I gave him a quizzical smile and he flushed. “I mean I happened to be back there one night and I saw it,” he almost stammered. “I didn’t mean—” He let it die and averted his gaze when he saw my amused expression.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “You’ve figured all the angles you could think of, and so far have batted zero. Don’t be embarrassed. I wouldn’t mind taking a stab at it myself.”
His face jerked toward me. “You’re kidding.”
With my eyes fixed on his, I gave my head a slow shake. “Were you just casing the lay to amuse yourself, or were you in earnest?”
After a moment of astonished silence, he said, “Are you—I mean is your business—”
When his voice trickled off to nothing, I said quietly, “Never mind what I am, or what my business is. Are you interested in a partnership?”
He licked his lips and glanced furtively around. He would have made an excellent movie villain. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t have considered him as a possible partner in anything. In a strange town he probably would be picked up on suspicion by the first cop who saw him.
In this setup he had the advantage of having thoroughly cased the lay, though, which made him indispensable.
When he was satisfied that no one was eavesdropping, he asked in a suddenly husky voice, “Are you serious?”
“Totally.”
He had to look around again before saying, “Fifty-fifty?”
“Right down the middle. If you don’t quit gazing around as though you just picked a pocket, somebody’s going to wonder what’s eating you. Cut it out and just act natural, huh? Nobody’s close enough to hear us.”
“Sorry,” he said with a gulp. “This kind of takes the wind out of me. I mean I’ve dreamed about it, but I never expected—” His voice trailed off again.
I said, “Let’s get on with the discussion. I’m no safe cracker, so burglary is out. Hitting him in here is out too, if what you say is true. I’ve no more desire than you have to be torn apart by a bunch of crazy miners. That leaves hitting him between here and the bank. How far is the bank?”
“Right next door. And at five p.m. on a Friday there are as many miners wandering up and down the sidewalk as there are in here. We’d be up against the same thing.”
The problem was beginning to compare with knocking over Fort Knox. I was contemplating forgetting the whole thing and driving on when there was a rending crash of metal from outside.
Instantly customers began streaming out the door. Andy Carr jumped up too and joined the exodus. As the only windows in the place were small, barred squares too high to see out of, the only way to learn what all the excitement was about was to trail along.
I was the last customer out of the place, leaving only the bartender behind. And even he came as far as the doorway to peer out.
On the far side of the square a couple of cars had collided. All traffic had stopped and a couple of hundred people were converging on the scene from all directions.
By the time I reached the edge of the crowd, a solid mass of humanity covered that whole side of the square. The low wall which boxed in the courthouse lawn was crammed with spectators on that side, gaping above the heads of the crowd. Others stood on the lawn and courthouse steps.
I couldn’t see anything, but I did locate Andy Carr.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Just a couple of smashed fenders, I guess,” he said, disgusted that it wasn’t more serious. “See what I mean about this dead town?”
“How’s that?”
“Everybody rushes to see anything at all that happens. It’s because there’s so little else to get excited about.”
His words popped an idea into my head. If the accident had occurred ten minutes earlier, just as Fat Sam Cooney carried his money bag from the office, only the proprietor and the bartender would have been left in the place.
I turned to look back toward the tavern. On that side of the square some people were staring from the windows of the bank next door to the tavern, and a number of businessmen and clerks were peering from the doorways and through the show windows of stores, but there wasn’t a soul on the sidewalk. Everyone who wasn’t working seemed to have rushed to see the accident.
If a similar distraction could be arranged the following Friday, just as Fat Sam emerged from his office—
I said to Andy, “How do I get in touch with you?”
“You going?” he asked.
“I want to check into a motel. Can we get together tonight to resume our conversation?”
“Sure. At Fat Sam’s?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think we ought to get too thick in public. Got a phone?”
“Yeah. It’s listed under my dad’s name. Joseph Carr on Bodie Street. It’s in the book.”
“I’ll phone at exactly nine p.m.,” I said. “Make a point of answering personally.”
“Okay. The best motel is the Shady Lane, about a mile from the square out North Main.” He pointed to the street bisecting the north side of the square.
I gave him a nod of thanks and walked off.
If the Shady Lane Motel was the best in Rover, I pitied the guests at the others. It consisted of a row of paintless square cabins with flat, tarpaper roofs which absorbed sunlight, converted it into heat, and poured the heat into the rooms below. The rugless floor of my cabin creaked, and the shower dripped.
It was clean, though, and it was certainly reasonable. I paid twenty-five dollars for a full week.
There was no phone in my cabin, so I lingered at the restaurant where I had dinner until nine o’clock, then phoned Andy Carr from the restaurant booth. He must have been waiting at the phone, because he answered in the middle of the first ring.
“Andy?”
“Yeah.”
