Undercurrent

Nineteen

Two-ten P.M.

I was sitting in a place called the Old Bavarian Inn, a combination cafe and German-style beer hall located directly across Balboa Street from the vacant newsstand Walter Paige had tried to rent in Cypress Bay. I had been there for close to an hour, in one of the high-backed wooden booths next to the curtained front window-burning my lungs with too many cigarettes and tightening my nerves dangerously with too much coffee and no food at all; watching the dark and cobblestoned little alley that bisected the block next to the newsstand, waiting for something to happen, wondering if something would happen or if the balding guy had abandoned the thing at the last minute because of the heavy risk factor.

There was a thin, cold-hot sweat on my forehead and my eyes felt inflamed and my thoughts were sluggish and somewhere along the line I had developed a sore throat; I had pushed myself to just about the limit of my physical endurance, and unless I got some tension-free rest pretty soon, there would be physiological hell to pay. But the tension would not abate, and I would not be able to sleep until something happened or did not happen across the street and seven doors to the south: the Cypress Bay National Exchange Bank.

We still did not know much of the background yet, but the what and the how had all been there in The Dead and the Dying. The robbery had only been important in the book because it was the source of the two hundred thousand dollars which the protagonist, Johnny Sunderland, and his mistress had later stolen from the four men who had pulled the holdup; Dancer had spent only a chapter on the robbery, and that in flashback. But the plan was a relatively clever one, and he had related its execution in detail.

In the book, one of the holdup men had once been an electrician who was familiar with both the small California town of Cliffside and with the town's major banking operation, the Cliffside Savings and Loan. On the day of the robbery he was the first of the team to enter the bank-dressed in a business suit and posing as a new and well-to-do arrival in the community. He had asked to see the president of the bank about a loan and had been granted the audience. Once alone with the president, the electrician had produced a gun and forced the president to conduct him downstairs into the basement area where the bank's alarm system was located.

The electrician had rendered the alarms inoperable, as well as all phone lines, and had then taken the president back upstairs into the bank proper. Waiting there were two of the remaining three members of the gang, pretending to be customers and fussing with deposit slips. At gunpoint they had taken over the bank, locking the door and pulling the shades over the front window; teller's cages and the vault were cleaned out for the exaggerated sum of two hundred thousand, employees and four unfortunate citizens were made to lie on the floor at the rear of the building. Then the three men had made good their exit.

Dancer's cleverness went one step further here: there was a vacant bakery located half a block from the bank and which bordered on an alley leading through to the next parallel street. Some weeks prior to the holdup date, one member of the gang had managed to rent the bakery under an assumed name; on the day of the robbery and just prior to it, he had let himself into the vacant store with his key, leaving the alley door unlocked and ajar. When the other three reached the alley, they checked to make certain it was empty and then entered and began stripping off certain simple items of disguise such as dark glasses and wigs; then, as they passed the partially open bakery door, they stuffed the items plus the guns they had used in the holdup into the satchel containing the bank's money. One of them opened the door, tossed the satchel inside to the waiting fourth man, and the trio then continued through to the parallel street. The maneuver in the alley required no more than a few seconds.

There was as a result no need for a swift and dangerous getaway, along roads which soon would be blocked by local, county, and state police. They had no incriminating evidence in their possession-no money and no weapons-and they looked somewhat different from the men who had held up the bank as well; even if, by some chance, they had later been stopped for questioning, which they had not been, there was nothing at all to link them with the crime. They simply split up, on foot, wandered around town for a while like any other resident or tourist, and then met later at one of two motels they were utilizing in a nearby city. The two hundred thousand remained inside the vacant bakery overnight; the following morning it had been transported, in a cardboard box, by the fourth man to a third Cliffside motel. After a week to allow things to cool down, the four left the area separately and met in San Francisco to divide the swag; and that was where Johnny Sunderland had come in.

Dancer told Quartermain and me that he had gotten the robbery idea from an electrician friend of his, in 1953, who had helped to install the basement alarm system in Cypress Bay National Exchange Bank. Caper books were not much in vogue in the early fifties, and so Dancer had simply "thrown away" the holdup idea in his contrivance of The Dead and the Dying; and it was because he had, because it played such a small part in the actual plot of the book, that he had not been able to remember it these twenty years later.

The way it seemed to us, Paige or the balding guy or Winestock-most probably Paige-had happened upon Dancer's book, had read it, and had known or remembered enough about Cypress Bay to recognize both that the village was the model for the fictional Cliffside and that the Cypress Bay National Exchange Bank was the model for the fictional Cliffside Savings and Loan. Some simple if discreet checking had revealed that the National Exchange Bank was still housed in the same building as in 1953, and that its alarm system-comprised today of silent alarms and hidden television cameras-was still located and still vulnerable in its basement. And once they were able, by luck or design, to obtain a vacant store bordering on an alley near the bank, they had the perfect blueprint for an actual holdup.

