The Night People

by Edward D. Hoch

Basil went off to make a phone call and Sam Briggs returned to the table alone. He ran his eyes over the turtleneck sweater Carol was wearing and asked Tony, “How about it? Want to make some money?”

  “Sure. Doing what?”

  “A little work in midtown.”

  “Not the park.”

  “No, no—what do you take us for? Hell, I’d be afraid to go in the park at night myself! I was thinking of Madison Avenue. The classy area.”

  Tony glanced at Carol. “We’ve been working as a team.”

  “You can still work as a team. She can finger our targets.”

  “What is all this?” Carol asked. The bar had grown suddenly noisy and they had to lean their heads together to be heard.

  “Most guys get hit when they’re all alone, on some side street at two in the morning,” Sam explained, eyeing her sweater again as he spoke. “But I got a spot picked out right on Madison. We hit middle-aged guys walking with their wives earlier in the evening—nine, ten o’clock.”

  “Hit them?” Carol asked.

  “Roll them, take their wallets. And their wives’ purses. We’re gone before they know what happened!”

  “Aren’t there a lot of people on Madison Avenue at that time of night?”

  “Not as many as you’d think. I got a perfect corner picked out—there’s an empty restaurant there and when the offices close down it’s fairly dim.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Go halfway down the block, pretending to window-shop or wait for a date, and watch for a likely prospect. If a couple come by talking, listen to what they’re saying. If they sound right, just point your finger and we do the rest.”

  Carol was silent for a moment. “There won’t be knives or anything, will there?”

  “Hell, no! What do you take us for?”

  She turned to Tony, “Do you want me to?”

  “We’ve got to live on something.”

  “All right,” she decided. “Let’s do it.”

  Two nights later, on an evening when the weather had turned unusually mild, Carol and Tony met the Briggs brothers at the corner of Madison and 59th. Carol was wearing a knit cap to hide her hair and a matching scarf to muffle the lower part of her face.

  “It’s just after nine,” Sam Briggs told her. “Look for couples with shopping bags, maybe coming from Bloomingdale’s, tourists heading back to their hotels. If the man has both hands full it’s easiest for us.”

  The three men hovered near the corner, glancing into the empty restaurant as if surprised to find it closed. Carol walked up the block toward Park Avenue, letting one man pass who was carrying only a newspaper. She’d been strolling back and forth about five minutes when she spotted a couple crossing Park in her direction. The man, stocky and middle-aged, carried a shopping bag in his left hand and a briefcase in his right. The woman, obviously his wife, carried a tote bag along with her purse.

  Carol followed discreetly along behind them, listening to their conversation until she was certain they weren’t police decoys. About fifty feet from the corner, she signaled a finger at them. When the couple reached Tony and the Briggs brothers at the corner, Sam Briggs walked up to the man and asked for a match. Before the man and woman realized what was happening, Sam punched the man in the face, knocking him backward into Basil’s arms. Tony grabbed the woman as she started to scream and yanked the purse from her hand. Basil had pinned the man’s arms while Sam went for his wallet.

  Then, throwing the man to the sidewalk, they scattered in opposite directions. Carol, walking quickly back to Park Avenue, ducked into the lobby of a hotel and pretended to use the pay phone near the door.

  The whole thing had taken less than a minute.

  They tried it again three nights later in almost the same location. This time the man tried to fight back and Sam Briggs gave him a vicious punch in the stomach. The first time they’d gotten $214 plus some credit cards they’d promptly discarded. The second time they realized less—only $67 from the man and $16 from the woman.

  “Everybody carries credit cards now,” Sam Briggs complained later over drinks in his Village apartment. “What good are credit cards to us? By the next day the computer knows they’re stolen.”

  “Let’s go after something big,” his younger brother suggested.

  “Like what—a bank?”

  “Count me out,” Carol said, afraid they might be serious. “I’m having nothing to do with guns.”

