The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  “If that is the best you can do.”

  “It is my final offer,” the man said.

  “We deal then,” Gunny said.

  “When do you want them?”

  “Tonight.”

  “It is possible,” the man said, “but we have done much talking, and we have made a deal, and I have not seen your money.”

  “Half now, half on delivery?”

  The man nodded.

  Gunny had to stop and think. He had five thousand on him. Two thousand in hundreds buttoned away in his hip pocket. One thousand in fifties in his right-hand trouser pocket. Two thousand in mixed bills pinned in his inside jacket pocket.

  He had to choose. He didn’t want to show too much money. He sensed that the driver and the bald man would kill for twenty dollars. And he was caught between the sums in his pockets. Eleven hundred owed.

  He reached into his hip pocket and brought out the two thousand in hundreds. He kept the wad of bills low but he smelled the strong garlic and knew that the driver was pressing closer, watching him. Nothing he could do about that. He didn’t open the fold. He did a cut he thought was a bit more than halfway through the wad. He placed the heavy part of the cut on the bar and replaced the remainder in his pocket. He picked up the hundreds from the bar and counted out eleven of them. He still had two hundred left. He stuffed them in his front-right trouser pocket. “There.” He pushed the wad of bills toward the man on his left.

  The man took his time. He counted the hundreds, and then he inspected each bill, feeling the paper and staring at the engraving.

  “It’s not phony money,” Gunny said. “If that’s what you think.”

  “It was my thought.”

  “Check the serial numbers,” Gunny said. “No two alike. If they all had the same numbers, they’d be phony.”

  The man checked the numbers. He nodded that he was satisfied. “Jean will deliver the pipe to you in two hours.” He indicated the driver. “You pick the location for the delivery.”

  The driver, Jean, nodded.

  Gunny pushed back his stool. He had the rest of the brandy. It jolted him and burned a place in the pit of his stomach.

  “Drop me at Rue Ontario. I’ll wait for you there.”

  The man with the gray hair nodded at the driver.

  Gunny followed the driver and the bald man to the exit.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The way Vic Franks heard it, Jules Harpur saw the war coming as early as 1937. That wasn’t to say that it was a religious vision or anything like that. The rest of the world had seen the same signs. The difference was that Jules, even that early, decided that there had to be some way to take advantage of the war when it came.

  Jules owned a junkyard, and part of his business was buying old cars and stripping them down before he sold them for scrap metal. That alone gave him a head start, because he realized that with the coming of the war there was going to be a shortage of cars, trucks, tires, and all parts.

  The junkyard did well. Jules made expenses and a good profit. He didn’t, he knew, have the cash to put his big idea into operation. It took him time to work up the nerve to go to his Uncle Robert, the relative that the whole family talked about in whispers. What they said was a mixture of respect and fear. From nothing, his Uncle Robert had skimped and saved and cut corners, and now, at sixty, he owned whole blocks of slum property and even land in the better parts of Montreal.

  It was not a long conversation. The small man with the face of an ill child listened after the first question. “What is it you want of me, Jules?”

  Jules had brought his notes with him. He knew almost to the penny. He needed the money to buy the twenty acres that joined the junkyard on the west side. The money to hire three or even four men to send on expeditions to the outlying, small-town sections of Canada with enough cash in hand to buy every used truck and car they saw. Payment on the spot—that was important. And storage. He would need to construct sheds and other buildings so that he could protect and hide what he collected.

  “There will be no shortage,” Uncle Robert said. “There will be steady flow from below the border.”

  Jules shook his head. “The United States will be in the war themselves.”

  “You are certain?”

  “One reads the newspapers. That man, Roosevelt, will help the British. It is as if they are family.”

  The old man believed him. He stared at Jules for a long time. “I thought all the blood in the family had gone thin and weak as water.”

  Jules blushed. He did not know what to answer.

