The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  They planned the day over lunch at the Wingate Inn Hotel. The dining room was almost empty. Church services had just started, and the first of those diners didn’t arrive until Johnny paid the bill and they were seated in a corner of the lobby.

  The way out was the first concern. Tom Renssler and Vic Franks were to take their Bulldog and find the U.S. border and a way to cross it. They didn’t want to attempt a crossing at the border station. Two truckloads of gold, several tons of it, wasn’t likely to pass even a casual customs check.

  Tom settled into the passenger seat and closed the sliding door. He made a note of the last three digits on the mileage meter: 649.

  “Find the border, Vic.”

  “That all you want?” Vic put the Bulldog in gear. “I ought to be able to smell it from here.”

  The road they took through town cut across the tracks east of the train station. It angled past the fronts and then the sides of the warehouse buildings. A siding curled away from the main tracks there. The siding ran parallel with the road for a short distance and then it ended, swallowed up by a closed metal doorway. They were high doors, and they were the entranceway into the red-brick building Tom had noticed on the leg-stretch look at town.

  Vic slowed down. Closer, the top third of the walls and most of the roof seemed to be glass.

  “What the hell is it?”

  Tom shrugged. He would have to leave that to Johnny and the others. Their afternoon was to be a slow, careful walk around Wingate Station.

  The first few miles out of town the road was clogged with the churchgoers on their way home. A few minutes of passing cars and trucks and the Bulldog was free, in the clear.

  “What’s your guess? The mileage to the border?” Vic said.

  “Somewhere around a hundred and fifty,” Vic said.

  Two hours and forty minutes later and 126 miles by the meter, and the road began to squeeze, grow narrow. Another mile or two and they saw the first sign. It pointed to the west, CANADA–UNITED STATES BORDER STATION.

  Vic slowed the truck. The road was empty, nothing in front and nothing behind them. “Which way, Major?”

  “Let’s take a look at the border station.”

  Another ten miles by the meter and they reached a second sign. This time it pointed away from the main road. They passed the turnoff at a crawl. Tom had his full look at the border station. Down the narrow road there was a kind of gateway with facing booths.

  It didn’t look busy. The security between the borders wasn’t that tight, anyway. The border was almost an invisible line as far as coming and going went. Maybe two or three people on duty there, just enough to check for contraband and screen out aliens.

  A couple of miles past the border station turnoff, Tom said, “Let’s picnic here.”

  Vic eased the Bulldog to the side of the road.

  They got out and walked it, crossing the field and stopping about where they estimated the border line was. It was fairly flat land. It had been turned by the plow but not planted. The even rows had been smoothed by wind and rain. Obviously somebody had planned to seed it and changed his mind.

  A slow 360° turn while they searched for houses. Nothing close by.

  “There,” Tom said. In the distance, on the American side, about half a mile away, a row of poles and black wire strung between them. “You ever see telephone lines that weren’t by the side of a road?”

  Vic shook his head. “I’ll check the maps.”

  They returned to the truck. “It’ll be dark the next time we’re here,” Tom said. “Find some markers.”

  Vic looked around. “I can find it.”

  They drove back toward Wingate Station. Dark thunderclouds rolled toward them as they turned north. A rainstorm was headed across the border into the States.

  Betts left to watch the truck.

  Gunny and Johnny set out on a block-by-block, house-by-house study of the town. First a door-to-door on the side of the street where the hotel was located. Then they crossed. They were halfway down the block when Gunny touched Johnny on the shoulder and pointed upward at a metal sign attached to the side of a building. The sign was above a narrow alley. At the dead end there was a low set of stairs and a small building. It was the police station.

  “I’ll have a look.” Gunny left Johnny to have a smoke. He mounted the steps and swaggered inside. He was inside two or three minutes. When he rejoined Johnny he said, “Two.” They moved away from the alley. “That’s a guess. One desk. I’d say one cop on duty days and one night man.”

  “Just a guess?”

  “There’s a coffeepot on a hot plate. Two cups on the rack over it.”

  “Weapons?” Johnny said.

  “Side arms. A locked case with two Winchesters in it. No shotguns I could see.”

  They angled across the street and passed the hotel again. Down a short street, and the train depot was straight ahead.

  “You think they patrol?”

  “I doubt it,” Gunny said. “No car. Maybe a shop-door shake at night.”

  “We’ll need to check it,” Johnny said.

  Gunny nodded.

  They rounded the station and stopped on the platform. “My turn,” Johnny said. “Might be a telegram for me.”

  “You arrange it with Harry?”

  “The name’s Jim Whit.” He left Gunny on the platform and entered the station. Off to one side there was a cage with side-by-side windows. A gray-faced man was behind the ticket window. Johnny leaned in. “You got a telegram for Jim Whit?”

  “Down there.” The man indicated the other window.

  Johnny turned with him and followed him. The man picked up a stack of telegrams and flipped through them. “You say Whit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got one.” The agent passed it through the window.

  Johnny thanked him and carried the telegram outside before he opened it.

