Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  “Anthony, none of the crew’s had any word from you for nearly three weeks.”

  “Stall for an even month, okay?”

  “Go easy if you get at that door of theirs, Anthony,” Richardson cautioned. “If Brink’s had a bag of tricks, that’s where they’ll start springing ’em.”

  “Sandy, if they gotta bag of tricks, even money says they bought ’em cut-rate.”

  The first metal-fronted fire door squeaked open in the dark. Pino stepped through, with a gloved hand set one of the wooden wedges in the floor tract between the wall and door edge. The door was eased shut—almost shut. The second fire door, the one that squeaked more than the first, was then inspected, eased open, affixed with a wedge and, after Tony had stepped through, rolled closed—almost closed.

  “See what we got here?” Pino asked. “Both them doors look shut till you got right on them. It’s just open wide enough to get your fingers in and pull ’em open if you’re in a hurry. Wedging them doors only saves you a second or two in opening them up, but when you’re running for your life, it can save you ten to twelve years. I’m carrying an ice pick. An ice pick is a burglar’s tool. I can get four to six for possession of burglar’s tools.”

  The short, dumpy leather-jacketed thief with a paper bag mask covering his upright head sneaked along the lines of armored trucks standing between slim concrete columns, cautiously peeking into cabs and through rear slit windows that were darker than the nearly absolute darkness of the garage. The probe required close to half an hour, terminated in the Hull Street corner of the wall closest to, and running parallel to, the playground. There was an open door here through which he looked before on other visits. He looked now, found nothing to warrant concern, was tempted to explore beyond the closed door. Didn’t.

  He moved along the wall, stopped, rose, trained the eyeholes against the slanted glass siding the rotunda, sidestepped to the larger pane in the front. The blackness beyond was not total: over to the left it had diluted to a heavy gray. He moved on, past the door immediately to the right of the rotunda—the door—reached the glass-fronted guard booth in the Prince Street/playground corner. He gave it the burn. Nothing appeared suspicious.

  He backtracked to the center rotunda, faced that door there—the door. He dropped to one knee. The erect paper bag moved forward. Stopped.

  “I’m staring at that goddamn dime lock,” he says. “I start thinking Sandy can be right. Maybe the sonsabitches rigged a goddamn cheap dime lock, know what I mean? They’re trying to sucker me. They’re letting me pound on the door and turn the knob and run all the hell over without nothing happening. They’re getting me overconfident on purpose. They’d give me anything out here I want. All they’re waiting for is me to touch that lock and bang!, it’s the Fourth of July. Treacherous, rotten bastards.

  “What’s gotta be done gotta be done, see. That’s the way it is. Okay, I take out the pick—my ice pick with the tip I honed down to needle size. My hands is steady as hell—I’m a brain specialist. I got the pick up and raised. I get all set. I’m standing up now ’cause this is a two-hand job. I’m going to be running, too. I got one hand on the knob. The pick’s in the other. Pfft! I open the lock and open the door and real fast shut her and take off. My legs are short, see, and they’re pumping up and down, and my head’s straight up ’cause a the twenty-pound sack, and I hit the cracks in them slide doors on the run. I don’t bother with no wedge blocks. I leave and tear down them steps and take off the twenty-pound sack and get through the door. I don’t check nothing. I keep going. The alarm goes off now, and I’m dead. I’m on my way to Italy forever and Mike and Sandy got themselves a crew all to their own.

  “It’s the fastest moving I’ve done. I get to the doorway and almost collapse of exhaustion and terror. I’m goddamn coughing, trying to find my breath. Some thief, huh? The cops pull up, you won’t hear their sirens with all my coughing. I’m so goddamn weak I won’t be able to get up and beat it onto the roof. Anyone shows, that’s where I go—through the door behind me and up over the roofs.”

  No lights went on in the line of seven windows above the playground. No light went on anywhere in the back of the building or along the Prince Street side. No foot patrolmen or police cars appeared. Nothing. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by, and nothing.

