by R.J. Ellory
Third hit was just an example. Joe Koenig was backed up against the counter. Tellers were frantically emptying cash drawers into canvas sacks. Karl Merrett was behind the main interview area hustling the bank manager out of his office and towards the vault. There was a lot of screaming. Things got confusing for a few moments. Reiff – standing near the front door watching for any external activity, making sure that he had a good view of the bank’s interior – caught the reflection off a side door. A man was pressed against the back of one of the internal pillars, no more than a few feet from where Merrett would appear once he cleared the rear offices.
Albert Reiff, a simple man, uncomplicated in both speech and manner, took three steps to the right, ducked beneath an overhanging pot-plant, and came up beside the man.
The man realized all too late that he’d been seen. He turned, looked right back at Albert Reiff, eyeball-to-eyeball in fact, and then opened his mouth to emit a sound like Nyuuuuggghh – an exhalation of excruciating depth and force – as Reiff drove a sixinch serrated combat knife through his lower gut. As the man went down Reiff caught him by his hair, held him suspended for a moment, and then cut his throat.
Six minutes later Kennet Wiltsey had entered the bank to cash a check.
At nine-forty-six Karl Merrett heard the first indication that things were not going strictly to plan.
The thing he heard was silence.
Beyond the plate glass front windows, out along West Ninth and across the corner of Washington, the traffic had ceased. It was a busy intersection; traffic ran through it twenty-four seven.
Silence was not good.
Joe Koenig, already aware of the fact that it was now an all-or nothing gig, held his breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them Karl Merrett was standing beside him.
‘Call Wheland in the van,’ Koenig said. ‘Tell him we’re going to need to come out the back.’
Merrett nodded, took a heavy handset from his coveralls and switched on the transmitter.
Nine-fifty-one.
Harper’s cab is stopped by the cops at the corner of Seventh and Greenwich. Two black and whites are angled nose-to-nose from one sidewalk to the other. Riot-suited officers crouch against storefronts, and from the rear window of the cab Harper can see uniformed men ushering lines of people from the back door of stores, from the mall facing him. A single spectator stands outside a record store on the left sidewalk, headphones on, in his hand a huge cup of Coke like he’s at the drive-in.
‘What the fuck is this?’ the cab driver is saying. He winds down his window and hollers at one of the uniforms.
‘Need to back up sir,’ the uniform tells him. ‘Back up the way you came and find some other way to your destination.’
‘This is my freakin’ destination,’ the driver says.
The uniform smiles, shakes his head. ‘Not any more it’s not.’
The driver curses, winds up the window.
‘Back up half a block and let me out,’ Harper says. ‘You what?’
‘Back there . . . the corner down there.’
The driver shrugs, shifts gear, reverses the cab and turns.
A minute or so later John Harper is walking back towards the record store at the bottom of West Twelfth.
McLuhan snatches the receiver from his desk. ‘Yes?’
He pauses. ‘Who are you talking about? Who’s not where?’
He shakes his head. ‘Okay, okay. Jesus Christ. Let me know when you hear back from West Twelfth.’
McLuhan sets down the receiver and walks to the corridor. ‘Oates!’
Sergeant Warren Oates appears at the end of the corridor.
‘He’s not home,’ McLuhan says.
Oates frowns.
‘Duchaunak . . . he’s not home. Find out which car went over to West Twelfth and call them. I want to know what the fuck is going on.’
‘I called,’ Oates says. ‘I was on my way up to see you.’
McLuhan says nothing.
‘The whole area is sealed.’
‘What?’
‘West Twelfth, both ends. Sixth and Seventh. They have about thirty uniforms down there and a Federal crew.’
McLuhan is shaking his head, disbelieving. ‘They have what?’
‘Federal people . . . ATF, SWAT as well I think.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘What I say,’ Oates replies. ‘There’s something going on down there . . . down on West Twelfth, and we just had a report in from Despatch.’ Oates pauses, like he’s figuring the best way to say something he doesn’t want to say.
