by Ed McBain
The north side of the precinct, the area between the new quarters of the Mercantile Trust Company and the waiting room of the Isola-Majesta ferry, was suddenly devoid of policemen.
Meyer Meyer and Bert Kling, cruising in an unmarked sedan, ready to prevent any crime which occurred against the harassed places of business on their list, received a sudden and urgent radio summons and were promptly off The Heckler Case. The radio dispatcher told them to proceed immediately to a subway station on Grady Road to investigate a bomb threat there.
By 4:30P.M ., six Civil Defense units were thrown into the melee, and the Police Commissioner made a hurried call to the Mayor in an attempt to summon the National Guard. The National Guardwould eventually be called into action because what started as a simple plot to rob a bank would grow into a threat to the very city itself, a threat to equal the Chicago fire or the San Francisco earthquake, a threat which—when all was said and done—totaled billions of dollars in loss and almost razed to the ground one of the finest ports in the United States. But the wheels of bureaucracy grind exceedingly slow, and the National Guard units would not be called in until 5:40P.M ., by which time the Mercantile Trust Company’s vault would be empty, by which time invasion reports had caused panic beyond anything imagined by the deaf man, by which time the river front to the south was a blazing wall of flame, by which time everyone involved knew they were in the center of utter chaos.
In the meantime, it was only 4:30P.M ., and the deaf man had completed twenty-two of his calls. Smiling, listening to the sound of sirens outside, he dialed the twenty-third number.
MR. WESLEY GANNLEY,manager of the Mercantile Trust Company, paced the marbled floors of his new place of business, grinning at the efficiency of his employees, pleased as punch with the new building. The IBM machines were ticking away behind the counters. Music flowed from hidden wall speakers, and a mural at the far end of the building, washed with rain-dimmed light at the moment, depicted the strength of America and the wisdom of banking. The polished glass-and-steel door of the vault was open, and Gannley could see into it to the rows of safety deposit boxes and beyond that to the barred steel door, and he felt a great sense of security, he felt it was good to be alive.
Mr. Gannley took his gold pocket watch from the pocket of his vest and looked at the time.
4:35P.M .
In twenty-five minutes, they would close up shop for the day.
Tomorrow morning, May 1, everyone would return bright and early, and depositers would come through the bank’s marble entrance arch and step up to the shining new tellers’ windows, anxious to reap that three and a half per cent, and Mr. Gannley would watch from the open door of his manager’s office and begin counting the ways he would spend his Christmas bonus this year.
Yes, it was good to be alive.
He walked past Miss Finchley who was bending over a stack of canceled checks, and he was seized with an uncontrollable urge to pinch her on the buttocks.
He controlled the urge.
“How do you like the new building, Miss Finchley?” he asked.
Miss Finchley turned toward him. She was wearing a white silk blouse, and the top button had come unfastened and he could see the delicate lace of her lingerie showing where the cream-white flesh ended.
“It’s beautiful, Mr. Gannley,” she answered. “Simply beautiful. It’s a pleasure to work here.”
“Yes,” he said. “It certainly is.”
He stood staring at her for a moment, wondering whether or not he should ask her to join him for a cocktail after closing. No, he thought, that would be too forward. But perhaps a lift to the station. Perhaps that might not be misinterpreted.
“Yes, Mr. Gannley?” she said.
He decided against it. There was plenty of time for that. In a wonderful new building like this one, with IBM machines and music flowing from hidden speakers, and a bright, colorful mural decorating the far wall, and an impervious steel vault, there was plenty of time for everything.
Recklessly, he said, “You’d better button your blouse, Miss Finchley.”
Her hand fluttered up to the wayward button. “Oh, my,” she said. “I’m practically naked, aren’t I?” and she buttoned the blouse quickly without the faintest trace of a blush.
Plenty of time for everything, Wesley Gannley thought, smiling, plenty of time.
The tellers were beginning to wheel their mobile units into the vault. Every day at 4:45P.M ., the tellers performed this ritual. First they took the coin racks from the change machines on the counter and laced these racks into the top drawers of the units. The bottom drawers usually contained folding money. Today, both drawers and coin racks were empty because the bank had not done any business at its new location, and all the money had been transferred directly to the new vault. But nonetheless, it was 4:45P.M ., and so the units were wheeled into the vault and Mr. Gannley looked at his watch, went to his desk, and took the key which fit into the three clocks on the inside face of the vault door. The clocks were minuscule and were marked with numerals indicating hours. Mr. Gannley put his key into the first clock and set it for fifteen hours. He did the same to the other two clocks. He expected to be at work at 7:30A.M . tomorrow morning, and he would open the vault at 7:45A.M . It was now 4:45P.M .—ergo, fifteen hours. If he tried to open the vault door before that time, it would not budge, even if he correctly opened the two combination locks on the front face of the door.
