Nothing happened. I glanced at my watch. About 8:53. A few minutes early. We waited. Then, at 8:57, the motor of the cleaning truck was started. It slowly, carefully, pulled out around us into the northbound traffic. I got a glimpse of the driver as they passed. His face was white. He looked like he was about to weep. Then I felt a light prick from Angela’s knife. The tip sliced through cloth coat, dress, and touched my flesh. Just touched. It was enough. I pulled out after the cleaning truck, not tailgating but close enough so no other car could cut between us.
That’s when I heard the sirens, a lot of sirens and buffalo whistles. They were coming from the west and south. I knew what they were: squad cars, fire engines, and the bomb disposal truck, all converging on Rockefeller Center in answer to those diversionary phone calls Jack Donohue had set up. That son of a bitch!
We turned west on 55th Street. The cleaning truck pulled to a stop in front of Brandenberg & Sons. I pulled up behind it. There was no parking allowed on this street, so the van was able to angle in to the curb. I was farther back, double-parked outside a truck apparently unloading material for the construction site on the Madison Avenue corner.
The Bonomo driver and Donohue got out of the cab. They went to the rear of the van. The driver pulled out a mop and a small, canister-type vacuum cleaner. Then he marched up to Brandenberg’s. Donohue was close behind him. He was carrying a pail in one hand. The other hand was still in his coverall pocket.
They stood an instant outside the door. It was unlocked almost immediately.
Then the rear doors of the van swung wide again. Five men, stockinged heads lowered, moved swiftly the few steps across the sidewalk. They pushed into the opened door on Donohue’s heels.
The door was closed behind them.
They were inside.
So far, everything I have related I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. What follows next I learned later from Dick Fleming and Jack Donohue …
The moment the door to Brandenberg & Sons is opened Donohue shoves the Bonomo driver through. Shoves him so hard that the man stumbles forward, falls to his knees before a startled Noel Jarvis.
Jack whips out his gun, points it directly at the manager’s face a few inches away. The masked thieves come rushing in drawing their guns. Nothing is said. Nothing has to be said.
Hymie Gore and the Holy Ghost dash directly to the safe room. They are in before the outer door or the safe door can be locked. The two repairmen are herded into the main showroom. All employees are told to stand in the center of the floor, away from the silent alarms and the chair rail around the walls.
Noel Jarvis says—both Donohue and Dick Fleming remembered this later—“You’re making a mistake. A terrible mistake.”
All the employees are patted down. One of the clerks and one of the repairmen are carrying pocket transmitter alarms. More surprising, all three clerks are armed with short, blunt pistols in hip holsters. Transmitter alarms and weapons are confiscated.
All employees and the Bonomo driver are made to lie prone in the center of the showroom. Their wrists are tied behind them. Their ankles are roped. Just before their mouths are taped, Noel Jarvis repeats, “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re making a terrible mistake.” Then he, like the others, has his mouth and eyes taped shut.
The thieves remove their stocking masks and set to work.
The Holy Ghost watches over the fettered men. The others start smashing showcases and removing small leather packets from the safe. Everything goes into the pillowcases.
There is no time for selection; everything is taken: rings, necklaces, watches, tiaras, earrings, cufflinks, unset gems, chokers, emeralds, bracelets, diamonds, gold, sapphires, silver, rubies—the works.
Dick Fleming is put to work closing the mouths of full pillowcases with strips of tape. He is under the gun of the Ghost.
The others empty all the showcases, the big safe in the vault room. They work swiftly, sweeping their loot into the pillowcases with the edges of their gloved hands. Very little talk. Very little confusion.
Donohue works as hard as the others, glancing at his watch occasionally.
“Fifteen minutes,” he says.
“Another ten minutes,” he says.
“Five minutes left,” he says.
They redouble their efforts, digging into bottom drawers in the display cases, cleaning out the show windows behind the drawn steel shutters, reaching deep into the big safe to pull out more of the black leather packets.
“One more minute,” Donohue says.
They drag their full pillowcases to the door. Fleming tapes up the mouths. There are fourteen bags of loot for the six men to carry.