Now, with knowledge of the robbery and with simple hindsight, I could see the various facts which Quartermain and I might have put together without the book to determine that a bank holdup was the answer-the pieces I had known were there earlier, but which I had not been able to separate and correlate from all the other pieces. There was the vacant newsstand and its location in downtown Cypress Bay; we could not have known exactly why it was important without The Dead and the Dying, but if I had noted yesterday which business establishments were located in the general vicinity as well as immediately surrounding the newsstand-or if Quartermain had made an association between the proximity of the store and the bank-we would have, with the other facts, been able to guess the truth. The other facts: today’s date-the first of May, the first of the month-payday for a large number of local employees; the banners I had seen on Saturday announcing the beginning of the Sentinel Hill Professional Golf Classic, a major tournament which always attracts golf buffs and tourists equipped with traveler's checks and personal checks that require cashing; the combination of those two facts to make a third: the necessity of a local bank such as the National Exchange to have a large amount of available cash on hand-more cash than it would normally keep and thus a boodle big enough to make the time and expense of a complicated holdup worthwhile; the fact that at least three men-Paige, the balding man, Winestock-were involved, which tended to rule out a large number of major-profit crimes, since such ploys as kidnapping and extortion would hardly require more than one or two principals; the fact that in a small community like Cypress Bay, a bank would be the only source of enough money to make feasible a plot involving three or more men and the subsequent split of the take; and finally, Judith Paige's comment in my office on Friday that her husband had told her he would be in Cypress Bay not only until Sunday but until "late Monday afternoon," which confirmed the day and approximate time of the robbery and bore out our feelings of urgency.

Quartermain's frantic check with the president of the National Exchange Bank, following our reading of the carbon at the schoolhouse, had determined that until that moment everything was perfectly normal. The robbery, then, had either been aborted or they were waiting until later in the day-any time up until six o'clock, since the bank stayed open late on the first of the month. Quarter- main had had to make the choice, assuming there had been no abortion of the plan, of whether or not to allow the execution of it.

He could have arrested the balding man as soon as he showed his face, and raided the vacant newsstand immediately, and put the arm on anyone asking to see the bank president who was not known to him; but since no crime had actually been committed, the only charge which could be made was that of conspiracy-and a conviction on that score was tenuous at best. And there was no concrete evidence linking the balding man or any other member of the potential holdup team to the deaths of Paige or Brad Winestock; if neither murder weapon could be located, the State would have nothing but supposition and circumstantial evidence-and a relatively minor arson complaint against the balding guy-with which to go to court.

In view of that, Quartermain had grimly decided to let the robbery take place if still scheduled. He had explained the situation to the bank president and had assured the man that every precaution would be taken to circumvent any potential danger; the president had agreed, although reluctantly, to the Chief's wishes. Quartermain had immediately delegated three armed men in plainclothes to the National Exchange Bank, to pose as examiners and employees. They had orders to take instantaneous action if the holdup commenced before Quartermain had mobilized the balance of a local, county, and state trap force, or if it appeared in any way that harm would befall a private citizen. The risk factor was still prominent-you can't anticipate the unforeseen-but with each bank employee apprised beforehand of what might happen so that no one would become heroic, the danger was not great. And since the blueprint called for disposal of money and weapons and disguises into the newsstand, and the success of that part of the plan depended on both time and inconspicuousness, the holdup men could not afford any shooting, any trouble at all. They would be very careful, and the bank people would be very careful; as long as fate stayed out of it, there would be no problems.

As covertly as possible, Lieutenant Favor-returned from Monterey-and several other men dressed in plainclothes had been sent to predetermined stations on Balboa and Pine streets. County and Highway Patrol units were on standby at each of the Cypress Bay exits, and others were deployed in the vicinity if needed. And then the waiting had begun.

I would have liked to have been an active participant myself, but there were limits to my involvement as a private citizen and this was one of them; all Quartermain could do was to tell me about the Old Bavarian Inn, and its rear garden entrance, and allow me to assume a passive spectator's role. Dancer had wanted to come along, too, but Quartermain had told him no as a precautionary measure and because Dancer was still hangover-sick and badly agitated and in need of a couple of shots of pure oxygen; he had been escorted, grumbling, to the local hospital.

So I had come alone to the Old Bavarian Inn, and had sat here alone to wait it out, and now I wondered again where Quartermain was and if all the arrangements had been made and if his men in their deployment were cool enough to maintain the illusion of complete normalcy. And how long it would be before the balding man showed, if he was going to show; and if their plan was already in operation, as I knew it could be; and if Quartermain's trap would spring as silently and as bloodlessly as he anticipated…

I lit another cigarette off the butt of one smoldering in the ashtray, and coughed, and wiped some of the sweat off my forehead. Sporadically, people came in and went out of the dark, beam-ceilinged room-and boisterous laughter and the clink of beer steins filtered in from a pair of tables jammed with tourists in the grape-arbored rear garden. Outside on Balboa, passersby were few and desultory past the alley entrance and the newsstand.

Two-twenty.

