James Chase - Well Now, My Pretty…

Washington Smith lit another cigarette. He was sitting by the open window of his small, airless cabin at the Welcome Motel. Maisky had warned him not to -show himself until ten o’clock when he had a rendezvous at Maisky’s bungalow. This, Wash accepted. No one wanted to see a shabbily dressed negro on the streets. Questions would be asked. The police would converge on him. People would stare at him in that contemptuous way only the rich whites can stare at a negro.

Mish Collins, stretched out on the bed, was examining the blueprints of the Casino’s electrical wiring. He had come over in his hired car to collect Wash. They still had half an hour before they need leave for Maisky’s bungalow.

“What are you going to do with your share, Mish?” Wash asked, turning away from the window.

Mish laid down the blueprint. He fed a cigarette to his lips and set fire to it.

“Well… three hundred thousand dollars! Yeah, it’s a lump of money, isn’t it? I’ve been making plans. I’m going to buy me a small boat. I’ve always wanted a boat. Nothing very elaborate, but big enough to live on. I’ll find me a girl and then she and I will take a look at the Keys. I reckon that would be fun, just to keep sailing, stopping when I feel like it, changing the girl when I get bored with her, eating well. That’s the life for me.” He turned on his side so he could look at Wash. “How about you?”

“I’ve always wanted to be a doctor,” Wash said. “I’ll use some of the money to train. Then, with the rest of it, I’ll buy a practice in New York.”

“For Pete’s sake!” Mish was startled. “Do you think you can make it?”

Wash nodded.

“Of course. Given the means, and if you make up your mind, there isn’t anything a guy can’t do.”

“Yeah… but all that study! Jeepers! It wouldn’t suit me. Don’t you want a girl, Wash?”

“I want a wife and family, but that will have to wait.” Wash let smoke drift down his flat nostrils. “Think we are going to get away with this, Mish?”

“Why, sure. Maisky is a real, bright boy. We’ll get away with it… I promise you that. I wouldn’t have brought you into it, Wash, if I hadn’t been sure myself.”

“It won’t be as easy as he makes out.”

“Well, okay, we can’t expect it to be easy. You don’t pick up three hundred thousand dollars without sweating a little.”

“No.”

Wash turned back to the window and Mish, after looking thoughtfully at him, picked up the blueprint, but now he found he couldn’t concentrate. A doctor! he was thinking. This dinge certainly had big ideas. What the hell makes him imagine anyone would want to be treated by a little smoke like him?

Mish found himself growing resentful. He could understand a guy when he was in the money wanting a woman, a boat and lots to eat and drink, but this idea of becoming a doctor irritated him. Who the hell would want to be a goddam doctor if he had money? he asked himself. That was the point. This was something that jarred his philosophy. He knew a doctor ran around all the time, never had any peace, got night calls, sat in a dreary office listening to people moaning about themselves — jerks who would be better off dead — what an ambition for anyone to have who owned three hundred thousand dollars!

He put down the blueprint and again looked at Wash as he sat staring out of the window. Then he shook his head and shrugged. Well, the hell with it! Why should he care?

Half an hour later, the two men got out of Mish’s hired car, carrying a suitcase each and walked up the narrow path that led to Maisky’s bungalow. A light showed through the curtains, and the door opened immediately when Mish thumbed the bell push.

Maisky waved them in.

“I hope everything so far is well,” Maisky said as he led the way into the small, shabbily furnished sitting-room. Jack Perry was already there, lounging in the only comfortable chair in the room, a cigar burning evenly between his teeth. He nodded indifferently as the two men came in.

Maisky went over to a table on which stood a bottle of Scotch, glasses and a container of ice.

“Chandler is still to come,” he said, “but we can start without him.”

He made two drinks after Wash had shaken his head. Mish dropped his large body into a chair that creaked under his weight. He accepted the drink, then watched Maisky hand the other drink to Perry.

“I will ask you to try on your uniforms,” Maisky said. “I think they will fit. I have taken trouble with them. Then we will go through the whole plan.”

A ping on the doorbell made him break off. He went to the front door and returned with Chandler, a suitcase in hand.

Chandler came into the room, nodded to the other men, set down the suitcase and accepted a drink. Watching him, Maisky realised he had been with a woman. The relaxed, satiated expression on the handsome face was enough to tell Maisky this. It didn’t worry him. He was confident enough in Chandler to know that he wouldn’t talk, even to a woman.

“There is one thing that is important,” Maisky said, sitting on the edge of the table, “which I forgot to mention last night. When Jess and Wash get into the vault, they will find the money is packaged in five, ten, twenty, one-hundred and five-hundred-dollar bills. You two will take only the five-hundred-dollar bills. There isn’t a great deal of space in the carton and we want as much money as we can get. But you must also take as many five-dollar bills as you can carry in your pockets. On this money we will have to live for three or even six weeks. I am still not sure that the five-hundred-dollar bills aren’t marked. So while the heat is on, we must only spend the five-dollar bills… understand?”

“Marked?” This from Mish. “You think they would mark their big bills?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it, but we mustn’t take any chances. Until the heat has cooled off, we will not spend one single five-hundreddollar bill.”

The four men nodded.

“Well, you all know the plan and you have had time to think it over. Have you any suggestions?” Maisky looked around, his head slightly on one side, his eyes probing.

“This cylinder of gas,” Mish said. “I could fix a gimmick so that the gas was released when they open the carton. Would that help?”

“And what would happen to them? The gas operates in ten seconds.” Maisky sounded a little impatient. “They must have their gas masks on before the gas is released.”

Mish scratched his thick nose and shrugged.

“Yeah… well, it was an idea.”

Chandler said, “Suppose we work through the whole plan? The timing has got to be exact. Why does Mish have to put the air conditioner on the blink?”

“If the temperature is too low, the gas isn’t efficient. It will work, of course, but not so fast. It is essential that the room isn’t cold.”

“About the timing… aren’t we cutting it fine if Mish starts operating at two-thirty?”

“That is right.” Maisky slid off the table, went to a drawer and took out a sheet of paper, “I have revised the schedule. It’s all here. You will each be given a copy. But before we go into that, I want you all to try on your uniforms.”

Ten minutes later, Chandler, Perry and Wash had on the I.B.M. service uniforms and found no fault with them. Mish was wearing the Paradise City’s Electricity Co’s uniform.

“Yes, they will do very well,” Maisky said after a careful inspection. “Now, I will show you the truck.”

“Just a second,” Chandler said. “How did you get hold of these uniforms?”

Maisky regarded him, his gentle smile in evidence.

“You are very curious, my friend. I have many contacts. A tailor who owes me a lot was happy to make them… you need not worry. He won’t talk.”