One Endless Hour

9

When I had a chance to count it, my end of the District bank job came to sixty-four hundred dollars.

It wasn't worth the risk, but it had been a long time since I needed sixty-four hundred so badly. I felt reprieved. It eased the money pressure, which had led me to take on the helter-skelter operation just completed. Professionally, I could hardly approve of the job, some elements of which had been almost farcical, but the important thing was that it had worked.

I fully intended that tapping the bank in Thornton, Pa. would be a far different story. With time enough to prepare properly, it should indeed be the piece of cake that I had promised Harris. A useful bonus from the hasty job just done was that I felt I knew Harris and Dahl now. Harris was colorless, Dahl flamboyant, but both had performed. With two weeks to work up a detailed plan, it shouldn't be too difficult to arrange Dahl's contribution so his kookiness didn't jeopardize the whole show.

I had already selected a motel near Philadelphia where I had stayed before to serve as a base of operations. En route to it, I detoured slightly to the northwest to drive through the suburb of Thornton. It was a residential community, generally known in real estate jargon as a "bedroom" community. Row after row of well kept up, better-priced homes on neat-looking streets bespoke a maximum of financial security. No air of quiet desperation existed in Thornton. Male Thorntonites might commute to the city daily to scuffle for the elusive buck at their places of business, but when they returned home evenings it was to an oasis of tranquillity.

Ordinarily I would have set myself up in the area as a tree surgeon, a gunsmith, or a locksmith, occupations in which I could cut the mustard. With only two weeks, there wasn't time. I had to have a cover story, though. Nothing is so conspicuous to local police as an unfamiliar face or automobile seen repeatedly, and I would have to spend some time in Thornton.

Before leaving town, I crisscrossed the town's business section twice. It looked prosperous. The absence of empty stores indicated few worms in the local economic apple. There was industry nearby, but not within the city limits. I drove south to Media, a few miles from Philadelphia, and put up at the Carousel, a middle-class motel.

After looking Thornton over, I decided to pass as a survey taker, an individual who walked into places of business and checked off answers to a list of prepared questions. It had worked for me a couple of times before. I didn't plan on being just any ordinary survey taker, either. Over the years I'd learned that big names open doors wider. Names like U.S. Steel, General Electric, and IBM.

The name I chose this time was Bell Telephone. The only disadvantage in claiming to work for a large company was that one might occasionally run into a supposed fellow employee, but this could actually be turned into an advantage. A man working for a giant corporation, no matter how far up the ladder, could hardly be expected to know what all the other departments of his company were doing.

Back in my room after a late dinner, I picked up the telephone directory for the Philadelphia area and turned to the Yellow Pages section. I tore out the familiar Yellow Pages logotype from the first page, then trimmed it neatly with a penknife, leaving a half-inch margin all around it.

I read Bell Telephone's own plug for its Yellow Pages advertising in the back of the phone book, then armed myself with a sheet of motel stationery and a ballpoint pen. Rewriting as I went, I drew up a list of ten possible questions. I boiled this down to six, and finally to four. I didn't want to burden my "prospects" with more than two and a half or three minutes reading time.

I wound up with the following,

When I was satisfied with the wording of the questionnaire, I slipped it into my jacket pocket and prepared for bed. The last thing I did before turning out the light was to phone the Schemer. "We had a little trouble getting our schedules together," I told him, making no mention of the District job, in which he had no part anyway. "But we're set for two weeks from now. When the boys call you, tell them I'm at the Carousel Motel in Media near Philadelphia."

"Will do," Frenz replied. "Have you looked over the layout yet yourself?"

"In a preliminary way."

"You'll find it's a winner."

"I can use a winner. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," he echoed.

I went to bed and dreamed repeatedly of bare-bottomed girl bank robbers sliding on their tummies across the slick tile floor of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City.

