Max Collins: Hard Cash

This time, thankfully, the folder contained material of a more agreeable nature: the photographs of the interior and exterior of the bank that Nolan had requested of Rigley, as well as a listing of employees and a timetable of their work activities, plus a floor plan prepared for the occasion by Rigley, which indicated where each person worked and where each alarm button was located, and a wealth of other pertinent information. Rigley had done a good job, and Nolan told him so.

“And I have to admit,” Nolan continued, “your basic plan for the robbery is a good one. Some refinements would be necessary, of course, and I’d need to go over these photographs and plans and such you brought me first, but otherwise I see no reason why your scenario wouldn’t be followed very close. Almost to the letter.”

All of that was true — it was a good plan — but the point of all the compliments was to put Rigley at ease. And it did. Rigley’s tic, his overall nervousness, seemed to have disappeared. He was smiling, sipping his Manhattan.

“However,” Nolan said, “I’m afraid all of your work maybe was for nothing.”

“What do you mean?” Rigley said, brows knitted.

The girl was silent, but her expression asked the same question.

“Now, I don’t want anyone to misunderstand my motives,” Nolan said, “but I think it would be best all around, for all concerned, if we called it off.”

“What?” Rigley said. Almost shouted. “Call it off? Call off the robbery? Why, for Christ’s sake?”

Nolan shrugged. “The only way I can explain it is by saying I’ve reached fifty years of age and never spent a day of it in jail, even though for the better part of the last twenty I was robbing banks like yours, Rigley. And do you know how I managed that? Managed to stay alive and not behind bars? By being careful. By having certain rules. By demanding certain conditions... ideal conditions... for any heist I was part of.”

“What in hell could be more ideal than this?” Rigley demanded. “What in hell more could you ask in a bank robbery than the help of the president of the bank? I mean, I’ve heard of inside tracks, but this is ridiculous.”

“You’re right,” Nolan said, nodding. “But I’m not talking about the job itself.”

The girl, who had the painfully skeptical expression of a doctor listening to a patient explain how he caught clap off a toilet seat, leaned forward and said, “Then just what are you talking about?”

And Nolan told them about the break-in Friday. He told them of two men (neither of whom Jon got a look at) who came in, rummaged through the entire antique shop, including opening a safe, apparently but not necessarily looking for money, and were interrupted by Jon, whom they promptly conked on the head before getting the hell out.

Before Rigley and the girl could begin expressing their obvious disbelief, Jon leaned forward, parted his hair, and showed them the bump. Then he sat back and said, “And that ain’t special effects, boys and girls. I’m too much of a coward to let myself be conked on the head just to back up a phony story.”

“All right,” the girl said, taking over (as Rigley seemed too confused at the moment to actually talk), “suppose it’s true. What exactly does any of that have to do with anything? Two people break into your shop and try to rob you. So what?”

“First let me tell you about something else,” Nolan said. “Something that happened to a friend of mine. A guy who set up a robbery Jon and I were on not long ago, and who worked with me on a lot of things over the years. Real pro. Thursday night he was murdered. For the contents of a cash register, amounting to maybe fifty bucks. He ran a bar, you see, and after closing, somebody came in and blew my friend’s head all over the wall.”

Nolan paused for dramatic effect, but the girl was not impressed. She said, “I still see no relationship to what we’re doing here.”

“Maybe there isn’t any relationship. I’d go so far as to say there probably isn’t. But I don’t like coincidences. A thief, a friend of mine, is killed for nickels and dimes. Call it cute, or ironic, or anything you want. Only the next day, two guys break into where I live, and Jon interrupts them before much damage is done, but anyway they’re apparently trying to rob us. Again, ironic, cute, robber gets robbed. Big laugh. But suppose something’s going on. Some old friends or enemies of mine are in the neighborhood with something in mind.”

“Isn’t that rather far-fetched?” Rigley said, finally regaining his faculty of speech.

“Isn’t it rather far-fetched that within twenty-four hours, a few hundred miles apart, two professional thieves who did a lot of work together are the object of two robberies themselves? One of them killed, head blown off by a shotgun like the one you were waving around the other night, sweetheart.”

“Wait one fucking minute, now,” the girl said. “You aren’t accusing us of having anything to do with...”

“I didn’t say that. Thursday night, we were together, so the shotgun thing is a true coincidence. I grant you that. But from my point of view, why not? Why couldn’t you have hired some people to dig up further blackmail material on Jon and me? That would at least explain the break-in at our place.”

“I think it’s all a bunch of bullshit,” the girl said.

“We had nothing to do with it,” Rigley said. “Any of it.”

“Okay. So who did?”

“You’re making mountains out of molehills,” Rigley said. “You’re desperate to find an excuse to get out of this situation, and so are trying to scare us out, confuse and frighten us into letting you off the hook.”

Nolan smiled. A friendly smile. It hurt him to do it; he hated Rigley and the bitch, and being civil to them would give him an ulcer if he had to keep it up much longer. But he smiled. He said, “I’m not trying to get off any hook. It’s a good heist. It really is. It’ll be easy, fast money for Jon and me. We’ve done it before, so why not again? But don’t you see the reason the two of us are around to rob your bank a second time is that we’re careful, we only work under certain conditions, and that it’s foolish to pull a heist when there’s possibly something going on that could fuck up that heist? Don’t you see that?”

“No.”

“No.”

“Okay. I tell you what. We’ll postpone it. Postpone it a month. Give me time to see what’s going on, if anything. That’s all I ask.”

“No!” Rigley shouted. He slammed his hands on the table, and everybody’s drinks spilled, the pitcher, everything. “No! No, goddammit, you’re just playing with us, I’m not postponing anything , no!”

And Rigley got up and ran behind the bar and got a bottle off the shelf and shakily poured himself a shot and downed it and then another and...

The girl, quietly, leaned over and touched Nolan’s hand. Her touch was warm, and for the first time she extended a trace of sexual promise to Nolan. She said, “Please. Understand. This is hard for George. He’s been a respectable member of the establishment for too many years for this to be easy for him. Do you have any idea how long it took him to gather the courage to approach you at that restaurant? He’s been watching you for months. Planning this, building himself up, gearing himself to be capable of an act that he is barely capable of even now. Asking him to postpone the robbery would be suicidal not only for George, but for all the rest of us, for any of us involved with the robbery. George is an intelligent and capable man in his chosen profession, just as you are in yours. But where crime is concerned, George is an amateur. We have to go ahead with the robbery, and as soon as possible.”