Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “You print up them business cards?” Pino asked the proprietor.

  “Sure do.”

  “How much?”

  “Two ninety a hundred in one color. Three fifteen in two.”

  “Can’t get it in twenty-fives?”

  “Nope. No twenty-fives or fifties or seventy-fives—only hundreds.”

  “Tell you what, gimme hundred of the two nineties.”

  “Reading how?” the proprietor asked, taking out an order form.

  “Greater Boston Construction Company.”

  “Address and phone number?”

  “No address. No phone number.” Pino dropped the money on the counter. “Pick ’em up tomorrow, okay?”

  Richardson wandered through the promenade of the Chamber of Commerce building. No door to the sub-basement could be found.

  Big Steve examined the ersatz mohair overcoat in the mirror, took it off and tossed it on a table, tried on and examined a tweed single-breaster, then several more coats, discarding them all on the table. Shaking his head at the nearby salesman, he tried on another. The salesman walked off. Big Steve tossed a stack of overcoats out the open window, glanced down to make sure Costa was there, hung the garment he was wearing back on a rack, walked from the men’s section of the Boston department store. Pino saw him leave, swept a pile of earmuffs off the counter and into his trick bag and left.

  The strip of celluloid slipped down between the frame and door edge, caught the tongue of the lock and pressed it in. Pino pushed open the door, stepped inside the unlit front hallway of the tall, narrow office building on Pearl Street, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He studied the sharply rising staircase, unbuttoned his oversized ersatz mohair overcoat, took out a flashlight, beamed it up the staircase and hurried back out onto Pearl Street.

  “Hey, fella, you got a can in here?” he asked, stepping through the door of the telegraph office.

  “Gee, friend, we’re not suppose to let—”

  “All the cans over at the station is busted, and I’m damn near dying.”

  “In the back,” the tall clerk said with a head toss.

  “I’ll never forget you.”

  Once in the rear, he flushed the toilet, stepped out of the lavatory, removed a company uniform from a hanger and stuffed it under his oversized coat.

  Tony Pino had his first costume.

  Sandy studied the large iron safe with his flashlight, carefully checked the front hall leading into the factory section of the women’s underwear company, crossed the office, examined the steps leading down to the alley, concluded to himself that it might be a two-man job after all. But a risky two-man job.

  Jimmy and Tony sat on the cellar floor at 3 Fuller Street sorting through the burglar’s tools. The hydraulic jacks just weren’t working properly, and the sectional wedge still didn’t fit together properly. Almost everything else, though dated, was usable. The binoculars were in excellent shape.

  Big Steve boosted a stack of empty envelopes from a telegraphy office in Providence, Rhode Island.

  Tony and Jimmy excused themselves from Sunday dinner at the elder Pinos, drove northward and retraced the route of the Stop and Shop delivery truck on which Tony worked. Costa made a mental note of the half dozen potential scores Tony had spotted during the previous workweek.

  Big Steve boosted a large paddle lock in Marble-head.

  “Hey, buddy, what’s your name?”

  “I ain’t nobody’s buddy,” Pino said, signing out at the Stop and Shop warehouse.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Take it on the arches,” Pino snapped back as he walked out.

  The elderly Winchester matron poured out a cup of tea, handed it to Costa, explained the “For Sale” sign in her front yard was intended for only reliable customers—and that Jimmy certainly did look that. It wasn’t merely a car being sold, she wanted him to know, but something that had served her faithfully for five years. Part of the family. Costa promised he would treat it well. In that case, she told him, the price was $250.

  Each flight of wooden steps creaked in the darkness; so did the upper floor landing. Pino stopped to get his breath. A blast of light caught him full in the face. He all but fell back down the steps. He inched back up on his hands and knees. Peeking into the hall, he saw the beams coming through a rear window and deduced they were emanating from a nearby building. He crept forward up the hall. Once in darkness he rose and cautiously moved on to the two doors at the end of the passageway. He selected the one to the left, tripped the lock with his celluloid strip, slipped inside, stood assessing the layout, then went to the pair of facing desks in front of the window—peered out the window and over at Congress Street.

