Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “I look over all the trucks ahead of me. There’s a big open space from where I am to those other trucks—the space for the door [garage door]. Then I’m off and going, crawling on my hands and knees like John Wayne does in war movies. I get in behind the first truck. Then I get up. Get up slow and cautious. I peek into the front seat of the first truck. I peek into the front seat of the second truck. I’m looking cross-eyed half the time, but I’m peeking all the same. Whatcha gotta watch out for is hacks sleeping. Lots of hacks go to sleep in trucks instead of patrolling like they’re supposed to. That’s what I’m looking out for. Sleeping hacks.

  “I look in the back of the trucks and the front. I go from truck to truck along that wall. Maybe there’s six or seven trucks. Maybe more. I sneak up on each one and look for hacks. All the trucks in Brink’s. Some is parked nose first. Some is parked ass first. Now down at the end I see there’s another big door. Garage door. But it don’t look like it’s used much because trucks are parked in front of it. That’s where the last trucks are, in front of this door. And right beyond that last truck I see this hall. A dark thin hall.

  “Now I gotta take the hall. I move in on my hands and knees. I’m feeling as I go. With my hand. Right away on my right I feel this door. It’s open and I go in slow. Now it’s darker than dark, and I bump right into something. It’s a toilet. I’m in their goddam crapper. So I back outta there on my hands and knees.

  “Now I’m back in the garage, and I’m crawling along the crapper wall [parallel to Hull Street]. I come to the end of it, and it goes in. The wall shoots off to Hull Street. So I can figure out they built the crapper right out into the garage. It’s like a big shithouse standing there. Now I crawl in behind it, into the wall running along Hull. I can see equipment and a truck parked up on a jack. This has to be their repair shop. The part of the garage where they fix their trucks. So real slow I peek in the truck. Front and back. No hacks.

  “I’m back on my hands and knees going for a line of trucks parked out in the middle. I’m cutting right back across the garage [toward the Prince Street side], and that’s where these tracks stand. Parked between them concrete pillars. I crawl up on each one and peek for hacks. I don’t find nobody. The joint is mine. I looked over all the tracks, and there ain’t no one.

  “I’m getting a neckache, see what I mean? I been crawling all the hell over, keeping my head straight up so the cross-eyed mask don’t topple. I been looking up for hacks and down for oil and grease, trying to keep my head straight. But I don’t know I got this neckache till I stand up. That’s when it hits me.

  “So I’m standing out in the middle of the garage with a neckache. Now I see what I couldn’t see from the other side of the garage. There’s a wall running the whole length [parallel to the playground]. I walk around a truck to get a better look, and I damn near die of shock. A goddamn rotunda’s staring at me. I dive back down. I don’t know what I was thinking, but nothing happens. I crawl around and take a better peek at the rotunda. It’s a glass rotunda sticking right out in the middle of the wall. A goddamn guard booth. It’s dark inside. I keep staring at it and start noticing it’s not as dark as I think. There’s some filter light coming through. Like on the staircase out front, some light coming from a street somewhere. No direct light.

  “So I sit down and think it over. You build a rotunda so a guard can sit in it. And if a guard was sitting in it, he would have seen me. But nothing’s happened. That means two things. Either the guard’s sleeping down low in the rotunda or somewhere nearby or there ain’t a guard. Now I’m up in a crouch. I run across the floor on the crouch and hide behind a concrete pillar, only that ain’t much hiding. Those pillars are so skinny you can damn near put both hands around them. I look over the rotunda from here. Now I run back to the wall I started from [facing Prince Street], and I almost fall over dead. There’s a whole line of trucks I never seen. And there’s another goddamn rotunda, too. A square rotunda right in the corner [of the wall parallel to the playground and the wall parallel to Prince Street]. But this rotunda’s smaller, and I can’t see no window in it. All I see in it’s a door. A closed door. So that’s not gonna give me no trouble.