  She went to the kitchen to make some coffee and she could hear Tony speaking in a low tone while she was gone. Later back at their own place, he started in on her. “You got this big thing about guns and knives, but sometimes they can actually prevent violence.”

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  “Remember that first time you went into a house alone? Remember how the man came up from the basement and surprised you? Suppose he hadn’t believed your story about the kittens. Suppose he’d grabbed you and you’d picked up a kitchen knife to defend yourself. You might have killed him. But if you’d been carrying a weapon he wouldn’t have grabbed you in the first place.”

  “I don’t buy that sort of logic, Tony.”

  “Look, you saw Sam Briggs punch that guy tonight. You’re part of it! Suppose there’s some internal bleeding and the guy dies. The simple act of carrying a gun or knife isn’t all that much worse than what we’re doing already.”

  “It’s worse in the eyes of the law.”

  He sighed and tried again. “Look, Carol, Sam and Basil have an idea that can make us a lot of money all at once. We won’t have to go around mugging people on street corners. The thing is foolproof, but we need you to hold a gun on two people for about ten minutes.”

  “In a bank?”

  “No, not in a bank. This is far safer than a bank.”

  “Why can’t you do it without me?”

  “We need a woman to get in the place before they’re suspicious.”

  “Where?”

  “I want Sam to tell you. It’s his plan.”

  “I don’t like that man, Tony. I don’t like the way he looks at me.”

  “Oh, Sam’s all right. He’s a little rough at times.”

  “He’s a criminal!”

  “We’re all criminals, Carol,” Tony reminded her.

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve never thought of myself as one,” she admitted. “Maybe because I’ve never been arrested.”

  “How about it? One big job, and we can live like normal people for a change.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to live like a normal person, Tony. I guess I’ve always been bored by normal people. I was married to one once, and it bored the hell out of me.”

  He put his arms around her. “How about it? One big job? I promise it won’t be boring. You’ll never be bored with me.”

  “One big job …” She remembered them saying that in the movies, and they always walked into a police trap. But this wasn’t the movies, and she knew she’d go along with whatever they wanted of her. She’d go along with it because Tony Loder had made her feel like a real person and not just a cog in some insensitive machine.

  The plan was simple.

  Sir Herbert Miles, the wealthy and successful British actor, maintained a luxury apartment with his wife on Central Park South. They were going to rob him of cash and jewelry, using Carol to penetrate the elaborate security precautions in the building’s lobby. “You see,” Sam Briggs explained, sketching a rough diagram on a sheet of paper, “they have a guard at a desk just inside the door. He monitors the elevators and hallways with a bank of closed-circuit TV screens. And nobody gets by him unless they’re a resident or a guest who’s expected.”

  “Then how do I get by?”

  “There’s a night elevator operator as added security, and from eleven o’clock on he sells the following morning’s newspapers. All you do is walk through the revolving doors about eleven-fifteen and ask the man on the desk if you can buy a copy of The Times. He’ll say sure and send you back to the
elevator operator. That’s when you take out your gun and cover them both. Make them lie on the floor. We come through the door, take the elevator up to the penthouse, and rob Miles and his wife. In ten minutes we’re back downstairs. You stay in the lobby the whole time.”

  “Why can’t we just tie up the two guards and leave them?”

  “Because another resident might come in and find them while we’re all upstairs. This way if anyone else arrives you cover them with the gun too.”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to shoot anyone.”

  “You don’t have to shoot anyone. Just hold the gun and they’ll behave. Nobody wants to get shot.”

  Sam gave her a .38 revolver of the sort detectives carried on television. It held five bullets and he showed her how to load and fire it. “That’s all you need,” he said.

  “Will you all have guns too?”

  “Sure, but nobody’ll need to use them.”

  That night, in bed with Tony, she started to tremble and he held her tight. “It’s going to be all right,” he whispered reassuringly.

  She was a long way from the assembly line at Revco.

