The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  Careful of his feet, wary of where he stepped, he reached the gate. The chain hung down, the busted lock on the ground. The gate was parted a couple of feet. He walked through sideways.

  He started across the yard toward the office shack. After two or three steps the toe of his right shoe touched something huddled on the ground. He kept his balance and leaned down. He was afraid it might be either Vic or Gunny. It wasn’t. It was some man he didn’t know. Probably the night watchman at the junkyard. The man was out, his breathing shallow but steady. His hands were tied behind his back with a piece of rope.

  Betts straightened up when he heard voices from inside the shack. A growl or a shout. He followed the angle of the building and ducked beneath a window. He avoided the light and peered over a window ledge. He saw Vic Franks. He was backed against a wall. Blood, from a number of cuts and tears, covered his face. While Betts watched, a tall bald man stepped forward and caught Vic by his shirt front.

  “Tell him,” another man off to the side, at the desk, said.

  “Fuck you,” Vic mumbled.

  The bald man hit Vic. The building shook when Vic fell back against it. Stunned, blinking, he bounced off the wall and back toward the bald man.

  Betts didn’t see Gunny at first. Then he stretched to his full height and could see the whole room. Gunny was on the floor on all fours. He’d been beaten, too. He looked like he was trying to pull himself together, his head shaking like he was trying to clear it.

  The man behind the desk was armed. He was waving around what appeared to be a lady’s hideout pistol. It was pearl-handled and it looked like it was probably a .32 with a short barrel.

  The bald man doing the rough work didn’t have a gun showing. Betts decided he’d have to play it that way. One armed and one unarmed. He was backing away from the window when the man at the desk spoke. “My friend and I do not have all the patience in the world. Tell me why you need these weapons or …”

  Betts lost the rest of it. The building shook and Betts knew that Vic had taken another lick.

  There had to be some way to let Gunny, if he wasn’t too dazed, and Vic, if he wasn’t out on his feet, know that he was outside. They had to be expecting him. The fact that there had been no one outside to watch for him meant that the two strangers in there didn’t know he was coming. Otherwise they’d have planned to ambush him too. Gunny and Vic expected him. That was why they were willing to take the beating.

  And then Betts had an idea. On the train, all the way to Montreal, he’d bored the hell out of them doing birdcalls. He’d done all the calls one of the blacks on the mule chain had taught him.

  He stepped away from the window and did a bobwhite. He repeated it. Then a third time. He circled the building until he reached the rear of it. He did the caw of a crow. After a pause he repeated it a second and a third time.

  He threw out another bobwhite and another crow call while he circled the side of the building and headed for the main door. It was silent inside the shack. He wasn’t sure what that meant. He arrived at the door and leaned forward. He ran a hand around the outside of the door until he found that the hinges were placed inside. The door would open inward. He put his back to the wall to the right of the door and did a whippoorwill. He pursed his mouth to do the whippoorwill a second time and then heard the floor creaking. The steps came toward the doorway. He heard the man who’d done all the talking say, “… a wild-bird refuge?”

  The door was jerked open, inward. The barrel of the pearl-handled pistol came through the doorway first. The man was following it when Betts chopped at the hand holding the gun. The gun shook loose. At the same time Betts rammed the point of the .45 into the man’s gut. The air went out of him. He was beginning to slump when Betts caught a shoulder in him and pushed him back into the room.

  Bad action in there. Vic was slumped against the wall. No help there. The bald man was reaching for his hip pocket. Whatever he had there wasn’t to blow his nose with. Betts shoved the man in front of him to the side and brought up the .45. He took in Gunny, still down on his hands and knees. The man didn’t pay any attention to Gunny. The hand came away from his hip. He held some ladies’ pistol in it. Maybe a .22. He brought up the pistol and, at the same time, began to step around Gunny.

