Tangier Bank Heist

by Sean McLachlan

  “Shadier by the day,” I said, ignoring the usual impressed ooohs and predictable comments about my line of work. “I’m looking for Pieter Vlamin.”

  “Who isn’t? He cleaned me out of a bundle,” a red-faced older man named Robert said. Robert was a retired mid-level executive from Ohio who spent most of his time drinking. He was a big, goofy looking guy with a bald head, ears that stuck out, and a round, babylike face that looked even more like a baby’s after he had a few snorts.

  “Got any idea where he might be?” I asked him.

  “If I did, I’d be there, with my hands around his scrawny neck! I lost so much I might have to go back to work.”

  “Damn, that’s tough. Got any leads?”

  “The oil companies and Saudi Arabia are hiring. I met some Arabs here on vacation who said they might get me a job.”

  “I have a hard time picturing you in Saudi Arabia,” Jane said.

  “Oil doesn’t have any alcohol in it!” someone else joked.

  I tried not to smile. Robert muttered under his breath and took another swig from his glass.

  “He stole from me too,” Libby said. She was the only other person in the crowd I recognized, Jane’s social circle being almost as big as Tangier itself. Libby Holman was a torch singer at some of the clubs around town, and a damn good one too. She had been a Broadway hit back in the Depression before marrying a millionaire who killed himself at a party a few years later. At least that was the ruling at her trial for his murder. She inherited a bundle and never had to sing again. But she loved to, and made a tour of the clubs just for kicks. She could still hit those notes. Melanie and I had been to a couple of her shows.

  “Did he get you for much?” I asked.

  “Five hundred,” she said, making a face.

  “Pesetas?” I asked.

  “Dollars.”

  “Ouch.”

  Chump change to her, but it’s still an insult.

  “If I had known what he planned to do last week when he came to my show, I’d have spat in his eye, him and his fat friends.”

  “Did he talk to you? Was that the last you saw him?”

  “Nah, he didn’t talk to me, but his friends did. Three big, fat Egyptian businessmen, or at least they said they were businessmen. Gave me the creeps. Got so fresh the bouncer threatened to 86 them.”

  This was interesting. “Egyptians, eh? Did you recognize them?”

  “No. Said they were in town for business. I didn’t want the kind of business they wanted with me, though, so I split.”

  “Did they tell you anything else?”

  “Just a bunch of smut that doesn’t bear repeating.”

  “The way you shimmy onstage who can blame the darkies for wanting a piece, har har,” Doug said.

  Libby gave him a derisive look. “Get bent, you mug.”

  Robert leaned in, wafting his boozy breath on me. “I never did trust that Pieter fella. Should have my head examined for putting money in that bank. You know I even helped that guy look for a house, and this is how he repays me!”

  “Pieter bought a house?”

  Robert shrugged. “Oh, I don’t think he ever bought one, but he was looking. You know my place, on the far side of the Mountain, practically in one of the Moorish villages. A heck of a drive to get here, but peaceful, real peaceful. Well, he was looking for something in my neighborhood or even further out. I showed him around the area a bit.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said. I didn’t know how it was interesting, but it sure was.

  “You know,” Robert said, warming to his subject. “I think that might be a clue right there. This all happened only a couple of weeks ago. I think he really was looking to buy a house. Then something happened that made him change his mind and he ran off with our money. That might be just the break you need.”

  “Maybe.” People were full of free advice on my cases, but Robert might actually have something there. “So what places did you show him?”

  “Back side of the Mountain, plus Jabila and a couple of villages further along the coast. He said he wanted something right by the sea, so we spent a bunch of time on the seaside road. Went all the way to the Grotto of Hercules. He didn’t know the area at all. Asked me all sorts of questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like good places for sailing, spots where he could build a house where the wind wouldn’t be so strong, that sort of thing. Plus I told him all about the good places to go fishing on the coast. You know I’m crazy about fishing.”

  “Robert, you just earned yourself a drink.”

  His face grew even redder as a childish smile spread across his face.

