The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  “I figured as much,” Johnny said. “Unless you made them yourself.”

  “Two Canadian Army soldiers were killed during that theft.”

  “You know a lot about it.” Johnny gave Jean a push that headed him toward the open door. “Thanks for the information.”

  “You might wish to think that it is information.” Henri turned to his side to allow Jean to pass him and step into the hall. “I prefer to think I have given a warning.”

  “This business is done.” Johnny crossed the room and pushed past Tom. “And since our business is done, I don’t want to find you walking on my heels.”

  Henri caught the door and drew it toward him as he stepped into the hallway. “We will talk again at the proper time.” He pulled the door closed.

  In the room, Johnny slammed his open palm against the door. “The son of a bitch. What does he want?”

  “I think he’ll tell us when he wants us to know.”

  “And his warning, that threat …?”

  “The Thompsons are hot,” Tom said.

  “It’s got no teeth. He’d get burned himself.”

  Tom crossed the room and sat down on the edge of his bed. “So what do we do?”

  “Nothing. We wait him out.”

  Lafitte, about to start his early rounds, arrived at the train station a few minutes before seven. The evening local was unloading. Lafitte crossed the platform and passed through the waiting room and out the front entrance. He didn’t look back at Richard Betts or the three men who stepped down from the train and joined him.

  He found Henri Leveque in the dining room at the Wingate Inn. One of his men, Pierre, sat on his left side. Jean had not wanted to come down from his room because of the puffed lip.

  Lafitte stood across the table from Henri until he saw the nod at the empty chair. The waiter brought him a cup of coffee.

  “I have been at the train station.”

  Henri smiled. He buttered a narrow crust of French bread. “It is a nice train station.”

  “One of the Americans has been sitting there on the platform for more than two hours.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I assumed that the man was at the train station for some reason.”

  Henri popped the crust of bread into his mouth and chewed slowly while he nodded.

  “The local train pulled in only minutes ago.” Lafitte added a long pour of cream to his coffee and stirred it thoroughly while he let the other man wait. “The one who was waiting greeted three men from the train.”

  “Three new men?”

  “They are men I have not seen before.”

  Henri swallowed and wet his mouth with a sip of wine. “Where are these men now?”

  “A moment, please.” Lafitte left the table and walked to the doorway that led from the dining room into the lobby. One brief look into the lobby and he returned to the table. “They are at the desk checking in.”

  Henri lifted his napkin from his lap. He dabbed at his mouth and placed the napkin next to his plate. He pushed his chair from the table and stood. Pierre made a movement as if to join him. Henri stopped him with a bare shake of his head. He reached the doorway and looked across the lobby.

  Three men were receiving their room keys at the desk. One man was big and wide in the shoulders. Another was short and childlike. The last one was tall and very thin.

  Yes, they were new men.

  Henri watched the big man with broad shoulders direct the other two to the staircase. When they went out of sight Henri returned to his table. He draped the napkin across his legs carefully before he moved his chair closer to the table.

  He closed his eyes. Now the five had become eight. Was there no end to the kind of multiplying these Americans were capable of? Were they rabbits that some wizard pulled from a hat? Would these eight become ten? Twelve?

  He opened his eyes. Lafitte had drained his coffee cup and stared down into it.

  “Do you know where this train originated?”

  “It comes from Halifax,” Lafitte said.

  Henri nodded. The nod and the assured look on his face meant that he understood everything. In fact, he understood nothing.

  Jean came to the door bare-chested, wearing only his trousers and his socks. His lower lip had a hump to it, an angry bubble.

  “Is there gas in the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enough for a drive to Halifax and back?”

  “More than enough,” Jean said.

  Henri gave him a scrap of paper with a name, an address, and a phone number written on it. “You are expected.”

  He saw the reluctance in Jean. It was there in the way he stood in front of the mirror and buttoned his shirt. His eyes were on the swollen lip.

  “It is important,” he said.

  “Pierre could go,” Jean said.

  “He is stupid, and you know it.”

  Vanity or no vanity, it was settled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  During the daylight hours, since his walk around town with the captain the day before, Gunny scouted the town for a barn or an old building where he could store the two Bulldogs. It wasn’t easy. He and the captain had agreed that it had to be a structure set apart, isolated.

  Oh, he supposed the back lot was okay if they had to settle for it. It was open ground, and there was a horse trough and a faucet at one end. There were shade trees, too. Still, it was cool at night, and he worried about his lungs during the night watches that fell to him. And that damned constable, whatever his name was—the one he’d asked about fishing in the area—was sniffing the air. It looked like he’d put the back lot on his rounds. Not that he came close, but he was always passing at a distance.

  It was better to pay the highway robbery. The captain and the major agreed with him. It was a leaky and drafty old building that had housed a seed-and-feed store. The owner, a man named Bassett, wanted thirty dollars for one week’s rent. You could see the sun through the roof in the day and the stars at night. It had been empty so long the rats had picked it clean and moved on.

  It was almost dark by the time Gunny settled the matter with Mr. Bassett. He paid the rent and got the key and the loan of a kerosene lamp for a couple of days. Until, he told Bassett, he could buy one.