  He should have watched Gunny. Before Betts could get the .45 sighted in, Gunny reached out a thick arm and hit the bald man about ankle high. It was like being hit by a rolling log. The strength of the arm and the man’s moving forward floored him. The .22 skidded across the floor toward Betts.

  Gunny wasn’t that much out. He moved like a fat possum climbing a tree. He landed on the bald man and planted a knee in his kidney and clubbed him in the back of the neck.

  It was blood-and-spit time after that. Betts stood aside and watched Gunny and Vic get theirs back. He let it go a time and then he stepped in and stopped it short of killing. The slicker who’d had the gun was missing a couple of teeth, and he probably had a bad jaw and some floating ribs. The other man, with the bald head, took his beating and kicking while he was still unconscious.

  They shoved the wood-sided truck into a ditch, to get it out of the way. Betts drove the stolen car to the driveway. The explosives were loaded into Gunny’s truck. The other Bulldog, the one he hadn’t checked, was already loaded with the Thompsons, the spare ammo, and the grenades.

  The two trucks trailed Betts a mile or so, until he found a place to ditch the stolen car. Then, because he could see that Gunny was shaky, Betts took over for him and got behind the wheel of his Bulldog.

  “Scum was curious why we wanted these weapons.” Gunny was bent forward, hugging his ribs. His breathing was rough.

  “I guess we should have expected it.”

  “Birdcalls,” Gunny wheezed. “That was good as string music.”

  “I didn’t know you appreciated them.”

  “I do now. And one more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “In Vic’s truck. Those are cut-rate weapons. Scum got so anxious they didn’t wait to collect the other half of the payment.”

  “Better and better,” Betts said.

  “They were overpriced anyway.”

  After a couple of hours of rest Gunny said he felt good enough to drive. Betts shifted to the other truck and relieved Vic.

  They were on a tight schedule. As soon as Johnny and Tom heard that the arrangements were being made, they’d taken the train to Halifax to meet with Harry and the Gipsons. That had been early evening.

  The Mack Bulldogs rolled east the whole night.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Henri Lebeque did not think of himself as a criminal.

  No matter how other people saw him, he thought of himself as a patriot. From the time he was a small boy he’d been involved in the Movement. There was to be a Free Quebec, and it would be separated from Canada, and it would be governed by the true French-speaking. It would be the real New France.

  He had learned his politics at his grandfather’s knee. His grandfather had come from France and had refused to learn English. If the old man had to speak English to ask for a glass of water or to order a meal, he would prefer to die of thirst or hunger. His grandfather was a great man.

  Henri waited until his grandfather died before he let anyone in the family know that he understood and spoke English. The Quebec Movement needed money, and it needed arms, and the English seemed to have most of both.

  Ten years before, at the age of thirty-four, after he had worked himself up to head clerk in the shipping department of the Canadian National Railway, a once-in-a-lifetime chance came to him. He was working in Ottawa then, and a shipment of fifty used Mausers and ten thousand rounds of ammunition had reached the depot. It was intended for a sporting-goods wholesaler. Henri misrouted the consignment, and it arrived at a newly rented storefront in Quebec. By the time the misrouting was discovered, the arms were in the Movement’s cache, and Henri Lebeque had disappeared from Ottawa. There was a price for everything, and it was a
lmost five years before Henri could come out of hiding. He’d aged during those years, his hair had gone gray, and he had been furnished a newly created identity. Henri Leveque was how he was known now. It was his own idea to set up in Montreal. With the Movement’s contacts and with some starter money, he settled into the criminal world. He started with gambling and moved from there into any and all traffic that would bring in money. It amused him that the English-speaking Canadians, with their vices, pumped cash into the war chest of the Separatists.

  Then came September 1, 1939. The bond the Movement felt with old France postponed their war of independence. Most of the young men in the Movement believed their first war had to be fought to keep their real homeland, France, free. They joined the Canadian Army in hundreds, and the older men, when they became used to it, decided that it was not all bad. Let the English teach the young men to fight, to fire weapons and kill. It would rebound on them later, when the time came.

