Big Man

by Ed McBain

  Celia blew out a wreath of smoke. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Not at all,” Mr. Carfon answered. “You’re looking well, Celia. I’d forgotten how lovely you looked.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mr. Carfon nodded and then walked back to the desk, sitting on the edge of it. “How much are you earning now, Frankie?” he asked again.

  “At the moment, I ain’t working,” I said.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Mr. Carfon said. “Would you be interested in a job? Starting at, let us say, fifty dollars a week?”

  “That sounds pretty low,” I said, and Celia looked up at me, surprised.

  “Does it?” Mr. Carfon asked.

  “I can make that in the A&P.”

  “How much did you have in mind, Frankie?”

  “I had in mind all I can get,” I told him.

  “All you can get is seventy-five to start, and that’s tops. You can also get a little free advice against being overly ambitious.”

  “What am I supposed to do for this seventy-five a week?”

  “Lots of little things.” He smiled. “Lord knows there’re always a million little things to do, isn’t that right, Turk?”

  “Always,” Turk said, his eyes still sort of blank.

  “We have a large organization, please don’t misunderstand me. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that you’d be doing these little things all by yourself. Do you see?”

  “What kind of little things?” I asked.

  “I see you believe in specifics. I take this to be a sign of intelligence, which is always good. Very well, I shall become specific. We have a warehouse deal on the schedule for tonight. We can use another man on it. If you’re interested, of course.”

  “What kind of warehouse deal?” I asked.

  “I promised specifics, and I did not deliver them, did I? I do not ordinarily encourage too many questions, but I can see you’re a cautious man. I’ll spell it out for you, Frankie. You should, after all, know exactly what you’re getting into—though I imagine you’ve already grasped at least part of it. We are going to break into and enter a warehouse. We are going to commit burglary. The warehouse has recently received a shipment of furs. We are going to steal those furs. And later we are going to sell them. That is the long and the short of it, Frankie. Are you interested?”

  “This is the kind of little thing I’d be doing, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “For seventy-five bucks a week, right?”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head. “At that salary, the A&P is safer. I want a hundred a week.”

  “Seventy-five is as far as I’ll go,” Mr. Carfon said. “And I’m not ready to enter a bargaining duel and then settle for eighty-five or ninety. Seventy-five is the salary, take it or leave it.” He smiled. “Turk, ask Milt to get us something to drink, won’t you? I don’t want Frankie to think we’re inhospitable. As I told you, Frankie, this is a big organization. But I don’t need motivational research to teach me there’s no percentage in treating the bottom men like animals. I don’t believe in that. There’s plenty of room at the top, and I don’t want someone in command to bear a grudge in remembrance of shabby treatment he may once have received. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. A hundred dollars is my price.”

  “Have a drink first. Think about it. Turk?”

  “I’ll talk to Milt,” Turk said, and he walked out of the room.

  When he was gone, Mr. Carfon turned to Celia. “What do you think of Frankie here?” he asked.

  “I think he has potential,” Celia said.

  “Ah, yes, and I’ve always admired your good judgment. Do you own a gun, Frankie?”

  “No.”

  “You prefer a .45, I gather. We’ll get you one.”

  “I didn’t take the job yet.”

  “True, nor am I trying to high-pressure you. I think you’ll find our organization worthwhile, though.”

  “Am I expected to do any more killing?” I asked.

  “Well now, that’s certainly to the point, isn’t it? Murder, eh? Well, I’ll be honest with you. Perhaps. Perhaps you may have to kill again. Do you find the thought disagreeable?”

  “Well … no,” I said cautiously.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I just wouldn’t like it to become a habit. Not for a measly seventy-five bucks a week.”

  “No, we habitually try to steer away from violence. Except where it is absolutely necessary, of course.” He smiled. “And then we rise to meet the demands of the occasion.”

  “I see.”

  “So? What do you say?”

  “I say I’ll take the seventy-five a week … provided.”