“We can’t manage,” Clement says. “Too heavy.”
“We can manage, “Donohue says. “Hymie, take four.”
“Sure, Jack,” Hymie says.
Donohue says: “Smiley, Clement, Fleming go out first to the van. Hymie and the Ghost go next to the Chevy. I’ll be along as soon as I wedge the door shut. No wild running, but move quick. Let’s go.”
From then on, I saw what happened.
Clement came out first, carrying a taped pillowcase in each hand. After him came Dick Fleming, also carrying two cases. He was closely followed by Smiley, who was lugging two pillowcases in one hand. The other hand was in his coverall pocket.
The three burdened men took a few swift steps to the rear of the Bonomo van. They opened the rear door, threw their stuffed pillowcases inside. Clement and Fleming climbed in, closed the doors. Smiley went around to the driver’s side of the cab.
All this had been done in full view of a score of passing pedestrians. No one noted a thing. No one shouted or raised an alarm. Why should they? Three coveralled cleaning men were returning to their van, that’s all.
Then came Hymie Gore carrying four pillowcases in his big hands, and the Holy Ghost carrying two. They walked rapidly, purposefully, to where I was parked, threw their loot in the back seat, and climbed in.
“Start up,” the Holy Ghost said hoarsely. “He’s coming out in a minute.”
I started the engine. We all looked toward the front door of Brandenberg & Sons. Jack Donohue came out casually. He calmly put his two pillowcases down on the sidewalk, then bent down to tie his shoelace. I saw him slip the rubber wedge under the door jamming it shut.
He picked up his two pillowcases, straightened, started to move toward us.
As he swung around, he bumped full-tilt into a man turning into the entrance. The man was one of those soberly dedicated salesmen we had noted making frequent visits to Brandenberg & Sons, attaché case handcuffed to the left wrist. I saw Jack Donohue smile, saw his lips move, imagined him apologizing for the collision.
Donohue came back to the Chevy, circled to the street side. Hymie Gore opened the back door, took the pillowcases, slammed the door. Then Black Jack opened the front door on the driver’s side.
“Shove over,” he said.
Angela slid to the door, I moved closer to her (and her knife), and Jack got behind the wheel.
I was conscious of all this happening. But I was watching that jewelry salesman. After bumping into Donohue, he had stopped right where he was. He just stood there, watching Black Jack walk away, come back to our Chevy with the pillowcases, toss them to Hymie Gore in the back seat, then get behind the wheel.
The salesman saw all this. He turned suddenly to the front door of Brandenberg’s, shielded his eyes, peered within. Then he turned back to the street, went down on one knee. His right hand went into the left side of his topcoat and jacket, reaching.
At the same time this was happening, the Bonomo Cleaning Service van began moving. Donohue started the Chevy rolling. The light at the corner of East 55th Street and Fifth Avenue turned green; traffic began moving across the avenue.
It all happened at once. No sequence that I could remember.
“Move it, move it, move it!” the Holy Ghost howled.
The jewelry salesman pulled a gun from i
nside his jacket and slowly, carefully, sighted it at me as we accelerated past him. Later, of course, I realized he didn’t especially want to kill me. But at the time I saw the muzzle of his revolver tracking us, and it seemed that big eye was looking only for Jannie Shean.
Then the rear door of the Bonomo van ahead of us opened slightly. A black hand with a gun came out. A shot was fired. The glass door of Brandenberg & Sons shattered, not far above the head of the man kneeling on the sidewalk. Shards came crashing down.
“You fucking idiot!” Donohue screamed.
The salesman flattened after the shot was fired and began to aim again, propping his elbow on the concrete. This time his gun was pointed toward the van ahead of us. I heard at least three shots, and saw the revolver jump in his hand.
Now there were yells, shouts. Pedestrians scattered. Squeal of brakes as cars pulled up, drivers ducked down out of sight. There was a great blaring of horns, a momentary traffic jam at the corner, then more screams and shrieked curses.
The van sideswiped a parked taxi, bounced back into the street, jammed ahead. The back door was opened wide. Clement was firing at the prone salesman.