“George Snyder. Do you have a car?”
“No.”
“Hmm. How far are you from the Shady Lane Motel?”
“Only about a half-mile. I can walk it.”
“Good. I’m in cabin five. Don’t check for me at the office. Just come straight there.”
“Right,” he said. “See you in about twenty minutes.”
By the time I got back to my cabin, it had cooled sufficiently for it to be quite comfortable. A knock sounded at nine-twenty-five. I opened the door, to find Carr standing there.
Letting him in, I closed and locked the door. I had already drawn the shades.
Glancing around, he said nervously. “This thing has already got me jumping out of my skin.”
“Want to drop it?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “I’ll be all right.”
“Then sit down and we’ll talk it over. Want a drink?” I indicated a bottle of whiskey on the dresser.
He said he did, and I poured shots in both water glasses with which the cabin was furnished. “There’s no ice and no mix. Want water in it?”
“That’s okay.”
Carrying both glasses into the bathroom, I added water to each. When I came out again, he was seated in the only chair with his head cocked to one side, listening. I paused to listen too. All I could hear was a siren in the distance.
“Fire engines,” he said, grinning at me. “Probably kids again.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought you heard someone coming.”
I handed him a drink and sat on the bed.
After we had sampled our drinks, I asked, “You’re sure you’re in this all the way? I don’t want to waste a lot of time planning this score, then have you chicken out at the last minute.”
“I’m in,” he said sincerely. “I’d do anything for enough money to blow this burg. I need a break.”
“Okay. Then I’ve got a tentative plan. Did you notice h
ow fast Fat Sam’s place cleared today when that accident happened?”
“Sure. They even run out like that when a jet goes over. I told you there was nothing to do here.”
“Well, suppose we staged a similar diversion about one minute to five next Friday, so the place would empty just as Sam came from his office?”
His eyes grew round. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?” he breathed. “What kind of diversion?”
“I haven’t thought that far. It’s just a tentative idea. But we have a week to work on it. Now, the next question is, do you care if, after the event, everybody in town knows you were involved?”
This apparently hadn’t occurred to him, because he looked startled. His brow creased in a frown.
“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” I said. “I’m a stranger here, nobody knows my real name, and I don’t care if I ever come back again. But this is your home town. Fifteen minutes after the heist there will be radiograms about us going all over the state. All they’ll have on me is a description, and I’m a pretty average-looking guy. But your real name will go out, your known habits—everything. What about that?”
He asked uncertainly, “Couldn’t we wear masks?”
I gave him an amused smile. “You mean sit around in the joint wearing them, waiting for the diversion? Even if we did, if you disappear from town, everybody’s going to know why.”
It began to register on him that I was working up to something. “So what’s your suggestion?” he asked.
“I don’t think you ought to bug out. After the job, I think you ought to sit pat for a couple of weeks before you take off.”
“But suppose I’m recognized?”
“You won’t be there. I can handle Sam and the bartender alone. We’ll give you the safer job of creating the diversion.”
He eyed me fishily. “Then how do I collect my cut?”
“We’ll work that out some way. Arrange to meet somewhere in a couple of weeks.”
He gave his head a slow shake. “You mentioned a minute ago that nobody around here knows your real name, which, I suppose, includes me. It isn’t George Snyder, is it?”
“Nope,” I admitted cheerfully.
“Then I’d never find you if you left me holding the bag. I’m gonna stick right by your side until we split.”
I shrugged. I hadn’t really expected him to be that much of a patsy, but it had been worth the try. “Okay. I never skin a partner, but if you don’t trust me, we’ll work out something else. What’s your suggestion?”
He didn’t have any suggestions, so I made another one. I suggested we sleep on it.
As I unlocked the door to let him out, I said, “I want to case the lay some more. If you come in to Fat Sam’s tomorrow and see me there, don’t do any more than nod to me. Some of the customers may have noticed us talking today, and might think it funny if you completely ignored me. But we don’t want anyone to suspect we’re thick. We’re just casual acquaintances.”
All right,” he said. “You planning to park on the square tomorrow?”
“I’m not even going to drive onto it, if I can help it.”
“Then I’ll give you a tip. Lock your car. It would be safe on the square, because there’s always a lot of people around there, but not on a side street. Not even on a parking lot. The teen-agers in this town carry ignition jumpers. When they’re not turning in false alarms, they’re joy-riding in swiped cars. They always abandon them somewhere in town, so the owners get them back, but it’s a nuisance. Then, too, every so often they crack one up.”
“I’ll remember,” I said. “Now on further contacts, when’s the best time to catch you at home?”
“We eat at six. If you phoned at five of, you’d always catch me.”
“All right. I’ll make a point of calling you at five of six every evening, whether anything has developed or not. If something has, we’ll arrange another meeting.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll expect your call tomorrow then.”
