19 Purchase Street

by Gerald A. Browne

  A Mus musculus.

  A house mouse.

  It fit easily headfirst into the hole, and when Leslie let its sleek little shape slip from her hand she tried not to think that the creature was plunging an equivalent of fifty stories. It landed awkwardly, but without injury, on the floor of The Balance Room below. Any discomfort it suffered was offset by its immediate discovery of the superb cheese and crackers.

  Chapin put the Sheetrock plug back into place.

  In twenty seconds the heat sensor alarm unit reacted to the body temperature of the mouse. The alarm gave off an electrical squeal.

  At that moment, in his second floor sitting room in the south wing, Darrow was in a Sulka robe and slippers watching the Steelers play the Dolphins in Miami. He had taken the three and a half points, bet the Steelers for a dime, in other words a thousand. Already he was a couple of touchdowns behind and the Dolphins were on the twelve yard line going for more. Darrow felt he’d been sucked in, personally misled by Bradshaw and the whole old bunch from Pittsburgh. He had that enraged, futile, nearly bilious feeling of a bad loser. Andrew, he thought, would have probably told him to bet Miami.

  The squeal of the heat sensor alarm jumped Darrow. He hurried into the adjoining room, got a .380 automatic from the top drawer of his nightstand. In the lower drawer was a telephone. He didn’t have to lift the receiver, merely work the touch-tone dial. Dab out the tonal code that only he knew, the eight digits that would electronically, automatically release the elaborate bolting device of The Balance Room door at this hour. He rushed out and down the hall, coverged with five security men on the run up the main stairs. They had automatic rifles at the ready. They went ahead of Darrow along the hallway of the north wing to the closed door of the vault. Two security men flattened out against one wall, two against the other. Darrow ducked into one of the regular rooms for cover. The fifth security man warily approached The Balance Room door, shoved it open abruptly and in the same motion stepped aside, out of line of possible fire.

  After a long moment, two of the security men charged into The Balance Room. Within seconds the lights were turned on in there and the two men appeared in the doorway with their automatic weapons relaxed, gesturing that all was safe. They shut off the squeal of the alarm and went back to their regular duties.

  Hine and Sweet appeared on the scene. They followed Darrow down the hall and into The Balance Room. Darrow now had the superior air of an inspector.

  The mouse had scurried beneath a lower shelf when he heard all that rushing about. However, he wasn’t about to be denied the first delicacy he’d had in days. He came back out and hoped he’d be overlooked there on his haunches in the middle of The Balance Room floor, nibbling on cheese and crackers as fast as his jaws would allow.

  Darrow was actually relieved when he saw the creature, but he didn’t let it show, decided it was an opportunity to piss on certain people. He turned on Hine and Sweet.

  “I’ve had it with you,” he told Hine.

  “What the hell did I do now?”

  “Both of you,” Darrow said, including Sweet with a glance.

  “We were down in the library going over next week’s carries—”

  “I’ve told you time and time again there was to be no eating up here,” Darrow said, gritting. “Now we’ve got mice, look at the goddamn mouse!”

  The mouse had one eye on them. Only his mouth was moving.

  “I can’t depend on anyone.” Darrow even raised his voice. He brought his right hand from the pocket of his robe, pretended to forget that he had the .380 automatic pistol in it. He gestured wildly, underscoring the words. “I especially can’t depend on you, Hine. You’re obviously intent on fucking things up. I don’t care how many degrees you’ve got, you’re only smart where the skin’s off. I swear I’m going to have you replaced,” Darrow said, and then added just ominously enough “… or something.”

  Hine and Sweet couldn’t help but duck away from Darrow’s jerks and waves of the automatic. What made it so bad was if it went off and blew one of them away, Darrow wouldn’t even be punished.

  “I’m to blame,” Hine said.

  “Then catch the fucking mouse,” Darrow told him.

  Hine got a carton from the collating area.

  The mouse, with a jawful of cheddar, almost evaded the inverted carton that was dropped over him.

