Naked Greed

35

Stone got a call Thursday morning:

“Dino on line one.”

“Hey, there.”

“Hey, yourself. Are you still in one piece?”

“Let me check.” Pause. “No missing pieces.”

“Let’s try and keep it that way. Get out of town.”

“How come?”

“Gene Ryan is out there somewhere. We lost track of him.”

“You were tracking him?”

“He was being watched. The watchers are now officially on my shit list.”

“Poor guys.”

“You better believe it. Now go away, please.”

“If you think I should.”

“I’ve said it twice.”

“You want to go with me?”

“It may surprise you to learn that, occasionally, I’m busy.”

“Bye-bye.”

“I hope so.” Dino hung up.

Stone worked for another hour, then Joan buzzed. “Pat Frank on line one for you.”

Stone picked up. “Hello, there, how are things in Kansas?”

“I wouldn’t know. I got in last night, and your new airplane is in your hangar at Teterboro.”

“You’re early.”

“There were only a few cosmetic squawks, and they corrected those quickly.”

“Let’s go fly somewhere.”

“You need to do that — your insurer wants you to have five hours with a mentor pilot — i.e., yours truly — before you go single-pilot. I talked them down from thirty hours, since the old airplane and the new have identical cockpits.”

“Why don’t we run down to Key West for the weekend?”

“What a good idea!”

“I’ll pick you up at nine AM tomorrow. We’ll come back Monday morning.”

“That works for me. See you then.”

Stone hung up. A blah day had just turned sunny. He buzzed Joan. “Book me into the Marquesa, in Key West, for three nights, starting tomorrow. Best available cottage.”

“Will do.”

The following day, Charlie Carney’s driver pulled up a few feet from the bank’s front door at ten sharp, opening time. “Okay, you go around to the alley and wait for us there.” He and his two men got out of the van, each carrying a large duffel bag. As they approached the front door they pulled down their masks from under their baseball caps, produced riot guns from the duffels, then walked into the bank. Charlie made straight for the single uniformed guard, who was talking with a customer. He took the gun from the man’s belt. “On the floor.” The man complied. Charlie racked the shotgun and fired a round straight up. Bits of ceiling tiles rained down around him.

“Everybody on the floor! No alarms and nobody gets hurt!”

“Fifteen seconds,” one of his men said, and the two men handed Charlie their duffels.

Charlie went straight for the manager and his desk and put the shotgun barrel under his chin. “You and me in the vault, now.” The manager complied.

Inside the vault, Charlie dropped the duffels on the floor. “Start packing,” he said to the man, and both of them started raking stacks of bills off shelves into the bags.

“Forty-five seconds to go!” came the shout from inside the bank.

Charlie raked faster. The third bag was nearly full when fifteen seconds was called. There were a few stacks left, and he filled the last bag. “You,” he said to the manager, “grab two bags and lead me to the rear door. Ten seconds,” he yelled, when they reached the door. “Open it,” he said.

The man produced a key and unlocked the door.

“Toss all three bags out the door. You stay inside. Time!” he yelled. His two cohorts joined him. “Lock the door when we’re gone,” Charlie said to the manager. “That way, we can’t come back.” He stepped out the door and listened as the lock turned. “We’re done!” he yelled. The duffels were already in the rear of the van. The three men hopped in. “Drive normal,” Charlie said. “Don’t attract attention.” All the men began getting out of their coveralls and tossing them into the back on top of the money. The driver was already wearing his own clothes.

Charlie took a small GPS unit from his pocket and switched it on. Their destination was already programmed in.

“Take your next left,” the recorded voice said. “We change cars in ten minutes,” Charlie said. “A block short, stop, and we’ll take the carpet cleaning signs off the van.”

Frank was waiting at the end of the alley when he saw the black Toyota turn in and stop behind the closed restaurant. He waited until the four men were inside before he drove in, parked behind the Toyota, and hammered on the rear door. Charlie opened it. “Come on in,” he said.

The three duffel bags were sitting on a dusty pool table. “How much?” Frank asked quietly.

“A lot,” Charlie replied. “Okay, guys, I promised you twenty-five grand each. You’re going to get fifty.” He opened the bag that contained the hundreds and counted out five piles of five stacks of hundreds each. “There you go,” he said. “Take it, and remember, don’t spend it for three months, even if your mortgage gets foreclosed.”

“Listen,” one of the men said, “there’s a lot more than we counted on. We should get more.”

Charlie put a .45 against the man’s cheek. “You’re getting double what I promised,” he said. “Be happy or be dead.”

“Right,” the man said, and picked up his money. So did the others.

“Now, take the Toyota and scatter,” Charlie said, and the three men went out the back door.

“Give ’em five minutes,” Frank said, “then check and be sure they went. We don’t want to be bushwhacked.”

“There’s at least three million here,” Charlie said. “You want to divvy it now?”

“No, let’s get it into my car.”

They checked the alley carefully, then put the three duffels into the trunk and closed it.

“Where do you want to do this?” Frank asked.

“Drop me off near the beach,” Charlie said. “I’ll trust you to take the money and count it. I’ll come for my share later today, when I’m sure there’s no tail.

Frank and Jimmy sat at the conference table in the law office and completed their tally. The money was stacked in three roughly equal piles. Frank hit the last button on the calculator. “We net a million two, plus our twenty-five grand,” he said. “Charlie gets the rest.”

“Unless we remove Charlie from the equation,” Jimmy said.

“That would be a bad decision — word gets around if Charlie disappears. It would come back to bite us in the ass, so let’s don’t get greedy.”

Jimmy shrugged. “I guess you’re right.” He started dividing their stack into two, while Frank packed Charlie’s share into two duffels. Jimmy went and got a catalog case and raked his half of the third of the take into it, then left. Frank put his half into his safe, then took the two duffels down to his car. He called Charlie on his throwaway cell.

“Yeah?”

“I’m ready to deliver. I want to get this off my hands, so you tell me where.”

“There’s a Walmart on the western edge of town.”

“I know where it is.”

“I’ll park in their lot, as far as possible from the store. Half an hour.”

“Go.”

Frank drove into the lot and picked his spot; Charlie pulled up five minutes later and put his car alongside Frank’s. Frank rolled down the window and pressed the trunk button.

“There you go,” he said. “Your two-thirds is a little over two million. Nice day’s work.”

Charlie moved the two duffels to his car, gave Frank a wave, and drove away.

Frank drove back to his office, relieved to have the money off his hands and the event behind him. It was very clean, he thought — nobody got hurt, everybody got paid.

And he had six hundred grand in the safe; he was set for at least a year.