Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 2, July 1973

“I’ll be back not later than 8:45,” he whispered. “And I’ll have the money!”

“Be careful, hon!”

“No sweat,” he said, and meant it.

He walked south, once he gained the street. Then he saw the bus station, and decided he needed to walk no further. He would simply remain in the bus station until the allotted time. No one would question a man waiting for a bus.

At 8:42 Marge heard hurried footsteps approaching. The next instant he had squeezed through the opening, pushed the board back in place, and she was in his arms.

He waved the case at her.

“It’s full of that nice green stuff!” he whispered. “No sweat. No sweat at all!”

He heard a siren at that moment. She clutched him tighter.

“Relax!” he said.

“I’m still scared stiff.”

“Nothing to be frightened about. All we do is sit tight.”

That’s what they did. Through cracks in the old building, they could see the sudden activity at the bank, the police cars, the state highway troopers. Suddenly John Whiting came out on the back stoop with an officer, looked up and down the alley, shook his head.

“They can’t figure it out!” he whispered. “Where was the escape car parked? How did it get out of town so quickly?”

“I’ll bet there are road blocks on all of the highways leading out of town.”

“Road blocks, and some very perplexed cops.”

She clutched him. “Was there any resistance?”

“Honey, they were scared stiff. Simply scared stiff. When I was ready to leave I made them all hit the floor on their tummies—”

“It worked!”

“It worked beautifully. I got inside the shed before anyone even came outside the bank building.”

Now it was simply a matter of waiting. He got out of the business suit, pulled off the fake mustache, put on the black glasses.

They counted the money, to help pass the hours. “Eighteen thousand, two hundred and forty-six dollars!” he whispered.

Time dragged slowly. Still playing it safe, as evening shadows darkened the interior of the shed, he took the money from the attache case, gave half of it to Marge, and secreted the balance in his pockets.

Marge chuckled. “I’ve heard of bras being used for various purposes, but this is a new one—”

He scraped out a deep hole in the soft loam, buried the empty attache case, the clothing he had used on the caper, even the sandwich wrapper and pop cans.

“We’ll sneak out, soon as it gets good and dark,” he said. “Once we’re on the street, we’ve got it made.”

“What if someone looks inside the shack?”

“I’ve thought of that, too. I’ll brush out every track.”

It was 9:12 when they got back to the farm. They had managed to steal out of the alley unseen. The car was still parked where they had left it. There was no tail, no sweat.

Once inside the old house, with the door locked and the shades drawn, he scooped her up in his arms, and they danced merrily about the room.

“We did it, hon! I told you it would work!”

“I’m still frightened. Any moment someone will knock on our door.”

“Hon, relax. I’m hungry as a wolf, so let’s get some food cooking.”

No one knocked on the door, as he said.

After a week, even Marge began to unwind. They had gone back to town the next day. He had tap-tapped his way down the street, into the post office, several stores, listening to the scuttlebutt.

The small daily paper had given the bank robbery a banner line across the front page. The story stressed the fact that a lone bandit had held up the bank and escaped so quickly that it smacked of well-organized crime, a waiting accomplice who had somehow gotten out of town ahead of the law, et cetera.

“Two more weeks,” he said. “Then we’ll move out for parts unknown.”

“Why don’t we go right now?”

He shook his head. “It might incite suspicion. Two more weeks won’t be a problem, lover.”

The following Monday, washing dishes at the sink, Marge made an observation.

“Someone’s coming up the driveway.”

He had on the glasses, the cane was hooked over a chair.

“Okay, we’ve had company before.”

“This is the sheriff’s car, hon.”

“Okay, no sweat. Keep cool and let me handle it.”

His mind suddenly was doing a reversal, a playback on the caper. No slipup, not even a minor one. Maybe the guy wanted to buy a few eggs. No sweat.

The man who knocked on the door had a silver star on his khaki shirt. He was about thirty, smooth shaven, with very wide shoulders.

Saxon tap-tapped to the door, opened it, stood on the threshhold.

“Mr. John Saxon?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Nils Brutto, deputy sheriff. May I come in?”

“Of course!” Saxon said, stepped back. The white cane gestured. “My wife Marge is somewhere near the sink.”

Marge’s smile was tight, her hello far from enthusiastic.

“We’ve just completed an early lunch,” Saxon explained. “But we still have some coffee.”

“No, thanks!” the deputy said.

Saxon noticed now that he carried a large manila envelope. He faced away from the man with the cane, swung toward Marge.

“Mrs. Saxon, will you take off your husband’s glasses?”

Something cold and icy slammed into Marge’s chest.

“Take off John’s glasses? Isn’t that an odd request?”

“Take them off, please.”

Her feet hesitant, Marge walked to John’s side, took off the dark glasses.

The deputy advanced a step, his eyes cold and hard, boring into John Saxon’s face.

“I was right,” he said, as if consoling himself. “I argued with them for hours. They presumed I was plain nuts. But I knew I was on the right track. And then the photos came from the lab.”

Brutto took out several large glossies from the manila envelope, handed them over.

“Mr. Saxon,” he said, smiling tightly, “it was a very clever caper. You tied up all of the knots real tight. We still don’t know how you made your getaway, one of the cleverest, no doubt. But that isn’t important now, for the camera solved the case for us.”

“Take a close look at the photos,” he said.

And suddenly John Saxon was remembering something that Marge had said, long before the robbery. “You look like an owl. Your entire face is tanned except your eyes.”

That precision camera, photographing the caper, showed a very personable young man brandishing a gun, a young man who had a very tanned face, except for his eyes!

Death had held grisly carnival in that dark house of hate. Who was the killer? I’d find out — if he let me live to do it.

Detective-Sergeant Renzo Di Lucca had been a cop for twenty-seven years, a dedicated, patient and observant cop. Next to his wife Rosa who had borne him three sons and who made the best fettucine in the world, Di Lucca loved police work more than anything else.

There was, however, one particular facet of police work that he did not like at all, breaking in rookies newly elevated to the detective squad.

Which, naturally, was the one assignment he invariably drew.

Di Lucca didn’t know if Captain Hearn always paired him with the rookies because he was the senior member of the squad, and patient, and well-versed in police procedure; or if it was because the captain had a well-hidden streak of leprecaunlike Irish humor; or if it was that every man is supposed to bear a sometimes heavy cross. He only knew that he always drew the rookies, and that there was nothing he could do except to steel himself and make the best of it.