  Robert ordered a double vodka while I got another beer. Libby was having wine so I got her another glass too.

  Libby raised her glass high. “To the three detectives of Tangier, one for all and all for one!”

  Robert belted out a laugh and gulped down his vodka.

  “Some three detectives,” Doug said. “A lush, an easy girl, and a shrimp.”

  Libby glared at him. Robert slumped.

  I glared too. “Can it, bud. I took down bigger lugs than you in the service.”

  He laughed. “Were you even in the armed forces? I bet they didn’t allow a shrimp like you in the infantry. Probably got a 4-F or entertained with the USO as a midget juggler.” Doug boomed out a drunken laugh.

  I turned to him fully now. Silence settled on the bar.

  “No, I was in the tank corps. In Spain. I was knocking the turrets off Panzers when the rest of America was still selling Hitler arms and talking neutrality.”

  As Doug sputtered, I went on.

  “To answer your question, I was never in the American army. You see, after the Lincoln Brigade came home, we were treated like pariahs. Of course I was used to that already, but when America finally decided to take a side they wouldn’t let me enlist. They labeled me a ‘premature anti-fascist.’ Trust the government to come up with a line like that! Didn’t trust us in the ranks. We might get the men to start asking why they always had to fight while the bankers stayed home counting the profits.”

  “You’re talking like some anti-American red agitator!” Doug bawled. No one is quicker to take offense than an American when their myths are challenged.

  “You got the second part right, brother, but not the first. I love America. I love what it could be. I love what it claims it wants to be. But I sure as hell hate what it is.”

  Doug’s face turned from red to purple. He slammed a fist on the counter, making all the glasses clink.

  “You’re probably queer too, you louse!”

  Dean chuckled. “Kent, queer? No, his blood is as red as his politics. You should see his girlfriend. Lovely French girl. Runs a fine little cafe off the Grand Socco. Not as fine a place as this, of course. No place better than Dean’s. Now settle down, Doug. How about another beer?”

  Doug nodded. “He still seems queer to me. So what if he’s got himself a two-bit French whor—”

  My gun was out in a flash. Before I could even think about it I had the hammer cocked and had it aiming right between his startled eyes. Some people say I’m too quick to pull my gun. Actually, considering some of the people I had to deal with in my line of work, I’m the very picture of restraint.

  Doug obviously didn’t think so. He looked set to have a heart attack.

  “You ain’t never had a gun pointed at you, Mac?” I asked. “From all that trembling I’d say no. Guess you never saw combat. What did you do during the war?”

  “I-I was in the Navy!”

  “Doing what?”

  Doug shook all over. “I sailed on…I worked for the quartermaster depot in Charleston.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I uncocked the hammer and put the gun back in my shoulder holster. The guy took a big slug of his drink. The bar had gotten real silent. Only Dean was smiling. Scenes like this were good for business. Everybody came to Dean’s for a show, and to show of
f.

  “You wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in combat,” I told Doug. “Blowhards like you never do. I fought for the Royal Tank Regiment in the big one. They didn’t look too close at their volunteers’ pasts, so I was able to fight for them even if I couldn’t fight for my own country. In our training camp we had a tank driver like you. Always bragging, always boasting. Our first firefight he turned his tank around and drove off at top speed, the rest of his crew shouting and swearing at him to stop. Didn’t do any good. A Panzer hit the weak back armor and cracked it open like an eggshell. Three good men killed because of one cowardly loudmouth. If we had more men like you in the service, Doug, we’d all be speaking German now.”

  Paying Dean, I turned to leave. The silence held until I was two steps from the door.

  “You wouldn’t act so tough without that gun at your side!” Doug called to my back.

  The guy’s tone was meant to sound tough, but came out more like a whine.

  I stopped. Turned. He was off his bar stool now, standing tall and giving me a sneer. Desperate to regain his lost face.

  I passed by him on the way back to the bar, giving him my back while eying his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. I unbuckled my shoulder strap, removed it, and handed it to Dean. He took it with a knowing smile.

