He nodded and walked over to the table. I bought ten thousand dollars’ worth of chips, then did something I’d never done before while gambling. I asked the porter to mix me a scotch and soda. A stack of clean ashtrays sat on the bar beside the glasses and I took one. At the table I unwrapped one of my Coronas and carefully touched a wooden kitchen match to its end.
“Table stakes, dealer’s choice, pot limit … How does that sound to you?” Robillard asked.
“Why don’t we just play five-card stud, Mr. Robillard? That’s all either of us ever deals anyway.”
He nodded. “That suits me fine.” He noticed my scotch. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you drink up here before,” he commented as he fanned the cards out on the table. “Or smoke, either.”
“This is a night of firsts, Mr. Robillard. And lasts.”
I drew a three to his jack and he had the deal. As he shuffled the cards he said, “Lasts? Why, don’t let me run you out of the game, young man.”
I smiled at him calmly. “Hardly. Besides, I seem to be the one who’s a little ahead overall.”
“Yes, so it seems. But we’ll just have to do something about that, won’t we?” he said, and promptly relieved me of $1,600 with a natural straight against three aces.
That night it was not necessary for me to win. I merely had to stay in the game and kill time. But my natural sense of competitiveness and my need to embellish pushed me to play aggressively and slam him whenever I could. Twice I bet heavily with large pairs showing before the fourth card and forced him to fold when he was working on a flush. I was a few hundred dollars ahead sometime after nine o’clock when we both rose from the table to stretch our legs and freshen our drinks. I made myself a second scotch, this one stronger than the first. As I turned away from the bar I felt a hand on my elbow. “How’s it going?” Wilburn Rasco asked.
“Well enough. I’m a little ahead at the moment.”
“I never liked these one-on-one matches, and I wish they weren’t allowed.” He sighed. “But back in the ’20s old man Weilbach’s son started them, and they’ve been a tradition ever since. Every now and then a couple of fellows will square off, but it almost always leads to hard feelings. Don’t take it too seriously.”
“I won’t,” I said, regretting that he was there. He was the one regular player in the game that I had come to truly respect. He stood to lose financially that night, and he would doubtlessly suffer considerable embarrassment from the publicity. But there was nothing that could be done about it.
Back at the table Robillard and I played for a while without really talking, neither of us drawing the cards to engage the other in an interesting hand. The porter came by, and I asked him to replenish my drink. As soon as he returned Robillard picked up the cards and gave them a few quick shuffles, then laid them on the table for me to cut. I ignored the deck and took a sip from my scotch. “You know, it’s an odd coincidence that we were talking about Germany the other night,” I said. “Not long afterward somebody told me that you had been there, but I didn’t believe it because you never mentioned it while we were on the subject.”
His body stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. “Actually, I was in Germany for just a few days back in 1936,” he said smoothly. “With a delegation from the American Bankers’ Association.”
“And how long have you been a banker?” I asked smoothly.
“I’ve been chairman of the board at Mercantile Bank for two decades, and back then I was forced to take over its day-to-day operation for a few years. Just as I was again about six months ago.”
“So you’re running the bank now?” I asked.
“Only until after the first of the year. We hope to have a new president hired by then.”
“Why did the banking association send a delegation to Germany?”
“In those days the German banking system was quite different from ours. Their banks were strictly commercial banks, and almost all of them were located in the larger cities. Their government was interested in the possibility of setting up a number of banks in smaller towns to do consumer lending, and they wanted to get some ideas from us American bankers.”
“I see,” I said, and looked down at my wristwatch. It was a few minutes before ten. “When we talked before I didn’t tell you the whole story about Heydrich. At the time the offer was made to me I wanted to take it.”
“Really? But I thought you said—”
“Oh, I had no intention of becoming a turncoat. What I really wanted was to infiltrate the German sabotage network here in this country. My superiors at the State Department vetoed the idea, of course, and I’ve always thought it was a great opportunity lost. But later on I had a chance to do a little work in that area, and it was amazing the things I learned.”
“I’m sure,” he replied dryly.
I reached down and cut the cards and pushed them across to him. “Yes, those were heady days,” I said. My voice sounded dreamy and detached in my own ears, as though it was coming from someone else, or from a radio speaker far away. I took a long pull from my scotch and unwrapped another cigar before I continued. “Mosley’s fascists were marching in England, and over here we had William Dudley Pelly and his Silver Shirts and the German-American Bund. Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee were riding high, determined to keep us out of the war that everybody knew was coming, and all of them were being financed directly by the German intelligence apparatus.”
“Is that right?”
I nodded and chattered on. “Oh yes. They had a very elaborate system. The money came from Argentina and other South American countries, and was funneled directly to banks right here in the States. In almost every case they were state banks that were free of federal regulation and scrutiny, banks where it was easier for substantial sums of money to materialize and then disappear once again, leaving few traces behind.”
“Fascinating,” he murmured in his silky voice. At that moment he knew that I knew, but he thought there was nothing I could do about it.
“Yes, isn’t it?” I asked with a smile as smooth as his voice. I reached over and cut the deck and the game went on.
