Big Stick-Up at Brink's!

by Behn, Noel;

  Pino slapped the back of the cab, held onto the side as the truck started up, moved through the darkness and helped open the thin pencil-sized bag. Jazz dropped in his car keys, managed to strip off his coat jacket and fold it while standing, sat down and braced himself up against a truck panel, opened the laundry bag Pino had shoved up between his legs, struggled into the pea coat, checked to make sure the .45 was in the pocket, pulled the rubber Captain Marvel mask all the way down over his face, then rolled it back up in the prescribed manner until it rode tightly on the crown of his head, placed the beaked chauffeur’s cap atop it, pulled the rubbers over his shoes, reached back in the pocket of the suit jacket, took out and put on his gloves, slid the suit jacket into the now-empty costume bag, pushed the bag to Pino, stood up so Pino could check out the costume, took the two folded sisal sacks Pino handed him and tucked them in his belt under the pea coat, took several strands of the knotted-end rope Pino gave him and tucked them in his belt as well, waited until Pino again checked him out to make sure neither the rope nor the bags were showing, then sat back down.

  Pino sat on his Coca-Cola box. Sandy stood with an eye at the front peephole over the cab and, when Calumet Street came into view opposite the Parker Hill playground, tapped Tony on the shoulder and managed to get to the rear of the truck without holding onto the overhead bows or stumbling. Pino was too short to reach the bows, almost fell before reaching the door, braced himself for the truck stopping. Barney braked to an abrupt stop. Tony tore open the canvas door. Sandy reached through, helped pull Henry Baker aboard, then Jimma Faherty. Tony buttoned the door back into place. Maffie extended a leg and kicked the back of the cab. The truck started up. Jimma had nothing to drop into the pencil bag and, since he put the pea jacket on over his suit coat, would have nothing to put in the empty laundry bag later except his soft hat. Henry had car keys and some change for the small bag; when he was costumed, he put an overcoat, soft hat and suit jacket into the bag. Jimma was given two folded sisal sacks. Henry was only given the bar—and loudly protested that it was the wrong kind of bar—a pry, not a pinch bar. Tony didn’t know how that could be and whispered as much. Sandy swore under his breath.

  As had been the case before, only Tony was at the front peephole when Gus and Specs came into view near City Hospital. Gus and Specs changed into their costumes. Gus was handed a good deal of rope and a sisal bag to put under his jacket. Specs got a bag and the ring containing the keys. Tony suddenly remembered to give Gus and Henry each a roll of adhesive tape and to give Sandy his two sisal bags. But he forgot to check Gus and Specs’s costumes, Specs wasn’t wearing rubber over his soft soled shoes.

  In the past the six costumed conspirators had talked, even kidded around on the last half of the ride. In the past Tony had jumped up and almost shouted trying to keep them quiet. Tonight he remained on his Coca-Cola box with nothing to do. There was no talking or whispering. What noise there was came from the flapping of a loose and undetected canvas end, an occasional tattoo of rain, an occasional passing vehicle and mostly the incessant creaking of the wooden rigging.

  Costa was concerned by the lack of traffic. He kept about thirty feet behind as the truck reached the end of Albany Street, turned right onto Kneeland Street and followed Kneeland the several short blocks to another left and the beginning of Atlantic Avenue. The last two times Barney had driven this particular route there had been traffic all along the way and particularly by the time they reached Atlantic. Now hardly a headlight could be seen in the opposite drizzle-swept lane, just as few headlights had been seen until here. Nothing was coming up from behind. They had been alone all the way—had maintained an even forty to forty-two-mile-an-hour pace; an uninterrupted pace—and according to Costa’s rough calculations, they were far ahead of schedule. They were now less than two miles away from the joint and, as Jimmy calculated roughly, would be reaching Brink’s at 6:35 or 6:40. No signal had been arranged whereby he could warn Barney to slow down. There was nothing perilous about arriving ten to fifteen minutes early. If all the lights in all the windows were on, the truck could go up and wait where it had waited when this happened in the past. They had waited twice before only to have all the lights go out simultaneously in one instance and the vault room light go out before the others in another instance. What concerned Costa the most was that in the nearly full year they’d been casing Brink’s they’d never been over to Prince Street this early on a Tuesday night.