  “There is a further matter,” the old man said. “You must tell me why I should let you have the money. You have offered me your idea without strings, free of any charge. Is there a reason why I should not take your idea and go and do with it what I please? I have the money to finance it and you do not.”

  “There is no reason,” Jules admitted. And he felt the sinking feeling in his stomach.

  “There must be a reason you can give,” Uncle Robert said, “or I will do just that.”

  “It is my business. I know it and you do not.” He sucked in a breath and rushed on. “I will do all the work. I will handle every part of it. By the time the war is one year old or two years, we will be dividing large profits each month.”

  “How would we divide those profits?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Jules said.

  “Money itself is more than an idea or the sweat that makes it work.”

  “Sixty to you, Uncle, and forty to me.”

  The old man agreed. Within the month Jules had his seed money.

  Now the war was a year old. Steel was short. Everything went into the war effort. Soon, if he understood the newspapers as he believed he did, the United States would be in the war. It would be hard for them to stay out of it.

  The stockpile on the additional twenty acres grew. The profits were just around the corner. The old man, his uncle, was even more patient than he was. He knew that if there were profits to be made now, those profits would double in another year.

  Other men, slower than Jules Harpur, had the same idea. They were too late. They found the surrounding countryside had been stripped almost bare by the Harpur advance men.

  Vic Franks found him in his office near the front gate of the junkyard. It was a one-room shack, a wood-frame building that was covered, roof and sides, by tar paper. The floor creaked, and it was black with tracked-in oil and grease. Metal shavings and filings made a grain in the wood floor.

  The desk Jules sat behind was a flush door laid over two fifty-gallon oil drums.

  “I do not understand,” Jules said. “Is there some reason why you should come to me? I am, as you can see, in the junk business. I do not sell trucks or cars.”

  “A man …”

  “Is there a sign outside that says that I sell trucks or cars?”

  “A man in a bar gave me your name,” Vic said.

  Jules Harpur lifted his hands over his head, the gesture of ultimate exasperation. His arms were thick and short. “And now people are talking about my business in bars? People talk freely …”

  “It wasn’t all that free,” Vic said. “I had to pay him a hundred dollars.”

  “Did this man … this paid informer … give his name?”

  “I didn’t ask it. His name didn’t have anything to do with my business.”

  “You are saying,” Jules said, “that you are discreet?”

  “I’ve got a mouth that shuts like a bear trap.”

  “I see.” Jules fiddled with a tin can on the front of his desk that held a number of pencils. “And, what exactly is your business?”

  “That’s my business,” Vic said.

  Jules pushed himself up from his chair. He was wearing bib overalls with a blue shirt. The bib wasn’t hooked. It hung down, flapping against the front of his legs like a butcher’s apron.

  “It will do no harm to look around and see what we can find.”

  “My though
t exactly,” Vic said.

  The bib flapping against his knees bothered Jules after a few minutes of walking. He hooked it in place while he showed Vic through the old part of the junkyard.

  “Do you see anything that interests you?”

  Vic pointed toward the west, the new part of the yard. “Let’s try that direction. I can smell a truck a mile away.”

  Jules unlocked a high fence gate. They walked through rows of crudely constructed storage sheds. The sheds had walls but no doors. From outside, Vic could see the racks of engine parts. He looked at Jules.

  “Guard dogs at night,” Jules said, answering the question before it was asked.

  Past those sheds, and they were in a different area. The buildings looked like oversized carports. Each shed, without walls but with a tin roof, held five or six cars or trucks.

  “I told you my nose was good,” Vic said.

  Jules led him through the larger sheds where the trucks were stored. They passed bay after bay where the trucks were parked. All of the trucks were on blocks, tireless, and they were covered with waterproof tarp.

  Vic had his look. Then he touched Jules on the arm and they walked back to the second shed, where he stopped in front of two three-and-a-half-ton Mack Company Bulldogs. Vic knew the Bulldogs had been built from 1915 to 1937 with almost no changes in the design.