In the morning I drove to Philadelphia with my list of questions and my Yellow Pages logotype. I cruised back streets and side streets until I spotted a dingy-looking basement printing shop. I parked the VW and descended narrow iron steps until I found myself ankle-deep in discarded paper and cardboard in a dimly-lit interior that obviously hadn't been swept out in months. From the look of the place, if the payment were spot cash the proprietor would be unlikely to question my motive even if I wanted a five-dollar bill printed on one side of a 2 1/2 x 6 sized piece of paper with a verse from the Bible backed up on the other.

There was no one in sight, but I could hear an offset press rattling out in back. "Anyone home?" I called.

The press noise stopped, and a sour-faced man with a limp Pancho Villa moustache came out into the front of the shop. "Yeah?" he said ungraciously.

I showed him the logotype and questions. "I ran out of flyers," I explained. "How much for five hundred of these on fairly good six-by-nine stock?"

"I got no time to wait for you big companies to get around to payin' your bills," he whined. "I got to pay cash for my supplies."

"Cash it is if I can have them tomorrow."

He fingered the logotype. "It'll have to be offset."

"I don't care what it is."

"Eleven A.M., then," he said, and did some figuring with a pencil stub. "Sixteen eighty for five hundred." I handed him a twenty-dollar bill. He made no move to take it. "I got no change here this early in the mornin'."

I found I had seventeen dollars in fives and ones. "No sob story tomorrow," I warned him as I gave him the bills. "I've got to have this material right away."

He grunted something unintelligible as the bills disappeared beneath his ink-smudged apron. He was already on his way to the rear of the shop before I began to climb the iron steps.

I spent the afternoon at the Philadelphia Public Library. In the reading room I went through the past year's issues of the magazine Banking, The Journal of the American Banking Association. I hoped to find some reference to the Thornton Bank that would contain some indication of recent changes in floor plan or equipment. The Schemer had a detailed floor plan of the bank in his kit, but I had to be sure that it was up-to-date.

In the past I had acquired helpful information from a column "The Country Banker" in Banking. It was a chatty affair that mentioned bank remodeling, new vaults, new cashiers' cages, and the like. I found nothing on the Thornton bank, however. I'd still have to check it out, but there was a reasonable chance that nothing had changed there recently.

On my way back to Media I saw a theater marquee advertising Around the World in 80 Days. In the ten years since it was made I'd seen it four times, but I stopped in to see it again. It says something about the economy of this country that the admission charge has been higher each time I saw it. It's a remarkable movie, though. A bench mark in the industry. I enjoy professionalism wherever I see it.

The next afternoon I picked up my Yellow Page flyers. They were ready, somewhat to my surprise. The general atmosphere of the print shop hadn't been such as to induce confidence in promised performance. The flyers looked fine. Sharp black print on good quality paper carries its own authority. I stopped at a drugstore and picked up a clipboard to add an official touch to my survey sham. It assured my professional status.

I arrived in Thornton again at eight thirty A.M. the following morning. My first stop was a lunchroom across the street from the bank. I gave the girl at the cash register one of my flyers at the same time I bought a morning paper from her. "I'll show it to the boss after his breakfast rush dies down," she said after a glance at it. "He's the chef."

"No hurry," I said. "I'm having breakfast myself, and I'll be around town for a few days."

I took a seat at a table for two near a window that commanded a view of the bank's side entrance, which was used only by employees-a fact made known to me by the Schemer's fact-gathering. I spread my paper out in a manner that would discourage anyone from taking the seat across the table from me even if the place became crowded, then hitched my chair around slightly so I could see the bank parking lot without turning my head. At this hour the cars pulling onto the lot would contain employees only. Right now I was interested in their arrival times.

I ordered hotcakes and coffee when the waitress arrived at my table. Mentally I reviewed the descriptions of the bank manager and assistant manager contained in the Schemer's voluminous dossiers. Thomas Barton, the manager, was forty, five feet ten and a soft two hundred pounds, dark-complexioned, and had a quick, nervous way of walking. The Schemer had him down as a Casper Milquetoast type with a pushy, clubwoman type wife whose kids tended to run loose.

