A Pure Double Cross

by John Knoerle

  Richard Schram’s name was still on the door the of the office of the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, but Agent Gilliam’s size 46 suit jacket hung from the coat rack. Gilliam stood to the right with his arms folded. Halladay sat behind the desk.

  “Who’d you mix it up with this time?”

  “Agent Schram.”

  Halladay’s smirk drained to his chin. “I’ve been meaning to pay him a visit. How’s he doing?”

  “Lousy.”

  “I’ll see to it that he gets the best of care,” said Chester Halladay, solemnly.

  Then he dropped a thick courier’s pouch on the desk with a satisfying whump. “We got the go-ahead. But Jimmy Streets shows up and operational orders are shoot to kill.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Halladay ticked his chin at Gilliam. Gilliam removed a file from the pouch, unfolded a schematic diagram and laid it out on the light board against the far wall.

  My heart skipped a beat when I saw the name on the precisely drafted blueprint that included room dimensions, width, length and height, rate of climb of the staircase, noted the total number of steps - noted, hell, each step was individually numbered - and depicted each and every desk and cabinet in the payroll department. Each and every desk and cabinet in the payroll department of Cleveland’s largest employer, Republic Steel.

  I listened to Agent Gilliam’s recitation of the precise maneuvers that would comprise the largest armed robbery in Cleveland history. Special Agent in Charge Chester Halladay sat back and showed all thirty-two in a triumphant grin. It hurt to smile so I just nodded. That hurt too.

  -----

  The ancient elevator operator with the oversized Adam’s apple didn’t blink at my battered mug when he opened the car door on the 9th floor.

  “Lobby please.” He closed the outer door and the sliding gate and cranked the brass knob. “How’s your day going?” I said, the thick courier pouch tucked under my arm.

  The old man muttered something I couldn’t make out over the brass oompah band that had taken up residence above my right temple. The elevator car slowed and settled at floor #5. The bell rang as the door opened. No one there. We descended.

  “Well my day’s going quite well,” I said to the back of the old man’s head. His cap was sweat-stained tobacco brown and his yellow-white hair curled over his celluloid collar like ivy. The old man spat in the spittoon, cranked the brass knob and bounced the car to a halt. He drew open the safety gate and turned to face me.

  “You’d best go home,” he said and opened the outer door.

  The bell sounded and I walked off.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I hopped the rattler west, transferred at Fulton and Detroit and rode south to Cesco. I got off and hoofed it. It must have been cold, the folks I passed were turtled into coats and sweaters. But I had my courier pouch to keep me warm. I would have thrown my coat over my shoulder and skipped down the sidewalk were it not for that ancient elevator operator, pointing his craggy finger at me like Banquo’s ghost and croaking, ‘You’d best go home.’

  Home. Where was that exactly?

  I marched up the front walk to H&R Manufacturing and thumped on the door. No answer. I thumped some more. No answer. All that thumping gave me a headache so I kicked the door instead. “Open up!”

  Jimmy did so. He looked annoyed for some reason.

  “The Schooler in his office?”

  Jimmy eyeballed the thick leather courier pouch I had tucked under my arm. He knew what it was. I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew. We left it that way.

  I followed him down the corridor. The door to The Schooler’s office was open. He was on the phone. He looked up at Jimmy’s knock on the doorframe, saw me, saw the thick courier’s pouch and said, “I’ll call you back.”

  “I have something of interest,” I said, taking my rightful place in the center of the room, Jimmy scowling behind my back.

  “Close the door,” said The Schooler to Jimmy. Unfortunately he left off the ‘on your way out’ part.

  “I need to speak with you alone,” I said.

  “I don’t have any secrets from Jimmy.”

  “You will in a minute.”

  The Schooler hiked his eyebrows at this impertinence. I waited patiently.

  “Give us a few minutes,” said The Schooler.

  Long seconds passed before the door swung shut. The Schooler sat back and looked droll. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “If you’re thinking it’s the worked-out-to-the-last-detail diagram of the biggest heist in Cleveland history, yes sir.”

  “Why isn’t it on my desk?”