  And then France surrendered. That was two or three days ago. All the anger Henri felt against the English increased. It was at the boil. Churchill had betrayed France. He had not given the help and the support he had promised. He had withheld his Air Force. France had fallen because Churchill was too concerned with keeping England strong, with keeping Germans off British soil.

  But the young men still enlisted. Now the cry was that they had to liberate the homeland. Their own part of Canada, Free Quebec, would have to wait until the war was over.

  The model 1928 Thompsons had come into his hands through a fluke. A happy mistake. Henri had arranged the hijacking with the information that the truck carried passenger-car tires, new ones, worth all that the traffic would bear on the black market. He sent out his men, four of them, and they’d caught the truck on a narrow road and blocked it at both ends. The two men in the truck hadn’t given them trouble. Henri’s men were amazed to discover that the men were in Canadian Army uniforms, and even more surprised when they’d lifted the tarp from the truck and found the cases of Thompsons and the boxes of ammunition.

  The cases held fifty 1928 Thompsons. It was like finding a gold seam. The leader of the squad of hijackers knew that the heat would be on. The soldiers had seen too much of them. He took the two soldiers into the woods, off the road, and executed them, thinking of it as war. He had made his nervous explanation to Henri, and Henri had agreed with his decision.

  He hadn’t been able to move the Thompsons. Henri considered burying them until the war ended. It was then that the old American began asking in the grapevine about scrap pipe.

  If Henri could not move them, if he had no use for them until the war was over, why not sell five of the Thompsons to the American for a high price? The Movement would be able to use the money. Henri thought that way when he made the bargain with the old American.

  Later, looking at the crisp, new hundred-dollar bills, he had second thoughts. The evening paper he read after he left the private club where the deal was made had a small article on one of the inside pages. A bank had been robbed across the border in the United States. In a town called Renssler. The robbers had taken what was estimated at fifty thousand dollars. A large part of that money, the article noted, was in new hundred-dollar bills.

  The bank robbery and the hundred-dollar bills aroused his curiosity.

  Some time later, when Jean and the bald man, Pierre Picard, arrived at his home to carry the Thompsons and the other goods from his cellar storeroom and load them in a borrowed truck, he had a talk with Jean. A deal was a deal, he told him. There was no doubt a deal had been made. Still some questions had come up. He needed to know why the old American wanted the Thompsons and the grenades. Jean would find a way to learn the truth. If it was only a matter of buying weapons to take over the border to the States, he could go on with the deal. He might, however, try to raise the price if the old American would allow it.

  If the facts were otherwise, if the American had some kind of adventure planned for Canada, Jean was to bring the old man to him. He himself would discover if there was some way in which the Movement could profit from it.

  He heard them tell their tale. The old American had gone from being alone to having another man with him when they met him at the junkyard. And if that was not enough, there was another man as well, a man who waved a huge pistol about that was the size of a cannon.

  More and more curious, Henri thought.

  One man had grown to three. Could not those three have grown to six or even ten? How many had crossed the border? At least five, he thought, because they’d bought five of the 1928s. So what

  were five men going to do with five 1928s and a case of grenades?

  Jean, his driver, sucked breath through a gap in his teeth. His jaw was swollen, but he did not think that it was broken. “Whatever they are, however many they are, I think the old man we dealt with is not a true indication of the quality of the others. The others are very, very tough.”

  Henri dismissed them. Both Jean and Pierre went to see a doctor.

  At first he had been angry with them. How could they let the Americans handle them so easily? And how could they neglect to collect the second half of the payment? He calmed himself down. It was not all bad. If they were really tough, they would not have disclosed what they intended anyway. Tough men never did. They died first.

  Perhaps if the Americans would not tell him what they planned, they would show him, instead.

  By four in the morning the word had passed through the Movement’s grapevine. There was a description of the two trucks and the three men. Locate them and report to Montreal.

