The Procane Chronicle

by Ross Thomas

  “No last-minute instructions?” I said. “Not even a pep talk?”

  “They really don’t need it,” Procane said, holding the Impala to a steady fifty miles per hour about five car lengths behind Wiedstein.

  “They seemed a little nervous to me,” I said.

  “Of course they are, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m just scared.”

  Procane chuckled. “I can’t decide whether what I feel is apprehension or anticipation. Perhaps a little of both. Whatever it is, I like it. I really do.”

  “Maybe you’re just a born thief.”

  Procane chuckled again. “Maybe I am at that.”

  We drove for nearly fifteen minutes until we came to a fork in the parkway. To the right lay Maryland; to the left, Virginia. We went left down a two-lane, one-way road that hooked sharply left again. The rear stoplights on Wiedstein’s car flashed on as he slowed down.

  “The beltway,” Procane said. “U.S. 495. It goes all the way around Washington.”

  It was a six-lane highway, three lanes on each side, and a sign I spotted put the speed limit at sixty-five, but nobody but Procane and Wiedstein seemed to observe it. Cars flicked by us going at least eighty or even ninety. The traffic was moderate for that time of night.

  Procane drove well and I was a little surprised because not too many New Yorkers do, probably because not many of them own cars. The last car I had owned had been when I’d lived in Chicago, nearly fourteen years ago. It had been a Studebaker. They don’t make them like that anymore and I can understand why.

  “I’m really surprised, Mr. St. Ives,” Procane said.

  “At what?”

  “That you didn’t back out. I thought you might have second thoughts.”

  “I did.”

  “But here you are.”

  “Yes, here I am.”

  “What you’re doing is really quite criminal, you know.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Not much. Maybe because my values are twisted.”

  “You mean stealing a million dollars from drug merchants is quite different from stealing a million dollars from—say—a bank?”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “Part of it.”

  “Which part?”

  “About the drug dealers,” I said. “It’ll hurt them. Not much, but some. I don’t want to be preachy and all that good shit, but heroin’s nasty stuff. It wrecks too many lives and the people whose lives it wrecks are usually those who have everything going against them anyway.”

  “And that’s what you’ve used to justify your coming along?”

  “It doesn’t justify it, but it helps explain it. I tell myself that there’s something redeeming about what I’m doing. Not much maybe, but something.”

  “Of course, it might just increase the price of heroin. That means that the addicts will have to steal more to feed their habits. More crime will result. If the addicts resort to armed robbery, some innocent persons may get killed. Have you thought about it in that light?”

  “No.”

  “It’s better not to.”

  “How do you think about it?”

  “I accept what I am first. I’m a thief. But I steal only from those who’ve done something illegal. That way I salve my conscience.” He paused. “If I have one.” He seemed to brood about that for a few moments and then said, “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “When was the last time you stole something?”

  “What makes you sure there was a last time?”

  Procane chuckled again. “Don’t fence with me. When was it?”

  “Not counting the pencils I used to take home from the office?”

  “Not counting those.”

  “It was 1944 in Columbus, Ohio.”

  “You were a child.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What did you steal?”

  “A magazine from a drugstore.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted it and I didn’t have a dime.”

  “How bad did you want it?”

  I thought about that. “I think I wanted it more than anything I ever wanted in my life.”

  “And after you stole it how did you feel?”

  “Scared. Remorseful. Guilt-ridden.”

  “Did you enjoy the magazine?”

  “No.”

  Once more Procane chuckled, this time deep down in his throat as if he really found something funny. “I’ll tell you one thing about yourself, Mr. St. Ives.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll never make a proper thief.”

  “Why, because stealing makes me feel guilty?”

  “No, you could probably live with that. It’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t really like it. To be a good thief you’ve got to really enjoy your work.”

  I remember thinking that that was the first time I’d ever heard Procane split an infinitive, but I decided that he’d probably done it on purpose.

  20

  WE TRAVELED THE BELTWAY for five or six miles and then turned off at Exit 17 on to State Highway 27 which turned out to be a narrow, winding two-lane asphalt road that traveled west.

  Ahead of us Wiedstein cut his speed to forty-five miles per hour and we kept our five-car-lengths’ distance. I couldn’t see much of the countryside. A few lighted houses far back from the road. Some trees. An occasional bridge across a creek—or run, as they are called in Virginia. A gas station or two. Several hand-lettered signs along the road advertising “Puppies for Sale.”

  I found myself wishing that Mrs. Williams had served carrots for dinner. They might have helped my night vision. When I was through thinking about that I thought about how I came to be riding down a Virginia highway, driven by a master thief, following a couple of his apprentices who were about to turn journeymen, and headed for a million-dollar robbery that was going to make some very unpleasant people extremely unhappy.