  Oh, gracious, no, she couldn’t speak of the matter over the telephone, the matron told Costa over the telephone. If he wished to discuss business, he could drive out to Winchester. By the way, the car was still available—at $250.

  The receptionist at the textile firm office explained that it was Saturday and she was the only one in and didn’t have the vaguest idea where to look to find out if any of the firm’s 200 employees was the one to whom the wire was addressed. Pino, wearing the telegraph company uniform, told her the envelope he carried contained a money order, asked if there wasn’t someone else who might know where to find the addresses. The young woman suggested he go down the hall, past the cashier’s office and out into the plant and talk to the maintenance man.

  Big Steve boosted a roll of masking tape.

  “Great Boston Construction Company?” the Dorchester real estate agent read aloud from the business card devoid of address or telephone number.

  “We’re in cement,” a large, balding, red-haired man, sporting a red handlebar mustache, answered with a slightly Irish accent. He wore no overcoat or hat, was nattily attired in an expensive sharkskin suit and red bow tie. “A couple of us returning veterans feel there’ll be a postwar need for cement.”

  The real estate agent pushed away his morning mail and opened a loose-leaf notebook. “I might have fifteen thousand feet available at Walnut and Washington, Mr.… Mr.—”

  “Ferguson’s the name. Walter Ferguson. We were wondering about that space of yours over near the water?”

  “At Savin Hill?”

  “The same.”

  “Those are only garages. Two-car garages.”

  “We’re only a small and growing company. How much are they?”

  “Just one’s available. Thirty dollars a month. Two month’s rent in advance.”

  “Make it twenty, and you have yourself a tenant.”

  Walter Ferguson left the office, drove into central Boston, parked his car in an alleyway off Massachusetts Avenue, entered a rear door, hung his jacket in the closet, snapped red garters on each of his shirt sleeves, tied an apron around his waist, pushed another door and resumed his duties as a bartender.

  Twenty minutes later he was serving Jimmy Costa.

  “How much did it come to?” Ferguson was asked.

  The bartender flashed two fingers, then five. “Two months up front. No lease, just a receipt.” He laid the receipt and several bills on the counter along with a key.

  Costa paid for his drink, left a $10 tip and exited.

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars and not a cent less,” Costa was told on the Winchester front porch by the matron. “And if there’s any more haggling, young man, the price will go up.”

  “Offer her a bill and a half,” Pino said when Jimmy joined Tony and Big Steve on the afternoon boost.

  “For chrissakes, Tony, she just told us, she’d jack it up if we do that.”

  “Okay, one seventy-five and that’s the limit!”

  They put the masking tape and paddle lock Big Steve had boosted for them on consignment into the borrowed station wagon of a friend, bade their shoplifting partner good-bye, drove to 3 Fuller Street, loaded on a battered bureau they carried up from the cellar, stopped at a neighborhood hardware store, where Tony swiped
two cans of whitewash while Jimmy boosted two brushes and the morning paper. By 4 P.M. they had masked the windows with newspaper and were busily painting the brick walls of the Savin Hill garage. Costa drove Pino to work at 5:30, drove on to a Charlestown foundry, paid for and picked up the remodeled three-section pry, went to the 3 Fuller Street cellar, toted out a box of lock tumblers and the leather satchel containing burglar’s tools, brought all the gear back to the Savin Hill garage and neatly placed it in the bureau and continued whitewashing the walls. When Costa left at 11 P.M., the paddle lock Big Steve had boosted was clamped on the door.

  The nonexistent crew had a plant.

  The late Saturday night tour began at the new Savin Hill plant, moved on to the office in the tall, narrow building on Pearl Street, past seven or eight business establishments Pino had cased—only to find they required more than three men for robbing and that his current tools weren’t adequate for cracking their safes—and nearly a dozen more locations which had not as yet been entered and looked over and assessed for potential scoring.