  Hine slipped a piece of cardboard under the carton and handed the whole thing to Sweet, who promised to do away with the creature.

  “I ought to make you eat it,” Darrow said.

  Sweet shrugged, as though that might not be worse than a lot of other things.

  They left the north wing. Darrow returned to his bedroom, put the .380 automatic back into the drawer and performed the tonal sequence code that rebolted The Balance Room door. Went into his sitting room, heard the lopsided score in favor of Miami. Thought he might go pay a bedroom visit to Mrs. Pickering. The young Andrew came to mind. A comparison by Mrs. Pickering would be unavoidable. Darrow decided he wasn’t up to it tonight. He clicked on the Betamax to watch a Vittorio Gassman film. He’d seen it several times. He had about every film that Italian actor ever appeared in. Someone had once told Darrow he resembled Gassman.

  In the crawl space, Gainer, Leslie and Chapin had overheard every move and word that they and the mouse had caused. As soon as Darrow closed the door to The Balance Room a faint whirring sound began. It was the air cooling system down there. Gainer had timed it, until it shut off, found that it took two minutes and forty-eight seconds for it to lower the temperature of the air in the rooms to sixty-eight degrees—the point at which the heat sensor alarms automatically reset.

  Chapin removed the Sheetrock plug.

  Leslie dropped more cheese and cracker crumbs down through it.

  And three more mice.

  Again, after mere seconds, the alarm began its squeal.

  Again, the five security men came on the run with their automatic rifles. Darrow, only momentarily startled by the sound, didn’t bother with his automatic pistol this time, merely touched off the tonal combination to release the locking mechanism of The Balance Rooms and went down the hall in a quick but unhurried pace.

  By the time he arrived on the scene the security men were already inside The Balance Rooms. Their report to Darrow was more mice.

  Darrow was no longer in the mood for histrionics. He merely let Hine know with his clipped, harsh tone that this compounded his feelings. He instructed Hine to arrange for an exterminator in the morning and meanwhile to somehow get rid of those three mice that were sitting there on the floor enjoying a late snack. Notify him when they had, so he could lock up the damned place.

  Darrow returned to his rooms and the Gassman film.

  The mice, with no holes to retreat into, just scurried about and hid behind the legs of things. It took Hine and Sweet ten minutes on their hands and knees to capture them. They left The Balance Rooms, closed the door behind them.

  The air cooler went on again.

  At once Chapin and Gainer began cutting all the way through the Sheetrock where Leslie had scored the two-foot-by-four-foot hole. It went fast, easy, they simply broke most of it away with their hands.

  They had a length of half-inch rope attached to one of the roof rafters. Dropped that ten feet down into the room.

  Gainer slipped down the rope.

  Then Chapin.

  Leslie tossed down the shoebox of dry ice.

  The half-inch-by-five-inch squares of dry ice were individually contained in heavy clear plastic bags.

  The heat sensor alarm units were where Sweet had said they’d be, two pair of them on the ceiling and the wall above the door in each area—storage and collating. The units were disc-shaped, four inches in diameter, raised in concentric layers around a half-inch opening in the center.

  Hurry.

  Racing against the cooling system.

  The air in the rooms was already chilling down.

  Gainer kicked away
some money and stepped up onto a shelf to reach the heat sensors in the money room. Chapin climbed up on the counter in the collating area to get at the units there. The dry ice within the heavy plastic bags was difficult to handle, so cold it stuck to their fingers, burned. They used staple guns from their carryalls to attach the bags to the ceiling and walls around each of the heat sensor units, shot in staple after staple until the units were entirely covered by several layers of the dry ice. Just did get done when the air cooler went off and the alarm reset.

  With one hundred and sixty degrees below zero to contend with the heat sensor alarms would not be picking up any body temperatures this night.

  Leslie dropped down the bundle of laundry bags and the tackle line with a good-sized blunt hook on the end of it.

  Gainer and Chapin took a moment to get the feel of where they were. Their awe silently rotated them in place. The sheaf upon sheaf of stack after stack on shelf after shelf.

  Of money.

