by J. A. Marley
“Now, hold on a second…” Danny had his hands up and out in front of him.
“No, you hold on, mister. I know how to use this… I’m not going to let you terrorise any of my colleagues and sure as hell ain’t going to let you leave this room with so much as a single dollar.”
Danny would have preferred the element of surprise, but that was long gone. “The only way anyone will get hurt here is if you keep pointing that thing. Please… and I’m asking nicely, put the gun on the floor.”
One of the women whimpered. They had all gathered behind one desk in the far corner of the room. Between them and Ciaran and Danny was an array of desks, each with a counting machine on. In the very centre of the room was a pallet upon which sat a huge bale of counted money. Lots of it. And then, in the other far corner, was the door to the goods lift, a hydraulic trolley for shifting the money pallet right next to it.
“I always knew a day like this would come. We’ve always had a lot of cash come through here. It was only a matter of time. I’m ready… I tell you, I’ve always been ready to handle people like you.”
The man with the gun was yammering. Danny knew it was nerves. He was trying to “talk the talk” whilst not being sure that he could “walk the walk”. Ciaran made to move forward, but Danny held up his hand. He had this.
“Are you? Are you really ready?”
“Clarence… don’t be stupid… It’s only money… Let them have it… We can all walk away.” Ciaran glanced towards the new, clearer voice of reason, recognising it instantly. Marvin was in the room, too.
“Clarence… have you seen the Dirty Harry movies?”
“What? What the hell does that have to do with anything. Don’t take another step, mister, I’m serious, I’ll blow you away.”
“Oh, come on, Clarence… Answer my question. Dirty Harry? Clint? That big old handgun? Blowing people away for fun?”
Danny was slowly edging closer.
“You’re…you’re crazy, mister…”
“Am I? You think? Maybe I have to be to be a thief, Clarence. But maybe you’re the crazy one. Pulling a gun, a big one, mind, on a desperate man. A man willing to commit crime, and you point a gun at him. You think you’re Dirty Harry, Clarence? You think you’re some kind of vigilante?”
Clarence’s shake was becoming more pronounced, the gun quivering in mid-air. It looked like an older model gun, so it was probably heavy. And Danny estimated that it would feel like a hundred tons to Clarence. Two of the women were now openly weeping. Clarence was blinking, not at a normal rate, but like a man in a sandstorm with no sunglasses on.
Danny decided to finish it. “You ready for the blood, Clarence? For the ear-splitting bang, the buck of the recoil on that big old gun of yours? The smell of burnt flesh? Are you? Are you like Dirty Harry, Clarence? You feeling lucky?”
“Shut the hell up… just shut up… I will pull this trigger…”
Danny was close enough to see the sweat rolling down Clarence’s forehead and into his eyes. He was close enough to reach out and touch him. But Danny wanted to be sure. He didn’t want any doubt, no chance that Clarence might fire off a panicked round, maybe hit one of his own colleagues. “Because if you are feeling lucky, Clarence… you’d be wrong. There isn’t a gun in the world will fire, if you haven’t taken the safety off.”
Clarence’s face fell, his hand shook, he didn’t know what to do. Was he being bluffed?
He flicked his head down, couldn’t resist the urge to check, he could do it in a nanosecond. But it was all that Danny needed. The Vipertek was out and delivering a crackling hot shot of electricity to Clarence’s wrist before he even got the pistol turned all the way around.
He screamed, the gun dropping. The women screamed, too, and one of the men called out, “Sweet Jesus.”
Danny scooped the gun off the floor. Damn, it was heavy. “Okay, you people, no more fucking around wasting my time. Who’s in charge?”
Marvin stepped forward. Ciaran didn’t say a word. He didn’t want Marvin to connect his voice to the little meet they had had days earlier. No point giving cops any extra information if it ever came to it.
“How much is in the room? Counted?”
“Err… Megan, where’d we get to?”
Megan was in a weeping mess on the office floor.
“Megan! How much?”
