The Specialists

by Lawrence Block

  But looking was better than sitting still. Giordano turned the key in the ignition and headed the car toward Platt’s home. He had been past the estate several times already and had no trouble finding it. The entrance of the garage was dark and he had time for only a quick look, so he couldn’t say that he actually saw a Lincoln there. But there were three cars in the garage and that was all the cars Platt had, so it figured that one of them was the Lincoln.

  More important, Eddie’s car was parked in the driveway.

  He went back to the lot. The receiver remained silent. Giordano tried to decide whether Eddie’s car was a good sign or a bad one. He thought it over and came to the conclusion that it was about as significant as the presence of the Lincoln in the garage. It didn’t mean anything much one way or the other. The only question, the question that couldn’t be answered except by the receiving unit, was whether or not Platt would buy Eddie’s story. If he bought it, if he bought just a piece of it, they were still a long way from home. But if he turned it down, Eddie was behind enemy lines with no bullets in his gun and his ass in a sling.

  Giordano didn’t see how he could possibly buy it. Oh, the colonel’s sister had done a good job, no question about it. While the five of them were still on their way to Tarrytown she was checking death records at the Bureau of Vital Statistics, looking for a woman who had died within the year, a woman born in Brooklyn somewhere between 1920 and 1925. A woman who’d moved out of Brooklyn just before the start of World War II. A woman who left no husband or children. A woman, in short, who had been in the right place at the right time and who had left that place at the right time and who had over the years left precious few traces of herself.

  That was the background, and the colonel’s sister had made a good piece of work of it but it remained nothing more than background, a stage set for Eddie to play against. The long-lost bastard son routine—when the colonel had first outlined it, sitting up straight in that wheelchair and pointing things out on a blackboard like a brass hat in a map room, Giordano had been inches from laughter. But when Old Rugged Cross asked for comments, Giordano kept his mouth shut. There were, after all, two things you didn’t do. You didn’t tell a woman her breath stank and you didn’t tell an officer he had rocks in his head.

  Which was not to say that there was anything wrong with the colonel’s head. And the more Giordano had thought about it, the more he saw the good aspects of the plan. If it worked, it gave them a tremendous edge. It not only put a man in the enemy camp. It did that, and it put stars on the man’s shoulders. All in all, Giordano liked it enough to be disappointed when Manso was picked to play the bastard son. It was the proper choice. Manso was right in looks, he talked New York, he knew racket people. Giordano probably had an edge in hand-to-hand, but the bit called for someone who could look the part, and if Giordano went in applying for a job as bodyguard all he would provoke was laughter.

  He wondered, suddenly, if he had ever fathered a child.

  It was a crazy thought, he told himself. Platt, yeah, maybe he could believe something like that. That was a generation ago, when rubbers were unreliable and only married women had diaphragms and not even science fiction writers had discovered the Pill. For Giordano the whole situation was entirely different. The girls he knew swallowed the Swinger’s Friend with their orange juice every morning. There was a drugstore on every corner and nobody had to have a baby.

  Patricia Novak, he thought

  Divorced, lonely, living with her parents. Was she on the Pill? He had never even thought to wonder because he had for so long taken it for granted that every woman was on the Pill. Not her, though. He was instantly certain of it. Not her.

  Jesus—

  You fucking fool, he thought savagely, Eddie’s up against the wall and you got nothing better to do than worry if some pig has a cake in her oven. If she does you’ll never even know about it. You’ll be gone in a week, and New Cornwall isn’t the sort of place anyone ever visited without having to, and you’ll never see her again, and it’ll be two months before she even knows she’s pregnant. And what you don’t know about isn’t really there, unless you’re fool enough to imagine it you idiot.

  He looked at his watch. It was 5:27. He found himself wondering what he would do if some girl he barely remembered told him she was raising his child. He supposed he would send money—the hell, you never missed money, it was so easy to get more of it. But how would he feel about it? How would he feel about the kid? And it began to dawn on him that the colonel had nothing resembling rocks in that head of his. The legs might be gone, but there was nothing the matter with the head.

  At 5:31 the receiver next to him began to beep.

  SEVENTEEN

  Frank Dehn said, “They came into the bank at different times and moved into position. Wore ordinary business suits and had their guns under their jackets. Must have moved on a time signal, two men on the tellers, one at the door, another on the bank vice-president. They took him downstairs and made him open the vault. Couldn’t have been much of a problem there. Platt would have seen to it that they picked a man who was clued in and knew to open up for them. They cleaned the tellers after they hit the vault. Left the silver, of course. The teller got hers because she tried to be a hero, went for the alarm. The guard may have been window dressing. Hard to say. The idea is he tried for his gun, but he died with the gun still in his holster and according to a couple of witnesses he never even moved for it kept his hands in the air all the time. So either one of the robbers panicked or else they figured to make it more authentic by scratching a guard. They play nasty.”

  “Appearance? Voice?”

