Hard Cash

by Collins, Max Allan

  It was also stuffy and cramped and hell to spend four or five minutes in, let alone hours. Terry was to the point of giving up on his idea of waiting for Nolan to pull off a heist before killing him; to forget about the money and just get on with it, just let his old man get his revenge rocks off. After all, Terry’d only been out a few days. He was horny. He wanted to be the one who did the screwing for a change, and he didn’t want any damn boy, either. He wanted to get drunk, and he thought he might smoke a little shit, too, a little tokin’ of respect for his late doper brother. Christ, after all those months inside, was this any way to spend his time? Flat on his belly in an attic that had less room to move in than his cell?

  Noise downstairs.

  Old Sam gripped Terry’s forearm.

  Terry patted his father’s hand soothingly.

  Between them was the shotgun.

  “I’m sorry, Nolan.” Young voice. The lad. Nolan’s buddy.

  “It’s okay. You almost killed us, but it’s okay.”

  “That’s never happened to me before. Falling asleep at the wheel, I mean, Jesus.”

  “Maybe it’s a good sign.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Shows you’re relaxed, if nothing else. I doubt Rigley and the girl get that much sleep between now and Monday. No, I take that back—the girl’ll sleep fine. She’ll sleep better than any of us.”

  “Listen, Nolan, I’m tired, and I know you are too. I mean, you slept all the way back yourself. . . .”

  “Except when you almost ran into the semi. That woke me up.”

  “Yeah, except then. Anyway, I wonder if you’d mind going over a few things with me. I feel like there’s a few things you’re going to want me to know that Rigley doesn’t have to. After all, all he has to do is stand there.”

  “Couldn’t it wait till morning?”

  “I’ll sleep better if we go over it now.”

  “I didn’t notice you having any trouble sleeping when you were behind the wheel.”

  “I’m wide awake now.”

  “Okay. I tell you what. I’ll take it from the top, and you stop me any time you got a question.”

  After Nolan had gone over the heist in detail with the kid, the Comforts allowed time for everybody downstairs to go to sleep, then sneaked out through the garage.

  13

  MOST OF THE downtown Port City buildings were brick and had a decaying look to them. The bank, on the corner, was an exception. It was white stone, two stories of nicely chiseled Grecian architecture dominated by three pillars carved out of its face. Above the pillars the word bank was cut in the stone and the date 1870; the bank’s electric sign, nearby, didn’t date back that far. The sign was attached to the corner of the building and hovered out over the sidewalk; it said first national bank of port city above a field of black, on which white dots grouped to form the time and then regrouped to form the temperature. Right now the sign said the time was 1:27. The time was 7:26. And the sign said the temperature was 98 degrees. The temperature was 20 degrees. The sign was broken.

  Jon was nervous. Yesterday, Sunday, had been busy, and he hadn’t had time to be nervous; he’d been moving all the time, almost all night, too. But now he was sitting, and he felt himself trembling, like an alcoholic who needed that first drink.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and almost jumped.

  “Easy,” Nolan said. “Easy.”

  Nolan’s hand. A reassuring hand. Jon looked at Nolan, who smiled from behind his white whiskers and said softly, “ho ho ho.”

  “Yeah?” Jon said. “And I hear your wife puts out for the elves. Stick that up your chimney.”

  And they looked at each other in their Santa Claus suits and laughed, a little, and Jon was less nervous. A little.

  Rigley was behind Nolan, crouching. The man didn’t seem at all nervous, but somehow he didn’t seem calm, either. He hadn’t said a word since they’d stopped by his house to pick him up a few minutes before.

  They were in a red panel truck that was parked in front of the Salvation Army store just down the block from and on the same side of the one-way street as the bank. On the sides and rear of the panel truck it said “TOYS FOR TIKES, Davenport, Iowa” in white letters. Toys for Tikes was an organization of area businessmen whose panel trucks (identical to this one) were a common Christmas-season sight in these parts. The trucks went around to various businesses that served as drop points for the broken and/or discarded toys that Toys for Tikes collected, refurbished, and distributed to needy children. Sometimes, close to Christmas, when there were more deliveries than pickups to be made, the drivers dressed as Santa Claus.