  “So now I gotta check out these new trucks. Peek ’em one at a time. I get down to the end, and I see what happened. This wall they’re against [parallel to Prince Street] only runs halfway back into the garage. Then it cuts off and goes back [toward Prince Street] to where I started. So you figure there’s gotta be something on the other side of that further up. Maybe offices.

  “So I check these trucks, and it’s clean. My escape path’s okay. I got a clear shot at the fire door. I move back between two of the trucks. Then I keep low and run out into the middle of the garage. I duck in between two trucks there. Now I’m right across from the big rotunda in the middle of the wall [wall running parallel to the playground]. I feel around the floor and find a little pebble or two. Maybe a small chip of cement that feels like a pebble through my gloves. I move up closer behind a pillar. I take another deep breath ’cause I may be going out of here like a blast. I toss a pebble at the rotunda. Clink, it goes and nothing happens. No sound. No light going on. I toss another pebble. Clink and nothing.

  “This makes me brave. I stand up a little bit straighter and look this wall over. Next to the rotunda is a few feet of wall and then a door. Then it’s all wall to the rotunda in the corner. Looking the other way, you got the rotunda [in the middle of the wall], then more wall all the way down to what looks like another door [in the same wall]. So it’s the first time I’ve seen this other door [near the Hull Street corner of garage]. I sneak back down there. The door’s closed, and I get up close. Then I see this is only a half a wall. It’s like a pen [animal pen] down here with a door in it. It’s probably a storage area of some kind, so I don’t bother with it no more.

  “Now I’m back in the middle of the garage. Back behind a pillar facing the center rotunda. Clink, I throw another pebble. Nothing. That does it. I move right up on the rotunda. It’s got one long window facing me and two little side windows sloping into the wall. We stand looking at one another, and I look in. There ain’t nobody there. But like I explained, a hack could be sleeping behind it. I can make out there’s a small room behind it and off to the left there’s a door. That’s where the light’s coming through. Filtered light coming through that door. So I can see there ain’t no hack sleeping in the small room. That don’t mean he ain’t sleeping somewhere nearby, though. Maybe right behind the door where the light’s coming through.

  “I move back a ways. I look over the rotunda, and I look over the door to the right. Now I see something else. Something low and black. I sneak up on it. It’s a cooler. A cooler for your pop and Coca-Cola. Now I’m back looking at the door and looking at the rotunda [the rotunda in the center of the wall]. The reason that rotunda got a side window on it is so the hacks can see who’s going into that door. That means this is the main entrance for drivers unless I’m a hundred percent wrong. No driver’s going to be pushing those money hampers through the door in the corner of the room [the door in the rotunda at the corner of the garage]. This is gotta be their Golden Gate right out here in the center. And if a hack’s sleeping somewhere right now, it’s gotta be right around here, too.

  “So I walk right back to the rotunda and knock hard on the window. I run across the floor and duck in between two trucks [parked against the inner wall running parallel to Prince Street]. I wait to see if somebody answers. See if lights go on in the rotunda. See if somebody opens the door and looks. Come out to see what all the noise is about. I’m crouched, and I’m waiting. Nothing happens. Nobody comes out the door.”

  And if someone had come into the rotunda or opened the door beside it?

  “They woulda had an imagination. I coulda heard the footsteps coming and ducked further behind the trucks where nobody could see me. Whoever come out would think he’d had an imagination that somebody knocked, know what I mean? You open a door and see that there�
��s nobody there, you think the knock you heard was an imagination.”

  When no one came out to have an imagination, Pino moved back to the door beside the rotunda in the center of the wall.

  “It’s a big heavy door, and it looks like it’s metal or thick wood. I figure it for metal. I look it over for wires. Look up on top and around the sides. There’s nothing. It was clean. Now I squat down and look at their lock again. It’s a Schlage. The cheapest one you can buy.

  “Now I get up and give a second lookover for wires. Trip wires. Alarm connections. I don’t find ’em. I give a light rap on the door and get back behind the trucks. Nothing happens. I go back and give a harder rap and get behind the trucks. Nothing happens again.