George Mace, the assistant manager, was fifty. He was thin, balding, bespectacled, and invariably wore a cardigan sweater to work, changing to a linen duster inside the bank. The Schemer's file on Mace said that the man had worked in the bank for twenty-one years and had refused several offers of a branch bank managership for himself because he didn't want to leave town.

My interest in these two men was elementary: between them they had the combination to the bank vault. I was hoping that if they got to work early enough in the mornings, as bank men often did, that it might be possible to intercept them at the bank's rear entrance and force them to let us enter with them, risky though it might be. It would eliminate the aspect of the Schemer's plan that I liked least, the necessity for manipulating the families if we had to pick up the two men at their homes and take them to the bank with us.

The first morning I saw enough to convince me that the Schemer had the right of it and that my hope was in vain. When my watch showed 8:58 and I hadn't seen either Barton or Mace, I was beginning to think I had missed their arrival. Then a man who was unmistakably Barton from the Schemer's description hurried toward the bank's side entrance from a parked car.

But it was 9:17 before a man in a fuzzy gray sweater who was just as unmistakably Mace alighted from a mud-stained Rambler. He was thin, stooped, and ailing-looking, and he shuffled toward the entrance with a kind of patient weariness. I wondered if the tellers kept cash locked in drawers so they could operate for a few moments in the morning without the vault being opened. If they didn't, there must be some disgruntled bank customers standing around waiting for Mace to contribute his half of the vault combination to the opening of the vault so the day's banking business could get started.

The late arrival convinced me of something else. We were going to have to pick up Barton and Mace and take them to the bank with us. Even at 8:58, when Barton arrived, the majority of the employees were already inside the bank. That was no good as far as we were concerned. We had to be inside first to assure ourselves that we could herd the clerks, cashiers, janitors, and guards where we wanted them to go as fast as they entered. It looked as though the only way we could be sure that Barton and Mace would be there early enough for us to do the job right would be to take them there ourselves. I'd watch them further, of course, but this first viewing was hardly encouraging to my wishful thinking that we might not have to get involved with the families.

I made my hotcakes and coffee last another twenty minutes while I clocked additional customer arrivals at the bank's front entrance. I had already seen that in the first five minutes nine people went inside. This was only slightly fewer than those who entered in the next twenty minutes. The heavy initial traffic gave me additional pause.

We could hardly expect to force Barton and Mace to open the vault, clean it out, and make our getaway in less than eight to ten minutes. And in addition to the regular bank personnel, we couldn't hope to cope with the flow of bank customers I'd seen in the first few moments the front doors were open. We'd have to keep the customers out of the bank somehow. There were ways. It would come down to the question of selecting the best way.

"More coffee?" the waitress's voice said in my ear.

"Thanks." I held up my cup. Looking at the girl, my glance went beyond her, and I got a shock. Two uniformed young cops were seated at counter stools, looking in my direction. It took me an instant to realize that they were looking at the waitress, whose uniform nestled a bit snugly about her derriere. The cops laughed and said something to each other, then said something to the girl when she returned to the counter. She joined in the laughter, and I released a breath I'd been holding.

When the cops left, I left too. I spent the balance of the morning passing out a few more of my Yellow Pages flyers. I planned on making only half a dozen calls a day. I had to make the business section last until we pulled the job. None of the storekeepers wanted to take the time to talk to me. Two passed me on to their assistants, both of whom were women. The women wanted to talk about it, which was all right with me. I was in no hurry.

A couple of businessmen gave me a fast brushoff. "I'm already in the book," one said grumpily. "And with you in town coaxing my competition into it, you're cutting my throat." There wasn't much I could have said to that argument even if I'd been legitimate.

I toured the area on foot most of the morning, memorizing street patterns and traffic lights. There's nothing more anonymous than a salesman making a one-time call. In between stops I drank coffee to kill time until my kidneys were awash. By the time I made my last call the proprietor knew who I was supposed to be before I even began my pitch. That's a small town for you. It was why I'd gone to the trouble of setting up the gimmick to give me a reason for spending time in the area. My cover was established.

