‘Here they come,’ Donohue said suddenly.
I looked up. The Bonomo cleaning crew was coming out of the antique shop.
‘My turn,’ Black Jack said. He opened the door on his side, if she gives you any trouble,’ he said, ‘kill her.’
He was speaking to Angela, but he was looking at me when he said it.
I hope I never see eyes like that again. Holes. Empty. Deep, deep pits.
I watched him go. He timed it just right, hesitating on the traffic side of the doubleparked cars until the Bonomo crew had gone to the rear of their van and opened the doors.
They stood frozen. Then Donohue was behind them, hands at their backs, shoving them forward. Other hands from inside the van reached out, yanked them in. No shouts. No screams. No shots. It had been done.
I let out a long, quavering sigh. Angela hadn’t been watching the action. She had been watching me. And that knife blade never wavered, never drooped.
‘Angela,’ I said desperately, ‘why don’t we-”
‘Shut up your mout’,’ she said tonelessly. ‘You jus’ do like you was tole. You jus’ drive, that’s all you do. You say nuttin. You unnerstan’? Nuttin. Ever’ word you say, I cut you a leetle.’
So I said nuttin. I want this clearly understood: At that moment, and during what followed, I was absolutely certain that she meant what she said, that she was capable of cutting me and killing me. That’s why I did what I did. I was in fear of my life. I want everyone to know that. I acted under duress. I am not legally responsible for what happened.
I watched again in the rearview mirror. I saw the Bonomo driver climb out of the rear of the van. Jack Donohue was close behind him, a hand in his coverall pocket. The two men, walking almost in lockstep, moved to the passenger side of the van’s cab. The Bonomo driver got in first and slid across the seat. Donohue followed him inside and slammed the door.
Nothing happened. I glanced at my watch. About 8:53. A few minutes early. We waited. Then, at 8:57 the motor of the cleaning truck was started. It slowly, carefully, pulled out around us into the northbound traffic. I got a glimpse of the driver as they passed. His face was white. He looked like he was about to weep. Then I felt a light prick from Angela’s knife. The tip sliced through cloth coat, dress, and touched my flesh. Just touched. It was enough. I pulled out after the cleaning truck, not tailgating but close enough so no other car could cut between us.
That’s when I heard the sirens, a lot of sirens and buffalo whistles. They were coming from the west and south. I knew what they were: squad cars, fire engines, and the bomb disposal truck, all converging on Rockefeller Center in answer to those diversionary phone calls Jack Donohue had set up. That son of a bitch!
We turned west on 55th Street. The cleaning truck pulled to a stop in front of Brandenberg amp; Sons. I pulled up behind it. There was no parking allowed on this street, so the van was able to angle in to the curb. I was farther back, doubleparked outside a truck apparently unloading material for the construction site on the Madison Avenue corner.
The Bonomo driver and Donohue got out of the cab. They went to the rear of the van. The driver pulled out a mop and a small, canister-type vacuum cleaner. Then he marched up to Brandenberg’s. Donohue was close behind him. He was carrying a pail in one hand. The other hand was still in his coverall pocket.
They stood an instant outside the door. It was unlocked almost immediately.
Then the rear doors of the van swung wide again. The five men, stockinged heads lowered, moved swiftly the few steps across the sidewalk. They pushed into the opened door on Donohue’s heels.
The door was closed behind them.
They were inside.
So far, everything I have related I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. What follows next I learned later from Dick Fleming and Jack Donohue …
The moment the door to Brandenberg amp; Sons is opened, Donohue shoves the Bonomo driver through. Shoves him so hard that the man stumbles forward, falls to his knees before a startled Noel Jarvis.
Jack whips out his gun, points it directly at the manager’s face, a few inches away. The masked thieves come rushing in, drawing their guns. Nothing is said. Nothing has to be said.
Hymie Gore and the Holy Ghost dash directly to the vault room. They are in before the outer door or the safe door can be locked. The two repairmen are herded into the main showroom. All employees are told to stand in the center of the floor, away from the silent alarms and the chair rail around the walls.
Noel Jarvis says — both Donohue and Dick Fleming remembered this later — ‘You’re making a mistake. A terrible mistake.’
All the employees are patted down. One of the clerks and one of the repairmen are carrying pocket transmitter alarms. More surprising, all three clerks are armed with short, blunt pistols in hip holsters. Transmitter alarms and weapons are confiscated.
All employees and the Bonomo driver are made to lie prone in the center of the showroom. Their wrists are tied behind them. Their ankles are roped. Just before their mouths are taped, Noel Jarvis repeats, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re making a terrible mistake.’ Then he, like the others, has his mouth and eyes taped shut.
The thieves remove their stocking masks and set to work.
The Holy Ghost watches over the fettered men. The others start smashing showcases and removing small leather packets from the safe. Everything goes into the pillowcases. There is no time for selection; everything is taken: rings, necklaces, watches, tiaras, earrings, cufflinks, unset gems, chokers, emeralds, bracelets, diamonds, gold, sapphires, silver, rubies — the works.
Dick Fleming is put to work closing the mouths of full pillowcases with strips of tape. He is under the gun of the Ghost.
The others empty all the showcases, the big safe in the vault room. They work swiftly, sweeping their loot into the pillowcases with the edges of their gloved hands. Very little talk. Very little confusion.
Donohue works as hard as the others, glancing at his watch occasionally.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ he says.
‘Another ten minutes,’ he says.
‘Five minutes left,’ he says.
They redouble their efforts, digging into bottom drawers in the display cases, cleaning out the show windows behind the drawn steel shutters, reaching deep into the big safe to pull out more of the black leather packets.
‘One more minute,’ Donohue says.
They drag their full pillowcases to the door. Fleming tapes up the mouths. There are fourteen bags of loot for the six men to carry.
‘We can’t manage,’ Clement says. ‘Too heavy.’
‘We can manage,’ Donohue says. ‘Hymie, take four.’
‘Sure, Jack,’ Hymie says.
Donohue says: ‘Smiley, Clement, Fleming go out first to the van. Hymie and the Ghost go next to the Chevy. I’ll be along as soon as I wedge the door shut. No wild running, but move quickly. Let’s go.’
From then on, I saw what happened.
Clement came out first, carrying a taped pillowcase in each hand. After him came Dick Fleming, also carrying two cases. He was closely followed by Smiley, who was lugging two pillowcases in one hand. The other hand was in his coverall pocket.
The three burdened men took a few swift steps to the rear of the Bonomo van. They opened the rear doors, threw their stuffed pillowcases inside. Clement and Fleming climbed in, closed the doors. Smiley went around to the driver’s side of the cab.
All this had been done in full view of a score of passing pedestrians. No one noted a thing. No one shouted or raised an alarm. Why should they? Three coveralled cleaning men were returning to their van, that’s all.
Then came Hymie Gore carrying four pillowcases in his big hands, and the Holy Ghost carrying two. They walked rapidly, purposefully, to where I was parked, threw their loot in the back seat, and climbed in.