  SHOULD BE TOMORROW. I WIRE ARRIVAL TIME. HARRY

  He passed the telegram to Gunny. Gunny read it while they walked along the track bed. They crossed the tracks where the highway did. Here there was a switch and the metal flag. A siding butted against the main tracks and curled south. The rails ran between the warehouses and the road for about two hundred yards.

  Gunny folded the telegram and passed it to Johnny. “Time’s getting cut short.”

  “With this crew it might be the best thing could happen.” Johnny stuffed the telegram in his hip pocket.

  The siding ended abruptly. The high metal doors were closed and locked.

  Gunny looked at the red-brick building. “The major’s got a good eye. Glass up there and on the roof, just like he figured.”

  “I wish it wasn’t Sunday. I’d like to see if it’s being used.”

  “Used how?”

  “I think it’s a roundhouse. Where they do repairs on the engines.”

  “I can’t see it matters,” Gunny said.

  “It would if they shunted those broke-down boxcars in here to work on them. Or just for storage.”

  “It’s like a fort,” Gunny said. “Except for all that glass up there.”

  “It could be a problem.” Johnny turned and walked back toward town. “Bring Betts by later. We might have to plan to blow a few holes in the side of it.”

  “Soon as the major and Vic get back.”

  They reached the main tracks and took a turn to the east. They followed the tracks for half a mile or so and then turned north. It took another hour to box-step their way around Wingate Station.

  The sky darkened above them. A scattering of heavy rain made them run for cover when they were still a block or so from the hotel.

  Constable Lafitte didn’t put all the parts together until about nine that night. He was on his first rounds, the quick circuit of the main business district that took exactly thirty-three minutes, when the heavy truck swung out of a side street. The taillights flickered as the truck headed north on the main road.

  Lafitte shook the door in fron
t of Poole’s Café and stepped out of the doorway. Just then, the second truck, the twin to the first, turned in the same direction and went out of sight.

  It clicked then. The two parts of it. There was the old American who came in the police station about lunchtime. His face had faded bruises on it. At the time, Lafitte had thought the bruises might be part of a birthmark. Had not his cousin, William, had such marks from the day of his birth until he died the year before?

  The old American had asked about fishing. His eyes, now that Lafitte thought back on it, seemed more interested in the furnishings of the room rather than the answer he’d given.

  And now the trucks.

  The click of two objects running together. Now, if there was a third …

  Halfway through his round he passed the hotel. Usually he passed it. Tonight he went inside and talked to the clerk. The clerk had gone to high school with him. Yes, Graham said, he had rented double rooms to the Americans.

  He finished the rounds. He sat in the station, behind the single desk, and stared at the phone for another hour. It tempted him. Still, he knew that he would have trouble explaining a long-distance call.

  He was ready to leave when the night man, Parsons, arrived at 10:05. He rushed out while Parsons stood at the hot plate and bitched because he had not made a fresh pot of coffee as he did most nights.

  Lafitte did not have a phone of his own. The widow Jervis, who rented him a room, did, but there was no privacy there because the phone was in her bedroom.

  He stopped at his room long enough to pick up the Movement number in Montreal. Then he walked the two miles outside of town to the Berger farm.

  The Berger dog wanted to take off one of his legs. Old man Berger had to get out of bed and chain the dog before Lafitte could cross the backyard to the kitchen.

  “It is important,” Lafitte said. “It is the business of the Movement.”

  “It had better be important,” the old man said.

  It took time for the operator to place the call to Montreal, and the charges had to be reversed. Otherwise, old man Berger would not allow the call.

  The man at the other end of the line took his message. He wanted details before he seemed satisfied. Finally, he said that a Mr. Leveque would be in touch with him the next day.

  It was after midnight before Lafitte got to bed. He was tired, and his boots were muddy, and he had a bad headache.

  He fell asleep wondering what the hell it was all about.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The train crew huddled over their eggshell cups of rum at five that afternoon when Harry entered Toy’s.

  Randy was telling some long and probably dirty story to Cody. He broke off long enough to nod at Harry, but he didn’t seem to want to leave the table where he was. Clark was at the outer edge of the group. He got Harry’s look and brought his cup of rum to the table Harry picked. He arrived about the same time the waiter brought Harry’s first rum of the day.

  Clark pulled his chair close and leaned across the table toward Harry. “It’s tomorrow for sure.”

  “Cody say so?”

  Clark nodded. “There’s an early call in the morning. They’re to be at the yard at four a.m. Word is they’re putting together fifteen boxcars, three coaches, and a caboose.”

  Harry marked that in his mind. Coaches meant troops, guards. He looked across the table and saw Clark’s mouth moving, as if he had more to say and didn’t know how to put it. “Yeah?”

  “It’s funny about those coaches and the caboose. Most of the time they wouldn’t be part of the morning orders. I mean, they wouldn’t be on the work sheet. The work sheet would show the fifteen boxes. Later, after they were loaded and ready to move, the train would pass through the yard and pick up the coaches and the caboose.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “You see the security around the piers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think, once the train’s assembled, they haul it behind those fences and it stays there until they’re ready to redball it west. No stopping to pick up coaches, no stopping for a caboose, no stopping for anything.”

