One Endless Hour

7

I spent a week in mobile and accomplished nothing.

Or almost nothing.

I had underestimated the difficulty in making meaningful contact on my own terms. With my new face, I came as a total stranger. Still, I had expected to arrive at the Golden Peacock as Earl Drake, establish myself as a member of the breed, acquire some necessary information, and move on.

It didn't work that way. It wasn't only that no one at the Peacock would have known me as either Chet Arnold or Earl Drake. In my business, names were meaningless anyway. In thirteen years I'd used a lot of names. The major cause of my difficulty was that affairs at the Golden Peacock were in a complete state of flux.

As I had expected, Rudy Hernandez was in charge. Still, I had to go slow. It was only natural that I begin by asking for Manny Sebastian, even though I was the only one who knew positively that Manny was never going to return to the Golden Peacock. Not surprisingly, my questions about Sebastian's absence were parried by Hernandez' evasive answers. For all Rudy knew, Manny might show up that very night after his unexplained vacation. There was an increasingly proprietary air about Hernandez when I talked to him nights at the bar, though. Each day he was obviously more confident that in some inexplicable manner he had fallen heir to the establishment.

But he was cautious. I could have come out flatfooted and identified myself. I couldn't see doing it, though. What was the point in so painfully acquiring a new face if the old identity were to be tied to it for everyone to know? I would be giving away a priceless break with the past that I had literally gone through hell to achieve.

I had expected that in the give-and-take of bar conversations I could establish to Hernandez' satisfaction that I had been in the game for years. If I had had sufficient time, I could have done it eventually, but with motel and restaurant draining my meager resources daily, I had no time.

It came down to a point where I could either identify myself to Hernandez, or I could forego the information for which I'd come to Mobile. Once or twice I came close to capitulating. I was strongly tempted, but each time I held off. Our little talks went round and round in circles. "Jim Griglun?" Hernandez said one night in response to a query of mine. "I haven't heard his name in years. He's out of the game entirely. Nerve's gone. I don't know what he's doing now."

"He had nerve enough when he and Slater Holmes and Gig Rosen and Duke Naylor pulled off the Oklahoma City job," I said. "They got over a hundred thousand that day."

"You don't look old enough to be going back that far," Hernandez replied. "I remember that Rosen and Naylor were burned down on a job the very next year."

"In Massillon, Ohio," I contributed. "And Clem Powers was killed two days later when the rest of the gang holed up in a barn."

"Yeah," Rudy agreed. "That was a bad one. OT Barney Pope and some punk kid were rounded up in the barn an' sent over the road. I remember that was one of the few jobs set up by the Schemer that went all wrong."

I had been the punk kid on that job, but did I want to say so? While I was trying to make up my mind, Hernandez kept on talking. "Hadn't thought of Clem Powers in years. That boy was really a stud. Reminds me of Dick 'Ladykiller' Dahl nowadays."

A glass rapped sharply on the bar, and Hernandez moved away to serve the customer. His remark about the Schemer turned my thoughts in a new direction. Robert "The Schemer" Frenz was a professional who set up bank jobs for a fee or a percentage of the gross. Frenz would case the entire job, supplying escape routes, local police procedures, and the most detailed information on the bank premises and the bank personnel. He never took part in the actual operation, but he could really lay one out. I'd used the Schemer's prepackaged deals twice, when Big Ed Morris was my partner, before he was killed in a drunken argument in a bucket of blood in Santa Fe. I usually preferred to set up my own jobs, but I knew good workmen who relied upon the Schemer completely.

It nettled me that I had so badly underestimated how difficult it would be to get through to Hernandez. I could hardly blame him, though. Local cops, the state, and the Feds were always snooping around places like the Peacock hoping to pick up useful information. If I were an FBI plant, I could have been briefed on jobs and names, so I made it a point during the four or five nights I stopped in at the bar to touch upon subjects that couldn't have been known by the law. I named hangouts and hideouts, mistresses' names and wives' names.

Hernandez was impressed, but he wouldn't open up.

His own talk referred to the past, never to the present. I decided I was paying the penalty for Hernandez's insecurity in regard to Manny Sebastian's status.

Once I began to think in terms of Robert "The Schemer" Frenz, though, the prospect opened up. I had been using the name Carl Kessler when I used him before. My changed face would be no problem, because the Schemer had a peculiarity. He met no one face to face. He did all his business by telephone and mail.

I eased a hundred-dollar bill out of my wallet and laid it on the bar top. When Hernandez returned to where I was sitting alone, I pushed the bill toward him. "I've been out of touch with the Schemer lately," I said. "What's his business phone now?"

Hernandez supplied it promptly. That's how the nightclub made its real money, acting as a message drop. Rudy was guaranteeing nothing by giving me the number. It would be up to me to satisfy Frenz that I was legitimate.

It was a Washington, D.C., number as it had always been before. It changed about once a month, though. I sat at the bar for another hour, said goodnight, and left. On the way to my motel I stopped off at a lighted highway phone booth and called the number. I had forgotten how late it was. "Schemer, this is Carl Kessler," I said when his familiar high-pitched voice came on the line. "I got your number in Mobile at the Golden Peacock."