This is the ideal time, if they're going through with it, I thought. Midafternoon lull. People sunning on the beach or sitting in the park or walking by the sea, people napping in motel rooms and hotel rooms, people drinking beer or eating ice cream in places like this one. Any time from now until three o'clock. After that, the tourists go shopping again and the kids are out of school and the housewives run errands and taxi service, and the breadwinners of both sexes begin getting off work and heading for Two men in the alley, walking toward Balboa.

I leaned hard against the window, working new sweat off my forehead and blinking heavily to clear strain-shadows from my vision. Two men wearing business suits, one short and thick-set and carrying a large valise and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. A hat-in this weather, in Cypress Bay? The balding guy? He was still in shadow and I could not see his face clearly. The other one was tall and spare, light hair in a brush cut.

They kept on walking, briskly, and then they stopped, and where they stopped was at the padlocked alley door to the newsstand. The thin one used a key on the lock and removed it and pulled the door open and went inside and closed the door after himself; it was difficult to be certain from my angle, but it did not look as if he had closed it all the way. The one in the hat came forward, out of the alley, and stopped to squint at the bright flush of the sun.

It was the balding man, all right.

Even with the hat I had no trouble recognizing him, and I thought: So they're going through with it, the stupid cocky bastards are going through with it after all. They've got a guy inside already, one I don't know or I would have noticed him entering the bank-three of them then, a skeleton crew, but that's all they really need. I let out a soft breath and felt some of the tenseness flow out of me, some but not all because the trap was yet to spring and a lot of things could go wrong, a hell of a lot of things could go wrong.

The balding man took a pair of wide-lensed and very dark sunglasses from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and put them on; then he pivoted and started down the sidewalk to the south. He passed the six storefronts and turned into the National Exchange Bank without hesitation-a professional man going to work.

Four minutes later the amber-colored shades in the front window and front door of the bank went down, and I knew the door had been locked as well.

I had not seen anyone enter the National Exchange except the balding guy in better than ten minutes; there would not be many citizens within, and that was a blessing. I could visualize what was taking place at the moment: the balding man and the electrician with drawn guns, one holding employees and citizens at bay, the other scooping money into the valise; then, if nothing goes wrong, the order to lie down on the floor, and the exit. If nothing goes wrong…

The palms of my hands were hot and slick with sweat, and I gripped the edge of the booth table with unconscious pressure, my nose inches from the glass like a kid looking through the window of a candy store. I seemed to be hearing the tick of a clock, even though there was no clock in the room that I could see, and the ticks were painfully slow. A man and a woman strolled by the newsstand, arm in arm, and two cars passed and a kid came by on his bicycle; the shadows cast by the buildings had begun to lengthen, encroaching on the golden wash of sunlight. The shades in the bank stayed down and the door stayed closed, but there did not seem to be anything unpredictable or volatile happening down there.

Another minute passed, and two and three-and then the bank door opened inward. I stopped breathing; but it was all right. They came out, the balding guy and the electrician, the latter an average-looking type with red hair; they came out walking, not running, closing the door behind them and then starting up the street at an even pace. The balding guy was wearing his sunglasses and carrying the valise. They watched the street ahead of them and occasionally behind them as they walked and did not see anything that bothered them and kept on coming.

When they reached the alley they turned in without hesitation because there was no one abreast of it or approaching it in either direction, on either side of the street. The balding man had his sunglasses off and his hat off before they had taken three steps into the deserted passage. I saw him shoving those items, and something from his coat pocket that would be a gun, into the valise; the other guy tugged at his scalp and the red hair came off and went into the bag, revealing him to be dark-haired, and he shoved what was probably a second gun in there as well. All of that took maybe fifteen seconds, and now they were at the alley door to the newsstand. The balding guy reached out, caught the knob, looked back, saw that the alley was still deserted and that there was no one visible on the street, opened the door, tossed the valise inside, closed the door, and with the other guy took half a dozen steps toward Pine Street.

And the trap sprung.

It happened very quickly, and I found out later that Quartermain had had a man upstairs in the attic of the Old Bavarian Inn, equipped with a walkie-talkie and giving forth with a running commentary that let the others know exactly when the valise had been dumped and the two men were unarmed in the empty alley. Two plainclothesmen came out of the malt shop next to the newsstand and another one came out of the curio store that bordered the other side of the alley and Quartermain and Favor appeared from somewhere on my side of the street, running across; the five of them converged on the alley mouth, guns drawn, and I could see another team of officers sealing off the Pine Street mouth. The balding guy and the other one had no chance to fight and no place to run; they had gun muzzles in their bellies and handcuffs on their wrists within seconds. Quartermain and Favor had taken the newsstand, jerking open the alley door, rushing inside; they came out with the valise and with the tall guy, hands shackled behind his back, just as one of the local black-and-white cruisers was pulling into the passageway from Pine Street.

I let go of the table edge and sat back limply and said "Oh Christ!" aloud with soft reverence.

It had been just that kind of happening.