  I’d spent my time on the rattler hacking away at the underbrush. The Schooler hadn’t made me tailing him in the ’39 Hudson. Even if he made the Hudson he never saw me.

  And Jimmy hadn’t come clean to The Schooler about ratting out me to the FBI and the expected arrest that never came. Not a chance. That would’ve required Jimmy to beg the forgiveness of his superior on bended knee.

  So far as I could tell The Schooler counted me a loyal soldier. Which meant I could probably say what I was about to say and not get plugged. “It’s not on your desk, sir, because I will only present this plan to Mr. Big himself.”

  The Schooler steepled his fingers. “The FBI told you to say that.”

  “Yes they did. And for once I agree with them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I’m about to make a score that will either make me rich or make me dead. I would like to make the acquaintance of the man in charge.”

  I didn’t want to meet Mr. Big to assess his trustworthiness. I wanted to meet Mr. Big to insure his trustworthiness. As in, I trust you not to ace me out of my dib because I now know who you are and will hunt you down like a dog if you do. That’s the kind of trust a man can sink his teeth into.

  The Schooler crossed an ankle over a knee. “We’ll have to blindfold you.”

  “I understand.”

  “And bind your hands behind your back.”

  “Of course.”

  “And tie you to the back bumper and drag you down the highway for fifty miles.”

  “Sure,” I said, running a finger down the lurid ruin that was the right side of my face. “What else is new?”

  The Schooler chuckled. Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh.

  A tiny alarm bell sounded, barely tinkled, in the lower chambers of my skull. Something to do with The Schooler’s easy laughter, with his caving in without a fight. But I paid that tiny bell no attention. I was about to make the acquaintance of the shadowy and mysterious Mr. Big!

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Jimmy did the honors. Blindfolding me, binding my hands, confiscating my Walther, tossing me in the back seat of the Packard as The Schooler climbed behind the wheel. We meandered for a while but the icy chill and high hum of the Detroit-Superior Bridge told me what I wanted to know. We were headed east.

  We drove a long time. The road got quiet. Nobody spoke. We passed Pepper Pike and Hunting Valley and Gates Mills. Had to.

  I thought about stuff. Like how to turn the heist plan to our advantage. That was the easy part. The hard part was how to convince the boss man to sideline Jimmy Streets.

  We drove on. I was half asleep by the time the Packard finally came to a stop. Jimmy got out, unlocked a chain and swung open a rusty-hinged gate. The Schooler nosed the Packard across the threshold. The rusty-hinged gate swung closed. Jimmy climbed back in and the Packard crunched its way up a long gravel drive. We rounded a bend and stopped. A circular driveway maybe. The front doors opened, the driver and the passenger got out.

  “Wait here,” said Jimmy. What a card.

  My arms and wrists ached and my head pounded. I got to thinking morbid thoughts. As in once I explained my idea about how to turn the plan what the hell did Mr. Big need me for? Why not instruct Jimmy to take Mr. Schroeder for a nice long walk in the woods?

  Tough shit. There are risks in every operation.
And I had made up my mind.

  My thoughts were interrupted by scratching and sniffing at the back door. What new hell was this? I smelled a sharp feral odor. Did they have bears out here? I heard a deep hungry rumbling growl that made Hector the guard dog sound like a Pekinese. I had been making halfhearted attempts to free my hands from the electrical tape. I increased those efforts now.

  The beast let loose with a four-octave howl that put Fats Navarro to shame. I pried my thumbs into the electrical tape and dug down for all I was worth. This was a beast all right, a goddamn wolf.

  Someone came running. Down steps, across gravel. “Shut up Kingdog,” grunted Jimmy.

  The howling continued, followed by a yelp of pain and canine whimpering. This was a pet?

  Jimmy jacked open the car door and hauled me to my feet. He unwound my black tape ligature and yanked off my blindfold. He regarded me with a smug leer. My hero.

  “You ready to meet the big boy?” said Jimmy. Kingdog was chewing on something a few yards away, something Jimmy had tossed him.

