The Procane Chronicle

by Ross Thomas

“When were you going to do it?” I said. “Next week? Next month?”

  This time Procane shook his head slowly from side, to side. “The planning for it has taken six months.”

  I rattled the ice in my drink. “All right,” I said, “when was it set for?”

  “Tomorrow,” Procane said. “We are going to steal a million dollars tomorrow night.”

  11

  “GOOD-BYE,” I SAID as I rose and headed for the door. Before I reached it, Miles Wiedstein moved in front of me. If I wanted to leave the room, I would have to ask his permission. I don’t think he would have given it. I was about to ask anyway when he reached out and removed the forgotten glass from my right hand. “Let me fix that drink for you, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

  I had to decide then between the door and the drink. But there was more to the decision than that and both Wiedstein and I knew it. I stared at him for a long moment as he stood there in front of the door, blocking my way without really seeming to. He gave me a small, polite smile and I returned it, noting that he was a little taller than I and a little heavier and quite a bit younger and no doubt in one hundred percent better shape. He made a small, inquiring gesture with the glass, probably reading my mind.

  “Scotch and water,” said St. Ives, the craven.

  Seated once more in the chair in front of Procane’s desk with the face-saving drink in my hand, I waited for someone to tell me why I should do something that I was sure I wouldn’t want to do. Procane accepted the assignment.

  “A million dollars, Mr. St. Ives, is a great deal of money.”

  There was nothing I could add to that so I only watched as he leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and again looked up at the ceiling. It was the act of a man who felt that he had something complicated to say and who needed to gather his thoughts before he said it

  “A million dollars,” he told the ceiling, “is usually equated with success and happiness in this country. It’s always been a rather mystical figure. If a man somehow acquires a million dollars, he should never again be financially insecure. Invested conservatively, it can provide him with an income of fifty or sixty thousand a year, which could be sufficient to his needs, even in New York.”

  He lowered his gaze from the ceiling, frowned a little, and then smiled briefly, the way a man does who has sorted out his thoughts so that they form a sensible pattern. “A thief’s dream, of course, is to steal a million dollars. In cash. All at once. It’s been done a few times. The Brinks robbery in Boston in 1950 comes to mind. The cash in that one was a little over one point one million. More than one and a half million was taken in 1962 from the mail truck in Plymouth, Massachusetts. And, of course, there was the great British train robbery the next year. That was worth seven million, I believe. Dollars.”

  Procane paused to shake his head as if in mild regret. “Many of these thieves were eventually caught, most of them before they could enjoy spending what they stole. Psychiatrists, of course, will tell us that they wanted to be caught, to be punished, as it were. I must confess that I have never suffered from that malady and I should add that I’ve explored it thoroughly with a most competent professional.”

  I wanted to make sure that I understood him. “You mean you’ve sought psychiatric help to find out whether you’re the type of thief who has a subconscious desire to be caught?”

  Procane raised his eyebrows. “Is that so surprising?”

  “Yes. I’d call it that. Surprising.”

  “I became quite interested in the subject several years ago. I did as much research on it as I could. After that, I put myself into the hands of an interested analyst and together we explored the entire question.”

  “And the answer was that you didn’t have any problem.”

  Procane let his eyes wander over to one of his paintings. I followed the glance. The painting was of a tall old oak that rose from a forest clearing. It seemed to be spring, but the oak looked dead, killed either by light or age. Once again Procane had caught the sunlight well. Bright shafts of it seemed to bounce off the oak. He looked at me again.

  “None of us, of course, is without problems,” he said, “but a subconscious desire to be caught is not one of mine. Nor, I think I should add, is it a problem of either Mr. Wiedstein or Miss Whistler.”

  “The same guy checked me out,” Wiedstein said, a grin brightening his face. “If that’s what you call it. He already knew that Janet was okay.”

  “There’s something that bothers me,” I said.

  “What?” Procane said.

  “You say you steal only from those who won’t go to the law. I’ve been trying to think of a crook that you could steal a million from.”

  Procane smiled. “Have you come up with any?”

  “I’m still working on it.”

  “If the problem were only stealing a million,” he said, “the most logical victim would be an armored-car company. I sometimes wonder about those firms’ personnel practices. The majority of their help seems totally incompetent. Take last fall, for example. An armored car was hijacked and that really started me thinking about how best to steal a million.”

  “In Queens?” I said.

  He nodded. “The truck had three guards who were delivering cash payrolls to three large firms. The guards stopped around six in the morning at a diner and two of them went in for coffee. The third remained in the truck. When one of the guards in the diner came back to let the one in the truck go for coffee, the thieves struck. Three of them. They made off with the truck, the two guards, and four hundred and six thousand dollars. What I marveled at was the laxity of the guards and the brilliant simplicity of the theft.”

  “The thieves later switched the money to a couple of cars and nobody’s heard from them since,” I said.

  “And they won’t,” Procane said, “unless the thieves become careless.”

  “Or unless they want to get caught,” Janet Whistler said.

