The Split p-7 Read online

  ‘All right. Then what?’

  ‘We got three locks to get through and we’re in the finance office. Then we wait till morning.’

  Negli said, ‘It’s good, Parker, you know it is. It’s worth your time coming here.’

  ”If it plays like Dan says it does, and if there’s a way out.’

  Kifka said, ‘So what do you want to do?’

  ‘Is there anything doing out to the stadium tonight or tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Middle of the week? Nothing.’

  ‘Then we do a run-through,’ Parker said. ‘Tonight. We want lock impressions anyway, so we can move faster when the time comes.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  They ran it through later that night, and it worked just as Kifka had said it would. Negli went over the North Gate and a minute later let the other three through a green door in the brick wall about ten paces away to the left. They were under the grandstand in a kind of concrete tunnel. Lighting their way with flashlights, they followed the tunnel around to the right and came out in the basement of the stadium building, next to a metal staircase. They went up two flights and Arnie Feccio worked silently and speedily on a locked door. There was no alarm system here, and no guards inside the stadium at night, although private police did patrol the general area by car.

  Kifka led the way past the first locked door to the second, which led onto the corridor to the finance office. Feccio got them through this door, too, and then through the third, and they were in the finance office.

  The finance office was actually three offices separated by room dividers of wood and glass, plus a small closed-off workroom containing supplies and a mimeograph machine.

  They looked the place over, decided the workroom would be the place to spend the night when the time came, and retraced their steps, Feccio taking the time to study the locks as they went so they’d have keys when they came back.

  Outside in the car, Kifka said, ‘Well? How does it look?’

  ‘We can get in,’ Parker said.

  Kifka nodded. ‘Right. And the question is, can we get out? Right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘If we can get in, we can get out. We’ll have to work on it.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Parker said. ‘It’s been a long day. I need a place to stay while I’m here.’

  ‘With a woman or without?’

  Parker hesitated, then said, ‘With.’ Not that he expected to want her, not just yet. Before a job he never had any interest in women, or in anything else but the job itself. But he would want her afterwards, when he would make up for lost time.

  Kifka had gotten him Ellie. Not exactly a pro, hardly an amateur. She wasn’t sharing her place with anybody at the moment and she didn’t mind sharing with Parker so long as he came with an introduction from somebody she knew and was willing to pay for the groceries and incidentals. She seemed surprised when Parker let her know the first night that nothing was expected just yet, but she didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  That almost summed her up. In her clothing, her appearance, her apartment, her life, in everything, she didn’t care one way or the other. She was a good-looking girl, but Parker never really noticed it unless she was nude. She wore her clothing so sloppily that with it on she looked like a lesbian gym teacher on a cross-country hike. Her black hair was too long and too full and too infrequently combed. She daubed lipstick on from time to time, but otherwise she never used makeup. And she treated the apartment the same way she treated herself: negligently.

  She had some sort of daytime job that didn’t require she be particularly neat. Parker never asked her what her work was, and she never volunteered the information. Her style was very much like Parker’s own, silent and self-contained. They spent hours in the same room without either saying a word.

  Parker was pleased by her. She didn’t jabber away at him, and he never had to tell her anything twice. Kifka had done better than could have been expected.

  The job pleased him too. In more sessions with the others, they gradually worked out a plan for getting themselves and the cash out of the stadium and safely in the clear. The final plan needed seven men, so they recruited three more, all pros they’d worked with in the past. Abe Clinger was a fast talker, could be a guard or a finance office employee or whatever you wanted. Ray Shelly and Pete Rudd were drivers and general strong-arms.

  Kifka was actually running the job, though he wasn’t asking more than his seventh. But he arranged for the financing, and he was the one who’d seen the possibilities in the job to begin with, having worked at the stadium the year before. His apartment remained headquarters, where they met and worked out the details.

