by Steve Levi
Thus, there would be no duty today. The armored-car garage was crawling with cops, and the vault was going to be inspected. So it was a real day off.
Steigle’s first stop was at the UPS boutique in Avon. He had put in an order for twenty large boxes. The flats were ready for him. Then he was off to the FedEx boutique in Frisco, where there were another twenty boxes waiting for him. By 10:00 a.m. he was at the rented warehouse garage in Nags Head. There was no security fence here, so he just drove up the garage door. After he was sure no prying eyes were around, he unlocked the garage door and rolled the metal plating up. Then he drove inside. Only after he closed the door behind him did he flick on the overhead lights.
Within an hour, the UPS and FedEx boxes were taped open and stacked in two piles against the back wall of the rented garage in Nags Head. Then he sat on the flimsy metal chair he’d picked up at a garage sale. He put his computer on the rickety card table from the Salvation Army thrift store and punched up the UPS on his computer. He printed out a dozen labels from the UPS account he had set up six months earlier. There was a single destination address for all the boxes. Then he did the same for the FedEx account he had set up nine months earlier—with the same destination address. Finally he folded ten If it fits, it ships boxes and printed out labels with a different address.
After he put his computer away, he made sure the box of vinyl gloves was on the card table along with several rolls of mailing tape. He double-checked the bathroom scales on the floor of the garage. His body weight matched on both.
Finally he checked to make sure the pickups he had bought in Vanceboro and Tarboro for cash started up. Both popped to life with no problem. He flicked on the headlights and did a walk-around to make sure the turn signals worked and no taillight was out.
You could never be too careful.
He turned the pickups off.
He hit the light switch before he rolled open the garage door.
The Swensen armored car was where it had been sitting since Saturday. Steigle was out of the garage and the door down in about ten seconds. He snapped the lock shut. It was pushing 1:00 p.m. Not bad for half a day’s work.
Chapter 30
“Sorry to say it, Heinz, but this is your day for scut work.” John Swensen waved Noonan toward the back door to his office. “It’s one of those have-to-do-it meetings, and you should be there.” Swensen paused as he indicated Noonan should enter the breakroom ahead of him. “It won’t take long.” He paused for an embarrassing moment. “Unfortunately, this will not be pleasant.”
“Comes with the territory.” Noonan smiled sadly as he entered the breakroom. “What great joy is coming my way?”
He didn’t have to ask. As soon as he entered the room, he knew immediately just how much pleasure he was going to enjoy over the next half hour: none.
Gloria and Sandy, the Jackson wives, were as different as chalk and cheese. Gloria was statuesque with a perfect hourglass frame. She might have been all of thirty-five. She had blood-red lipstick and matching polish on her finger and toenails. She was wearing a tight-fitting top that accentuated her breasts and an immodest pair of shorts that showed off her long, tanned legs. Her high heels were open-toed and had a faux leopard strap over the top of her feet. Her makeup was perfect, and she had a bow in her hair. She was also smoking a scented cigarette in a cigarette holder.
Sandy was a hausfrau. There was no other way to describe her. She was a mousey, thin woman who wore what appeared to be a pants suit that was either a dull brown or a faded cordovan. She wore no makeup, and her hair was short, flat, and gray. She wore sneakers, and the last time her fingernails had been in a salon, Bill Clinton had been president of the United States. Her face and legs were ruddy as if they were sunburned.
But the moment they opened their mouths, they were as peas in a pod. Both were outspoken and rude as opposed to hysterical. Gloria may have been the extrovert when it came to fashion and looks, but she was second fiddle when it came to presence. Sandy took one look at Noonan and tore right into him.
“I take it you’re the hired gun who’s supposed to find my husband? What the blazes have you been doing for the past two days? I mean, if you’re so darn good, you should have solved this . . . this missing armored car by now. There wasn’t a dime in the armored, so where’s my husband? What kind of BS are you pulling?”
