by Patrick Mann
Moretti forced his face to remain unmoved. Typical New York smart-ass bystander. Everything was a joke. Well, wasn’t it?
“Go get ’em, Sheriff!” another civilian yelled.
“This town ain’t big enough for both of yez!”
Goddamned half-wit jokers, Moretti thought. Where everything’s a joke, nothing’s serious. Well, wasn’t it? What was so serious about a twenty-year cop with a wife and three kids risking his ass to get three dumbbell bandits off a hook their own greed had hung them on? Was that serious? Shit, it was to laugh.
He could see the man in the chinos move toward the door. The revolver in his belt looked like a .38 cop gun, probably lifted off the bank guard. But where the hell had he gotten that carbine? What the hell kind of arsenal did he have in there?
The asphalt plucked at his heels. He could feel the sweat flowing down his sides, down his forehead. A drop gathered at the tip of his nose. How could anybody take this seriously, he thought. Except maybe this weirdo with the carbine.
Anybody had to take a carbine seriously, Moretti told himself. It was ten times as accurate as a handgun. Keep babbling, he thought. Keep the old brain idling in neutral. Don’t think about too much, because it wouldn’t help. Gurnischt hilfen, bubbele.
He reached the curb in front of the bank.
“Ain’t you the new schoolmarm?” some clown yelled.
“String ’em up, Marshal!”
The man in the chinos lifted the carbine across his chest, as if doing “Port Arms” by the manual. He was old enough to be a vet, Moretti noticed. Vietnam vet meets Korea vet; object: homicide.
Moretti turned very slightly to check on the position of his men. He had snipers on several rooftops, as did the Feebies. He could now see his own reflection clearly in the glass front of the bank, and, without even trying, he could see that Baker was standing behind him in the doorway of the insurance office, holding a walkie-talkie in his hand. The son of a bitch was not above ordering his snipers to cut loose, even if they got Moretti by so doing.
The sergeant walked across the sidewalk and stood a foot in front of the glass door. His man in chinos had stopped in almost the same position inside the door. “Can you hear me?” Moretti called.
The man nodded.
“Loud and clear, sweets!” someone in the audience called out.
Moretti cleared his throat and pitched his voice as loud as he could. “There are a dozen sharpshooters zeroed in on us,” he shouted. “They have orders to hold their fire.” He paused. “To hold their fire,” he repeated even more loudly, hoping the goddamned message sank in. “Nobody is going to shoot,” he went on then. “I’m your protection. They can’t shoot while I’m here. Now, I don’t ask much. I just want you to open that door a crack so we can have a private parley. Okay?”
The man with the carbine blinked. He seemed rooted to the spot. Moretti was afraid to say any more. He’d warned off the snipers, he hoped, no matter what Baker told them. More to the point, he’d put Baker on notice not to give the order to fire. Most of what he’d shouted was directed at the law, not this poor creep standing on the other side of the door.
“Just open it two inches,” Moretti said at last. “So we can talk like two human beings, instead of barking at each other.”
The man with the carbine reached in his pocket and brought out a key. He inserted it in the lock. Then, with a dramatic gesture, something like Errol Flynn swinging a saber, he threw the door wide open and held it that way with his toe.
“Speak your piece,” he said.
A loud cheer went up from the crowd.
Moretti listened until it had died down. “Can I come inside?” he asked in a low, confidential voice. “You saw I’m not armed.”
“Stay out there.” The man’s eyes took in the television cameras. There were six of them now, with lenses of various lengths, all focused on the confrontation in the doorway. The man snapped an order over his shoulder. “Sam, kill the crying broad if anything happens to me. If I go down, kill everybody. Including Eddie.”
“A pleasure,” the dude in the ice-cream suit called back.
Moretti watched as the man put down the carbine. He pulled the .38 out of his waistcoat and laid it on the bank floor next to the long gun. Then, squinting into the sun but remembering to smile, he stepped out into camera range.
The crowd went insane. Shouting, catcalls, cheers, screams, and strange barking noises filled the street. Moretti saw a white van pull in behind the crowd at one end and start selling cold drinks and Popsicles.