  Financing ran steep. They wanted a minimum of five pistols and two machine guns, plus two cars and an ambulance and a truck. The only things that really caused trouble were the machine guns, unlicensed ownership of which is a Federal offence. But they got everything they needed in plenty of time.

  They kept the vehicles in a closed-down gas station on a secondary highway out of town. The two cars were a seven-year-old black Buick, a fat monster that looked like something with gland trouble, and a little gray Renault Dauphine, which looked like something the Buick had just spat out. The truck was a gray GM van, four years old, with a rotten transmission. The ambulance was a smaller version of the van, the sort of ambulance used in wars and on airfields and at football games.

  All the vehicles but the Buick needed work of one kind in another. The stunted rear seat of the Renault was pulled out to leave plenty of room for the two suitcases.

  The van was given a company name on its doors - CITY SCRAP METAL CORP - and a bunch of old metal barrels were put in the back, lined along one side. Two long two-by-twelve boards were laid in on the floor.

  The ambulance was the most work. It had been used as a grocer’s delivery truck most recently, so it had to be completely repainted, two coats of white sprayed on and then the red crosses painted in place. Lights that had been removed when it had stopped, being an ambulance were put back, and two boards like those in the van were put on the floor in back.

  By Friday night they were ready. At nine-thirty all of them but Shelly and Rudd were in the Buick, parked by the North Gate. Kifka and Negli got out carrying folding chairs and brown paper bags full of sandwiches and look up their post by the gale. When the coast was clear, Kifka boosted Negli over the fence, then sat down on his camp chair and unfolded a newspaper to read by the streetlight. A couple of minutes later he folded the paper up again and stretched, which meant Negli had opened the door in the darkness to the right of the gate. Parker and Feccio and Clinger got out of the Buick, Parker carrying the two suitcases, Feccio and Clinger carrying blanket-wrapped parcels that were the machine guns.

  The door was open, Negli inside waiting for them. They went through and shut the door and Negli took out a flashlight with electric tape over most of the glass in front, so when he flicked it on only a thin beam of light arrowed out to show them where they were.

  Outside, Parker knew, Kifka would wait a few more minutes, then gather up his gear and get into the Buick and drive home. He and Shelly and Rudd wouldn’t have anything to do until tomorrow.

  Inside, Negli led the way with the flashlight. They’d been over this route before, but this time it was easier because they had keys for all the doors. They settled into the finance office storeroom and waited for morning.

  The day started early. Employees and guards dribbled in between seven and eight-thirty, and each was taken care of in turn. The guards were stripped of their uniforms, tied and gagged, and left in the storeroom with Negli holding one of the machine guns on them. With any operation of this kind, a machine gun’s main use was psychological. Nobody wanted to have to fire one of them, because of the mess and the racket they made, But merely showing a machine gun to a mark was usually enough to make him a lot more peaceful and agreeable than any other weapon could have.

  After all the employees had arrived, th
e money started coming in. Feccio stood out of sight of the corridor door, holding the second machine gun on the employees seated at their tables. He and Parker, who answered the door every time more money arrived, were now dressed in guard uniforms. Clinger, now in shirt sleeves, played the part of an employee, accepting and signing for each delivery of money as it came in.

  They had the employees stack the cash in the suitcases without counting it. The sacks of change that also came in were ignored, being too bulky and awkward for their value, as well as being almost impossible to spend.

  Parker looked at his watch at eleven o’clock and knew the others were getting started on the outside. Rudd was getting the truck and driving it to a place seven blocks from the stadium, inside the city limits. Shelly by now had driven the Renault inside the ambulance, where it fit snugly but did fit, and he was ready to leave for the stadium when the time came. And Kifka was driving the Buick to meet Rudd, to leave the Buick parked against the curb directly behind the truck, so that space would be sure to be available when it was needed.

  The football game began at one-thirty, and the box offices closed at one-fifty. By five after two, as the second quarter was starting with Monequois ahead seven to three and Shelly was starting the ambulance engine and heading toward the stadium, the employees in the finance office were stacking the last of the gate receipts into the two suitcases. Parker checked with Negli, but the guards were still being good.

