Tangier Bank Heist

by Sean McLachlan

  “Go back to London, Gerald,” I chuckled. “This place is getting to you.”

  “The chaps at the Tangier Tennis Club will never forgive me for bringing him in,” he said, shaking his head sadly.

  “Make a deal so you don’t have to.”

  Gerald brightened and clapped me in the shoulder. “Good point, my man. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kevork Bagdasarian’s cover for his forging business was a print shop he owned in Tangerville, the new sprawl reaching east along the bay. The proprietor was a squat, swarthy man in his thirties who greeted Gerald warmly when we showed up and immediately cooled when the police chief produced a warrant. In a back room we found all we needed—special printing and photography equipment, and fake passports for several different nations.

  Gerald gave it to him straight. He declared that “for the sake of the honor of the Tangier Tennis Club” he would not arrest Bagdasarian, on the condition that he tell everything he knew about Pieter Vlamin. In addition, all his forging equipment would be confiscated, he would promise to get out of the passport business, and he had to pay a thousand-peseta fine for “health and safety violations.”

  Bagdasarian promptly agreed. They actually shook on it. I never realized England’s Old Boy network reached so far, or that it could include Armenians who went to Oxford. I suppose if Bagdasarian had been an Englishman who went to Oxford, he wouldn’t have gotten punished at all.

  The Armenian sat us down to some fine Turkish coffee and told us what he knew.

  “Pieter Vlamin came to me for a passport via an intermediary. I would rather not say who because he is not directly connected to this.”

  “Actually Tymon is connected in a most direct way, but we already have him in custody,” his tennis partner told him.

  “Oh dear. Well, Pieter requested a Belgian passport with the name Gert Vandebosch.”

  “Posing as Flemish so he could still speak his native tongue, eh? Clever chap,” Gerald said. “I don’t suppose he mentioned where he was headed?”

  “No. I make it a point never to ask my clients questions beyond what I need to know.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Now that we have the name we can find him easily enough.”

  The forger checked a notebook and then copied out “Gert Vandebosch’s” passport number and other information. He handed it over to Gerald with an apologetic air.

  “Many of my clients are refugees fleeing the Iron Curtain,” he told us.

  “I know, old chap, but you can’t just be giving passports to anyone who asks. My men are outside. We’ll do this as unobtrusively as possible. I wouldn’t want any scandal that might hurt your legitimate business.”

  “I appreciate that, Gerald.” They shook hands again.

  It didn’t take much time to trace Pieter’s movements. Using his new passport, he had taken a bus down the coast to Asilah, a port town in the Spanish zone. I was surprised he hadn’t gone further. Many of the richer set from Tangier went to Asilah for a change of air. He was bound to get spotted sooner or later.

  The town was only a couple of hours’ drive from Tangier. Gerald and I took an unmarked car with two Moorish plainclothesmen in back.

  I kept shifting around in the seat, checking for landmarks that would tell me how close we were to Asilah. I always get restless when I’m close to wrapping up a case.

  “Can’t you drive any faster?” I asked Gerald.

  “We wouldn’t want to break the speed limit, would we?”

  “Who’s going to give you a ticket?”

  “Relax,” Gerald said. “We’ll be there soon.”

  I drummed my fingers on the windowsill. A salty Atlantic breeze blew in my face.

  “I just want to get this guy and get my friends’ money back. Then I’ll relax.”

  “Other banks gave Vlamin thousands of pounds to cover his credit. Don’t forget them.”

  “Screw ‘em.”

  Gerald shook his head and chuckled. “Brawling at Dean’s—yes, of course I heard—and then getting outraged over a confidence trickster! Your morals are all mixed up.”

  “That guy wanted to fight. Not my fault he didn’t know how. I go after crime that actually hurts people.”

  “All crime hurts people.”

  “Some people can’t get ahead doing anything else. Look at prostitution. Yeah, it needs to stop, but the only way to stop it is to dismantle the system that makes some people so poor that they don’t have any choice. If we keep the system in place and stamp down on prostitution, all we get is a bunch of starving ex-prostitutes.”

