McNally's Caper

by Lawrence Sanders

  ‘Pardon?’ he said absently. ‘Oh no, dear lady, no tax.’

  He tucked the the catalogue back into his attache case and removed a small scratchpad. He figured rapidly with a gold ballpoint pen.

  ‘One nine-millimeter Parabellum automatic pistol in factory-sealed carton, plus fifty rounds of standard ammunition for same … one hundred and … carry the six … and we arrive at one fifty-three, seventy-two. Oh, let’s round it out to an even one hundred and fifty dollars. How does that strike you, dear lady? Is it within your budget?’

  ‘I - I think so,’ I said hesitantly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have the cash with me,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose that you would take a check?’

  ‘Well, ah, no, dear lady, I do not think that would be wise. Over the years I have evolved a system of payment and delivery that I think you’ll find satisfactory. However, it usually involves a third person - in this case, Mr Morris Lapidus, our estimable host. You trust Mr Lapidus?’ 1 ‘Morrie?’ I said. ‘Of course. All the way.’

  ‘Excellent.’ He nodded, beaming. ‘My sentiments exactly. When can you deliver the total cash payment to Mr Lapidus?’

  I thought for a moment. Then I said:

  ‘The restaurant opens at noon tomorrow. I can have it here by then.’

  ‘Most satisfactory,’ Uncle Sam purred.

  ‘And I’ll pick up my gun from Morrie?’

  ‘Oh no!’ he said, shocked. ‘No, no, no, dear lady. I wouldn’t think of involving Mr Lapidus to that extent. You leave the purchase price with Mr Lapidus at 12:00 noon. Return at approximately 2:00 P.M., and Mr Lapidus will deliver to you an envelope. Within the envelope you will find a key to a parcel locker in Grand Central Station, along with a brief note giving you the number and precise location of the locker. Only one warning: Your purchase must be taken from the locker within twenty-four hours. Lockers closed longer than that may be opened by the authorities and their contents removed.’

  ‘I’ll go as soon as I get the key,’ I said. I paused, looking at him thoughtfully.

  ‘Ah, yes, dear lady,’ he said with a particularly gentle smile. ‘You were wondering if, after you have paid the sum required, I will actually leave a locker key with Mr Lapidus. Or if it will be the right key for the locker designated. Or if the weapon will, indeed, be in the locker. Or if the cupboard will be bare.’

  ‘Well … yes. Uncle Sam,’ I confessed. ‘I was thinking along those lines.’

  ‘Trust,’ he said solemnly. ‘I can urge you to nothing but trust. One of the noblest emotions of which human beings are capable. You must trust in my honor and in my honesty.’

  I stared at the clear, guileless eyes and lips curved in a perpetual smile.

  ‘I trust you. Uncle Sam,’ I said.

  ‘God bless you, dear lady!’ he cried joyfully. He caught up my hand and pressed the knuckles to his lips.

  That next night, Dick Fleming and I sat at the desk in my office and tried to follow the instructions in the leaflet: ‘To load the 9-mm. Parabellum, it is necessary to depress the magazine release button (marked 3 in Diagram A), allowing the magazine to eject freely.’ And so on.

  The gun, magazine, and bullets gleamed dully in the light of the desk lamp. They seemed very heavy, very solid. We were both surprised by their physical presence. They were -well, they were very real.

  I picked up the empty pistol, gripped it in the approved manner, pointed it at the far wall.

  ‘Not ka-chow,’ I said. ‘Pow/’

  ‘Pow/’ Dick Fleming said. ‘Now where’s part 6 in Diagram C?’

  CRIME AS THEATRE

  ‘Assuming we go ahead and recruit a gang,’ I said to Dick, ‘I’m not about to bring them up here for strategy meetings and arguments on how to divide the loot. I don’t want them to know who I am, either. I don’t want them to come looking for me after we desert them.’

  ‘Understood,’ Dick said. ‘But even if we set up another place to meet, and you operate under a phony name, what if you meet one of them accidentally on the street after this is all over?’

  ‘That means not only a change of name,’ 1 said, ‘but a complete change of identity, of appearance. So complete that even if they meet me accidentally later, when I’ve become Jannie Shean again, they won’t recognize me.’