  Patrolman William Savage had left Station Precinct House One and begun his rounds. Station One was in easy walking distance of Brink’s. Savage, a twenty-five-year veteran in the North End, knew that there was usually a parking problem in the Copps Hill area on the nights when basketball games were played at Boston Garden.

  Pino heard Barney rap, rose from the Coca-Cola box and gazed out the front peephole. South Station was approaching to the right; a man was standing on a street corner to the left. Sandy whispered he’d take care of it alone, when the truck stopped, opened the flap and helped Geagan on. The truck started on its final leg of the journey.

  Mike was costumed and inspected. Pino reached down, expecting to find three sisal bags still on the floor. He felt only two, didn’t have time to search further or ask which robber had an extra bag. He tried to go over interior procedures with Geagan, made a big point about Baker and Maffie’s going under through the money box half door and sneaking up on the vault room from behind. This was news to Mike—he always thought he and Baker were supposed to come in that way. A short but heavy burst of rain had been falling during this whispered conversation. Maffie didn’t hear any instructions about his going in through the half door. All Baker knew was to follow Geagan once in the joint.

  Patrolman Savage rounded the corner from Commercial Street into Prince Street and was surprised to find so very few cars standing along the curb. The veteran officer deferred going down Prince and checking the door of the North Terminal Garage building, including the metal one numbered 165 until after he wandered over to the Boston Garden three blocks away and determined why there was no traffic snarl.

  The tandem of a humped canvas-back Ford pickup truck and trailing Chevrolet sedan circled the drizzle and mist-licked northern crown of Copps Hill at an even forty miles an hour. Pino jumped from his Coca-Cola box, meaning to give the seven costumed gun-carrying men one final checkout.

  Commercial Street was straightening out. Up ahead the North Terminal Garage building came into view. Hull Street passed to the left. Tony warned the others to brace themselves, himself held on as the truck slowed, then, amid creaking and groaning wooden bows, took a sharp left turn.

  Pino moved back to the front peephole. A dim, inclement Prince Street lay ahead. One car was parked to the right under a streetlight. Up ahead, at the far corner of Lafayette Street, light from the candy store window spilled out on the wet sidewalk. Beyond, the panorama was dark and moist and cavernous.

  Tony inched over to the side peephole. The truck had slowed to a near crawl. Metal window gratings inched past. Then came the metal door bearing the shield and numbered 165. The end of the building was reached. The playground began.

  Pino squinted up.

  All was dark save for one window—the fifth window on the second level.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Biggest Haul of All

  The canvas-backed dark-green Ford pickup truck swung wide, swung into and then away from the playground side of wet Prince Street, swung directly toward the lit windows in the tiny corner candy shop called Peppy’s, swung farther and rocked into alley-wide, alley-dark Lafayette Street, splashed forward and climbed the curb in Lafayette, skimmed past a parked car and made a tight and easy right turn into Endicott, sped up and reached the corner at Commercial Street and had to stop because of traffic. And six to eight feet behind the truck—all the way—was the black Chevrolet follow car.

  And walking across Prince Street and going into the corner candy store called Peppy’s to buy a pack of cigarettes was a seve
nteen-year-old girl named Margaret.

  The rigged truck pulled right into Commercial Street, shifted into a higher gear and drove along at slightly over twenty miles an hour. The black Chevrolet sedan stayed on its tail. The truck passed Prince Street. The follow car pulled into Prince and parked some ten feet from the corner along the right-hand curb. The truck slowed slightly as it passed the ground-level doors of the North Terminal Garage building. Jimmy Costa was out of the follow car, walking down Prince Street with a flashlight in one pocket, his .45 caliber automatic in the other and the binoculars under his jacket. The truck made a wide turn into Hull Street and shifted into a lower gear, and Jimmy Costa lowered his head and turned it slightly away as he strode opposite the candy store on the playground side of the sidewalk. And the rigged truck climbed slowly up Copps Hill on Hull Street and drew near the second-level garage doors. Jimmy Costa hurried his pace along the playground. The truck passed the second-level garage doors and drew near the garage door on the third level. Costa entered the front door of the apartment building at 109 Prince Street. The truck pulled past the third-level door and past the end of the garage building, leveled when Hull Street leveled near the Snowhill Street intersection, turned right into the intersection and pulled in and stopped on the right-hand side of Snowhill Street just beyond Hull Street. It stood motionless in the dark beside the burying ground.