  Procane nodded. “Exactly. But if they don’t, there’s only a slight chance that they’ll be apprehended through the efforts of the police or the FBI. Only one chance in twenty, in fact, according to the latest figures.”

  “I’m sometimes surprised that more people don’t try it,” I said.

  Procane opened a desk drawer, brought out a clipping, and tapped it with a forefinger. “According to this story in the Times, only four point three percent of reported burglaries and four point two percent of reported grand larcenies result in arrests. Not convictions, mind you, but arrests.”

  “That means the average thief has a ninety-five percent chance of success,” I said. “Not bad odds.”

  “Better than those that are faced by the man who wants to start his own business,” Procane said. “But the odds shift dramatically when you want to steal a million dollars. I’d say that it’s far more difficult to steal a million than it is to make it honestly. Especially if you want to steal it from someone who won’t, as you say, Mr. St. Ives, go to the law.”

  “That could present a problem,” I said.

  Procane nodded again. “After considerable thought, I came up with two possibilities,” he said, caught up in what seemed to be an earnest admiration of his own cleverness. But then I wouldn’t have called him dumb. A little twisted, yes; a fool, no.

  He was staring at the ceiling again. “I was limited, of course, to an illegal transaction in which a million dollars in cash changes hands. One possibility was a deal involving illegal armaments or gun running. The second, of course, was narcotics. I chose the latter.”

  I started shaking my head. I remember thinking that I should stop, but for some reason I couldn’t. “You’re going to try to knock off a million-dollar heroin buy,” I said, and went on shaking my head. I must have been trying to indicate that I wanted no part of it. Not then. Not ever.

  “Let him finish, St. Ives,” Wiedstein said. “That’s how I felt at first.”

  “I don’t even want to hear it. I’ve been around some of the
people who’re big in heroin. Not close, but near. I’ve heard things. Those people are different. They’ve got something missing. I’m not talking about what they do, I’m talking about how they are. How they see things. You’d be better off stealing from the FBI. You’d have a better chance.”

  While I talked, Procane smiled patiently, as if he’d already given careful consideration to every point I had to make and had found nothing about any of them that should cause him the least bother.

  “Planning, Mr. St. Ives,” he said, wagging a cautionary forefinger. “You must not forget planning. Six months of it have gone into this theft. No detail has been overlooked. Seventy thousand dollars has been spent on securing information alone.”

  “Write it off,” I said. “Cut your losses and take a long trip. Florida’s not bad this time of year. Not too crowded yet. It could be a lot of fun. I might even go myself.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” he said.

  “Why? You don’t really need the money. You’ve already stolen your million, not in one chunk maybe, but over the years. Now you want to go up against the bunch that wholesales heroin. And you know what they are. They’re condensed evil. I’m not talking about the nickel bag pushers up in Harlem or for all I know over in the next block. I’m talking, goddamn it, about an outfit that’ll track you down if it takes ten years. And I could get bad nightmares from just thinking about what they’ll do when they find you.”

  Procane nodded and looked interested and polite, as if I were the age of reason’s local representative, but he really didn’t need any. “If my journal had been returned intact, I might agree with you completely. Now I have no choice but to go ahead with my plans.”

  I rose and leaned across his desk. I started calmly enough, but by the time I was done, I was yelling. “At least three persons have already had their hands on your journals. The guy who stole them went out of an eight-story window. The old crook he sold them to was found dead in a laundromat. God knows who they talked to before they died. But maybe two dozen people know all about how you intend to steal a million dollars. You may have spent a lot of time and money developing your plan, but right now it’s not worth a dime because it’s probably old stuff all over New York and half of Chicago.”

  “Shut up and listen, St. Ives,” Wiedstein said. “You could learn something. Not much, but something.”

  I sat back down. “All right,” I said. “I’ll listen. I don’t know why I’m listening because I don’t think that I really want to hear what you’re going to tell me, but I’ll listen anyway.”

  “Very well,” Procane said. “You must realize, Mr. St. Ives, that when my journals were stolen I immediately realized that there was a possibility that they would be used for more than blackmail. My fears grew when I learned of the deaths of the Boykins person and of Peskoe, the safecracker. When you returned the journals to me with the four pages missing, my worst fears were confirmed.”

  “You’ll have to admit that Boykins and Peskoe might have talked to a lot of people,” I said.

  “No,” Procane said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the four pages are missing. That means that whoever has the pages must know that neither Boykins nor Peskoe talked and probably made sure that they didn’t. That’s why they were killed.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure of only one thing. That whoever has the four pages is going to make use of them.”

  “How, by blackmailing you some more?’

  “That’s one of three possibilities. But further blackmail would be possible only if I went through with the theft, don’t you agree?”

  I nodded and said, “What’re the other two possibilities?”

  “One is that whoever has the pages could use them to tip off the outfit from which I intend to steal the million. The drug merchants, as you call them. They might do this for a reward or simply to curry favor. Do you also agree to that?”

  “It could happen,” I said.

  “The final possibility is the one that will dictate my actions. I’ve decided that it’s the course that will be taken by whoever has the four pages because it offers the most profit and the least risk. Almost no risk at all.”

