McNally's Caper

by Lawrence Sanders

  SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

  ‘Bea, there’s something you and me have got to talk about,’ Jack said. ‘We been putting it off, but we’re getting close now, and we should get it settled.’

  ‘The split?’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘The split.’

  We had been trailing the Bonomo van all night, doing a final check on its Friday route and timing.

  ‘You’ve had expenses,’ Jack said. ‘Picking up our drinking tabs, the gas for your car. The masks, tape, rope, and so forth. So all that comes off the top.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t amount to that much.’

  ‘No, I won’t forget it,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I figure a couple of C’s should cover you. Right?’

  ‘More than enough,’ I said. ‘Too much.’

  ‘Let’s call it two C’s. That comes off first. Then I figure the two muscles we bring in at the last minute, we can get them for five big ones each.’

  ‘They’ll sign on for that?’

  ‘Sure they will,’ Donohue said. ‘And be happy to get it. So that’s another ten thousand off the top. Now, out of what’s left, Hymie Gore and the Holy Ghost get ten percent each.’

  ‘In rocks,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Correct. In rocks. So their share will be approximate. But that leaves like eighty percent for you, me, and Fleming. I figure thirty-five percent for you - after all, it was your idea - and twenty five for me, and twenty for Fleming. How does that sound, Bea?’

  I sat awhile in silence, as if I were giving his proposal careful consideration.

  ‘It’s fine with me,’ I told him. ‘You’re the boys who are actually going in, while I sit outside in the car. So I figure my thirty-five percent is generous. But I’m not sure Dick will be happy with twenty.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Donohue demanded. ‘I can’t see where he’s contributed much to this caper.’

  ‘Jack, he was in from the beginning on all the planning. You’ve got to admit he came up with some good ideas. Like this truck route business tonight.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But you and me have been doing most of the work.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him. I think I’ll be able to get him to take the twenty without screaming too much.’

  ‘You do that,’ Donohue said. ‘Talk to him. How close are you to this guy, Bea?’

  ‘What do you mean - how close?’

  ‘I mean, I can’t figure out what’s between you two. He’s not your brother, is he?’

  ‘Of course not. What gives you that idea?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes you act alike. Talk alike. Even look alike, in a way. Is it a sex thing? I mean, between the two of you?’

  ‘Jack, he’s just a friend. I knew him out west, then looked him up when I came to New York.’

  ‘A close friend?’

  ‘So-so. I like him. I get along with him.’

  ‘Bea,’ Donohue said softly, ‘we could cut him out. Easy as pie. Make the sale to Asa Coe and take off. Fleming could never find us.’

  ‘No,’ I said instantly. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Or a fake count,’ Black Jack said gently. ‘Con him out of coming to meet with the fence. Then he has to take our word for how much we get for the stones. You and me could be big winners, babe.’

  I turned my head away, looked out of the window. Or tried to. But it gave me my reflection back. And behind me was the dim, wavery image of Black Jack Donohue staring at me steadily, his face stony. I turned back to him.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You do that,’ Donohue said. ‘You think - Oh-oh, here they come! Two more stops before they get to Brandenberg’s.’

  We followed right along, keeping a cautious distance, and Donohue said nothing more about the split. But I did think about it. I thought how Jack was ready to deceive Hymie Gore, the Holy Ghost, Dick Fleming, and for all I knew, me.

  If I had ever felt guilty about betraying his hopes and dreams by this make-believe Big Caper, I felt it no longer. He really, I told myself, was not a very nice man.

  ‘All right,’ Donohue said, as truck 14 pulled away from a rug store on 50th Street and Madison. ‘Now they’re heading for the last stop before Brandenberg. How we doing?’

  ‘Right on schedule,’ I said, consulting the clipboard. ‘A few minutes off here and there, but all the stops check out.’

  ‘Good. Now they’re pulling up. It’s that antique store.’

  It was on Madison between 53rd and 54th streets. We parked across the street, down the block, and watched. It was 8:15 A.M.; the sidewalks were filling up with people. Sunlight came shafting through the slots between buildings. It promised to be a sharp, clear day. The morning rain had vanished, leaving the pavements clean and glistening.