‘And?’ McLuhan prompts.
‘And it looks like West Twelfth isn’t the only place.’
‘Mr Ross isn’t here this morning.’
Freiberg stands over the bank teller. Through the slits in his mask his eyes are small dark spaces, as if there is no light behind them, as if everything is switched off.
‘Not here?’ he asks. The intonation of his voice lifts at the end of his question. The sound is one of puzzlement, disbelief perhaps. ‘Bullshit he’s not here. Get him out here now!’
The teller starts to cry. Her name is Alice Dunnett. She is twenty-five years old and people constantly tell her how much like Helen Hunt she looks; younger, of course, but nevertheless so much like Helen Hunt. With mascara now smeared across her lower lids and the upper part of her cheeks she looks like someone kicked her six ways to Thanksgiving and home again for Christmas.
Freiberg turns and looks at Steve Tyler. ‘Where the fuck is Frederick Ross?’ he asks.
Tyler shakes his head. His face is white. His pants are soaked through. His eyes are red and swollen from crying. The man has almost nothing left of the person he was when he arrived for work. ‘He’s not here,’ he says, and he steps forward, his right hand instinctively reaching towards Alice Dunnett in a gesture of camaraderie, of intended protection perhaps. ‘He called in sick this morning . . . just called in sick.’
‘You spoke to him?’ Freiberg asks.
Tyler shakes his head. His voice is weak and strained. ‘No, I didn’t speak to him. There’s a number for staff to call if they’re sick. They speak to a nurse. If they’re staying home we get a message through on our internal memorandum system.’
‘And Ross called in sick?’
Tyler nods. ‘Yes sir, he called in sick.’ He looks down at the ground.
‘So who’s got the vault access code?’
Tyler shakes his head defeatedly. ‘No-one has vault access until after lunch. We have an ancillary vault which Mr Youngman has access to, but until Mr Ross’s replacement arrives we have no access to the central vault.’
‘And where the fuck is Mr Youngman?’
‘Here,’ a voice says.
Freiberg turns, sees a middle-aged man in a dark suit rise to his feet.
‘I’m Mr Youngman,’ the dark suit says, but his voice – though clear and distinct – is lost in the sound of a helicopter overhead.
The East Coast Mercantile & Savings security guards, faced with a hostage situation, yielded to the demands of the three gunmen without question. They were relieved of their weapons, and once the first had taped the hands, feet and mouth of the second, Larry Benedict repeated the procedure on the first. They were then seated with their backs to a central pillar, invisible from the street if anyone were to look through the front door, and while Klein herded the bank’s customers to a section of the lower floor, Leo Petri ran back of the tellers’ positions and disabled the counter’s alarm activation system. Without assistance he started filling bags with bundles of notes, one eye on what he was doing, another on the street. For some reason, neither apparent nor specific, he had woken that morning with a sense of uneasy premonition. He believed something had gone wrong. He said nothing, not to Walt Freiberg nor Larry Benedict. He didn’t want to be the one who jinxed the operation, because he’d been there before. Did a four-year Fulton stretch on a jinx back in 1996. Back then, more than eight years before
, he’d experienced the same feeling, the same sensation in his lower gut, all the while a dark thought at the back of his mind. Like an itch that could never be scratched, always out of reach.
He bagged the money; he watched the road; he did his best to ignore the negative vibe that had invaded his thoughts. Watched everyone and everything, eyes going two directions at once. Nervous, like a whipped cat.
SIXTY-FOUR
Nine-thirty-one a.m.; both John Harper and Frank Duchaunak are attempting to get as close to the scene of police activity as possible, Harper from the Seventh Avenue end of West Twelfth, Duchaunak from Sixth.
At nine-thirty-three both of them are aware of the sound of helicopters, and looking up they are witness to a black whispermode police chopper making its way past the roof of St Vincent’s Hospital. Close behind it, no more than two hundred yards, is a TV station helicopter. Both Harper and Duchaunak are aware that whatever might have been planned is already falling apart.
