The revolving glass door pivoted and the bank guard walked in from the street. He was carrying a tray with eight or ten cups of coffee on it. He saw me and flinched. He tried to react so rapidly that the coffee cups sailed off the tray and spilled all over the floor. "Keep moving," I told the guard. "Inside the gate." He did as he was told.
A chorus of twittering feminine protests rose from behind the tellers' cages. Dahl's menacing voice drowned them out. Then it was quiet again. All of a sudden a soft bright light was glowing, its source invisible to me. I could see Harris looking in that direction, and I moved in a step from the door. Then Harris went back to rifling cash drawers. I relaxed and moved back to my former position. Outside, cars went by in a steady stream along Georgia Avenue.
I was sweating under the mask. I hoped my makeup was holding together. Harris ran for the railing, the laden pillowcase dangling from his left hand. He placed his right hand on the railing and started to vault over it. I could hear the squeak as his sweating palm slipped on the smooth surface. He turned over in the air and landed on his stomach in the longest slide since Pepper Martin stole third base in the World Series. Harris scrambled erect and ran past me to the door.
He was already out in the parking lot when Dahl appeared behind the railing, retracing Harris's route except that with his superior height Dahl stepped over the railing. A gun dangled loosely in his right hand. I picked up the blanket and re-covered the riot gun as Dahl's coat-of-many-colors went through the revolving door, the camera dangling from the cord around his neck. I swung the gun in a final semicircle to freeze all movement, then backed out the door.
I was halfway through the hundred-and-eighty-degree swing of the door to the parking lot when Dahl charged in on the other side, heading back into the bank. I froze. I couldn't imagine what he was up to. From my position with my back to the exit I could see the bank guard coming across the floor of the bank at a dead run. He shoved his foot into the protruding edge of the section of revolving door inside the lobby, and Dahl and I couldn't go anywhere. We were locked inside the revolving door.
I raised the riot gun, but before I could draw a bead Dahl fired three times from his compartment inside the door. Shattering glass crashed in massive quantities. The guard ducked to one side, unhurt but shaken. The sudden acceleration of the door as his foot was removed thrust me out into the alley. In a second Dahl came winging out as the door completed the circuit. "What the hell were you doing?" I panted as we ran for the car.
"Thought you might need help."
"When I need help I'll ask for it!"
Harris was under the wheel of the Olds with the motor running. Dahl and I piled into the back seat. We were moving down the alley by the time I got the door closed. Dahl jerked off his loose-fitting red-and-blue-sleeved jacket and threw it on the floor. "Masks off!" I rasped as Preacher made the turn at the end of the alley onto Piney Branch. The fresh air felt cold against the perspiration on my face when I pulled mine off.
Dahl reached over the back of the front seat and lifted the pillowcase into the back seat. I half turned on the seat so I could watch him and still keep an eye out the back window for possible pursuit. We were headed south in a traffic flow that seemed ordinary. Dahl dumped the contents of the pillowcase onto the floor and began sorting it into three piles. "Damn, damn, damn!" he swore softly. "Small stuff."
"I know," Harris said without turning around. There were no red fights behind us and no sirens. "What's the take look like?" His voice sounded husky.
"Less'n twenty thousand," Dahl grumbled. Harris's grunt was eloquent of disgust. I refrained from saying that a properly planned job would have guaranteed that the amount of cash available made the risk worthwhile. "Check it," Dahl said to me, pointing to the piles of money at his feet.
"Watch the rear," I said. I went through the cash quickly. I checked by packages of banded bills, not by counting. "It looks all right." Dahl reached down to the stack nearest him and began stuffing packages of bills into various pockets.
I did the same. We had reached Military Road by the time I looked around. Still no sign of police pursuit. Dahl picked up the third pile of money in both hands and dropped it on the front seat beside Preacher. "This'll hardly keep me goin' three weeks," he said gloomily.
"That's right," Harris chimed in. "Unless my system takes hold real quick this time." He looked belligerently at Dahl. "That was the most stupid thing I ever saw done on a job!"