“That was a smart move,” he told the man in the chinos. “Let’s try and make a few more.”
“You Moretti?”
“Yeah. What’s your name?”
He hesitated. Then: “The bank people know it anyway. It’s Littlejoe.”
Moretti eyed him up and down, referring to his short size without using words. “Why don’t I call you Joe,” he said. “Here’s where we stand, Joe. I figure you have three women, Boyle, and the guard inside. You and what’s-his-name, Sam, and the big guy are going to get out of this smooth and easy. They do what you tell them. Sam’s not that hard to handle, is he? So he’ll do it when you tell him to drop the Colt automatic and come out here. You got that much control of him, right?”
“Bullshit,” Joe snapped back, “It isn’t going to happen that way.”
Moretti put on a disturbed and worried face. “There’s no other way you’re going to make it, Joe. You just have to trust me.”
“Shit to that. The only thing keeping your killers from mowing me down is that Sam will chill the broads inside. That’s all. It don’t look good in the papers for the cops to cause the death of broads. So you’re holding fire now. The minute Sam would drop that gun, your people would chop me to shreds.”
“Without hitting me?” Moretti demanded in an aggrieved tone. “Joe, I have put my ass and my immortal soul on the line. You better believe that if they open up, I go with you, mincemeat special.”
Someone in the crowd with a high, cracked voice shouted: “May I have the next dance?”
“Waltz me around again, Willie,” another voice chimed in.
Moretti glowered. He was distantly related to Willie Moretti, the New Jersey Mafia don who had handled Sinatra’s early career. He hated the name Willie because it stirred up people’s memories, especially those of reporters smelling an exclusive. The other Moretti had gone off his nut from paresis and had been hit by his own men for the good of the cause. It was this kind of ancient history, spiced by the Sinatra connection, that might lead a reporter to dig into it.
“Never mind those clowns,” Moretti told Joe. “They got nothing better to do on a hot day but fry their tonsils yelling smart-ass cracks. Just listen to what I’m telling you, Joe. At this point I am the only friend you have in this world.”
“Some friend. You just want my scalp on your belt.”
“Wrong. I’m here to keep everybody alive. Including you and Sam.”
“What about him?” Joe pointed behind Moretti at Baker. “The undertaker there. He your boss?”
“No way. He’s FBI. They shoot first and sort it out second. You want him in charge of this party? It’s easy. Just fight me all the way, make a monkey out of me, and the FBI takes over. That’s your death sentence, Joe. I’m your ticket to staying alive.”
“What’s so great about that?”
“How can you ask such a question. You Catholic?”
Joe frowned. “Hah.”
“You Italian?”
“Nah.”
“Don’t shit a paisan’, Joey.”
Joe turned to face the other battery of cameras. “What do you call staying alive, Moretti? Seven to fifteen for armed robbery?”
“You a first offender?”
“Yeah.”
“Vietnam vet?”
“Yeah.”
“It won’t go bad with you, not if you surrender now,” Moretti promised him.
Joe puckered his mouth. �
��Kiss, kiss.”
“What the hell’s that for?”
“I like to get kissed whenever I’m getting fucked.”
“No cheap jokes. We got enough comedians watching us.”
“Anyway,” Joe mused, more to himself than to Moretti, “Sam won’t buy the deal. He’d kill every one of them and shoot himself if he thought he was going back to jail.”
“He’s done time? That’d go rough for him.”
“More than time. They buggered him so bad he landed in the hospital.”
Moretti threw out his arms, palms up. “Ma, che cosa? Jail is like that. I don’t run jails.”
“You just fill ’em.”
“What do you want, Joe? You should go free and get a medal for this?”
Joe thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No deal.”
“It’s your only deal.”
“No, I got another.” Moretti watched Joe’s eyes dart this way and that, as if he were thinking furiously. The detective recognized Joe as having the worst kind of mind for a cop to outguess. Joe didn’t think straight. He was a fantasist and an improviser.
“No,” Joe repeated, “I got another, Moretti. Maybe to you it looks like I heisted a bank, right?”