  ‘Can’t be done,’ Dick said firmly.

  ‘Sure it can. Change of hair color with a wig. A new makeup job. A different wardrobe. Even a different way of walking and talking.’

  ‘Playing a role?’ he said dubiously. ‘You’re not an actress, Jannie.’

  ‘The hell I’m not!’ I said. ‘All women are actresses. How else do you think we’ve been able to survive in a man’s world? Tell you what - I’ll go ahead and create the new woman. You take a look, and if you say it won’t work, I’ll forget it and we’ll try something else.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Now what about this business of another apartment, a new home for the new woman?’

  ‘Let’s take it step by step. First, the new appearance, then the new name, identity, background, apartment, and so forth.’

  ‘Jannie,’ he groaned, ‘it’s going to cost a whole lot of money.’

  ‘Not so much,’ I said. ‘Besides, it’s all deductible as a business expense: research for my new novel.’ ‘I’d love to be there,’ he said, ‘when you try to convince the IRS.’

  I found a lingerie shop on Sixth Avenue that apparently catered to the wives and girlfriends of underwear fetishists and sex maniacs. In the window I saw brassieres with holes cut out round the nipples, panties with open crotches, and negligees embroidered with obscene suggestions.

  ‘Good morning,’ I mumbled to a saleslady. ‘Do you have anything that will make me, uh, look bigger - up here?’

  ‘Sure, dearie,’ she said promptly. ‘Single, double, or triple pads?’

  ‘Uh, single, I guess.’

  ‘What size are you now?’

  ‘About 34-B.’

  ‘Take the double,’ she said firmly. She craned around to inspect my derriere. ‘You could use some fanny, pads too. Come back to the dressing room; I’ll make a new woman out of you.’

  She did too. A triumph of engineering.

  I bought a lot of freaky stuff in that place. Including red babydoll pajamas that had, embroidered on the crotch, the legend ‘All hope abandon ye who enter here.’

  Elsewhere, I purchased two pairs of sexy sandals with three-inch heels. I could hardly stand in them, but the clerk assured me I’d soon learn to walk gracefully.

  ‘They make you look like a queen,’ he gushed.

  I was about to tell him that he was way ahead of me, but thought better of it.

  I bought sweaters too tight, blouses too small, skirts too short.

  In the Times Square Wig-o-Rama I bought a metallic-blond wig, shoulder length, and one so black it was almost purple, came halfway down my back. Both wigs had the texture of steel wool and smelled faintly of Clorox. I figured a perfumed hair spray would remedy that.

  Finally I bought two berets and a lined trenchcoat in red poplin. The salesgirl said the ‘in’ way to wear it was with the belt casually knotted and the collar up in back. When I came out of the store, I passed a hooker wearing a T-shirt that said: ‘The customer always comes first.’

  I gave her a friendly nod. Sisters.

  ■The only things left to buy were makeup and perfumes, and for these I went to Woolworth’s, where the prices were reasonable, the selections enormous, and where I let an enthusiastic salesman show me how to apply false eyelashes that looked like a picket fence, paint on green shadow, and apply a small black beauty mark. You just licked it and stuck it on your chin.

  ‘Makes me look like a skinny Madame Du Barry,’ I told the clerk.

  ‘Precisely,’ he beamed.

  This shopping spree lasted a week. At home, at night, with the door locked and chained, and the shades drawn, I practiced walking my three-inch heels, stuffing the cotton pancakes in my bra, and applying just enough eyesh
adow so I wouldn’t look like a victim of malnutrition. I started out giggling, but after a while I really worked at it, and rehearsed a voice change too, striving for a husky, sex-inflicted Marilyn Monroe whisper.

  I was fascinated by what I saw in my cheval glass. Not only was my appearance utterly different, but I fell different. I looked like a floozy. I was a floozy. The falsies gave me a pair of knockers that came into the room three seconds before I did. My padded behind bulged provocatively. The ersatz eyelashes batted, the carmined lips moued, the long, long legs wobbled suggestively on the spike heels. When I added a cocked beret and tightly cinched trenchcoat, I could have seduced the United Nations. More than that, I felt seductive. Also, cheap, hard, available, and willing, willing, willing.