  He removed the tarps. “1935?”

  “I understand they are 1935 or 1936.”

  Vic opened the hoods on both Bulldogs. The engines were clean. They’d probably been steamed and sprayed with oil. He ran his hands over the wiring, looking for rot. The wires appeared solid. He backed away and looked for a tool bay. He found a toolbox and selected a spark-plug wrench and pulled a couple of plugs on each truck.

  Fouled points. He tossed the plugs away, skipping them like stones across the shed.

  “They need plugs.”

  “I have them,” Jules said.

  “Tires?”

  Jules waved a hand at a wired-in cage where there were stacks of tires.

  “These two, they running when you brought them in?”

  “Drove them right through the gate,” Jules said.

  “I’ll change the plugs and tune the engines. You have somebody who can set the tires for me?”

  “For a fee,” Jules said.

  “Of course.”

  They set the deal in the open shed. The price was high. Jules wanted ten thousand dollars for each Bulldog. He’d bought them, he remembered, from a construction company that had gone out of business. He’d paid five thousand dollars for the pair of them.

  Vic argued him down to six thousand dollars each.

  It was a good morning’s profit for Jules and his uncle. The seven-thousand-dollar profit was an indication of things to come.

  Jules left him with the trucks. Vic stripped down to his undershirt and went to work. By late afternoon he had the plugs changed and the engines humming to suit himself.

  The tires were worn but still had plenty of tread.

  By five in the afternoon the trucks were parked on the road outside the main junkyard gate.

  Hess said, “The money is fine. Something else bothers me.”

  Richard Betts had done his cock-and-bull at the Melton Construction Company, asking about work, but mainly he’d been interested in locating the shack where they stored the explosives. It had been easy to locate. It was set apart, distanced from the other buildings and sheds. And then, when he’d been told there wasn’t work, he had a few beers and a sandwich at the bar down the street where all the workers from Melton had lunch. A few casual questions and he had the name of the night watchman. That was easy enough, but he backed away. He didn’t want anybody remembering him. It took a phone call to get Hess’s address. He said he was the old man’s nephew from Ottawa and he was passing through Montreal on the way to his new duty station with the Army. The war was big, and everybody tried to do all they could for the servicemen. He got the address.

  Will Hess was about fifty-five. He had a bad hip from the other war, and he dragged the leg when he walked. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was a veteran and there was a shortage of men, he probably wouldn’t have kept the job any time at all.

  At first, when Richard approached him at his boardinghouse, Hess had been surprised and even outraged. That would be dishonest, to take a man’s pay and then stab him in the back. It was what some dirty German might do.

  Richard Betts accepted the mouth from him. It always took a man time to talk himself out of thinking that he was honest. You let him blow it out, work his rage off, and then run down.

  Then you say, “Look, I am going to find somebody and give him this five hundred dollars, and if it happens that you are independently wealthy, then I guess I’m just wasting your time and mine.”

  You show the money, you fan it in your fingers like a card hand. A couple of fifties, some twenties, and the rest in tens. It makes a big wad that way. And then you fold the money—after the greed starts getting to him—and you put it away.

  And you watch him break down the middle from all the things he knows he can buy with five hundred dollars, and you wait for him to creep up on you and accept the deal.

  His hand will find the right pocket.

  “What do you need?”

  Betts just looked at him. “That’s for me to know,” he said. “It ain’t none of your mix at all.”

  “You ain’t going to hurt anybody with it? I would not like to think …”

  “I’ve got this logjam in my backyard,” Richard said, “and I need enough sticks to blow it loose.” Then he decided he ought to calm the old fart. “Of course, I ain’t going to hurt nobody.”

  “And you said five hundred?” Hess had his eyes on the pocket where he’d stored the money.

  “Half now, the rest tonight.”

  Hess held out his hand.