  Two-fifteen. Monequois was ahead now ten to three, and Shelly was arriving in the ambulance at the stadium’s East Gate, where the patrolman waved him on through. Shelly, aseptic in white jacket and white shirt and white trousers, waved back and drove on into the stadium. A short cinder driveway led him around the corner of the end zone bleachers and out into the view of seventy-four thousand people.

  As with most such stadiums, this one had been built for more spoils than football. A cinder track made a huge oval around the football field, for track events. Shelly drove slowly along this the length of the field, on the south side, and headed for the stadium building at the far end. On his left, thousands of people cheered and hollered and jumped up and down. On his right. Plainfield was finally on the march. Shelly fell a little self-conscious, but nobody was actually looking at him. There’s always an ambulance or two along the sidelines at a football game, but the fans don’t like to look at it or be reminded it’s there.

  One hundred yards, still and all, had never been so long. Shelly honked for a girl cheerleader toting a huge megaphone to get the hell out of the way. She got, glaring at him. He passed a legitimate ambulance parked on the grass between the cinder track and the western end zone; the driver, lounging against the front fender, turned his head and waved languidly. Shelly waved back.

  At the western end of the stadium, the cinder path ended and Shelly crossed a narrow patch of grass to a lane of blue-gray stones that led around to a blacktop parking area behind the building. Shelly drove around there and parked against the rear wall.

  The parking lot was full of the cars of employees of the stadium and a few chartered buses from Plainfield. There was no one in sight; bus drivers and all, they were around on the other side of the building watching the game.

  Upstairs, Parker went over to the window and looked out and saw Shelly down there. He motioned to him and turned back to help with the finishing up. The employees had to be tied and gagged like the guards and dragged into the storeroom. When that was done, Parker took the rope he’d brought in with him, tied one end to the radiator, and attached the other end to the two suitcases. Feccio helped him lower the two suitcases down to Shelly, who took them off the rope and slowed them away in the back of the Renault inside the ambulance. They lowered the machine guns next, and finally they came down the rope themselves, one at a time. Parker and Clinger trawled into the back of the ambulance and squeezed into the Renault. Feccio, still in his guard uniform, sat up front with Shelly in the cab of the ambulance, while Negli found enough room between the back of the Renault and the rear doors of the ambulance to be more or less comfortable.

  It was now two twenty-five. Plainfield was on the Monequois eight-yard line, first and goal to go, three minutes and seventeen seconds left in the first half. Monequois was still leading ten to three. Plainfield had one chance to tie the score before the half. The seventy-four thousand fans present had never seen a more exciting ball game.

  So it was just an added fillip when the ambulance came tearing around from behind the stadium building, red lights flashing and siren screaming, racing across the cinder track from one end of the field to the other while the Plainfield quarterback threw an incompleted pass into the end zone and cheerleaders scattered in all directions. The ambulance roared out through the East Gate, turned right, and shrieked away toward the city.

  It went one block, and the siren stopped and the red lights clicked off.

  Another block and the ambulance pulled to the curb. Feccio jumped out, ran around back, opened the rear doors, and helped Negli position the boards for Parker to back the Renault out. They were on a side street with no traffic and no pedestrians, but they didn’t care if they were seen or not. Neither of these vehicles mattered.

  Feccio and Negli got back into the rear of the ambulance, shutting the doors after them. Shelly kicked the ambulance into motion again, turned left at the next corner, left again at the next, and drove for five minutes at high speed, rapidly leaving the city behind. He stopped at a roadside ice-cream stand, closed for the season, behind which Feccio and Negli had stashed their car. They abandoned the ambulance there, and Feccio and Negli drove Shelly to his hideout and then went on to theirs.

  Behind them, Parker and Clinger had gone off in the opposite direction in the Renault. Clinger looked at his watch and said, ‘Two-thirty on the button.’

