The Specialists

Nine

The Commercial Bank of New Cornwall was located at the northwest comer of the intersection of Broad Street and Revere Avenue. Broad Street was the main commercial thoroughfare of the town, and the one-story brick building fronted on Broad with a small parking lot alongside on Revere. Dehn put his car in the lot and walked around to the front entrance. It was fifteen minutes past three. The bank normally closed at three, but on Fridays it stayed open until 5:30.

Dehn opened the door, went inside. He was wearing a gray sharkskin suit and carrying a slim leather attach
 case. His glance darted around the bank, registering impressions, estimating distances. He wouldn’t have to supply details. Giordano, who had visited the bank during the noon rush, would probably be able to come up with a virtual floor plan of the layout. But Dehn wanted to get his own feel of the place, and it wouldn’t hurt for him to be able to backstop Giordano.

A row of tellers’ cages on the right. A stand-up desk in the center where depositors could fill out slips. On the left, three desks for bank officers, just one of them presently occupied. A staircase at the rear center, presumably leading to the vault room in the basement. A uniformed guard at the head of the stairs, another at the side door, plus the one he had passed in front. The guards themselves looked wholly interchangeable, stiff white-haired men with slight paunches and underslung jaws. Dehn guessed they were retired cops.

Dehn went over to the desk where a bank officer sat. When the man looked up from a column of figures, he said he wanted to open a checking account. The officer pointed him to a chair, opened a desk drawer, asked if he was interested in a regular or a special checking account. He started to explain the difference, and Dehn cut in and said the regular account would be fine. The officer brightened at this.

Dehn gave his name as Arthur Moorehead of Seattle, explained he had taken a position in New Cornwall and would be bringing his family east as soon as he found suitable accommodations for them. “But first you set the financial house in order,” the banker said. “Good, good.”

A year earlier Dehn had opened an account as Arthur Moorehead at the Shippers’ Bank of Seattle. He had closed out the account within a week, but somehow or other he had never destroyed the checkbook. He wrote out a check now for $2,500 and used it to open his account.

The bank official said something tentative about waiting a week for imprinted checks.

“Oh, of course,” Dehn said. “You’ll want to wait until my check clears in Seattle. No problem. I won’t need to draw on this account for the time being.”

It would take the check at least ten days to bounce back to New Cornwall. And by that time the bank would have more important things to worry about than Arthur Moorehead.

After the last of the forms had been filled out, Dehn asked about a safe deposit box. They only had a small selection, he was told, and there was a waiting list for the larger boxes, but a small one might be available. Was that satisfactory?

Dehn said it was. The officer went away, came back, smiled, and led him down the stairs at the rear. There was a massive gate at the foot of the stairs, with an eye beam between the stairs and the gate. A guard came into view when they broke the beam. He and the bank officer nodded to each other, and the depressed a button to release an electronic lock. Inside was the bank’s own vault and, to the left, a few dozen feet of wall space given over to individual safe deposit boxes.

In a curtained booth Dehn opened the box and took from his attach
 case a thick manila envelope sealed with heavy plastic tape. He put this in the box and watched as the guard locked it away. The envelope contained a stack of newspaper cuttings.

He left the bank and drove to the motel where he had registered earlier as Moorehead. On a sheet of motel stationery he began sketching the bank’s floor plan. A rough sketch was all he wanted now. When he saw Giordano’s photos, the two of them could work together on it and produce something more detailed.

He left the motel room. A beautiful day, he thought. Perfect for golf. He got into his car and headed north out of town, then cut west on Route 4. When he saw the driving range, he pulled off the road. He took his driver and his spoon from the trunk and bought a bucket of balls.

He hit eight balls before he lost interest entirely. He topped the first one, caught the next two nicely, then sliced the rest. He left the remaining forty-two balls in the bucket on the rubber mat and put his clubs back in the bag and locked the trunk.

He drove another half mile down the road to a gas station. The pay phone was set up for direct-dialing. He dropped a dime in the slot and called Tarrytown.

