Pretty soon he finished the cup, pondering whether he could get away with turning on the truck’s radio for a while and listening to some music. But that might keep him from being able to follow the nonadventures of the Davenport cops and company on the scanner; and he had strict orders from Nolan to keep monitoring that, so to hell with it. Besides, he had to pee.
He put his coat on and climbed out of the cab and went back near the loading dock and had just unzipped his pants and exposed his member to the shriveling night cold when he realized he could hear voices, just inside.
Father and son voices.
Cole and Lyle Comfort.
They were talking as they stood in there, by the mouth of the trailer, which was still in the process of being loaded up. Though the truck was backed fairly flush up against the loading dock, the voices squeezed through.
“You lost it?”
“I’m sorry, Pa.”
“Well, get another one from one of the Leech boys.”
“I will. Pa, I looked all over for it.”
“Is that why you were so late?”
“Well, she gave me a little trouble. That’s how I lost it.”
“But you did do your job?”
“Sure, Pa.”
There was a pause; Jon stood there, dick in hand, bladder about to burst, and listened.
“You did good, son,” Comfort said, the anger out of his voice.
“I hate to lose my birthday gun,” Lyle said, woefully.
“It’s all right, son. I’ll buy you a new one. Too damn bad there ain’t a gun shop in this fucker, or we’d just steal you one.”
“Thanks, Pa.”
“Here comes the Leeches. Better pitch in some.”
Jon, feeling shell-shocked, moved away from the loading-dock area, and stood facing the back wall of the mall and when his urine hit it, steam rose.
Nolan did his share of loading, but mostly he supervised, making sure the right things were being taken.
For example, he put Dooley in charge of the collectibles shop. He knew the locksmith would have the right touch to handle the Hummels and the collector’s plates and other valuable knickknacks; those on display had to be put in their boxes — original-boxed goods were always easier to fence, and with collectibles like these that was especially true.
In the camera shop, he directed two of the Leeches, each lugging a couple of footlockers they’d found at Penney’s, to take nothing under a hundred dollars, and later gave them exactly the same advice in the Singer outlet, where they loaded their hand trucks with sewing machines in cartons.
In the department stores, he had various of the players strip items off wheeled clothing racks to make room for some selective shopping, loading up on designer clothes. I. Magnin, though, had whole racks of designer duds just waiting to be wheeled out, and easily matched the Haus of Leather where furs were concerned — also, several display cases of jewelry (no vault there) were broken into and emptied into waiting luggage, some of it imported leather pieces from Magnin itself.
Nolan by no means lost himself in the work, however: he kept an eye on Comfort and Lyle, both of whom kept their distance from him. He had been thinking over what Jon had told him of the conversation between Lyle and his pa. Behind his cool supervisory demeanor, a storm brewed.
It was just after four when Nolan cornered Comfort in Magnin’s, where the coveralled, white-haired bandit was walking down the aisle with a suitcase in either hand, crammed with who knew what, thimbles and Snicker bars maybe, heading through ladies’ wear toward the double doors that would lead into the storeroom and the final loading dock.
Nolan smiled. “Satisfied with your shopping spree so far, Cole?”
Comfort stopped in the aisle, did not put down the bags; smiled back, rather nervously, Nolan thought. “I surely am. You and me, we’ve had our differences. But you come through for me on this. And I ain’t gonna forget it.”
“Good. That’s quite a wallop your boy seems to have taken.”
“He fell on the ice.”
“Looks like he got hit with something.”
“He fell on the ice. Excuse me, these is heavy.”
“I keep my promises, Cole. Remember that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah — look. We’ll shoot the fuckin’ breeze some other time. Time is money, Nolan! We’re running out of time, here.”
“Yes we are,” Nolan said.
At four-fifteen, two jewelry stores under his belt, a tired but self-satisfied Roger Winch walked into the First National branch bank, duffel bag in hand; he looked like a bum, in his old clothes, but that just went with the territory: you had to be able to discard your clothes, after a job, as the telltale dust from a safe blowing clung to clothes, making prime evidence for the prosecution. Roger had never done time and had no intention, at this late date, of ever doing so.
A few lights were on, behind the row of teller cages, which were decked with holly and some twinkling Christmas lights. The big NCR safe, olive-colored, stucco-surfaced, was at his left as he entered, on a pedestal; this was to help facilitate its use as a card-activated cash machine, outside. A fully trimmed Christmas tree, under which were bogus gifts, stood next to it.
This automated teller machine — which was called Presto-Change-O, the sort of cutesy name these bank cash machines always seemed to have — was open twenty-four hours. That was one of the reasons Nolan had suggested doing the bank safes last — later at night, the less likely many (if any) customers would be hitting up Presto-Change-O for cash.
The computer within the safe would probably shut down, once Roger blew the door; but ATMs going on the blink was nothing new — though an answering service would automatically be called by Presto-Change-O in the machine’s last breaths before doing its disappearing act, no one would service the thing till tomorrow. And any stray, late-night/early-morning customers encountering the uncooperative machine would dismiss it with a “goddamn.”
The face of Presto-Change-O was actually the ass of the safe, extending out of the bank’s brick outer wall to greet the public in such a way that even if some customer did come along at four- fifteen this morning, he or she wouldn’t see Roger Winch in the process of performing what was known in the trade as a jam shot.
Normally Roger would have laid out all of his tools and equipment on the top of the safe; but, due to the pedestal it was on, the NCR was too tall for that. So Roger pulled a desk around and removed items from his duffel bag, arranging his things carefully, in order, on the desktop, like a chef assembling his ingredients. These included: soap, Fels Naphtha brand, which was malleable and just the right consistency to keep the grease (nitro) from draining through; the grease, a couple of ounces in a medicine bottle, cushioned by twice as much water; a folded strip of cellophane, eight inches long, half an inch wide; a box of wooden kitchen matches, four of which he removed and set out; a knocker — a small metal cap with fulmonite of mercury in it (a lot of guys these days used electric detonators, but the art of this game, Roger felt, was knowing how to properly use a fuse-type knocker) with five inches of fuse crimped in the knocker’s open end; a razor blade; a flashlight; a crowbar; and some rubber gloves, which he now put on.
Whistling “Strangers in the Night,” Roger inserted the strip of cellophane lengthwise into the space between the safe’s door and door frame. Then he took the soap, which he’d already limbered up at the motel before coming, and sculpted a funnel-shaped cup around the cellophane strip. He made it fit nice and snug; mustn’t allow any grease to trickle down the front of the door. Then he gently withdrew the cellophane, which left a narrow passage through the soap where the grease could flow.