  ‘They’ll leave here in about forty minutes,’ Donohue said. ‘Go north on Madison. Turn west on 55th. Pull up in front of Brandenberg’s. So we’ve got to take them sometime between the two stops.

  ‘When they come out of the antique shop,’ I said, it’s the only way. Jack, you notice when they doublepark and go into the place they’re cleaning, they don’t lock the truck? I mean, they probably take the ignition key, but I haven’t seen them lock the rear doors of the van after they take their cleaning gear out.’

  He turned sideways on the seat to stare at me.

  ‘Bea,’ he said dubiously, ‘are you sure of that?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’ve been watching them all morning. They probably figure they’ve got nothing in there worth stealing. But you just wait until they come out. You’ll see them go to the rear of the van, open the unlocked doors, and put their cleaning gear inside.’

  We waited. At 8:53, the two Bonomo employees came out of the antique shop. They were carrying a canister vacuum cleaner, mops, buckets, rags, and a feather duster on a long, jointed pole. They went to the rear of the van, opened the unlocked doors, began to stow their gear inside.

  ‘Babe,’ Donohue breathed, ‘you’re a whiz. A whiz That’s it; they don’t lock those back doors.’

  ‘So while they’re inside the shop,’ I said, ‘we can be putting our guys inside the van.’

  ‘They’ll be wearing the Bonomo coveralls,’ Jack said. ‘No one on the street will look twice.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Then the real Bonomo guys come out of the antique shop, open the back doors of the van, and—’

  ‘And they’re staring down the muzzle of a piece that’ll look as big as the Brooklyn-Manhattan tunnel. 1 love you!’

  Laughing, he grabbed me, pulled me close, gave me a hard kiss on the lips. I resisted. Oh, maybe a second or two.

  Then I pulled away.

  ‘Hey,’ I gasped. ‘Early in the morning for fun and games. They’re taking off. Don’t you want to follow them?’

  ‘What for?’ he said. ‘I know where they’re going. To Brandenberg and Sons. To fame and fortune. Just where we’ll be going a week from right now. Kee-rect?’

  ‘Kee-rect,’ I said.

  It was a hard, cold morning, but suddenly I was covered with sweat. Not perspiration. Sweat. I had never been so scared in my life. I think, at that moment, I finally realized exactly what I had done, was doing. I knew I was going to walk away from it, but even that didn’t help. I felt I had set an avalanche in motion, rumbling down. How do you stop an avalanche?

  ‘My God,’ Jack Donohue said. ‘You’re shaking. Cold?’

  I nodded, teeth making like castanets.

  ‘Let’s stop for some hot coffee,’ he said solicitously. ‘Can’t have you coming down with the flu. Not now. When we’re so close.’

  ALARMING NEWS

  The city was girding up for Christmas. Scrawny Santa Clauses on every corner, ringing bells and tugging at false beards. Wet weather, snappish, with freezing rain and dirty slush hinting at worse to come.

  Still, it was Christmas. You remember that, don’t you? Peace on earth, goodwill toward men, and all that jazz? Suddenly m
idtown Manhattan was invaded by a determined army of shoppers, all with a fistful of cash in one hand and a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag slung in the other. They had buying mania in their eyes, and seemed determined to strip every store bare of everything that could be wrapped in cutesy paper, tied with a red ribbon, and stamped ‘Do Not Open Until Xmas.’

  That was all okay with me. Mobs on the street as early as 8:00 A.M. Hustle and bustle, shoving and confusion. In all that scurrying throng, who would have time to notice a bunch of guys in cleaners’ coveralls doing their own brand of Christmas shopping in one of the city’s prestigious jewelry stores? ‘Tis the season to be jolly, ho-ho-ho, and so forth. It would make a great novel.

  I slept until late Friday afternoon at the Hotel Harding. Then, Blanche coming in to clean, I had a quick vodka, then got out of there and drove through heavy Christmas traffic over to my East 71st Street pad. It was a relief to peel off the sponge rubber, soak in a hot tub, enjoy a few more vodkas in the rough and forget everything. For a while.