Dahl started to laugh. "You're jealous, cousin. I-"
"What was this stupid thing?" I asked Harris, interrupting Dahl.
"This mongoloid had the women tellers bare-assed on the floor, taking movies of them."
"All but one who wouldn't pull her pants down even when my gun was an inch and a half from her twitch," Dahl affirmed in high good humor. "Must've had the rag on. You never know when you can use a little good pussy footage, cousins."
I wondered how much of the bank area the camera had covered. "If I ever hear that you've used that film commercially, I'll find you and nail your ears to the nearest telephone pole," I threatened Dahl.
Harris pulled the Olds onto the shoulder of the road before Dahl could reply. "What do we want to take?" he asked.
"Nothin' but the gun," Dahl said sullenly. "Leave the masks."
Harris was scooping money into his pockets… "Let's keep moving," he urged. His voice was husky. He sounded as though the strain was beginning to catch up to him. We walked across the wide highway to my car and I slid into the driver's seat. Harris got in with me, Dahl in back.
I handed the blanketed gun to Dahl. "Wipe it clean."
He was already working on it when I swung the VW around in a U-turn and headed toward Brightwood and Dahl's parked car. The final look I took in the rearview mirror showed the white Olds glistening on the shoulder of the road. Harris broke the silence. "This touch wasn't much of a stake," he said.
"It's enough to get us together again for proper planning on the Schemer's job," I said. "And that time I think we should remember that we do just as long a bit for ten thousand as we'd do for Fort Knox. Let's make sure the cash is there."
Dahl spoke right up. "Suits me," he said. "When?"
"How about next week?"
"Make it two weeks," he said. "I've still got a movie to shoot. You in, Preacher?"
"I guess so," Harris said unenthusiastically.
"I'll drive to Philadelphia and get set up," I said. "I've let the Schemer know where I am, and when we're ready to go you can call him to find out where to meet me."
"Let's make the meeting two weeks from today," Dahl said.
"Fine."
"All right," Preacher Harris said a tick later.
We were approaching Brightwood. "Where are you parked?" I asked Dahl.
"In the middle of the first block, across from the post office," he replied. "Pull in anywhere." He was carefully rewrapping the riot gun in the blanket. "So long, cousins," he said when I double-parked momentarily alongside a line of cars parked at the metered curb. "Don't spend it all in one place." He stepped out, slammed the door, waved, and jogged across the street.
"I don't ever want to work on a job with him again!" Harris burst forth as I pulled away.
I knew what he meant. I wasn't happy about the botched aspects of the job myself, but I didn't want Harris too unhappy with it. I knew how long it would take to recruit new partners. "Now that we know he's a kook, we'll keep our fingers closer to the button next time," I said soothingly. "And you have to admit that nothing fazes him."
"No brains, no feeling," Harris snorted, but he subsided. "Let me out at the next cab stand," he said a minute later. "I'll take a cab to the airport."
"Take one to Fourteenth Street and then another to the airport," I advised him. "The police are sure to check cab sheets from this area for riders to Union Station and National Airport."
"Yeah, good idea," he admitted.
"Here we are," I said, easing in behind a two-cab stand. We weren't more than five blocks fr
om the bank we'd taken. "The next one will be a piece of cake too, and we'll all get well on the proceeds. Don't forget to call the Schemer."
Harris's smile was wan as he got out of my car. As I drove off I had the feeling that whether he called the Schemer or not depended very much upon how his luck ran at Vegas's dice and card tables for the next two weeks.
I headed over to Bladensburg Road in northeast Washington and had lunch. Then I went to a neighborhood movie where I watched the Redskins lose again. When I came out of the theater, the 4:30 P.M. homeward traffic was just starting to thicken up. I joined it, moved along to New York Avenue, and-eventually-to the Washington-Baltimore Expressway.
There were no roadblocks or car inspections barring exit from the District of Columbia.
If there had been earlier, the police had decided that the hit-and-run bank robbers were long gone.
I settled down for the drive to Philadelphia.
