“This is a special case.”
“Sure it is. Goodbye, Edgars.”
“Will you God damn it stop leaving?”
Parker didn’t like to do a lot of superfluous talking, but he took the time now to tick off the points for Edgars: “You got an operation needs an army, and the more men in a job the more chances it’ll go sour. You got an operation set up by an amateur, for personal reasons. Amateurs get their ideas from the movies, which means flashy and impractical, and personal reasons are no good in a job because they get in the way of clear thinking. Forget it, Edgars.”
“God damn it, Parker, you’re the man I’ve been waiting for.” Edgars was smiling happily now. He said, “I knowthis is a good solid deal, but I want a professional to tellme so, and you’re it. All you have to do is hear me out. When I’m done if you don’t think it’s workable, then I’ll give up the whole idea and I’ll pay your fare back where you came from. Fair enough?”
Parker studied him. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell you it’s no good, and then go do it on my own?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Why not? I’m no saint.”
“No, but you’re a good businessman.”
“What gives you that idea? You don’t know anything about me at all.”
“I’ve got a hunch, that’s all. Will you listen to the deal?”
Parker thought about it. He didn’t see any way an operation requiring twenty-five or thirty men could be workable, and he didn’t see any way an operation Edgars was connected with could be workable, but he was here already so he might as well listen. He nodded. “All right.”
“Fine. Come on in. You want a beer?”
“All right.”
“I’ll get it.” They crossed the living-room, a square sparsely furnished room lit by pole lamps, and Edgars pointed at a door just off the hallway. “They’re in there. I’ll be right in.”
They separated at the hallway, Edgars going for the beer, Parker going into the room with the others. It was a long narrow room with another spaceship ceiling light. The walls were tan, with lighter squares where paintings had once hung, and there was a wall-to-wall green carpet on the floor. Paulus and Grofield and Wycza were sitting around a dining-room table. There was a slide projector on the table and a screen set up at the far end of the room.
Paulus gave him a nervous smile. Wycza, a huge bald man who did professional wrestling when times were bad, waved a beer can in greeting. Grofield, an intense, lean, handsome man who sometimes acted in summer stock theaters, said, “Hail, Parker. Long time no see.”
“How are you, Grofield?”
Paulus said, “Are you in, Parker?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
Grofield said, “Herr Edgars is a mysterious type. Did he tell youwhat the job is?”
“Not yet.”
Edgars came in, then, with a double handful of beer cans, and Grofield said, “All fools in a circle.”
Edgars laughed. “I hope not, Grofield,” he said, and passed the beer around. Then he checked his slide projector, turned it on, and said, “Paulus, would you get the light, please?” He was full of confidence again.
Paulus got up and switched off the light. The projector was beaming a harsh white light at the screen, and it reflected back to give the five men pale faces and vague outlines.
There was a clicking, and the blank face of the screen was replaced by a black and white map. Edgars’ voice said, “There it is. Copper Canyon, North Dakota.”
Parker looked at the map, trying to make sense out of it, but it was just geometric confusion. He lit a cigarette, and waited.
Edgars moved around the table to the front of the room. He had a pointer with him now, like a geography teacher. “This wavy line,” he said, and the pointer ran along a U-shaped irregular line that edged the town on three sides, “is the cliffs. The city is built inside a box canyon, with vertical cliffs on three sides, too steep and too tall to be passable. The only way in or out of town is here” the pointer tapped “at the open side of the canyon. State road 22A comes in here, and this here is a spur line of the Dakota and Western Railway. The one road and the railway line are the only means of entry to the town.”
Parker silently shook his head. Everything Edgars said made the deal sound worse. You don’t go into a box with only one exit, never.
Edgars kept moving the pointer, tapping here and there. “It’s a one-industry town,” he said. “Copper. The mine entrances are at the rear of the canyon here, and the refinery is spread along here. Twelve buildings, storm fencing along here, two gates here and here, both with armed guards day and night, though the plant is working only during the day. There are two banks, here and here, in about the middle of town, opposite each other on Raymond Avenue, the continuation of 22A. There are three jewelry stores, here and here and here, all on Raymond Avenue. The police station is here, on Caulkins Street, near the east gate to the plant.”
Parker waited for him to get to the point. He kept telling them about things, banks and jewelry stores and factory gates, but he hadn’t gotten around yet to telling them what he thought they were going to hit. The fan in the slide projector made a humming sound, and Edgars kept on pointing at things.
“The telephone company building,” he was saying, “is over here on Blake Street, a block from Raymond. There’s a local radio station, with studios here on Whittier Street, but it shuts down operation between midnight and six-thirty in the morning, and there’s no one on duty there during the night. The Nationwide Finance and Loan Corporation has offices on the second floor of the Merchants’ Bank building. Most stores and other commercial operations are centered along this four-block stretch of Raymond Avenue, with the banks and jewelry stores.” The pointer was removed, and Edgars’ pale face turned to them. “That’s it,” he said.
Wycza said, “That’s what?”
But Parker already had it. “You’re crazy,” he said.