  But work habits die hard. So there I was, early in the evening, slaving away at the typewriter in my cluttered office, working on my private manuscript, Project X. I wrote down everything that had been happening to me, including my very, very secret musings on the character of one Black Jack Donohue. I must admit, he didn’t come across on paper. I mean, I couldn’t figure him, couldn’t pin him down, couldn’t fit him into any neat personality slot. Sometimes I thought him a shallow, two-dimensional cutout, a cartoon of the cheap, criminal hustler. Other times I thought I glimpsed something deeper and more complicated there, a man who was nervy and frightened, brave and scared, laughing and peevish. In short, human.

  That night I wanted to be alone. I have a highly developed taste for solitude, and had had few recent opportunities to enjoy that pleasure. So that Friday night, locked safely in my East Side burrow, I devoted all my time to what I call ‘schlumpfing.’ Men might not understand it, but women will.

  I washed my hair. Did a few stretching exercises. Cut and painted my toenails. Tried a new moisturizer I had bought. Ate some odds and ends I found in the refrigerator. Mixed a few crazy drinks, like a grasshopper and a black Russian. Wrote a letter of progress to Aldo Binder and tore it up. Put some Cole Porter on the turntable and danced naked around my living room, Ginger Rogers without Fred Astaire. In other words, I just schlumpfed around, spending time as though it would never run out.

  I was half-listening to the midnight news on an FM radio station when I became aware of what the announcer was saying. I dropped what I was doing and listened to every word.

  The newscaster was reporting a jewel robbery in San Francisco. A well-known, exclusive shop called Devolte Bros. Five or six masked gunmen. In broad daylight. Held up clerks and customers. Ransacked the store, taking only the most expensive items. In and out before police could respond to the alarms. Loot was estimated at more than two million dollars.

  I turned off the radio. Two million dollars. Six masked gunmen. In and out so fast that the silent alarms were worthless.

  As they say in novels, it gave one pause. The whole caper sounded like a rehearsal for our Brandenberg & Sons hit. And apparently it had gone down as planned: no one hurt, a clean getaway. I was sure Jack Donohue would hear of it, or read of it, and now I wasn’t so certain of what I had told Fleming - that the gang wouldn’t dare pull it without us.

  Suppose they did? And suppose they got caught and warbled like canaries? I could see the headlines now: ‘Thieves Blame Blonde Boss. Cops Seek Femme Brain of Gem Heist. Bea Flanders Sought by FBI. Where Is the Sexy Crime Czar?’ And so on. Nice thoughts. Two hours later I got out of bed and popped a sleeping pill.

  On Saturday morning I went out for the papers and read everything I could find on the robbery in San Francisco. Details were scant, but apparently six masked and armed robbers suddenly invaded the jewelry store during the lunch hour. Two of the crooks cowed clerks and customers at gunpoint while the other four did a quick and efficient job of cleaning out the display cases and the back room safe, taking the loot away in what appeared to be pillowcases.

  One lovely touch was noted. When the last crook ran out of the front door, he paused long enough to insert a rubber wedge-shaped stopper under the door, which opened outward. It effectively delayed pursuit long enough for the thieves to escape unscathed in two cars, one of which had been identified as a stolen taxi.

  That rubber doorstopper was a neat gimmick. The front door of Brandenberg & Sons also opened outward. I would have bet my bottom buck that right then, at that moment, Black Jack Donohue was out shopping for wedge-shaped rubber doorstoppers.

  I spent the next night at the Hotel Harding, but there was no sign of Donohue. I was disappointed. I had had enough solitude the night before. How many nights in a row can one schlumpf? I stopped in at Fangio’s for a drink at the bar, but didn’t see Black Jack, Hymie Gore, or the Holy Ghost.

  On Sunday, Donohue was still absent, I went back to East 71st Street. I called Dick Fleming at home. No answer. I called my sister. No answer. I called Sol Faber. No answer. It was that kind of day. Where was everyone? So I went to a lousy French movie and had dinner alone at Chez Morris. That didn’t improve my disposition. Or my digestion either.

  Went back to my apartment to put on my doxy’s costume, preparing to return to the Hotel Harding. Then my phone rang. At last! I was beginning to think Manhattan had become a desert island.