  “Sure.” I picked up the courier pouch from the floor of the Packard and dusted it off. We crossed the gravel drive and climbed the steps of an imposing three story brown brick building that looked more like a city hall than a rustic hideaway.

  Mr. Big, here I come.

  Kingdog bounded through the foyer and skidded left to the parlor. We followed. The parlor was a high-ceilinged walnut-paneled room with a stone fireplace you could roast an ox in. A fire was burning. A man and a woman were seated on an overstuffed divan, facing the fire, their backs to us.

  Kingdog trotted over and put his great head on his master’s knee. The woman was smoking a long dark cigarette.

  We crossed the room and stood in front of the medieval fireplace and faced the lord and lady of the manor. Lizabeth, in a silvery satin dressing gown that reflected the firelight. And The Schooler, lounging comfortably in a burgundy smoking jacket and slippers, a wolf at his knee, a snifter of cognac in one hand and a cigar the size of a hog’s leg in the other.

  “G-man, meet Mr. Big.”

  Well dip me in cornmeal and fry me in butterfat. The Schooler was Mr. Big! “But...”

  “It’s a long story,” said The Schooler to my face full of questions.

  “Very well done, brilliant. You had me fooled, the feds too. I guess what I’m wondering is, you know, why.”

  The Schooler feathered an ash from his foot long Corona into a crystal ashtray. “The Jews and the Sicilians ran the show in Cleveland during Prohibition. The Ginzos tried to corner the bathtub gin market. They used a lot of muscle, got a lot of press coverage, got busted or got dead. The Hebes ran bonded booze from Canada, stayed in the background, kept a low profile and got rich. I’m not Jewish or Sicilian but I learned the lesson.”

  “But you’re not in the background. The feds and the coppers know who you are.”

  “Do they?”

  Point taken. “But what happened to Teddy Biggs?”

  The Schooler took another puff, took another sip. “I’ll tell you all about it someday.”

  “Brilliant,” I said again. “Which brings me to this.” I held up the courier pouch. “The supremely detailed plan for the robbery of the payroll department of Republic Steel, scheduled for Friday, December 21st.”

  I paused for a round of applause and hearty huzzahs.

  I continued. “Only we’ll go this Friday, the 14th. Now that

  we have the layout it should be a snap.”

  Still no hearty huzzahs. Not even a polite smile on The Schooler’s impassive mug. “Jimmy has something he’d like to tell you.”

  I turned around to see Jimmy standing beside the fireplace, smacking a new pack of butts against his palm. He removed the cellophane string with his teeth, peeled back the foil just so, squeezed the pack and smacked it with a blunt forefinger. One cigarette popped up.

  Jimmy lipped the pill and thumbed his lighter, his good eye never leaving mine. I wasn’t going to like whatever he had to tell me.

  “I had an expert, a currency expert, check out the cash haul from the last two heists,” said Jimmy, cool as cool can be. “It’s all counterfeit.”

  I whirled around to Mr. Big. He nodded in grim agreement. The yellow-eyed wolf studied me hungrily.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Shit a brick! How was this possible?

  I was supposed to have superior knowledge, I was supposed to call the shots this time.

  I was not supposed to be standing before Mr. Big like an organ grinder’s monkey, dancing to Yankee Doodle Dandy. You know your enemy’s plans by the questions they ask. And don’t ask. This was why the feds gave me such a free hand, why they didn’t ask for the heist money back.

  It figured the Fan Belt Inspectors would get it wrong, they didn’t know jack about espionage. A double agent is a liability before he’s an asset. You have to invest in him before he pays off. The feds never ponied up a nickel.

  “I didn’t know that money was counterfeit,” I said. “Swear to God on a stack of bibles.”

  The Schooler was silent. Jimmy snorted behind my back. I didn’t have to look to know he had his nickel-plated ready. I could have tried explaining that it made no sense for me to get beat up and shot at for a satchel full of worthless money. But in the eyes of The Schooler I was either a traitor or an idiot. And neither one did him any good.

  Wait a minute…

  “We can still do this heist. We can! We’re going in a week early. Republic Steel won’t be handing out dummy dough a week before the heist. We can still make off with a pile, six figures easy!”