  Doug sauntered up to me. To say he towered over me would be an exaggeration because he was too drunk to stand straight, but he sure was a hell of a lot bigger. Probably had him slinging 50 pound bags of flour all day in the quartermaster’s depot.

  “That’s more like it,” he said. “Now I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget, you little—”

  My fist went into his stomach as fast as lightning. He folded like a pillow.

  That’s one of the advantages to being short. You have a straight shot for the gut.

  I left Dean’s Bar with another story for his collection, a smug smile on my lips, and a couple more unanswered questions about Pieter Vlamin.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Egypt kept coming up. Those Egyptian papers in Ronnie the Pusher’s apartment. That packet of Egyptian cigarettes in the bank office. And now three fat Egyptian businessmen partying with Pieter the week before he stole his own bank.

  Who could have been smoking those cigarettes? Not Ronnie the Pusher, he smoked Camels. Did Pieter smoke them? Or had those businessmen been to his office?

  There was an easy way to find out. I called Melanie.

  “Hey babe, when you talk to Pieter’s girls, ask what type of cigarettes he smoked.”

  “Um, all right. I talked to the others and they’ll pool together to give you twice your usual fee.”

  “My usual fee will be just fine.”

  “You pick up a trail?”

  “A faint one, but it’s got me sniffing like a bloodhound. Oh, did Pieter ever come into your place with some Egyptians?”

  “I don’t think so. Oh, I’ve made up a list of what everyone lost. I’ll give it to you the next time I see you.”

  “Thanks, baby. I’ll see you soon.” I hung up.

  It was the following morning, sunny and clear with a mild breeze waving the fronds of the palm trees. I had used the telephone at the exchange on Place de France, and from there I headed to Cafe Paris, hoping Sayyed would be there. Sayyed was one of my few Moorish friends, if a white man and Moor can ever really be friends. Most white people in town don’t even bother to try, but in my line of work having a few native connections can’t hurt.

  I was in luck. Sayyed sat outside. Like most cafes in Morocco, the Cafe Paris had outdoor seating along the sidewalk, with little wooden tables pushed against the wall and chairs on either side facing the street, shaded by a row of trees against which the boys leaned waiting for customers. The French consulate and the police station stood just on the other side of the plaza. The spot was perfect for people watching, which seemed to be the prime entertainment anywhere you went around the Mediterranean. The Cafe Paris lived up to its name with a sumptuous interior, but only people doing business or who wanted to listen to the radio sat in there. My business was on the street, and no radio was going to tell me what had happened to Peter Vlamin, or why he had killed Ronnie the Pusher.

  As I approached the cafe, one of the teens leaning against the trees made a circle with his fingers and shook it in front of me.

  “Mister Bob? Mister Bob?” he said.

  “Mister Bob yourself, kid. That’s what I did when I was your age.”

  My friend Sayyed (I can’t remember his last name) owned some shop somewhere. He made his son work it so he could spend his days sitting at the Cafe Paris, “looking for opportunities,” as he put it. Aging but not old, with gray hair beneath his fez and a stout body beneath his green djellaba, his sharp eyes caught me immediately as I came up the street.

  He pushed himself out of his chair with an audible “oof” and threw his arms wide.

  “Ah, Mr. Kent, my good friend!”

  He gave me an Arabic kiss on both cheeks, scraping off several layers of skin with his stubble.

  After the initial couple of minutes of asking after health and family, we got down to business. I pulled out the newspapers.

  “Can you take a look at these and tell me what they’re about?”

  “Ah, Al-Ahram, a fine paper. I don’t buy it much because it is imported and expensive.” He scanned a few pages and then looked up at me. “Is this for a case?”

  “Yes.”

  He clucked his tongue. “I have never heard of a bank disappearing in the night. So strange.”

  You might think I’d be surprised that Sayyed would know I was working on the case only a day after I took it on, but Tangier had a very efficient grapevine. Everyone knew everyone else’s business unless it was of the shadiest and most secretive kind. Gossip was the spice of life here. The only people who didn’t spend long hours each day in cafes gossiping were junkies like Bill or working stiffs who had to toil twelve hours a day just to feed their families. There were too damn many of those in the International Zone. That was something the Party needed to fix.