  “Provided what?”

  “Provided it goes up to a hundred within a month. And provided the salary doubles the day I’m asked to kill anybody.”

  Mr. Carfon smiled. “Very well,” he said, and I was already beginning to congratulate myself on being a shrewd businessman when he added, “You’ll join us in a drink, won’t you? And then you can leave.”

  “What?”

  “Your counter-offer was unacceptable,” Mr. Carfon said, still smiling. “But that’s the way it goes.” He shrugged.

  “Well …”

  “Think it over, Frankie,” Celia said.

  I looked at her. I was beginning to kick myself for playing it so shrewd. The guy’s offer had been a reasonable one.

  “Well, Mr. Carfon—” I started.

  “Ah, here’s Milt and Turk with refreshments,” Mr. Carfon said. “Come in, boys.”

  Milt came over with a tray full of drinks, serving Celia first. Mr. Carfon said, “Drink up, Frankie.”

  We all drank. Then Mr. Carfon said, “Well, Frankie, it was very nice meeting you. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us, but that’s the way the Tootsie rolls. If you’ll excuse me now …”

  “Mr. Carfon …?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll … uh … I’ve been thinking.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. I’ll … I’ll take the job. For the seventy-five.”

  “Seventy-five?” Mr. Carfon said, still smiling. “There must be some misunderstanding. The starting salary is fifty.”

  “Fifty? But you said—”

  “I said fifty,” Mr. Carfon said, still smiling.

  “Fifty,” I repeated, and then I nodded because I saw what had happened, and I had nobody to blame but myself. “Okay,” I said. “Fifty.”

  “Good, I’m glad you’re with us.” He took my hand and shook it. “Celia, you may go now or as soon as you like. I want Frankie to stay so that Andy can explain tonight’s job to him. I wouldn’t want him to foul up his first time out.”

  “I’m going tonight?” I asked.

  “Yes, certainly. On the warehouse job.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

  Mr. Carfon began walking Celia to the door, anxious to get her out now that the cordialities were done with. He put his arm around Celia’s waist, and I heard him say, “You’re really looking quite lovely, Celia. You must come to see us more often.”

  Milt, standing just inside the door, patted Celia on the behind again before she went out. Celia didn’t seem to mind.

  Andy didn’t seem to notice.

  4

  The warehouse was a big monster on the lower West Side, near the West Side Highway. We drove up to it with our headlights off, and way up the Hudson on the other side, we could see the lights of Palisades; and while we were parking the heap, the boat coming back from Bear Mountain drifted by, and we could hear people singing out on the river.

  There were four of us in the car. A guy whose name I didn’t catch was driving. On his right, a small guy who’d been introduced as Weasel that afternoon sat chewing on a matchstick. Andy and I sat in the back seat. The deal had been explained very carefully by Andy that afternoon. He had a floor plan of the warehouse, and he knew just where everything was, in
cluding the alarm system. Weasel was the alarm expert, he told me. There wasn’t an alarm in the world that Weasel couldn’t foul up in ten minutes, Andy said. I hoped he was right.

  The warehouse was surrounded by a cyclone fence which Andy said wasn’t wired. There was a gate in the fence about fifteen feet back from the rear brick wall of the building. A ramp went through the gate and up to the loading platform at the back of the warehouse. The gate was held closed by a heavy padlock. There were two watchmen inside the building, and each one carried a key to the gate.

  We pulled up close to the corner, on the blind wall of the building. The driver and Weasel stayed in the car. Andy and I went out. They had given me a .45, and I had the gun tucked in the waistband of my pants, and it felt very big and very hard against my belly. I stationed myself on the corner where I could see in all directions. The car was parked about twenty-five feet from me, the back doors open in case we had to make a run for it. Andy worked on the fence for about fifteen minutes, using a pair of heavy wire cutters. I kept watching for cops. I got to admit I was sweating. Finally, Andy came up to me and whispered, “All right, get Weasel.”

