Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

From the soda fountain across the way from the bank, Carl Semmer could see the bank very clearly. There was a driveway to the right of the bank, and a door was at the end of that driveway, and the payroll trucks would roll up that driveway on Thursday. The guards would step out and enter through the door at the end of the driveway, and the payrolls for American Steel and Tartogue Aircraft would be carried back to the vault, awaiting the demands of the employees’ checks next day. He had sat at the soda fountain counter on two payroll delivery days thus far. On both those days, the American Steel payroll had arrived in an armored car bearing the shield of International Armored Car Corp. On the fourteenth of last month, it had arrived at 2:01 P.M. On the thirty-first of last month, it had arrived at 2:07 P.M. On both occasions it had taken the guards approximately six minutes to deliver the payroll and back the truck out into the street. They had then turned left around the corner and been out of sight before an additional minute had expired.

On the fourteenth, the Safeguard Company’s truck bearing the second payroll had arrived at 2:10, several minutes after the first truck departed. On the thirty-first, the Safeguard Company’s truck arrived while the first truck was still in the driveway. It waited in front of the A&P alongside the bank’s driveway, and when the first truck swung out into the street and around the corner, it pulled up to the rear door at 2:15. On both occasions, each truck was gone and out of sight by 2:22 P.M.

Carl had watched these operations with careful scrutiny. He was now watching an equally important operation.

The big clock on the outside wall of the bank read 2:59. He glanced at his own wristwatch to check the time, and then his eyes moved to the front steps where he saw Anson Grubb starting for the doors. Anson entered the glass doors and moved into the bank. Carl’s eyes fled to the clock again. The big hand was moving slowly, almost imperceptibly.

Three o’clock.

Jeremy Thorpe started up the front steps of the bank. From behind the glass doors, the uniformed guard shook his head, smiled a sad smile at Jeremy, and then began closing the big bronze doors. Jeremy snapped his fingers, turned, and walked down the steps again and turned left toward the A&P. Carl studied his watch. It took thirty seconds to close the big bronze doors.

He kept watching the front of the bank. At 3:05, one of the bronze doors opened, and an old lady started down the steps. The door closed behind her. At 3:07, the door opened again, and two more people left the bank. At 3:10, four people left. At 3:17, two people left. At 3:21, Anson Grubb left the bank. Carl knew he would be the last person to leave. He paid for his coffee and went back to the furnished room at the other end of town.

This was Wednesday.

“The payroll trucks should be gone by 2:25,” Anson said that night. “We’ll give ourselves leeway and say they’ll be gone by 2:30. Add another five minutes to that in case there are any foul-ups inside the bank, and we can figure the money’ll be safe in the vault by 2:35.”

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. He was a tall man with wild black hair. His eyes were blue, and his nose was long and thin. He wore an immaculate blue suit, and a black homburg rested on the chair beside him. One knee was raised as he leaned onto the chair, the trouser leg pulled back in a crease-preserving manner.

“Where’s the plan, Jerry?” he said.

Jeremy Thorpe rose and walked to the dresser. He opened the top drawer and removed an eight-by-eleven enlargement of the plan he’d sketched onto the deposit slip. He brought this to the table, put it in the center under the hanging lightbulb and said, “I’m no Michelangelo.”

The other men studied the plan once more. They had seen it often enough since Jeremy had drawn it up, but they studied it again, coupling it with their own memories of what they’d seen inside the bank, giving the two-dimensional drawing a three-dimensional reality.

“What do you think?” Anson said.

“Looks good,” Carl answered. He was a short man with a pug nose and bad teeth. He was smoking now, and the gray smoke of his cigarette drifted up past the cooler gray of his eyes. He wore his brown hair in a crew cut.

“Jerry?”

“I like it,” Jeremy said. He blinked his eyes. Now that the time was close, he was getting a little nervous. The nervousness showed in his pale features. He tweaked his feminine nose, and his lids blinked again, like short flesh curtains spasmodically closing and opening over his brown eyes.

“Only two of us are going in, you understand that, don’t you?” Anson said.

Carl nodded.

“Jerry?”

“I understand.”

“You think we can knock it over with just two inside?” Carl asked. “Maybe we all ought to go in.”

“We can do it,” Anson said.

“There’s just one weak spot in the plan,” Jeremy said, blinking.

“What’s that?”

“The last guy to leave.”

“How do you figure that to be a weak spot?”

“Suppose the timing is off? What happens then?”

“The timing won’t be off,” Anson said. “Look, you want me to run through this again?”

“Yeah, I’d feel better if you did,” Jeremy said.

“Okay. The trucks are gone by 2:30, we’re figuring. The money is in the vault by 2:35. Carl is across the street in the soda fountain, watching all the time. If anything happens to delay the trucks, he gives us a buzz before we leave here, and we postpone the thing to the first of next month. So there’s no chance of a slipup there, right?”

“Right,” Jeremy said.

“Okay. At 2:45, assuming we get no call from Carl, you and I leave here. It takes us five minutes to drive from here to the parking lot on Main and West Davis. That’s a public parking lot, so we don’t have to worry about attendants or anything. We just pull the car in, and leave it. Time: 2:50. We walk to the bank. It takes only four minutes to walk to the bank, we’ve timed that a dozen times already. That would put us in the bank at 2:54, but that’s a little too early, so we dally a bit, getting to the bank at 2:58. We’ve entered as late as 2:59 with no trouble from the guard at the door, so there shouldn’t be any trouble at 2:58. I go straight to the manager’s desk. At three o’clock, four things are going to happen.”

“Go ahead,” Jeremy said.

“One: the bank guard is going to close those big bronze doors so nobody else can come into the bank.”

“Yeah.”

“Two: you’re going over to the bank guard, Jerry. You’re telling him a holdup is in progress, and that he is to behave normally, letting no one into the bank and letting anyone out who wants to go out. You got that?”

“Yes.”

“Three: I’m going to sit down at the manager’s desk and tell him I have a gun in my pocket and I want him to take me back to the vault. Four: Carl leaves the soda fountain and heads for the parking lot the second he sees the bronze doors closing.”

“Well, it’s okay so far,” Jeremy said. “It’s what comes later that bothers me.”

“This is perfect,” Anson said. “There’s nothing to worry about. The time is now 3:00 P.M. The doors are closed, you and I are inside the bank, Carl is on his way to the car. There are only two people inside that bank who know there’s a holdup going on. And they’re the only two people who’ll know about it until it’s all over and we’re gone. It takes Carl four minutes to walk to the car. Time: 3:04. By 3:04, the bank manager and I will have left his desk, gone through the locked door to the right of the tellers’ cages, and be at the door to the vault. You’re still at the entrance with the bank guard, Jerry. Some people will be leaving, but that’s all right. We let them go. By 3:05, the vault door is open, and the manager and I are inside.”