Duchaunak thinks of Walter Freiberg, perhaps because he is the closest to Edward Bernstein, perhaps himself in some way an accessory to the murder of Lauren Sachs. He wonders why there is so much police activity when his call to Captain McLuhan seemed to produce nothing but rebuttal and protest.
John Harper, confused, uncertain of what part he might have played in bringing the same police presence so swiftly, thinks of Cathy Hollander. There is little else now that occupies his thoughts. He wonders if she will make it out of Christmas Eve alive.
At nine-forty-seven the fifth victim of what would later be known as ‘The Christmas Eve Heists’ was killed.
Associated Union Finance on West Broadway. Sol Neumann, Charlie Beck and Lewis Parselle had been inside the building for twenty-five minutes. They were already behind schedule. It had taken until nine-forty-one for the cashiers to empty the twenties, fifties and hundreds into holdalls – four bags in all, each approximately three feet in length, a foot deep, a foot wide. The dollar count for each holdall was unknown, but bank financial records would later estimate that somewhere in the region of two hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars had been stripped from eleven desks. As far as the original plan was concerned such an amount was merely a taster, an hors d’oeuvre before the main course. Each of the selected targets held considerably more than four million dollars within their respective vaults. It was the day before Christmas. The streets were jammed with people, the vast majority away from work, the vast majority engineering their way through the crowds in an effort to gather the last of their provisions and gifts for the following day. The banks had predicted that requests for cash would be high, much the same as every year, and thus the withdrawals anticipated by each crew were anticipated to be sufficient to cover the amount to complete all transactions between Ben Marcus and Walter Freiberg – and leave more than sufficient for the remaining members of Bernstein’s outfit to start their own business elsewhere.
So, at nine-forty-seven, Charlie Beck hauled one of the assistant managers to his feet from the huddled staff and customer gathering at the back of the internal concourse and told him to point out Thomas Delaney, vice-president of the West Broadway branch of Associated Union Finance. Charlie Beck had seen the man’s picture enough times, but the picture was small, a little grainy, and appearances in person were always significantly different from photographs.
The assistant manager, a remarkably punctual and reliable man called William Byrde, father of two, struggling to keep a somewhat awkward marriage together due to his wife’s tendency to drastically overspend on a routine basis, told Charlie Beck that Mr Delaney was not in that morning.
Beck frowned, shook his head. ‘Come again?’
‘He’s not here,’ Byrde said. ‘He’s not well . . . he called in this morning and told me that he wouldn’t be in until after the holiday period.’
Beck nodded, turned and looked at Neumann. ‘So who has the vault access code?’
Byrde didn’t speak for a moment.
Beck stepped forward, raised his handgun and pointed it directly at Byrde’s chest. ‘The vault access code . . . who has it in Delaney’s absence?’
Byrde’s eyes widened, more than seemed physically possible. He started to shake his head, a reaction that seemed more apropos to his own disbelief rather than a response to Beck’s question.
‘Who?’ Beck repeated.
‘Deputy Vice-President Michael Roth,’ Byrde said, his voice steady, but somehow reflecting his utter terror about the situation in which he had found himself.
‘And where the fuck is he?’
Once again Byrde shook his head, slowly, metronomically, as if he believed such a gesture would perhaps alleviate the pressure he was feeling. ‘He’s on his way,’ he said quietly.
‘On his way?’ Sol Neumann asked. He stepped forward. He raised the M-16, pointed it towards Byrde. ‘On his way from where?’
Byrde looked at Neumann, back to Beck, at Neumann once again. ‘If an access code holder is absent the code he possesses can only be relayed to another VP or manager.’
Beck was nodding. ‘Right, right,’ he said. ‘Go on . . . get to the fucking point here.’
Byrde swallowed visibly. His skin was white, chalk-white, but glossed with sweat.
‘The VP or manager has to come from another district though . . . a precaution against too many people in the same facility having the same codes.’
‘And where the fuck is he coming from?’ Neumann asked. He took yet another step forward, raised the gun a little higher.
