by Dave Norem
They would move in three nights prior to payday, and wait for the delivery. The night it arrived, they would wait until 3:30 AM to overcome the unsuspecting guards. Weed had already sneaked in and hidden a voice activated FM wireless microphone, powered by a battery pack. It had limited range, but enough to reach a hidden tape recorder. A remote control would actuate the recorder from just inside the factory basement. Cramer had already been in through the passage to try it, and all worked well. He had gotten the devices from an electronics guru in Dayton, Ohio.
Everything was a go, and John was ready to get back to business.
I feel I am in the grave, or maybe the passage to Hell. It is so dark and cold; perhaps a negative passage to Hell, where there should be more than ample light___, and heat.
Now there are voices, although echoing and undecipherable. They are coming closer!
Now I can distinguish words, and need to hide even more than what the overall darkness is providing, although I know not why. It occurs to me that two persons are searching for someone; and that ‘someone’ is me.
“He was right here damn it!” The first voice said. “He hit me hard, and without warning. I don’t know what he’s doing here but he’ll pay___, even more than the others.”
“There!” A second voice said. “I heard a noise over there___, in the water.”
“We’ll spear him like a fish, gut him, and roast him,” said the first.
They are coming closer and I cannot see any light that would indicate a way out, or a find a place to hide. I can only feel my way and inch along. Now something has bitten me on the leg, and I know the little demons will soon drag me down. They will torture me for eternity.
Wait! There is light, high above, too high. Suddenly something sweeps my feet from under me and I know I am gone... Gone...
John was jarred awake. He thought that he had fallen out of bed, but he hadn’t. Then the nightmare came rushing back.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Julie exclaimed.
“Sorry for what?”
“I rolled over and kicked your leg with my toenails and you had a spasm. Were you having the nightmare again?”
“Not that one, another one, a new one.”
”It’s about your new project, maybe you shouldn’t go on this one,” she said.
“No, it’s OK. I have the nightmares regardless, and always have. Let’s go back to sleep.”
Sleep did not come. He was too keyed up about the job, but he knew that he’d be fine after he was back in the groove.
John, Weed and Cramer were spending their second night in the boiler room below the axle factory.
John said, “It’s too bad we couldn’t watch from outside.”
Cramer replied, “We could, but since they pay the next day we wouldn’t have time to get in place. We still have Davis outside with his walkie-talkie to let us know when the truck comes in, and to cover for us when we go out. He’s reliable too.”
They dozed off-and-on until the walkie-talkie chirped at 11:00 O’clock. The waiting was almost over.
Cramer confirmed that the truck was making its delivery. “Three and a half hours, that’s just enough time for those boys to get sluggish. Let’s eat and drink something and then get the kinks out. We need to clean this place up and bag everything we brought in too, including the trash and slop buckets.”
At 2:30 AM, they donned masks and eased into the factory’s main basement from the hidden entrance, then worked their way up the stairs. There were a few workers in the production area but the stairways leading up to the offices, and the offices themselves, were all dark and deserted except for a light in the upstairs accounting office. They worked their way up these stairs too, and gathered at the nearest corner.
John eased down the hall until he reached the office window, where he heard music and voices. Using a small mechanic’s pocket-mirror with an extension handle, he quickly panned the room. Two men were sitting at a table counting and stacking money into small piles. Two others were in the room also, both asleep. One was on a small sofa with a newspaper over his face, and the other was in a kitchen chair, tilted back against the far wall.
John motioned Cramer and Weed to him and then whispered, “Two up, two down, and they’ve got a radio playing in there.” He pointed with his fingers to indicate the positions as he spoke.
Cramer reached out and tried the doorknob, and found it locked. He shrugged and pulled a ripping bar loose from his belt. After glancing first to see that the others were ready, he eased the tip into the crack next to the latch. With one pry and very little sound, the door popped open.
They overpowered the sleeping men before they knew what hit them. Weed kicked the propped-up chair out from under the one against the wall, and sapped the man with the newspaper over his face.
One of the money counters, a young man barely out of his teens, dropped his bundle and grabbed at a gun in a shoulder holster. Cramer brought the edge of the ripping bar down on his arm, catching him in the ribs too. This one was out of action with broken bones. John had the second man covered, but he was older, and had thrown his hands in the air as soon as the door popped open. Things were under control in scant seconds.
They taped and blindfolded the men, and put them in a closet surrounded by a pile of clothes and empty money sacks. Afterwards, they quickly bagged the money, turned the radio up, and left. After reaching the boiler room, they beeped Davis and received an all clear beep in return. Before entering the tunnel, they divided the money according to plan, Cramer taking Davis’s share with him. After they dropped down into the main sewer system, they dispersed in three directions.