  He would handle it himself this time. When he knew where they were, that would be the proper time to discover what their real business was. He would mix and stir in it. After all, had they not made a binding deal? One half of the money when the bargain was struck and the final half upon delivery. The old American had broken his word.

  If it turned out that their business—why they needed the arms—did not interest him, the eleven hundred dollars did. It was the Movement’s money.

  It was a cloudy, cool day in Halifax.

  According to plan, the Gipsons had wormed their way into the center of the train-yard crew. When Cody and his crew left the boarding house for breakfast at six in the morning the Gipsons trailed along. The story they gave was that they wanted to see how railroading was done north of the border. Harry rationed them breakfast money, lunch money, and a few dollars for drinks at Toy’s after the workday was over.

  “Show them you know the business,” Harry said.

  “That ought to be easy,” Randy said. “We damned well do.”

  Harry let that snot pass. It wasn’t worth the trouble it took to level the smartass. Later. That would come later.

  The crew left. Harry rolled back into bed for two or three more hours of sleep.

  He spent the rest of the day wandering around Halifax. The old town was bursting at the seams. It was overcrowded with the influx of servicemen, whores, and workers. Housing couldn’t be bought for double money. No booze for sale anywhere in the city except at the ration stores, and you had to have a card for that. That was all right with Harry. He could settle for the rum at Toy’s. And the shortage might hold the Gipsons down for a few days. Might. Just might. He didn’t really believe that anything but a bullet between his eyes would hold Randy in check.

  At four in the afternoon, legs weary from all that walking, he was at a table in Toy’s when Cody and his crew streamed in. The Gipsons were all buddy-buddy, and that much of it was fine. They’d had a good day playing trains, and they hadn’t shown any crazy at all.

  Harry waved his cup of Newfoundland Screech at Cody and he yelled at Shorty, the Chinese waiter, that the first round was on his ticket.

  The talk that afternoon over the drinks was about the war. It wasn’t going well. Invasion across the English Channel was expected any hour. The way the war was going, they might start cutting the exemptions for work that was considered essential. That hap
pened, and the train crews might end up working at half strength.

  As it was, they were working a man or two short in each shift.

  Harry made his joke. “You could hire these two good ole boys for about fifty cents an hour. It’s about all they’re worth.”

  Cody took it as a knock on the Gipsons. He didn’t take the offer seriously. Not completely. But there was a hesitation before he said, “I lose a man or two and that’s not such a bad idea.”

  And then the offer got lost in the noise of the next round being ordered.

  Harry didn’t push it. He settled back and let the suggestion sink in. He’d planted it, and that was all he wanted to do. It was there in case the need came up. And it would. He would see that it did.

  Harry finished his bath in the community tub down the hall. He returned to the room he shared with the Gipsons. It was a bare living space about twelve feet by twelve. Two double-decker bunks, a card table, and a couple of chairs were the only furniture.

  The Gipsons were gone. Harry didn’t let it panic him. He dressed in clean underwear and walked the length of the hall. He asked his question and got the same answer everywhere. Nobody had seen the Gipsons since they’d all returned from Toy’s.

  Harry thought of one possibility. He returned to his room and took his trousers from the wall hook. He counted the wad of cash in the hip pocket. He knew what he’d started with in Butler and he made a quick estimate of what he’d spent in Halifax.

  He was short about a hundred dollars.

  The urge was in him so strong it dried his mouth. He wanted to find Randy and kick the living crap out of him. No matter what. Even if he busted some knuckles on his hard head.

  But he knew he didn’t have the time to go looking for them. The captain and the major were due on the early-evening train from Montreal. He and the Gipsons were supposed to meet them. It was a fucked-up situation anyway. There’d been no way to contact them in Montreal because they hadn’t known where they’d be staying, and the captain and the major hadn’t known how to reach him in Halifax. It was damned poor communications for people who’d been trained in the U.S. Army.