  After a week of practice that included going out at night to learn how to negotiate steps and curbs in those hookers’ heels (I received four propositions during those trial runs), I decided it was time for the final test.

  I called Dick and asked him to come right over to discuss something important. I then went downstairs and sailed by the doorman, who knew me but didn’t give me a second glance, being too busy with the first. I figured he didn’t recognize me.

  I took up station in the dim doorway of a Third Avenue store I knew Dick would pass. I lighted a cigarette, let it dangle from my lips. I stuck my hands deep in the trenchcoat pockets. I tried to jut my fake chest.

  Along came Dick, walking fast. I blew out a plume of smoke from the corner of my mouth just before he came abreast of me. I stepped out into the illumination of a street lamp.

  ‘Wanna have a little fun?’

  He looked at me. I mean, he didn’t just glance, he looked.

  ‘Not tonight, thank you,’ he said primly and continued walking.

  He took about three more steps, then stopped so suddenly he almost fell on his face. A classic double-take. He turned and came back. He stood in front of me, staring.

  ‘Change your mind, buster?’ I murmured.

  He shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘All right, Jannie,’ he said. ‘You win.’

  CASING

  There were so many things I had written in those Chuck-Mike-Buck-Pat-Brick books of mine that I really knew nothing about. Like casing. I’d have my villains walk around the target twice, time the nightwatchman’s schedule, and maybe discover when the payroll was to be delivered.

  But now, trying seriously to determine how Brandenberg & Sons might be robbed with profit and minimal risk required a laborious, minute-by-minute study, conducted with a stopwatch, that was gradually extended for almost a month. I filled two notebooks of observations, and from my jottings. Dick Fleming designed beautifully neat time charts of personnel flow, using a variety of colored inks.

  By consulting these records, we could pinpoint the location of any one of the employees at any moment during the working day. Since we didn’t know their names, they were designated Manager, Salesmen 1, 2, and 3, and Repairmen 1 and 2. Each was described physically so we could tell them apart. In addition I discovered the presence of a seventh employee: an aged black man who apparently doubled as porter and messenger.

  Most of my casing was done from the window of the luncheonette across the street. I varied the tables at which I sat and the times I was present. Fortunately, the place was usually crowded and seemed to have a heavy personnel turnover.

  I changed the luncheonette routine occasionally by driving from my apartment to East 55th Street and doubleparking my XKE as long as I could, using it as an observation post. But the car was too noticeable to use frequently, so I borrowed Dick Fleming’s VW several times.

  I noted several things of interest:

  The store did not open for business until 10:00 A.M., but all the employees arrived between 8:45 and 9:00. In the hour before the public was admitted, the store was dusted and vacuumed by commercial cleaners who arrived at 9:00 each morning. Also, during this preparatory hour, the interior steel shutters protecting the window displays were raised. I was bemused to note that despite this protection most of the valuable items were removed from the street windows at night and presumably placed in the vault, to be returned to the window displays in the morning.

  The two commercial cleaning men were admitted by the manager, who unlocked the front door to let them in and locked it again after their entrance. They rarely spent more than forty-five minutes giving Brandenberg & Sons its spic-and-span appearance. When they departed with their vacuum cleaner, mops, brooms, etc., the manager unlocked the door, let them out, then locked the door after them. At precisely 10:00 the door was unlocked once again to signal the start of the business day. This routine never varied.

  The employees were apparently on a rigid lunch-hour schedule: never more than two absent at the same time. I think the repairmen brought sandwiches. At least, both carried small black cases, like doctor’s bags, when they arrived in the morning, and I never saw either of them go out to lunch.

  Brandenberg & Sons closed promptly at 5:00 P.M. A few minutes later, the interior steel shutters were lowered, and I was unable to observe the routine of closing. I presumed the valuable items were put in the vault, and interior burglar alarms set. Whatever was done didn’t take long, because all the employees had exited by 5:30. The manager was always the last to leave, and he not only turned a key in a conventional lock, but reached high to turn a key in another lock, which, I assumed, activated another burglar alarm attached to the door. When he opened up in the morning, he reversed this process, first turning off the alarm, then opening the door.