  Parker said, ‘Good.’

  He turned a corner, and three blocks ahead on the right was the truck. As he approached it, the Buick pulled out from behind it and stopped in the middle of the street. Kifka got out and ran around to the back of the van, where Rudd was already placing the boards.

  Parker angled the Renault in behind the Buick and stopped long enough for Kifka and Rudd to be sure the boards were positioned right, and then he drove the Renault up inside the truck.

  No one saw it happen. A factory, closed on Saturday, was on their right, and the high board fence of a junkyard was on the left.

  Parker and Clinger got out of the Renault while Kifka and Rudd were shoving the boards back up into the truck. The four of them all worked inside the truck for a minute, moving the empty barrels into position across the opening at the rear of the truck, lashing them into place with ropes. Their unused pistols were tossed into the back of the Renault with the machine guns and the suitcases.

  ‘We didn’t need all this extra,’ Clinger said as they were putting the barrels in place. ‘They still don’t know what happened back there.’

  ‘You couldn’t count on it ahead of time,’ Kifka told him. ‘If the alarm went out right away, they’d know nothing but an ambulance had left the stadium recently, and they’d be all over the place looking for that ambulance. We had to be able to make a fast switch to another car, and then we had to be able to hide that car and the loot. That’s where baby came in.’ He motioned at the Renault. ‘It’s like a traveling briefcase. Out of the ambulance, into the truck.’

  ‘All the same,’ Clinger said, ‘I’m just as happy we didn’t need all this.’

  They got down out of the truck, and Parker put the last barrel in position. Then he crawled through the glassless window at the front of the box into the cab. Kifka and Rudd and Clinger got into the Buick and took off.

  Now, for the next five days, the money was Parker’s responsibility. He knew where Kifka was staying because Kifka was staying at home. He didn’t know where any of the others were staying because there was no need for him to know; it wouldn’t be bright to contact them anyway, and at the time it didn’t seem there’d be any re
ason to contact them. In five days they would all get together again, this time at Ellie’s place, and divvy up the money. By splitting up this way and by not trying to clear out of the city and the area, they would make it more difficult for the law to get any kind of lead to them.

  Parker just sat in the truck and smoked and waited. A little after three, police cars started rushing by, hurrying this way and that, and Parker heard sirens sounding in the distance, but nobody stopped to question him or search the truck. One prowl car did slow down, but a truck full of metal barrels could hardly be involved in the robbery.

  At four o’clock, Parker started the engine and drove slowly away from there. He drove all the way through the city to the freight yards and parked the truck on Railroad Street, down from the main freight office. Parked and laden trucks lined both sides of the street along here, most of them here for the weekend. Parker climbed out, left the truck doors unlocked, and walked away. He walked three blocks, caught a cab, and went on back to the apartment. Ellie wasn’t home; he found out later she’d gone to the game. She was a Monequois fan.

  At nine that night he went back downtown and picked up the truck and drove it over to the block containing Ellie’s apartment building. Going through the window between body and cab each time, he transferred everything from the Renault to the closet of Ellie’s apartment. The suitcases he carried up in one trip, and then the machine guns wrapped in blankets. The pistols he carried up in his pockets. When everything was stashed, he drove the truck downtown again, abandoned it for the last time, took another cab back, and went in to see Ellie. The job was done; he could feel himself unwinding.

  Seeing how lackadaisical Ellie was about everything else in life, Parker hadn’t expected her to be more in bed than a receptacle, but she surprised him. He had found the one thing that made her pay attention. For three days and nights they hardly left the bed at all, and the whole time she was nothing but stifled mumblings and hard-muscled legs and hot breath and demanding arms and a sweat-slick pulsing belly. All the passion that had been dammed up inside Parker while his one-track mind had been concentrating on the robbery now burst forth in one long sustained silent explosion, and Ellie absorbed it all the way a soundproof room absorbs a shout.