Lawrence Block - The Specialists

“I guess I am at that.” Dehn was making his fourth visit to the box today. He signed the signature card, rubbing his sleeve against it to eliminate the possibility of prints. Then he and the guard went through the little game with the keys, using first the guard’s key and then Dehn’s key to liberate the safe deposit box.

“All filled up with hundred dollar bills, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, just some torn-up newspaper. I’m just putting up a front.”

The guard laughed cooperatively. Dehn took the box to a booth, opened it, removed the manila envelope, returned it to his attaché case, and gave the metal box a quick wipe to rid it of prints. From the attaché case he withdrew an eight-inch length of lead pipe that had been wrapped first with quarter-inch-thick foam rubber and then with several layers of Mystik tape. His gun was in a shoulder rig under his jacket, the .45-caliber Ruger automatic that Murdock had bought in Passaic.

He hoped he wouldn’t have to shoot it.

He unlocked the door of the booth and eased it open an inch or so. The vault room was silent. He reached into the attaché case a final time and took out a pair of sheer rubber gloves. He put them on.

And looked at his watch.

It was 1:59.

The Wells Fargo truck pulled into the Revere Avenue lot at two minutes of two. The driver stayed behind the wheel. The two guards, dressed in gray uniforms with blue piping, went into the bank. One of them carried a pair of cloth sacks. The other was empty-handed. As they opened the side door of the bank Simmons ground the starter of the brown truck.

He did this a couple of times, staying clear of the gas pedal so that the engine couldn’t catch. Then he swung down from the truck, scooped up the gun, and went over to the Wells Fargo driver.

“Can’t help you, buddy,” the driver said. “Not allowed to leave the truck. Now there’s a gas station on Broad and Ivy, that’s two blocks down and — oh, shit.” He saw the gun. “All we got is nickels and dimes, is why I’m all alone here.”

“Shut up and turn around.”

“Listen, it’s their money. Not mine. Right?”

“Right.”

“So what do I care about it? Right? I got a wife, I got a kid—”

Simmons hefted the gun.

“Oh, shit,” the driver said. “You could tie me up and gag me, but I suppose it’d take too much time, huh? Look, do me a favor, don’t hit too hard. Believe me. I should care about their money. I could care less, right? One little tap and I’ll guarantee I’m out cold for hours. And I got a lousy memory for faces, believe me. And—”

Simmons knocked him cold.

Dehn was waiting when they came downstairs. Two Wells Fargo men and Matthew Devlin, the bank’s vice-president and, according to Manso, one of Platt’s finest. Outside of Devlin and Caspers, the president, it was unlikely that any bank employees knew about the racket connection. But those two were in the know.

Dehn opened the door of his booth the rest of the way. He emerged carrying the empty safe deposit box under one arm. The hunk of taped pipe was held out of sight behind his back in his free hand. He ignored the three men clustered around the vault door and turned over the safe deposit box to the guard.

“Now, Mr. Moorehead,” the guard said, grinning. “Feels lighter, doesn’t it?”

“Sure does,” Dehn said.

The guard took the box, turned, raised it up to return it to its slot. Out of the corner of his eye Dehn saw Matthew Devlin open the vault door. “I’ll have your key now, Mr. Moorehead,” the vault guard said, and Dehn hit him behind the right ear with the length of lead pipe.

The guard fell forward, against the wall, and slid gently down to the floor. Before he got there, Dehn had the pipe transferred to his left hand and the Ruger drawn in his right.

He said, “Freeze. Nobody move.”

The guards were very good. They froze on command and held that way. But Devlin made a try for the vault. Dehn got to him, shouldered him out of the way.

“Just cool it, Matt. Don’t screw it up now.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Stay loose, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t Platt tell you about it?”

Devlin stared.

“Yeah, the same drill as Passaic.” He chuckled lightly, then turned to the two Wells Fargo men. “Sorry, fellows,” he said, and put them both out with the pipe.

Devlin said, “Platt must be crazy.”

“All I do is follow orders.”

“And why did you call me Matt? And for the love of God, why talk like that in front of them?”

“In front of who?”

“Those two soldier boys. You’ll have to kill them now.”

“Oh?” Dehn’s eyes flicked to his wristwatch, then back to Devlin. “Why’s that, Matt?”

“They heard what you said. They could repeat it to the police, you idiot!”

“They could at that,” Dehn said. He heard sounds from upstairs, the sounds he had been listening for. “They definitely could do that,” he said, “and it might give the police ideas.”

And he shot Matthew Devlin twice in the face.

When the two Wells Fargo men and the bank VP had been downstairs for three minutes, Murdock stuck his gun in a guard’s back. Just about that time Giordano was leaning over the rail of the tellers’ counter. He held a gun on the two girls while with his other hand he used a knife to cut through the alarm wire.

“Clean out the drawers,” he said pleasantly. “Don’t stall — use the cloth sacks behind you on your left. Good girl, good girl. Now fill them up with the fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Don’t bother with anything smaller or larger. Very good, very good.”

And behind him Murdock had the guards and customers and two bank officers all fanned out very nicely. When the tellers had their drawers clean, Giordano motioned them around to join the party. He kept the whole crowd in place while Murdock ran the two sacks of bills to the side door to hand them over to Simmons. Then Murdock went on downstairs to help Dehn clean out the vault, and Giordano stayed where he was, keeping everything and everybody cool.

“Now don’t anybody be nervous and don’t anybody be a hero,” he said. He kept talking gently to them, telling them that nobody was going to be hurt, that they would all be on their way in two or three minutes. He called the bank executives and the tellers by name, almost as if he knew them.

Like silk, he thought. In and out and everything smooth and easy. He had one tense moment when two muffled reports reached the first floor, the sound of the two bullets that Dehn put in Matthew Devlin. He hadn’t expected any shooting, and his first guess was that the Wells Fargo men had tried to be cute. When a few seconds crawled by without any uproar from the vault room, he decided that everything was still going the way it was supposed to. A customer asked about the shots and Giordano was so loose and cool he told her it was just the sound of the vault being blown open. The crowd seemed to believe it.

He held them all in place. In no time at all Dehn was coming up the stairs, heading out the side door. A few seconds later Murdock appeared, also carrying a large sack. He headed through the crowd and went out the front door. By then Simmons had the truck out of the lot and around the corner, and Murdock flipped the sack in back and leaped up after it, and Giordano, gun in hand, started backing toward the front door.

Smooth as pie and easy as silk, he thought, and all of this with them one man short and working on a short-notice improvised plan. The bank was a piece of cake and that was all there was to it. They could have knocked it over with two men and a four-year-old crippled girl, all armed with beanshooters and spitballs. Unloaded beanshooters. Dry spitballs.