“Am I?” Edgars was grinning, pleased with himself. “There are three men on duty in the police station at night; two out in the patrol car and the third in the station to take calls. The plant security force at night is also three, one man on each gate and one man in the front office of the main building to take calls. The banks and jewelry stores and so on have no night security of their own at all. The telephone company has three woman employees on duty at night, and the door to their building isn’t even kept locked. After midnight, the radio station isn’t broadcasting. There is one road and one railway line to watch, to keep townsmen in and reinforcements out. Due to vandalism of juvenile delinquents, there’s been a midnight curfew in town for the last four years.”
Wycza was beginning to get it. He said, “Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute.”
Grofield laughed out loud.
Paulus whispered, “Sweet Jesus.”
“We go in at midnight,” Edgars told them. “We pop every safe in town, and we’re out by six a.m. Two miles south of where this map leaves off there’s themain east-west highway, and from there the whole state network of roads is open to us.”
Parker said, “State police.”
The pointer slapped the map, down near the bottom. “Substation here on 22A, two miles south of the town limits. State and city are differing political faiths, there’s friction. State troopers never patrol north of the city line.”
Parker said, “All-night diner.”
Edgars shook his head. “None. Curfew, remember? There’s a Howard Johnson out on the highway; that’s where the troopers go.”
Parker shook his head. “Five minutes after we leave, they’ll be burning up the phone wires behind us. There’ll be a roadblock at the highway before we get to it.”
“We can arrange things to give ourselves more time. Break radio and telephone equipment, wreck a truck or two across the road, tie and gag policemen and telephone operators and the rest. We’ll have to figure out where we hide out afterwards, of course. We wouldn’t want to be on the road too long.
”
Paulus, over on his side of the table, was shaking his head in wonder. “It could be done,” he whispered. “It honest to Christ could be done.”
But Parker wasn’t satisfied. The operation broke too many rules. Set up by an amateur. Requiring too many men. Involving going into a box with only one way out. And it was just too big and fantastic an idea to begin with, it was science fiction.
Edgars said, “It’s time to talk about money. Payday at the refinery is Friday. Thursday night there’s approximately sixty thousand in the refinery safe. The two banks should have between fifty and seventy-five thousand in cash each. Give them the low figure, that’s a hundred thousand from the two banks. Three jewelry stores, cash and gems, among them they ought to be good for another fifty thousand at the very least. The loan company and department store and other stores and commercial operations, maybe fifty thousand more all told. There’s a minimum of a quarter million dollars in that town, maybe more. With twenty-five men on equal shares, that’s a minimum of ten thousand a man.”
“Ten thousand? That’s not much, for the risk.”
“That’s a minimum. There may be more.”
Paulus said, “Maybe it could done with less men, Parker.”
“You’d know more about that than I would,” Edgars told him.
Grofield said, musingly, “If it could be done at all, it would be fascinating.”
Wycza said, “I don’t like that state police barracks. And I don’t like not having any getaway figured out.”
“One thing at a time,” said Paulus. “Why don’t we think about manpower first?”
Edgar’s face, even in the semidarkness, showed an excitement that didn’t go with his ward politician features. “The way I thought of it,” he said, “would be almost like a commando raid. Each of the five of us would captain a group of five men, including himself. Each of our groups would have specific objectives. My group would take out the police station and radio station and plant security men and telephone company building. Parker’s group would go for the refinery safe, with the payroll. Paulus’s group would take the Merchants’ Bank and Nationwide Finance. Grofield’s group would take City Trust and Raymond Jewelers, right next door to it. Wycza’s group the other two jewelry stores and the other commercial buildings along Raymond Avenue.”
Parker shook his head. They were now talking about his business, his speciality. Whether he took the job seriously or not, he couldn’t avoid thinking about it, and about the best way to handle it.
He said, “You don’t want to do it that way. You waste manpower. You have four men stand around with nothing to do but watch a fifth man work on a bank vault. You don’t need all those men.”
Edgars watched him. “How then? How should it be set up?”
Parker got to his feet and walked to the end of the room. He studied the map projected on the screen, and said, “To begin with, you need four men on stationary plant for as long as we’re in there. One at the police station, one at the telephone company, one at the factory front office. Those three to handle any phone calls or anything like that. And the fourth man in a parked car down by the town line, so he can warn the rest of us if anybody’s coming in. We’d need walkie-talkies for that. They’re cheap, in any Army-Navy store.”
“That’s four,” said Edgars.
Parker pointed at the map. “Five men hit the police station. One stays. That leaves four to hit the telephone company. One stays. Three to hit the west gate of the plant, take care of the guard, get into the main building without being seen by the guard at the east gate.”
“No trouble,” said Edgars. “The gates are six long blocks apart, and the main building is right near the west gate.”
Parker glanced at him. “Any business at night? Truck deliveries or anything?”
“Not usually.”
“So there’s another man on plant. With a guard uniform on, at the east gate. Sign at the west gate, ‘Closed, use other entrance.’ That leaves two. One of them has to stay in the office of the main building, and the other one tackles the safe.”
“Fine!” said Edgars. “That’s fine! Just five men!”
“So far. Everything else you want is on Raymond Avenue, right?”