  Pino reentered the building through the Prince Street people door, reset the wedges on the second-floor fire doors, was soon standing, rumpled paper bag over his head and honed ice pick poised, at the door.

  “Pfft, I got her open again. I jump inside and close her. Mother of God, it’s dark. Wherever I am it’s dark without relief. And I can’t move much either. I’m inside, and I don’t know what they got in here. They can have all them electric eyes planted low along the boards [floorboards]. They can have bugs buried right in the cement [floor] so pressure sets ’em off. That’s why I brought the flashlight around my neck, but I don’t turn it on the regular way. The electric eyes don’t pick up nothing that’s fast, see what I mean? They gotten be broken, and fast light hitting ’em don’t do it—don’t break ’em. That’s why I give her the pfft-pfft. I turn on my light fast, and I turn her off fast, pfft-pfft.

  “So I’m standing there not moving, looking over the floor. Trying to figure out what kind of alarm they got around here and where the hell I am. I pfft-pfft along the boards. There ain’t no electric eye down there [to his right]. Now I bend way down and feel the cement, feel for alarms they got buried. I don’t feel nothing. I got a little tiny piece of floor that’s clean, so I get down on my hands and knees on her. That’s how I start going—a foot or two at a time. Pfft-pfft her and feel her. You don’t wanna break no speed records here. When I’m about five or six feet down the boards, I start feeling out further. Start getting myself out into the middle some. Now I got three or four feet cleaned out there. My island’s getting bigger. I go back and start pfft-pffting the wall. All the way up the wall in that area. It’s a pain in the ass, this slow going, but you gotta have patience. I got all the patience there is. That’s why I’m still alive. But you don’t take no chances because of that. Only one hidden wire or sneaky picture, and you’re dead. Them things don’t take up much space, and I gotta lotta dark to cover.”

  Pino reached the corner of the wall nearest Prince Street, searched along the adjacent wall, eventually reached the other corner nearest the playground side of the building and determined he was in a long rectangular chamber, perhaps twenty feet in length and six in width. Eventually he reached a second door. It was directly opposite the one through which he had entered, and it stood slightly ajar. Nothing much could be seen in the continuing darkness beyond. Pfft-pffting and feeling of the doorframe and door edge produced a new revelation.

  “The goddamn lock’s rigged,” Pino explained. “It’s another goddamn dime job, and they rigged it only not on the lock itself, see. Where the wires run to is the latch. The latch’s in the frame, the tongue of the lock fits into the latch—that’s what keeps it locked.

  “So now I gotta figure out. It’s like I told Sandy. This door’s open a little, see? If this was alarm rigging, whistles woulda gone off already. And I didn’t open the door—it was open like this when I got here. So all you gotta ask is why you’d have wires running to the latch if it ain’t for alarms. To open it, is why. What we got here is one of them electric opening jobs. Press a button somewhere, and this lock opens itself up.

  “Now I get over to the other wall—the wall running between the door I come in and the door that’s rigged. I see a window in the wall. When I peek her, I’m looking into the rotunda. I get way over, and I could look out this window and right through the rotunda and out the rotunda’s other window—the window that goes into the garage.

  “So now I play a hunch. I go back to the first door, the door I come through to get in here [opening into the garage]. On this side I can see she’s rigged, too. A wire goes into the latch. It’s an electric opening job like the other one.

  “See how it wor
ks? A hack gets out of his truck and comes to the door [leading from the garage to the room]. The hack in the rotunda looks him over. If he likes what he sees, he presses a button and the lock opens by itself. The truck hack comes in the room. The hack in the rotunda can give him a second peek now. He looks out that little window in the side. If he still likes what he sees, he presses his button and the second door pops open. The door that’s a little open now.”

  Pino continued his investigation of the room. By and large it was barren. One or two lockers were up against a wall. Three or four wooden chairs were against another.

  “They got this bulletin board on the wall, and I can see some names on it. They’re roster names for which hack is supposed to work what days. I’m in the hacks’ room. This is where the hacks wait for their trucks to get loaded. Maybe it’s where they bring the money in and out from too.