Mr. Gannley put the key into his vest pocket and then heaved his shoulder against the heavy vault door. It was a little difficult to close because the carpeting on the floor was new and still thick and the door’s friction against it provided an unusual hindrance. But he managed to shove the door closed, and then he turned the wheel which clicked the tumblers into place, and then he spun the dials of the two combination locks. He knew the alarm was automatically set the moment that vault door slammed shut. He knew it would sound at the nearest police precinct should anyone tamper with the door. He knew that the combination locks could not be opened if the time mechanism was not tripped. He further knew that, should the alarm go off accidentally, he was to call the police immediately to tell them a robbery wasnot truly in progress, the alarm had simply gone off by accident. And then, as an added precaution if he made such a call to the police, he was to call them back in two minutes to verify the accident. In short, should a robberyreally be in progress and should the thief force Gannley into calling the police to say the alarm had been accidental, the police would know something was fishy if he didn’t duplicate the call within the next two minutes.
For now, for the moment, there was one thing more to do. Wesley Gannley went to the telephone and dialed Frederick 7-8024.
“Eighty-seventh Precinct, Sergeant Murchison.”
“This is Mr. Gannely at the new Mercantile Trust.”
“What is it, Mr. Gannley? Somebody callyou about a bomb, too?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind, never mind. What is it?”
“I’m about to test this alarm. I wanted you to know.”
“Oh. Okay. When are you going to trip it?”
“As soon as I hang up.”
“All right. Will you call me back?”
“I will.”
“Right.”
Mr. Gannley hung up, walked to one of the alarm buttons set behind the tellers’ cages, and deliberately stepped on it. The alarm went off with a terrible clanging. Immediately, Mr. Gannley turned it off, and then called the police again to tell them everything was working fine. He passed the vault door and patted it lovingly. He knew the alarm was there and working, a vigilant watchdog over all that money.
He did not know that its voice was a tribute to the careful labor which had gone on below the ground for the past two months, or that it would be silenced forever within the next half-hour.
IT WAS 5:05P.M.
In the new drugstore across the street from the bank, Rafe sat on a stool and watched the bank doors. Twelve people
had left so far, the bank guard opening the door for each person who left, and then closing it again behind them. There were three people left inside the bank, including the bank guard. Come on, Rafe thought, get the hell out.
The big clock over the counter read 5:06.
Rafe sipped at his Coke and watched the bank doors.
5:07.
Come on, he thought. We have to catch a goddam ferry at five minutes after six. That gives us less than an hour. He figures we’ll be able to break away that remaining concrete in ten minutes, but I figure at least fifteen. And then ten more minutes to load the money, and another ten—if we don’t hit traffic—to get to the ferry slip. That’s thirty-five minutes, provided everything goes all right, provided we don’t get stopped for anything.
Rafe took off his gold-rimmed glasses, wiped the bridge of his nose, and then put the glasses on again.
The absolute limit, I would say, is five-forty-five. We’ve got to be out of that vault by five-forty-five. That gives us twenty minutes to get to the ferry slip. We should make it in twenty minutes. Provided everything goes all right.
We should make it.
Unreasonably, the bridge of Rafe’s nose was soaked with sweat again. He took off his glasses, wiped away the sweat, and almost missed the bank door across the street opening. A girl in a white blouse stepped out and then shrank back from the drizzle. A portly guy in a dark suit stepped into the rain and quickly opened a big black umbrella. The girl took his arm and they went running off up the street together.
One more to go, Rafe thought.
The bridge of his nose was sweating again, but he did not take off the glasses.
Across the street, he saw the bank lights going out.
His heart lurched.
One by one, the lights behind the windows went dark. He waited. He was getting off the stool when he saw the door opening, saw the bank guard step out and slam the door behind him. The guard turned and tried the automatically locked door. The door did not yield. Even from across the street, Rafe saw the bank guard give a satisfied nod before he started off into the rain.
The clock over the drugstore counter read 5:15. Rafe started for the door quickly.
“Hey!”
He stopped short. An icy fist had clamped onto the base of his spine.
“Ain’t you gonna pay for your Coke?” the soda jerk asked.
THE DEAF MANwas waiting at the far end of the tunnel, directly below the bank vault when he heard Rafe enter at the other end. The tunnel was dripping moisture from its walls and roof, and the deaf man felt clammy with perspiration. He did not like the smell of the earth. It was a suffocating, fetid stench which filled the nostrils and made a man feel as if he were being choked. He waited while Rafe approached.
“Well?” he asked.
“They’re all out,” Rafe said.
The deaf man nodded curtly. “There’s the box,” he said, and he swung his hand flash up to illuminate the box containing the wiring for the alarm system.
Rafe crawled into the gaping hole in the corroded steel bars and reached up for the exposed alarm box. He pulled back his hands and took off his glasses. They were fogged with the tunnel’s moisture. He wiped the glasses, put them back on the bridge of his nose, and then got to work.
IN THE FEVERED DELIRIUMof his black world, things seemed clearer to Steve Carella than they ever had in his life.
He sat at a nucleus of pain and confusion, and yet things were crystal clear, and the absolute clarity astonished him because it seemed his sudden perception threatened his entire concept of himself as a cop. He was staring wide-eyed at the knowledge that he and his colleagues had come up against a type of planning and execution which had rendered them virtually helpless. He had a clear and startling vision of himself and the 87th Squad as a group of half-wits stumbling around in a fog of laboratory reports, fruitless leg work, and meaningless paper work which in the end brought only partial and minuscule results.