  Sayyed studied each paper carefully. For a time, I thought he might have forgotten my question. I ordered a mint tea cloudy with sugar like the Moors always make it, and waited. The natives lived by their own sense of time, and anyone who didn’t adjust to that could go mad here.

  At last he put down the papers and held up two fingers. “There are two points of similarity among all these editions. Two points of similarity,” he stressed. Sayyed was proud of his level of English. “Firstly, they all talk about the Suez crisis. And secondly, they all have detailed financial articles on how this will affect the Egyptian economy.”

  Well that was interesting. President Nasser had gotten into a fight with Britain about nationalizing the Suez Canal like he was nationalizing so much else in Egypt. The problem was, the Brits thought this broke their treaty and didn’t want to give it up. Nasser had stoked up the common people with fiery speeches about British colonialism and how the great powers wanted to steal Egypt’s wealth and doom her to a future of poverty. All that was true, but he left out the part about how he wanted to steal that wealth for himself and his little circle of cronies.

  Just because I’m a Communist doesn’t mean I believe every politician who calls himself one. Look at Stalin. The Devil incarnate. I’m a Trotskyite with leanings toward De Leonism, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, look it up. What that meant to me was that during the war I was speaking out against Stalin as an oppressor of the working man and murderer of his own people while the Allied propaganda portrayed him as the kindly “Uncle Josef.” It was all very confusing to my non-Communist friends.

  “Is this helpful, Mr. Kent?” Sayyed asked with an eager look. He reminded me a bit of Robert. Why was everyone so eager to help with my cases? They think being a detective is romantic or something. Mostly I just pound the pavement like some cub reporter, hoping for a scoop.

  “Yes it is, Sayyed. Thank you very mu
ch.”

  I wanted to get up and go, but of course that wasn’t possible. You don’t stop and have a quick chat with a Moor. You can wave from the opposite side of the street or shake hands and have a couple of minutes of conversation without sitting down, but as soon as your behind hits that chair, brother, you are in for the long haul.

  So I sat through an hour of conversation about Egyptian politics, British literature, and the singing of Umm Kulthum.

  I listened with half an ear, my mind whirring along trying to figure out the Egyptian connection. A murdered heroin dealer reading about the Egyptian economy. An empty bank with a packet of Egyptian cigarettes. The bank owner taking some rich Egyptians out for a night on the town. The banker looking for a house on the coast west of Tangier. I was getting there, but I still couldn’t see the whole picture, just a few hazy shades like that crap Jackson Pollock painted and called art.

  Then Sayyed got on about the Moroccan independence movement, eagerly extolling the virtues of the Istiqlal Party and how they would make Morocco a great nation. Sayyed appreciated my company because I was the only foreigner he knew, or who I knew, who supported independence. Not that I thought their own government would be any fairer or more generous than the International Zone government, or the governments in the portions of Morocco owned by France and Spain. Of course it wouldn’t. But if you must have a government, a government of your own people is far more likely to understand your problems and know ways to fix those problems, assuming that government cares. Yeah, big assumption. But at least the Moors would have a fighting chance. At the moment they were on the bottom of the heap.

  At last I got away. From Cafe Paris I headed to the port. It was time to check on those copies of Marx. Burdet Roussel was my connection in the customs office. I don’t know what his vice was, because he kept it well hidden, but whatever it was it must have cost a bundle. Everyone bribed that guy. He was the go-to man for more smugglers, dealers, and illegal entrants than I could count. One story I heard about Roussel has it that a Greek shipping magnate wanted to bring in a shipment of manufactured goods without paying the import duty. Now this was no simple crate or shipping container, but an entire freighter full of stuff. There were even cars in the hold. Roussel couldn’t figure out how to get all that junk off the boat and onto the pier without the higher ups in his office noticing. At best they’d take a big cut. At worst they might decide to do their job and impound the lot.