100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Perfect Pigeon by Carroll Mayers

At first I didn’t favor the idea. I mean, all the odds have to be on your side for a successful bank hit. But Frankie kept pressing me. Like: “It’ll be a piece of cake, Joe.”

“You’ve checked them all?” I asked.

“Every bank in the city. Security Savings is our best bet.”

“Because of one character.” I made it a statement, not a question.

“Exactly,” Frankie said. “I’ve been practically in his pocket for a week. He’s Casper Milquetoast in person.”

“Even a worm can turn.”

“Not this worm. I know him, I tell you.”

You’ve read accounts in the papers where a lone bandit tries to heist a bank by passing the teller a note threatening bodily harm, or maybe death, if he or she doesn’t give with a jackpot of cash. Sometimes the bandit scores. Usually he doesn’t. Usually the teller is only momentarily taken aback, then manages either to cry out or press an alarm button. Perhaps both. Whatever, it’s a fiasco for the heister.

Frankie had in mind the note-passing gambit. The thing was, he had a refinement. He meant to be particular about the teller he passed that note to.

I couldn’t fault Frankie’s basic reasoning. If he could tab a teller, male or female, a real Nervous Nellie who’d be too scared, too paralyzed, to take any physical action other than complete compliance, Frankie would be home free — “a piece of cake.”

That was where Frankie’s “survey” came in. Checking the personnel (first by general appearance, then by discreet, in-depth, after-work surveillance) of every bank in the city, Frankie had come up with the perfect pigeon.

One Homer Jennings.

Homer was a teller at Security Savings, and the exact type Frankie wanted. Why Homer hadn’t been put out to pasture long ago was a mystery. Certainly crowding mandatory retirement, Homer had a physique like Twiggy’s and eyesight comparable to Mr. Magoo’s. A lifetime bachelor, he lived alone behind triple-bolted doors and seldom went out after dark. More important, he frequently wrote letters to the newspapers deploring “crime in the streets.”

Unbelievable? Not really. And he was definitely our man.

However, I still wasn’t completely sold. “There’s an alarm at Security Savings, isn’t there?”

“Sure. A button on the floor at each teller’s station.”

“And you’re saying Homer will be so terrified he’ll simply freeze, do nothing but hand over the money? Won’t even shift one foot to that button?”

“He won’t risk it, Joe. He’ll be scared witless, believe me.”

It sounded good the way Frankie spelled it out. Also, I’d be going along just for the ride, so to speak. Because I wouldn’t be in the bank at the moment of truth. I’d be outside, behind the wheel of a souped-up jalopy, ready to do my specialty as a crack wheel-man. Which was why Frankie had latched onto me in the first place.

I finally agreed. “Okay, deal me in,” I told him. “You’ve got a gun to flash along with that note?”

He grinned. “I’ll pick up a plastic model at the five-and-dime. With Homer that’ll be enough.”

But Frankie didn’t stop with Homer. For three days before our hit he diligently checked traffic in the bank, determining busy and slack periods. He settled on one-thirty in the afternoon, after the luncheon rush and before the closing surge. He also surveyed the traffic on the streets at that hour and set up my best route to take off when he scooted out with the cash.

So there it was. A real easy score, right?

Wrong. We never racked it up. I managed to wheel clear when the alarm clanged, but Frankie never got out of the bank. An alerted guard’s shot shattered his shoulder.

I have to admit poor Frankie had Homer Jennings pegged one hundred percent. The old gaffer was terrified — so terrified that when Frankie gave him a glimpse of the toy gun to reinforce the note, Homer fainted dead away and his body collapsed on the alarm button, kicking it off just as neatly as if he’d nudged it with his foot.