk give me my change, I’d give ’em back a smile big as the moon.
If I seen it was a bank we could blow, we’d hang around the town a couple more days and I’d check out things after dark. Did the town’s lights go off after a certain time? (In a lot of ’em, the electric generators got shut off at midnight.) Was there a night marshal? Where did he hang out? Was there businesses that needed people up and around at night? I’d write ever’thing down in a little yellow tablet.
Before long, I had us a list of a dozen good marks—and soon as September come around, our whole team went at it!
Yessir, we went at it!
We went at it in Coldwater, Kansas, and we went at it in Cassville, Missouri, and we went at it in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.
And a bunch of other towns.
I ain’t saying ever’thing went off without a hitch. A lot of roads was ba
d them days, and ever’ so often, we’d get stuck in the mud. (Frank was never no help pushing us out.) And there was still enough bungles to make us seem like the Keystone Kops. Like one time, we was hitting a bank in north Michigan, and the little Dago seen the Northern Lights flash up in the sky—they was flashing up just as bright as day—and he thought it was a rank. He got Slim and Frank all boogered, and the three of ’em run off with the soft loot and left me and all the hard behind. I had to run a half mile with a sack of silver that musta weighed a hundred and fifty pounds!
Still, with all my detail work, we was making us some money.
Before long, each one of us had $70,000. Seventy thousand dollars!
And before long, I was shooting half the safes myself.
I’ll never forget the first one I blowed. It was in a little bank in Indiana that had a Packer setting out in the open. Dago held the flashlight and went over ever’ step. ’Course, I already knowed just what to do. If I seen somebody do something just one time, I could do it exact. I mashed up the soap and plugged it around the cracks and dug out that little tunnel and pinched out that little lip. I picked up the jar of grease and tipped it.
“Three ounces oughta do it,” the Dago said.
“I know.”
I poured in about three ounces. Then I poured in another one. Then one more.
The Dago’s eyes got round. “That’s too much grease.”
“Too much?” I said back. “I don’t know what ‘too much’ means.”
He crossed hisself. I handed him the bottle and picked up the string. I cut a twenty-second fuse. Put on a cap. Dropped one end in the nitro. Struck a match, touched it to the other end.
It set up a few white sparks and then, fiz-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z!
“Get back behind it,” the Dago said. “God knows …”
We quick went behind the safe and pressed our backs hard agin the wall.
The fire was racing up the fuse.
Fiz-z-z-z-z-z-z-z!
Now, it was three inches from the nitro.
Now, two inches.
Now, one inch.
All Honest Men Page 15