  Not that he would. Another day and the business would be over. Two days at the most.

  Richard Betts found them in the back lot. Gunny waved him into the truck. “Harry get here all right?”

  “Minutes ago,” Betts said.

  Vic led the way in his Bulldog. Gunny followed.

  “Where’s he now?”

  “At the hotel. Said he wanted to clean up and have supper.”

  They reached Bassett’s building. Vic pulled up to the locked door. Gunny parked on the street and got out and unlocked the door. He spread the doors and let Vic drive in.

  Gunny returned to his truck. “You stay with Vic.”

  Betts pushed the sliding door and got out. Vic came out and stood on the driver’s side of Gunny. “I thought you wanted to talk it out with Harry.”

  “Harry’s busy. I got to find me a firing range.”

  Vic frowned. “What’ll I tell the captain and the major?”

  “Any lie you want to. Or tell them the truth.”

  Gunny took the highway north. He’d gone about twenty miles before he found a dirt road that sliced away to the east. He took that road and followed it for five miles or so. Brush grew close in. It scraped the sides of the Bulldog. It wasn’t, Gunny decided, a road that got much use.

  He braked where the dirt path ended. There was a fanned-out clearing. The headlights swept across the stone foundations of what had at one time been a house. Black timbers and what had been the roof were strewn about the yard.

  Probably a fire. It hadn’t been recent. Time and weather had washed the smoke smell away.

  Gunny got out of the truck and let his eyes become used to the darkness. Then he did a slow 360° turn. He didn’t find any light in
any quarter.

  That meant, if he was lucky, that he was also out of earshot of anybody. He returned to the Bulldog and worked it around until it was pointed toward the dirt road again.

  The tailgate was now pointed toward the remains of the house. He pulled the tarp aside and picked up the first of the Thompsons. There was a thick stump of a tree to the left of the burnt house. Probably destroyed by the fire. That would do.

  He fired a short burst. Then he picked up the second Thompson. Another short burst. That way, in less than five minutes, he satisfied himself that the Thompsons were in operating order.

  The stump was in splinters.

  He didn’t collect the brass. Screw it. It was too dark. He didn’t feel like crawling about on his hands and knees.

  He drove back to town. Vic had gone to supper. He and Betts swabbed out the barrels. Then he took the ammo drums and reloaded them to capacity.

  No reason to spend time on a full cleaning. Not when the next day was probably the day they got used. That once, and never again. No pitting by then.

  Screw the hard work. He felt tired for the first time since New York City. His lungs were sore. He wasn’t coughing, and there hadn’t been any blood in days. Not that he expected a miracle. It was only a matter of time. All he could hope was that it wouldn’t happen before the job was over and they were back across the border.

  He didn’t want to die in some strange country.

  Lafitte had two pieces of information for the important man from Montreal.

  The first came to him during his rounds. That was after he left the hotel where he’d told the Mr. Big about the arrival of the three new men.

  As he approached the back lot his mind was on other matters. He was composing a speech about ingratitude, and his text was taken from the way the man from Montreal had not said thank you even one time. He was so engrossed in his composition that he was halfway across the lot before he realized the trucks were missing.

  It took him almost an hour to find them again. At that, he would have missed Bassett’s store if he hadn’t seen the light inside. A leak of light. He could be thankful that he hadn’t searched for it during the day.

  Of course, he had to be certain. At the same time, he had to be careful. That combination took him down a dark alley between Bassett’s and the old stable building. He remembered that there was a window there.

  Yes, the trucks were inside. Both of them. And then he realized that something strange and frightening was going on in his town. The old American and one of the younger men had their backs to him, leaning into one of the trucks. Then the old American turned and he was holding a tommy gun in his hands.

  Lafitte had never seen a tommy gun in his life. Only in the movies. Had not that American gangster, Mr. James Cagney, killed several men with such a weapon in his last motion picture? And then died very sadly on the church steps?

  Had it not been for the Mr. Big Shot from Montreal, Lafitte would have gone straight to the police station. He would have called the Canadian Mounted Police and told them that there were dangerous men in his town and that they had formidable weapons and that he was worried about their intentions.

  He hadn’t finished his rounds. He returned to the station. He needed time to think. He was at his desk, trying his best to concentrate, when the old farmer came in.

  His name was Masterson. Lafitte usually only saw him on weekends, when he came in town to do his shopping or to attend church.

  Masterson held out a handful of brass casings. “It sounded like a war,” he said.

  Lafitte had him start at the beginning. Masterson had been walking in the woods. One of his heifers was missing. That was when he heard the shooting. It had the noise of many guns firing at once. He’d been afraid and he’d waited. It hadn’t lasted long. And not much later he heard a car drive away. He’d waited another five minutes and then he’d gone to the place where he’d heard the shooting.

  It had been at the Hemphill place, the one that had burned down in 1936. A tree had been shot to pieces and the shell casings had been all over the ground.