  “Two things,” Harry said.

  “What?”

  “You and Randy ask around the crew. See if you can find out when the train leaves the piers. Cody might know.”

  “All right.”

  “And the two young guys you were drinking with yesterday.”

  “Phillips and Mass?”

  “Those two,” Harry said. “Talk to them about a couple of drinks later tonight.”

  “Ought to be easy.”

  “Do it,” Harry said.

  “It’s good as done.”

  Harry reached deep in his pocket. “How are the two of you fixed for money?”

  “Getting short.”

  Harry peeled away a couple of tens. He passed them across the table to Clark. “That’ll hold you until I see you back at the boarding house.” He tipped the cup of rum and pushed back his chair. “Got some business.” He waved at the train crew and dropped a dollar on the table for the waiter.

  Harry wandered around in the mazes and the stews.

  It was still light. None of the brothels, the low-rent ones, were open yet. Not that he was interested in that kind of woman. If he wanted a woman, it would be the kind Mr. Arkman had at the apartment now and then. The sweet-cream ones, clean and young, and they acted like ladies.

  No, he was interested in the blind pigs, the illegal bars. And not just any one of those. It had to be the right one. A rough place with some of the fur still on it.

  Too early, dammit. It would have been easier around midnight. Timing was a factor. He couldn’t wait that long. What he wanted he needed now. Half an hour ago.

  The second blind pig he visited was the right scum world. The bottom. It cost him a dollar, paid to a bum in the street, to get directions to it. And once he found it, up two flights of stairs in a slum that smelled of overflowed toilets or no toilets at all, the man on the door didn’t want to let him inside. Maybe he looked too neat and clean. Harry yelled that he was a tourist, a damn American tourist, until the bouncer gave up and waved him in.

  A quick look around and he thought he’d found the right one. It was one large room with a makeshift bar off to one side. Rough planks over sawhorse frames, a shelf behind the bar that held glasses and a few bottles of clear liquid: gin, from the labels. There was a large wooden keg with a tap. Probably the rum.

  Benches along the walls. No tables. The floor pocked with cigarette burns and littered with last night’s trash.

  Two British sailors slumped against one wall. Either it was an early start or a drunk that was still running from the day before.

  “What’s yours, gov?” The bartender was a man about fifty. He needed a shave, and there was a thumb missing from his right hand. He wore a dingy white shirt with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows.

  “What’s the choice?”

  “Gin and rum.”

  “Rum,” Harry said.

  The bartender held a glass under the keg tap and drew a shot by some measure in his mind. He placed the drink on the plank bar and scooped up the dollar Harry put there. He didn’t offer change.

  Harry picked a hair from the rim of the glass and had a swallow. It was pure fire all the way down.

  “American, huh?”

  “That’s right. I’m taking a summer vacation.”

  “Sight-seeing the war, huh?”

  “Not exactly,” Harry said.

  “You’d be surprised how many of the tourists are,” the bartender said.

  “They’ll have their own war soon enough.”

  “You see it that way?”

  Harry nodded. He finished his shot and tapped it on the bar.

  “Another?”

  “One won’t kill the germs,” Harry said.

  The twenty-dollar bill was in his front-left pocket, apart from the main wad of cash. The bartender placed the glass on the bar and looked at the twenty when Ha
rry dropped it next to his glass.

  The bartender picked up the bill and stared at it. “This the smallest you got?”

  “Afraid it is.”

  “I can’t change it yet.”

  “Who said I wanted change?” Harry lifted his glass. “Have a drink with me. What’s your name?”

  “Call me Bill.” The bartender poured himself a shot of the gin. He nodded at Harry and put it back in one swallow.

  “You make that yourself, Bill?”

  “Don’t everybody? What else is a tub for?” Bill looked at his empty glass and waited. The twenty was still in his hand.

  “I’ve got a sick hunting dog, Bill.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I think I’m going to have to put him away. Poor old Shep.”

  Bill shook his head, a mock sympathy without any real belief in the story.

  “I think I’d like to knock him out first, you know.”

  “Tender feelings,” Bill said.

  “Why, Shep is almost part of the family,” Harry said. “If I knocked him out, he wouldn’t be looking at me when I do it.”

  “How’re you planning to do it?”

  “Cut his throat,” Harry said.

  Bill nodded as if that didn’t seem at all remarkable.

  “Or shoot him.”

  “And you want to knock him out first?”

  “I think I have to,” Harry said.

  Bill stared at him for a long moment. Then, decided, he stuffed the twenty in his trouser pocket. “Watch the bar a second for me.” He ducked under the bar and headed for a door at the rear of the room. The door was open for a brief moment, and Harry saw the bed and a couple of chairs.

  Bill returned a couple of minutes later. His left hand was closed over something. Harry finished his drink while Bill ducked under the bar and walked down to face him.

  Bill held out the closed fist, the knuckles up. Harry put out his open palm. Bill dropped a small bottle into his hand. “Another drink?”

  Harry shook his head. He looked down into his hand. It was a small medicine bottle with an eyedropper cap. “What’s the dose?”