  “All white, so Howard can drive. They used a stolen car, incidentally, left it seven blocks away. What else? A wart on somebody’s hand, and the majority opinion was that the wart was on the left hand of a tall guy with a crew cut. A dark guy with a thin moustache; a couple of witnesses missed the moustache, but the rest reported it. Not much on the voices except the usual garbage—they were menacing, they were bitter, you know the way witnesses project. What else? The moustache was the last one out the door, kept the crowd covered while the rest piled into the car. Car was not on the scene until they started out, then moved in on cue to pick them up. . . .”

  Louis Giordano said, “Her lunch hour’s twelve thirty to one thirty, so if we hit it then, she’ll be out. The tellers have each got an alarm button on the floor. They hit it with their feet if they get a chance, but they’ve all got instructions to stay cool if there’s a holdup. They aren’t supposed to take chances. Where’s the drawings? The buttons are here and here and here, and evidently there’s a wire running across here that they’re all hooked to. Hit that wire and they’re all dead.

  “Cash on hand remains pretty constant, as far as she knows. A Wells Fargo car comes by every Wednesday at two to deliver change and small bills and pick up old bills and silver coins for shipment to the Federal Reserve. There’s not that much cash involved, though, so you can discount that part.

  “On the vault, she doesn’t know too much about that part of the operation. The president is somebody named Caspers, but he’s out most of the time. There’s a vice-president named Devlin. I get the impression that he runs the show most of the time. He has the vault combination; she knows that because he’s the one who opens up for the armored car boys. . . .”

  Edward Manso said, “The front gate is clean. The rest of the fence all the way around is electrified from ten at night until seven in the morning. During the day he has two men on the front gate and one roaming the grounds in back, but there will also be odd hoods that sort of wander around when they don’t have anything better to do. At night, from ten to seven, the force is beefed up. Still two men on the front gate, but others here and here and here. A total of five at night. At night there are alarms on all the doors and windows. They’re wired to the front gate. We went out for air last night and we didn’t go five steps before a flashlight picked us up. The night men have walkie-talki
es connecting to the front gate, so everybody’s in close contact. Marlene says she feels like she’s living in a prison. At first I thought she was just there for the soft life, but now I don’t know. I think there’s a pretty big love-hate thing there. He’s got some kind of emotional hold on her. Maybe she responds to his strength, I don’t know. She was bitching about things and I asked her why she stuck around. I got a funny look from her and then a lot of silence. I maybe shouldn’t have asked.”

  “You want to come out?”

  “No. He’s got the vault combination somewhere. I lifted his wallet and couldn’t find it there, but there’s a safe in his bedroom and I ought to be able to get to it.”

  “We don’t need it.”

  “Call it insurance. Anyway, I’m in like Flynn. He bought the whole story. He wanted to buy it, he’s excited about having a son. But we play it very cool. In introductions I’m Eddie No Last Name. I’m inside, it’s as easy to stay inside.”

  Howard Simmons said, “The traffic pattern is fairly steady. No parking in front of the bank. I can pick them up in front and run two blocks without worrying about traffic lights. Then a right and a left. Say we stash the second car right about here. We’ll be on the highway before there’s any chance of a roadblock. We take Two-O-Two and cross the state line at Suffern, dropping some of the boys off on the way. We switch cars one more time right across the New York line, then take the Thruway north, cross the Hudson at Beacon, come back down on the Taconic.”

  Ben Murdock said, “I got that old truck painted brown again and the right plates on her. Only hard part is the waiting. I feel ready to bust out. The guns check out good enough. This here throws a little high and this one, hell, you won’t hit anything with it unless it’s big and you’re close, but shouldn’t be much shooting.”

  Colonel Roger Cross said, “Thursday. Thirteen hundred hours. You all have your assignments and battle stations. Now let us go over the entire operational plan one more time.”

  Frank Dehn said, “I don’t like it and I’m damned if I know why. You know what it is? It’s too damned slick. It’s easy, and when it’s this easy, I sweat. It doesn’t make any sense and I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t like it.”

  Everybody told him he was crazy.

  EIGHTEEN

  “You see, it’s so dreadfully dull here,” Marlene Platt said. “As cloistered as a convent, but no other nuns around for company. I hope you’ll liven things up, Eddie.”

  “I don’t even know how long I’ll be here.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” she said. She had a habit of peppering her cultured, slightly affected speech with vulgarisms. “The prodigal son has returned. He’ll live out his days with his handsome father and his wicked stepmother——”

  “His beautiful stepmother.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I’m not even sure Albert Platt is my father, Marlene. If it turns out that he is, well, we seem to hit it off pretty well, and I suppose he’ll be able to find some work I can do. And if it proves out the other way, I’ll get on my horse and ride off into the sunset. I used to love westerns when I was a kid. There were a couple of years when I don’t think I once missed a Saturday double feature. I must have seen, oh, I don’t know how many movies.”

  “You wouldn’t do it,” she said.

  “Do what? See a movie?”

  She tilted her head back, lowered her eyes to look at him. Movies, he thought; God, the woman was a collection of learned lines and gestures, all of it wholly artificial and poorly integrated.

