Red Rag Blues

by Derek Robinson

  3

  Luis stood on a corner and looked at Madison Avenue. If this was the Mecca of American advertising, it went about its work very discreetly. All he could see was banks. Big solid banks. First National City. Marine Merchant. Chemical Bank. He craned his neck and searched for more. Manufacturers Hanover. Dime Immigrant. Was that a bank? It had a Wells Fargo truck outside.

  All these banks, all that money.

  Luis, daydreaming, remembered Willie Sutton’s reason for robbing banks. “That’s where the money is,” Willie had said. Here, now, in this one sunny stretch of Madison Avenue, there must be fifty million dollars doing nothing in those banks. Just lying in bundles of notes, getting older, going nowhere, buying nothing. Luis had another thought. Those notes kept shrinking in value. Inflation nibbled like mice. Even at only one percent per annum, fifty million dollars was worth half a million less than a year ago. Yet nobody caused an uproar about that. Nobody sent the FBI to Washington DC to arrest the Willie Suttons in government who had quietly siphoned off the loot. Nobody complained, so presumably nobody suffered. Bank robbery, like everything else in life, was relative. Do it with a gun and you go to jail. Do it with statistics and they let you teach at Harvard Business School. Amazing.

  Luis went for a stroll. He had the whole afternoon to kill.

  Without really looking, he saw a couple of messenger agencies, so Morgan was right. Then, somewhere near Lexington Avenue, on 49th Street, he passed a tired-looking building that advertised offices to rent by the week, day or hour. He wondered what type of business would rent its premises by the hour. Several possibilities suggested themselves. One generated half an idea. He walked around the block and developed the idea further. Then he went into the building and rented a small room on the second floor for two hours. It cost him ten dollars.

  Next he went to Bloomingdales and bought a pair of light leather gloves. He wore them when he visited a stationery store and bought ten large, strong envelopes, a block of writing paper and a ballpen. He borrowed a Manhattan phone book and looked up ten banks with branches no more than a few blocks from his office. He wrote ten messages in block capitals, put one message in each envelope, sealed them, and addressed the envelopes to the banks. As an afterthought he wrote “Any Teller” on the envelopes.

  He went to a messenger agency he’d noticed on Lexington Avenue. “I need ten messengers,” he said. “They must deliver these ten envelopes at exactly 2:45 p.m. and take what they’re given and bring it to me immediately at this address. Is that possible?”

  “Strictly routine,” the man said. “Deliver, pick up, deliver. Where’s the problem? Forty-five bucks.”

  Luis recoiled. “Isn’t that a bit steep?”

  “You want it good or you want it cheap? My guys do good work. Cheap, you can get elsewhere.”

  Luis paid.

  *

  Messengers were a mixed bunch. Some had just left school with no qualifications except the ability to make a delivery and, if necessary, wait for a reply. Others were elderly men with sore feet who needed the pay to boost their Social Security benefit. A few were recent immigrants with little English. All had one thing in common: boredom. Walk around Manhattan all day, carrying stuff you don’t know what it is, soon you switch off the brain. What’s to get excited about? Ain’t gettin’ paid to think. Paid to walk.

  Billy Ogilvy was seventeen, six feet two, waiting for the army to claim him. Interested only in sex, at which so far he had had limited success. If he saw a good-looking girl his pupils would dilate spontaneously. Otherwise he had no reason to put his face to work. His features were heavy. They fell into a natural scowl and he left them where they felt comfortable.

  He went into a branch of First National City Bank at 2:45 p.m., as ordered. He joined the shortest line. It took him four minutes to reach the teller. He gave her the big envelope. First half of his job done. She was young and pretty and his eyes widened to get a better view. He rested his elbows on the counter.

  She slit the envelope, took out the paper, read the message: I have a gun. Put all your money in envelope and seal it. Do it now. No alarm! Gun is loaded.

  Instinctively, she glanced at Billy Ogilvy. He looked her in the eyes. He was frighteningly calm; he might have been waiting for a bus.

