Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5, April 1974

Awry in a Parade by Paul Yawitz

Everyone marches to a different tune, and he knew just the song to make whitie march his way at last!

VIgal knew there was no retreating now.

He was in the fermenting midst of his long-planned hold-up of the rich neighborhood branch of Newcomers National Bank.

An unexpected anxiety clamped his throat as he hurled his slender, agile body over the outer counter of the main office. For days he had steeled his every nerve for the climactic moment. He had been certain they would not waver. It was a prudently devised maneuver to free himself from the gutter of his black ghetto. His own little masterpiece that once accomplished would allow him to walk with equality. Big money was his secret.

Nothing could go wrong, he had assured himself a thousand times. For three weeks he had cased the operation of the bank. It was to be — had to be — a perfect crime executed with a precision that would prove him a pro.

It was a dangerous venture and in a few hectic, but carefully devised, moments it would be over.

In that sliver of a second that he was now suspended in the mid-air leap, the light .22 caliber Smith & Wesson in his free hand felt heavier than he had ever suspected, but his eyes caught the, red glove of the hand on which his body was weighted and it renewed his confidence. It was part of the protection he had planned for himself. No one would ever detect his fingerprints, no one. The anxiety relaxed, and his mind attuned itself instantly to the well rehearsed minutes ahead.

There were fourteen employees inside the modest quarters. All were on their backs trembling against the floor and watching his leap. Their minds were so blank with fright that not one even wanted him to slip. If he fell someone would be expected to struggle with him. It was a duty the $115-a-week guard was loath to face. He was rooting for the oddly attired stick-up man to get a million, if necessary, and to get out.

Vigal had attired himself with purposeful outrageousness. His hat was an over-puffed, knitted, red stocking flap. He wore a droopy turtle-necked sweater with long sleeves floridly brilliant in contrasting stripes, and his wide, checkered slacks clung to his ankles with heavy elastics. His shoes were green and lustrous, and there was a small drum tucked with its sticks by a narrow strap over his shoulders. It was a wild costume that dis-furnished the mind, but the weapon gripped tightly in his hand was a silencing menace that was respected by the white Establishment.

In the maze of colors his face became an anonymous blob. It was part of his plan. Who could ever correctly describe him after he escaped?

At 8:00 he had slipped out of an alley and jammed his gun into the bank guard’s back. “You belong to me, man,” he whispered and slashed the officer’s weapon from its holster. “Open the door!”

Once inside, Vigal supervised with dispatch all the normal activities that would throw off suspicion. The Venetians were thrust partially open, the fluorescent tubes over the tellers’ cages were lighted, and the guard was ordered to make his pacifying call to the bank patrol office. “It’s 8:07. Everything’s in order here—”

For a moment he had hoped to voice the distress signal which was “Okay,” but Vigal knew the routine too well. He tapped the man’s head with the nozzle of his gun. “Say, Maynard,” he ordered.

“Maynard,” the guard spouted and dropped the receiver into its cradle.

The manager was admitted and locked in at 8:30. He and the guard were immediately supplied with wooden pegs Vigal carried in his drum. They were fashioned to fit the alarm releases on the floors. Vigal had spent a week carving the preventatives. “One stupid finger slip and both, of you die,” he barked, and the pegs slid into perfect permanent position.

Each phone wire was severed at the wall, and the scanning cameras hidden in niches at both ends of the lounge were disconnected and their slugs crushed with a hammer.

“You seem to know where everything is,” the manager said dourly.

“Even the two hundred $1000 bills that are waiting for pick-up in your vault,” Vigal agreed. “And you’re going to help me leave with them.”

Then, with his gun holding command, Vigal extracted four slim cannisters from his drum. “Now listen, if you want to live. These were taken from an Army dump ship that buried thousands of them in the South Pacific. Don’t worry how I got them, but I’m giving them to you. Then you can worry real good because they contain a death gas that kills everything within 500 feet in less than two seconds. Two seconds, get that? Once they’re open, that becomes it, man.” He laughed with a sinister threatening sound.

“There’s a short-wave release on each can, and I can control it up to a mile from this room.” He pulled out a diminutive electronic device for its macabre effect. “I know I can trust you and your cashier to open the big safe with your counter-keys. Get me?”

The manager, rigid and tense, nodded affirmatively and shuddered as Vigal carefully placed his bombs on a desk. It was exactly 9:00 now and the cashier arrived. His morning jauntiness was shocked from his face as the manager hustled him downstairs into the vault zone.

The remaining employees were captured at the door as each appeared, and Vigal’s gun silenced them into flat immobility on the carpets. “I’m taking off the minute they come up with my money. Then you’ll all take your places as if nothing’s happened. Remember, I’ll be in charge here long after I’m gone.”

It was 9:46 when Vigal completed his leap across the counter. He breathed hard as he stuffed the cash into his drum. When he locked the door from the outside, everyone proceeded to his position like a robot.

Vigal walked slowly into the alley, then broke into a run for the two blocks to Market St. where the parade of the Black Compton Clowns for Racial Justice was passing on schedule. He lowered his drum in front of him and sidled in with the wide flank formation of drummers. Each was in a costume identical with his. He sighed. His job was done.

His security suddenly shattered when he realized the drummers were all white men. “Where’s our black corps?” he asked the man beside him.

“They’re on a plane to Washington. Duke Ellington hired ’em this morning for a special show at the White House.”

Vigal went limp as he saw police cars merging on the procession.