“Yeah, you could sort of put it that way.”
“Let me put it a different way. Suppose I told you I hijacked a plane that happens to look like a bank.”
“What?”
“Suppose I told you that five bank people in there are dead, one by one, unless you give us a million in cash, a safe conduct to Kennedy Airport, and a plane, with a crew, ready to take off.”
“For where?”
“Cuba.”
“They’d throw your ass in the clink as soon as you land.”
“Algeria.”
“Joe,” Moretti pleaded, “you’re way behind the times. Nobody gives skyjackers sanctuary any more.”
“Then we use chutes. I jumped once in Nam. It ain’t that hard.”
“That’s no deal, Joe, it’s suicide.”
“Shift your head into a different gear, Moretti. Stop thinking bank heist. Start thinking hijack. Think kidnap. Think ransom. Think hostages. Think getaway. Then you’re on my wavelength.”
Moretti watched Joe’s eyes dance with excitement. Joe kept turning this way and that, as if to give every camera a chance at a full-face shot and a profile. He’s a lens louse, Moretti thought. He’s high on publicity. And the goddamned TV people would just love to give it to him. They deserve each other.
He stepped back from Joe whose face instantly registered alarm. “Stick close, Moretti.”
“I just don’t want to hide you from the cameras.”
“Tell them I’ve got a deal to offer. Let the whole town know.” Joe’s voice went up slightly with excitement. “Shit, the whole country’s watching this, right?”
“Don’t forget satellite relay to Europe.” Moretti glanced around. He saw the cameraman with the creepy-peepie. “Hey, you! Is that a color camera?”
The TV man, startled, let the lens’ snout dip. “Uh, yeah.”
“Come over here. Where’s the guy with the mike?” Moretti looked around him. “You over there, from Channel Four, is this your cameraman? So let’s have the mike. It’s an announcement.”
The sound man, holding a Nagra recorder by a suitcase strap, brought over his microphone. “What is it, chief?”
“Detective Sergeant Moretti. We have five hostages inside there, two men and three women. They’re being held at gunpoint by a man who won’t hesitate to kill them. He’ll do whatever this man tells him. Does that explain why we haven’t moved as fast as we wanted to in this case?” He noted that Joe was edging closer to the camera.
“This man here calls himself Littlejoe,” he said. “He has a plan to save the lives of the hostages. He doesn’t have my approval. He doesn’t have Police Department approval. This is his own idea, and I want you to see what we’re up against here, why we’re somewhat paralyzed in handling this.”
Moretti stepped back. The camera and microphone centered now on Joe. He brushed his hair sideways and gave a tentative smile.
“We have four non-negotiable conditions,” he said. “One: a million dollars in cash, no bills larger than twenties. Two: safe passage to JFK airport. Three: a plane gassed and ready for transatlantic flight. Four: a crew no larger than three. Oh, I forgot. Five: My wife is to be brought here to the bank before we leave. She’s going with me. She uses her maiden name. It’s Lana Lee, and she lives down in the Village on Bleecker Street.”
He stopped. The camera’s red light was still on. The microphone was still extended. Moretti cleared his throat. “Anything else?”
Joe moved toward the door of the bank. The three other men moved with him. “As soon as those conditions are met, we’ll release all hostages but two. They go with us on the plane. No sense taking chances.”
He darted inside the glass door, shoved it closed, and locked it. It happened so fast that the cameraman lost him in his finder and had to content himself with filming Moretti’s face. The detective hoped nothing showed. He stood there, breathing the yeasty smell of fresh bread and wondering whether he’d salvaged his chances for a lieutenancy or not.
14
Littlejoe stepped back a pace from the front door of the bank and stared out through the Herculite glass to the street beyond. The cop stood there as if he couldn’t make up his mind what to do next. The cameraman and the sound man looked to take a cue from Moretti, and got none. Hot shit! Really threw a monkey wrench into their plans!
Didn’t expect anything that big, Joe thought. Figured me for just another two-bit heist guy without any . . . any . . . what the hell was the word? Without scope. Right, scope! As if you could earn Littlejoe’s rep without being something pretty fucking imaginative.