  The Schooler curled his lips and raised his eyebrows, a screaming tirade by his standards. “The FBI’s use of counterfeit money seems to indicate a certain lack of trust in you and this enterprise.”

  I waited. Jimmy, Lizabeth and Kingdog the wolf waited. Were we doing the Socratic dialogue routine again? The Schooler finally filled in the blanks.

  “The FBI might hedge their bets. They might be waiting at Republic Steel in case you decide to show up for work a week early.”

  The sanctimonious son of a bitch was probably right about that. The rule of thumb in undercover ops was to get underway ASAP. The less time secret plans have to get unsecret the better. Republic Steel paid their workers every Friday. There was no good reason for the twelve-day lag between plan and execution.

  “When we first met I asked why I should trust you,” said The Schooler.

  “Yes sir.”

  The Schooler leaned back, crossed his ankles and sent several fat gray smoke rings toward the ceiling. He was good, the rings were round and solid as a plumber’s grommet. Apparently I was expected to humiliate myself without the courtesy of a prompting question.

  “I said,” I said glumly, “‘Don’t trust me, trust the results.’”

  Touché said the twinkle in The Schooler’s eye. The greatest armed robbery in the history of Greater Cleveland was kapoot.

  Was I down the drain with it? I could feel the barrel of Jimmy’s nickel-plated sighting up and down my back. I addressed myself to Lizabeth, who was smoking her perfumed black cigarette down to a nub.

  “Could you get me a couple aspirin before Jimmy plugs me in the back? I’ve got a roaring headache.”

  A bilious cloud of expectation gathered in the high-ceilinged room as Lizabeth dredged up a tin of Bayer’s from her purse and popped the corner with her thumb. Blood pounded in my ears.

  The Schooler let me twist for a long minute before he said, “The feds aren’t the only ones with heist plans.”

  He smiled when he said it. I exhaled to my ankles. Lizabeth leaned over and held out her hand. Four aspirin, smart girl. I thanked her and chewed them up, waiting to hear what The Schooler had up his sleeve.

  “You ever notice that crooks always wait till the money is divvied up before they steal it?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “They rob banks, they rob armored cars, local businesses,” said The S
chooler, gesturing with his Corona Corona. “Why not grab it at the source?”

  “What? You want to knock off the Philadelphia Mint?”

  “Not quite,” said The Schooler, eyes alight, smile suppressed. “I want to knock off the Cleveland Branch of the Federal Reserve.”

  Well, so much for keeping a low profile. “Uhh, I don’t know a great deal about the Federal Reserve Bank but I’m guessing it’s a fort.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Big, cheerily. “The vault is underground. It’s constructed of four-inch drill-proof steel plate with dual time-delay locks. The bank is guarded by the Federal Reserve Police, a rotating spit and polish crew of ten, heavily armed. And the Cleveland PD comes running at the push of a panic button.”

  I nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “And those twenty foot Greek statues by the front entrance on Sixth Street? They’re hollow, connected by tunnels to the bank interior.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. Still no shoe.

  “The bank gets a delivery on December 13th from the Federal Bureau of Engraving, an extra large delivery due to the liquidity demands of the holidays.”

  “And you plan to hijack that shipment?”

  The Schooler shook his head. “Too public, too many loose ends.”

  “O-kay.”

  The Schooler took his time, puffed on his cigar, played the moment. I stood still on shaky legs and listened to my head pound and my stomach growl.

  “The Federal Reserve Bank is required to count deposits by hand before they’re placed in the vault. Approximately one million dollars will be in the counting room of the Federal Reserve Bank on the night of Thursday, December 13th. And it won’t be counterfeit.”

  Jimmy and Lizabeth reacted with surprise to this big revelation. Me personally, I got tired of waiting for that damn shoe.

  “And you’d need an armored battalion to bust in.”

  “Not so,” said Mr. Big, “all I need is you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re my key to the front door.”

  I snorted. “Sir the Federal Reserve Police don’t know me from Adam.”

  “They’re feds. They play pinochle with the FBI every Friday night at Rohr’s. They know all about you.”