by Patrick Mann
He followed Boyle into the rear of the bank. He’d expected a smallish vault, hardly more than a walk-in, but he hadn’t expected one quite this small. Evidently the only business the branch did was consumer stuff. The bakery payroll was probably its only big commercial account.
“Okay, Boyle. The payroll cash.”
Boyle’s wide, easy mouth opened, then closed. “Ellen,” he called. “Bring your key.”
A thin girl almost as young as Sam appeared after a moment. She held up one key while Boyle removed a similar one from his pocket. He nodded to Ellen, who inserted her key in one of the two locks on the vault door.
“Easy,” Joe said. “Don’t turn that key till his is in the other lock.”
Boyle nodded. “You really do know the routine.” He started to fit his key into the lock. Nothing about his face or his movement told Joe anything unusual except that Boyle was moving slowly to avoid upsetting him.
Just as the key touched the steel of the lock, Littlejoe’s arm shot out. “Son of a bitch!” he yelped, grabbing the key.
He held it under Boyle’s nose. “You motherfucker, this is the spur key. Did you really think you could get away wi—”
Boyle’s eyes went wide with horror. “Christ! I didn’t mean to do that. Honest. Look.” He pulled out an identical key. “No spur. It was a mistake, I swear it was.”
Littlejoe pocketed the key with the almost invisible projection, like a spur, that would have triggered an alarm if used. “Boyle,” he said, “you’re cute. You’re gonna cute yourself to death. Now put in the right key and turn them both at the same time. No more comical stuff.”
Boyle heaved a heavy sigh. “I’m not kidding, it was a mistake. You have to believe me. All I want is to give you the money and say good-bye. Nothing personal,” he added, grinning weakly.
He twisted both keys simultaneously and, turning a handle, swung the polished steel gate wide open. Littlejoe could hear Ellen crying softly, but his eyes remained on Boyle. Once cute maybe twice cute. “The payroll, Boyle.”
“Okay.” The manager stepped into the vault. “I don’t know how you knew, but you just hit the jackpot.”
“Fucking ay right I did.”
Boyle rummaged around inside a plain steel cabinet. “Ellen? Where did you have Wells Fargo put the—” His light blue eyes looked up from the cabinet at the girl, and when they did, his voice stopped short. “Ellen?”
She started to sob audibly. “There isn’t any money.”
“What?” Littlejoe shouted. He was aware that Boyle had also shouted the same question at the same time.
Now the girl began to break up. “Th-the delivery was ch-changed, Mr. Boyle. Th-they changed it l-last week. Don’t you r-remember, Mr. Boyle. Oh, dear God, there’s a pain—” She broke off, clutching at her left breast, her eyes wide.
“That’s right,” Boyle said. “Delivery’s Friday morning now.”
“No money?” Littlejoe yelled at him.
Ellen slumped to the floor of the vault, sobbing and choking on her sobs. “Oh, sweet Jesus, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Boyle.”
Joe watched her for a moment. She was too young for this sort of hysterics. He nudged her with the toe of his boot. “Calm down,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”
“She’s afraid you’re going to shoot us,” Boyle explained.
Littlejoe turned on him. “What the hell am I gonna do with your chickenshit four grand? Is that the best this rotten bank can come up with? Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am gonna shoot somebody.”
They stared at each other, Boyle’s forehead damp with sweat. Abruptly, from somewhere in the distance, a telephone began to ring.
9
Joe brought the carbine muzzle up very slowly until it pointed directly at Boyle’s navel. “You’re gonna do this right,” he said then. “You’re gonna answer the phone, find out who it is, put him on hold, and tell me all about it. Then I’ll tell you what to say next.”
Boyle swallowed. His beefy throat almost concealed the movement of his Adam’s apple, Littlejoe noticed. He jerked the carbine left and marched Boyle out into the lobby.
The phone rang again. Again.
At once Joe saw that things had changed. Sam was no longer cool. He had his automatic at his side, but he was holding it tightly and his trigger finger was white at the knuckle.
“It’s okay,” Joe told him. “It’s just a routine call.”