John dragged his load in a direction he believed to be toward Union Station, where he had left his car. He was forced to make several turns and a slight detour, to where he’d heard running water. The water was in the bottom of a larger tunnel that bisected the one he was following. Except for the money, he dropped everything that would float into the knee-deep flowing water and watched it disappear. He put some depleted batteries into the bucket he was carrying, for ballast, and let the bucket float away too.
He retraced his steps to the last intersection, and went a different direction. One flashlight and a spare set of batteries were still in his jacket pocket. He had slung the bag of money from a shoulder strap under his jacket on the right, and his .38 revolver was in a shoulder holster under his left arm.
He reached the main tunnel again, continued on, and realized he had made a wrong turn somewhere. He tried to rationalize his directions and found a ladder up into a building. The ladder was made from steel rod or pipe, with separate standoff handrails. He climbed the ten feet to the top and listened just under the trapdoor for a few minutes, then felt around for a latch.
Not hearing anything, he pushed upwards. The door rose slightly, but with resistance. He pushed harder, raising it high enough to see the floor above him, and saw light under the edge of a rug. It hung over the sides of the door, almost to the floor.
Peering under this, he found himself staring into the eyes of a seated, heavy-set black man about forty years old. The man froze in place no more than ten feet away. There was a crash as a coffee cup hit the floor, splattering hot black coffee in all directions and onto John’s face. He blinked and saw bare, black feet, ankles and the hem of a green dress even closer. Their owner was even more surprised than he was.
John dropped the trapdoor and kicked his legs out, sliding in a fast descent to the bottom, with his hands on the handrails and his feet against them. He landed in a heap at the bottom with a bone-jarring thud. After picking himself up, he ran back to where he remembered passing a main intersection. He heard pursuit and voices, but he was able to make the turn before they saw him. He slowed his pace and proceeded quietly. Upon reaching a second intersection, he started around a corner, hoping to regain his original direction.
A huge
man was directly in front of him in the gloom. The man threw his head back and shouted, “He’s here!”
His echoes were still reverberating throughout the tunnels when John’s Smith & Wesson slammed into his forehead. The man fell over backwards facing straight up, and didn’t move.
John holstered his revolver while turning, and went a different way. He made it to another intersection and turned just before hearing more shouts. Two or three men continued calling out. Their voices and overlapping echoes helped John to distance himself from them.
He saw light overhead, and climbed another ladder. Looking out through a grate, he was surprised to see where he was: in one of the Arch parking lots. Daylight hadn’t arrived yet, but it was soon to come. He couldn’t budge the grate he was clinging to, and he had to descend and try three more before he found one that was loose enough to push free. He couldn’t see the sun yet, but it was reflecting from the Arch, as he pulled himself through.
He was closer to Washington Avenue where he had left his getaway car, but half-an-hour behind schedule. People were out-and-about, allowing him to blend in with the morning work force. The few who saw him emerge, did not seem in the least bit surprised or interested.
The job had been a ‘piece of cake’. Later, while driving across the river, he thought about the dream of being in a tunnel to Hell. He laughed aloud, thinking of eating cake in Hell.
A friend, Marlin Brown, died the following spring.
CHAPTER 16
John was in Cincinnati with Cramer and a new crew in late summer. They were going to try something different and more lucrative. Cramer had inside information on an impending major drug transaction. Walter Powers, a contact from Philadelphia, was to follow the drug deal from the product end in New York City to its destination in Cincinnati. The money came from further southwest. He had gotten the information from a federal agent with a gambling debt.
Powers had contacts in New York City with ties to the drug sellers too. They informed him that that they had fed false information back to the federal agency. This would put the Law enforcement agencies at the site of the proposed transaction forty-eight hours to late.
The transaction site was inside a steel-sided abandoned garment factory on Cincinnati’s west side, an area of mixed cultures and social levels. Industry closings from lower cost foreign competition had driven the area into a state of abandonment and despair. There were many such buildings in the area, with little or no police activity or surveillance.
A real estate agent, who would make sure the property was accessible yet isolated from public interest, controlled the building selected. A mostly-intact chain link fence surrounded the property, but the truck gates were missing. The rear of the building faced the back of a similar abandoned factory.
Street-level, open numbered doorways on the back side would allow the dealers to drive directly into the building through their agreed upon doors.
Possession of the location, and information on the entire setup were critical assets. The heist team put together by Cramer was the largest crew that John had ever worked with. The large crew and a good plan were necessary because of the number of participants and volatile nature of the transaction.
They had a planning and get-acquainted meeting in Hamilton, Ohio. A member from Dayton had been able to get inside the building well in advance and had supplied a detailed layout. Their plan evolved to three teams of two men, each with a Remington semi-automatic shotgun, and one team of three men with Colt AR-15 rifles, converted to selective fire. Personal handguns were discretionary. John’s own weapon of choice was a Colt Official Police Mark III, 38 Special, A revolver he was both comfortable and accurate with.