  The uniformed guard glanced up from his newspaper as she entered. Behind him a half-dozen TV screens flickered their closed-circuit images. “Can I help you, Ma’am?”

  “Someone said you sold tomorrow’s Times here.”

  He nodded and motioned around the corner. “The elevator man has some.”

  She walked down two steps and saw the second uniformed man already folding a paper to hand it to her. The gun came out of her purse. “Not a sound!” she warned.

  The man behind the desk turned toward her and she shifted the pistol to bring him into range. “You too—get down here and lie on the floor! Quickly!”

  “This building is robbery-proof, girlie. You won’t get away with it.”

  “We’ll see. Both of you stay down there. Don’t even lift your heads or I’ll shoot!”

  As soon as they saw the empty desk, Tony and the Briggs brothers came through the revolving door. They were wearing stocking masks, and she wasn’t too happy about being barefaced. Still, the knit cap and scarf helped hide her features. “Ten minutes,” Tony said as he went by her.

  She watched the floor numbers as the elevator rose, keeping the gun steady on the two guards. “Who are they after?” the elevator man asked.

  “Shut up!”

  Eight long minutes later she saw the elevator start down from the top floor. No one else had entered the lobby and she was thankful for that. When the elevator stopped, Sam Briggs was the first one off, carrying a bulging plastic trash bag in one hand. The other two were behind him. “Let’s go!” he told her.

  “Don’t follow us,” she warned the two guards. “Stay on the floor!”

  Then, as she backed toward the door, she asked Tony, “How’d it go?”

  “Great! No trouble.”

  Basil had left the car on one of the secondary roads in Central Park, with a phony television press card on the windshield in case anyone got curious. They broke onto Central Park South, running across toward the low park wall. Carol was in the middle of the street when she heard a shouted command.

  “Police! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

  At the same instant she saw the police cars, realized both ends of the street were blocked off. “The guard must have pushed a silent alarm,” Tony gasped at her side. “Forget the car and run for it!”

  She heard a shot and turned to see Basil with his gun out. Then there were three more shots close together and he spun around and went down in the street.

  She kept running, afraid to look back.

  There were more shots, and the stone wall of the park was before her. She went over it fast, her legs scraping against the rough stone. Tony was somewhere behind her and she turned to look for him.

  “Run!” he screamed at her. “Run!”

  She saw the blood on his face, saw him reaching out for her as he ran toward the wall, then his whole body shuddered and he went down hard.

  She ran on, deep into the park, until the breath was torn from her lungs in pulse-pounding gasps and she sank to the frozen earth and started to cry.

  God! Oh, God!

  Tony was hit, probably dead. And the others too.

  After a long time she picked herself up and after walking for what seemed hours she managed to reach Fifth Avenue, at 66th Street. She hailed a taxi and took it downtown, getting out a block from the apartment in case the police tried to trace her later. She circled the block twice on foot, mingling with the late strollers, until she felt it was safe to go in. Then she collapsed onto the bed and pulled the blankets tight around her, trying not to think.

  She must have lain there an hour or longer before she heard a gentle knock on the door. Her first thought was the police, but they’d have been less timid. She got up and listened at the door. The knocking came again and she could hear breathing on the other side of the door. “Who is it?” she asked softly.

  “Me!”

  “Tony!” She threw off the bolt and opened the door.

  It was Sam Briggs. “Let me in!”

  “I—”

  He pushed her aside and closed the door after him. “I thought they got you too.”

  “No.”

  “Basil and Tony are both dead. The cops were right on my tail but I lost them in the park.”

  “You can’t stay here,” she said. “I want to be alone.”

  “Come on! There’s only the two of us left now. Tony’s dead!”

  She turned away from him. “What about the money?”

  “I dropped the bag when I was running. I had to save my skin!”

  She didn’t know whether to believe him but it didn’t really matter. “You’ll have to go,” she repeated. “You can’t stay here.”