  “Now I own this room. Know everything about it. It’s safe. But I don’t go no further. All this took me time. I figure it’s ten or ten-fifteen when I finish. This joint is only safe for me until ten thirty. I only checked her out for hacks and cleaning women up to ten.”

  The phone refused to stop ringing. A nightshirt-clad Pino finally woke up, got out of bed and answered.

  “Hey, Tony,” Jimmy Costa said urgently, “you better get the hell over quick.”

  “Over where?”

  “Over where I’ve been for almost a week. Your lousy diner.”

  “You make the stew like I told you?”

  “I don’t know how to make stew, Tony. That’s why I’m calling. I put—”

  “Anyone can make stew for chrissakes. I put all the meat and vegetables in for you myself, didn’t I? All you got to do is turn on the flame.”

  “I did turn on the flame, and that’s how the fire started. Tony, we had a fire in the kitchen. I burned up the stew.”

  “You done what, mister?”

  “Burned up all the stew.”

  “How much stew?”

  “All the stew!”

  “Both potfuls?”

  “Both.”

  “Mother of God, that’s forty-five dollars’ worth of profits in them. How could you goddamn go and burn ’em up?”

  “I been telling you for three goddamned days I don’t know how to cook stew.”

  Trapped amid prospects of millions upon millions of dollars in vault room money and possibilities of continuing $45 stew losses, Pino hardly hesitated in picking the immediate over the imminent. He ran over to the diner and was away from Brink’s for two full days while he stayed on at the diner cooking.

  A twenty-pound paper bag rose up in the darkness, peered into the rotunda window and moved on. A honed tipped pick slid between the door and jamb, touched against a metal tong and depressed it. Reinspection of the guardroom was cursory; of the second, slightly ajar door leading farther in the direction of the playground, painstaking. A gloved hand reached out; two gloved fingers pulled gently, coaxed the door open wider. The hunched-shouldered figure dropped down on its knees, tilted its square head slightly forward. Unseen eyes peered down through torn holes in the paper. All was dark. The hunched shoulders swayed backward. The square head raised cautiously, guarded, so as not to fall off. The unseen eyes looked upward. Light, so diffuse as not to be total or in shafts, wafted above, etched out the unmistakably straight outline of the top of a wall, a wall parallel to the door and perhaps eight feet away, a wall perhaps eight feet high, perhaps ten feet high. Below this edge line, all was as dark as ever. Looking up again, tracing the edge line back and forth provided some estimate of the enclosed space to be investigated. Far to the left, perhaps twenty to twenty-five feet to the left, a second edge line ran at right angles to the first. The area above the second edge line was not entirely open, was covered by some sort of heavy-duty screening, which reached up to the ceiling.

  Some six or seven feet to the right the first edge line collided into solid black, a ceiling-high wall.

  Pino started into the darkness to his right. Began on his hands and knees, felt the floor, pfft-pffted along the base of the wall. Almost immediately he reached a corner. On turning the paper bag, and head underneath, he collided with an object. The gloved hand reached out, felt the hardness and cold, gently searched out the edges, determined that it was metal and square and on rollers, stood three and a half or four feet high. The fingers probed farther back along the top; the wrist bumped under something, went farther, got stuck, retreated without difficulty. The fingers came out, rose, moved forward, gained only a few inches, found a wall, lowered, felt the molding, skipped along, soon determined that there was a door four feet high and three and a half feet wide there, that the cold metal object was protruding from this door. The chest-suspended flashlight was gripped. Pfft-pfft. The metal General Electric money box. If not the GE money box itself, one that looked identical and was standing two-thirds of the way through the door.

  More crawling, feeling, pffting-pffting onto the corner, the back wall over which light drifted, the eight-or ten-foot-high wall. A partially opened door was reached. The floor beyond was dark for several feet, then lightened into a visible cement floor. This door was passed by, the wall beyond only beginning to be examined when Pino could see more visible floor off to his left. It became evident that he was in a large L-shaped room, the shortest leg being the dark recess in which the box had been found. The longer leg of the L ran back toward the garage, ended at a wall in which there was a closed door. A door he could plainly see. Much of the wall parallel to the money box wall also ran beyond the shadows and into the weak, diffuse light. A counter ran along it. Above the counter were louvered windows. Some five feet above the windows the wall ended. Where the wall ended, an endless expanse of sturdy metal grille screening began, a barrier which ended at the ceiling.