The transaction area for the drug deal was the empty shipping and storage department. This left open floor space for the deal and more than one escape path. Inside information indicated that buyers and sellers would make visual contact in a shopping center parking lot, signal readiness by radio, and then drive to the factory.
Buyers would enter first through door 19, and then sellers would enter through door 8, seventy-five-yards closer to the back gates. These two doors had ramps leading up to them and their overhead rollup doors were missing. The doors between them were tractor-trailer dock doors with a four-and-a-half-foot drop to the pavement. Their rollup doors were intact and closed.
The layout showed an overhead walkway the width of the building above the doors and partway along one side. A stairway led up to two small offices on the side and provided access. A restroom was under the offices, at floor level. Farther in, on the same side, was a small break room with a few vending machines. Trash, discarded garment pieces, and mismatched chairs from the break room and offices covered the floors in each area, including the overhead office entrances to the walkway. At the opposite side, the walkway extended along the length of the building.
After studying the layout John said, “We could put men at either end of the walkway, but they will probably send someone up to check: the offices too. If we pile a lot of that trash at the entrance to the crosswalk and make it look natural, they probably won’t go any farther.”
Cramer nodded in agreement. “We can put men up there with rifles at each end, but they’ll be looking for that if nothing else. Leave just enough trash at the office end of the walkway so they can see over it. If they see that there’s no one at that end they’ll stop. We can still have a man with a rifle lying down on the other side—and cover him with something.”
One of the riflemen volunteered for that position.
Another said, “How about if I get on the roof of the break area and pile something in front of me? It’s probably got a raised edge anyway.”
John said, “Good, that lets the two of you cover the overhead doors and the main aisles without shooting in each other’s direction.”
They were all looking at the floor plan when the man who had been inside said, “Hey I remember a tank of some kind, up high on a platform on the side opposite the break room. There was enough space around the tank to hide somebody.”
“That’s good too, as long as it isn’t some kind of fuel or gas tank,” muttered the third rifleman, who was stuck with that position.
They all laughed, because the plans showed it to be an air tank.
Powers said, “now that we’ve got that covered, how are we going to accomplish the rest?”
They all went back to studying the layout. Finally, they decided that for the takeover they would have a pickup truck come out of the main factory aisle on each side, one man driving and two others in the truck bed with shotguns.
“We’ll wait until they’re out of the cars. When I signal, you three” -Cramer indicated the riflemen- “run a short burst of full-auto across in front of the doors and the main aisles. Then, switch to single fire and take out at least two tires on each of their vehicles.”
“I’ll have a bullhorn with a remote mike rigged up. After you stop firing, I’ll tell them they’re surrounded, we’re not cops, and we’ll shoot to kill if they don’t all lie down on the floor in the open.”
“What if they don’t?” One of the riflemen asked.
John said, “You three each shoot one of them in the lower leg. We’re not here to kill anyone and we don’t want anything left behind.”
“Right, and by that time we’ll move in on them with the pickups and shotguns,” stated Cramer.
Powers said, “The most dangerous job is driving the pickups. Who is going to volunteer for that?”
John replied, “I’ll drive one.”
Cramer said, “I’ll be working the bullhorn and a shotgun from the back of one, so I can’t.”
“I’ll do it,” said Joe Spane.
He was a big-nosed, loud-mouthed Italian from Philadelphia. Those who worked with him usually didn’t like being around him, but during a job he shut up and did his part. “Why can’t we just hijack the m
oney car and not fuck with the drugs?”
“Yeah, what are we going to do with the drugs?” muttered one of the riflemen.
Cramer said, “First, we don’t have enough information about how they’re coming in or what they’re driving, and we can’t be sure who’ll get there first. Hell, there might even be a double cross. Second, our goal is to get the money. If we can grab the dope too without too much risk, we will. We’ll burn it or dump it in the river though. There’s too much of that shit out there now. If it’s too risky, they can keep it.”
“Double our money if we keep it.” Spane said.
“No!” John turned directly to Spane, “We don’t deal with dope or murder.”
Cramer glanced at John. Despite shootings and close encounters, neither had ever shot or killed anyone, nor had they dealt with drugs. With a hard look on his face, he stepped over in front of Spane too.
Before either of them could speak again, Spane raised both hands, palm out. “All right, all right, I know the deal and I’ll stick with it.”
“Right, you’ll stick with us on this.” Cramer stated. Spane nodded in the affirmative.
They went over the plan several more times, reviewing details and what-ifs.
Wimpy Ivins, the man from Dayton who had supplied the floor plan, raised his hand. Wimpy was a short stocky man with only one eye. His brother had shot his left eye out with a BB gun when he was a kid. He was as likeable as Spane was unlikeable.
“What if they see our tracks in the dust on the floor?” He asked.