  The bank had a simple policy for this situation: give the robber your money and let him go. On average, a hold-up cost less than a thousand dollars. For that, it wasn’t worth risking anybody’s life, especially a customer who might get caught in the crossfire. She took all the paper money in her tray, stuffed it in the envelope, sealed it with sticky tape, gave it back, and held up her hands, palms outward: empty. Billy turned and left. It was the first time she had been robbed and she suddenly found herself frightened, breathless, trembling. It took her an absurdly long moment to find the silent-alarm button. By then Billy was gone, lost in the crowd. As instructed, he delivered the envelope to Luis in his rented office on 49th Street, got his signature (G. Washington) on the job sheet, and went away. Two more messengers delivered bulky envelopes to Luis in the next ten minutes. Maybe more were on their way. Or maybe trouble was coming. Enough was enough. Luis quit.

  He walked out of the building, carrying all three envelopes in a Bloomingdales bag. The day had changed: now colors were brighter, sounds were sharper. As he reached the corner and looked for a taxi, a police siren screamed and wailed. Another siren did battle with it. A taxi saw Luis and swung to the curb. He got in. Two police cars bullied through the traffic and stopped halfway down the block. Their sirens faded into a long, low sob and died. Cops ran into the office building. “Goodness!” Luis said. “What’s all that about?”

  “Late for their coffee break, I guess,” the driver said. He was black. He wore a knitted woolen cap and he chewed a toothpick. “Uptown,” Luis said. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile. He was beginning to feel like a New Yorker.

  *

  For the NYPD it was rapidly turning into a busy afternoon in Manhattan. Two shootings, one fatal, in Spanish Harlem. East River Drive closed near Bellevue by a multiple pile-up. Anonymous bomb threat to City Hall. Knife fight in Chinatown: three victims. Truckload of furs hijacked near Penn Station. Shots fired at 125th Street and Columbus; passing fire truck hit. Plus minor crimes and misdemeanors all over the city, such as the lady on West 12th Street who threw her husband out the window without opening it first. He landed on a passing musician. Sheer bad luck. She was a big woman, and unrepentant. She flattened three patrolmen before she was cuffed and led out. By then a crowd had gathered. Kids on the roof tossed garbage cans at the patrol cars, missed, killed a dog. Officer fired warning shots. Small riot. It was that sort of a day.

  The officers who responded to alarms at ten midtown banks flooded the area. At five banks the robbers had got away. The rest were old, slow and bewildered; they willingly gave up their envelopes and their instructions. Police found an empty office, rented in the name James Madison. “He was a regular guy,” the office manager told them. “Dressed nice. Paid cash.”

  “You didn’t suspect anything?” a detective said. “You never heard of James Madison before?”

  “Sure. I go to the fights. That’s the guy built Madison Square Garden, right? Could have been a relative. How should I know? Ain’t clairvoyant.”

  The last two messengers turned up, bearing envelopes, which they refused to release unless somebody signed their work sheets. “You’re looking for a James Madison, right?” the detective asked them.

  “Hell, no,” one said. “Thomas Jefferson.”

  “James Monroe,” the other messenger said.

  “Let me out of here,” the detective said. He drove to the messenger agency and questioned the boss. “Ten messengers, to go to ten banks. Didn’t that strike you as unusual?”

  “No. Why should it? Kind of job we handle all the time.”

  “And the ten deliveries from the banks to a rented office?”

  “So what? Most the offices in Manhattan are rented.
This office you’re standing in, it’s rented. The guy was polite, he paid cash. See?” He had found the paperwork. “William McKinley. All kosher. Strictly routine.”

  “Yeah. President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo in 1898.”

  “Before my time. Maybe this is a relative … Hey, look at this.” He had the messengers’ job sheets. “McKinley signed different names. G. Washington … A. Lincoln … U. S. Grant.”

  “Cute,” the detective said. “Cute as crabs.”

  One thing, there was no lack of witnesses. No lack of descriptions, either. Depending on who you believed, the suspect was a clean-shaven 25 with gray eyes and no scars, or a 40-year-old with a Clark Gable mustache, brown eyes and a birthmark like a strawberry on his neck. The birthmark was Billy Ogilvy’s contribution. “Which side?” the cop asked. “Right,” Billy said, and touched the left side of his neck. The cop reversed his pencil and rubbed out birthmark. Billy saw that, and was hurt. “You’ll never catch the guy,” he said. “I met him. He’s a mastercrook.”

