by Patrick Mann
“What about the honest people?”
“Let ’em wake up and join the show.”
Joe pulled the door open and strode out into the blast of hot air smelling of fresh bread. The traffic noise roared and shook the air as trucks rattled past. Everybody who was in on it, including dopey Phil, who was driving the car, knew they’d pull the job a week from tomorrow. That gave everything a solid week in which to fall apart, go sour, trip him up and ruin him.
Okay. In that case, they’d hit the bank not a week from tomorrow but tomorrow. One week early. Fast, hard, and so cleverly that they’d leave everybody standing around flatfooted with their mouths open. Let them learn a thing or two from Littlejoe. You don’t get to be a legend for nothing.
8
The rendezvous was on a residential block in Elmhurst, another in that belt of lower middle class communities that stretches across Queens from the East River to Nassau County. These neighborhoods bear names left over from some earlier time when they were independent communities or, perhaps, only a momentary gleam in the eye of a land developer.
The block of one-family houses reminded Littlejoe of his mother’s block in Corona, some miles away. In the absolute sameness, as if sliced off a piece of something much larger, cake or cheese or something like that, it reminded him of the block where Tina and the kids lived in Rego Park, and his father-in-law’s semi-detached row house and garage in Flushing, and his grandmother’s apartment block in Ridgewood. Nobody escaped.
He had let the Mustang get very dirty over the past week. Even the windows were dusty. A slight rain three nights before—which had been expected to break the heat wave but never made a dent in it—had left the fenders splashed with mud. Joe had carefully splashed more mud on the license plates, front and back. He bore his father-in-law no grudge, didn’t want him involved in an armed-robbery rap, and especially didn’t want any unexpected witness to come up with a handy license number to give the cops.
The carbine was no longer in the trunk. Now encased in a white florist’s box, it had been shoved under the front seat. The .45 lay in the glove compartment, with two tan poplin hats, the kind fishermen use. Joe had bought them in a camping-goods store on Second Avenue in the Village. He’d bought them a little too big for his head and Sam’s.
He’d also bought large, cheap sunglasses, the wraparound kind with thick frames. He played around at one point with the idea of paste-on moustaches, but decided they’d be too much trouble. The glasses and the hats, jammed down, brims drooping, would be enough.
He’d driven the car from East Tenth Street, bringing Sam with him. He’d expected the kid to be wearing his usual clothes, jeans and a thin body shirt, but Sam had surprised him. From somewhere he’d borrowed a very sharp suit, six-button, nipped in at the waist, wide shoulders, the color of Breyer’s vanilla ice cream, sort of a creamy white with a pattern of tiny black spots, like traces of vanilla bean. His trousers matched, and instead of sneakers he was wearing a pair of multicolored bump-toe, clog-heel boots that added four inches to his height. He’d chosen a white shirt with ruffled front and cuffs, and a wide orange tie. He looked terrific, Joe decided, so elegant he almost didn’t look like Sam at all.
Littlejoe hadn’t deviated that much from what he normally wore: the same shoes, a plain white business shirt like the kind he’d worn when he worked in the bank, an odd pair of chino slacks, and no jacket. Joe Anonymous. Not that he wasn’t capable of dressing up to an occasion. He’d once shown on a chilly autumn evening along the Christopher Street meat rack in short shorts, sandals, and a sleeveless underwear top with big holes. They’d talked about it for weeks.
Today, however, was business. Sam was dressed so elegantly that witnesses would be certain to spend a lot of time describing a Sam who never existed, at least not in those clothes. And Littlejoe would be Mr. Anybody from Anywhere.
Now for the bad news. The driver, Phil, one of the kids Sam crashed with in the Bedford Street pad, was not going to be in on the job. Littlejoe had learned this late last night when he and Sam, leaving Mick’s more reputable leather bar at about midnight, had seen a squad car stop across Christopher Street. The two young cops who jumped out of the car had proceeded to hassle Phil and another guy for a few fast minutes before packing them into the car and driving off. Exit Phil.