9
When I had a chance to count it, my end of the District bank job came to sixty-four hundred dollars.
It wasn't worth the risk, but it had been a long time since I needed sixty-four hundred so badly. I felt reprieved. It eased the money pressure, which had led me to take on the helter-skelter operation just completed. Professionally, I could hardly approve of the job, some elements of which had been almost farcical, but the important thing was that it had worked.
I fully intended that tapping the bank in Thornton, Pa. would be a far different story. With time enough to prepare properly, it should indeed be the piece of cake that I had promised Harris. A useful bonus from the hasty job just done was that I felt I knew Harris and Dahl now. Harris was colorless, Dahl flamboyant, but both had performed. With two weeks to work up a detailed plan, it shouldn't be too difficult to arrange Dahl's contribution so his kookiness didn't jeopardize the whole show.
I had already selected a motel near Philadelphia where I had stayed before to serve as a base of operations. En route to it, I detoured slightly to the northwest to drive through the suburb of Thornton. It was a residential community, generally known in real estate jargon as a "bedroom" community. Row after row of well kept up, better-priced homes on neat-looking streets bespoke a maximum of financial security. No air of quiet desperation existed in Thornton. Male Thorntonites might commute to the city daily to scuffle for the elusive buck at their places of business, but when they returned home evenings it was to an oasis of tranquillity.
Ordinarily I would have set myself up in the area as a tree surgeon, a gunsmith, or a locksmith, occupations in which I could cut the mustard. With only two weeks, there wasn't time. I had to have a cover story, though. Nothing is so conspicuous to local police as an unfamiliar face or automobile seen repeatedly, and I would have to spend some time in Thornton.
Before leaving town, I crisscrossed the town's business section twice. It looked prosperous. The absence of empty stores indicated few worms in the local economic apple. There was industry nearby, but not within the city limits. I drove south to Media, a few miles from Philadelphia, and put up at the Carousel, a middle-class motel.
After looking Thornton over, I decided to pass as a survey taker, an individual who walked into places of business and checked off answers to a list of prepared questions. It had worked for me a couple of times before. I didn't plan on being just any ordinary survey taker, either. Over the years I'd learned that big names open doors wider. Names like U.S. Steel, General Electric, and IBM.
The name I chose this time was Bell Telephone. The only disadvantage in claiming to work for a large company was that one might occasionally run into a supposed fellow employee, but this could actually be turned into an advantage. A man working for a giant corporation, no matter how far up the ladder, could hardly be expected to know what all the other departments of his company were doing.
Back in my room after a late dinner, I picked up the telephone directory for the Philadelphia area and turned to the Yellow Pages section. I tore out the familiar Yellow Pages logotype from the first page, then trimmed it neatly with a penknife, leaving a half-inch margin all around it.
I read Bell Telephone's own plug for its Yellow Pages advertising in the back of the phone book, then armed myself with a sheet of motel stationery and a ballpoint pen. Rewriting as I went, I drew up a list of ten possible questions. I boiled this down to six, and finally to four. I didn't want to burden my "prospects" with more than two and a half or three minutes reading time.
I wound up with the following,
1. Are you listed in the Yellow Pages?
2. If not, do you realize that advertising placed in the Yellow Pages is never lost, misplaced, or forgotten?
3. If not, do you know that advertising campaigns in support of the Yellow Pages encompass all major media from television, newspaper, car cards, and radio through magazines, billboards, and direct mail, and that this advertising is your advertising if you are listed?
4. Would you like to have a space salesman call upon you with additional facts and figures?
When I was satisfied with the wording of the questionnaire, I slipped it into my jacket pocket and prepared for bed. The last thing I did before turning out the light was to phone the Schemer. "We had a little trouble getting our schedules together," I told him, making no mention of the District job, in which he had no part anyway. "But we're set for two weeks from now. When the boys call you, tell them I'm at the Carousel Motel in Media near Philadelphia."
"Will do," Frenz replied. "Have you looked over the layout yet yourself?"