  I walked back to the car, not making any noise. It may sound stupid that we were wearing sneakers, but that’s what we were wearing. Andy explained that Mr. Carfon did things right, and sneakers don’t make any noise on the floors of a warehouse.

  I reached into the front open window and tapped Weasel on the shoulder. He opened the door and came out of the car. The car was a new Buick, and you could hardly even hear the engine, even though you knew it was running, purring under that long, sleek hood. We walked to the hole Andy had cut in the fence. Weasel squeezed through, and I squeezed in after him. Andy, because he was too fat to get through the hole, took up the sidewalk post, and began working on the fence some more, enlarging the hole. I wanted to pull out my gun and hold it in my hand, but Andy’s gun was still in his shoulder holster, and I didn’t want to seem chicken. I followed Weasel to where he knew the alarm wiring was, and then I walked around the side of the building and looked up to the catwalk I’d seen on the floor plan. There was a door on the second story of the building, opening onto the catwalk, and if a watchman showed, it would be through that door. I ducked into the shadows and kept my eyes on the door.

  Andy had explained to me that afternoon a little about the kind of electric alarm systems used today. There was, he explained, the open circuit, the closed circuit and a combination of the two. The open circuit was the kind used by cheapskates who only wanted to make believe they had alarm protection. With that type of system, the alarm sounds when the circuit is closed, and you can put it out of action merely by cutting the wire.

  In the closed circuit kind of alarm, which is a little more expensive than the other, there’s always a small current running through the wires, and the bells go off when you break that current in contact. The way you beat this alarm is by cross-contacting.

  The warehouse we were hitting had the best type alarm, and that was a combination of the other two kinds of alarms which went off either when the current was broken or when contact was made. There was only one way to beat this, and Weasel was working on that now. Actually, the wiring box was in a pretty stupid exposed place. The wiring is the weakest part of any alarm system, and some places bury it in concrete or under the floor or something. But this one was right where you could get at it and unscrew the lid to the box. When I went around to see how Weasel was coming along, he’d already laid open the wiring and was using a compass to find out which wires were carrying current. I went back to my post. Andy had already come through the bigger hole he’d cut in the unwired fence and had gone down to the gate where the padlock hung on the inside. He started working on the padlock while Weasel cross-contacted the wires carrying current and then cut the remaining wires. By the time Weasel finished with the alarm, Andy had the padlock open, too. For all practical purposes, the warehouse was now wide open.

  Andy moved away from the padlock and signaled to the driver of the car. Slowly, no rush involved, the driver pulled away from the curb and drove out of sight. Together, Andy, me and Weasel walked to where the catwalk hung to the second story of the building. I was the tallest, so I jumped up for the ladder, pulling it down. Weasel went up the ladder first. Andy followed him, and then came me. At the door, Weasel checked for maybe a second wiring system, nodded, and then moved aside for Andy to work on the lock. He was really a whiz with locks, this Andy. He cracked the door in about thirty seconds, I’ll swear it, and then he put his ear close to it and listened. According to what we knew, neither of the two watchmen should have been on the second floor at that time, but Andy was making sure. He listened for a long time, and then he got ready to pull open the door. We all held our breaths. If Weasel had goofed even slightly, you’d be able to hear that alarm away the hell over in California. Andy pulled open the door.

  The alarm didn’t go off. Weasel smiled a little. It was so damn quiet on that catwalk, I could hear my old man’s ghost breathing. Andy kept listening, even now with the door open. Then he nodded at Weasel and they both went inside while I watched the sidewalk. I was scared. I was goddamn good and scared. My hands were sweating, and my face was sweating, and my shirt was soaked through even though it was a pretty cool night.

  “Come on,” Andy whispered, and I followed him into the building and eased the door shut behind me.

  There were high walls all around us, and high windows on three of those walls. The fourth wall was a blind wall, big and blank, like a dummy’s face. There were refrigerators all over the place. Everywhere you looked, you saw another refrigerator. There was enough refrigerators there to cool off all Africa.