"Kessler," the voice said tentatively, then continued more alertly. "Oh, yes, you came to me through-"

"Ed Morris," I supplied when Frenz waited for me to supply the key information. "What have you got on the shelf ready to go?"

I could all but hear the wheels clicking in the Schemer's computer-like brain. "You've been keeping a low silhouette recently," he countered.

"It happens," I said. "Sometimes a man's talking when he should have been listening." Let him think I'd taken a fall and been on ice for a while. "Listen, when you call Mobile to verify where I got your number, you might find that Rudy Hernandez doesn't know my name. He stayed so buttoned up with me that I returned the compliment."

Frenz chuckled. "I'm not unhappy to learn that you both stayed buttoned up. There's too much loose talk in this business." He cleared his throat. "I do have a package I've been saving for a first-class man."

"The usual ten percent afterward?"

"You have been out of circulation., It's twelve and a half percent these days. Inflation, you know."

"It had better be worth it, Schemer."

"It will be." He sounded confident. "Where shall I mail the kit?"

"To Earl Drake. General Delivery at-" I stopped to think.

"Washington, D.C.?" Frenz asked.

I knew the General Delivery window in the mail post office in Washington, D.C. It certainly wasn't my first choice. It could be staked out for a look at a man picking up an envelope. I didn't know that the Schemer was that curious, but I didn't know that he wasn't, either.

"Make it Richmond, Virginia," I decided. The General Delivery office there was a cubbyhole no one could hang around without making himself conspicuous. "And this is only for a look, Schemer. If I decide to take on the job, I'll call you again."

"Right," Frenz said briskly. "The plans will be in Richmond tomorrow afternoon."

And I won't be far behind, dear boy, I thought, but I didn't say it. "I'll be in touch," I said before hanging up.

It had worked out well.

If anyone should become curious about Carl Kessler, former partner of Ed Morris, any backtracking would lead only to Morris's grave in potter's field in Santa Fe.

I drove on to the motel and went to bed.

I started early in the morning.

I slept well, something I had been doing infrequently recently. I used to think I didn't have a nerve in my body, but recent events made me aware that even at a subconscious level, I knew I was in a tighter financial box than I had been in years.

My money was running out. I still had the jar buried in the Colorado mountains, but if I retrieved that and got into a jam afterward, I had absolutely nothing else to fall back on. Without a reserve such as the Colorado jar represented, a situation like the one I'd found myself in at the prison hospital in Florida could well have been the end of the line.

It was a relief to be in action again, however tenuously. I wouldn't really know if it was action or not until I saw the contents of the Schemer's kit, of course. The week of making no progress with Rudy Hernandez hadn't been wasted, though. I had time to practice with the contents of the makeup kit the blonde in Pensacola had sold me, and I was satisfied that now only a professional eye would be able to discern the plastic-surgery scars beneath the makeup. It was a bonus that with further practice I could become adept at making subtle changes in my appearance. I could sufficiently alter skin tone and shadows before going on a job so that descriptions would be confusing. All I really needed was to knock over a quick one and remove the hot breath of financial insecurity from the back of my neck.

I reached Richmond at noon the second day. I used the driver's license supplied by Blind Tom Walker when I asked for mail at the General Delivery window. The clerk handed me a large manila envelope that had seventy-two cents worth of stamps on it to cover the indicated first-class postage.

The bulk of the envelope disturbed me. It suggested an extremely detailed plan, which in turn pointed to a complicated job. I hadn't time for such a caper. I went back to the VW and drove to the Holiday Inn on Route 301. After checking in, I stopped off in the coffee shop for a chicken sandwich and a glass of iced tea, then went to my room. I locked and chain-latched the door, sat down in an armchair, and opened the envelope.

The bulkiness of its contents was explained immediately. It was made up of sheet after sheet of stiff-paper line drawings, which in effect were blueprints of the floor plan of a bank. In addition, there were page after page of biography on the habits of the bank employees, both at work and at home.

There were an additional two pages in single-spaced elite type describing the police routines for the area. The bank was in a suburb where official jurisdiction overlapped, and the typewritten sheets gave chapter and verse on the schedules of both the city police force and the sheriff's department of the county. On a separate sheet was plotted possible escape routes, with traffic lights indicated in red and one-way streets in blue. Robert "The Schemer" Frenz was nothing if not thorough.

Clipped to the top sheet, which was labeled "Summary," was a typewritten note. Its message was brief. "Three-man job," it said. "Known available workmen: Sandy Bascombe, Dick Dahl, Thirsty Huddleston, Preacher Harris, Bob Wolfe, Jess Burkett. Call me."

I pushed everything else aside while I scanned the summary sheet. The bank was in Thornton, a suburb of Philadelphia. I knew the area, which helped. It was apparent at once that the pivotal point of the proposed job was that the suburban bank received cash by armored car after closing each Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday mornings the cash was separated among the tellers for making up factory payrolls and cashing checks. If the bank were entered before business hours on a Thursday morning, it should be possible to pick up the armored car delivery still in bulk before the usual distribution.