John Swensen tried to cut in, but Sandy would have none of it. “Gloria and I have been on pins and needles for two days now.” She looked at Swensen, pursed her lips, and did a poor rendition of his speech pattern. “Now don’t say anything to anyone, Sandy. Everything is going to be all right. It’s just going to take some time to sort this all out.”
Swensen tried to cut it, but Sandy cut him off at the pass. “Don’t you schuss me, John Swensen. I don’t know what kind of malarkey you are trying to pull, but I am not pleased. Neither is Gloria.” She pointed to Gloria, who was concentrating on looking delectable. “We’ve got two missing husbands, and the best you can tell us is to be quiet!”
Then she turned to Noonan. “And you . . . you . . . whatever it is you are. You a cop? If you’re so darn good, where’s my husband? It isn’t like this is a murder and you’re looking for a body. People do not up and vanish inside an armored car. What kind of a bozo are you?”
This time Swensen could get a word in edgewise. “Sandy, like I told you, more than once, we don’t know what is going on. We’ve got a missing armored car. Charlie and Harry were driving the armored. They went into the Pamlico Tunnel and never came out.”
Sandy grabbed Swensen’s lapels and pulled him down until she was eye to eye with Swensen—and she was five feet six inches tall. “Don’t give me goulash. There was an escort and all. An escort! A security escort! What the Sam Hill were the four men doing? I mean, really. Security? Charlie Schanche has PTSD so bad, he shakes when he’s on the pills. And the two fruits, really? That’s what you call quality? The only one with any talent is George, and he can’t do the job of four men. So where’s my husband and his nephew?”
Noonan was quick this time. He had been here before. It was time for the 3Ds: defuse, deflect, delay. It was very political, and it galled the detective he had to stoop to such a generic tactic.
“Cutting through the anger,” he said, looking at Gloria more than Sandy, “which I can understand, I still need your help. I don’t know your husbands, so anything you can tell me might speed up this process. Can you,” he said, looking at Sandy, “cool down long enough for me to get some facts?”
“Better be quick,” snapped Sandy. “I’m not in a cooling-down mood.”
“I can understand,” Noonan said softly. Then to Gloria he said, “Your husband is Charlie. Did he say anything odd to you before he left for work on Sunday?”
“Everything he says is odd, what’s your name?”
“Just call me Heinz.”
“Like the Ketchup?”
“It’ll do. Heinz. Like the Ketchup.”
“Heinz, Charlie is a little boy in a man’s body. He doesn’t talk about the news or what the president is doing. He’s a go-to-work-and-come-home kind of guy. He talks strange things, I guess you’d say, but it’s about wrestling, WWF, and the Super Bowl and who’s been injured and how all of it’s going to affect his fantasy football team. He’s like a little boy. I don’t mind. I don’t care about what the president does. I just want a normal life, and until two days ago, I had one. Now I don’t know what I’ve got. And for what? Charlie couldn’t have stolen any money and run away with the neighbor’s wife. There wasn’t any money in the armored, and our neighbor doesn’t have a wife.”
“He didn’t say anything odd or usual the day he disappeared?”
“Not a word. Just his usual cheery self. Nothing special. Just a ‘Good-bye, babe. I’ll see you this evening.’ That was it.”
“Did you take anything unusual with him?”
“Unusual!” This set her off. “Unusual?! He was a truck driver! Nothing unusual about
any of his days. He left home to drive a truck! He didn’t even take lunch! It was just ‘Good-bye, babe,’ and ‘I’ll see you in a few hours.’”
“How about you?” Heinz said, looking at Sandy.
“Sandy,” she said because Noonan was clearly at a loss for her name to keep the conversational personal. “I’m Sandy. She’s Gloria. We’re both Jacksons, but we’re only related through our husbands. They’re kind of third cousins on one side and fifth cousins on the other, depending on how you want to do the genetics.”
Noonan did not correct her use of the term genetics.
“Your husbands are distantly related,” he said, pointing to the two women.
“Nothing distant about the old families here on the coast,” Sandy snapped. “The Jacksons grew up as one big family. Not always a happy family but a big one. My husband, Harry, is my age—fifty-eight. Charlie is forty going on nineteen. Same family, same town, one big happy family with Charlie and Harry on the outer fringes.”