  We knew the furs were on the third floor, so we didn’t have to say anything to each other. We’d worked this all out beforehand in the afternoon. We knew that one of the watchmen would be down on the first floor at this time, while the second watchman would be making his rounds. Weasel slipped away from us and darted downstairs after the first watchman. Andy and I started up for the third floor.

  There were iron rungs on the steps to the third floor, and I imagined what leather soles would have done to those rungs. It would have been just like another alarm; only one you couldn’t cut the wires on it. I was all at once very happy to be wearing sneakers. That’s what I liked about the whole setup, the planning. We’d estimated the job for an hour and ten minutes, complete. We figured it would take us about a half-hour to get into the place and quiet the watchman, and another forty minutes to get the furs downstairs to the loading platform. That was a long time to be inside the place, but there were a lot of furs, and even with all that time we couldn’t hope to load but a small percentage of them. But Andy explained that Mr. Carfon was a very careful worker, and he worked on a very big scale. So if the job netted him only forty or fifty grand with just a portion of the furs, it was still a lot safer than using a truck and sticking around for the whole load, which maybe could have netted him two hundred grand, I don’t know. That was the way Mr. Carfon worked—safe. An hour and ten minutes, no more. At the end of that time, we would leave the building, no matter how many furs we stacked. I suppose, if you looked at it another way, you could figure since you’re already in the damn building, since you already took the risk, why not go all the way, why not absolutely clean it out? But Mr. Carfon figured there was a point of diminishing returns, the way Andy put it, and since he had a big organization, he could afford to make a lot of smaller, safer heists.

  He took no real chances. That was why the car had driven away. Now maybe that could be considered risky, leaving us inside the warehouse without a getaway car waiting. But if a Snow White happened to be cruising by, they’d sure as hell be suspicious of a car idling downstairs. I knew the car would be back a half-hour before our time was up, and that we’d have the first load of furs downstairs by that time. I knew the driver—what the hell was his name?—would open the gate and drive right up the ramp to the loading platform. I knew his l
ights would be out, and that we’d load the furs in complete darkness. I knew all that, and I felt pretty safe, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling a little scared.

  The third floor was just like the second floor, minus the refrigerators. There were furs up there instead. The furs were on plain pipe racks, like Robert Hall advertises. We stood on the landing and looked through the open door. Our eyes were used to the darkness by this time, and we kept them peeled for the second watchman. Only we didn’t see him anyplace on the floor.

  “Where is he?” I whispered.

  “He’ll be around,” Andy said. “Keep cool.”

  We stayed on the landing for a good seven minutes. We heard Weasel starting up from the first floor, and then we didn’t hear him all the way up to the third because of his sneakers.

  When he came up to us, he said, “I put him away and tied him up. Where’s yours?”

  “He hasn’t showed yet,” Andy said.

  Weasel glanced at the fluorescent dial of his watch. “He better hurry,” he whispered. “That car’s gonna be back soon.”

  “Maybe we should start taking the furs down,” I said.

  “No,” Andy told me. “We’ll wait for the watchman.”

  We kept waiting. I could hear Weasel’s watch ticking away. I wondered if the car was back yet and waiting by the ramp downstairs. Suppose a squad car spotted that car waiting?

  “Where the hell is he?” I said.

  “Cool, man,” Andy said.

  “Suppose he stumbles on the guy Weasel put away? Suppose—?”

  “I said cool, man,” Andy snapped.

  I listened to Weasel’s watch, and I listened to my own breathing. The warehouse was very quiet, and the quiet mushroomed up like a hydrogen bomb, like if you ever watched the hydrogen bomb on television with the volume turned down, just like that. I could feel the sweat oozing down my back, and all at once I wanted that .45 in my hand. I reached under my jacket and pulled the gun out of my waistband. It made a scratching noise when it came free. Andy glanced at me and the gun, and then went back to watching the floor.