As if this weren’t bad news enough, the replacement driver, Eddie, was worse. Thinking back over last night, Littlejoe realized he’d panicked. They’d been so close. Losing Phil had stopped him from thinking straight, and in his panic he’d begged Mick for a reliable guy. Not from the organization, just somebody Mick vouched for. He’d been given a name, Eddie. And he’d told Mick the time and place of the rendezvous.
From the moment he’d seen Eddie walking toward them, a block away, Joe had known the choice was a mistake. For one thing, Eddie was big, damned near six feet tall, which he knew would spook Sam. Secondly, Eddie was beefy, a mixture of teen-age muscle and beer-belly flab acquired in the five years or so since he’d stopped being a teen-ager. And third, as it soon developed in talking to Eddie in the car, he was a no-good son of a bitch.
“No probs, man,” Eddie had said in a tone of utter confidence so fake that even to a stranger like Littlejoe it stuck out a mile. “I drive like a goddamned angel.”
“I don’t need no angel,” Joe said in a gruff voice, trying to reestablish dominance. “I just need a fucking dummy who keeps his fucking mouth shut and don’t drive through no fucking red lights. Think you can remember that?” he added insultingly.
With Eddie in the front seat, there was almost not enough room for Joe and Sam. Joe watched Eddie’s lumpy profile, the fatty chin, the thick neck, the tiny pig eye, the puffy ear. He looked like some kind of club palooka, good enough to take a few clouts on the chin and then dive for the money.
“Hey,” Eddie said weakly, the bully whose bluff has been called. “Listen, man, they ain’t no call to rank me that sharp, okay?”
“Whatever gave Mick the idea you could drive for me?” Joe bored in relentlessly.
The air in the car was growing hotter by the second. Eddie turned his beefy hands palms up. “All he told me, this was a heavy caper and you needed a heavy driver.”
“Heavy, not fat.”
“Shit, man, that ain’t fat,” Eddie responded, almost in a whine. He pummeled his belly several times, and Joe watched the shudders traverse his flesh in jellying ripples. Another five years and this would drip with meat like Tina.
Sam groaned softly, almost under his breath. “If that ain’t fat,” he muttered, “then it’s shit.”
Eddie turned to face them with a scraped-together show of bravado. “What the fuck is this, the U.S. Marine Corps? You wan’ a driver, you got a driver.”
Littlejoe and Sam greeted this with glum silence. All he needed, Joe thought, was a slow-witted dumdum at the wheel. The plan was split-second and the one who needed to follow it second by second was Joe himself. Eddie had only to drive, wait, and drive again. The responsibilities were 99 percent on Littlejoe, where they belonged.
“Tell me again what you do, Eddie.”
“Like, I drop you guys at the bank when you tell me, I mean, where you say, and, like, you know, keep on driving around the block and park behind the bank and keep the motor going and just cool it till you show.”
“And what happens when we show in back of the bank?”
“I mean, I wait till you’re in the car, right, and then I like take off for Queens Boulevard, west to Horace Harding, then you tell me my next move.”
Joe glanced at his watch. Two thirty. He got out of the stifling car and stood in the hot sun for a moment. This was another scorcher, today. The sky was cloudless. New York couldn’t expect a drop of rain. The temperature had been climbing all morning, from eighty overnight to ninety at the moment. Ninety-five was forecast. Littlejoe leaned forward, squeegeed his forehead with a finger, snapped the finger toward the sidewalk, and sent a spray of sweat droplets onto the cement. Th
ey vanished almost at once.
He stood by the driver’s window. “Start it up. Get the air conditioning going. We don’t have to die while we’re waiting.”
He watched with a certain distaste as Eddie fumbled with the Mustang’s controls and finally got it started and adjusted the levers to produce cool air inside the car. Then Joe walked around to the opposite door and got in. They rolled up the windows as the cool air started to flow. In a few minutes, the three of them sitting on the front seat, they began to feel almost comfortable. Joe checked the time. Two thirty-five.
“Okay, Eddie. Take this street to the Boulevard. Not fast. Just a nice average slow speed. Watch the lights.”
The Mustang took off with a jackrabbit start, then settled down. They reached Queens Boulevard and turned right. Two forty.