“I see,” said Noonan. “Both men just walked out the door as if nothing was wrong?”
“That’s the size of it,” snapped Sandy. “Now, I’ve got a question for you. Where are our husbands? This is crazy! There wasn’t any money to steal. Armored cars do not just disappear into thin air. Someone’s been lying to you, or you’re lying to us!”
Sandy took a deep breath, and Swensen seized the opportunity to cut the conversation off. “Sandy. Gloria. Harry and Charlie have been working here for fifteen to twenty years. There has not been a speck of trouble from either of them. I can’t say I know what happened to them. They aren’t gone as in dead and gone, but they are missing. I don’t have a clue as to what happened, and Heinz here,” he pointed to Noonan, “is working hard to figure out what happened.”
“Well, he sure isn’t working hard enough.” Sandy was livid. “Not anywhere near hard enough.”
“I have never lied to you, Sandy. Or you, Gloria.” Swensen pointed at the two women as he said their names. “What I told you Sunday is still true today. I do not know what happened. I do not know where your husbands are. I do not know what is going on. All I can do is tell you to wait. Just like I am doing. That’s all I can say.”
“Well, you’d better do better than that!” Sandy was flushed. “A lot better than that.”
Things appeared to get out of hand, when Noonan cut in. “I do have a couple of more questions, if you don’t mind. I can’t tell you anything about your husbands, but the more I know, the better I can help you.”
“OK.” Gloria rolled her eyes and seemed resigned to answering a few questions.
“First,” Noonan started. “Do either of your husbands do any rock climbing?”
The question took them both by surprise.
“Climbing?” Sandy looked at him strangely. “Harry thinks our bed should be on the floor with no legs.”
Gloria kind of shook her head.
“I take that as a no,” Noonan said.
“Charlie’s athletic, if you know what I mean.” She smiled sheepishly. “But he doesn’t go climbing cliffs and mountains, if that’s what you meant.”
“Do your husbands swim?”
Gloria gave Noonan an odd look. “This is North Carolina on the coast. Everyone swims. Or knows how to. If you mean was he a competitive swimmer—Charlie, that is—nope. If he was, I never heard him talk about it. Sandy?”
“Same here. Yeah, Harry swam in the ocean. But we’re talking about swimming from a boat to shore.”
“Huh,” said Noonan as he thought for a moment. “Neither men were very physical. I mean, athletic types.”
“Harry was good at changing television channels,” Sandy said. “For him that’s exercise.”
Noonan gave Gloria an “and you?” look.
“Nope. He was strong for his age, does weight lifting to keep in shape for the job. Loading the armoreds. But that’s it.”
Noonan pretended to look at a notebook. Then he said, “Did either man talk about foam?”
“Foam?” Sandy again gave Noonan a strange look. “You mean like foam in a couch?”
“Probably not,” Noonan said. “Maybe foam like in froth or a fire extinguisher.”
“N-n-nooo . . .” said Gloria. “Nothing I can think of.”
“How about you?” Noonan looked at Sandy.
“Well, Harry wrapped packages and used those foam balls to put around Christmas gifts. It’s all I can think of.”
“Last question,” Noonan said. “Do either of your husbands have a pilot’s license?”
That took them by surprise. Sandy chirped up first. “Really, Heinz as in the Ketchup. This is North Carolina. Where would anyone fly to? Why get a license when it’s cheaper to pay for a ticket and drink all the way to wherever?”
“So the answer is a no?”
“It is for Harry,” Sandy said.
“Charlie didn’t fly. Why do you ask?”
“Because neither of the men have been spotted since the armored car went missing. The troops had roadblocks at both ends of the Pamlico Tunnel. No bodies have been found, so your husbands are still alive. But if they were not spotted at the roadblocks, they might have been flown out of the area.”
Sandy and Gloria looked at each other. There was a moment of silence and then Sandy said, “That’s just crazy. You’re saying some plane was there on the roadway, and Harry and Charlie got in and flew away?”
