The Green Eagle Score

4

Fusco pulled the Pontiac into the cinder driveway beside the house. There was no garage, only the driveway, ending at a metal fence. The fence completely enclosed the back yard, which was perfect for Pam. The kid was out there every warm and rainless day, with the whole yard to roam in. A hell of a lot more than the chunk of Canarsie pavement Fusco had had when he was a kid.

Fusco shut the Pontiac door and walked over to the fence. There was Pam, all the way at the other end of the yard, squatting the way little kids do, digging in the dirt back there with a tablespoon Ellen had given her.

Ellen was a good mother, there was no denying it. Yeah, and she’d been a good wife, too. It was him that was off. As a husband he’d been punk, and as a father he was the kind of guy who could show up once a year with a balloon and a box of Cracker Jack and other than that have no idea what the hell he was supposed to do. It was a good thing Pam had a mother like Ellen.

The one thing Fusco couldn’t work out entirely was his feeling about Stan. It seemed to him he ought to be bugged by it one way or another. Stan shacked up with Ellen, but when he thought about it he didn’t feel bugged at all. What the hell, they weren’t married any more. And after three years in the pen, completely separated from her, he had practically no emotional involvement left for Ellen at all any more. Oh, a little, but he thought that was mostly because of the kid, because she was the one in charge of bringing up his daughter.

He liked to look at Pam. He liked to know she was there. But he shouldn’t hang around out here too long now. Without having called to the child or in any way attracted her attention, Fusco moved away from the fence, walked around the Pontiac, and went into the house by the front door.

It was a little after six, and Ellen was in the kitchen making dinner. Parker was sitting on the sofa, looking at Stan’s pictures spread out on the coffee table. Stan wasn’t around.

Parker looked up. “It work out?”

“Beautiful,” Fusco told him. “I sat at a table right next to a window, I could see everything happened at the gate. I had a book open in front of me, my notebook open, it looked like I was copying down stuff I was reading. Nobody paid me any attention at all.”

Stan came in from the bedroom then, spying, “Marty, tomorrow I get my car back. I hate that stinking bus.”

“I was going to be there longer than you,” Fusco reminded him.

“I know, I know.” Stan looked at Parker. “You want to go over his stuff now, or after dinner?”

“Whenever Fusco’s ready,” Parker said.

“Couple minutes,” Fusco said. He dropped his notebook on an end table and went into the bathroom to wash up for dinner. He didn’t know why, but sitting in that library all day had made him stiff; his back creaked when he bent over the sink to wash his face.

When he came out, Parker and Stan had moved to the kitchen table and Ellen was dishing up supper. Parker and Fusco both were taking most of their meals here, but were sleeping elsewhere, Fusco at the residence hotel over Checkers’ Bar & Grill down on Front Street, Parker at the motel in Malone, fifteen miles away. Parker had the Pontiac every night, but always brought it back in the morning in time for Stan to take it to the base. Unless, like this morning, either Parker or Fusco had a use for the car.

Fusco sat down at the table and Ellen put a plate in front of him without a word, meatloaf, green beans, boiled potato, starving, Fusco dug right in.

When Ellen sat down she said to Fusco, “How was your day?”

“Good,” he told her. “No trouble at all.”

“That’s good,” she said. In the last couple of days she’d gotten a lot better, a lot easier to get along with. She’d been all up in the air about this caper for a long time, but now all that seemed changed. Maybe she’d grown resigned to it, or maybe she’d just gotten interested in how the score was shaping up. Ever since Monday she’d been fine, listening to them talking things over, not bitching about anything. Stan had been understandably more relaxed himself as a result.

Fusco liked it when people were relaxed. He hated trouble in the air, interpersonal hang-ups. It was much better now, the four of them sitting around the kitchen table together, Stan telling funny stories about some kid second lieutenant in his office. Fusco had two helpings of everything.

Afterwards, back in the living-room, Fusco reported on his day, giving the names and times of all the commercial vehicles in and out of the South Gate, the quantity of passenger cars at different times of day, what Air Force vehicles used that gate in and out. At the end he said, “There were two trucks went out that gate but didn’t come in, at least not while I was there. One was a garbage truck, green, said S & L Sanitation Service on the side, went through at three-twenty. The other was a Pepsi-Cola truck, went through at four thirty-five. I figure they both must of come in the main gate, went through some kind of set route, and then they go out this way.”