  Richardson was impressed with the progress.

  The tour ended up in the cashier’s office at the textile firm. Again Sandy was impressed, was particularly pleased to find a payroll which indicated the 200 employees received the weekly salary in cash on Thursday—that, therefore, on Wednesday night the safe must have more than $20,000 in currency. The safe was an old-fashioned model, the type Tony’s present burglar’s tools could peel with ease. What Sandy didn’t like had to do with positioning and carpets. The door between the cashier’s office and an abutting hall was wire mesh. The safe was against the rear wall, in a location which offered a partial view of the wire door and hall beyond. While they cracked the safe, their backs would be to this door. The hall itself was covered by carpeting, which meant the pair of safecrackers wouldn’t hear anyone coming until whoever it was was at the door and looking in.

  Pino suggested they move the safe completely out of the door’s sight line. Richardson suggested he try it. Pino took up the challenge, couldn’t budge the mammoth iron box. Sandy and Tony together couldn’t move it.

  “Guess we’re gonna need a third man,” Pino said sadly, “someone to keep the peek on the hall.”

  “Guess so.”

  “What about Jimmy?”

  “Emphatically no.”

  “But there isn’t anyone else. You gonna let twenty grand go to waste just ’cause you’re picky?”

  “Better picky than pinched.”

  “When you’re right, you’re right, Mr. R. Guess that only leaves women’s drawers.”

  “That’s, a three-man job, too.”

  “No, it ain’t. I been in there again. The two of us can handle her.”

  “I’ve been in there again, too. What if a hack comes out of the back?”

  “There ain’t no hack. I looked the whole joint over nose and toes.”

  “I’m pretty sure I heard a noise in back.”

  “That’s rat country. Big dock rats in all them old buildings. It’s a two-man job, and unless you and me get busy on something soon, we’re gonna rot with age and start thinking mosquitoes is airplanes.”

  “Mosquitoes are airplanes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. What about those other joints you’ve been looking over?”

  “I told you, my tools won’t open ’em. I gotta buy new tools and can’t do that unless I got what’s inside here.” Pino slapped his hand on the safe. “Jesus, I hate to see this go to waste.”

  “Why don’t you call Mike’s friend?”

  “‘Who’s that?”

  “Jazz Maffie.”

  “‘Not that goddamn bookie again?”

  “Yes, the bookie.”

  “You married to that guy or something?”

  Sandy had a chat with Costa, said he had nothing against a three-way partnership between the two of them and Tony regarding small scores, but insisted Jimmy not go inside on pete jobs until he gained some practical experience. Jimmy wanted to know how you gain practical experience unless you do go inside.

  “When the conditions are right is when you gain it,” Sandy explained.

  Pino boosted a milk bottle—an empty milk bottle. He was sitting in Elizabeth Di Minico’s kitchen having breakfast, and when his aunt turned her back, he reached out, grabbed an empty milk bottle off the counter, stuffed it in his shirt, got up, feigning a sudden stomach cramp, hurried on down to his apartment and hid the empty glass bottle under some clothes in a bureau drawer.

  Costa crept forward, trying to avoid a litter of discarded cartons and wrapping paper, quietly opened the cab door, got inside, turned the key that had been left in the ignition and drove the green-paneled flower delivery truck out into the night. Once it was safely stashed in the Savin Hill plant, he and Pino began painting the vehicle with the white enamel Mary had rejected for her apartment.

  Richardson held the satchel while Tony tripped the lock in the side door of the South Boston lingerie factory building. They slipped inside, stole up the steps and made their way forward through the unlit offices.

  Thirty minutes later the safe door was peeled open. Sandy began taking out the bills and coins as Pino packed away his tools. Footsteps were heard. The two thieves fell to the floor. The dark outline of a night watchman was seen at the opaque glass door. The silhouette stood for a moment, then moved on.