Byrde started to shake his head more vigorously. His legs seemed weak, and for a moment it appeared that he would collapse right where he stood.
‘Where the fuck is he coming from?’ Beck shouted.
‘Long Island City,’ Byrde mumbled.
‘Eh?’
‘Long Island City . . . he’s got to come from Long Island City.’
‘You’re full of shit!’ Neumann barked, his temper already stretched. ‘This is bullshit. For fuck’s sake, this is just some goddamned bullshit fucking line . . . who the fuck d’you think we are?’ He stepped forward, pushed the barrel of the M-16 into Byrde’s chest. ‘What the fuck do you think this is, mister? Some kind of party game? Tell me what the fucking access codes are!’
‘Please,’ Byrde started. ‘Please, no . . .’ His knees started to give. He tried to stand but there was too little strength remaining. He dropped to his knees, his hands together like he was praying, his face red and sweating, his hair rat-tailed, dark stains beneath the shoulders of his suit jacket.
Neumann stepped back, aimed the muzzle of his rifle directly at Byrde’s head.
‘Jesus, no!’ Byrde pleaded. ‘I have a wife . . . have kids, two kids, mister . . . I have two kids and it’s Christmas!’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Beck snapped. He looked at Neumann, shook his head, and then turned to the gathered crowd of staff and customers huddled against the far wall.
‘Hands up anyone who’s first name begins with the letter A.’ Two people raised their hands, a young man, a middle-aged woman.
‘Over here!’ Beck snapped. Both of them hesitated. ‘Now!’ Beck hollered. ‘Get the fuck over here now or this asshole is going to get shot in the fucking head!’
The young man and the woman moved fast, running across the floor towards where Beck stood with Neumann, Byrde on his knees between them.
‘You!’ Beck said, and pointed at the young man. ‘What’s your name?’
‘A-Andrew,’ the man stuttered.
‘How old are you?’
‘How old am I?’
‘Yes, for Christ’s sake how fucking old are you? It isn’t a difficult fucking question!’
‘Twen-twenty t-two,’ the young man stammered.
‘Married?’
Andrew shook his head.
‘Kids?’ Beck asked.
Again Andrew shook his head.
Beck turned and looked down at Byrde. ‘The access code?’ he asked.
Byrde looked
up at Beck, his eyes wide and terrified. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t know it . . . I don’t have the access code.’
Beck nodded, raised his handgun, shot Andrew in the head. A wide arc of blood rushed from the wound and sprayed across the woman standing beside him.
For a moment the woman did nothing. Stunned horror didn’t even register on her face for a handful of seconds. She seemed to move her head then, in slow-motion, everything in slow-motion, her eyes wide, looking down at the mess of blood that covered her hands, her skirt, her legs, the side of her woollen jacket.
She opened her mouth to scream, but Byrde was there first, shouting at the top of his voice, a sound like a wounded animal, so whatever might have come from the woman’s mouth was drowned.
Neumann stepped forward. He raised his hand and slapped Byrde viciously across the face. Byrde fell silent, the woman too.
‘Access code?’ Beck asked again.
Byrde started to shake his head.
At nine-forty-eight the sixth victim was killed. Her name was Anthea Hennessy. Anthea was forty-seven years of age, a nurse and a widow with no children; for the previous seven years she had devoted herself almost exclusively to the care of elderly terminal patients at St Vincent’s hospital. She was a very close friend of Iris Piper, resident ward sister on the ICU wing, a woman who had spent the previous week monitoring the progress of a seventy-year-old gunshot victim called Edward Bernstein. Ironic, but nevertheless true.
The gunshot was loud, extraordinarily so, but somehow drowned beneath the sudden rush of a helicopter, accompanied by the first challenges from armed robbery negotiators across the street.
Beck looked at Neumann.
Neumann stood immobile for some seconds. Someone somewhere must have tripped a silent alarm. ‘Get Parselle to radio Dearing,’ he said. ‘We’re outta here.’