Brian Garfield: Relentless

They worked like that up here, operating vaguely under” interstate “hot pursuit” statutes; in fact a Utah sheriff’s office regularly covered the northwest corner of Arizona’s Mohave County. It had to be done that way. Watchman’s was the only Arizona police car in fifteen thousand square miles.

Even so it would take the two Nevada cars an hour to reach San Miguel.

Watchman reached up for the siren switch. “God knows what we’ll run into-better get armed.”

Buck Stevens was pale. He twisted in the seat to get at the rack inside the back door that held the riot shotgun and rifle; dragged both weapons over the back of the seat and held them across his knees. In the corner of his vision Watchman saw the rookie’s Adam’s apple shift up and down.

They whipped past the city-limit sign and several cars and pickups crowded over close to the curb to let them by. Watchman brought the speed down and came into the last bend at forty; the cruiser swayed on its springs, tires wailing, the ten-foot spring-mounted radio antenna lashing violently from its mountings on the rear bumper.

A small crowd stood gaping outside the bank and Watchman slid in at the curb, switched off the siren but left the flasher on. “Never mind the guns.” People in crowds could be stupid but not that stupid; if there was any chance of shooting here these people would have been behind cover. Conclusion: if the bank had been robbed, the robbers had already fled.

The crowd was a tight knot around the door and when Watchman and Stevens came across the curb the crowd parted like the waters of the Red Sea. A barefoot kid in frayed jeans stood open-mouthed with his nose pressed to the window. Watchman went inside.

People were clustered inside the bank. Most of the men had no trousers on.

There was a little group crouched around an object on the floor by the rear teller’s cage.

There was a lot of talking, everybody shouting at one another and at Watchman. He lifted his voice; “All right, let’s hold it down.”

The racket subsided from clamor to mutter. A thin shape straightened and detached itself from the knot of people by the teller’s cage-Jace Cunningham, looking greenish and soft around the mouth. He came forward quickly and showed his consternation by shaking his head grievously and letting his hand dangle limply at the wrist, shaking it back and forth as if wearily drying his fingertips. “Jesus H. Christ.” He had his pants on.

“What happened, Jace?”

“I ain’t sure. I wasn’t here-I just got here. But somebody hit the bank, a bunch of them. They got the cash, pretty close to a million. And that over there…”

Past the crowded people Watchman could see a pair of boots protruding and he heard Cunningham say, “They killed Jasper Simalie, Sam.”

Watchman gripped Buck Stevens by the arm. “They didn’t pass by us going out so they’ve gone out the other way-west on 793. Get on the radio and report. Tell those Nevada patrol cars to stop and search anything that moves on that road. On the run, now.”

When Stevens sprinted past him he pushed Jace Cunningham aside with the heel of his hand and shoved into the crowd around Jasper Simalie. He recognized Doctor Jamieson-a gaunt man with a hollow-cheeked death’s head and big yellow teeth, sparrow-chested and frail. The doctor was breathing like a teakettle. He looked up at Watchman and shook his head.

Jasper lay on his face. There was a great deal of blood on the floor.

“Shotguns,” the doctor said through his teeth. “They weren’t pistols, they were shotguns. The poor son of a bitch never had a prayer.”

A pudgy man with pink hands was waiting, licking his lips with a pink tongue, when Watchman straightened and turned. Cunningham said, “This here’s Mr. Whipple. He owns the bank.”

“Not really,” the pudgy man said. “I’m the manager-I work for the San Miguel Copper Company and I’m supposed to-”

“Were you here?”

“What’s that?” Whipple’s eyelids fluttered like semaphores.

“When this happened. Were you here? Can you tell me what happened?”

“I suppose so. It’s all so unreal, you know?”

The doctor came by, lugging his bag. “I’ve got to have a look at those armored-car guards. You coming, Jace?”

Watchman turned with an abrupt snap of his wide shoulders. “What about the guards?”

Cunningham flapped a bony hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it. They’re okay. They got sprayed with something and need gettin’ their eyes washed out, that’s all.”

The doctor said, “I think it was chemical Mace,” and went.

It was the biggest bank haul in the history of Arizona.

Watchman absorbed the facts quickly, piecing them together from the disjointed reportage of Whipple and Cunningham and two of the tellers he questioned. The tellers stood awkwardly, trying to ignore the fact that they were standing there in shirts, neckties, and underdrawers.

That was because the bandits had relieved them not only of the better part of a million in cash-Terrell, the head cashier, estimated $930,000-but of their pants as well, to discourage them from venturing out in pursuit.

It wasn’t clear whether there had been four men or five. The company guards who rode the armored truck and its two convoy cars had instructions to stay near the bank in case of trouble and they had developed the habit of playing dime-quarter poker in the mud room in the back of the bank where employees hung their coats and boots on winter days. The bandits had known that; at least two of them had rushed in through the back door and squirted a chemical from spray cans-probably Mace, a disabling gas. It had affected the guards’ vision, disoriented them, made them violently nauseous. Whatever it was, it had taken the eight guards out immediately and silently and none of them was able to give more than a sketchy description of their attackers. The bandits had relieved them of their side arms and locked them in the mud room. When Watchman talked to them the Tally Ho cards and coins were still scattered all over the room.

One man had entered the bank proper from the rear and two others had walked in the front door. They wore stocking masks and carried two double shotguns and an automatic pistol. About eight customers had been in the bank along with Whipple and seven employees. Another robber had waited outside at the wheel of the car. It was possible a fifth man had remained posted by the mud room to make sure the guards didn’t break through the locked door.

In the bank the robbers had told everybody to remove their trousers and get down on the floor. Two of them had leaped over the low fence and gone into the vault, carrying military duffel bags which they stuffed with loot. The third man, with a shotgun, had waited just inside the front door. The bank guard, Jasper Simalie, had sneezed and stirred or had not stirred-there were conflicting eyewitness reports-and in either case the nervous bandit had fired. The shotgun charge had blasted Jasper Simalie back against the tellers’ counter and he had slid down and fallen over on his face, leaving behind a red smear on the face of the counter.

The head cashier, Terrell, had pressed the alarm button under the lip of his desk very shortly after the bandits had entered the place, and the alarm had sounded in the police shack four blocks away. Jace Cunningham had been in the office with one of his patrolmen and he had told the patrolman to get through to the Sheriff and the Highway Patrol; Cunningham himself had grabbed a rifle off the rack and sprinted for the bank. But by the time Cunningham arrived the bandits had fled; he got a glimpse of their car speeding by, heading west.

The entire operation had taken no more than four minutes.