Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

9

‘‘E E P,” I SAID. Then, when everybody looked at me, I said, “Frog in my throat," and pretended to cough. Billy Glinn whumped me on the back a little more than necessary.

Joe Maslocki waited impatiently for me to return to health. His bashed-in boxer’s face looked earnest and impassioned, and when I finally got Billy to stop whumping me so I could give my attention elsewhere, Joe leaned across the table and said in a low voice throbbing with intensity, “You know what we got, Harry? We got the greatest alibi in the world!”

I looked at him.

He waved a tattooed arm to include our surroundings. “How could we commit no crime? We’re in the big house.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Now, look,” he said, and bunk-bunked his finger on the tabletop just the way Warden Gadmore had done to my records, except that the warden had done it while thinking things over, and Joe did it to make a point. “We're all gonna get outa here some day,” he said. “When's the best time to pull a really big score, set ourselves up for life? Right now!”

“That’s right,” Jerry said, and there was a general murmur of assent.

“We been doing these little stings,” Joe said, “but that ain’t-”

I said, “Stings?”

“You know,” Joe said, throwing it away, “little burglaries, nothings.”

“Small scores,” Phil explained to me, “to cover our expenses.”

“Expenses,” I said.

“The electric bill for the tunnel,” Phil said. “Civilian clothes, things like that.”

“And don't forget,” Jerry told him, “Fylax and Mutt- good.”

“Right,” Phil said. “We got two screws on the payroll.”

So that was why Fylax had so patently disliked me. I said, “They know about the tunnel?”

“What, you crazy?” Phil shook his head and said, “They know we got action, that’s all. They don't ask, we don't tell. We give them their salary and they mind their own business.”

“Enough,” Joe Maslocki said. “Harry can figure it out for himself. You got an operation like this, you're gonna have expenses.”

“Well, sure,” I said. I'm in a madhouse, I thought.

“So we cover the expenses,” Joe said. “Naturally.” “Naturally,” I said.

“But that’s not what I’m talking about,” he said. “Forget about copping TV sets and knocking over gas stations.” “Okay,” I said. I was happy to.

“What I’m talking about,” Joe said, “is a major score. I figure somewhere around a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty grand.” He looked at Phil. “Am I right?”

“That’s what we figure,” Phil said.

They were all so calm, so businesslike. There was nothing to do but sit there and be just as calm. That, or run screaming from the room.

Joe said to Phil, “Did you show him the banks?” “Just to look at. I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Okay.” Still intense, plugging away like the welterweight infighter he used to be, Joe told me, “What we got out there is a couple banks you could knock over with a softball.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“Maybe not quite that easy,” Jerry said, grinning.

“It’s a goddam easy couple of banks,” Joe insisted. “And they’re goddam full of money.”

“You see,” Phil told me, “this is a twice-a-month town.” Should I pretend that made sense? I smiled blankly. “Most towns,” Phil went on, “the people get paid once a week.”

“On Friday,” Joe Maslocki said.

Phil nodded. “But this town,” he said, “only has two big employers, the prison and the Army base, and they both pay twice a month.”

“The fifteenth,” Joe said, “and the thirtieth.”

“So that means twice as much folding money,” Phil said, “every time somebody cashes their paycheck.”

Joe, leaning passionately toward me, said, “You see the picture?”

“I think I do,” I said.

“Just before the fifteenth,” Phil said, “and just before the end of the month, the local banks get in a whole bunch of cash from out of town.”

“Ah hah,” I said.

He said, “At first we thought maybe we’d hit an armored car coming in. Eddie had a nice little scheme worked out for that.”

“An ambush,” Eddie Troyn said; the military man. “Counter-insurgent tactics,” he said, and now I saw what his natural smile looked like. It was a simple baring of teeth, a curling back of the lips and widening of the mouth, and on a fully-fleshed man it would have looked perfectly all right. But Eddie Troyn had no spare flesh at all, and the smile turned his normally bony face into a death's head. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what this ex-military man had done to get himself reassigned to a penitentiary.

But Joe Maslocki wanted my attention. “That was small change,” he said, pushing the idea away. “We want the whole thing. The whole thing.”

“There’s only four banks in town,” Jerry told me. With a little grin he added, “Joe wanted to hit all four.”

“We still could,” Joe said, as taut and intense as ever. “We blow up City Hall for a diversion, knock out all four banks at once. There’s eight of us, we could do it easy.”

Eight of us. Including me.

“Logistically,” Eddie Troyn said, “it’s quite a challenge. But not impossible, no, not impossible.” And he did his smile again.

Phil said, “But we’ll settle for two. You’re lucky, Harry, you got here just in time to climb on the gravy train.”

“Yeah,” I said. I smiled or something.

He said, “You can see why I couldn’t tell you before you were definitely in.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Certainly.”

“We’ve got three weeks,” Joe said.

I said, “Three weeks?” Fortunately, one of the things a practical joker learns early in life is how to hide his reactions. I don’t believe I jumped more than half an inch off the chair, and I covered that movement by pretending to shift to a new position.

Joe was explaining the timetable. “We got Christmas coming,” he said. “That’s when people spend money. We got not only paychecks getting cashed, we also got Christmas clubs, and we got people taking money out of savings accounts.”

Phil said, “There’ll be more cash than ever, the middle of December.”

“So that’s when we do it,” Joe said.

Phil gave me a big grin. “Some Christmas present, huh, Harry?”