  “Very well, but what about the con men? You’re hunting one right now, but you have coffee and drinks with them every day.”

  “Most of the con men I know are poor people duping the rich out of money they won’t really miss. Consider it forced redistribution of wealth.”

  “Like what Nasser is doing in Egypt.”

  “Hell, no. That’s the exact opposite. He’s a rich guy stealing from less rich guys, while lying to the poor that they’ll get their share. Pieter is worse than that because he steals from people who can’t afford to lose the money.”

  Gerald overtook a slow truck and took a drag of his cigarette. We were passing an olive grove I knew stood near the border. Almost there.

  “I suggest we agree to disagree,” Gerald said.

  “Have we ever done anything else?”

  We were met at the border by the Spanish police, who greeted us with a formal air and accompanied us to town.

  Going into the Spanish zone always made me feel edgy. As far as I knew, Franco’s government didn’t have my name on a list, but if they found out who I was and decided to punish me for my past, I doubted the American government would bother saving me. This time, though, I was with Tangier’s chief of police. The Spanish cops didn’t even check my passport.

  As much as I hated Franco’s police, they’d done their job. They’d tracked Pieter to a little beachside bungalow on the southern edge of town, a stone’s throw from the old fortification walls. Asilah had been the base for the last of the Barbary Coast pirates, so it seemed a fitting place for Pieter to bolt to.

  The bungalow stood at the border between an open field and the start of the sand, with a fine view of the empty beach and a few sailboats visible far out to sea. Gerald and I took our shoes off and strolled along the beach as if we were holidaymakers. His two men circled around and came along the beach from the other direction. The Spanish cops hung out of sight about two hundred yards behind the house, hidden by a palm grove.

  My gaze strayed past the curling waves to the blank horizon. A thousand miles away lay America, a place I’d probably never get to see again. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I shook off those thoughts and glanced around. We were coming up on the bungalow. The door faced inland, so all we had facing us were a pair of windows. Both were open. White curtains fluttered in the breeze. The local police had already told us there were windows on all sides of the house.

  “He’s got a clear view all around,” I said. “You sure this is a wise move?”

  “I’d like to get him alive in case he’s stashed the money somewhere,” Gerald said. “Plus if we let the Spaniards go in guns blazing they might get hurt. Pieter is a desperate man and he’s killed at least once already. You wouldn’t want some of Franco’s finest to die in the line of duty, would you?” He said this last bit with a little smirk.

  “Wiseacre.”

  I felt inside my suit for my shoulder holster. The wind was up and I had to keep my jacket buttoned in order to stop it from flapping open and showing that I was armed. But having it buttoned up meant I’d be slower on the draw. Gerald was buttoned up too.

  “Hey! Mister!” Someone shouted behind us.

  We turned.

  A Moor riding a camel and leading a second camel by a rope trotted up the beach toward us.

  “Mister! Camel ride?” he shouted.

  Shouted it louder than he needed to
.

  I glanced at the bungalow and saw a curtain twitch out of time with the breeze. Beyond it, I caught a movement in the shadows of the house. Someone was looking out, and seeing me looking.

  “Mister! Camel ride?” There came that call again, louder this time even though the Moor had drawn closer. He glanced at the house.

  “He’s a lookout!” I said as I tackled Gerald and brought him down.

  A gun flared from the window, the crack of the shot snapping across the beach. A plume of sand spat up a couple of feet away from us.

  Gerald and I had both been in the war, and instinct kicked in. We rolled in opposite directions, getting behind little rills of sand that offered virtually no protection but was better than standing there like a target.

  The gun fired again. It sounded like a pistol. The bullet kicked sand a few inches from me. We were at far range for a pistol, but Pieter had a good bead on us.

  I yanked out my gun, saw the Moor galloping away, and took aim at the window.

  Gerald fired first, his shot pocking the whitewash on the sill. My shot came no closer.

  A third shot, this one making Gerald bite sand, and then a shout from the house. For a moment I saw an arm shove out the window, a pistol gripped in its fist. Another hand was clasped around the forearm. The arm wavered, then got slammed against the windowsill. The gun went off, burying a bullet in the earth below the window. The curtains got shoved aside and I had a glimpse of two struggling figures before they dropped out of sight an instant later.