Boyle walked to his desk and picked up the telephone. “Boyle speaking.” His glance was riveted on Littlejoe. “Who? Lou? Hold it a second, Lou. I’ll be right with you.” He punched the “Hold” button on his telephone. “It’s Lou.”
Littlejoe grinned. “You’re a real comic,” he retorted. “It’s like a TV sketch. Lou who? Lou what-does-he-want?”
Boyle pulled in a long breath of air. “Lou Bagradian from across the street.” He started to point, then kept his hands on the desk. “The insurance office across the street.”
Littlejoe turned very casually. At this distance no one in the insurance office could see him, nor he them. But the sign did read INSURANCE, and he could even distinguish a Bagradian among the names gold-leafed on the glass door. “See what he wants.”
Boyle punched another phone button. “Okay, Lou. We’re sort of busy here. Sorry I kept you waiting. What?” His eyes crawled sideways to watch Joe again. “No, no trouble.”
Joe felt a chill along his shoulder blades. He stepped closer until the carbine muzzle dug into Boyle’s ear as he sat at the desk. “Be very good, Boyle,” he murmured softly.
“Just the usual end-of-the-month routine.” He paused and moistened his lips twice with his tongue. “Extra guys? You must mean the two fellas here from headquarters in Manhattan.”
Joe nodded slowly up and down. He shoved the muzzle a bit harder against Boyle’s ear. The steel was digging into the grayish hairs there.
“What do they want? It’s bank business, Lou. Do I ask you questions about the insurance business?”
“Systems,” Littlejoe hissed softly.
Boyle produced a poor imitation of a laugh. “No, Lou, they’re from systems, that’s all. Systems? Well, it’s, uh, confidential. Right, Lou. No, no trouble. Thanks for calling. So long, Lou.”
As he hung up the telephone, a bead of perspiration rolled down Boyle’s snub nose and dropped on the gray linoleum top of his desk. He sighed and glanced up at Joe again. “That’s okay now,” he said.
“Not if I know Lou,” the older woman said. She was standing with the rest of the bank employees behind a lobby sign some fifteen feet back. Behind her rather plump face, Littlejoe could see Sam’s tight, anxious look. “That Lou is nosy,” the woman was saying.
“Yeah?” Joe put the carbine in its white florist’s box and drew out the guard’s .38. He tucked it in his belt. “What’s he likely to do?”
The woman eyed him. She wasn’t bad, Joe noticed: nice tits and good figure for a broad about his mother’s age. Not elderly, he corrected himself, but closing in on forty. They really loved it at that age, didn’t they. But why was she trying to be helpful? “I asked you something, cunt.”
She blinked. “I have these young girls working here. You’ll have to watch your language, mister.”
“Am I? Are you the one who’s gonna make me?”
“I’m trying to help,” she said then. “Call me Marge, not—not that other word.”
“You never heard it before?”
She tried a smile. “Not recently.” Then, quickly, “What I mean about Lou. Look.” She indicated the street outside with a nod of her head.
“Oh, God,” Boyle groaned.
Littlejoe watched a chubby man in a white short-sleeve shirt, eyes squinting against the hot sun, making his way from the insurance storefront across the street. He stopped at the midline to let some cars pass, then continued over the asphalt toward the bank door.
“I don’t believe this,” Boyle said. “Look at that moron.”
; “Okay, folks,” Littlejoe snapped. “I’m the one uses shitty language. But the guy standing behind you there with the automatic, he kills. I bark. He bites. Get your asses on the double into the vault, all except you, Marge. Stick around.”
“What about Leroy?” Marge asked.
“Leroy?”
“The guard.”
Joe walked behind her and jammed the .38 in her back. “Leroy waves Lou away. Says the bank’s closed. Right, Leroy?”
“Christ,” the guard mumbled. He sat up straighter in his chair, but his face still looked panicky.
“You do that,” Littlejoe told him, “or Marge gets a slug from your gun right in the left ovary.”
“Lou can’t be handled like that,” Boyle said, getting up. “I’ll take care of him.”
Marge turned sideways. “Leave the ovaries alone, mister. You and I can just, uh, look at these ledgers here. Isn’t that what a systems man would be doing?”