  Ten banks, no leads: it was a headache. Bank robbery was a federal offense. The NYPD gladly turned it over to the FBI. The banks had lost five thousand bucks and change. Let Hoover’s agents bust their nuts over it.

  *

  Luis kept five hundred dollars and put the rest in a safe deposit box which he rented at a branch of Chase Manhattan on 72nd Street. Then he took a cab to 84th and First. No cops in sight. Julie was sitting on the stoop, reading the Trib. “Someone left it at Mooney’s,” she said. “I can’t afford newspapers. That bastard McCarthy’s muckraking again. See? Says he’s found more Reds in the State Department.”

  “I thought we might go to Central Park and drink some chilled white wine. Have you got a nice frock to wear?”

  She squinted up at him: he was standing with his back to the sun; his face was a dark blank. “You sound like Daddy Warbucks,” she said. “I’m not Li’l Orphan Annie.”

  He laughed. “I haven’t the faintest notion what that means.”

  “Means you’re out of your depth. Something else you don’t know.”

  They went inside. He showered, and changed all his clothes. “Jolly warm, New York,” he said. “Is there a laundry handy, by any chance?”

  She was watching him dress. “On every block. They like to be paid. And I’m behind with the rent. So what makes you so chipper?”

  “Chipper …” he murmured. “I knew a chap in Madrid who was chipper. Freddy Ryan. Remember Freddy? Trained with me to spy for the Abwehr, until they shot him. Poor old Freddy. Didn’t look chipper when he was dead. Looked as if he’d been kicked in the goolies.”

  “This is America. If you mean nuts, say nuts. Let’s go.” She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Like that? It’s a waste of your legs. Haven’t you got a pretty frock?”

  “Wrong gal. Shirley Temple I’m not.”

  “America has ruined you.” But even that didn’t make her smile.

  4

  Fisk had a guilty secret. He liked crime. For him, a day without crime was flat, dull, worthless. That was why he had joined the FBI. He had a law degree from Yale, his family were Presbyterians, and he couldn’t do wrong any more than he could play the bass saxophone, so crooks fascinated him. He and they were alike yet unalike; a puzzle and a challenge. He felt much the same way about women. In a flash of inspiration he suggested to the manager of the messenger agency that the person who hired ten guys to rob ten banks might have been a woman.

  The manager was amused. “You saying I don’t know Arthur from Martha?”

  Fisk’s supervisor, Prendergast, looked on. When the FBI had taken the ten-bank steal from the NYPD, Fisk had been eager to be involved. “Bring your notebook,” Prendergast said. “You can take statements.” They had questioned many people and they were getting nowhere. Now the kid had an original idea. “What’s on your mind?”

  “The nature of the crime. It’s evasive, there’s no risk of violence to the criminal. That’s how a woman would rob a bank: get someone else to do it.”

  “Listen, sonny,” the manager said loudly, “if it’s built like man, talks like a man, and grows hair on its knuckles it ain’t a woman.” He was annoyed at having to tell his story all over again.

  “I arrested a female, couple of years ago,” Prendergast said. “Walked like Betty Grable, talked like Joan Crawford, when we searched her she was hung like Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger, both.”

  “That’s different,” the manager said. “This still wasn’t no woman.” He pictured Luis. “Most I can say is maybe the guy was a fruit, on account of he was wearing fruit boots.” They were interested. “You know,” he said, “them soft suede things look like the fairies made ’em.”

  It was a lucky break. Well, law officers have plenty of bad luck; they also have good luck once in a while. Fisk phoned Immigration at Hoboken, got the contact address which Luis had given: an apartment on East 84th Street. “I want a black bag job on that apartment as soon as possible,” Prendergast said. If the money was there, the case was closed. That kind of search wasn’t legal, but this was the Bureau. Who gave a shit about the law?

  *

  They took a taxi to Central Park South, to a hotel she knew. The foyer was a cool and lofty place with an ambitious fountain. Bronze statues of naked youths danced in a circle through the spray. Their streaming, glistening skin made them look as if they were on the spree. “I come here a lot,” she said. “Just to look around. It’s free. I want to be like them. Run in the rain.”