It was not the famous Dead Man’s Hand that was showing when the two men burst into the room just after ten. Instead, after the third card was dealt each of us held a pair of nines on top, and I had just raised my eyes to smile ironically across at Robillard when the door swung violently open. The first thing I saw was the off-duty deputy who’d been posted outside to guard the door. He came flying headfirst into the room propelled by a hard kick in the rump. The next thing I noticed was a sawed-off pump shotgun, and it was pointed directly at my head.
They were both big men, but one was much larger than the other. Both were dressed in overcoats, Shriners’ fezzes, and Santa Claus masks, and both knew their business. The first order of that business was to cow and intimidate everyone present through the immediate and unexpected application of violence. As soon as they were in the room the larger of the two clubbed the deputy nearly senseless with the butt of his shotgun. Then he turned and gave the porter a casual backhand slap that put him on the floor beside the guard. Reaching down to pull the guard’s gun from its holster, he said, “Don’t neither one of you hired hands give me no trouble. They don’t pay you enough to die for them.” Then he pointed the muzzle of his shotgun right at Will Scoggins’s chest and said, “Hi, Sheriff! You’re not packing heat tonight, are you?”
Scoggins hesitated. Manlow Rhodes had been right about the man being a coward; I believe he was the most frightened person in the room. He’d gone deathly pale and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d fainted.
“I said are you packing?” the big man repeated.
Scoggins managed a nod. The big man jerked his head at his companion, who quickly stepped over to give the sheriff a quick frisk. He reached his hand in Scoggins’s coat pocket and pulled out a small automatic.
Then the big man turned to look at Robillard and me. “On your feet, you two,”
he growled.
Apparently I didn’t move fast enough for him. He jerked me the rest of the way up by the collar of my coat, then gave me a good belt in the mouth that split my bottom lip and chipped a front tooth. I started to raise my hand to my face and he said, “Keep still. You’re not hurt bad.”
By this time his partner had closed the door and jerked the phone cord out of the wall. Then he leveled a silenced automatic pistol at the men sitting at the poker table. The larger intruder quickly checked the bedrooms and emerged from the last one dragging a half-naked and screeching blonde by the hair. He slapped her twice and threw her on the sofa between Miss Teeny-Tunes and a dark-haired girl who was there for the first time that evening. “Shut up or I’ll cut your goddamned throat,” he growled at her.
He pushed Robillard and me roughly over to the other end of the room beside the poker table. “Any of the rest of you got a gun?” he asked. “Better tell me now because if I find one later I’ll kill whoever’s holding it.”
I nodded and pulled my coat open where he could see my Colt. The rest shook their heads. He pulled the little auto from its holster, then went over to the valise and pulled out the two drawers of chips and slung them aside. I guessed at the time that there was probably about a hundred thousand dollars in the deep cash drawer, but he wanted more. He pointed to the valise, and said, “Wallets and money clips in this suitcase. Right now, one at a time. Turn your pants pockets inside out. If I don’t see enough money go in here, I may decide to search everybody, and I’ll kill any man I find holding out.”
We filed by one at a time and dropped our cash into the yawning black mouth of the case.
“Any more?” the larger man asked.
We all shook our heads.
“All right,” the big man said. “Listen and listen careful. We’re gonna take one man with us as a hostage just to keep you worthless bastards honest. Don’t nobody go out that door for one hour. And don’t try to fix the phone and call nobody. If an hour passes and we haven’t been bothered by the cops, we’ll turn the hostage loose on the road. But if the red lights hit us before then, he’s going to die. Period. Remember … One hour.”
He motioned to his partner with a jerk of the head. “Get somebody.”
The smaller hood came over and poked me with his pistol. “Grab your coat, asshole,” he growled.
While I quickly pulled on my overcoat, the big man said to Scoggins, “Don’t get any ideas about jumping the gun on the time. If you do you’ll be killing this man.”
“The sheriff is going to sit here like a good boy,” Wilburn Rasco said, his voice steady and seemingly free of fear.
“Damn right he will,” Van Horn said.
The larger man clipped a heavy cord that hung around his neck to an eyelet in the shotgun’s stock. Then he slid the shotgun under his overcoat and let it dangle there. Buttoning the coat over the gun, he said to me, “Mr. Man, we’re gonna walk out of here like we own the damn place. We’re going down the stairs and through the back door, and if you make one peep you may as well order your coffin because you’re gonna be dead. Do you understand?”
I gave him a jerky nod, and the smaller robber prodded me toward the door. Just before we left the big hood turned back to the room, and said, “You better do what we say or your friend is deader than hell.” Then he picked up the valise and opened the door.
“You’ll get your hour,” Simon Van Horn said. “I promise you that.”
“We better,” he hissed, and then we were gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
Out in the corridor the big man pulled a fourth Santa mask and a folded-up fez from his pocket. I quickly pulled both on, and we headed for the stairs at the end of the hall. Suddenly a door opened and a middle-aged couple emerged. “Wheeee…” the smaller robber said.
“Evening, folks,” the big man said to the couple, slurring his words. That was all they would remember: three half-drunk Shriners, probably on the prowl for women.