The man in the white short-sleeve shirt was standing outside the door now. He shielded his eyes to squint through the sun’s glare and reflections into the bank lobby. Then he saw Leroy, flopped on a chair. He waved to the guard. When this failed to get a response, he rapped on the door.
“Get up, Leroy,” Joe called softly.
Leroy pulled himself to his feet and stood there shakily. Lou watched this for a moment, then kicked the door twice, impatiently. “Hey!” he called so loudly he could be heard through the tempered Herculite glass.
Boyle went to the door. On the way he took Leroy’s arm and removed the door key from his hand. “Sit down, Leroy.” He continued toward the door, fitted the key into the lock, and moved the huge sheet of glass a few inches. “Lou, we’re closed, you know that.”
“Is everything okay?” the man asked.
“I told you over the phone it was.”
“What’s with Leroy?”
“He’s not feeling well. Heart.”
“So where’s a doctor?”
“Lou, will you stop running my business for me?”
Littlejoe glanced behind him in the direction of the vault, where Sam had herded the two younger girls into a corner out of sight of the front lobby. All of them, Sam and the girls, seemed frozen in a kind of trance, their eyes on his gun, his eyes on their eyes. Littlejoe had never seen Sam like this before. He looked taller, more important. More of a man. And there was something strange about his face. What was it? Something new and sexy. He was smiling, that was it. For the first time since Littlejoe could remember, Sam was smiling.
“I didn’t like your tone of voice is all,” Lou was saying.
Joe turned quickly, watching past Marge’s face to the two men standing at the door. It was a contest, he saw, Lou wanting in, Boyle trying to keep him out.
“You’re sure it’s all right inside?” Lou asked.
“Absolutely fine. Just routine.”
Joe’s glance shifted to Sam. Not only was he smiling, but there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. It became suddenly clear to Littlejoe that Sam was starting to lose control. A little more of this back-and-forth with Lou and there would be some dead people.
“Mr. Boyle?” Joe called. “This ledger doesn’t check out.”
“What?” Boyle wheeled, startled.
“Can you come here a second and explain these entries?”
Boyle’s eyes, narrowed against the sun, widened now. “Right you are.” He turned back to the man in the white short-sleeve shirt. “Lou, I hate to close the door in your face, but you can see we’re busy.”
“Just as long as everything’s okay.”
“Everything’s okay.”
“You’re sure,” Lou insisted doggedly.
“Positive, Lou.”
“Okay, then.”
“Right. So long, Lou.”
Boyle waited until the chubby man had stopped holding the door open. He let the Herculite glass swing shut, turned the key in the lock, and moved stiffly back through the short lobby toward Littlejoe. It was only when he got within a yard that Joe could see how shaky Boyle was, face white with strain, dark indentations above his nostrils.
“Goddamned nosy Armenian busybody,” Boyle was saying.
“Okay,” Littlejoe said. “Trouble’s over.”
He waited for Sam to relax, but nothing in the kid’s rigid stance softened. The smile seemed to have been carved on his face. “Okay,” Joe told him, not wanting to use his name. “It’s okay now.”
One of the girls, the dark-haired one, Ellen, started to whimper again. “He’s going to kill us, Mr. Boyle,” she said.
“No he’s not.” Marge’s voice cut through with some authority. “Is he?” she asked Joe.
Joe came up to Sam and touched his gun arm, very gently. “Ease off, buddy.”
Slowly, Sam’s glazed eyes came to life. The smile disappeared. He slumped back against the wall. “That crying broad,” he said in an undertone which Ellen could hear, “if she don’t stop I’ll stop her the hard way.”
“No need to, baby,” Littlejoe said, keeping his voice light and easy. “We got our loot and we’re splitting as soon as I get the travelers’ checks.”
Sam blinked, but said nothing. Joe turned to Marge. “Bring me the whole supply of checks and the register books for them.”
“You don’t miss a trick, do you?”
“And my friend wouldn’t miss Ellen’s eyeball if you tried anything funny.”
He watched her move off toward a standing steel case with a combination lock on it. She twirled the lock and swung open the light steel doors. “Whadya mean?” Sam said then in a tight, choked voice. “Whadya mean, we got our loot?”
“Baby, we got every scrap of cash this joint’s holding.”
“Four fucking gees?”