  Someone shouted from the bungalow. It sounded like “I have him!” but I couldn’t be sure.

  I was up and running. To my relief, Gerald got up and started charging the bungalow too. For a second there, I thought he’d had it.

  I fired a couple of wild shots to keep whoever was dancing around inside from coming to the window. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gerald’s men sprinting down the beach to join us. A police whistle shrilled from the other side of the house.

  A shot rang out from inside the house, followed by a cry. Gerald ran for the right-hand window and I went for the one where the firing had come from.

  I pressed my back against the wall, bobbed my head around for a second but couldn’t see anything for the curtains. Summoning my courage, I grabbed them, yanked them from the rod, and shoved my gun in the window.

  And was paralyzed by what I saw.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Robert lay on the floor, clutching his bloody leg. Robert—drunken, baby-like Robert from Tangier.

  The interior was a large living room that took up most of the house. On the far wall was the front door. Pieter Vlamin, who I remembered taking a photo of me and Melanie the year before, was sliding back the bolt. A satchel was slung across his shoulder and a pistol in his grip.

  That pistol leveled at me.

  I raised my own gun, with the sickening realization that he’d get to fire first.

  A gunshot. Pieter slammed against the door. He stood for a second, dazed, arms slack at his sides, and then made a weak attempt to raise his gun.

  Gerald shot him a second time, and Pieter curled up, blood flowing from two spots in his chest, spreading out over a fine suit. Melanie was right, he was a good dresser.

  The door burst open, sending Pieter sprawling, and a Spanish policeman stumbled into the room.

  He stopped short as he saw the muzzle of my gun pointing right at him.

  “Bang,” I said.

  He turned pale and gulped. That made me feel good.

  The Spanish cops swarmed into the room. Gerald ran around the bungalow to join them. I took the less dignified path of hauling myself through the window, not an easy task for someone as short as me.

  Robert lay at my feet, his face contorted in pain. I pulled off my tie and made a tourniquet that I tied off at the thigh. The wound was bleeding bad but soon began to subside. Robert took a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it against the wound.

  I stared at him and he stared back at me. One of the Spanish cops patted him down. From inside Robert’s jacket pocket the officer found a thick envelope full of cash. The cop handed it to his commander and tried to haul Robert to his feet. Robert groaned. I slapped the chump’s hands away.

  I thought of Robert giving me information about Pieter, and later that phone call that pointed me on a different path, the wrong path. He had given me clues and then tried to take them back.

  “Why?” I asked. I couldn’t come out with more than one word.

  “I never wanted anyone to get hurt,” he said. “You gotta believe me. I stopped him from shooting you, didn’t I?”

  He looked hurt, and not from the gunshot. He looked like a kid who had been naughty and wanted to make sure his parents still loved him.

  “You saved our lives, my good man,” Gerald said, standing over us. “Kent, you know this chap?”

  “He’s a friend,” I sighed.

  Robert gave me a bashful grin.

  “So what the hell are you mixed up with Pieter Vlamin for?” I asked him.

  “I helped him with some of the business side of his bank when he first set it up. I could tell he was a phony but he paid well and I needed the money. This place is sucking me dry, Kent. I had such a boring life back in the States, and here I can party all night with heiresses. I can take beach vacations to places like this. I can get all sorts of girls. I’m living it up like I never got to before, but that all costs, Kent. That costs a bundle. My savings were drying up, but I couldn’t stop. I got stuck in the bottle, stuck hard. You know that. But it’s so easy around here. I didn’t want to miss the fun.”

  “So you didn’t lose money to Vlamin, you lost it to booze.”

  Robert nodded, looking embarrassed. “And women, and high living, but mostly booze. Then I saw a way out. I was serious about going to Saudi Arabia to get a job at one of the oil companies. No booze in Saudi. I could have dried out.”

  “We could have dried you out.”