“I… I… can’t be sure now… I…”
Danny crossed to where Megan sat, her face running with a mixture of sweat and make-up. He bent over her and clapped his hands close enough for her to react like she had been slapped. “Megan! You know. Answer your boss.”
“We… we got to seventeen… seventeen million and change.”
Danny was happy enough with that. He nodded at Ciaran. “Okay, here is what is going to happen, people. My friend here is going to gaffer tape your hands and feet together as well as your mouths. As long as no one resists, no one will be hurt. We got that?”
“Tell… tell that to Clarence.” One of the men was beginning to feel angry. Danny couldn’t have that.
He walked over to where the angry man was trying to care for Clarence, who looked like he was just coming to from his Vipertek experience.
“Hey, mate? Remember this?” Danny thumbed the trigger on the Vipertek. The resulting crackle was loud and menacing in the room. “Keep your shit together, and I’ll do the same, okay?”
Mr Angry was suddenly a bit quieter.
It took them a full five minutes to get everyone, except Marvin, bound. He was to be last. Danny told Ciaran to get the hydraulic trolley while he had a chat with Marvin.
“Okay, boss man, what’s your name?”
Marvin started to answer. “But you know…”
Danny touched Marvin’s wrist discreetly, giving Marvin the smallest of shakes of the head. Danny couldn’t believe it. For fuck’s sake, Marv… don’t implicate yourself in front of your esteemed colleagues.
“Marv… Marvin.”
“Okay, Marvin. Is there a code for the goods lift over there?”
He nodded.
“Is it the same as the ones we deciphered to get in here?”
“No.”
Fuck. Danny’s mind was racing again. It had been another loose end. Why did they not know there was another code to be used? Plus, going up in the lift could be another potential trap point, especially if he and Ciaran went up together with the money. Danny was getting angry with himself, but right now, that was pointless. Once again, it was just as well that he’d not shared all of the true plan with anyone except Ciaran.
“Are we in for any nasty surprises when we go up there, Marvin?” As he whispered the question, Danny gripped Marvin’s wrist and squeezed. Marvin looked dumbly down at his own arm, the pressure from Danny’s grip communicating its own message: be honest or else.
“No. No… there isn’t. Four, zero, one, two, nine.”
“Wise move, boss man.”
Danny taped him up, hands feet and mouth. And just before he left him, he whispered something in his ear.
Ciaran had pushed the hydraulic trolley into the slats at the bottom of the pallet and was jacking the handle back and forth, slowly raising it off the floor and allowing the wheels on the prongs to take the weight and do their work.
Danny went over and found the keypad on the goods lift. He punched in the code and heard the motor start to wind the lift compartment down to the basement. It felt like it was taking an age.
They were about to embark on possibly the trickiest part of the job. When they emerged from the lift, what would they find? Would the dancers have caused the conference centre to empty? Would the entire place be festooned with police? Or would there be enough time to execute the final part of the plan? His reverie was interrupted by the huge door sliding open in front of them.
Together, they pushed the trolley into the lift, the metal wheels clanging loudly on the steel floor.
Danny turned back to look at the room, the staff huddled together, Clar
ence in particular looking pathetic and lost.
“You did the right thing, people. Sorry to have made this a horrible day for you. But, sometimes, you just have to roll with the punches.”
Ciaran hit the ground level button and the door slid shut. The lift started its slow ascent.
Danny looked down at the money on the pallet. There was an awful lot there. He whistled softly. “Fuck me, Ciaran. There’s a lot of dosh to be made in Jesus’s name.”
“Aye, right enough… the good Lord provides… or rather a load of people who need a wee bit o’ Jesus something to make them believe their lives have a feckin’ point to dem.”
“Fuck me, I’m in a lift with an Irish Leonard Cohen.”
“Gobshite! By the way, what did ye whisper to oul’ Marvin?”
“I asked him if Anastasia’s happy ending technique was worth it.”