  Pino went home, returned the next night and, foot by foot, hand pat and pfft-pfft by hand pat and pfft-pfft, became satisfied that no hidden microphones or alarmtriggering devices were embedded in the cement floor, that no electric eyes scanned the area, that no “sneaky pictures” were poised to photograph trespassers.

  Though he did not know the company-designated name, he was in the counting room, concluded on his own that the counters and louvered windows along the screen-topped three-quarter wall parallel to Hull Street were used for one thing and one thing only—counting money. This put a chill to him, a rush, an effusive excitement. Time was running out, safe time in which he knew the chances of guards or cleaning people appearing were minimal. But he was drawn, hypnotically, toward the door ahead of him. Not the closed door to his left at the end of the room which he correctly assumed opened into the rotunda, but the door beside the counter in the screen-topped wall facing Hull Street. He knew that he must go through. He knew that he could not resist going through.

  And he became careless. He didn’t bother to check the door before touching it. There was visibility over here in this section. Weak light, but light enough to look for wires or devices; somewhat stronger light from the other side after he coaxed the door almost completely open. He entered without as much as a glance at the frame. If he had looked down, he would have seen wires running along the floorboard. If he had looked down, particularly in the direction he was heading, he would have seen a metal button rising up out of the cement—an alarm button. But the paper bag tilted upward; the eyes behind it were transfixed.

  An errant mist of unhurried street light brushed against the grille-fronted window, seemed to lose purpose and cohesion on entering, managed to reach and penetrate a high, wide gauze screen metal wall slanting across the front of the room, continued aimlessly on a ways, then gently spread itself out at the base of an eight-foot-high, eight-foot-wide, twelve-foot-long rectangular box—a box which, farther back in the gloom, a motionless, round-shouldered, bag-headed silhouette stood staring at.

  Pino shuffled forward, stopped, studied the structure again. Again he slid his foot in preparation for a step. The toe glanced off something. He jumped back, kn
elt, lowered an eyehole. The metal tit poked up from the cement maybe half an inch. A stomp button. A stomp button to a floor alarm. The paper bag rose and slowly shook from side to side. A stomp button was the most primitive of alarms in his opinion. In his opinion he could have stepped right on it with no adverse result. Stomp button alarms were what the name implied. You had to stomp hard to set them off. He had run across one where you literally had to jump on the button for activation. From the look of the metal tit, this alarm in this room was the cheapest and least efficient of the generally inefficient species. What’s more, it wasn’t meant to trip up interlopers. Stomps were internal security to be used by employees.

  Pino couldn’t dally with the button, didn’t. Sweat had risen on his bag-covered face. His ticlike smile was flashing with such rapidity that even he was aware of it. The big shadowy “room” off to the right inside of this room was his sole concern. This huge box anchored in a base of concrete eight inches to a foot higher than the floor.

  He stepped past the button, circled around in front of the “room,” stood back and gazed. There was more light here. Still shadowy, but enough to see by. The front wall of the box was constructed of large cinder or concrete blocks. A wide metal ramp lay at its base, gently rose to the bottom of a three- to three-and-a-half-foot-wide door, a metal door. A heavy metal door six feet high and fronted by large lap-over hinges on top and on bottom. A heavy painted metal door latticed by two unpainted metal rods running into and through protruding metal cylinders. In the middle, in the exact middle of the door, was a spike-metal wheel. It was the vault.

  “Mother of Sweet Christ, what a sight. What a piece of furniture. Oh, it was something. I coulda cried to begin with, but when I see painted on her face, ‘built in 1875,’ well, maybe I did cry. Back then, in 1860 or 1875, they didn’t have the fancy new metals that are around today. The stuff back then was banana skin. Peel or burn her, but no nitro.