“Maybe not an airplane. A hang glider. They might have glided out.”
The two women were silent for a moment. Then Sandy said. “I don’t see that happening. That would mean jumping off into . . . well, you know, thin air. Harry wasn’t that kind of a guy.”
Gloria shook her head. “Naw. I don’t think so. Even if they did, where were they gonna land? There’s a lot of trees and underbrush out there. No place to land. Not safely, anyway. No, I don’t see that happening.”
“Well, they weren’t in the tunnel, and they didn’t get picked up at the roadblock. They didn’t climb out—you said they were not rock climbers—and they didn’t fly out. That doesn’t leave much to consider.”
“Crazy, crazy, crazy.” Gloria shook her head as she spoke. “No. Charlie wasn’t a pilot. Harry wasn’t a pilot. Flying?” She gave kind of pfssst with her lips. “That’s just plain crazy. Plain crazy.”
“That may be,” John Swensen said exhaustedly. “The good news is, their bodies have not shown up anywhere. It means they’re still alive. Where, we don’t know. The police have an APB out.” He paused. “Do you know what that is?”
“All Points Bulletin,” snapped Sandy. “I grew up on DRAGNET.”
“Good. There’s an APB out for your husbands. If they or anyone using their credit card, buys a ticket or tries to cash a check, we’ll know within seconds. They can’t stay hostages forever.”
“Whoever’s got ’em has been doing a good job so far.” Gloria shook her head. “We haven’t heard word from either of ’em.”
Chapter 31
Alaskan humorist Warren Sitka’s sage advice for husbands is not to waste three days arguing about something that will take you one hour to finish. Heinz Noonan took the suggestion to heart on Tuesday afternoon. Everyone up the administrative food chain wanted him in the vault. There was no reason to disappoint. Or, as Noonan would say properly, “There was no reason to disappoint them.”
So he did not.
Disappoint.
Or waste his time arguing.
What happened inside the vault was exactly as he expected. It was SNAFU if you happened to be of Noonan’s generation, a cluster if you were from Charlie Schanche’s generation, or, if you were under thirty, a moronathon. SNAFU was the term coined during the World War II. Cleaned up for a commercial audience, it was the acronym for “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up.” The implication is, no matter what is on the design board or how careful the planning, human beings will, well, be human, and, mixing authors, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”
> The term cluster—usually followed by a f***—was a term from the Vietnam War and had nothing to do with sex. It originated from the early years of the war when the press in Vietnam was not allowed in the field. As a result, all information from the field was presented by colonels and lieutenant colonels, who had clusters on their lapels as a symbol of their rank who were not in the field. The information they provided was to press people who were not allowed in the field. Thus, every news story was “we won” and “they lost” which everyone knew was a crock, but it was the only news “from the front,” so the press had to use it.
Of more recent vintage is the moronathon, usually, and pronounced “moron-a-thon.” The meaning was clear. It is a collection of people doing stupid things for an extended period of time.
Two other expressions came to Noonan’s mind as he schlepped through the pea soup of political stench on his way to the vault. The first was “been there, done that.” This was more than an exercise in futility. He was being used as a stalking horse. The real story was, the feds, those Cookie-Cutter lookalikes from FinCEN, wanted concrete evidence that the money, the cash, in the vault under the name of RMD, LLC, the marijuana money, was actually in the vault. They knew there was “money” in the generic sense in the vault; they just wanted third-party corroboration that the RMD, LLC money was there.
That was step one.
Step two was a bit trickier. FinCEN could not seize the money from the Swensen Armored Car Company because an armoredcar company was not a bank. Somehow FinCEN would have to convince a judge that the Swensen Armored Car Company was acting as a bank. This would be hard because banks are regulated by an alphabet soup of state and federal agencies, while armored-car companies are transportation businesses. They do not make loans. They do not pay interest on assets in their possession. They are not regulated by the FDIC, SEC, or, for that matter, state financial departments or divisions.
