Brian Garfield - Target Manhattan

Brian Garfield

Target Manhattan

Adler (Cont’d)

General, did you at one point recommend that Charles Ryterband be taken up onto the roof of the bank?

I didn’t recommend it. I suggested it as one possible action.

To what purpose?

I told them they could try it. Take him up on the rooftop and hold a gun to his head. Tell the man in the plane that if he didn’t buzz off, we’d shoot the son of a bitch in the head. The suggestion was vetoed. I didn’t hold out much hope for it. Again, it was a military solution to a peacetime problem, and I suppose the two don’t gel.

Did you really think it would have worked?

It might have been worth a try. We didn’t have any idea how close the two men were. But Ryterband kept talking about his “brother.” I figured it might be worth a try.

But it was vetoed. By whom?

You might say it was a unanimous veto.

But you finally got through to the Federal Reserve Director in Washington, didn’t you?

Yes. It took some doing. My secretary tracked him down. He was over at Treasury, having lunch with somebody. We finally patched through a line to him.

At what time?

Must have been about one thirty, one forty.

What was said in that conversation?

I spelled out the situation. He absorbed it as quickly as you could expect, but a thing like that takes some getting used to. He asked me a lot of questions. I only had answers to a few of them. I guess he wasn’t completely satisfied. He said he’d have to get back to me. He said he’d call Maitland himself, and then he’d have to talk to the FBI Director.

And did he?

Well, I wasn’t there, you know.

This isn’t a court proceeding. We have no rules against hearsay evidence. We’re simply trying to compose an overall picture.

All right. As far as I know he talked to both of them-Maitland and the FBI in Washington. Anyhow, he called me back and said he’d talked to them.

Fine. And what was the result?

He said it looked like we’d better go ahead arid give them the money. He was having a letter-order prepared, and as soon as he signed it, he’d put it on the Xerox-phone to me so that I’d get a facsimile copy of it in case there was any flak. But he told me not to wait for it to come through, it would take at least an hour. He told me to go ahead and order the money put together and sent over to the Merchants Trust.

At what time did you receive that instruction?

By the time he’d called Maitland and asked all his questions, and then called the FBI chief and talked to him, and then called me back-let’s see, it must have been right around two fifteen in the afternoon, give or take five minutes.

And how long did you anticipate it would take to get the money to Maitland’s office?

Well, it had to be counted, didn’t it? Not note by note, but stack by stack at least. And it had to be packed into some sort of carry-containers. And we had to arrange for a guard on it in transit, and we had to whistle up an armored truck. Figuring on traffic and time-in-motion and all the rest of it, I called Maitland and told him he couldn’t expect to get delivery in less than an hour and a half.

In other words the earliest you could promise it would be a quarter to four?

I told him we’d make every effort to do it faster than that, but it didn’t look humanly possible to shave very much time off that estimate.

You were aware that the deadline for delivery was three o’clock?

Yes. I was. But there was nothing I could do about it.

We’re deeply grateful to you for your typescript, Captain. You’ve done an amazing job of reconstructing the backgrounds of the two men.

Well, the department gave me time off to compile the dossiers on them, Mr. Skinner, and I’ve had a month on it.

It’s a remarkable job of detective work, nonetheless. And while I’m no judge of writing styles, I must say it’s far more readable than most of the official documents one sees.

Well, thanks. I’m a part-time fiction writer, of course. I guess some of it’s too flowery. It probably needs editing.

Not by me. In any case I wonder if you’d let me ask you some questions about your own participation in the case.

Fire away.

You arrived in Mr. Maitland’s office at what time?

Somewhere around twelve forty-five in the afternoon.

Mr. Azzard of the FBI was there?

He’d arrived a bit ahead of me. Of course, I’d been monitoring the situation from my office for more than an hour by that time, but I decided I’d better get over there personally in case there was something I could contribute. I guess it was partly vanity and partly impatience-I just couldn’t stand being on the periphery any longer. The truth of the matter is, as far as police department business was concerned, Sergeant O’Brien had the situation as well in hand as anybody could. He’s an excellent officer. I’ve submitted him for a citation.

He certainly seems to deserve some recognition, I agree. Now, it wasn’t until about two twenty that you received definite word that the money would be delivered, but not until forty-five minutes after Ryterband’s deadline?

That’s right. We got a call from someone at the Federal Reserve. That call came at two seventeen. They said it would be at least ninety minutes before we had the money.

But you’d suspected as much earlier, hadn’t you? I mean almost everybody seems to have felt it would be impossible to get the money up so quickly.

Yes. Matter of fact I remember we were very surprised up there when they told us they could have it to us by three forty-five. We’d never expected it could be done that early.

What I’m getting at, Captain, is that someone must have gone to Charles Ryterband and said to him that it wasn’t possible to raise the money in time.

We were all trying to convince him of that.

At what time, and by whom, was this matter first brought to Ryterband’s attention?

I don’t know. By the time I got there he’d already been told that.

In other words Ryterband had been informed of the probable delay, and he’d been informed at some time prior to your arrival at twelve forty-five.

Actually I expect that must have been one of Maitland’s first statements to Ryterband.

Yes, Mr. Maitland says it was. I’m simply trying to pin down the fact that Ryterband was not only informed of it, but was actually aware of it. The point being that a lot of people were talking at him incessantly and there’s some doubt as to how much of it actually penetrated his consciousness. He must have been highly confused by all the activity.

He was flustered, yes. But he was in control of himself. He was aware of the fact that we didn’t expect to be able to deliver the money on time.

Fine. That’s what I wanted to establish. Now, how did he react to that information?

I’d call it stubborn disbelief. He refused to accept it. From what he said, I gathered he was utterly convinced that men with money could do anything. If they couldn’t raise the money in time, it meant they didn’t want to. That was how he felt about it.

And you tried to convince him otherwise?

We all did. We took turns at him. Hell, we had to convince him. We weren’t trying to put anything over on him. We were telling him the truth. We had to make him see that.

And did you?

Not for quite a while, no. Finally we started to penetrate, I think. He began to waver. He got on the radio and told Craycroft the situation down there.

How did Craycroft respond?

At first it was the same as Ryterband’s initial reaction. All he said was “Negative.” I remember Mr. Rabinowitz, the bank’s security officer, throwing his hands violently into the air at that moment and wheeling away from us in despair. I think that gesture had an impact on Ryterband-he saw it, he saw that Rabinowitz was honestly distraught. I think that’s what convinced Ryterband that we were telling him the truth about the time factor.