  Today was December 24.

  The bank was on the corner of Second Street and Iowa Avenue. The panel truck was parked on Second Street. Traffic was less than heavy, more than sparse; at any rate, the Toys for Tikes van attracted no undue attention. The morning was clear, crisp-cold; no overcast sky today; no threat of snow.

  At 7:28 a man who looked remarkably like a younger version of Rigley rounded the corner from Iowa Avenue on foot, having left his car in the riverfront parking lot a block down and across the four wide lanes of Mississippi Drive. The man’s name was Shep Jackson. He was a vice-president at the bank; technically, his job was that of auditor. He wore an expensive-looking gray topcoat with a black fur collar. He had short dark hair and a tanned complexion. As he walked, he looked at himself in the reflecting glass of the modern double doors between the first and second pillars and the big curtained window between the second and third. He stopped at the employees’ entrance, the furthermost door, which opened onto a vestibule that joined the stairway to bookkeeping and the side door to the bank lobby. Keys were needed to open both doors, but the outer one he left unlocked, while the lobby door he locked behind him.

  The vault’s time lock was set for 7:30, at which time Jackson would dial the combination, whirl the wheel, and open the vault.

  Inside the vault was a shiny silver wall of drawers the cast and gloss of newly minted coins, separately locked drawers that held the trays of money for the teller cages, drafts, trust vouchers, money orders, securities, and so on. There was a small inner safe, built into the lower half of the shiny silver wall. The bulk of the bank’s money was in the interior safe. Just under $400,000, Rigley said.

  The second safe, the one inside the vault, had its own time lock. At 7:45, Jackson would have four minutes to dial a combination and open the safe. From 7:30 to 7:45, Jackson would busy himself with the menial task of turning off the night alarms and emptying the small night depository vault up front, which would contain twenty-five or so locked, separate bags of coin and cash and checks left by merchants for overnight safekeeping. These he would carry to a teller’s window and leave. That would give him five or six minutes to sit at his desk, relax, have a smoke, and wait for the time lock on the vault’s interior safe to go off.

  Jon looked at his Dick Tracy watch. “Seven thirty-eight, Nolan,” he said. “Better get going, don’t you think?”

  “Another minute,” Nolan said.

  They waited.

  Nolan hadn’t told Jon the reasons for going with December 24, Christmas Eve morning, but Jon could figure them out for himself. The bank ran a skeleton crew on December 24; barely half the regular personnel would be on hand. Furthermore, if all went as planned, it would all be over before any (or at least many) of the bank employees had even showed up, the exception being Shep Jackson, who had to be there early to open the vault. Most people resent having to work on a holiday, even on a near holiday like December 24, so it was unlikely anyone would show up early today, and possible most of them would come dragging in five or ten minutes late. Also, the bank vault was overflowing at this busy shopping time of year; the Friday before the weekend was probably one of the biggest days of the season for local merchants. And, of course, there were the Santa Claus suits, which were to keep anybody from getting a look at Nolan and Jon’s true appearance, to keep anybody from realizing the P
ort City bank was being robbed by the same people again. Jon hadn’t been surprised when Nolan said the robbery would be Monday, because if it was any later than Monday, using the Santa Claus suits would be crazy. Although, sitting here in his false whiskers and red padded suit, Jon felt pretty crazy as it was.

  “Okay,” Nolan said. “Let’s go.”

  Nolan opened the rear doors of the van as Jon pulled up alongside the bank; Rigley got out first and Nolan, in his Santa Claus suit, followed. They went in the employees’ entrance. Through the glass door Jon saw Rigley working the key in the side lobby door. When Nolan and Rigley were both inside, Jon turned right on Iowa and drove past the bank and into the bank’s customer-only parking lot.

