One Endless Hour d-2

by Dan J. Marlowe

  He sounded so injured I almost laughed. It wouldn't have helped our relationship, because he was in deadly earnest. "I don't understand where you get your actors," I said.

  "No problem. I've got a notebook full of names. Two notebooks, actually. One with people workin' re'glar who moonlight in films, hopin' to make it big, an' one with volunteers for the blue stuff."

  "Volunteers?"

  "Sure. You wouldn't believe the exhibitionists in this world. I always got more than I need. An' I can whistle up five eager chicks for every guy on my list. Somethin' about everyone she knows seein' her ballin' it in livin' color really turns on a certain type of tomato." He took another swallow from his glass and changed the subject. "What's the job look like so far?"

  "Everything in the Schemer's blueprints has been right on the nose. Around the bank, anyway. In the next couple of days the three of us will check out the homes of the manager and assistant manager for arrival and departure times of the families. Wait a second and I'll get the file. I want you to look over the escape routes."

  Halfway across the room I remembered something and detoured to the telephone. One reason I had selected the Carousel was because it had direct phones in each room that didn't go through a switchboard. "There's one thing in the Schemer's notes I want more information on," I explained to Dahl as I dialed the Schemer's number in Washington, D.C. "Schemer? Earl Drake. Call me right back at the motel, will you?"

  I hung up the phone, took the scale drawings of the bank and the access roads around it from my briefcase, and handed them to Dahl. He pointed to the phone. "What's with this call back business?"

  "The Schemer's ultracautious. He never talks business over his own phone. He never meets anyone face to face, either."

  "You mean you've never even seen the guy?"

  "That's right."

  "Then how'n'ell does he get paid?"

  "Through the mail."

  Dahl whistled. "He sure must wind up waitin' at the gate for the postman. Waitin' in vain, I mean."

  "Not as often as you'd think. You only miss with him once. Then he puts you on his blacklist, and he's so well and so favorably known that once on his list you'll have trouble hooking up with the_ right kind of people for your next job."

  Dahl still looked dubious. "I say it's no way to run a railroad. He must-"

  The telephone rang. I picked it up. "Drake here."

  "Why the call?" the Schemer's voice asked.

  "One small point," I explained. "Your notes say the manager and assistant manager each has half the vault combination. What happens if either of them doesn't make it to work?"

  "I didn't have that in there?" Irritation threaded the clipped syllables. "I'm slipping. If it's the manager, Barton, who doesn't show up, his half of the combo is in the hands of the retired chairman of the board. I don't remember his name, but it's in the list of bank officers. If it's the assistant manager who misses, the bank attorney, who is also a director, has his part of the combination. His name is Carlisle and his office is right across the street from the bank."

  "No luck," I said ruefully. "I was hoping someone might have goofed and one man like the board chairman would have both halves. That way we could have bypassed the families."

  "I didn't say it was going to be easy," the Schemer said. "Anything else?"

  "Nothing. We're getting close."

  "Fine. I kept that job on ice for quite a while waiting for the right workman."

  The connection was gone. Dahl looked at me quizzically as I replaced the phone. "No shortcuts, huh?"

  "It was worth a try. Now we follow the blueprint." I looked at my watch. "Time to pick up Harris. There's no need for you to come. I'll drive you down the road where you can get a room."

  Dahl stretched, yawned, and glanced at one of the large double beds. "What's the matter with sackin' out right here, cousin?"

  "No," I said. "We're not going to be seen together any more than is absolutely necessary. You'll need to hire a car in the morning anyway."

  Dahl grumbled a bit but finally put himself in motion. He carried his suitcase out to my car. It was only a three-minute drive to the other motel. "You sure we're gonna knock this one over next Thursday?" he said when I stopped on the shoulder of the road in front of the motel.

  "Unless we get a bad break," I promised. "Goodnight."