  Floor to ceiling, wall to wall money.

  Three billion dollars of it.

  How’s this for stealing, Norma?

  “Get packing,” Leslie whispered from above to break the spell.

  It was ten-three when Gainer spread open the mouth of the first laundry bag and tossed in the first half million. He did not overload the bag, only put about three million in it so that at sixty pounds it would be easy to handle. He drew its nylon cord closed, knotted the cord and slipped it onto the hook.

  Leslie was up on the roof. The rain was a bit more than a sprinkle now. She drew on the tackle line, brought it up hand over hand to herself. The pulley made it practically effortless for her. Like drawing a drapery.

  The sixty pound bag came up through the roof and out. When it neared the top of the pulley, Leslie needed only to give it a slight push with her foot to swing it over and transfer it to the slide.

  Quickly she undid the hook.

  The first three million went zooming down.

  The rain on the slide’s polyurethane surface increased slickness. The bag was probably doing thirty miles an hour when it took the ninety degree banked curve at the roof of the shed and continued on down the longer, less steep portion of the slide to Vinny.

  Vinny had moved the truck so it was in perfect position with the slide. He was up on the flat ramp that ran the entire length of the tanker’s compartments. Gasoline fumes were rising thick from them, making Vinny feel a bit heady.

  The first bag flew off the slide.

  Vinny stopped its momentum and let it drop through the open hatch, heard the slight percussive thump as it hit bottom inside the empty metal tanker. It was difficult for Vinny to accept that what had just passed through his hands was three million. He didn’t have much time to think about it because here came another.

  By midnight two hundred and forty million dollars had been packed, pulleyed up, slid down and dropped into the belly of the tanker.

  Vinny moved the tanker so the slide fed to the next compartment.

  Leslie and Chapin traded responsibilities, just so she could be down there with Gainer for a while. She gave Gainer a swig of Tupelo honey, a half teaspoon of cayenne and a couple of squirts of Rescue before they got going again.

  Gainer had the packing of the laundry bags down to a system that wasted no motion. He swept the sheaves of money off the shelves with his forearm, and if some happened to miss the mouth of the bag, he didn’t bother with it. The only trouble was that by now a layer of money was underfoot, most of it torn from its bindings and scattered around. To make matters worse, the rain that fell through the hole in the roof and ceiling was causing a lot of the loose hundreds to become soggy, mushy as papier-mâché.

  By two A.M. most of the shelves were still stacked neatly, untouched. They had managed to get only five hundred million or so into the tanker.

  Leslie was working like a woman possessed.

  During a pause Gainer observed her hard at it and wondered if being surrounded by such an enormous amount of cash had caused her to have an acute, intense attack of the monies. She must have felt his eyes on her because she glanced his way and blew him three rapid kisses, one with the tip of her tongue out. However, her hands never let up on the money.

  Gainer knew, of course, he was required to steal a lot of The Balance, not necessarily all of it. What they had already would be enough.

  Chapin suggested that when he came down to switch responsibilities with Leslie again.

  Gainer was tired, sweating, had worked harder than any of them, but he wanted to keep at it, was determined to get away with as many millions as possible. He had his mind set on no less than a billion.

  At six A.M. they had to stop.

  Chapin climbed up the rope.

  Gainer took a final look around at the empty shelves and those still neatly stacked, untouched. He estimated they’d gotten about a third of what had been there. He climbed the rope and joined Chapin and Leslie on the roof.

  Chapin was the first to take the slide down. He just got up into it and let go. Next thing he knew he was on the tanker ramp with Vinny.

  Leslie was next. She kept hold of the edges of the slide, spread her legs and angled them over the edges left and right to brake herself. It took some doing, but she slid down the slick steep a foot or two at a time to the curved section. Rolled off the slide onto the roof of the shed.

  Gainer got onto the slide and let himself go deadweight, swooshed full-out all the way to the tanker.

  Its hatches were closed, ready to go.

  Vinny, behind the steering wheel, had the engine idling. Chapin was next to him. Gainer swung down to the cab and climbed in.