I drove back to the Carousel and checked my firsthand information acquired about the bank that morning against the Schemer's files. He was right on the button in every respect. That was his reputation, of course.

For the balance of the week I ate breakfast each morning in the lunchroom across the street from the bank. It helped my digestion when I discovered that the two young cops stopped in every morning because one of them was giving the waitress a big rush.

Barton and Mace never varied their pattern, unfortunately. They were consistently late in then arrival at the bank parking lot. I reluctantly came to the conclusion that once again the Schemer was right and we'd have to take them in their homes rather than in the bank itself. The third morning the bank had eleven customers who were either waiting for its doors to open or who arrived within the first two minutes. It confirmed my thinking that the customers somehow had to be excluded.

When I was back at the Carousel again, I looked up the section of the Schemer's report dealing with the bank's opening time. True to form, he had pinpointed the early influx of customers as a problem. Moreover, he proposed a solution. Have a card printed and place it in the bank door, his report suggested. Have the card say BANK EXAMINERS HERE. DOORS OPEN AT 10:00 A.M. TODAY.

It wasn't a bad idea. It might even work. That's why the Schemer was worth his ten percent. Twelve and a half percent, I reminded myself.

On Wednesday I made two trips to Thornton from my motel. I checked out the employees' arrival times in the morning as usual. In the afternoon I returned to watch the arrival of the armored truck making the delivery in which we were interested. The delivery was perfectly routine. On Thursday morning I made particular note that there was nothing unusual-at least nothing that was visible from across the street-in the bank's personnel or routine in dealing with the extra volume of cash.

So eventually it came down to the fact that there were no insuperable problems if we could find a way to control the families of Barton and Mace in their homes during the time we were taking the pair to the bank to open the vault. I stayed away from the homes. Time enough to check up on the Schemer's detailed reports on the home routines when three men paired up differently could operate less conspicuously than a single man. It could wait until Harris and Dahl arrived in town.

If they arrived.

It was time I heard from them.

Dahl called me at the Carousel on Friday night. "How's it look, cousin?" he asked in his usual breezy manner.

"We can do it," I told him. "Be here Sunday night and we'll go to work the following Thursday morning."

"Sounds great," he said heartily. "Sounds like you really been behind the plow, too. You know that all work an' no play makes Drake a dull boy. I'll be in around ten Sunday night, an' I'm gonna bring along with me a few feet of film that'll tickle the risability in your staff of life."

"We won't have time for anything like-"

"Relax," he urged me. "This'll do you good. See you Sunday."

And the connection was broken.

The phone call from Harris came at three A.M. Sunday morning. It roused me from sleep. I had been about to give up on him and call the Schemer for a replacement. "How about it, Drake?" he asked in his flat, Midwestern accent.

"We can do it." I repeated what I had said to Dahl. "I had this coming Thursday earmarked if you can make it here by tonight."

"It'll be late," he said. "Right now I've got to get some sleep. I've just come from twenty-two hours at the table." From the tone of his voice I didn't need to ask him which way it had gone. "I've looked up connections. There's a feeder plane that'll get me into Philly around midnight."

"One of us will pick you up at the airport."

"That means Dahl's still aboard?"

"He's still aboard."

There was a momentary silence. "I hope we can keep the damn fool under wraps this time," Harris said finally.

And the connection was broken.

I thought it over afterward.

I didn't need to go ahead with it. I didn't need to take on a job with two partners neither of whom I would have selected myself if the circumstances had been different.

There were at least two men in the country to whom I could have gone, identified myself, asked them to throw in with me, and had never a qualm about their performance.

But if I did that, I had to give away the secret of my new face and my totally new identity.

Was it worth it?

I finally decided that it wasn't. I'd stay with the program.

It's not only in the marriage contract that the phrase "for better or worse" occurs.