A complication was that the vault combination was shared by the bank manager and his assistant. Each had only half the combination. This meant that both had to be separated from their families early in the morning on the day the job was to be pulled. They would have to be herded to the bank together. The other employees would have to be immobilized as they entered the bank until the time lock on the vault went off and permitted it to be opened by the manager and assistant. Otherwise it appeared that the job called for standard operating procedure.

I set the summary aside and stared at the blank gray face of the room's television set. I didn't like the plan. There were so many variables in the Schemer's proposal that I hesitated on the brink of instant rejection. The plan called for too many people to be managed, in too many different places, by the unknown quantities in the way of partners I'd be forced to employ.

But what choice did I have? I could ask Frenz for a one-man package, but if he didn't have one on the shelf, what then? Walk in off the street cold with a brown paper bag and show a teller a gun? I'd seen too many men panicked by circumstances who'd gone that route when squeezed. It kept the jails full.

I picked up the summary sheet again with its attached note and reread the names. Sandy Bascombe, Dick Dahl, Thirsty Huddleston, Preacher Harris, Bob Wolfe, Jess Burkett. Huddleston I knew. He had nerve, but he wasn't called Thirsty for nothing. I drew a line through his name.

Dahl rang a bell. I sat there thinking about it. Finally it came to me. Hernandez had mentioned Dahl's name at the Golden Peacock. Rudy's remarks had coupled Dahl with the memory of Clem Powers, a fantastic cocksman. "La-dykiller," Hernandez had called Dahl. It was hardly a recommendation. I drew a line through Dahl's name.

Wolfe I didn't know. Burkett I didn't know. Two more drawn lines. Harris I knew. Preacher Harris, although I'd never worked with him, had the reputation of being a cool and steady operator everywhere except at the card and dice tables. Harris was a compulsive gambler, but when he was broke enough he was all business. I put a circle around his name. Bascombe I didn't know. Another line drawn.

So I had one possible from the list. Could two men do the job? I spread the floor plan of the bank in front of me and went over it carefully, then referred to the summary again. Fifteen minutes later I reached a conclusion. Two men couldn't swing it. Too much maneuvering would be needed to get the right people to the right place at the right time.

I put everything back into the envelope again, put the envelope under my arm, and left the room. I called Frenz from the pay phone in the lobby, a few feet away from the registration desk. When he came on the line, I gave him the number of the pay phone. "I'll call you back in ten minutes," he promised.

I sat in the phone booth waiting for his call. When it came, I heard the ding-ding-ding of coins, indicating that Frenz had moved to a pay phone, too. I went right to the point. "You've handed me a three-man package, Schemer, and I'm alone. What do you have in the way of a solo shot?"

"Nothing that isn't too risky," he replied. "I'd really like to see you take this job on. I've been saving it for someone who's an organizer. You saw the list of names?"

"I saw them. Harris is the only one I know favorably. What the hell are you doing recommending a drunk like Thirsty Huddleston?"

"I'm not recommending anyone." A touch of acid crept into the Schemer's smooth delivery. "I gave you a list of the men available. If you don't want to work with them, that's your business."

"Why didn't you give one of them the package?"

"Because they're followers, not leaders. I have to hitch them onto the tail of someone else's kite." There was exasperation in Frenz's tone. "Listen, I haven't all day. If you don't like the look of the job, I'll give you a post office box number to return the envelope."

The trouble was I had to like the look of it. "Don't jump the rails, man. Where's Harris now?"

"Vegas."

That figured, all right. "Can you reach him?"

"Sure."

I crossed the Rubicon with a rush. "Have him meet Earl Drake at the Marriott Motel across Key Bridge from Washington, D.C., day after tomorrow."

"Fine. Who else do you want?"

I ran through the list of names again in my mind. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. "What about Dahl? Is it true he's a womanizer?"

"Professionally, perhaps."

"Professionally?"

"He makes nudie movies, which he distributes through a chain of art theaters. It takes him a long time to get his money back from his releases, if he ever does. He finances his films by jobs like this."

A gambler and a maker of nude movies. It hardly sounded like a winning team. The Schemer sensed my hesitation. "Dahl has nerve and can pass anywhere," he said.

In the end it always comes back to nerve, I thought. There were a lot of good workmen on the street who had lost theirs and were out of the business. If a man had nerve, he had a chance in the racket. Without it, nothing else could do him much good.

I made up my mind. "Send him to the Marriott, too."

"Will do." Frenz said it in the manner of a businessman who has just seen the prospect sign the contract. "And good luck."

Once I'd thought I didn't need luck. I was younger then. I'd take all I could get now. "Where do you want your end sent, Schemer?"

He gave me a post office box number, said good-bye, and hung up.

I had a day and a half to study thoroughly the Schemer's plan before I met Harris and Dahl.

I went back to my room.