  The lot was behind the bank and bordered by the alley, across from which were big empty buildings, a hotel, warehouses, reclaimed for urban renewal. Jon parked in the far corner of the lot, by the rear door to the bank, a metal door at the top of half a flight of metal steps. Nolan would be coming out that door in ten minutes. It would have been a nice way to go in, but it could only be opened from inside; somebody inside had to look through the peephole and unbolt the door and let you in. So Nolan and Rigley had gone through the front.

  The lot was recessed, the bank having a neighboring building that extended clear to the alley’s edge, meaning the lot was open to view only on the Iowa Avenue side. Directly across from the lot was another, public parking lot, presently empty. But down the street half a block was a cafe. A police car was parked outside the cafe.

  Jon slumped behind the wheel of the van, sweating in his Santa Claus whiskers and suit despite the cold, wondering what prison was like.

  14

  NOLAN HAD a laundry bag in one hand and a .38 in the other. The laundry bag was empty. The gun wasn’t. He stood silently beside Rigley in front of Shep Jackson’s desk, at the rear of die bank, near the vault. The bank was silent, too, and dark, only the lights in the rear having been turned on as yet.

  Jackson was wearing a money-green sportcoat and pale green slacks, the latter approximating the shade his complexion had turned to a moment before. He had the same sickly handsome look as Rigley, only younger, of course, like someone who had stepped out of an Arrow shirt advertisement. He’d been sitting at his desk, feet propped up, smoking a cigarette, reading yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. He had stood as the bank president and Santa Claus approached; he had smiled, a smile at first amused, then puzzled, and finally not a smile at all, because Santa Claus had a gun.

  Three minutes remained before the time lock on the inner vault safe would go off.

  “Shep,” Rigley said, emotionlessly, “there is a man at my house holding a gun to my wife’s head. There’s a man with a gun outside, waiting. And, of course, there’s this man. They want the money in the vault. They came to my house this morning and brought me here; one of them stayed behind to hold my wife hostage. I will be leaving with them. I’m a hostage, too.”

  “Oh, my God,” Jackson said, touching his cheek.

  “Take it easy, Shep,” Rigley said. “I’ve been robbed before. The bank has. My experience is that if we follow instructions, no harm’ll come to anyone. They want the money, and that’s all. But if we don’t follow their instructions, my wife will be killed, and quite possibly so will I.”

  Nolan was pleased with Rigley’s words, but not with his performance. There was a mechanical quality to it, a coldness, like a bad actor reading off cue cards. Fortunately, Jackson seemed too unnerved to notice.

  “At eight-thirty, Shep, you’ll open and conduct business as usual. This man is going to take all of the money in the vault safe, but will leave the tellers’ money alone. So you should be able to carry on as if all was normal. Sometime around midmorning, they intend to release my wife and me, they say, and you’ll be contacted. I will contact you. And at that time you can call the authorities. But until then any effort to do otherwise, I have been assured, will result in my wife’s death and my own. So please keep everyone away from the alarms. Now. I think the time lock should be open and you can give this man what he’s after.”

  Jackson nodded nervously and said, “Uh, people will be coming pretty soon, George. How should we . . . I . . . handle that?”

  “I’m going up to stand by the front door now, to explain the situation to anyone who might come in early. This will be over, though, before very many, if anyone, shows up. So it’s going to be up to you to gather everyone in the back conference room and explain what is happening.”

  Jackson nodded again and walked gingerly toward the vault. He walked inside the vault and crouched to open the safe, then turned to Nolan and said, “All right, it’s open,” And Nolan held out the laundry bag to him, making him come for it, not entering the vault itself where Jackson would have him in a confined area that might lend itself to idiotic heroism.

  It took less than three minutes to empty the safe, to make the laundry bag bulge with the packets of money.

  Jackson pulled the bag by its neck, out of the vault, and turned it over to Nolan. Nolan slung it over his shoulder, Santa-style.

  Rigley, who was standing up front, by the side lobby door, saw that Nolan and Jackson were done, and rejoined them. He had a blank look on his face. It disturbed Nolan somehow that Rigley had taken this in such easy stride, that Rigley’s tic under the comer of his right eye hadn’t been here today.