  But it wasn’t going to be a simple gun-in-the-ribs heist. It was going to be something tricky because there were some others who wanted to steal the million dollars. Not only did these others want to steal it, but they also had a blueprint—stolen from the master thief himself—that told them just how to go about it. And when it was over, they could blame it all on him.

  I wondered who the others were and what plans Procane had for them, but because there was no sense in either wondering or asking about that, I started thinking about Bright Bobby Boykins, a small-time con artist who had aspired to better things and had been beaten to death just for trying. I remember how Boykins had looked, trussed up and tucked away out of sight behind the laundromat’s dryers. Then I remembered how Jimmy Peskoe had looked after he had hit the sidewalk in front of a cheap hotel, his safecracking days over and whatever knowledge he had about Procane’s journals and what they contained now safely buried.

  And finally I remembered the pride of the motor-scooter patrol, Francis X. Frann, who had wanted to be a plainclothes detective—or to shake down Procane—or both. I decided he had picked the wrong case and I remembered how still he had sat behind the wheel of the car, the shoulder harness holding him upright, the fatal stab wound not even showing.

  Frann had known those who had had the Procane journals and whoever it was probably had killed him, just as they had killed Boykins and Peskoe.

  If they had killed three, it wouldn’t matter much to them (for some reason I thought of the killer or killers as them) if they killed two more, or three, or even half a dozen. A million dollars in cash is a lot of money and many have killed more for much less.

  As I thought about the three persons who had died during the past four days there was something about each death that began to bother me. There seemed to be a link and I thought I almost had it when Procane said, “We’re nearly there.”

  The dri
ve-in movie was on the left-hand side of the road. A red-neon sign said that it was called The Big Ben Drive-In, possibly because of the rhyme. Below the neon sign was the lighted marquee which boasted of presenting a “Triple XXX Feature!” The names of the films were Take Me Naked, The Daisy Chain, and Unsatisfied.

  I looked at my watch and it was ten minutes till nine.

  “We’re a little early,” Procane said.

  “I’d hate to miss the beginning.”

  “We won’t.”

  He slowed down and made the turn into the drive-in.

  Wiedstein was already at the enclosed ticket booth, handing some money through his car window to a middle-aged woman. Procane drove slowly, letting Wiedstein get past the booth before we stopped.

  Procane rolled down his window. “How much?”

  “Three bucks each,” the woman said. She was bundled in a navy pea coat whose collar came up around the frizzled gray hair that framed her chapped face. A cigarette dangled from her lips. I couldn’t tell whether the twist in her upper lip was because of the smoke or whether it was a sneer that advised her customers of how she felt about them.

  Procane handed her a ten and she dug a small roll out of her pea coat and stripped off four ones. “If you hurry,” she said, handing him the money, “you’ll catch the beginning of Daisy Chain.”

  Procane put a lisp and a lilt in his tone. “We wouldn’t want to miss that, would we?”

  “I simply couldn’t bear it,” I said.

  “Fuckin fags,” the woman said and slid the booth’s glass window shut.

  The entrance road of the drive-in was lined by high board fences. The fence on the left ended after about fifteen yards but the one on the right continued all around the drive-in—to keep out the nonpaying customers, I assumed.

  The screen was near the highway and the parking spaces with their individual speakers and heaters fanned out from it. In the middle of the parking space was a low, cinder-block building that housed the projection booth and the refreshment stand. As Procane drove slowly along the fence with his lights off I counted about three dozen cars. Business was slow.

  At the very back row Procane drove the car up the slight parking incline and stopped.

  “Where’s Wiedstein and the girl?” I said.

  “The next row up and to your right.”

  “I don’t see them in the car.”

  “They’ve gone for refreshments.”

  “Where am I supposed to be looking so that I can record all this for posterity?”

  “The third row up.”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “There will be.”

  “When?”

  Procane looked at his watch. “You’ve got about five minutes. Relax and enjoy the show.”

  I looked at the screen. A woman was helping another woman take off her brassiere. Neither of them was very pretty. When the brassiere was off, a man came into what seemed to be a bedroom. The woman who was having her brassiere removed looked embarrassed and tried to cover her breasts. The other woman grinned. So did the man and then they started talking to each other and I stopped looking.

  “You’d better bring the speaker inside,” Procane said.

  “Okay.” I rolled down the window, took the speaker out of its wire holder, and fitted it over the edge of the window which I rolled back up.

  “You want it on?” I said.

  “Not unless you do.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Procane looked at his watch again. “In about thirty seconds a blue Dodge convertible should be arriving and parking three rows up and to our left.”

  “How many in it?”

  “One.”

  “The South American?”

  “Right.”

  We waited thirty seconds, but nothing happened.

  “He’s late,” I said.

  “You’re nervous.”

  “You’re right.”

  Fifteen seconds or so later a blue Dodge convertible with a white top crept down the third row. The driver’s face was a pale blur. The car turned up the slight incline and parked. The driver didn’t bother to bring the speaker inside.

