My stomach contracted. Bank surveillance. This had to have something to do with the robbery. Trying for an unconcerned facade, I said, “Sure, Eddie. When do you want me? Now?”
“No, not till they close, at three.”
Oh, that was all right, then. Not all right, but at least I could still open my checking account today. “Fine,” I said. “You want to meet at the bank?”
“You know the luncheonette across the street? I’ll be in a front booth there at three.”
“Right,” I said.
He shot a starched work-shirt cuff and frowned at his watch. “I read,” he said slowly, gazing at the watch, “eleven- twenty-three.” Then he looked at me.
He wanted to synchronize watches! “Oh,” I said, and looked at my watch, and I read eleven-nineteen. “Right,” I said. “I mean, check.”
“See you at three,” he said, and marched off.
I looked at the bin of basketballs, but I didn’t feel like fouling up any more of them, so I went on and did productive things until lunch, and then went out and took care of business at the bank.
I had, of course, my choice between two banks: Western National and Federal Fiduciary. I wasn’t sure which of them I would go to as I walked downtown, and in fact I was leaning toward Western National since I’d been in there once with Phil, but when I got to the banks I remembered it was also Western National where I had pulled my milk box stunt. That bank had been the victim of my first-and so far only-felony, and I felt a certain embarrassment in its presence. So I opened my account at Federal Fiduciary, where they gave me a book of temporary checks and told me my check on the Rye bank should clear in three days.
Returning to the street, I found myself smiling around at the downtown scene with an air almost proprietary. In some damn way, this was becoming my home town. I was a local boy now, with a Post Office box and a bank account of my very own.
And my own civilian clothing, at least partly. I was still wearing the borrowed shirt and pants, but out of my ill- gotten gains I’d bought myself a good wool sweater and a heavy leather jacket. Winter was settling in for a long visit in upstate New York, and I meant to be ready for it.
If only I could be ready for everything else that was going to happen around here. Spending the next hour browsing through the local stores, easing along with the ebb and flow of Christmas shoppers, stopping to look at model railroad displays, I couldn’t stop brooding about the upcoming bank robberies. What was I going to do? What could I do?
Nothing. Wait and see. Ride with events, and hope for the best.
God.
14
AT THREE O’CLOCK I met Eddie Troyn in the luncheonette, at a front booth by a window facing the street. He looked at his watch as I slid into the seat opposite him, and said, “Four minutes after.”
I looked at my own watch, which read three on the button. “Check,” I said.
Looking out the window, he said, “You understand the mission?”
“No, I don't.”
He gave me a quick pursed-lip glance, then looked out the window again. The whole world was run too sloppily for his taste. “Communication in this outfit is hopeless,” he said.
“Nobody told me anything,” I agreed.
“We watch Fiduciary Federal,” he said. “We mark everybody who goes in or out between closing time and the departure of the last employee.”
I looked over at Fiduciary Federal. Through the big windows I could see there were still several customers inside. A guard was standing just inside the mostly-glass doors, letting each customer out when they were finished. “Right,” I said.
“Not counting those customers,” he said.
“Oh.”
He glanced away from the bank long enough to push a notebook and ballpoint pen toward me. “You’ll write down what I tell you,” he said. “Every fifteen minutes we’ll reverse assignments.”
“Right,” I said.
I opened the notebook and poised the pen, and nothing happened. I watched Eddie, and Eddie watched the bank, and nothing at all happened. After a while my fingers began to cramp and I put the pen down. After another while my eyes began to water and I looked away from Eddie -out the window, in fact, in the general direction of the bank.
After about ten minutes a waiter came to take our orders. He was a high school boy with an after-school job, and he did not have his entire heart and soul in this activity. It took him a long while to understand that we wanted two cups of coffee, and when he wandered away I was fully convinced we’d never see him again. With or without coffee.
As a place to have a quick snack, this luncheonette wasn’t maybe the best in the world. As a place in which to establish a stakeout without drawing any attention to ourselves, it was ideal. We couldn’t have drawn that boy’s attention if we’d set ourselves on fire.
At three-fifteen I said, “My turn.” Since I was already looking at the bank, that simple statement was all I had to do in order to take over the watch.
Peripheral vision told me that Eddie had taken back the notebook and ballpoint pen.
This was very boring. Partly for something to do, and partly because I was morbidly interested in the details of the felony I’d been committed to, I asked after a while, “How are we going to do this thing anyway? Those banks look pretty solid.’’
“You haven’t been told the plan?”
“As you pointed out,’’ I said, while still watching nothing happen at the bank across the street, “communication is not this outfit’s strong suit.”
I could hear the doubt in his voice, as he said, “We operate pretty much on a need-to-know basis.”
I looked at him. “I’m a member of this gang, aren’t I?”
“Watch the bank,” he said.
I watched the bank. The last customer had departed ten minutes ago, and nothing else had happened since. Nevertheless, I watched the bank. I said, “I’m a member of this gang, aren’t I?”
“Of course,” he said. “We’re all on the same team.”
“Then I need to know,” I said.
“You’re probably right,” he said. I could hear him coming to a fast yet solid decision. “Very well,” he said. “We’ll begin with an unauthorized entry into Fiduciary Federal following the close of the business day.”
“How do we do that?”
“This observation of routine is helping to establish that question,” he said.
Sometimes it took a few seconds to get through Eddie’s words to what he was saying. The military prism through which he viewed the world made him at times a bewildering conversationalist. But very neat. Working my way through this one, I came to the kernel of thought at the center, and suddenly realized the gang didn’t yet know how they were going to get into that bank.
Hope blossomed in me, out of season.
Eddie said, “Having gained access to the interior, we will then require the personnel remaining in the bank to telephone their homes and explain to their next of kin that an unexpected state audit of the bank’s records will necessitate their working late, possibly through the night.”
I nodded. Nobody went in or out of the bank. Inside there, clerks moved back and forth, involved with the closing activities of the day.
Eddie said, “We will then induce the senior officer present to open the vault.”
That word ‘induce.’ I didn’t like that word ‘induce.’
Eddie said, “You can’t watch the bank with your eyes closed.”
I opened my eyes. “Just blinking,” I said. “Your eyes get tired when you keep looking like this.”
“Four minutes left to your tour,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “What about the other bank?”
“Just watch Fiduciary Federal,” he said.
“No, I meant the robbery. How do we get into Western National?”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s the brilliance of the scheme. Joe Maslocki deserves the citation for that.”
“Fine,” I said. I thought dark thoughts about Joe Maslocki.
“When the Fiduciary Federal building was put up, seven years ago,” Eddie said, “it was necessary to short-circuit a part of the alarm system used in the Western National vault.”