Then, unaccountably, there was a man on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel St. Regis. All the other pedestrians had run for cover. But this man, conservatively clad in gray topcoat and gray fedora, had fallen into a low crouch, knees bent. He was holding a large revolver in his two hands, calmly squeezing off shots at the fleeing van as if he were on the firing range.
(Later newspaper reports said he was an FBI man, assigned to the Manhattan office, who had gone to the St. Regis in hopes of effecting a reconciliation with his estranged wife.)
The Bonomo van accelerated across Fifth Avenue, heading straight west on 55th Street. We went hurtling right behind, Jack Donohue cursing and wrestling the wheel. I wondered why we hadn’t turned south on Fifth, then realized it would be jammed by the police response to those bomb-scare calls.
So we went speeding west on 55th Street, as fast as we could. Traffic was heavy, but we were moving, and once we were across Sixth Avenue, I began to think we might make it.
“Anyone hurt?” Donohue asked. He was driving like a maniac, scraping fenders, shooting through openings, jumping lights.
No one in our car was hurt. But when I turned to look back I saw a hole in our rear window with cracks radiating from it like a star.
Hymie Gore saw me looking, and stuck one of his thick fingers through the hole.
“Ain’t that cute?” he said, grinning.
A BLOODY MESS
THE VAN ARRIVED AT the West 47th Street garage before we did. As we pulled up, Smiley opened the outside doors, then closed them behind us.
“Trouble,” he said as Donohue got out of the Chevy.
Jack stripped away his face mustache and the Band-Aid stuck to his forehead. Then he stood, hands on hips, staring at the back of the Bonomo truck. One of the rear door windows was shattered. There were a half-dozen bullet holes puckering the back doors and body of the truck.
“Nice shooting,” Donohue said sourly. “Who caught it?”
“The helper,” Smiley said. “Flat on the floor, trussed like a chicken, you’d think he’d be safe. He took one through the top of his head. One pill and he’s a clunk. Clement caught two, one bad. He’s going.”
“Let’s take a look,” Donohue said.
He opened the rear van doors. I stood at his shoulder, peering in. It looked like a slaughterhouse in there. The roped, gagged, and taped Bonomo helper lay motionless in one corner. There was apparently a neat hole in the top of his skull. You couldn’t really see it because the hair was wet, dark, and matted around the wound. But you could see the blood glistening.
Dick Fleming sat cross-legged in the center of the van floor, surrounded by filled pillowcases and mops, buckets, sponges, squeegees, etc. His face was white as paper and his lips were trembling uncontrollably. Clement was stretched out in front of him, his head in Fleming’s lap. Dick was jamming one of the spare pillowcases into Clement’s ribs, low down, near the stomach. Clement’s eyes were closed, and he was sucking in short, harsh breaths, coughing up blood-flecked foam. There was another bullet hole in his right leg, oozing blood.
I turned away, gagging.
“Son of a bitch!” Jack Donohue said bitterly.
He climbed into the van. He bent down close to Clement’s face. He said something, but I didn’t hear what it was. He took the sodden pillowcase from Fleming’s hand, pulled it away gently. He looked at the wound, grimaced, then pressed the cloth back in place.
He climbed out, leaned against the truck. He lighted a cigarette with shaking fingers.
“We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” I said.
They all looked at me with blank faces. Black Jack took a deep breath.
“We would if it would do any good, Jannie,” he said quietly. “But it wouldn’t. There’s something bad cut in there. An artery maybe. He’s on his way out.”
“You don’t know!” I cried furiously.
“I know,” Jack Donohue said, nodding. “I know the signs. Ten, fifteen minutes at the most. Listen, if I thought he had a chance, don’t you think I’d let you and Fleming get him to a doctor? Go take a look for yourself. Go on, take a look.”
I climbed into the van, resolving not to be sick. I steadied myself by putting a hand on Dick’s shoulder. He looked up at me, trying very hard not to weep.
“Jannie, he’s dying,” he said, shocked and anguished.