Parker said, “What kind of check do the commercial trucks get?”

“They must have some kind of pass,” Fusco told him. “Every one of them stopped, the driver held something out for the kid on the gate to look at, and then the kid waved him through.”

“In and out both?”

“Right.”

“Nobody got waved through? Not even people going to be the same every day? The gate guards have to know some of those drivers.”

Fusco shook his head. “Everybody stopped. No exceptions.”

Stan told Parker, “There’s some chicken outfit goes around trying to crack security on Air Force bases. They hit here three or four months ago, and the story went all over the base. One of their men came in in a Coke company truck, put a red brick with ‘bomb’ stenciled on it in white in every Coke machine on the base. Then called up the Provost Marshal and told him the whole base had just blown up.”

Parker shook his head. “That’s beautiful. So now they’re bright and alert. Just to make things tougher.”

Fusco said. “We wouldn’t count on them being slack anyway. It doesn’t change anything.” He still had a small fear that Parker would suddenly decide the job was no good after all, and up and walk out. Parker was capable of something like that, if he didn’t like the set-up.

But it wasn’t going to happen now, not over the gate guards. Parker nodded agreement with what Fusco had said, and turned to Stan, saying, “What time does the payroll get to the base?”

“To the base, or to our office?”

“Both. Base first.”

“The plane lands at nine-twenty. The money gets into the finance office no later than quarter to ten.”

“When does it start getting split up?”

“Right away. Six guys work on it all day long.”

“They work after hours?”

Stan grinned. “No, they get it done by five. I know, I’m one of the six, all we want is to be done and out of there by five o’clock.”

“Where’s this happen?”

Stan picked up one of the photos on the coffee table and handed it over to Parker. “In the Major’s office there. Where the vault is. See those two long tables along the left wall? That’s where we sit.”

“And the two boxes with the money?”

“In front,” Stan said. “Next to the glass wall here.”

”Is that glass bulletproof?”

“No, it’s just regular plate glass.”

“But the windows back here are barred.”

Stan shrugged. “That’s the way the Air Force does things.”

Ellen came quietly in at that point, carrying a cup of coffee for herself, and sat unobtrusively in the chair in the corner.

Parker said, “Besides the six men working on the payroll who else is upstairs then?”

“Everybody who works up there,” Stan said. “About twenty people.”

“Anybody else in the room with the money?”

“The Major. And Lieutenant Wormley and Captain Henley. They both check out .45’s from Supply in the morning and stand around and play guard.”

“Describe them.”

“Wormley and Henley?” Stan shrugged. “Wormley’s like his name. A little creep, fresh out of ROTC. A nothing.”

“What about Henley?”

“He’s supposed to be an alcoholic,” Stan said. “I don’t know. He lives with his family in the dependent housing area, he’s got lots of kids, he’s in his forties, I hear he was passed over for major once, he likes to reminisce about when he was in Europe in the Second World War.”

“Does he know how to use a gun?”

Stan shrugged. “Beats me. All officers are supposed to be checked out on the .45. I figure Wormley just went to the firing range and shut his eyes and plugged away till they told him to stop. Maybe Henley did do some stuff in the Big War, I don’t know.”

Fusco had been listening, trying to figure out the characters of the men from Stan’s descriptions. He was pretty good at that, at working out what kind of a man somebody was and guessing what that kind of man would do in such a situation. Now he said, “That’s the one to look out for—Henley.”

Stan didn’t understand. He looked at Fusco and said, “The war was a long time ago.”

”Not for anything he learned in the war,” Fusco said. “If he‘s a passed-over captain, maybe twenty-five years in the service, got a family, drinks too much, maybe he’s out to prove himself. Maybe he’d like to be a hero and make major.”

Stan squinted, thinking about it. “Henley? You just could be right. He does get belligerent sometimes.”

Parker said, “What about the Major? Who’s he?”

“Major Creighton,” Stan said. “Kind of a nice guy, grandfather type, easygoing, got a little white mustache. The WAFs say he’s always trying to cop a feel, but all I know is he sits in his office and looks at everybody working and doesn’t seem to give much of a damn.”

Parker said, “No other guards?”