“Mister,” he heard Marge say behind him, “now you really are in the soup.”
He turned on her. “Listen, you people—”
Boyle shook his head. “I told you, take the money and run. You’d have been miles away and five thousand richer. No, you have to make a grab for the big stuff. Now where are you?”
“He has no plan,” Marge pointed out. “He never did have. ‘Let’s just rob a bank.’ That’s a plan?”
“I had a great plan,” Littlejoe burst out. “Think big? I thought huge! It would’ve worked except the motherfucking money wasn’t here the way it was supposed to be.”
Marge frowned. “I told you, I have young girls back here.”
“Fuck!” Joe yapped. “Shit! Piss!” He drew a breath and tried to hang cool. “What am I arguing with you for? You’re not even people any more. You’re hostages. You’re our ticket to freedom. Right, Sam?”
“Right on, baby.” Sam’s eyes were bright. Littlejoe couldn’t tell if it was the prospect of splitting a million dollars or of killing a few hostages. He had thought he knew what made Sam tick, but now he suspected the kid had mysteries inside him that no one had seen.
The telephone began to ring again. Joe turned to see if Moretti was out in the hot street, broiling under the afternoon sun, but the street was empty. The dumb cop was probably trying to get at him again by phone. And now was no time to talk to cops. He’d said his say. He’d thrown down the ultimatum. There was nothing more to talk about.
Ring. Ring.
But there was a lot to think about, a lot to plan, soft spots in the thing that had to be protected. For instance, the walk from the bank to the cars that would take them to the airport. For instance, getting into the plane. Food on the plane? A real crew, not some FBI killers? Christ, a million details to try to expect, to out-think, to plan ahead for. Littlejoe vs. The Universe!
Ring!
Littlejoe snatched up the phone. “I warned you, shitface,” he rasped, “keep bugging me and you start getting dead ones thrown out the door.”
There was a pause at the other end. “I . . . uh, I just called,” a man’s voice began, “to ask Ellen what time she’s get
ting off today.”
“What?”
“Is Ellen there?”
“Who wants to know?”
“This is her husband.”
Joe closed his eyes for a second. He didn’t need this kind of distraction. And how did he know the guy was legit? But what the hell could he do over the phone with the crying broad anyway? So let him talk.
“Hey, Ellen,” Littlejoe called. “Your hubby on the pipe. Happy-happy!”
She made her way so slowly and with such diffidence toward him that Joe realized she had been almost permanently scared out of her wits, mostly by Sam. Those eyes of his could do the job all by themselves, even without the heavy, menacing .45.
“Hey, fella,” Joe told the caller, “you got your TV on?”
“No, not yet.”
“Turn it on, man. You’ll get a hell of a surprise.” He handed the phone to Ellen. “Tell him when you’re getting home, baby. And try not to get the fucking phone wet, will you?”
Joe walked back to the street windows. The mob had quieted down a bit, but that was probably because it was so damned hot out there. Another ice-cream truck had pulled up. Now both ends of the street were being serviced with soft drinks, cones with and without sprinkles, candy, and possibly popcorn. Any minute some fucking pizza wagon would show up. There was something for everybody in these things, Joe reflected. He was creating plenty of extra income for people, wasn’t he?
“Sir,” he heard Ellen call.
Nobody had ever called him sir before. He turned slowly, almost majestically. “My husband wants to know when you think you’ll be through.” She held up the telephone as if to prove that it, not she, was the source of this idiocy.
“Through?” Littlejoe considered the question thoroughly, despite its lunatic coloration. “I figure if the cops play ball, we should be on our way in three, four hours. But you’re going to the airport, baby. And you’re gonna take a plane trip. Don’t tell him that. Just say a few hours.”
“He says a few more hours, Dennis.”
She listened silently, her eyes on Joe as the authority, the source of all knowledge. “He wants to know should he start dinner.” Her eyes had gone so wide that Joe for a moment thought she had been struck blind. He realized that she was rigid with fear, and wondered how anybody could get that frightened. She stood there like a board on which two eyes had been painted.