And they laughed, as much from nerves as from Danny’s question.
36
Sleight of Hand
When the lift doors opened, the first thing they could hear was the sound of evacuation announcements inside the convention centre. The voice was calm but firm, stating that due to technical difficulties beyond the organisers control, today’s event was ending early. That was a good start for Danny and Ciaran.
The lift emerged at the rear of the administration building right by a side road that was intended to allow cash vans to arrive and leave with ease. Due to its function, it was covered by four cameras. But Ciaran had an answer for that.
Before stepping out of the lift, he fumbled once more in his bag and produced a very old-fashioned solution. It was a catapult. He stretched the elastic on it once to check it was all intact and then fitted a small yet heavy rubber ball into the sling. Next, he pulled his hat firmly down over his forehead and adjusted his sunglasses. Danny noted the sweat ring that had developed around his friend’s baseball cap. It was a sign that not only was it a muggy day, but he was feeling the stress. Outwardly calm, but still sweating his bollocks off.
Ciaran and Danny had both memorised where the cameras were. Dropping to one knee and bracing his shoulder against the doorframe of the lift, Ciaran took a deep breath. Then, he ducked out and aimed around the corner. With quick, controlled movements, his first shot took the first camera lens out cleanly, a whoosh and a crash announcing his success. He repeated the process twice more, three cameras down in a matter of thirty seconds. Fitting ball number four into the sling, he could feel the perspiration stinging his eyes.
“Holy bejesus. This is fecking hot work.”
He took another deep breath, trying to regulate his heartbeat, and steadied his hands.
The fourth shot was the most difficult. It was the furthest camera, so his margin of error was next to nothing. Ciaran crossed to the other corner of the lift door and knelt. He slotted a ball into the sling and after a brief pause darted out. He didn’t fire. His balance wasn’t right.
Danny looked at his watch. Time was against them. It had taken longer to exit the counting room. Thanks to Clarence and his fucking gun, they really needed to get a move on. The police were bound to show up sooner or later.
Ciaran ducked out once more and let loose. There was no satisfying ‘crash, tinkle, tinkle.’ “Feck! Ye fecking fecker…”
“Calm, big man… Breathe… This is vital. We can’t let them follow the money. You can do this.”
Ciaran fitted another ball in his sling shot and rolled his shoulders, trying to relax them. “Holy Mary, Mother of God… gi’ us a hand here…”
He ducked out, taking a beat longer than before and then let loose. The crack and crash the ball caused was one of the finest sounds Ciaran had ever heard.
He stood, a beaming smile on his face. “See? The power of prayer, Danny… the power of prayer.”
Danny only snorted in reply and started to pull on the hydraulic trolley that they had been using to jam the lift doors open. There was still more trickiness to come.
They needed to haul the money over the loading dock where they first parked when they arrived for their recce weeks earlier. Again, they wanted to keep what happened to the money a mystery. There were more cameras over there for Ciaran to deal with. They should be easier because they weren’t as high or far away as these ones, but there was a bigger risk. Witnesses. This was the one point where they might encounter security staff, members of the public and, most problematically of all, police. Danny realised that Ciaran wasn’t the only one feeling the tension now. His own forehead itched where the hat band stretched across it, the hair at the back of his neck damp and sticky.
Once around the corner of the administration building, it was a straight line across a two-lane road over to the loading dock that had a space in front of it allowing large vehicles to turn. Ciaran peeked around the corner and saw no one between him and the dock.
“It’s clear, wait here. I’ll do the fecking cameras.”
Ciaran sprinted across the road and the open space. The small backpack jiggling across his shoulders as he did so. It was only halfway across when he remembered the pistol was in there, and he couldn’t recall whether he’d left the safety on or off.