  Nolan motioned with his gun for Jackson to lead them through the back room that led to the bolted back door. The room was lined with filing cabinets and had a Xerox machine and a counter for a coffee pot and a table; a coin- wrapping machine and a couple of other machines Nolan didn’t recognize were grouped around the massive metal back door, which was bolted three times. Bag over his shoulder, gun trained on Jackson, Nolan peered out the magnifying peephole in the door and saw Jon sitting behind the wheel of the red van. No one else was in the parking lot. The alley was empty too.

  Nolan motioned to Jackson to unbolt the door.

  Jackson did.

  Rigley said, “If you haven’t heard from me by eleven, you can call the police.” Rigley turned his blank face to Nolan and asked, “Is that right?”

  Nolan nodded.

  Jackson said, “If I haven’t heard anything by eleven, call the police. Otherwise business as usual.”

  Rigley nodded and said, “Don’t let me down, Shep. It’s not just me, it’s . . .”

  And here was the damnedest thing: Rigley’s voice cracked, as if there was some genuine emotion going on behind that blank mask.

  “. . . It’s Cora’s life too.”

  And Rigley turned to the massive door and opened it

  Jackson, who seemed pretty calm by now, said to Nolan, “You . . . you don’t say much, do you? You’re not your everyday Santa Claus, are you?”

  Nolan tapped Jackson’s shoulder with the gun, in a not unfriendly way, and said, “It’s better to give than receive,” and went out.

  They’d been inside seven minutes.

  15

  RIGLEY, FEELING as though he were moving through a strange but amazingly real-seeming dream, crawled inside the Toys for Tikes van. The laundry bag of money was tossed in after him. The doors, slammed shut. It was dark inside the van; Rigley sat and looked at the rear doors and saw nothing but darkness. His back was to the kid, Jon, who was getting the engine going, and he heard the door slam as Nolan (who Rigley knew as Logan) got in on the rider’s side. And then the van was moving. Backing out, into the alley.

  Nolan said, “Cops over at the cafe, like Rigley said they’d be.”

  They ate breakfast there every morning.

  Jon said, “You can see their backs if you look through the window there. Sitting at the counter, see? Never even looked over here once.”

  “Well let’s not wait till they do. Go.”

  And they were driving down the alley, and Rigley bounced in the darkness, wondering if dying was like this, darkness and an empty feeling—as if you were starving to death but felt no hunger. Ne
xt to Rigley, the bag of money bounced too.

  At the end of the alley, on the right, was a filling station, behind which was a self-service car wash, four stalls, two of which you could enter from the alley. Rigley felt the van swing into one of the stalls, and the van wasn’t yet fully stopped when Nolan was out and pulling down the garage-type door on the stall.

  It was a totally private cubicle. Though the filling station adjacent was open, there were no attendants at the car wash—strictly self-serve. It was simply a garagelike stall you drove into, a gray cement cubicle where you deposited fifty cents for five minutes’ use of a long-nosed gun affair attached to a hose, which shot a steaming-hot spray of soap and water; to switch from soapy water to rinse, you just squeezed the trigger again.

  The van doors opened.

  Nolan was still in the Santa Claus suit, but the whiskers were in his hand now. He said to Rigley, “Shake it.”

  Rigley got out.

  Nolan joined Jon inside the van, where they began getting out of the Santa Claus suits, under which they wore street clothes. Rigley pushed the doors shut, but not all the way, leaving them slightly ajar so Nolan and Jon could move if they had to. Rigley got out two quarters.

  He deposited the coins in the slot and squeezed the trigger on the long-barreled rifle, which immediately spurted hot, soapy water onto the van.

  The red van began turning white. The “TOYS FOR TIKES” lettering dissolved. The red color streamed away, melting off the van under the blast of the water rifle, finally being swallowed noisily by the drain beneath the vehicle. It was an easy job. Only the roof was hard.