“That’s it,” Joe agreed. “Plus maybe a grand in travelers’ checks. I have to destroy the register so they can’t put out an alert for the numbers, but the checks are as good as cash.”
“Five fucking gees?” Sam asked, his voice rising. “What happened to the hundred grand, Littlejoe?”
Joe blinked. They had agreed not to use each other’s names. He’d been so careful to keep from saying the word Sam, although it would have helped in keeping the kid calm. Now, in his nervousness, Sam had blown Littlejoe’s identity.
“Sam,” he said then with deliberate maliciousness, “the hundred gees was just talk. They won’t have the payroll cash till tomorrow. You wanna spend the night here or take the five grand and split?”
The two men stared at each other, Littlejoe trying to reassert his domination over Sam. But he could see that something was seriously wrong with the kid.
“Littlejoe,” he said, “maybe you don’t unnastand my problem.”
Joe glanced around him. He didn’t need an audience for this, but he couldn’t let them roam free. “We got no problem, baby,” he told Sam, grinning cheerfully. “We’re on top of this all the way.”
Sam’s head shook slowly from side to side. His normally grave expression was even glummer than usual. “You don’t unnastand,” he said, lowering his voice to a murmur. “You get copped for this, it’s a first offense. Not me, Littlejoe. They cop me, they throw away the key. I’m a three-time offender.”
“Nobody’s copping us,” Joe assured him. “We’re home free.”
“With five crummy gees.” Sam’s voice went even lower. “You get the point, Littlejoe? For my cut of peanuts, this job don’t make no sense. When you talked big loot, I figured, okay, that makes it worth trying.” His glance seemed to bore into Joe’s, as if trying to implant the idea by sheer willpower. “For my cut of a big score, okay, I take my chances. But this . . . man, this don’t make no sense no way.”
Littlejoe paused for a moment. He understood all too well what Sam was driving at, but the job was really over. The getaway was all that remained. Didn’t Sam’s brain pick that up? If he were anybody else, you could lean on him a little heavy and he’d snap back into line. But not Sam. Joe knew him
too well to think he could bulldoze him into obedience.
“What do you want from me, baby,” Joe asked softly. “There is no big score. The fucking Wells Fargo don’t deliver till tomorrow.”
“Don said—”
“Shit on Don. He—”
“Anyway,” Sam cut in, “why not wait for Wells Fargo?”
Joe eyed his prisoners and saw that, while all of them were listening closely, their eyes were elsewhere. Sam worried him now. He never interrupted someone talking to him. But evidently he was under such pressure that he wasn’t thinking or behaving normally.
“We can’t keep this whole crew quiet all night,” Joe said.
“We bust a few skulls. That quiets ’em.”
Out of the corner of his eye Joe could see that this suggestion went down poorly with the bank people. Actually, he thought now, Sam isn’t all that crazy. He whirled on Boyle so suddenly that the manager flinched.
“How much is Wells Fargo delivering?”
Boyle’s mouth twitched, his lower lip tucking under his front teeth. “Twenty thousand,” he said at last.
“Bullshit.” Joe moved up against Boyle’s belly, but kept his hand on the butt of the .38. “Your mouth was ready to say ‘fifty’ and you changed your mind.”
Boyle’s face went red. “Okay. Now you’re a mindreader.”
“Lip-reader,” Littlejoe said. He felt a sudden surge of elation and puckered his mouth inches from Boyle’s. “Kiss, kiss?” he said, imitating Lana’s act in the back room of the leather bar. He turned to Marge. “Only fifty grand?”
She nodded. “You can’t keep us here all night, mister. Some of these girls are going to crack under the strain.”
“Let ’em.” Joe turned back to Boyle. “When does the truck get here? No crap. Tell it straight.”
“Eight fifteen.”
Joe kissed Boyle’s cheek. “Good for you, Boyle. Next time it’s on the mouth.” He turned back to Sam. “Whatya think, baby?”
“You know, Littlejoe. I’m for it.”
“It’s only fifty. We split, say, fifty-five.”
Sam’s gun hand remained steady but his other turned palm up in a what-can-you-do gesture. “We’re here,” he said. “Let’s make it pay.”
