Lawrence Sanders - McNally's caper

‘Also,’ I said, ‘there have been at least five big hotel heists in Manhattan in the past few years. Security has been beefed up. I think there’s a special squad in the NYPD just to keep an eye on hotels, and for all we know there may be permanent stakeouts of hotel desks at night.’

‘Then let’s put hotels aside for the time being. Ditto offices. Offices sound small time, especially since most payrolls are paid by check. That leaves stores. Jannie, you take half these store robberies and I’ll take half. See if we can come up with something.’

We divided the clippings and began flipping through them.

After a while Dick said:

‘Jannie, how far back do these stories go?’

‘About three years. Why?’

‘Just wondering.’

We read on in silence for a few more minutes. Then Dick said:

‘That’s interesting.’

‘What is?’

‘Do me a favor: Put aside any clippings you find about jewel robberies. Just stores. Not couriers, cutters, messengers, and so forth; just stores. Anything to do with jewels. Mostly diamonds.’

He poured us each more vodka and we went on with our task. A half-hour later, we had a fat little stack of reports on jewelry store robberies all over the country. Dick started going through this specialized pile.

‘What are you doing now?’ I asked him.

‘Eliminating all those where the reported loss was less than a hundred thousand dollars.’

It didn’t take him long. When he finished, he had a fistful of newspaper stories, some consisting of several clippings on the same case stapled together. Dick counted the individual cases.

‘Fourteen,’ he announced. ‘Fourteen jewelry store thefts in the past three years in which the take was more than a hundred thousand.’

‘That’s wild,’ I said. ‘And there may have been more; I can’t guarantee that my newspaper clipping is one-hundred percent efficient.’

‘But the number of robberies isn’t the most unusual factor,’ he went on. ‘You’d think most of those fourteen thefts would be in New York, in the diamond district on West 47th Street. That’s diamond headquarters for the whole country. But only two of the robberies took place there. The other twelve were all over: Chicago, Beverly Hills, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Denver, and so forth. And here’s something just as odd: most of the fourteen took place in the past year, and only one bundle of clippings shows the crooks were caught.’

‘I may have missed the solution of the crime,’ I confessed. ‘The original theft usually gets a big play in the papers, with a headline and long story on page one. If the case is broken a year later, it usually rates a few inches of type on page fifty. I could have missed it.’

‘Maybe,’ he said doubtfully, ‘but according to your file, most of these recent jewelry store capers are still unsolved.’

‘Let me see,’ I said, and he handed over the clippings.

I went through them swiftly. Then I reported to Dick:

‘Practically all were armed robberies during the daylight hours when the stores were open for business. Only three of them were breaking-and-entering at night. That makes sense; jewelry stores have good nighttime security, with electronic alarms to the local precinct house or to a private security agency. But the daylight robberies seem to have been practically all successful.’

We looked at each other. Dick Fleming has a short upper lip. Now it lifted in a half-smile.

‘They wore masks, of course?’ he asked me.

‘Usually,’ I said. ‘Ski masks or stockings pulled over their heads. Or maybe just disguises, like fake beards and mustaches. Wigs and crazy clothes. Things like that to confuse the witnesses.’

Again we looked at each other. I added ice to our glasses and poured in more vodka.

‘How does it sound to you?’ Dick asked.

‘Sounds good. Sounds like our best bet. You?’

‘Sounds good to me, too. Jannie, if we did rip off a jewelry store, how would we cash in?’

‘Two ways,’ I said. ‘One, we can sell the jewelry to a fence. Making sure he’s not an undercover cop. If a fence gives you twenty to thirty percent of the retail value of the stuff you steal, you’re lucky. The other way of cashing in is to sell the stuff back to the insurance company that carries the policy on the store. You understand? They’d rather pay thirty thousand to recover the jewels than shell out a hundred thousand if they were never found. In effect, in cases like that, the crooks are holding the jewels for ransom. The cops hate those deals between crooks and insurance companies, but there’s not much they can do about them. But we don’t have to worry about that. After all, we’re not actually going to pull the job.’

‘That’s right,’ Dick Fleming said, his pale eyes staring somewhere over my head. ‘We’re not, are we?’

Having decided on the robbery of a jewelry store, we went on to a discussion of the type of store that would best fit the Big Caper concept. Not something as large as Tiffany or Cartier. It would take an army to pull off a successful daylight heist of those emporiums. But not a little mom-and-pop shop either; the take wouldn’t pay for the expense of planning and the splitting of the profits among several gang members.

‘A medium-sized store,’ I said.

. ‘About four or five employees,’ Dick said. ‘Certainly not more than ten.’

‘A store on one level. With a single entrance.’

‘But an expensive place, specializing in high-quality gems. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires.’

‘A place with an alarm system that can be cut or put out of order.’

‘With no more than one armed guard on the premises.’

‘Right,’ I nodded, making fast notes on my scratchpad. ‘A place like that. How many do you think we’ll need?’

‘Maybe three men,’ Dick said. ‘In addition to you and me. More than that begins to get unwieldy. We’d be running up each other’s heels.’

‘We’ll need someone outside in the car,’ I reminded him. ‘A driver for a quick getaway and to serve as a lookout.’

‘A fourth, then. Or perhaps one of the three I mentioned. It depends on the size of the store. Jannie, that’ll have to be your job — locating a suitable target. I can help out on weekends, and maybe during lunch hours, but you’ll have to do most of the scouting.’

‘Where do I start?’ I asked.

‘Try Fifth Avenue first,’ he said. ‘The crowds could be a help during the getaway.’

‘Or a hindrance,’ I said. ‘If we get hung up in traffic. Some nice shops on Madison, too. And 57th Street. I’ll just have to cover the whole midtown section.’

‘A lot of walking.’

‘A lot of fun. Besides, I need the exercise.’

After he left, I cleaned up the office, carried glasses, ice bucket, vodka to the kitchen, restored clippings to the folder, tucked folders back into the file cabinet. Then I sat down in the swivel chair again, read over the brief notes I had jotted down.

It occurred to me that I would be foolish not to keep a complete record of everything Dick Fleming and I did, said, thought. Such a journal would be an invaluable reference when it came time to start a new book.

‘Here’s looking at you, Aldo Binder,’ I said out loud. Then I threaded a yellow second sheet into my IBM electric, typed in yesterday’s date at the top, gave it a working title: ‘Project X.’ I started writing. I subtitled the first section: ‘How It All Began.’

I decided not to tell Dick Fleming that I was keeping a precise record of our activities. It would only make the poor dear nervous.

I wish I had been wearing a pedometer during the following two weeks; I would have loved to know how many miles I covered. Back and forth on the cross streets from 34th to 59th. Up and down on the avenues from First to Sixth.