We descended by way of the service stairs. Once we were on the ground floor, we went quickly down a short utility corridor and emerged into an alley where a gray 1941 Pontiac sedan waited, its engine idling softly. The driver wore a wide-brimmed fedora pulled low over his face, and the collar of his overcoat had been turned up so that his features were invisible. The man with the shotgun pushed me into the backseat, then climbed in beside me while his companion took the place beside the driver. The Pontiac eased down the alley and pulled carefully out into the street. Once the car was moving we removed our masks.
The snow had stopped and the roads were clear. We drove slowly and obeyed all the traffic laws. After a few blocks the downtown area fell behind and we turned off Roosevelt into a residential neighborhood. Beyond the residential area came a district of warehouses and cotton gins where the streetlights were few and far between. Another mile farther and the Pontiac turned off the paved street and onto a rutted dirt lane that was cloaked in darkness. After two blocks we pulled up in front of an old metal-sided garage.
The front passenger leaped out to open the garage’s door, and a few seconds later the car glided almost soundlessly into the building. Above our heads a single small bulb cast a dim glow that did little to dispel the gloom. Three cars stood parked along the back wall, a Chevrolet, an Oldsmobile coupe and a new black Ford sedan.
“Well, that went pretty slick,” the driver said, turning around to grin at me. “I hope you weren’t scared.”
“Not really, Little,” I told him.
“Sorry about that lick I gave you,” the big man said, sticking out his hand to shake with me. “I hit you a lot harder than I intended to. I was a little keyed up, if you understand what I mean.”
“Forget it,” I said. “We needed to make it look real.”
“We can get together and be sociable later,” Icepick Willie said. “Let’s get a move on now.”
The valise emerged from the trunk of the Pontiac. Quickly the stolen wallets and money clips were stripped of their cash and thrown aside. We took the money and placed it in a waterproof sack that had been originally made for the U.S. Army for a purpose not too different from the one it was to be used for that night. The cash drawer from the valise was then emptied into the sack, and on top of that went a fourteen-pound weight made of high carbon steel. All the air was then squeezed from the sack, and its special seal was fastened. Finally, it was placed into an identical sack, and it too was sealed. Then the whole thing was tossed into the trunk of the Ford. The shotgun and the Colt pistol used during the robbery went into the backseat of the Pontiac along with the valise and the Santa masks. All three men had worn gloves throughout the evening, and all three guns were untraceable.
A few seconds later the garage door opened once again and three cars emerged. The Ford and the Chevrolet waited while the Oldsmobile coupe stopped long enough for its occupant to shut and lock the door. Before he climbed back into his car he threw the keys to the door far out into the weed-choked field behind the garage.
I knew that the men in the Oldsmobile and the Chevrolet would go in different directions and end up spending the night in different tourist courts, each of which was many miles away. In the morning they would be on their way back to their homes in different states.
Little drove as carefully as he had while behind the wheel of the Pontiac earlier in the evening. Our route took us back through the center of town and past the Weilbach Hotel, where I noted that everything appeared perfectly normal. Once beyond the city limits, we proceeded seventeen miles northward, and then turned off the main highway onto a county road. After three miles the little Ford swung onto a rutted gravel lane that ran a few hundred yards out into the mesquite thickets. At its end sat an abandoned farmhouse, its cracked and broken windows casting jagged reflections of the car’s headlights. We pulled around behind the house and stopped beside a stone well curb. Quickly Little sprang from the seat and retrieved the sack of money from the trunk. Using a key he’d had for months, he unlocked the lid on
top of the well and swung it open. A few moments later I heard a splash as the sack hit the water. The key followed the sack into the well, and then he carefully slipped the locking arm of the padlock back into its hasp and clicked it shut.
Soon we were back at the main highway with nothing in the car to connect him in any way to the robbery. When he stopped, I opened the door and stepped out onto the shoulder of the road.
“I sure hate to leave you way out here all alone,” he said, “but it can’t be helped.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll catch a ride. “Just get rolling and be careful.”
“Ain’t I always?”
I shut the door and stood watching as his taillights gradually disappeared into the icy darkness. It only took me about ten minutes to catch a ride with a friendly trucker who was heading toward town. “Jesus,” he said. “What’s a guy dressed like you doing all the way out here in the middle of the night?”
“I got robbed,” I said with a rueful laugh.
“Damn! Did they take your car?”
“No. A few friends and I were having a friendly little poker game at the hotel back in town when two big guys swarmed us. They took me as a hostage to keep the others from calling the cops for an hour.”
“You’re talking about that game at the Wielbach, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. You know about it?”
“Hell, everybody in this part of Texas knows about it. It’s been going on for years up there. I bet they were serious hijackers with the kind of money that game brings in,” he said.
“My friend, you have no idea how serious these guys were.”
“Here,” he said, and reached behind the seat. After groping around for a few seconds he hauled out a bottle of whiskey. “I bet you could use a snort,” he said.
“I bet you’re right.” I replied, and looked at the bottle. It was White Horse. “My brand,” I said. “This must be my lucky day.”
“Oh, it’s your lucky day all right, but that whiskey ain’t got nothing to do with it. Your luck was when they let you walk away instead of putting a bullet in your brain.
The Rogues' Game Page 18