  Nineteen-year-old Edwin L. Coffin left his step-father’s apartment at 99½ Prince Street and started up Prince Street—in the direction of Brink’s.

  The rear door in the gray canvas covering the truck was pulled open. The first costumed robber jumped off, then a second, then a third.

  Forty-five-year-old Thomas B. Lloyd, head cashier, as well as the man whom Pino had observed before and referred to as a “slow crapper,” had left the vault room and was using the facilities of the men’s washroom in the second-floor garage. Charles Grell was left in the vault room, and so was Herman Pfaff, and so was Sherman Smith, and so was James Allen, and all four of them wore glasses, and one of them must have gone out of the vault room, probably Smith, who probably went into the control room.

  Costa ducked under the clothesline and kept low as he hurried over the roof atop 109 Prince Street. He stopped a foot from the edge, dropped to one knee, unzipped his jacket, took out the binoculars and trained them on the building wall about a hundred yards away and focused in on the only illuminated window—the fifth window.

  The vault door stood open. Wide open. Three men were in the room. All wore glasses. All were jacketless. One had a shoulder holster.

  Costa knew there were supposed to be a minimum of four employees in the vault room at closing time Tuesday. Often there had been five. He glanced over at Hull Street and didn’t believe what he saw. Seven men, all capped and coated like Brink’s armored truck personnel, were descending the steps between the top and middle terraces above the playground. As far as he knew, no one was supposed to get off the truck until he gave the signal.

  Costa noticed, but wasn’t much concerned with, the man on Prince Street walking in the direction of the candy store.

  He raised the binoculars again. A shirt-sleeved, spectacled man was standing at the table to the right of the open vault door. Two more shirt-sleeved, spectacled workers—one wearing a shoulder holster—stood farther back in the room talking to each other. Just in focus to the rear of this pair was the top of the metal GE money box. Directly in front of the open vault door was a sled of some sort. On the sled was a small mound of gray canvas packages bearing pink paper slips.

  Costa felt they had time before the vault was closed—but not much time. He knew he couldn’t give the go-ahead signal until he was certain how many people were working upstairs—until the crew had a good chance at catching them all in the vault room together.

  Nineteen-year-old Edwin Coffin ordered a pack of cigarettes from the part-time clerk at Peppy’s candy store and wasted no time in striking up a conversation with seventeen-year-old Margaret.

  O’Keefe led the line of seven pea-coated and chauffeur-capped robbers across the second terrace and down the staircase toward the third. Geagan was behind him. Behind Geagan was Baker. Behind Baker, Richardson and then Faherty. The two surest gunmen brought up the rear: Maffie and Gusciora.

  Pino stood perspiring in the rear of the truck, his eyes pressed hard against the back peephole. Costa was perspiring on the rooftop, his eyes, pressed hard against the binoculars his left hand was holding, the thumb of his right hand fidgeting with the switch on the flashlight which that hand was holding. Nothing had changed inside the vault room; no additional workers had appeared.

  The column of costumed thieves stepped across the third and lowest terrace and out onto the double staircase, chose the flight to the right, headed directly toward the rear of the garage building, descended onto the wet asphalt of the playground, kept close to the building wall, reached a point almost directly under the fifth and illuminated window, slowed, waiting for a signal. No signal came. They stopped.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Barney yelled back into the rear of the truck, and Pino, now taken to hopping from one foot to the other as if he had to leak badly, snarled back, “How the fuck should I know?” but there wasn’t any signal, and there should have been by now. Costa up on the roof was damn near talking to himself because now there were only two spectacled workers in the vault room, and he wasn’t giving any signal, not knowing how many were up there and where they were up there, and two of the seven capped and pea-coated robbers left the stilled column below the fifth window and were starting to straggle back toward the double staircases leading to the first terrace.