He was certain now that John Smith had been murdered by the same deaf man who had shot and repeatedly battered Carella with the stock of a shotgun. He was reasonably certain that the same weapon had been used in both attacks. He was certain, too, that the blueprint he’d found in the Franklin Street apartment was a construction blueprint for the vault of the Mercantile Trust, and that a robbery of that vault had been planned.
Intuitively, and this was what frightened him, he knew that the murder, and his own beating, and the planned bank robbery were tied in to the case Meyer Meyer was handling, the so-called Heckler Case.
He did not question the intuition nor its clarity—but he knew damn well it scared him. Perhaps it would have frightened him less if he’d known it wasn’t quite intuition. Whether he realized it or not, and despite the fact that he had never openly discussed the supposedly separate cases with Meyer, hehad unconsciously been exposed to siftings of telephone conversations, to quick glances at reports on Meyer’s desk. These never seemed to warrant a closer conversation with the other detective, but they did nonetheless form a submerged layer of knowledge which, when combined with the knowledge he now possessed, welded an undeniable and seemingly intuitive link.
But if the reasoning were correct—and it could hardly be called reasoning—if thissense of connection were accurate, it pointed to someone who was not gambling senselessly against the police. Instead, it presented the image of a person who was indeed leaving very little to chance, a person who wasusing the agencies of law enforcement, utilizing them as a part of his plan, making them work for him, joining them instead of fighting them, making them an integral part of a plan which had begun—how long ago?
And this is what frightened Carella.
Because he knew, detective fiction to the contrary, that the criminal mind was not a particularly brilliant one. The average thief with whom the squad dealt daily was of only average intelligence, if that, and was usually handicapped by a severe emotional disturbance which had led him into criminal activities to begin with. The average murderer was a man who killed on the spur of the moment, whether for revenge, or through instant rage, or through a combination of circumstances which led to murder as the only seemingly logical conclusion. Oh yes, there were carefully planned robberies, but these were few and far between. The average job could be cased in a few days and executed in a half hour. And yes, there were carefully planned murders, homicides figured to the most minute detail and executed with painstaking precision—but these, too, were exceptions. And, of course, one shouldn’t forget the confidence men whose stock in trade was guile and wile—but how manynew con games were there, and how many con men were practicing the same tired routines, all known to the police for years and years?
Carella was forced to admit that the police were dealing with a criminal element which, in a very real sense, was amateurish. They qualified for professional status only in that they worked—if you will excuse the term when applied to crime—for money. And he was forced to admit further that the police opposing this vast criminal army were also attacking their job in a somewhat amateurish way, largely because nothing more demanding was called for.
Well, this deaf man whoever he was,was making further demands. He was elevating crime to a professional level, and if he were not met on equally professional terms, he would succeed. The entire police force could sit around with its collective thumb up its collective ass, and the deaf man would run them ragged and carry home the bacon besides.
Which made Carella wonder about his own role as a cop and his own duties as an enforcer of the law. He was a man dedicated to the prevention of crime, or failing that, to the apprehension of the person or persons committing crime. If he totally succeeded in his job, there would be no more crime and no more criminals; and, carrying the thought to its logical conclusion, there would also be no more job. If there was no crime, there would be no need for the men involved in preventing it or detecting it.
And yet somehow this logic was illogical, and it led Carella to a further thought w
hich was as frightening as the sudden clarity he was experiencing.
The thought sprang into his head full-blown:If there is no crime, will there be society?
The thought was shocking—at least to Carella it was. For society was predicated on a principle of law and order, of meaning as opposed to chaos. But if there were no crime, if there were in effect no lawbreakers, no one to oppose law and order, would there be a necessity for law? Without lawbreakers,was there a need for law? And without law, would there be lawbreakers?
MADAM, I’MADAM.
Read it forwards or backwards and it says the same thing. A cute party gag, but what happens when you say, “Crime is symbiotic with society,” and then reverse the statement so that it reads, “Society is symbiotic with crime?”
Carella lay in the blackness of his delirium, not knowing he was up against a logician and a mathematician, but intuitively reasoning in mathematical and logical terms. He knew that something more was required of him. He knew that in this vast record of day-by-day crime, this enormous never-ending account of society and the acts committed against it, something more was needed from him as a cop and as a man. He did not know what that something more was, nor indeed whether he could ever make the quantum jump from the cop and man he now was to a cop and man quite different.
Clarity suffused the darkness of his coma.
In the clarity, he knew he would live.
And he knew that someone was in the room with him, and he knew that this person must be told about the Mercantile Trust Company and the Uhrbinger Construction Company and the blueprint he had seen in the Franklin Street apartment.
And so he said, “Merc-uh-nuh,” and he knew he had not formed the word correctly and he could not understand why because everything seemed so perfectly clear within the shell of his dark cocoon.
And so he tried the other word, and he said, “Ubba-nuh coston,” and he knew that was wrong, and he tried again, “Ubba-nuh…ubba…Uhrbinger…Uhrbinger,” and he was sure he had said it that time, and he leaned back into the brilliant clarity and lost consciousness once more.