  Robert shook his head. “You guys? Most of you drink as hard as me. Not you and Melanie, but you two got your own thing going and you don’t need some drunken sap relying on you.”

  “We would have helped, Robert,” I said, feeling like I had let him down. I’d always looked at him as a happy clown. I’d been tricked by a Tangier facade. I thought I was too smart for that.

  “Tell us about the Egyptians,” Gerald said.

  Robert glanced at Pieter lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Pieter still gripped his gun. A .38. Robert shuddered.

  “I’d been talking to some of the Saudis who come here. Managed to get invited to some of their parties. You know how they like to live it up when they get out of their kingdom. Those guys can drink me under the table. One of them knew I had worked for the South Continental Bank and mentioned he had some Egyptian colleagues who were looking to get money out of the country. Pieter and I invited them over and talked with them, and right away we could tell their money was stolen. It was written all over their faces. So we figured, why not?”

  “Robbing the robbers, eh?” I said. “But you robbed decent people too. Damn it, Robert, you robbed Melanie!”

  Tears came to his eyes. “I didn’t mean to. That envelope I was carrying has Melanie’s money in it. Ricardo’s too. All our friends. I was going to send that back to them. Honest.”

  “You expect me to believe Pieter agreed to that?” Gerald scoffed.

  Robert looked up at him. “It came from my share. I still had plenty from the Egyptians. That’s all I needed to get to Saudi and buy a house. Then I would have looked for a job. I miss working. It kept me on an even keel, and working in Saudi would have made it easy to keep off the sauce.” He sighed, stared at Pieter for a moment, and shook his head. “Another day and we would have made it. We booked passage on a tramp steamer going to the Canary Islands. From there we would have gone to Spain. Pieter would have gone to Belgium and I was going to make my way to Saudi Arabia. A new life. One with no booze.”

 
; “You’ll have plenty of time to dry out in prison,” Gerald quipped.

  “Can it, Gerald,” I said, and turned back to Robert. “So what happened at the Grotto of Hercules?”

  “That’s where Pieter met Nikolas to get his fake passport. Why?”

  “Pieter killed Nikolas.”

  Robert gaped. “That son of a bitch.”

  “You mean to say you didn’t know he’d do that?” Gerald asked.

  Robert looked dumbfounded. “Killed him? Why? The passport cost a thousand pounds sterling, but he had tens of thousands! He killed a man just for an extra grand?”

  Poor Robert. Poor dumb, drunken Robert. He never realized what kind of a man he had been working with.

  “He even made me help. I’m an accessory,” he moaned.

  “You? Oh Robert, tell me you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t know. He was worried Ronnie the Pusher was going to double-cross him. Those boys Ronnie uses for deliveries are his eyes and ears. Pieter spotted one hanging around when he and Nikolas agreed to the rendezvous. Pieter had me delay Ronnie that morning. I made up some song and dance about a friend needing a fix and held him up as long as I could.”

  “You didn’t delay him long enough,” Gerald said. “Nikolas’s shipmates saw him at the cave and assumed he had killed Nikolas, so they strangled him.”

  “Oh God! Oh God!”

  Robert started to cry.

  We left him alone for a while as we searched the house. Pieter’s satchel held tens of thousands of dollars in various currencies and untraceable bearer bonds. We found Robert’s share in a small bedroom off from the main room. We also found the tickets for the steamer to Gran Canaria.

  Once we came back, Robert had pulled himself together. One of the Spanish cops had cuffed him. Someone else had put a sheet over Pieter. The white material had already soaked up much of the blood and turned red.

  “So one thing I don’t understand, Robert. You let slip a bunch of stuff that night at Dean’s, and it was like you let it slip on purpose. Then later you made that call and try to steer me wrong. Why?”

  Robert looked abashed. “I was drunk. I had some loony idea of outsmarting you. Give you some clues and then steer you wrong. You’re so smart, Kent. I’ve always admired you. Me, I’m all right in my job but not much else besides that. All this criminal stuff went to my head. That combined with the booze made me shoot off at the mouth. Later, when I sobered up and realized my mistake, I called you and tried to undo the damage.”