Littlejoe indicated the next turn after a mile of careful driving. Eddie could handle a car, but he was jumpy. A car cut in on him from the left-hand lane, and he jammed on his brakes so abruptly that both Joe and Sam lunged forward until their faces almost hit the dashboard. “Easy!”
Two forty-five.
They turned left off the Boulevard. In the distance Littlejoe could see the big five-story building that housed the bakery. The one-story bank building hadn’t come into view yet. He watched Eddie’s face as they waited through a full, long red light. Something was perking inside the tub of lard. Cool he wasn’t. Sam, on the other hand, was ice. His profile was completely still. Nothing moved but his eyes, which shifted slowly now and then from the traffic to his watch.
Two fifty.
So much depended on the timing of the entry, Littlejoe reminded himself. Too early and the damned guard would keep the door open long enough for one more customer. Too late and he’d give them a hassle as they tried to enter. And the guard was the only one with a gun, wasn’t he?
Joe could see the bank now and, across from it, the tavern where he’d sat at this time yesterday and had his brainstorm, the idea of moving up the whole job one week to avoid all the loose ends that were going to trip him up. Another red light. Eddie had started to drive so slowly now that a cop might stop him as a menace to traffic.
Two fifty-five.
Joe handed Sam his hat and glasses and put on his own. They looked at each other and laughed. He reached into the glove compartment and handed Sam a nine-slug magazine. He watched the kid tuck it away in his jacket pocket. Then he gave him the .45 automatic, blue steel, engraved wooden plates on the butt, a motto in Italian on a curved bunting held in an eagle’s beak. “Honore e patria.” Shit, yes.
Two fifty-seven.
The Mustang came to a halt at the curb near the bank. The carbine, in its long, flat white cardboard box, now lay across Joe’s knees. There was no string or ribbon on the box.
Now Joe opened the car door. The two of them left the dusty Mustang and moved without haste to the bank door. From the inside, the black guard was also moving toward the door. Their intentions were opposite, as were their movements.
Littlejoe pushed open the door and ushered Sam in ahead of him. The kid had tucked the flat Colt into his waistband and buttoned his jacket over it, but the bulge was obvious to Littlejoe. He carried the white florist’s box under his arm, negligently. Both of them were inside by the time the guard reached the door.
Three.
Littlejoe glanced around the bank. Not a single customer. Great break! He watched the guard lock the door. He was a short, chunky Negro well past sixty, with unevenly gray hair and a face that had been punished over the years, perhaps in the boxing ring. He walked in a funny way, ducklike, as if his joints hurt.
Past the guard, Littlejoe watched the grimy Mustang pull away from the curb and disappear along the street. If he’d been the religious kind, this would have been the moment for praying that Eddie kept his cool and followed the plan to the letter. It was time now for Littlejoe and Sam to do their part.
Sam had gone up to a glass-topped table, as agreed on, and was messing around with a bank pen and some deposit slips. Joe moved quickly behind the guard. He shifted the box top to let the muzzle of the carbine peek out. It looked like the mean little eye of a pig, or the crazy eye of a caged ape. He let the guard see it.
Three five.
Terrible things were happening to the guard’s face. It had gone blank at first on seeing the muzzle. Now, as Joe unsnapped the guard’s holster and removed his .38 Police Positive, the man’s eyes turned up in his head, showing a rim of white and pink. He seemed about to faint. Joe dropped the guard’s revolver in the white box.
Sam glanced at the two of them, kept on playing with papers. None of the bank employees had bothered to look up yet. They probably wouldn’t, Joe figured, until some unusual noise was made.
Three seven.
Joe went to the Venetian blind in the corner and lowered it to the sill of the window. Then he reached inside the florist’s box and brought out a spray can of black paint. He turned to the camera over the front door and covered the lens with a blast of black. As he moved toward the remaining television camera, a balding man seated at one of the bank desks looked up with a practiced smile. “Can I hel . . . ?”
His mouth stayed open as Littlejoe squirted the second camera lens, opaqueing it. Then he dropped the spray can onto the carpeted floor and laid the white box on the man’s desk. He lifted out the carbine and worked its bolt. In the sudden silence, the click was deafening. He glanced at Sam, who brought out the .45 and aimed it at the guard.