  “So I’m back at the door. I’m standing there figuring nobody’s around, but I can’t be sure there ain’t secret wires on that door. Secret wires get tripped all kinds of ways. Sometimes knocking on the door don’t trip ’em. So I get all set. This is critical. I get on my mark. I give the doorknob a hard twist and tear out. I go running back and open both slide doors and take out the block. I close the doors and tear down them steps. I got the blocks in my pocket and I’m taking off the paper mask and folding it. I’m tearing down the steps, putting the paper mask in my pocket, too. I unfix the door [downstairs on Prince Street] and get the hell outside and up the street. I’m sitting and watching in the doorway up the street. Watching for something to happen. Nothing to Christ happens. I don’t understand it. I get up and go around the corner for my car, not understanding why these people don’t have some kinda alarm.”

  While walking toward his car, Pino took the paper bag mask from his rear pocket, tore it to shreds and paused to drop the pieces down a sewer.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Kiss

  It was Pino at his obsessive best or worst, his compulsively most thorough or overthorough or ridiculous thorough. The North Terminal Garage building totally monopolized his thoughts and time. How long the mania would last was problematic. He was mercurial in undertakings such as these, but for the time being he couldn’t get enough of the building. The Brink’s garage itself was left alone, not entered again, temporarily forbidden territory. Nearly all else above and below and abutting was systematically covered or penetrated, watched, crawled through, felt, smelled, listened to. He found that the second floor of the garage building was divided into four sections of which Brink’s took up the southernmost, or bottom quarters above at the corner of Prince and the playground. Entering the double fire doors to his left, coming off the staircase he always took, he saw a garage housing additional Brink’s tracks, some of which were apparently used for large or long-distance hauls. The large garage door between this section and the one Tony believed was Brink’s main garage was always kept closed and locked. The adjacent garage door on the wall parallel to and farthest from Prince Street was usually locked. On occasion it wasn’t. He had walked through into the large common garage on the other side, a common garage running along Hull Street—an area he computed as accounting for half the space of the entire floor. He had been up on the third floor, seen rows of parked green armored cars belonging to the United States Armored Car Company, took time to search for vehicle keys. He had been on the roof. He had spent considerable time in the first-floor garage opening onto Commercial Street, had located and studied a second door which he believed led up to Brink’s—the door far back in the space and over near the Prince Street/playground corner. Everywhere he went he found the ubiquitous rows of thin concrete pillars. Everywhere he went the lighting was poor. Seldom at night did he run into people, though on one occasion the lights of a car in the process of parking near the end of the second-floor common garage caught him unawares. Nowhere at night—between eight and ten-thirty—and with the single exception of the fellow who occasionally sat at the desk inside the Commercial Street doors had he run across any watchman or cleaning people. That didn’t mean they didn’t exist in the one section he had avoided to date—Brink’s.

  So he took to the roofs above and along Prince Street, lay there long hours watching the darkened windows for light, remained prone until ten-thirty and sometimes eleven and saw nothing to indicate hacks or cleaning people. And when after a ten-day hiatus he reentered the Brink’s section of the garage through the old familiar route, donned his paper bag mask, peeked into each truck and the windows of the two guard cages along the parkside wall, he still found no indication of hacks or maintenance personnel. He did however receive a shock when he reinspected the door beside the center rotunda.

  “I thought I was seeing things,” said Pino. “That last time I looked her over it didn’t have no window in it. I swear to God it didn’t. But now it does. Jesus, I tell myself, maybe they’re starting to change things. Put in new stuff.

  “It ain’t a big window. Just a little slit window up on top. A peek window. So I look into her and can’t see nothing but dark. Now I get close to the lock, the cheap Schlage. It looks like the same one I seen before, so maybe I missed the window. I tell myself this ain’t the time or place to be getting sloppy.”

  Pino raised his fist and began hitting hard on the door, then darted behind a nearby truck. No light that could be seen went on. No alarm that could be heard went off. He returned to the door, dropped to one knee and stared hard and long at the lock. He reached up, gave the knob a twist and waited. No alarm was heard. No light went on. He put an eye even closer to the lock. Then he left.