I let him out and went to bed.
Saturday morning I put on a sport shirt and jacket so as to be less conspicuous in town. I skirted the square by taking the streets a block away from it and making a complete circle around it. There were parking lots behind the buildings on all four sides, I discovered the one immediately behind Fat Sam’s Bar and Grill was for the sheriff’s office, but on the east side there was a lot behind a supermarket. An alley running east and west cut into the northeast corner of the square and ran right past the parking lot, so that the tavern entrance wasn’t more than a hundred feet from the lot.
That would be the best place to leave the car while pulling the job, I decided. The next step was to carefully plan the escape route.
On the opposite side of the lot from the alley was East Central, the street by which I had entered town. I recalled that it was a stop street, clear to the edge of town, with no signal lights to slow you down.
Getting out a road map, I located a secondary road about a half-mile beyond the east edge of town which cut south for about two miles, then linked to a main highway which ran southwest. Southwest was the general direction in which I had been heading ever since I left New York.
I drove out East Central to the secondary road, cut across to the main highway, and turned right. I stayed on the highway for a good thirty miles to make sure no construction was going on which would sidetrack me into detours. Then I pulled into a station for gas, turned around, and drove back.
It would be unnecessary to heist a car for the job, I decided. Neither Fat Sam Cooney nor his bartender knew what mine looked like, and no one was likely to pay any attention when I drove off the parking lot after the job, because I planned to arrange things so that no alarm would be raised for some minutes afterward. I figured I should be thirty miles on my way before the cops could get road blocks set up or trace my car.
Parking on the supermarket lot, I carefully locked the car and walked up the alley to the tavern. I timed the walk by the sweep hand of my watch. It took me twenty-five seconds.
The square wasn’t as crowded as it had been yesterday, but there were still a lot of people roaming the sidewalks. Fat Sam’s was just as crowded, though.
Andy Carr wasn’t in the place.
I had one beer. Then, as it was now approaching noon, I crossed the square to a restaurant for lunch. I got back about one p.m. and sat at a table the rest of the afternoon.
The crowd never abated. As fast as customers left, others filtered in. As my partner had indicated, there was no period slack enough to make a heist feasible.
About four-thirty Andy Carr came in, gave me a distant nod and went to the bar, where he got into conversation with a miner. He was learning, I noted with satisfaction, because he didn’t throw a single furtive look in my direction.
He left again at five-thirty. I waited another twenty-five minutes, then phoned him from the tavern’s booth. He answered immediately.
All day I had been musing over what kind of diversion we could plan to take place at exactly a minute to five on Friday, but nothing had jelled. I said, “No ideas so far. How about you?”
“I haven’t figured anything.”
“Then I’ll call you again tomorrow,” I said, and hung up.
The tavern was closed on Sunday, which I didn’t discover until I had driven downtown in the afternoon and found the square deserted. I killed the day by checking the escape route once again, this time taking the main highway a full hundred miles southwest without running into any construction.
If only I could think of a practical diversion, it would be in the bag.
The idea hit me on Monday. After lunch, as I was leaving the restaurant across the square from Fat Sam’s, I noted a small crowd gathered at the southwest corner and ambled over to see what was going on.
I must be picking up the habits of the townspeople, I thought ruefully, when I discovered what the attraction was. Like them, I was beginning to rush to rubberneck at anything which might relieve the boredom.
A workman was removing a fire-alarm box from a post and installing a new one.
I had walked away before the idea hit me. The alarm box was diagonally across the square from the tavern. Fire trucks pulling up there with their sirens whining would certainly empty the tavern. And that was something which could be timed almost to the second.
When I phoned Andy Carr at the usual time that night, I said, “Meeting tonight, same time.”
Again he showed just before nine-thirty. When I had mixed drinks for both of us, I got down to business.
“I’ve figured out the diversion,” I said. “You know that fire-alarm box at the southwest corner of the square?”
After thinking, he shook his head. “I never noticed it.”
“Well, there’s one there. Friday, just before five o’clock, you’re going to turn in a false alarm.”
His eyes widened. “In front of everybody? The square’s jammed at that time.”
“You’d be surprised at what you can get away with in a crowd, if you act natural,” I said. “If you just casually reach out and pull the hook as you walk by, I doubt that you’ll even be noticed.”
“But there’s a glass you have to break first,” he objected.
“You can take care of that late Thursday night, when the square’s deserted. Nobody’s likely to notice the glass is missing, because they just installed a new box today. They won’t be checking it so soon.”
After thinking this over, he became a little more enthusiastic. “Yeah, it should work. When fire engines come tearing into the square, the tavern should empty like magic.”
“We’ll have to figure just how long it will take engines to get to the scene. Where’s the fire station?”
The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 29