  I saw Wiedstein and Janet Whistler approaching their car. Wiedstein carried a cardboard tray. It looked as though he had a bag of popcorn and two Cokes, but I couldn’t be sure at that distance. They got in the car and then melted together, apparently in an embrace. Or clinch.

  “Neckers?” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s a pretty good place for it.”

  “I can’t think of a better.”

  “What are we waiting for now?”

  “A car with four men in it.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was a dark-colored Oldsmobile, a big sedan, either blue or black. It rolled down the third row and then parked next to the Dodge convertible. The stand that held the two speakers separated them. There were four men in the car. They didn’t bother with a speaker either.

  “Look to your left and up four rows,” Procane said. “See those two men?”

  “The ones who’re carrying something?”

  “They’re coming from the refreshment stand.”

  “What about them?”

  ““They’re the ones who’re going to steal the million dollars.”

  I didn’t ask him how he knew. I stared at the two men. It was still too far away to see their faces. They wore topcoats and hats. The hats were pulled down low. They were moving toward my left, walking slowly, carrying a tray each. I looked to the left. There were no cars parked there. The two men were now near the left-front fender of the Dodge convertible, the car that contained the South American diplomat.

  Both of the men raised their right hands to their faces.

  “Stocking masks,” Procane whispered. “They’re following it exactly.”

  With an abrupt motion they threw away their refreshment trays. The first man, a little taller than the other, leaped forward and grabbed the handle of the Dodge door, jerking it open. The second man leaned inside the car for no more than three seconds. I expected to hear a shot, but I heard nothing.

  “Mace,” Procane said. “They maced him.”

  They left the Dodge’s door open and ran quickly around its rear. The first man headed for the far right side of the Oldsmobile. The second man darted toward the rear left side. The four doors of the sedan flew open simultaneously. Someone seemed to make a lunge out of the rear seat. I rolled my window down. There was a shout and the figure that had lunged out of the car crumpled to the ground. He rolled about.

  “More Mace?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  The man on the left side of the Oldsmobile now leaned forward into the front seat of the car. Then he straightened up and leaned into the rear. When he came out he was carrying something that looked like a one-suiter. The man on the right side of the Oldsmobile now hurried around its rear. Both men trotted to the Dodge. One of them, the shorter one, bent forward inside the car. I could no longer see its occupant. He was probably writhing around on the front seat, clawing at his eyes. When the man who was leaning into the Dodge straightened up I could see that he was carrying something in his right hand. It looked like a suitcase, a heavy one. He handed it to the man who already was carrying the suitcase that he had taken from the Oldsmobile. He sagged under the weight of both cases. He should have if they contained what I thought they did.

  The man who had lifted the suitcase out of the Dodge now lifted out another one. It looked heavy, too. The two men, carrying the three cases, began to run. There were shouts and groans from the Oldsmobile now. A man staggered out from its front seat, spun around, and sank to his knees. His hands were at his face. It looked a little as if he were praying. He may have been.

  The two men with the three suitcases were running toward the refreshment stand. They didn’t run very fast, not with what they were carrying.

  “They took the heroin,”
Procane said. He sounded surprised.

  “About one hundred and ten pounds’ worth, I’d say. Wasn’t it part of your plan?”

  He started the engine. “No, that wasn’t in my plan.”

  “Now what?”

  “Put the speaker back and watch Wiedstein.”

  I watched Wiedstein. He was no longer in the clinch with Janet Whistler. He was backing his car out savagely. The rear wheels chewed up the gravel as he slammed into drive and gunned forward, heading for the exit.

  I watched Wiedstein’s car as it streaked toward the narrow exit that was lined by two high board fences. The exit road curved on its way back to the highway and I lost sight of Wiedstein’s car.

  “Now what?” I said again.

  “We back out like this,” Procane said and reversed the car sedately until we were headed toward the exit “Now we wait another moment or two.”

  A small green Mustang with its lights off came out from behind the refreshment stand and sped toward the exit. Procane glanced at his watch and then put his car in drive and headed toward the exit. His speed was barely above normal.

  “They didn’t do too badly, everything considered,” he said.

  “I thought they looked like pros.”

  “Well, they were a little off.”

  “How?”

  “I had it timed for forty-five seconds. It took them nearly fifty-five.”

  I looked back at the Dodge and the Oldsmobile. I could see three or four men weaving around. They all seemed to have handkerchiefs to their eyes. “How long will that bunch be out of action?”

  “Oh, several minutes more. Perhaps even longer. That Mace is very tricky stuff.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said and then asked, “What now?” for the third time.

  “Now? Now we steal a million dollars from a couple of thieves.”

  21

  IT WAS A TRAP. I could see it when Procane rounded the curve of the narrow, fence-bordered exit road. About thirty feet from where the fences ended, Wiedstein had blocked the road by angling his car across the narrow strip of asphalt. The hood was up. I could see neither Wiedstein nor Janet Whistler.