  “Something I’d buy a ticket to see,” he said, and regretted it. Too flip. Her silence made it worse. “Sorry,” he said. She walked away. For the first time since he arrived, he thought perhaps she disliked him. That raised a flutter of panic. Without Julie he would be alone in New York, alone everywhere, in fact. Spending money had kept him busy in Venezuela; but it hadn’t created a different person.

  They went into the restaurant. He ordered a bottle of Blanc de Blanc, a plate of hors d’oeuvres, some breadsticks. Spending money helped the little panic to fade.

  “Herb Kizsco came by the apartment,” she said. Luis had to work his memory: Kizsco, academic, head like a melon, got fired, drove a taxi. “He heard Enrico was let out of jail. Seems the church hired an attorney to put the squeeze on Immigration.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah. Except, those nice folks from Internal Revenue were waiting. They want to audit his tax returns for the last seven years.” She ate an olive.

  “If Enrico charged a dollar a meal, he couldn’t have made any profit.”

  “Forget profit. They’ll find mistakes, irregularities. Anything they want to look for, they’ll find, they always do. They’ll put him out of business. He might as well quit.”

  “That’s persecution. Surely the government—”

  “The government’s running scared, just like the rest of us. The whole country’s scared shitless.”

  Luis looked around. The place was calm, quiet, prosperous, unhurried. This wasn’t York Avenue, where people lived on the sidewalk in their undershirts. This America was as solid as Fort Knox. He wanted to know why Julie had been fired, but instinct said this was not a good time to ask. So he smiled instead. Back in the old days, his smile had worked like sunlight on flowers. Not now, though.

  “I hope you can pay for the booze,” she said. He nodded, and kept the smile burning. “This morning you were flat broke,” she said. “Now suddenly it’s taxis and frocks and imported wine.”

  “Busy day. My associates negotiated profitable deals with several banks.” He forked an anchovy.

  She thought about that. He gave her more wine. “Luis, I know you better than anyone in the world. I know your beautiful body, every square inch of it.” Hope lurched in his loins. “I know your shabby soul,” she said, “and I know your cock-eyed mind. Whenever you sound pleased with yourself, you’re lying.”

  “I have five thousand dollars and change.”

 
“Good. Tomorrow you can get an apartment of your own.”

  For a few seconds they looked each other in the eye. Both were afraid. Julie was afraid that she would fall back in love with a man who could only be trouble. Luis was afraid he would lose the only woman he could be honest with. Also dishonest with.

  The moment passed. They talked about harmless things: Manhattan, what to see, what to avoid.

  Time to leave. He signaled for the bill. The waiter looked young enough to be his son. “Suppose I told you I was a Russian spy,” Luis said to him, casually, as he sorted out money. “What would you do?”

  “I’d expect a good tip, sir.”

  “Yes? Why?”

  “It’s a bull market, sir. From what I hear.” He was quick and cheerful. Luis laughed, and added more to the tip.

  When they were outside, she said: “Smart kid. Just don’t judge everyone by him. Can we afford the movies? Then dinner?” He smiled, and waved down a taxi. “Don’t do that Russian spy crap again,” she said. “It gives me cramps.”

  5

  The first man into the apartment wore Con Ed coveralls. He carried a Con Ed toolbox and, if pressed, he could show ID from Con Ed. He got in by using picklocks that were not Con Ed issue. He was a retired cop who did illegal entries for the FBI. He preferred the Con Ed identity because it let him search anywhere for gas leaks or

  faulty electric cables, including under the floorboards. Nine times out of ten, your amateur robber hid his stuff under the floor. Tenth time, he buried it in the back yard. People did what they saw in the movies. No imagination.

  But he found no scarred wood, or scratched nails, or disturbed dust: the floorboards hadn’t been moved since Pearl Harbor. He went down the hall and peeked at the backyard. Kids on a tree swing. Guy poking burgers on a barbecue. Forget it.

  He went back to the apartment. Somebody knocked on the door, so he opened it. Repairman from New York Telephone. “Name of Conroy?” the man said. “Fault on the phone?”