“Christ, will you shut up?” Wykopf said. “Kilduff knows his end of it, and so does Conradin.”
“Look, I’m nervous, that’s all.”
“We’re all nervous,” Drexel said. “Cool it, now.”
Wykopf hunched forward, peering through the leafy branches of one of the willow trees. “Here it comes.”
The armored car was almost halfway along the access road, less than fifty yards from where they were. Drexel’s hand worked spasmodically around the revolver’s grip. “Blow, baby,” he said softly. “Come on, baby, blow.”
And the car’s left front tire blew.
The heavy vehicle lurched to the side of the road, swaying as the driver fought for control, and finally shuddered to a stop. The door opened, and Felix Marik stepped out and went to inspect the damage, shouting something to the guards inside.
Drexel said, “Go!”
Beauchamp brought the tow truck out from its concealment and to a skidding halt, nose in to the armored car. Wykopf and Drexel were out and crouched ready, their guns held low and in close to their bodies, before the tow truck had ceased rocking. Marik whirled, his hand dropping toward the service pistol holstered at his side, but Drexel took two steps forward and put the muzzle of the revolver in his stomach. Marik’s hand froze in midair, and Drexel took the pistol and put it into the pocket of his coveralls.
He said in a cold, sharp voice, “If you want to live to see your family again, you get the guards out of there without their guns. Now, baby!”
Beauchamp swung down from the tow truck as Drexel and Wykopf pushed Marik toward the rear of the armored car. He had several small white flour sacks strung over his left arm.
From inside the car Lloyd Fosbury said, “Felix? What in hell’s going on out there?”
“Holdup,” Marik said tightly. “They want you to come out unarmed.”
“What!”
“You heard the man,” Drexel said. “Now if you want your friend Felix here to keep on living, you do exactly what we tell you. You got that, baby?”
There was silence from inside, and then Fosbury said, “Yeah. We’ve got it.”
“Unlock the doors,” Drexel said to Marik.
Marik obeyed the order, using a key from his belt ring. Drexel took the ring, and then motioned Marik to one side. He called out, “The outside locks are open now. You spring the inside locks and push one of the doors open just enough to throw out your guns. All of them. I don’t want to see anything come out of there but the guns.”
There was the sound of movement from inside the car, and then the left door opened just a little. Drexel and Wykopf, standing off to the side, held their breaths. Two service pistols like the one Marik had worn came flashing out and fell into the grass at the rear of the truck. The door closed again.
Drexel said, “Is that all?”
“That’s all,” Macklin, the other guard, said.
“Now come out, one at a time, with your hands on your heads. Nice and slow.”
The guards came out that way, and Drexel looked at Wykopf and nodded. “Watch them.”
“They’re all mine.”
Drexel motioned to Beauchamp, and the two of them went inside the armored car. They began to fill the white flour sacks from the canvas money sacks. When they had all the money—something more than $750,000, although they didn’t know that until later—they jumped out again, carried the flour sacks to the tow truck, and put them behind the seat. Then Drexel went back to where Wykopf was holding the three Smithfield employees.
“Into the car,” he said to them, and he and Wykopf herded them inside. Drexel threw the door closed and locked it with Marik’s key. He tossed the ring into the front seat of the armored car as he and Wykopf went by.
They climbed quickly into the tow truck, and Beauchamp backed the machine and got it turned around. They headed toward the entrance to State Highway 64 ...
A half mile to the south, in a sparsely traveled area just off the Maypark Road overpass, Fred Cavalacci sat nervously waiting in a wood-paneled 1954 Chevrolet station wagon. He looked at his watch for perhaps the twentieth time in the past ten minutes, and then up at the positioned rear-view mirror.
The tow truck appeared on the overpass.
Cavalacci took the ignition key, breathing through his mouth, and got out and opened the rear door. The tow truck pulled up parallel to the wagon, and Drexel and Wykopf and Beauchamp swung out of the cab. Drexel said, “Clockwork, Fred.”
Cavalacci nodded, exhaled, and drew back the heavy tarpaulin that lay on the floor of the wagon, revealing a wide rectangular space which had been hollowed out to form a pit. The four men then transferred the white flour sacks from the tow truck to the wagon. Three cars passed during the time it took them to make the switch, but none of the occupants took more than passing notice of what they assumed was a stalled motorist and the tow truck he had summoned.
When all the flour sacks were in the floor pit, Cavalacci rearranged the tarpaulin. They made sure no one was approaching in either direction, and then the four of them got inside the wagon. Cavalacci drove east, heading toward Collinsville, where they would meet Kilduff and Conradin.
They had gone almost a mile in silence when Cavalacci glanced at Drexel beside him. “We did it,” he said, and there was a touch of awe in his voice. “We pulled it off.”
“We did it, all right,” Drexel said. He pivoted on the seat, looking at Wykopf and Beauchamp in the back. And then he began to laugh, a soft, amused, tension-releasing sound that elicited smiles, laughter from the others.
“Oh, we did it,” he said, “we did it, we—did—it! And we’re going to get away with it, babies! The police are never going to catch us, you mark my words!”
Larry Drexel was right.
The police never caught them ...
October, 1970
BLUE ...
From the Evanston, Illinois, Review, October 3, 1970:
BUSINESSMAN KILLED, 4 HURT IN FREAK AUTOMOBILE EXPLOSION
Elgin businessman Frederick S. Cavalacci was killed last night, and four other prominent citizens were injured, when Cavalacci’s 1969 compact Chevrolet exploded in the Elks Club parking lot following an Urban Betterment League meeting.
Police sergeant Thomas Carlisle, the investigating officer, stated that there was the possibility of “fuel leakage from the carburetor somehow igniting, but we have no way of determining if this was the actual cause of the explosion.” Another of the officers on the scene said that the blast was “one of those tragic things that happen sometimes, a real freak.”
The other four men—David Keller, George R. Litchik, Nels Samuelson and Allan Conover—were treated for minor burns at County Memorial Hospital and subsequently released. Samuelson told reporters: “We had just come out of the meeting and were walking together toward our cars. We saw Fred get into his Camaro and heard the starter grind, and then there was this terrible, white-hot burst of flame. The concussion knocked us all off our feet. I thought the whole world had exploded.”
Cavalacci, 32, owned a half-interest in Bargains, Inc.—one of Evanston’s largest discount department stores. He was a native of Arden, Oklahoma, and came to this city in 1959. In 1963 he entered into partnership with Graham Isaacs of Evanston to establish Bargains, Inc. He was active in public affairs, and last year ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the City Council.
He is survived by his wife, Rona, and a seven-year-old daughter, Judith Anne.
GRAY...
From the Fargo, North Dakota, Forum, October II, 1970:
TRUCK MISHAP CLAIMS LIFE OF LOCAL MAN
Paul Wykopf, 34, owner of the X-Cel Trucking Company of Fargo, was crushed to death shortly past 7 p.m. last night in the company’s truck garage at 1149 State Street. A failing hand brake on one of the General Motors diesel cabs parked in the garage was blamed for the tragedy. The vehicle apparently rolled forward after the hand brake slipped, pinning Wykopf against one of the concrete walls. Death was instantaneous, police said.