  He was unable to figure her out. At first it had bothered him, but after a day or two he stopped caring and simply wanted her to leave him alone. He had toyed with the idea of throwing a pass her way. Not, certainly, because he wanted her to keep him company in the sack. She had the looks for it, but he had the feeling that underneath that fine skin she was all cotton candy and feathers. But it had seemed to him that a pass would win whether it won or lost. If she hopped into bed with him, then he had a friend in the enemy camp. If she reacted the other way entirely, at least she would avoid him, which would simplify his life considerably.

  Somehow he had never quite brought himself to go through with it. There was just no margin for error; if she went screaming to Platt, it would tear everything to hell and gone. By now there was no longer any point to it. It was Tuesday evening. In the morning—

  “Ride off into the sunset,” she said slowly. “You wouldn’t do it, not in a million years. Nobody does.”

  “Well, I——”

  “Nobody leaves this house, Eddie.”

  The words were chilling, He remembered Platt showing him around the grounds. You wouldn’t want to know for instance what’s under that bush or what’s next to that tree, kid. Buddy is over there. Just a couple of days and already you can hardly make out the seams in the grass. Go ahead, take a close look.

  “Nobody ever leaves. The life’s too good. It’s very comfortable being Al Platt’s wife. I’m sure it’ll be just as comfortable being Al Platt’s son.”

  “But if it turns out I’m not his son——”

  “Don’t be a schmuck. He’s very excited about the whole thing, as though you just came on the scene as living testimony to his manhood.” She put her hand to her forehead, rearranged a few strands of silky black hair. “Now, Eddie, you and I both know you’re a sharp boy looking for a soft touch, and it was a good idea you came up with, posing as Al’s son. He won’t even try to prove otherwise. You’re too good for his ego.”

  “Marlene, you make it sound as though——”

  “As though your story is a lot of crap? Well, isn’t it? You don’t have to answer.” She stubbed out a cigarette. “You think I care? He’ll go through the motions of checking the story, then he’ll say it won’t prove one way or the other but what the hell, you’re like a son to him, and you’ll stay with the easy living, Eddie, and you’ll be here a long time before you realize how much it’s costing you. You’re what? Twenty-eight?”

  He nodded. He’d leave in the morning, he decided. Turn the car back to the rental agency, then up to Tarrytown and he’d be with the rest of them for twenty-four hours before they hit the bank. He’d tell Platt he had to go see a girl in Philly, something like that.

  “I was twenty-seven when I married Al. Five years ago.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Wait until you see yourself five years from now, Eddie.”

  He grinned. “Yes, Mother.”

  “No jokes. It costs, all of this. Could you hear last night?”

  “Hear?”

  “He brought a girl home last night. One of his whores. He took us to bed. The three of us went to bed. A nice little family unit.”

  Manso knew this. He had seen Platt with the girl, had heard the three of them together. Now he avoided Marlene’s eyes.

  “Albert does like to prove his manhood. I’m surprised he didn’t ask you to join us. His son and his wife and his whore all together, and it would have been perfect wouldn’t it? Because I’m not his wife, not in my heart at least, and you’re not his son, and that blonde slut, for all I know she’s not his whore. You should have joined us, Eddie.”

  He said nothing.

  “I think I’d have liked that,” she said. Her eyes caught his. “I think I’d have liked it a lot. Myths are very compelling, aren’t they? Oedipus and all that, Eddie——”

  “I guess I’ll go have a cup of coffee,” he said.

  “Why don’t you,” she said. “A nice cup of coffee. Why were you trying to open the safe, Eddie?”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, cut the shit, as Albert would say. The wall safe. I saw you.”

  “Just testing my talents,” he managed.

  “Come again?”

  “A fellow once taught me how to knock off a combination lock by listening to the way the tumblers fall into place. I saw the safe, I thought I’d see if I could still do it.”

  “You have interesting talents.�
�

  “Well, you pick things up. Like another guy, an Army buddy of mine, taught me how to hypnotize people. Ever been hypnotized, Marlene?”

  “Constantly. Does Al know about your talents?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Does he know you pinched his wallet the other day? You wouldn’t take money, you’re not that stupid, but you must have been looking for something.”

  “His driver’s license. I expected him to be older than he said he was, and I wanted to check without being obvious about it.”

  “You’d better go have that coffee now.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  When he was halfway to the door, she called his name and stopped him. He turned. She said, “He won’t be back for a couple of hours. He went to see the Greeks in Trenton. He never gets back from there before midnight. Take your choice.”

  “My choice?”

  “Choose coffee and I tell him. About the safe and the wallet. He might believe you.”

  “And the other choice?”

  “Me.”

  He killed time lighting a cigarette. His mind flipped through alternatives. Easiest and safest was to knock her cold and just go out. Platt was away and he could come and go as he wished. Or did the guards have instructions to keep him on the premises? He didn’t really know, and it could be bad to commit oneself in advance.

  Coffee or Marlene? He was almost certain that it would be at least as dangerous to accept her offer as to reject it. He had the feeling he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

  “You can always have the coffee afterward, Eddie. Don’t take so long to make up your mind, dear. It’s not very flattering.”