  “Where t’Christ did he come from?” Pino demanded after, as they sped away in the flower truck with Costa at the wheel.

  “Maybe from the basement. Maybe from upstairs. Maybe from any of the places we couldn’t watch because there was only two of us! Here’s your share.”

  Pino took the small linen bag of money and coins Richardson had prepared. “How much?”

  “Eleven hundred.”

  “You saying there was only thirty-three hundred in here?”

  “I took out everything there was—and that’s all there was.”

  “You goddamn lying son of a bitch,” Pino snarled, grabbing Costa by the neck, “you said there was five or six in there.”

  “There was—when I worked there five years ago.”

  “And was there a hack there, too, you didn’t tell us about?”

  “There wasn’t any hack. Hey, Tony, let go, will ya? I gotta drive.”

  “I’ll drive ya. Off a deep pier. I shouldn’t even give you your share.”

  “For chrissakes, Tony, is it my fault you didn’t spot good enough to see a hack?” Costa said, then added, quietly, “And I told you from the beginning—you needed three men inside.”

  Pino slumped back in the seat. “I can’t understand where the hack came from.” He finally looked around at Richardson “What was his name?”

  “Whose name?”

  “That goddamn bookie you been pestering me with.”

  “Jazz Maffie.”

  “Okay, tell him he can come and see me.”

  “According to Mike, if you want a meet, you have to go to see him!”

  Chapter Five

  Jazz

  Jazz Maffie clenched an unlit cigar between his teeth and handed his black mohair overcoat, white silk scarf, gray kid gloves and soft black fedora to the hatcheck girl at Jimmy O’Keefe’s, a popular and bustling restaurant on Boylston Street in Boston. The thirty three-year-old Maffie genially gave instructions to have his, wife shown into the dining room when she arrived, swept the hair back from his roughly handsome Neapolitan face, fluffed up the handkerchief in the breast pocket of his smartly tailored suit jacket, straightened to his full six-foot one-inch height and strode into the men’s bar. He pushed through the crowd, draped his bare arms around a pair of detectives seated on stools, paid off the bet one of the officers had won on a football parlay and ordered drinks.

  By the time Jazz joined his wife and three family friends in the dining room of Jimmy O’Keefe’s he had settled his gambling accounts for the day and bought drinks for all the winning bettors, as well as one or two losers. Maffie wa
s in the process of ordering when the hatcheck girl signaled that he was wanted on the phone.

  The caller was a “mutual friend,” who told him “Tony wants to make a meet.”

  “How soon?”

  “Tomorrow morning. His place in Dorchester.”

  “Tomorrow noon. At my apartment in Quincy. You bring him over.”

  Jazz hung up before the caller could reply.

  “Oh, I’d heard all about Tony Pino from Mike Geagan,” Maffie recalls. “And I expected Superman. One of them rogues you see in the movie pictures. One of those James Cagney guys.

  “I opened the door at eight o’clock the next morning, and there was this mutual friend with a little fat guy.

  “I couldn’t believe it. I’m looking at Tony Pino, and I didn’t know whether he was a nut. I thought he was laughing and he had one of those pumpkin faces and squat hats that made him look funnier than he was. I didn’t know he did that all the time, that it wasn’t a smile or laughing, just twitching.

  “So Tony Pino said, ‘We were riding by and thought we’d drop in to see you and say hello.’

  “‘Oh, well, just don’t stand there. Come on in and have something to drink.’

  “‘I don’t drink,’ Tony Pino said, ‘but give me a drink anyway.’

  “So I got them a drink, and Tony Pino belted it down. And then he got up and he said, ‘I’m half loaded.’ So they left, and I couldn’t have cared less.

  “So I went back to bed. And someone started knocking on the door again. I got up and opened it a little. There’s Tony Pino, so I said, ‘Who is it?’

  “He said, ‘Tony.’

  “‘Tony who?’

  “‘Pino,’ Tony Pino said, ‘Tony Pino.’