“Be fecking embarrassing if I shot meself on a job,” Ciaran muttered to no one in particular as he fished around in the bag until he had hold of five more rubber balls. It was a surprise to him when he had found them in the toy shop just a few days earlier. He wanted something heavy duty to fire at the cameras, and he recalled superballs from his childhood. He hadn’t wanted to use metal because of the noise they might make in his bag, plus the weight. He never believed he would find the small rubber balls from his youth. But lo and behold, they still made them. And they were still small, light, hard as hell and bounced like crazy. Perfect for disabling the cameras.
Using the huge Coca-Cola trailer for cover, he dropped again to one knee and made short work of the three cameras that covered the loading dock. He then turned his attention to the forklift truck parked next to the big trailer. If there was one thing he was good at, it was hotwiring. The diesel exhaust of the forklift was soon puffing out foul smoke under his touch. Ciaran then turned it in a tight, quick circle and took it across the loading space, over the road, and met Danny at the side of the admin building.
“Good man, you were quick. Anyone?”
“Nah, not so far. Pull that trolley out from under the pallet. Let’s crack on.”
Danny did as he was told, and then stood back as Ciaran carefully slotted the prongs of the forklift under the pallet of money.
“All aboard the Skylark!”
Danny jumped on. As they trundled across the road towards the dock, they both heard them. Sirens. Police sirens.
“Fuck…we knew they’d come. We just have to double time it from here.”
“What’s it dem rappers say? ‘Fuck Da Police’? I’m right wit’ dem.”
They had arrived at the ingenious part of Danny’s plan. The Coca-Cola trailer. The soft drinks were delivered in two forms. Firstly, as canisters of syrup that when mixed with carbonated water became Coca-Cola. Secondly, a smaller consignment of small vats that were used to refill the sellers who literally carried the drink around their back during events, like the kid Danny had tipped so heavily.
When they had done the recce, Danny had wondered why the trailer had been left on site. He had taken a second to look inside it that evening and spotted that the trailer was full of canisters and small vats. It had been an easy matter to get Slow Tina to introduce them to the guy who delivered coke to Woody’s. When he had turned up in his truck after they had finished the team briefing, what he had told Danny was music to his ears.
Because the events at the convention centre were not constant, but fitful, the soft drinks would be delivered in a trailer which was left there to cover a period of a busy week. During that time, the centre would unload what they needed from the trailer each day, loading the empties back onto the same trailer. The manufacturers would then simply take the trailer away whe
n the busy period was finished or supplies ran out, whichever occurred first. And that was where Danny’s cogs had started to turn. A robbery where there isn’t a robbery.
The trailer was a tautliner, meaning it was not hard-sided. It was covered in the kind of plastic/canvas that made the vehicle lighter and therefore more fuel efficient. The taut cover was secured at the bottom by a series of retaining straps, through which was laced a long cable that was then attached to a lock. But, as Danny already knew from the recce, they left the straps unlocked for speed and ease of access when loading and unloading the containers.
He started loosening straps as quickly as he could. He listened all the while to try and gauge how close the sirens were, and if, indeed, they were getting closer. Who was he trying to fool? They could only be headed to one place… here. Ciaran joined him, both of them working frantically, whilst also constantly scanning their surroundings to see if there were witnesses.
So far, so good. They had unclasped enough of the plastic curtain on the trailer to make a big enough access point. Danny then climbed inside and moved the canisters and small vats around. Once a space had been cleared, Danny ducked his head out of the trailer.
“Load it up…”
Ciaran lifted the pallet, the money heavy and enticing. He had to be careful. Such a load could throw out the balance of the forklift. If it were to topple, they would be in huge trouble. For the umpteenth time that day, seconds passing seemed like hours. The slow, monotonous rise of the pallet appeared to be glacial in its pace. Danny’s foot was tapping uncontrollably, his T-shirt now drenched, sweat stains causing it to become moulded to his torso.
Finally, the pallet was at the right height. Carefully, Ciaran edged the forklift forward, while Danny waved him in. He then dropped it gently onto the floor of the trailer. All he had to do now was reverse out. But the angle wasn’t quite right and, as Ciaran pulled back, the pallet shifted, too.