  When the manager locked up and departed at 5:30, he was always accompanied by clerk Number 3, who kept his hands in his topcoat pockets and was, I suspected, armed. They always followed the same procedure. They walked over to Park Avenue, then one block south. There at a corner bank, the manager took out a manila envelope from his inside jacket pocket and dropped it into the bank’s night deposit vault. I supposed the envelope contained the day’s receipts, cash and checks. The two men then went their separate ways.

  During the weeks I was observing Brandenberg & Sons as closely as possible, I also tried to form a clearer idea of their clientele. For the most part they seemed middle-aged or older, and very few were window-shoppers. That is, they were not interested in the outside display windows, but came down the street and turned purposefully into the store. They knew exactly where they were going. Many of them arrived by taxi or private car, and not a few by chauffeured limousine.

  I also became aware of a special type of visitor to Brandenberg & Sons. These were invariably youngish men, most of them well built, conservatively dressed, and all carrying black attache cases handcuffed to their left wrist. There were three of four such men entering Brandenberg & Sons every week. I couldn’t figure it out. Finally Dick decided they were jewelry salesmen or couriers from wholesale jewelry merchants delivering purchases made by Brandenberg & Sons.

  Dick and 1 had several discussions about who actually owned our target store. Neither of us believed it was that rubicund manager. Dick said we could probably find out, if we wanted to go to the trouble, by looking up city records, leases, reports of property sales, bank references, membership lists of jewelers’ associations, etc. But did we really want to attract attention to ourselves by such enquiries? Besides, what difference did it make to professional thieves whom they were robbing? Inevitably, it would be the insurance company, wouldn’t it? So we made no effort to identify the actual owner of Brandenberg & Sons.

  A bad mistake.

  During my second week of casing, I dug out my grandfather’s pocket watch from a bottom bureau drawer, slipped it into my purse, and made my second actual visit to the store.

  I was approached by the salesman we had labeled Number 1, but I told him I wanted to speak to the manager.

  ‘Mr Jarvis?’ he said. ‘He’s busy at the moment. Would you mind waiting?’

  He brought up one of the brocaded armchairs and seated me with all the deference of a headwaite
r giving a duchess the best table in the house. Then, another customer entering, I was left alone: a marvelous opportunity to look around.

  The door to the back room, where the vault was located and where the repairmen worked, was closed. I presumed the manager was in there. I estimated the interior of the store as approximately 60 feet long and 30 feet wide. The three clerks were all occupied with customers. Once again I was conscious of the hushed opulence of the place. No one, it seemed, spoke over a murmur. You couldn’t hear footfalls on the thick carpeting. Showcase doors slid noiselessly, and merchandise was always exhibited to customers on squares of padded velvet.

  I watched the three clerks at work. Although they had dissimilar features, they were all of the same physical type: tall, slender, with a whippy grace. Curiously, I fancied there was something almost sinister in their appearance: they had expressionless features but very sharp, alert eyes, with a kind of brooding intensity. 1 suspected 1 was looking for novelistic characters in quite ordinary salesmen.

  The manager finally entered from the back room, leaving the door open. He was accompanying one of the conservatively clad, attache-case-bearing visitors. The manager escorted him to the front door, they shook hands, the salesman departed, the manager came back into the shop. Some signal I missed must have been passed, because he came directly to me. He bowed and said, ‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting. You’ve brought the watch and chain you mentioned on your last visit?’

  That last visit had been almost a month earlier. I was surprised he remembered me, and told him so.

  ‘I never forget a face,’ he said, with what seemed to me a cold smile. Then he added, with more warmth. ‘Especially such a charming face!’

  I handed him the watch, and he asked if he might take it into the back room for a few moments to have one of his technicians examine it.

  And off he went with Grandfather’s watch and chain, closing the door of the vault room behind him. I spent the four or five minutes he was gone making a surreptitious examination of the ceiling and walls. Brandenberg & Sons was located on the ground floor of what had once been a five-story town house, and I suspected the store occupied the original drawing room. The ceiling and walls were wonderfully rococo, but unfortunately all that fanciful carving and ornamentation could easily conceal a small peephole or even the lens of a TV camera. In addition, there was a full-length pier glass set into one wall. If that was a one-way window, there could easily be an armed guard concealed behind it, keeping an eye on the shop.