Giordano hung the last of the prints up to dry. There were sixteen of them and almost all of them had come out sharp and clear. His camera was a Japanese job about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and he had loaded it with a very fast film. He studied the pictures now and was reasonably pleased with them. He had enlarged the negatives to four-by-five, and could have made them still larger without too much loss of definition, but he felt they would do.

He poured his trays of chemicals down the sink and went upstairs. Helen Tremont was at the kitchen table reading a magazine. “Oh, Louis,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come up. You walk like a cat.”

“I hope I didn’t startle you—”

“Not at all.” She smiled. “You’re finished already? That was fast, wasn’t it.”

“The darkroom’s a pleasure to work in.”

“Yes, Walter spent hours on end down there. You’ve seen his nature photographs. He did some marvelous things. He always said it was the only hunting he cared for. Do you do very much photography yourself?”

“Not anymore. I did for a few months, but then I realized I had a cabinet full of prints that I never looked at once I’d developed and printed them, and I sort of lost interest.”

“I suppose that can happen.”

“And I wasn’t an artist at it. I got to be competent, and then I never got to be anything better than competent, so from that point on it got dull for me. The only part I ever really enjoyed was the darkroom work. That’s still a kick, you know, putting the film through the bath and seeing what you come up with. This batch turned out fine.”

“Roger will be glad to hear that. He’s upstairs, if you want to go up. Oh, what’s wrong with me? You’ll have a drink?”

“I’d like some coffee, if there’s any made.”

He stayed with her and drank the coffee in the kitchen. They talked about hobbies and travel, but Giordano had trouble keeping his mind on the conversation. When he was done with the coffee, he went up to the second floor and found the colonel in the library.

“The prints are drying,” he said. “They came out fine.”

“Good. I just spoke to Frank. He opened his account with no difficulty and managed to lease a safe deposit box. He had a look at the vault. No photographs, of course.”

“His memory’s almost as good as a camera.”

“Yes. He’ll be here sometime this evening to go over the photos with you. And Howard was on the phone earlier. They hope to get on the ground of the Platt estate tomorrow. They’ve laid the groundwork and should have something for us tomorrow night if all goes well.”

“Yes, sir. Uh... as far as this evening is concerned—”

“Yes?”

Giordano hesitated. “Well, I did make a dinner date with one of the tellers. I don’t have to show up if you think it’s more important to meet with Frank tonight, but I thought it might be worthwhile to develop that contact. She’s just a teller, of course, but she might know a lot about bank routine.”

“Yes, of course.” The colonel turned away for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. “A dinner date,” he said suddenly. “You only went there to change a bill, didn’t you?”

“Yes, a twenty.”

“And it was crowded, and of course the girl must have been rushed.”

“Yes, sir, she was.”

“And you still managed to date her?”

“Well...”

The colonel chuckled softly. “I see,” he said. “I gather you’ll be spending the night in New Jersey, then?”

Giordano fought against the rush of blood to his face. It was bad enough to be short and skinny and nearsighted. Why the hell did he have to blush? “She seems like a quiet sort of girl,” he said. “I don’t know, I mean, I—”

The colonel spun his chair back, wheeled himself over to his desk. “I think you’re quite right, Louis. You should develop this relationship. A dinner date, you won’t have very much time, will you? I could call Frank and suggest he make it tomorrow. No, that’s not good. Will those prints be dry by the time you’re ready to leave?”

“Easily.”

“Good. Bring them up before you go, and I’ll go over them with you so that I know what they are. Then Frank and I can work together on them. I think that should do well enough. You’ll have a look at his scale drawing tomorrow. Just give me a call when you know where you’ll be staying.”

“The Cavalier Motel on U.S. One.”

“Oh?” The colonel raised an eyebrow. “Did you take the room before you met the girl or after? You don’t have to answer that, Louis.”

Giordano blushed furiously. “I’ll check those prints,” he said, and fled from the room.