  “I’m afraid to go back to my place. They’ll be looking for me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “To hell with you! I’m staying!”

  She walked casually over to her coat and slipped the pistol from the pocket. Pointing it at him, she said, “Get out, Sam.”

  His eyes widened. “Hell, Carol, we’re partners! I always liked you, from the first time I saw you.”

  “I was Tony’s partner, not yours. Get out!” The gun was steady in her hand.

  He smiled. “You wouldn’t use that.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” In that instant she wanted to. She wanted to squeeze the trigger and wipe the smile off his face for good. He had caused Tony’s death and now he was standing grinning at her.

  But he was right about the gun. She wanted to use it, but she couldn’t.

  “You can sleep on the couch,” she told him. “Just for tonight.” She went into the bedroom and closed the door, taking the gun with her.

  In the morning he was still asleep as she dressed quickly and left the apartment. She bought a paper at the corner store and read about the robbery: “ACTOR’S PENTHOUSE ROBBED AT GUNPOINT—POLICE SLAY TWO FLEEING SCENE.” The dead were identified as Tony Loder and Basil Briggs, both ex-convicts.

  She put the paper down.

  So that was Tony’s epitaph, after all the things he’d been. Not lover, nor dreamer, nor even thief. Only ex-convict.

  She started reading again. The police were seeking Sam Briggs, brother of the slain man, and an unidentified woman, who were believed to have fled with an estimated $80,000 in cash and jewelry.

  So Sam had lied about dropping the bag. He had it stashed somewhere, probably in a locker at the bus station.

  She thought about going back to the apartment and confronting him, pointing the gun at him again and demanding a share for her and Tony.

  But Tony was dead, and she’d shown Sam last night that she wouldn’t use the gun.

  She went to a phone booth and dialed the police. When a gruff voice answered she said, “You’re looking for Sam Briggs in connection with last night’s robbery. If you hurry you can find him at this address.”

  After that sh
e took the subway to the Port Authority Terminal on Eighth Avenue and caught the next bus home.

  They were hiring again at Revco and they took her back without question. She had her old spot on the assembly line, with many of the same girls, and when they asked where she’d been she only smiled and said, “Around.”

  She learned from the New York papers that Sam Briggs had been arrested and the loot recovered. The unidentified woman wasn’t mentioned. Even if Sam had given them her name, he didn’t know where she came from. After a month she stopped worrying about being found. Instead, she felt that by some miracle she had been given a second chance.

  For a time she was happy at work, and she thought of Tony only at night. But with the coming of spring, boredom set in once again. The routine of the assembly line began to get her down. She tried going out drinking with the other women on Friday nights but it didn’t help. There was nothing in their bickering conversations or the half-hungry glances of their male friends to interest Carol.

  One morning in May she phoned in sick, then dressed in a dark sweater and jeans and went out for a drive.

  She parked near an apartment house in a better section of town and walked through the unguarded lobby. An inner door had to be opened with a key or by a buzzer from one of the apartments. She pressed three or four numbers until someone buzzed the door open, then took the elevator to the third floor. Tony had told her once never to go up too high, in case she had to run down the fire stairs.

  She used the knocker on a door chosen at random and nobody answered. Taking a plastic credit card from the pocket of her jeans, she used it on the bolt the way Tony had shown her. She was lucky. There was no chain, no Fox lock. In a moment she was inside the apartment.

  It was tastefully furnished in a masculine manner, with an expensive TV-stereo combination and a few original paintings. She saw a desk and crossed to it.

  “Hello there,” a male voice said.

  She whirled around, tensed on the balls of her feet, and saw a man standing there in his robe. His dark hair was beginning to go grey, but his face still had a boyish quality. He was smiling at her. “This is my first encounter with a real live burglar. Are they all as pretty as you?”

  “I’m no burglar,” she said, talking fast. “I must have gotten the wrong apartment.” She turned and started for the door.