  The third shirt-sleeved worker returned to the vault room; then a fourth, also wearing glasses and without a jacket, stepped back in; then came a fifth who didn’t have glasses and didn’t have on a jacket either and who was sipping from a bottle that looked to Costa like a Coca-Cola bottle.

  Costa flashed the go-ahead signal.

  The seven costumed robbers fell back into line under the fifth window and started across the playground for Prince Street.

  Costa turned to his right and flashed in the direction of the Hull Street/Snowhill Street intersection on the crest of Copps Hill.

  And Tony saw this signal intended for him and all but let out a shout. He ran to the front of the truck and pounded on the cab and shouted, “Mother of God, we’re off,” and Barney took off down the harbor side of Snowhill like such a shot out of hell that Tony was sent reeling backward over some laundry bags.

  One by one the robbers came out onto Prince Street. Pino was shouting at Barney to slow down, slow down, and Barney took a left into Charter Street so hard and so fast that Pino was sent flying and Barney immediately took the left into Commercial so hard and so fast that Pino went atumbling.

  O’Keefe came up to the metal door bearing the Brink’s shield at 165 Prince and inserted the key with cine notch on its head and opened the lock with no trouble at all and pulled open the door and stepped inside and one by one the others in the column began to enter.

  And Barney came barreling down Commercial Street. The last of the robbers closed the door at 165 Prince and hurried up the first half flight of steps and reached the other six, who had stopped aligned on the second half flight. Seven hard-beaked chauffeur caps were raised by gloved hands in the nearly total darkness. Seven full-faced rubber masks were pulled down. Eyeholes were adjusted; caps reset and tugged at. Seven gloved hands reached into seven pockets for seven revolvers or automatics.

  And Barney came barreling into Prince Street like a bat out of hell.

  And nineteen-year-old Edwin Coffin suggested to seventeen-year-old Margaret that they leave Peppy’s together and go over to the playground together and have a smoke together, and Margaret thought this a very fine idea indeed.

  Barney overshot his preassigned parking spot opposite the door at 165 Prince Street. While Pino was holding on for dear life in the back, Barney backed up like a bat out of he
ll, hit the curb, shifted, shot ahead—shot right at Margaret and Edwin Coffin and Margaret would have been hit if Edwin hadn’t pulled her out of the way and Barney slammed on his brakes and reversed and again shot back and slammed on his brakes and still wasn’t in the right position and, because Edwin Coffin was walking up to the cab, didn’t go forward again. He sat in the darkness, looking straight ahead and not moving a muscle, as Coffin came within a foot or two of the front left fender and said something and then turned and walked back to Margaret and with Margaret walked across the street and entered the playground. When Barney saw them disappear, he started forward again.

  The key with two notches on its head opened the metal door at the top of the second-landing staircase. One by one, seven costumed and masked armed robbers entered and passed the dark unmanned guard booth in the outer lobby, then paused. The key with three notches fitted into the lock of the wooden door to the right in the lobby. The lock clicked. Mike Geagan, who was second in line, pushed past the man with the key, pulled open the door and, with a .38 caliber revolver firmly in his gloved hand, led the way down the pitch-black corridor and through the open door to the right. He slowed and signaled for the six behind him to slow. Cautiously and silently he crossed the unlit counting room, reached the grate-fronted window overlooking the playground.

  Costa watched through his binoculars as the man with the Coke and without glasses pointed to something and one of the men with glasses nodded and headed for the rear of the vault room. And one of the other men with glasses went to the counter to the right of the open vault door. He saw yet another man in glasses come up and stop in front of the vault door—stop as if he might be getting ready to close the vault.

  Then Costa saw the dark outline of a square-shouldered figure standing in the shadow of the first large window nearest Prince Street.