  " 'Night," he echoed. He walked up the driveway to the motel office, lugging his heavy suitcase. I watched from the car to make sure he got a room. I drove off when I saw the clerk swing the register in Dahl's direction for him to sign. It reminded me that I should have asked him what alias he intended to use.

  * * *

  At the airport I found I had a forty-five-minute wait for the arrival of Preacher Harris's plane. I left word at the airline counter for him to be paged upon arrival and I left a phone number for him to call. The phone was a pay phone at one end of the terminal. When it finally rang, I was sitting five yards away from it. "Harris," the voice at the other end of the line said when I picked up the receiver.

  "Drake," I identified myself. "Let's meet behind the first row of cars in the parking lot."

  "Be right there," he said.

  He was obviously tired when I met him. "Bad flight," he said briefly. "I chucked twice. I need to sack in."

  I suspected that at least part of the dark circles under his eyes and the strained expression around his mouth came from more than a bad flight. Long, losing hours at the tables in Las Vegas had evidently preceded the flight. "I'll take Dahl on a dry run in the morning," I said. "You can sleep till noon and we'll look it over together then."

  The sound of Dahl's name seemed to rouse him. "Is he just as cocky as ever?"

  "No ego shrinkage that I could see." I didn't tell him about Dahl's movie made inside the bank. If I knew Dahl, Harris would be seeing it for himself very soon. I drove to a third motel, this one ten miles from the Carousel, on U.S. 1 near Lima. "What name are you going to use if I want to reach you?"

  "Harris James. James is my real first name."

  "That's easy to remember."

  I remembered an armored truck job years before in which a change of plan had come up at the last moment. The critical interval came and went with one partner hammering on door after door of a motel because he couldn't remember what alias his partner was using.

  At the motel I waited again until I was sure that Harris had a room, then drove back to the Carousel.

  We would be starting the last lap in the morning.

  11

  Dahl and I drove to Philadelphia at five A.M. the next morning. He picked up a rented car, and I parked the VW. We continued to Thornton with Dahl driving. A light rain was falling and the streets were slick. It was full dark, and would be for another hour of the late-August morning.

  Dahl appeared to be in good humor during the thirty-five-minute drive. He hummed as he drove. When I directed him to the street in Thornton where George and Shirley Mace lived, he asked his first question. "Who we lookin' over this mornin', cousin?"

  "The assistant bank manager and his wife. Slow down now." A block away from the Maces' I noticed a sign on a lawn that said TOURISTS-ROOMS. That would be a good spot to park one of the cars. The police wouldn't pay any attention to a strange automobile parked in front of such a building. "Turn here. Fourth house on the other side of the street. If a cruiser gets nosy, I'm being transferred out of the territory on my advertising job, and I'm breaking you in." I opened my briefcase and showed Dahl my Yellow Pages flyers.

  He looked speculatively at the house, which was in a neighborhood that had seen better days. "What's to know about this pair that can do us any good?"

  "Their habits, especially in the early mornings. Circle the block and park where we can watch the house."

  "Are they gonna be a problem?"

  "The Schemer doesn't think so. They never go out together, for one thing. They don't seem to have any social life at all. Even when he takes a vacation, Mace shows up at the bank almo
st every day."

  "Sounds like a guy who's afraid someone's gonna find out he's been tiltin' the pinball machine."

  "If he is, he's good at it. He's worked at this same bank for twenty-two years. He refused a couple of transfers with advancement. He and his wife have lived in this same house all those years, too."

  "Refusin' a chance to move up sounds even more like a man who doesn't care to have anyone lookin' too close at his operation," Dahl said.

  "I'm sure the bank took that into consideration."

  "Just so there's somethin' left to grab when we make our move. Maybe he's just not makin' it with his war department. But imagine shackin' up with the same broad under the same roof for twenty-two years if you weren't cuttin' it with her?" He was silent for a moment. "Speakin' of there bein' somethin' for us to grab on a job," he resumed, "what we really need is a union, you know. Some outfit that could set up priorities. A good friend of mine is doin' twenty-to-life because he walked into a bank with his gun out when the FBI was standin' right there investigatin' another heist pulled in the same bank forty-five minutes before. It shouldn't happen to a dog."