The smile died on the balding man’s face. “What?”
“Okay,” Littlejoe said, “this is a stickup.”
One of the tellers let out a shrill yip. Joe swiveled the carbine on her. “Do that one time more and you get it in the guts.” Again he trained the gun on the man at the desk, who seemed to be the manager.
“No alarms. No funny stuff. Nobody presses the Holmes button or you get it between the balls and the bellybutton, twice, and these are dumdum slugs. Your colon will be sprayed all over this lobby.”
The man started to raise his hands over his head and get to his feet at the same time. “Hands down!” Joe snapped. “No problems, shithead, no smart moves or you get it anyway.” He shoved the muzzle of the carbine into the man’s gut and watched his eyes bug in pain. He looked a little like Don, come to think of it. Not exactly the same, but that same banky way all these middle-aged guys got after a while. This one seemed calmer, however.
“Tell the people,” Joe commanded.
“Uh, look,” the manager began in a raised voice, “you can see what’s happening. Nobody press any alarms, please. This man seems to know the routine. I see he’s drawn the blind. He’ll kill me if any of you do anything he doesn’t like. So, please . . .” He ran out of words.
Littlejoe nodded encouragingly. “Nice work. Tell them the rest.”
“The, uh . . . ? Oh. Look, people, clear out your cash drawers and put the money on the counters.” The manager’s eyes darted this way and that, as if making sure this command was being obeyed with good discipline. Joe contented himself for the moment with watching him. He had the kind of face that gave off its own warning signs.
Sam moved quickly along the counters, scooping up the money in a wastebasket, which he brought to Joe. “Keep your eye on the guard,” Joe warned him. “He’s gonna faint or something stupid. He’s an old guy.”
“He has a bad heart,” the manager cut in.
“Shoulda thought of that before he got this job,” Joe said. He upended the wastebasket on the manager’s desk. Tens and twenties, loose and in wrapped packs, slid out. “Now, this is the important part, Mr. . . . uh . . . ?” Joe looked questioningly at the manager.
“Boyle.”
“Mr. Boyle, this is where you star. I want you to go over this cash and pick out the bundle of marked money. Then I want you to show me the markings, so there’s no doubt.”
The manager frowned. “It’s not that easy.”
“That’s why I picked you for the job.” The
muzzle of the carbine buried itself an inch in Boyle’s abdominal flab.
“Right.” He had a round, easy-going sort of face, Littlejoe noted: the kind of guy who might sing in the church choir or maybe captain the bowling team, typical Irish face with the long upper lip and big chin and fuzzy eyebrows.
“Here.” Boyle handed over a packet of twenties. “See this here, next to the signature?” As if patiently teaching an employee a lesson, he produced a loose twenty and showed Littlejoe that the small green dot next to the Secretary of the Treasury’s signature was only on the special packet of bills.
“That’s the only pack that’s marked?” Joe asked.
“The only one. Now, look. You have a lot of money here, maybe ten grand. It’s what you came for. We cooperated. We didn’t give you any trouble. We played your rules. Now you’re leaving, right?”
Joe eyed him for a moment. Boyle didn’t seem to be kidding. He looked as if he couldn’t wait for them to leave but was determined to be polite till the bitter end. Littlejoe rummaged around in the piles of money.
“Chickenfeed, Boyle. There’s maybe four grand here, if that.” Nobody spoke. “Mr. Boyle,” Joe said, drawling out the man’s name as if it was something shamefully amusing. “I think it’s time we visited the vault.”
“The v—” Boyle’s voice choked off in mid-word. He nodded miserably.
“Everybody out from behind the counter,” Joe called. He waited till they had formed a small group near him in the lobby. Then he moved slowly past the bank employees. There were three of them, all women, two tellers under thirty and one older woman, not bad-looking, who had been working at another desk, using an adding machine.
Joe turned to Sam. “They don’t look natural from outside,” he said. “Move them toward the back, behind that floor sign there. The guard too. Never mind his heart. Keep them all back there, sort of out of sight. You stand behind them so nobody sees you from the sidewalk. This won’t take long.”
