Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

As had happened before in the past two weeks, each of them brought forth memory fragments from the bright corners of his mind…

Oh come all ye faith-ful, joy-ful and tri-um-phant,

Oh come ye, oh co-o-me ye, to Be-e-eth-le-hem…

… Angie singing those words softly, sweetly, as they trimmed the tree the year before, smiling, that question-mark loop of gold hair hanging down over her left eye, her face slightly flushed from the hot-buttered rums they’d drunk earlier, and Lindy tugging at the hem of her dress, dancing up and down, saying, “Mommy, Mommy, let me put the angel on top, let me put the angel on top!” and Steve hanging his stocking on the mantel, very intent, very careful, the top of his small tongue held catlike in the open space between his missing front teeth…

Si-i-ilent night. Ho-o-ly night.

All is calm, all is bright.

Round yon vir-r-gin, Mother and Child…

… Angie’s voice again, softer, reverent, while all of them sat in the darkened living room and looked at the winking lights of the tree, the kids drowsy but refusing to give in because they wanted to wait up for Santa Claus, Angie’s voice making the words into a lullaby that finally put them both to sleep, and he and Angie carrying them upstairs and putting them to bed and then tiptoeing downstairs again and setting out the presents, filling the stockings, and, when everything was arranged, going up to their own room and lying close, holding each other in the silent, holy night…

Cain got abruptly to his feet, shoving his chair back, and carried his glass away from the window. He stood unsteadily in the center of the room, looking at the fireplace, and it reminded him of the one in the house near San Francisco’s Twin Peaks, the house that no longer was. He turned away and went across to the breakfast counter and around it into the kitchen area for a fresh package of cigarettes. Spasmodically, he tore off the cellophane and got one of the cylinders into his mouth and began patting the pockets of his Pendleton shirt. His matches were on the table. He went over there again, sat down, lit the cigarette, drained the bourbon from his glass; then he stared again into the valley, refusing to hear the faint carols now, concentrating on what he saw spread out before him.

White world, soft world, clean world; snow had a way of hiding the ugliness and disguising the tawdry trappings of humanity, of creating the kind of beauty a whore creates with makeup and the right kind of lighting. Here, in this idyllic, fanciful little valley, you could almost believe again in Christmas and God and Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men; you could almost believe life had meaning and was worth living, and that there was hope and joy and justice in the world. But it was all illusion, it was all a lie. There was no God and there was no peace, and there was no justice; there was nothing to believe in, there was nothing left at all.

Cain picked up the bourbon bottle and poured himself another drink.

Sacramento

The three of them went in for the ripoff at two thirty, exactly half an hour before the scheduled arrival of the armored car.

The place was called Greenfront-one of those cash-and-carry super-department stores where you can buy anything from groceries to complete home furnishings-and it was located on the northern outskirts of Sacramento. A former employee had dropped word in the right places in L.A., eight weeks before, that he was willing to sell a detailed package on the complex. Kubion had picked up on it immediately; he was a planner, an organizer-between jobs and looking for something ripe and solid-and on paper the job looked pretty good. He gave the guy an initial finder’s fee of five hundred, told him there’d be another two thousand if a score developed, thought things over for a while and figured a three-man team, and went to talk to Brodie. He’d worked with Brodie before, and he was sharp and dependable and had a multitude of talents, like being a good wheel man and having contacts that could supply you with most anything short of a tank; Brodie was looking, too, and said he liked the sound of it so far, count him in. They talked over who to get for the third man. Both of them wanted Chadwick; but Chadwick was unavailable, and so were two others they tried, and finally they had to settle for Loxner. Loxner was big and bluff and slow-witted and knew how to take orders well enough, but the thing about him, like the thing about a lot of strong arms in the business, he was tough only when things were moving smoothly and he was behind the gun. If there was any kind of tight, the word was he went to mush inside and maybe you couldn’t depend on him to do anything except crap his shorts. Still, he’d been around a long time and had only taken one fall, and that said something for him right there. So they talked to him, and he was free and hungry, and that made the team complete.

That Monday the three of them had driven up to Sacramento to look things over. A single surveillance of the afternoon ritual with the armored car, using binoculars from a copse of trees to the rear, convinced them that the job was not only workable, it was a goddamn wonder somebody hadn’t ripped the place off long before this. Kubion evolved a full-scale plan right away, but they hadn’t wanted to use it if there was an alternative method; the financing would be heavy and would cut deeply into the take. They visited the store several times, individually and in pairs, and they camped in the trees for three successive Monday afternoons. But they couldn’t find another way to do it that was as clean and sure as the original. They even considered hitting the armored car instead, but that was a dangerous and by no means simple or guaranteed proposition-particularly since the car operated strictly within residential and business districts. And there wouldn’t be any more money in the store by doing it that way, since the car delivered each payload to one bank or another after making a pickup.

For reasons known only to its management, the armored car company didn’t necessarily use the same guards on the same run each Monday. And, conversely, their signal for admittance to Greenfront never varied: one long, two short, one long on the bell beside the rear entrance door. These two facts, discovered during surveillance, convinced the three of them finally to take Greenfront according to Kubion’s initial plan. With the method of operation settled, they agreed to pool their slim cash reserves in order to eliminate outside financing and an even larger slice off the top, and went to work setting it up.

Brodie knew something about photography and spent two days outside the car company’s offices in downtown Sacramento, taking unobtrusive color photographs of the guards and of the type of armored car used by the firm. When the pictures were developed and blown up, Kubion took the ones of the cars to a mechanic Brodie knew in San Francisco, and the mechanic thought it over and decided he could make a dummy, for around eight thousand, that would pass any but the closest inspection. Then Kubion went to L.A. with the photos of the guards, to a costumers again supplied by Brodie, and put out another two thousand on three duplicate guard uniforms, three sets of simple theatrical disguises, and six money sacks of the type utilized by the armored car concern. Brodie handled the weaponry, through a safe gunsmith in Sacramento; he bought three. 38 caliber Colt New Police revolvers, the same model carried by the guards, and a Smith amp; Wesson Model 39 automatic, 38 caliber, as a backup. On each of the subsequent three Mondays, Brodie followed the car which serviced Greenfront-one stop each week, using different rented vehicles on each occasion, to avoid the possibility of detection; by this means, he learned that the stop just prior to Greenfront was a place called Saddleman’s Supermarket, two miles from the department store complex.