  It was Noel Jarvis, and he said he had been trying to reach me for three or four days. I mumbled something about being busy with Christmas shopping, and he said he had been busy too; the store was doing an ‘absolutely fabulous’ trade. I told him how happy I was to hear it, and what else was new?

  What was new, he said, was that he hoped I might be free the following night, Monday, to have dinner at his apartment. I told him I’d be delighted. He said to show up around ‘eightish,’ very informal, wear jeans if I liked. He promised a special banquet, and he was going to get started on the sauce the moment I hung up.

  So I hung up.

  Monday. A lonely day mooning around the Hotel Hard-On and environs. I had heard Jack Donohue come in about 2:00 A.M. But he hadn’t knocked on my door, and when I awoke, he was gone again. I know; I knocked on his door.

  Back to the East 71st Street apartment to prepare for my dinner with Noel Jarvis. The phone rang a little after 6.00. He couldn’t have been more apologetic. He had to ask me to postpone our dinner date. He was tied up at the store. They were taking inventory and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get away in time to do the dinner justice. Would I ever forgive him? Would I give him another chance? Would I come to dinner the following night, Tuesday?

  Yes, yes, and yes.

  So I called Dick Fleming. I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to tell him how uneasy I felt. How, after three days with no contact with Jack Donohue, I was beginning to wonder if something was going on I didn’t know about -and should. I wanted to tell him about the Devolte Bros, robbery in San Francisco, if he hadn’t heard about it. Tell him about the doorstopper. Tell him to rush over to my place for a quick roll in the hay.

  His phone rang and rang. No answer. Where was everyone? What was going on?

  Finally, on Tuesday, I reentered the land of the living. Had a hamburger lunch with Jack Donohue at a nausea noshery on Broadway. As I had guessed, he had read all the newspaper stories on the Devolte heist and thought the doorstopper gimmick was pure genius. He had already bought two of them. He had also slipped the lock of the Hotel Harding linen closet and had waltzed away with a dozen reasonably clean pillowcases. To carry off the Brandenberg loot. He was full of piss and vinegar, looking forward to our dress rehearsal on Thursday night. We had made plans for the five of us - me, him, Fleming, Gore, and the Ghost - to meet at the West 47th Street garage at 12:30.

  ‘What about the stolen car?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘Our two heavies have a good one spotted. Parked in the same place e
very night. They’ve got the right keys for it. A seventy-six Chevy four-door. They’ll bring it to the garage on Thursday. We’ve done time trials in traffic from East 55th to the garage. Not over fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Now what about the two other guys, the pickup help?’

  ‘On standby,’ he assured me. ‘They agreed to the five grand each. They don’t know what or where or when we’re going to hit, but they’re ready for anything. You and Fleming will bring your cars to the garage at 7:00 on Friday morning. Leave them there. The three of us will take the stolen Chevy to Madison Avenue, with the masks, rope, tape, stoppers, coveralls, pillowcases and so forth. Meanwhile, Hymie Gore, the Holy Ghost, and the two standby muscles will get over to 54th any way they can. Don’t worry; they’ll make it. They’ll come into the Chevy, one at a time to pull on the Bonomo coveralls. We wait for the cleaning truck to show up at that antique shop. Then all the men, including me and Fleming, will take the van. You follow us up to Brandenberg’s in the Chevy. And that’s it. We’ll go over all this in more detail on Thursday night so everyone knows his job and the timing.’

  ‘You’ve got it all figured out,’ I said.

  ‘You better believe it,’ he said, smiling at me.

  I went back to East 71st Street. I took along some personal belongings from the Hotel Harding, preparing for the final break on Thursday night. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the final split. Half-relief, half-disappointment. Dichotomous. There’s a word for you. I had never used it in a novel. I made a mental note to use it in my novel about the Brandenberg ripoff.

  I took Noel Jarvis at his word and dressed informally. When I bopped into his museum-apartment, it was apparent he had spent much time building the appearance of casual elegance. Hound’s-tooth jacket, gray-flannel slacks, fringe-tongued black moccasins, a paisley ascot around his neck - and a rubicund complexion that signaled two double martinis. He was bubbling.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said, taking my mink and dropping it on the floor. ‘You and me, the dinner. Everything. Listen, hon, I mixed this shaker to keep me company while I’ve been cooking. How about—’