I looked down at that crimson pillowcase jammed into Clement’s chest. Blood was everywhere. The wounded man was soaked with it. Dick’s coveralls were stained. The floor of the van was a puddle. I couldn’t believe one body could contain so much blood.
I knelt in the mess. I smoothed Clement’s wet hair back from his forehead. His face was ashen. Now his breath was coming in great heaving sobs, as if a great weight were pressing him down. I saw his eyelids flutter, his lips move.
I leaned close.
“You’re going to be all right,” I whispered to him, my lips close to his ear. “We’re going to get you to a hospital and get you patched up. You’ll see, you’ll be fine in a week or so. Strutting around. We’ll get you the best doctors and they’ll fix you up. Just hang in there, and everything will be all right. You’ll be hopping around in your executive suit and …”
I went on and on like that. I saw his lips move again. I put my ear close to hear what he was trying to say.
“Bullshit,” he said.
Then he was gone. Like that. One instant he was alive, fighting to breathe. The next instant a great gush of blood flooded from his mouth, his head flopped over limply.
I climbed shakily out of the truck. The others had stripped off their coveralls. Jack Donohue was leaning against me truck again, smoking a fresh cigarette. His eyes were narrowed against the smoke.
“He’s dead,” I said to Donohue. “Satisfied?”
He looked at me without expression.
“It was your idea,” he said.
I turned away.
Dick Fleming came climbing out of the van. I helped him get out of his soaked coveralls. Blood had seeped through to make dark stains on his pants and blotches on his white shirt. There were blood smears on his face; his hands were sticky with the stuff. He tried to wipe it all away with his handkerchief. I stood close to him. I put an arm across his shoulders. I could feel him shake.
“I’ve never seen a man die before,” he said in a low, unsteady voice. “I’ve never even seen a dead person before. That’s strange, isn’t it?”
No one seemed to know what to do next. They were all looking at Jack Donohue, waiting.
“The problem is—” he started.
“The problem is,” I said, “that it’s not just armed robbery now. The helper is dead. An innocent man. Now it’s felony homicide.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he said without rancor, “and let me think this out.”
We waited. The ot
hers moved around quietly, putting on jackets, raincoats, topcoats.
“All right,” Donohue said. “I’ve got it sorted out. Clement getting snuffed is too bad, but we all took our chances. Rather him than us—right? The problem is, we were going to Clement’s pad up in the Bronx. I never figured on going back to the Hotel Harding. So Clement said we could use his place to hide out and make the split. But with him burnt, that’s out. So now we need a new hidey-hole. We got to get out of here, that’s for sure. So where we’re going is …” His head turned slowly until he was looking directly at Fleming. “We’re going to your place.”
“Dick’s place?” I gasped. “Why the hell there? Why not my apartment?”
“No way,” Donohue said, shaking his head. “Plenty of witnesses saw the Bonomo cleaning van. How long do you think it’ll take the cops to get the trip sheet from Bonomo, go back over the truck’s route, and nose around at every stop? Then they find your abandoned Jag in front of that antique shop on Madison Avenue. They check out the license plate and go directly to your apartment. They could be there right now, waiting for you.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“They’ll run a chase on you,” Donohue went on. “All your friends and acquaintances. Sooner or later they’ll come up with Fleming’s name and address. But that won’t be for a day or two. Meanwhile his apartment will be as safe as any place in the city. We checked it out. Ten apartments in an old, converted brownstone. Everyone in the place works; right now we’ll have the whole building to ourselves. Am I right, Fleming?”
Dick didn’t answer.
“Okay,” Donohue said, “let’s get moving. All the pillowcases out of the van and the Chevy, into the Volkswagen and Ford. We’ll go like this: me, Jannie, and Angela in the VW, me driving. Smiley, Gore, the Ghost, and Fleming in the rented Ford, Smiley driving.”
It took less than five minutes to transfer the loot to the final getaway cars. While everyone was working, Donohue wiped down me van with a pair of discarded coveralls, smearing door handles, doors, side panels, steering wheel, gear shift lever, the interior of the cab, and the back of the van. Then, for good measure, he did the same smear job on the Chevy.
Caper Page 17