  Lafitte put on his best wise face. It was the face that authority gave him. Under it, he felt himself trembling. What if the timing had been different? An hour and forty minutes by the clock, and Masterson would have been reciting his tale to the night officer, Parsons.

  “You will have to investigate this,” Masterson said. “The sound of the firings has scared my hens. I doubt that I will find even one small egg in the morning.”

  The wise nod. It was what he’d seen a judge do once. “It is my thought,” he said, “that this shooting at night is part of some war games. The Army is testing night blindness among its troops.”

  “Do you think so?” Masterson did not seem convinced.

  “Usually the Army does not announce these war games. I will telephone the Army tonight and ask which unit was involved. And first thing tomorrow I will send a telegram to that unit and inform them that there is a chance that they have damaged your egg production for the month.”

  “For two or three months,” Masterson said.

  “You know more about chickens than I do,” Lafitte said. “I have heard, through official channels, that the Army makes payments when they have done damage to farm crops.”

  “I have heard that also.”

  The fool and his chickens. It took Lafitte some minutes to rid himself of Masterson. Since he had taken the trouble to come all the way into town, he wanted to remain at the police station while Lafitte made the call to the Army. Lafitte assured him the call had to be private.

  The door closed behind Masterson. Lafitte sat at his desk and looked at the handful of shell casings, and he thought of the tommy guns he’d seen at Bassett’s old feed store.

  Duncan MacTaggart awoke in the last coach of the formed-up train. It was completely dark. There wasn’t even a light on behind the Exit sign.

  He’d slept sitting straight up. Now he fumbled in the empty seat next to him until he found his coat, and he was careful as he unfolded it.

  His watch was in the right-hand pocket. He found the catch and opened the cover. He struck a match on the sole of his shoe. It was a minute or two after two.

  And then he heard what had awakened him. It was a swish-swish sound. It was his first night ashore in eight days or so, and the first night he hadn’t slept deep in the innards of a ship. Down there, deep in the ship, it seemed that you were behind many inches of insulation.

  After that, on land, it appeared that every sound was magnified.

  Before the match reached his fingertips, he found the catch on the coach window blind. He raised the blind while he blew out the match and dropped it. The window faced the docked Emerald. The blackout was in effect. He could see the shape of the cruiser, and then, closer in, the gusting rain that struck the coach window.

  He got to his feet and struggled into his raincoat. He stumbled down the aisle and found the rear door of the coach. The heavy sheets of rain hit him as soon as he stepped on the train platform. It came at him like it poured out of a fire hose. He felt his trousers pasted against his legs and he knew that his shoes, dry for the first time in days, would be soaked in seconds.

  No help for it. He took a deep breath and stepped down to the pier. He turned to his right as soon as his feet touched. When he’d checked the watch two hours before, at midnight, there had been only a light mist, and he’d reviewed four Canadian Navy guards lined up the length of the train. Now he couldn’t find even one.

  MacTaggart trotted the distance of the train, stopping at each boxcar to check the lock and the seal. All were intact. Nothing out of order unless you counted the guards.

  Disregarding the rain, he backed away from the boxcars until his back was getting close to the Emerald at dockside. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled as loud as he could. “Guards, damn your souls, where the bloody hell are you?”

  It didn’t take a second shout. They came at a run from the other side of the t
rain, the side near the pier shed. They ducked under the coupling that connected the boxcars and trotted to their assigned positions.

  They’d been as dry as MacTaggart seconds before and now they were drenched.

  MacTaggart gave them a moment to assume, without being told, a position of attention. “It too wet for you, laddies?”

  It was a bellow. They didn’t answer.

  “Perhaps we could ask some sailors off the Emerald to take the watch for you. Everybody knows that seagoing sailors aren’t afraid of water. They won’t melt.”

  Even in the downpour, against that noise, he realized that he’d drawn an audience. He heard laughter and looked over his shoulder. The gangplank watch, a couple of ratings and an officer, leaned on the rail and gawked at him.

  “Two more hours before you’re relieved. You babies think you can stand the watch? If not, I’ll find the watch hut and see that you’re relieved. What’ll it be?”

  That special voice, that tone, it brought back his days as a recruit. That had been 1914, and the sergeant had his way of making you feel about as high as a dog’s belly.

  Since he’d started it, he decided he might as well take it the whole distance, as Sergeant Welles would have. He straightened his back and marched toward the guard nearest him. Five long paces brought him face to face with the young sailor. It wasn’t exactly face to face. MacTaggart towered over him by some six inches.

  “Now, son …”

  “Sir … sir …” The boy’s face was screwed up. He looked like he was about to cry. “Nobody said it was important.”

  “Important?” He bellowed until his lungs hurt. He wanted the other guards to hear him. “You have any idea what is loaded in those boxcars?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’s a secret. You’re not supposed to know. But it could make the difference between winning this war or losing it.”

  “We didn’t know, sir.”

  “Now you do.” MacTaggart backed away until he could look at the other guards as well. “Remain at your posts until you’re relieved.”

  He marched away. Not toward the dry train coach. Toward the land where the pier ended. As soon as he was out of sight, he dropped all the military crap, the walk and the rigid back.