  “They’ve got to have some kind of alarm there,” Richardson commented as he drove Pino toward the Savin Hill plant.

  “I know they gotta, but they don’t. I told you I burned her high and low. Twice I burned her.”

  “And you knocked on the door you think goes into the offices?”

  “I did everything but hit it with a baseball bat. I damn near twisted the knob right off and nothing. I can’t get a sneeze from them people.”

  “Perhaps the door doesn’t go into the offices?”

  “It can’t go anywhere else, Sandy. There’s just so much space on that floor. I go another twenty feet in that direction, and I’ll fall out a window.”

  Richardson pulled to a stop on a side street. He and Pino got out and started walking for an alley.

  “Anthony, if that door goes into their offices, it must have an alarm on it.”

  “Well, if it does, it’s in the lock. But I never heard of no one hooking up a ten-cent lock.”

  “Then maybe that’s exactly where it is. Perhaps that’s why they installed a cheap lock, to catch the unsuspecting?”

  “If you ask me, Mr. Brink’s put in that lock ’cause he’s a chintz.” Pino reflected for a minute. “Every time since I started watching ’em, they been chintzy and screwing up. Maybe they moved over to this new joint ’cause it’s got cheaper rent. They got two goddamn rotundas up in that garage of theirs with no visible hacks in them. They got no hack out in the garage, too. Maybe they’re too goddamned cheap to pay their hacks night rates. They’re too goddamn cheap to put anything on them slide doors. Christ, they won’t even spring fifty-watt bulbs in their garage. Whoever heard of a garage for twenty-grand trucks with only a twenty-five-watt bulb in it?”

  Richardson unlocked the garage door to the Savin Hill plant, followed Pino in and slide-bolted the door shut. Tony snapped on the light—a twenty-five-watt bulb.

  “Good God,” Richardson uttered at seeing large cardboard cartons stacked three and four high on every available foot of space around the panel truck and cache of recently stolen lawn mowers.

  “Yeah, we need a bigger joint,” Pino announced, squeezing past a wall of cardboard. “I already been looking.”

  “Anthony, do you mind telling me what these boxes are and where they came from?”

  “Cigarettes. Barney’s been smuggling them in the state but don’t want McGinnis to know, so I took some off his hands.”

  “Barney doesn’t do anything without that skinheaded bastard knowing.”

  “Joe’s oka
y when you get to know him.”

  “He’s a goddamn crook and thief, and I don’t want to know him.”

  Pino circled the last mound of contraband cigarettes and reached the rosewood cabinet containing his burglar’s tools, lock cylinders and array of costumes. “You know something, that lock of theirs could be wired after all,” he told Sandy, “but not the way you think. Not to the alarm. That turret had two slanted windows on the sides. Slanted so you can see the door. That maybe means the hack inside pushes a button, know what I mean? He sees somebody come up to the door and knock. When he sees who it is, he pushes a button and the lock opens.”

  “All I know, Anthony, is that you’ve only been in their garage twice,” Richardson replied, “and maybe you caught them on an off night. Maybe those guard cages are manned most other nights.”

  “Then they gotta be sitting there in the goddamn dark,” Pino countered, slipping a finely honed ice pick in his pocket. He reached up to the cabinet’s upper shelf and removed a flat, square industrial flashlight affixed with shoulder straps—one he had boosted from a night watchman’s office some months before. “I’m telling ya, Sandy, I know what should be and shouldn’t be. I know they should have that joint locked tighter than a drum. But I’ve been living in that neighborhood at night, and what my eyes see and my logic says are two different things. They’re keeping her wide open. I can’t say what goes on after ten thirty [P.M.]. I don’t think it’s much. Up to ten thirty you never seen anything more wide open in your life.”

  “What do you want me to tell Jazz?” Sandy asked.

  “Don’t tell ’em nothing till we got this thing whipped.” Pino took down two wooden wedges, then closed the rosewood cabinet. “I don’t want nobody to know I’m in ten miles of that joint.”