Target Manhattan

Rabinowitz

Your name?

Ira Rabinowitz.

Your position and title?

Chief security officer for the Beaver Street offices of the Merchants Trust Bank.

Is that your exact title, Mr. Rabinowitz?

Assistant Vice-President in charge of security.

Thank you…

We did our best with it, Mr. Skinner. My people in that bank can’t be faulted. If you’re looking for where to pin the blame, you’d better look somewhere else. We’ve got the best internal security systems of any bank in the city. We’ve never had a major vault robbery. Our losses in negotiable securities have been less than any bank’s. We keep tight tabs on our employees and it’s paid off. I just want to make it clear-what some nut does in an airplane, that’s not our job. That’s a job for the FBI or the United States Air Force. It’s not bank security. Our job is to protect the bank against robbery, and we do that job as well or better than any other security organization in the country.

I appreciate that. We’re not trying to pin blame on anyone at all.

I just wanted to make it clear.

Fine. Now, I wonder if you’d tell me when you were first brought into the case.

I had a call from Mr. Maitland’s secretary. She asked me if I’d mind stepping up to his office right away.

This was on May the twenty-second?

Wednesday. Yes, that’s right. The twenty-second.

What time was that?

About a quarter to eleven. In the morning.

And you arrived in Maitland’s office when?

Maybe two minutes later. My office is one floor below the executive suite. I used the stairs.

What did you find when you got there?

The secretary let me go right in. I found Mr. Maitland and another man in the main office.

And?

Mr. Maitland said this man was threatening to blow up the city if we didn’t fork up five million dollars in unmarked cash.

What happened then?

I guess I got a little sarcastic. I mean, this guy really looked like a nut case, you know? He was pretty big, but he had on this herringbone-tweed suit that looked like something they issue you when they let you out of the rubber room someplace. And he was covered with sweat. Eyes bulging out. He looked a lot more scared than Mr. Maitland did.

Did he know you were the security officer?

I don’t think so. I think Mr. Maitland had told him I was a bank officer, that was all. Maybe he expected me to get up the cash.

You said you got sarcastic. What did you say to him?

I don’t remember exactly. I said something about did he have the hydrogen bomb in his hip pocket or his shirt. I guess I wasn’t taking it very seriously at first. But it didn’t take long at all to wise up. This guy didn’t say anything at first. It was Mr. Maitland who did the talking. He told me the guy claimed he had a partner up over the city in an airplane and they were threatening to drop bombs on the city if we didn’t pa the ransom.

Had Ryterband given him a deadline?

I don’t know. You’d have to ask Mr. Maitland.

What I’m getting at, Mr. Rabinowitz, is whether you were informed of the deadline.

Well, of course I was. But it didn’t happen right at the beginning there.

What did happen?

I told Mr. Maitland he ought to take it easy, the chances were the guy was a crazy, he was bluffing.

And?

Mr. Maitland said he realized that. But he said we had no choice but to act on the assumption that the threat was real.

Were those Maitland’s exact words?

Pretty close. Why’d you ask?

Because it sounds like the way Maitland would phrase it.

Anyway I took a seat. This guy looked rattled. I thought the best thing to do was try to calm him down, get him talking. I asked him his name. He stammered a little, then he said he was Willard Roberts. I asked him if he had any identification. He said, “Don’t be an idiot.” He said we were wasting precious time. He started yelling at me to get down to the vaults and start packing the money up. I told him it wasn’t that simple. In the first place we don’t keep that kind of cash on hand-no bank does, except maybe the Fed down at their incinerators-and in the second place, I told him, we had no way to know he wasn’t bluffing.

What did he say to that?

He said we’d find out soon enough, if we didn’t pay off. Then he went over to the window-it’s an old building, the Merchants Trust, it’s got those high ceilings and those tall vaulted windows. He pointed up through the window and told me to see for myself. I walked over to the window and looked the way he was pointing.

And?

I saw the plane.

Where was it?

Circling over the Battery, heading north over Manhattan. It was flying very low-right on top of the buildings.

Did you recognize the aircraft type?

I’m not an expert. I was in the infantry in Korea; I don’t know a whole lot about airplanes. But I could see it was an old one-four propellers. And it was pretty big. It looked like a bomber, if you know what I mean.

Were the bomb-bay doors open?

I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Go on, Mr. Rabinowitz.

He said that was his partner. He said he had a full load of five-hundred-pound bombs in the plane. He said his partner was going to circle over Manhattan Island until the ransom was paid or the time ran out. If the ransom was paid he’d go away. If it wasn’t paid by the deadline, the bombs would be dropped on New York City. Then he told me the deadline was ten minutes after five in the afternoon. He said the money had to be paid by then or the bombs would drop.

Did he say why they’d picked that particular time? Ten minutes after five?

It was because the largest number of people would be on the streets at that time. I don’t remember whether he explained that right then or later.

Actually didn’t he insist that the money be paid over somewhat earlier than that?

That was later.

How much later?

Maybe forty-five minutes, an hour. After the police came. Maybe after the FBI came.

Let’s break for lunch, shall we?