  At about eleven o’clock he stole a car a few blocks from the tourist home on Rue Ontario. He drove across town to the Melton compound. Hess met him at the gate and let him drive in. He parked next to the explosives shack and used a short piece of pipe to pry the lock and the hinges from the door. Hess, nervous and shaking, held the flashlight while Betts selected the sticks, the caps, and the coils of wire that went with the black box.

  He loaded what he wanted in the back of the car and then drove to the gate and got out. Next to the guard shack Betts counted into Hess’s hand the two hundred and fifty he owed him.

  That was when Hess said that the money was fine but something else worried him.

  Betts understood. “You got some place where you can put the cash so it won’t be on you?”

  Hess carried the money into the shack. He’d just stepped out of the doorway when Betts hit him. Betts caught Hess as he started to go down. He rammed him against the side of the shack. The shack shook.

  Hess said, “That’s enough.”

  “No,” Betts said, “that is not enough to fool anybody.” He hit Hess in the nose and broke it. Then he worked Hess over. He pulled his punches some, but he wanted to be sure there were plenty of bruises on his chest and ribs.

  Finally, he was getting some blood on himself from the broken nose Hess had, and he decided it was getting messy. Hess had earned the five hundred.

  He let Hess fall face down in the dirt.

  It wasn’t just to protect the old man. They’d believe him, they’d see the beating, and there would be fewer questions. If they didn’t push at the old man, then he could probably stay with his story. That way Betts would remain a ghost.

  He left the gate open. He drove to the junkyard where the trucks were waiting. Gunny and Vic Franks were there. By now they should have received the shipment of arms.

  Richard Betts thought right away that there was something wrong. The two Bulldogs were parked side by side on the driveway that led to the main gate of Harpur’s junkyard. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. It was where Gunny and Vic had said the hardware would be delivered. What w
as wrong was that there was a low wooden-sided truck parked behind the Bulldogs, blocking access to the road. And there was nobody showing, not even when Betts hit the horn a toot and slowed down.

  Not right. The plan was that they’d load the explosives and head for Gilway, a railway stop about two hundred miles from Halifax. It was going to be a hell of a drive, all night and part of the next day.

  So Gunny and Vic should have been waiting by the trucks. They weren’t. Richard Betts changed his mind about turning into the drive. He eased the accelerator down and drove past. He followed the fence that surrounded the junkyard until he found a place where he could make his turn. Then he forked the car around and headed back the way he’d come. A hundred yards from the gate he cut the lights and the engine and coasted a few yards while he pulled to the side of the road. He got out and stood there for a time. He didn’t have a weapon. He’d refused one when Gunny had offered him his choice from the suitcase. Shit. That was smart at the time, but it seemed dumb as hell now. He walked to the trunk of the car. He fumbled about in the clutter until he came up with a jack handle. Best he could do, he guessed. He carried it over his shoulder the eighty yards or so to the junkyard gate. He walked on the dirt and grass. Playing cowboys and Indians, he was going to be the Indian.

  He ducked when he reached the truck with the plank-wood sides. He had a look in the cab. Nobody there. The smell of rank cigarettes and some kind of perfume. An awful stink. He moved to the bed of the truck. A canvas tarp was thrown there in a heap. Nothing under it. He bent low and ran for the Bulldog on the left. The truck bed was empty. He rounded the side to the cab. The Bulldog had a sliding door. He eased it open slowly. Nothing on the seat. He’d backed away when he saw the shape of the suitcase on the floorboards. He reached in and grabbed the handle. It was the right one, so heavy it almost pulled his arm off at the socket. Yes, that was Gunny’s war bag. He lifted the suitcase from the truck and lowered it to the ground. He squatted over it and worked at the two leather straps. He opened it and did a braille reading of the contents. A pump gun would be better. He didn’t want to take the time to assemble it. He settled for a .45 Army automatic. He put that aside and found a loaded clip. He ran a fingernail down it until he was sure it was a full load. He slapped the clip home, worked the slide, and knew a round was in the chamber.