Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

14

AT THREE O’CLOCK I met Eddie Troyn in the luncheonette, at a front booth by a window facing the street. He looked at his watch as I slid into the seat opposite him, and said, “Four minutes after.”

I looked at my own watch, which read three on the button. “Check,” I said.

Looking out the window, he said, “You understand the mission?”

“No, I don't.”

He gave me a quick pursed-lip glance, then looked out the window again. The whole world was run too sloppily for his taste. “Communication in this outfit is hopeless,” he said.

“Nobody told me anything,” I agreed.

“We watch Fiduciary Federal,” he said. “We mark everybody who goes in or out between closing time and the departure of the last employee.”

I looked over at Fiduciary Federal. Through the big windows I could see there were still several customers inside. A guard was standing just inside the mostly-glass doors, letting each customer out when they were finished. “Right,” I said.

“Not counting those customers,” he said.

“Oh.”

He glanced away from the bank long enough to push a notebook and ballpoint pen toward me. “You’ll write down what I tell you,” he said. “Every fifteen minutes we’ll reverse assignments.”

“Right,” I said.

I opened the notebook and poised the pen, and nothing happened. I watched Eddie, and Eddie watched the bank, and nothing at all happened. After a while my fingers began to cramp and I put the pen down. After another while my eyes began to water and I looked away from Eddie -out the window, in fact, in the general direction of the bank.

After about ten minutes a waiter came to take our orders. He was a high school boy with an after-school job, and he did not have his entire heart and soul in this activity. It took him a long while to understand that we wanted two cups of coffee, and when he wandered away I was fully convinced we’d never see him again. With or without coffee.

As a place to have a quick snack, this luncheonette wasn’t maybe the best in the world. As a place in which to establish a stakeout without drawing any attention to ourselves, it was ideal. We couldn’t have drawn that boy’s attention if we’d set ourselves on fire.

At three-fifteen I said, “My turn.” Since I was already looking at the bank, that simple statement was all I had to do in order to take over the watch.

Peripheral vision told me that Eddie had taken back the notebook and ballpoint pen.

This was very boring. Partly for something to do, and partly because I was morbidly interested in the details of the felony I’d been committed to, I asked after a while, “How are we going to do this thing anyway? Those banks look pretty solid.’’

“You haven’t been told the plan?”

“As you pointed out,’’ I said, while still watching nothing happen at the bank across the street, “communication is not this outfit’s strong suit.”

I could hear the doubt in his voice, as he said, “We operate pretty much on a need-to-know basis.”

I looked at him. “I’m a member of this gang, aren’t I?”

“Watch the bank,” he said.

I watched the bank. The last customer had departed ten minutes ago, and nothing else had happened since. Nevertheless, I watched the bank. I said, “I’m a member of this gang, aren’t I?”

“Of course,” he said. “We’re all on the same team.”

“Then I need to know,” I said.

“You’re probably right,” he said. I could hear him coming to a fast yet solid decision. “Very well,” he said. “We’ll begin with an unauthorized entry into Fiduciary Federal following the close of the business day.”

“How do we do that?”

“This observation of routine is helping to establish that question,” he said.

Sometimes it took a few seconds to get through Eddie’s words to what he was saying. The military prism through which he viewed the world made him at times a bewildering conversationalist. But very neat. Working my way through this one, I came to the kernel of thought at the center, and suddenly realized the gang didn’t yet know how they were going to get into that bank.

Hope blossomed in me, out of season.

Eddie said, “Having gained access to the interior, we will then require the personnel remaining in the bank to telephone their homes and explain to their next of kin that an unexpected state audit of the bank’s records will necessitate their working late, possibly through the night.”

I nodded. Nobody went in or out of the bank. Inside there, clerks moved back and forth, involved with the closing activities of the day.

Eddie said, “We will then induce the senior officer present to open the vault.”

That word ‘induce.’ I didn’t like that word ‘induce.’

Eddie said, “You can’t watch the bank with your eyes closed.”

I opened my eyes. “Just blinking,” I said. “Your eyes get tired when you keep looking like this.”

“Four minutes left to your tour,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “What about the other bank?”

“Just watch Fiduciary Federal,” he said.

“No, I meant the robbery. How do we get into Western National?”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s the brilliance of the scheme. Joe Maslocki deserves the citation for that.”

“Fine,” I said. I thought dark thoughts about Joe Maslocki.

“When the Fiduciary Federal building was put up, seven years ago,” Eddie said, “it was necessary to short-circuit a part of the alarm system used in the Western National vault.”

I frowned, and remembered not to look away from the bank. “How do you know a thing like that?”

“Our team,” he said, “has friends in the local building trades. Remember, that’s how the tunnel was constructed in the first place.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Radio silence,” he said.

I couldn’t help it; I looked away from the bank. I stared in bewilderment at Eddie and said, “Huh?”

He gave a meaningful head nod. I looked to my left, and damn if the high school boy wasn’t back, with our coffees. He put them down without looking at either of us, stood frowning at them for a few seconds, and then drifted aimlessly away, like a paper boat in a puddle.

I looked back at the bank.

Eddie said, “The Western National vault is wired against tunneling from every side, except where it is conjunctive with the Federal Fiduciary vault. In effect, the two vaults share a common wall and a common alarm system excluding that wall.”

“Oh,” I said. I could see it coming.

“Once we have breached the Federal Fiduciary vault,” Eddie said, “we will in a way be behind the lines of the Western National vault. We will tunnel through the wall from vault to vault.”

“Ah,” I said. But it seemed to me that bank vaults, with or without alarm systems, did tend to have very thick and very solid walls. I said, “How long does this tunnel take to dig?”

“Perhaps three hours.”

I glanced at him, glanced away, and he said, “You are relieved.” I glanced at him again, and he was watching the bank, having pushed the notebook and pen back over toward me.

I picked up the pen, had nothing to write, and put it back down I said, “Three hours? I thought it would take a lot longer than that.”

“Not with the laser,” he said.

I looked at him. “Laser?”

“The one we’ll take from Camp Quattatunk,” he said.

I said, “Camp Quattatunk.”

“The Army base,” he said, as though that explained everything.

I remembered having heard there was an Army base around here somewhere, but this was the first time I’d heard its name. Or that we would be getting a laser from it. I said, “A laser. That’s one of those burning ray machines, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“And we’re going to get one at this Army base.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Steal it,” he said.

Of course. I said, “We’re going to pull a robbery at an Army base so we can pull a robbery at two banks.”

“Positive,” he said.

Positive. I said, “When do we do this Army base robbery?”

“The night before the banks.”

Monday, December thirteenth. Two and a half weeks from now. I picked up the coffee and sipped it and it tasted like my future: cold, bleak, thin and not very sweet.

“Two female employees exiting,” he said, “at three thirty- seven.”

I looked at my watch. Three thirty-three. “Check,” I said, and wrote in the notebook “2 fem emp X 3:37”. Then I looked out the window and saw two girls, bulky in their carcoats, walking away from Federal Fiduciary Trust, as the guard locked the door again behind them.

If only it looked harder to get into. Or easier.

I didn’t want to think about the Army camp at all.