But it wasn’t going to happen now, not over the gate guards. Parker nodded agreement with what Fusco had said, and turned to Stan, saying, “What time does the payroll get to the base?”
“To the base, or to our office?”
“Both. Base first.”
“The plane lands at nine-twenty. The money gets into the finance office no later than quarter to ten.”
“When does it start getting split up?”
“Right away. Six guys work on it all day long.”
“They work after hours?”
Stan grinned. “No, they get it done by five. I know, I’m one of the six, all we want is to be done and out of there by five o’clock.”
“Where’s this happen?”
Stan picked up one of the photos on the coffee table and handed it over to Parker. “In the Major’s office there. Where the vault is. See those two long tables along the left wall? That’s where we sit.”
“And the two boxes with the money?”
“In front,” Stan said. “Next to the glass wall here.”
“Is that glass bulletproof?”
“No, it’s just regular plate glass.”
“But the windows back here are barred.”
Stan shrugged. “That’s the way the Air Force does things.”
Ellen came quietly in at that point, carrying a cup of coffee for herself, and sat unobtrusively in the chair in the corner.
Parker said, “Besides the six men working on the payroll, who else is upstairs then?”
“Everybody who works up there,” Stan said. “About twenty people.”
“Anybody else in the room with the money?”
“The Major. And Lieutenant Wormley and Captain Henley. They both check out .45’s from Supply in the morning and stand around and play guard.”
“Describe them.”
“Wormley and Henley?” Stan shrugged. “Wormley’s like his name. A little creep, fresh out of ROTC. A nothing.”
“What about Henley?”
“He’s supposed to be an alcoholic,” Stan said. “I don’t know. He lives with his family in the dependent housing area, he’s got lots of kids, he’s in his forties, I hear he was passed over for major once, he likes to reminisce about when he was in Europe in the Second World War.”
“Does he know how to use a gun?”
Stan shrugged. “Beats me. All officers are supposed to be checked out on the .45. I figure Wormley just went to the firing range and shut his eyes and plugged away till they told him to stop. Maybe Henley did do some stuff in the Big War, I don’t know.”
Fusco had been listening, trying to figure out the characters of the men from Stan’s descriptions. He was pretty good at that, at working out what kind of a man somebody was and guessing what that kind of man would do in such a situation. Now he said, “That’s the one to look out for. Henley.”
Stan didn’t understand. He looked at Fusco and said, “The war was a long time ago.”
“Not for anything he learned in the war,” Fusco said. “If he’s a passed-over captain, maybe twenty-five years in the service, got a family, drinks too much, maybe he’s out to prove himself. Maybe he’d like to be a hero and make major.”
Stan squinted, thinking about it. “Henley? You just could be right. He does get belligerent sometimes.”
Parker said, “What about the Major? Who’s he?”
“Major Creighton,” Stan said. “Kind of a nice guy, grandfather type, easygoing, got a little white moustache. The WAFs say he’s always trying to cop a feel, but all I know is he sits in his office and looks at everybody working and doesn’t seem to give much of a damn.”
Parker said, “No other guards?”
“Not during the day. They come on at five o’clock, when we quit. I think they work two shifts, they must change around midnight or something. I’m not sure how that works.”
“All right. What time does the money leave the next morning?”
“First thing. About five or ten after eight. It goes down into the armored car and that’s the end of it.”
“The question is,” said Fusco, “do we want to go after it in the daytime the day before, or wait until night?”
“We can’t decide that yet,” Parker said.
“Yes we can,” said Stan. “You’ll have to do it in the daytime. You don’t dare try to move around that base at night. Besides, in the daytime all the guards are Wormley and Henley. Whatever Henley’s like, he’s an amateur at being a guard. At night, you’ve got APs to tackle, inside and out.”
“If we do it in the daytime,” Parker told him, “and there’s static, you’ll have to play it like we aren’t on your team. And we’ll have to play it that way, too.”
“You won’t have to gun me down,” Stan said, grinning.
“I know that. But you want to be there in uniform when we do it, with twenty witnesses around?”
“I’ll just stand there with my hands up,” Stan said, and stuck his hands into the air.
Fusco said, “Stan’s right, the daytime is our only chance. At least, that’s what I think.”
Parker seemed to be considering it. He picked up a couple of the photos, looked at them, put them down. “A daylight haul is tougher,” he said. “Let’s let it ride for a while. We’ll figure either way, day or night, we’re going to need three more men, including a driver. That’s six men, equal shares. You say there’s four hundred grand in the kitty?”
Stan said, “About that. A little more, a little less, it changes every payday.”
“About sixty-five thousand each,” Fusco said.
“We can build up an A string for that,” Parker said. He looked at Fusco. “You got any ideas?”
Fusco had. “There was a guy I met on the inside,” he said. “He was only in because he was finked on. He’d be out by now. He looked solid and dependable, and he knew a lot of the same guys we do.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jake Kengle.”
Parker shook his head. “I don’t know him. You know how to get in touch with him?”
“He gave me an address before I got out.”
“Give him a try. You know Philly Webb?”
“Sure,” said Fusco. “He drove for me once in Norfolk, he’s a good man.”
“I’ll contact him,” Parker said.
Fusco said, “What about that foreign guy? Salsa. He still around?”
“Dead,” Parker said, “Couple of years ago.”
From her corner, Ellen surprisingly said, “Bill Stockton’s always good.”
“That’s right,” Fusco said. To Parker he said, “You remember Stockton, don’t you? Tall, skinny as a flagpole, black hair straight up on top of his head. Sharpshooter.”
“I remember him,” Parker said. “You want to contact him, or should I?”
“I’ll do it,” Fusco said. “You see about financing.”
Stan said, “Financing? What’s that?”
Fusco explained to him: “We’ll have expenses beforehand. Guns maybe. A car, other things. We get financing from somebody outside, he gets back double if the caper works.”
“Why don’t we finance ourselves?”
Parker said, “If the money man is involved it tends to make for trouble. He starts acting like he’s got extra votes. It’s better to have it done on the outside.”
Fusco said, “The reason I thought you ought to handle that, Parker, money men tend to shy away from somebody been on the inside. Superstitious or something.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Parker said. To Stan he said, “How can we mount a night watch on the South Gate, same as what Fusco just did?”
“That’s easy,” Stan said. “I just sit there in a car. Nobody’ll bother about me.”
“We’ll need it from eleven-thirty tonight till about four tomorrow morning,” Parker said.