"In a preliminary way."
"You'll find it's a winner."
"I can use a winner. Goodnight."
"Goodnight," he echoed.
I went to bed and dreamed repeatedly of bare-bottomed girl bank robbers sliding on their tummies across the slick tile floor of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City.
***
In the morning I drove to Philadelphia with my list of questions and my Yellow Pages logotype. I cruised back streets and side streets until I spotted a dingy-looking basement printing shop. I parked the VW and descended narrow iron steps until I found myself ankle-deep in discarded paper and cardboard in a dimly-lit interior that obviously hadn't been swept out in months. From the look of the place, if the payment were spot cash the proprietor would be unlikely to question my motive even if I wanted a five-dollar bill printed on one side of a 2 1/2 x 6 sized piece of paper with a verse from the Bible backed up on the other.
There was no one in sight, but I could hear an offset press rattling out in back. "Anyone home?" I called.
The press noise stopped, and a sour-faced man with a limp Pancho Villa moustache came out into the front of the shop. "Yeah?" he said ungraciously.
I showed him the logotype and questions. "I ran out of flyers," I explained. "How much for five hundred of these on fairly good six-by-nine stock?"
"I got no time to wait for you big companies to get around to payin' your bills," he whined. "I got to pay cash for my supplies."
"Cash it is if I can have them tomorrow."
He fingered the logotype. "It'll have to be offset."
"I don't care what it is."
"Eleven A.M., then," he said, and did some figuring with a pencil stub. "Sixteen eighty for five hundred." I handed him a twenty-dollar bill. He made no move to take it. "I got no change here this early in the mornin'."
I found I had seventeen dollars in fives and ones. "No sob story tomorrow," I warned him as I gave him the bills. "I've got to have this material right away."
He grunted something unintelligible as the bills disappeared beneath his ink-smudged apron. He was already on his way to the rear of the shop before I began to climb the iron steps.
I spent the afternoon at the Philadelphia Public Library. In the reading room I went through the past year's issues of the magazine Banking, The Journal of the American Banking Association. I hoped to find some reference to the Thornton Bank that would contain some indication of recent changes in f
loor plan or equipment. The Schemer had a detailed floor plan of the bank in his kit, but I had to be sure that it was up-to-date.
In the past I had acquired helpful information from a column "The Country Banker" in Banking. It was a chatty affair that mentioned bank remodeling, new vaults, new cashiers' cages, and the like. I found nothing on the Thornton bank, however. I'd still have to check it out, but there was a reasonable chance that nothing had changed there recently.
On my way back to Media I saw a theater marquee advertising Around the World in 80 Days. In the ten years since it was made I'd seen it four times, but I stopped in to see it again. It says something about the economy of this country that the admission charge has been higher each time I saw it. It's a remarkable movie, though. A bench mark in the industry. I enjoy professionalism wherever I see it.
***
The next afternoon I picked up my Yellow Page flyers. They were ready, somewhat to my surprise. The general atmosphere of the print shop hadn't been such as to induce confidence in promised performance. The flyers looked fine. Sharp black print on good quality paper carries its own authority. I stopped at a drugstore and picked up a clipboard to add an official touch to my survey sham. It assured my professional status.
I arrived in Thornton again at eight thirty A.M. the following morning. My first stop was a lunchroom across the street from the bank. I gave the girl at the cash register one of my flyers at the same time I bought a morning paper from her. "I'll show it to the boss after his breakfast rush dies down," she said after a glance at it. "He's the chef."
"No hurry," I said. "I'm having breakfast myself, and I'll be around town for a few days."
I took a seat at a table for two near a window that commanded a view of the bank's side entrance, which was used only by employees-a fact made known to me by the Schemer's fact-gathering. I spread my paper out in a manner that would discourage anyone from taking the seat across the table from me even if the place became crowded, then hitched my chair around slightly so I could see the bank parking lot without turning my head. At this hour the cars pulling onto the lot would contain employees only. Right now I was interested in their arrival times.
One Endless Hour Page 11