  I made no reply. We sat and watched the neighborhood come to life. Men of all shapes and sizes emerged from their homes, climbed into their cars, and drove to work. The teen-age generation was apparently taking advantage of the last few days of summer vacation to sleep in. There were none visible. A few small children appeared in front of their homes in increasing numbers until the neighborhood took on the appearance of a tricycle headquarters. The wives, like the teenagers, remained invisible at that hour of the morning.

  "What time we gonna hit the place?" Dahl wanted to know.

  "This house? We'll have to work out a timetable. Early enough in the morning to have this home and the manager's under our thumbs so we can get the two men to the bank before daylight."

  "Sounds like an all-night job." Dahl sighed. He fingered the camera suspended from the cord around his neck. "Good, clear shootin' day. Hate to waste it."

  I was mentally running through the Schemer's notes again. Shirley and George Mace; no children; seldom any visitors; little social life. Side-door entrance hidden from the street by hedge along the driveway. It was hard to see a problem.

  The other house could be a different story. Thomas Barton, the bank manager, had three children. If Dahl and I went to the bank with Barton and Mace-no, after Dahl's antics during the Washington job it had better be Harris and I escorting the bank officials. Dahl could remain behind to keep the families hostage. That meant consolidating the families, and the easiest way would be to shift Shirley and George Mace to the Barton home when the time came.

  It could wait until we'd looked over the Barton home.

  Some circumstance there might make me want to change it. We wouldn't look it over today, though; we'd already spent enough time in the Mace neighborhood.

  When George Mace came out of his side door at 9:10 A.M. and backed down his hedge-bordered driveway in his fender-dented Rambler station wagon, I nudged Dahl. "Back to the motel," I said.

  "We're not gonna case the manager's house?"

  "Harris and I will do that tomorrow."

  "You mean I'm gonna waste the whole day tomorrow?"

  "You won't be wasting it. You'll be out buying enough cord to make adequate slip-noose tie-cords for the hands and feet of two wives and three children."

  He grunted acquiescence. "What about gags?"

  I considered it. Who could tell what might happen? "You'd better have gags ready." I thought of the children again. "Yes, you'd better have them ready."

  "Okay."

  We left the city limits of Thornton behind us at 9:15 A.M.

  If all went well, on Thursday morning we would also leave the city limits of Thornton behind us at 9:15 A.M.

  * * *

  The next morning at six A.M. Preacher Harris and I were sitting in Harris's rented car diagonally across the street from the Thomas Barton residence. The streetlights were still on. In contrast to his Sunday night tenseness, Harris seemed much more relaxed.

  I felt reasonably secure about the surveillance. The Schemer's notes had made it clear that the city police had developed a pattern of returning the cruisers to the station at five A.M. while reports were made out. The state police cars never left the state highways unless called. In many communities there is a gap in police coverage during the early morning hours.

  At 6:15 a half-ton enclosed van rumbled down the street and parked in front of the Bartons' house. A man ran up the walk with a bundle in his arms, tossed it onto the porch where it landed with a thump, and ran back to the truck, which pulled away.

  "Newspapers," Harris deduced although there were no markings on the truck. "Did the Schemer's file say the Barton boy had a paper route?"

  "No."

  "If he does, I don't like it," Harris said. "People are used to getting their papers at the same time every morning."

  I didn't like it myself. It was a complication, but the only thing to do was work around it. The Barton front porch light came on and a boy in T-shirt and shorts came out the front door and bent down over the bundle. He was followed by a girl three or four years older. She had on a shortie nightgown, and even in the weak porch light she was something to see. "Dahl should be here," Harris said dryly. Dahl had insisted upon showing Harris his bank movies the previous afternoon. "That's a good-looking girl."

