Hard Cash

13

Most of the downtown Port City buildings were brick and had a decaying look to them. The bank, on the corner, was an exception. It was white stone, two stories of nicely chiseled Grecian architecture dominated by three pillars carved out of its face. Above the pillars the word bank was cut in the stone and the date 1870; the bank’s electric sign, nearby, didn’t date back that far. The sign was attached to the corner of the building and hovered out over the sidewalk; it said first national bank of port city above a field of black, on which white dots grouped to form the time and then regrouped to form the temperature. Right now the sign said the time was 1:27. The time was 7:26. And the sign said the temperature was 98 degrees. The temperature was 20 degrees. The sign was broken.

Jon was nervous. Yesterday, Sunday, had been busy, and he hadn’t had time to be nervous; he’d been moving all the time, almost all night, too. But now he was sitting, and he felt himself trembling, like an alcoholic who needed that first drink.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and almost jumped.

“Easy,” Nolan said. “Easy.”

Nolan’s hand. A reassuring hand. Jon looked at Nolan, who smiled from behind his white whiskers and said softly, “ho ho ho.”

“Yeah?” Jon said. “And I hear your wife puts out for the elves. Stick that up your chimney.”

And they looked at each other in their Santa Claus suits and laughed, a little, and Jon was less nervous. A little.

Rigley was behind Nolan, crouching. The man didn’t seem at all nervous, but somehow he didn’t seem calm, either. He hadn’t said a word since they’d stopped by his house to pick him up a few minutes before.

They were in a red panel truck that was parked in front of the Salvation Army store just down the block from and on the same side of the one-way street as the bank. On the sides and rear of the panel truck it said “TOYS FOR TIKES, Davenport, Iowa” in white letters. Toys for Tikes was an organization of area businessmen whose panel trucks (identical to this one) were a common Christmas-season sight in these parts. The trucks went around to various businesses that served as drop points for the broken and/or discarded toys that Toys for Tikes collected, refurbished, and distributed to needy children. Sometimes, close to Christmas, when there were more deliveries than pickups to be made, the drivers dressed as Santa Claus.

Today was December 24.

The bank was on the corner of Second Street and Iowa Avenue. The panel truck was parked on Second Street. Traffic was less than heavy, more than sparse; at any rate, the Toys for Tikes van attracted no undue attention. The morning was clear, crisp-cold; no overcast sky today; no threat of snow.

At 7:28 a man who looked remarkably like a younger version of Rigley rounded the corner from Iowa Avenue on foot, having left his car in the riverfront parking lot a block down and across the four wide lanes of Mississippi Drive. The man’s name was Shep Jackson. He was a vice-president at the bank; technically, his job was that of auditor. He wore an expensive-looking gray topcoat with a black fur collar. He had short dark hair and a tanned complexion. As he walked, he looked at himself in the reflecting glass of the modern double doors between the first and second pillars and the big curtained window between the second and third. He stopped at the employees’ entrance, the furthermost door, which opened onto a vestibule that joined the stairway to bookkeeping and the side door to the bank lobby. Keys were needed to open both doors, but the outer one he left unlocked, while the lobby door he locked behind him.

The vault’s time lock was set for 7:30, at which time Jackson would dial the combination, whirl the wheel, and open the vault.

Inside the vault was a shiny silver wall of drawers the cast and gloss of newly minted coins, separately locked drawers that held the trays of money for the teller cages, drafts, trust vouchers, money orders, securities, and so on. There was a small inner safe, built into the lower half of the shiny silver wall. The bulk of the bank’s money was in the interior safe. Just under $400,000, Rigley said.

The second safe, the one inside the vault, had its own time lock. At 7:45, Jackson would have four minutes to dial a combination and open the safe. From 7:30 to 7:45, Jackson would busy himself with the menial task of turning off the night alarms and emptying the small night depository vault up front, which would contain twenty-five or so locked, separate bags of coin and cash and checks left by merchants for overnight safekeeping. These he would carry to a teller’s window and leave. That would give him five or six minutes to sit at his desk, relax, have a smoke, and wait for the time lock on the vault’s interior safe to go off.

Jon looked at his Dick Tracy watch. “Seven thirty-eight, Nolan,” he said. “Better get going, don’t you think?”

“Another minute,” Nolan said.

They waited.

Nolan hadn’t told Jon the reasons for going with December 24, Christmas Eve morning, but Jon could figure them out for himself. The bank ran a skeleton crew on December 24; barely half the regular personnel would be on hand. Furthermore, if all went as planned, it would all be over before any (or at least many) of the bank employees had even showed up, the exception being Shep Jackson, who had to be there early to open the vault. Most people resent having to work on a holiday, even on a near holiday like December 24, so it was unlikely anyone would show up early today, and possible most of them would come dragging in five or ten minutes late. Also, the bank vault was overflowing at this busy shopping time of year; the Friday before the weekend was probably one of the biggest days of the season for local merchants. And, of course, there were the Santa Claus suits, which were to keep anybody from getting a look at Nolan and Jon’s true appearance, to keep anybody from realizing the Port City bank was being robbed by the same people again. Jon hadn’t been surprised when Nolan said the robbery would be Monday, because if it was any later than Monday, using the Santa Claus suits would be crazy. Although, sitting here in his false whiskers and red padded suit, Jon felt pretty crazy as it was.

“Okay,” Nolan said. “Let’s go.”

Nolan opened the rear doors of the van as Jon pulled up alongside the bank; Rigley got out first and Nolan, in his Santa Claus suit, followed. They went in the employees’ entrance. Through the glass door Jon saw Rigley working the key in the side lobby door. When Nolan and Rigley were both inside, Jon turned right on Iowa and drove past the bank and into the bank’s customer-only parking lot.

The lot was behind the bank and bordered by the alley, across from which were big empty buildings, a hotel, warehouses, reclaimed for urban renewal. Jon parked in the far corner of the lot, by the rear door to the bank, a metal door at the top of half a flight of metal steps. Nolan would be coming out that door in ten minutes. It would have been a nice way to go in, but it could only be opened from inside; somebody inside had to look through the peephole and unbolt the door and let you in. So Nolan and Rigley had gone through the front.

The lot was recessed, the bank having a neighboring building that extended clear to the alley’s edge, meaning the lot was open to view only on the Iowa Avenue side. Directly across from the lot was another, public parking lot, presently empty. But down the street half a block was a cafe. A police car was parked outside the café.

Jon slumped behind the wheel of the van, sweating in his Santa Claus whiskers and suit despite the cold, wondering what prison was like.