“Not during the day. They come on at five o’clock, when we quit. I think they work two shifts, they must change around midnight or something. I’m not sure how that works.”

“All right. What time does the money leave the next morning?”

“First thing. About five or ten after eight. It goes down into the armored car and that’s the end of it.”

“The question is,” said Fusco, “do we want to go after it in the daytime the day before, or wait until night?”

“We can’t decide that yet,” Parker said.

“Yes we can,” said Stan. “You’ll have to do it in the daytime. You don’t dare try to move around that base at night. Besides, in the daytime all the guards are Wormley and Henley. Whatever Henley’s like, he’s an amateur at being a guard. At night, you’ve got APs to tackle, inside and out.”

“If we do it in the daytime,” Parker told him, “and there’s static, you’ll have to play it like we aren’t on your team. And we’ll have to play it that way, too.”

‘You won’t have to gun me down,” Stan said, grinning.

“I know that. But you want to be there in uniform when we do it, with twenty witnesses around?”

“I’ll just stand there with my hands up,” Stan said, and stuck his hands into the air.

Fusco said, “Stan’s right, the daytime is our only chance. At least, that’s what I think.”

Parker seemed to be considering it. He picked up a couple of the photos, looked at them, put them down. “A daylight haul is tougher,” he said. “Let’s let it ride for a while. We’ll figure either way, day or night, we’re going to need three more men, including a driver. That’s six men, equal shares. You say there’s four hundred grand in the kitty?”

Stan said, “About that. A little more, a little less, it changes every payday.”

“About sixty-five thousand each,” Fusco said.

“We can build up an A string for that,” Parker said. He looked at Fusco. “You got any ideas?”

Fusco had. “There was a guy I met on the inside,” he said. “He was only in because he was finked on. He’d be out by now. He looked solid and dependable, and he knew a lot of the same guys we do.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jake Kengle.”

Parker shook his head. “I don’t know him. You know how to get in touch with him?”

“He gave me an address before I got out.”

“Give him a try. You know Philly Webb?”

“Sure,” said Fusco. “He drove for me once in Norfolk, he’s a good man.”

“I’ll contact him,” Parker said.

Fusco said, “What about that foreign guy? Salsa. He still around?”

“Dead,” Parker said, “Couple of years ago.” From her corner, Ellen surprisingly said, “Bill Stockton’s always good.”

“That’s right,” Fusco said. To Parker he said, “You remember Stockton, don’t you? Tall, skinny as a flagpole, black hair straight up on top of his head. Sharpshooter.”

“I remember him,” Parker said. “You want to contact him, or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” Fusco said. “You see about financing.”

Stan said, “Financing? What’s that?”

Fusco explained to him: “We’ll have expenses beforehand. Guns maybe. A car, other things. We get financing from somebody outside, he gets back double if the caper works.”

“Why don’t we finance ourselves?”

Parker said, “If the money man is involved it tends to make for trouble. He starts acting like he’s got extra votes. It’s better to have it done on the outside.”

Fusco said, “The reason I thought you ought to handle that, Parker, money men tend to shy away from somebody been on the inside. Superstitious or something.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Parker said. To Stan he said, “How can we mount a night watch on the South Gate, same as what Fusco just did?”

“That’s easy,” Stan said. “I just sit there in a car. Nobody’ll bother about me.”

“We’ll need it from eleven-thirty tonight till about four tomorrow morning,” Parker said.

“Tonight?” Stan’s grin turned pained. “I forgot,” he said, “about never volunteering.”

Fusco said, “I’ll come long if you want, Stan, help keep you company.”

Stan pointed a finger at him. “You just volunteered, pal,” he said.

Parker said, “One of you can drive me back to the motel first, and come pick me up in the morning.”

Ellen said, “You could stay here tonight.” There was nothing suggestive in her voice, or in her face when Fusco looked at her, nothing but a flat statement and an expressionless face, but Fusco felt the shock go through the room, felt Stan tensing, felt himself going taut, and he was amazed at how relieved he was when Parker answered, just as flatly, “I’d rather stick to the routine.”

Fusco got to his feet, suddenly in a hurry to break up this meeting. “I’ll take you, Parker,” he said.

“Good,” Parker said, “See you in the morning, Stan.”

“See you,” said Stan. The moment was over.