  The tanker started mowing down saplings and undergrowth.

  Leslie remained on the roof of the shed until she felt sure the tanker was under way. She could see only the upward flare of its headlights moving beyond the high wall. The sound of its engine, baffled by the wall, seemed a long way off.

  Dawn was coming on.

  Everything turning gray, becoming defined.

  Leslie noticed some black, humpy shapes in a flowerbed beneath the span of the slide, halfway to the wall. Laundry bags of money, several that had apparently taken the curve too fast and been flung off by momentum. If even one of the bags had landed in a sensitive area of the pressure alarm grid …

  Leslie climbed down the stepladder to the ground, hesitated there to remove a small black bundle the size of her fist from her carryall. She unsnapped it, shook it and helped it blossom out into yards and yards of a full-cut, practically weightless rain cape. She inserted her head through its opening, and the fabric fell around her, enveloping her.

  Removed her gloves.

  Used those to quickly wipe the black make-up from her face.

  Then she stepped out from behind the shed and walked around to the front of the house to her Corniche. Got in, started it up, took an appraising look at herself in the mirror on the sun visor. She’d missed some black around her nose and neck. Wiped it away with a tissue. Yanked the kerchief from her head, shook her hair loose and combed it with the fingers of one hand while her other hand steered the winding drive down to the gatehouse.

  The security man on duty there saw her coming, recognized her, her car. Nevertheless he glanced at the current “Allowed and Expected” list and found she was on it. He did not think it unusual that she would be leaving that early. “Allowed and Expected” people came and went at all hours at Number 19, didn’t they?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DARROW stood in The Balance Room, soggy money squishing beneath the soles of his white buck shoes. “Sweet Jesus,” he murmured.

  Hine had discovered the robbery when he’d routinely let the collators in at eight. He immediately summoned Darrow, not telling him what was wrong because he wanted the pleasure of Darrow’s reaction.

  Darrow put his hand on Hine’s arm to steady himself.

  Hine drew his arm away.

  “Get security up here,” Darrow said to ever
yone. His voice had more please than authority in it. His eyes traveled up the knotted rope to the opening in the ceiling, the opening in the roof, the sky.

  The clouds that had been solid for the last twenty-four hours chose that moment to break and display some blue high above them. Darrow did not like the looks of it.

  “How much do you think is missing?” he asked Hine.

  Hine did a little shrug with his hand. “It’ll have to be counted.”

  “Will you do that for me?”

  “Glad to,” Hine said.

  “Better not touch anything until security’s had a look.”

  Darrow closed his eyes, turned, slipped a bit in the greenish-gray mush and left The Balance Room. He walked slowly down the hall, as though his feet were lead, unaware of the smile from Hine that was hitting him in the back. He trudged down the main stairs and into the dining room. Sat for breakfast across from Lois Hine.

  “Someone got into The Balance,” he told her, subdued.

  She was having something to eat before she went up to bed. She yawned and then crunched a corner from a piece of crustless toast with her perfect front teeth.

  “It appears they took a lot of it.”

  “Tant pis,” she said. So much the worse for dear Darrow. She removed the top from a sterling jam server, ate a straight spoonful of conserved strawberries that had once grown wild in a field in Scotland, got up, took her coffee with her. Not the saucer, just the cup that dripped from its bottom onto the Kirman carpet as she left Darrow sitting there.

  He sat slouched, brought himself up but only to slouch again. Couldn’t keep his legs still under the table. The sunny-side up eggs that were placed before him were an inappropriately light-hearted color. He unfolded the Wall Street Journal as he usually did. His hands seemed detached, two separate performers. The couple of headlines he read got only as far as his eyes.

  Steve Poole appeared in the doorway, waited for Darrow’s permission to enter. A nod brought him to the table. He assumed a parade rest stance, hands clenched together behind him as though hiding something. Poole was supervisor of security at Number 19. He had once been Secret Service assigned to the White House and before that with Defense Intelligence. This Number 19 job was softer, paid more. Darrow himself had taken him on nine years ago.