  The boy cut the rope binding the papers and handed one to his sister. He put the papers in a wire basket on a bicycle parked on the porch, wheeled the bike down to the street, and rode away. The girl yawned, looked the neighborhood over, stretched casually, and reentered the house. The porch light went out.

  I opened the car door. "Follow the boy," I told Harris. "I'll stay here."

  "Follow him? For what?"

  "There can't be more than thirty papers in his bundle. If we know his route to make sure he can't make a wrong stop, one of us can go with him Thursday morning." I stepped out onto the sidewalk. "I'll walk up to the next corner where I can still watch the house."

  Harris drove off after the fast-pedaling boy. Daylight came shortly after 6:45. It would be a tight fit to wait for the boy to return from his paper delivery and still get his father to the bank while it was dark. No newspapers delivered probably would bring phone calls from subscribers, though, and an unanswered phone call might trigger someone's unhealthy curiosity.

  Harris returned in twenty-five minutes, during which there had been no further activity visible at the Barton home. "Not too bad," he reported. "He never gets out of a four-block area. He leaves a paper at almost every house."

  "But where is he now?"

  Harris shrugged. "He rode off somewhere. I only stayed with him till he got rid of the last paper. I thought I'd better get back to you."

  It was all right if his absence didn't mean he was picking up more papers for additional delivery, I thought. I didn't say anything. Harris was staring reflectively at the Barton home. Although not very far in distance from the Mace home, it was a world apart in milieu. "What about that shortie-nightgowned job?" Harris asked.

  "What do you mean, what about her?"

  "What did the Schemer have to say about her?"

  "According to him, she's a swinger. Pretty wild by high-school standards. Why?"

  "That girl is still in high school?" Harris answered a question with a question. "She sure as hell doesn't look it"

  "Why the question?" I asked again.

  Harris grinned. "I just kind of had a picture of Dahl and his camera in the car with you here this morning instead of me. He'd have been right up on the porch asking her to pose."

  "The hell he would," I said grimly. "I've had enough of that camera foolishness."

  "I guess you're not turned on by the dollies any faster than I am," Harris said. "With me, the main line has always been two dice or fifty-two cards on a green felt table."

  We watched the house in silence for a moment. "How'd you happen to g
o the gambling route, Preacher?" I asked.

  "Only thing I ever really wanted to do," he said softly.

  "It's not everyone's game."

  "Yours, for instance?"

  "I might have bet fifty bucks on a horse three times in my life."

  "I never got around to horses," Harris said. "Dice and cards gave me all I could handle."

  "And banks," I said.

  "Just another gamble."

  We fell silent again. The neighborhood grew lighter. The Barton front door opened and a blond, pig-tailed pixie in a preteen version of a miniskirt bounded down the front walk. She was carrying a violin case. "That must be Margie, their eleven-year-old," I said.

  "I sure hope she doesn't take a violin lesson on Thursday morning, too," Harris said.

  "We'll check it against the Schemer's blueprint on everyone's whereabouts at the critical time."

  Harris lit a cigarette. "How much does he have the jug figured for if we get it all?"

  "Two-hundred twenty-five thousand."

  "A third of that'll buy the croupier a few drinks," Harris said dreamily. He savored the idea for an instant. "Although it doesn't seem possible in a town this size."

  "There's industry on the outskirts," I said. "The armored car delivery on Wednesday is to make up factory payrolls."

  "It's a wonder anyone pays by cash any longer. Sure would put us out of business if they quit, though."

  "It's changing," I said. "I can remember when I started in the business. A delivery like this one would usually consist of two-thirds cash and coin and one-third paper. Checks, bank money orders, bonds, that sort of thing. Now it's about reversed. That's why it pays to buy a job from someone like the Schemer. You know the cash is there and that you're not going to have your work for nothing."

  Harris turned in the front seat to look at me. "Who's going into the bank on Thursday morning?"

  "You and I."

  "That's good," he said earnestly. "I don't mind telling you I get nervous thinking about Dahl roaming loose inside a bank for the length of time we'll have to be there. He may be long on nerve but he's short on brains."