  He paused, perhaps to let my curiosity grow. It did. I was still something of a snoop. “All right,” I said, “what is it?”

  “I’m convinced that whoever removed the four-page outline from my journal will follow it to steal the million dollars himself—or rather themselves, because my plan calls for more than one person.”

  “Why remove it from the journal?” I said. “Why not just copy it out or even Xerox it?”

  “First of all,” Procane said, “they wanted me to know that they have it.”

  “To keep you from going through with the theft yourself?”

  He nodded. “That’s one reason. But you noticed, of course, that my journals were in my own writing?”

  I nodded. I could see where he was going now.

  “Well, earlier you predicted that the drug merchants were going to be terribly upset about having a million dollars stolen from them.”

  “I don’t think I said terribly, but maybe I should have.”

  “Now suppose that you are a drug merchant who’s just been robbed of a million dollars. And suppose you receive a four-page handwritten, detailed outline of the theft along with a note suggesting that the handwriting should be compared with that of one Abner Procane. What would you do, Mr. St. Ives?”

  “If I were the drug merchant?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d have you dead by sundown.”

  12

  PROCANE WENT ON FOR another fifteen minutes about why he was convinced that whoever had blackmailed him out of one hundred thousand dollars was now going to steal a million more from some drug combine and blame everything on him. He built a solid enough case although I couldn’t help but wonder how high his analyst rated him on the paranoia curve.

  After a while I grew tired of listening and said, “Okay, you’ve sold me. Now why don’t you just tip off the federal cops and let them nab everyone red-handed—the smugglers, the dealers, and the guys who’re going to steal the million and blame you for everything.”

  Procane gave his head a small stubborn shake. “I have a considerable financial investment to protect”

  “That’s not it.”

  “No?”

  “No. The real reason is that you want to be a million-dollar thief. I’ve been listening to you for almost an hour and I’d say that the whole thing has become an obsession. You want to join the thieves’ hall of fame. You want recognition so bad that it’s distorted your thinking.”

  The room grew quiet. Procane made a careful examination of his right thumb. Wiedstein discovered something interesting about the rug. Janet Whistler found a painting that she liked. The silence put on a little weight. It had grown fat by the time Procane said, “There’s a kernel of truth in what you say, of course.”

  “You’d better tell him and get it over with,” Wiedstein said, still examining the rug.

  Procane ended the inspection of his thumb, used it to smooth down his moustache, and said, “Yes, I rather think you’re right.”

  For a moment or two I thought that we were going to get another fat silence, but Procane said, “We’d like you to join us, Mr. St. Ives.”

  I didn’t hesitate. I said, “No chance.”

  “Not as a participant.”

  “Still no.”

  “But as a witness.”

  “It’s against the law.”

  “You would be adequately compensated.”

  “Not enough to die.”

  “The risk would be minimal.”

  “I’d make an unpleasant cripple.”

  “I was thinking of around twenty-five thousand.”

  “I’ll listen.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  I still maintain that it was curiosity, not greed, that kept me from
walking out. After all, I had just earned $10,000. In addition, there was $327 in my checking account and earlier in the year I had purchased $5,000 worth of highly touted common stocks that were still worth around $900 the last time I had looked at the financial page. So I was flush enough and therefore silly enough to listen to some thief tell me how he planned to steal a million dollars.

  Actually, all three of them told it. When one of them dropped the story, another would pick it up and tell it for a while. Each of them spoke in the same flat, matter-of-fact tone, as if their plan to knock over a million-dollar heroin buy was no more interesting than a week they had once spent together in Memphis a long time ago.

  After deciding that a heroin transaction would be his most likely prospect for a million-dollar steal, Procane’s next problem was to find one. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. His first move had been to turn both Janet Whistler and Miles Wiedstein into addicts—in theory, at least. They found themselves a pusher and in two months bought enough from him to establish themselves as heavy users. After three months they claimed poverty and became pushers themselves, staking out a small slice of the upper East Side as their territory.

  Their supplier was a Puerto Rican they knew only as Alfredo. Over the months they bought forty-six thousand dollars’ worth of low-grade heroin from him with money that supposedly came from their customers, but actually came from Procane. They threw the heroin down incinerators.

  They had to act and talk like addicts and to do this, they had to associate with addicts. “It was difficult at first,” Janet Whistler said. “Later on I think we came to feel a little pity for them. It’s not a good way to be sick.”

  It was Janet who eventually discovered the link they needed, an impoverished South American diplomat, very minor, who liked to fly up from Washington for New York parties. She met him at one given by Alfredo, the Puerto Rican supplier. Still using that same flat, totally unemotional tone she described how in bed the diplomat liked to boast of one of his embassy colleagues who, he claimed, was very big in the heroin smuggling trade. She said that it took a lot of time and a lot of care and an immense amount of flattery to get enough details out of him to make sure that he knew what he was talking about. Shortly after they became convinced that he did, the diplomat hinted that something big was about to happen. So Janet and Wiedstein set him up.