“Right. So’s the west gate to the plant, down at the end of Raymond Avenue.”
“I see that. All right, you need four more men, two on each side of the street. One opens the safes, the other one transfers the loot to the cars. We need four cars. One at the town line, for the lookout. One at the plant. Two along Raymond Avenue. Four cars, four walkie-talkies, a lot of guns, ten men.”
Edgars moved closer, and for a few seconds his bulky shoulder cast a black shadow on the screen. He moved back out of the way and stood gazing at the map. “Ten men,” he said. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“You, need three box men. Paulus is good at that, so you need two more. You seem to know the town, Edgars, so you ought to be the lookout.”
“You’re in, Parker?”
Parker looked at the map. “Not yet,” he said. “I want to see a getaway route that makes sense. I don’t like the idea of driving four cars out of town past that state police barracks at six o’clock payday morning.”
Wycza said, “I don’t like that state police barracks at all.”
Parker went on, “I want to see a hideout we can get to but the law can’t. I want to be sure there’s no other way to get information out of that town but what we’ve already covered, and I want to be sure there’s nobody else we have to worry about in that town but what we’ve already covered.”
“We can straighten those points out, Parker,” Edgars assured him.
“Then let’s do it.” Parker looked down at the slide projector. “What’s the rest of the slides in that box?”
“His trip to Ausable Chasm,” said Grofield.
“Shut up, Grofield.” Parker said it quietly, not bothering to look at him.
Edgars said, “Pictures of the banks, the plant gates, the police station and everything else.”
“They’ll come in handy some other time. What about getaway route? What about hideout? You got a map of the whole state there?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’ve got to get one. You’re from out around there, aren’t you?”
“I was.” His voice was bitter.
The personal reasons again. Parker didn’t give a damn about. them. He said, “You get a state map, a couple of them. A roadmap and a topographical map. You look at them till you find a spot we can hole up. If we leave there at six, we’ve got maybe an hour before the alarm’s out. You find us a place fifty miles away or less, that we can get to without being noticed and without leaving tracks, and that the law wouldn’t come in after us.”
Edgars nodded. “All right, I’ll do it.”
Wycza said, “What about that goddam trooper barracks? Edgars, ain’t there any side road, dirt road, anything at all to take us aroundthat barracks?”
“Nothing,” Edgars told him.” Flat dead countryside, that’s all.”
Wycza got to his feet and stretched. His knuckles scraped against the ceiling. He said, “I just don’t like that barracks there, that’s all.”
“Neither do I,” Parker told him. “Edgars, switch off that projector, we don’t need that map right now. Paulus, give us some light.”
When they had light, Parker said, “I don’t like four cars going intotown past that state police barracks, and I don’t like them coming out again past the barracks.”
Grofield said, “What about holing up inside the town? The old double feint. I’ve seen you use that a dozen times, Parker.”
“It’s no good here,” Parker told him.
Edgars said, “What is it?”
“It works in some jobs, not this one. You do the job, then make like you’re going to run for it. You run maybe two blocks, and hole up. They throw out roadblocks all over the state and wait for you to show up. You don’t, so they figure you must of ho
led up in town. They take the roadblocks down and start looking for you in town, and that’s when you leave town.”
Edgars laughed. “You’re in when they’re looking for you out, and out when they’re looking for you in.”
“Right.”
Grofield said, “What’s wrong with doing it here?”
“Too small a town, number one. Only one road out, number two. They could put up one dinky roadblock and leave it there for thirty years, till we showed our faces.”
Grofield shrugged. “So we have to go past the troopers, that’s all.”
Paulus said, “Going in’s no problem. We can slip in over a couple days.”
“So half the townspeople can make you in the rogue’s gallery. No good, Paulus. We go in the night it happens and go back out the same night.”
“These are details we can work out,” Edgars told them.
“We work them out soon,” Parker said, “or there’s no job.”
Edgars said, “Tomorrow morning I’ll get the maps. We can meet back here again tomorrow night, Nine o’clock?”
Nine o’clock was all right with everybody. Edgars said, “This thing will work, I know it will. The town’s wide open for it, and you people have the knowledge to do it.”
“We’ll see,” Parker told him.
They left one at a time. Wycza went first, and Parker second. Parker walked back to the hotel and went up to his room. He lay down on the bed in darkness and stared at the ceiling, thinking about the job.
It was a crazy one. It broke practically every rule there was. But if the remaining loose ends could be tied up, it just might be workable.
A lot depended on the men. Wycza was all right, steady and fast. Grofield acted sometimes like he didn’t take anything seriously, but he knew when to cut that out and get down to work. Paulus was a fidgety type, but first-rate on safes and bank vaults.
But what about Edgars? He had some sort of grudge against somebody in that town, and that wasn’t good. Also, he was an amateur at this kind of thing. But in some ways he wasn’t an amateur at all. The way he’d reacted to the news about Owen, for instance. Sore at first, but after a while catching on, and then not bringing the subject up again. He was a tough man to figure. First he tried to bluff his way, and then he put all his cards on the table, but there was always the impression there were still a few cards left up his sleeve.
The Score p-5 Page 2