The Name of the Game is Death (9 page)

I finally shook them by traveling up into the Pacific Northwest and hooking on in a lumber camp. I never saw street lights for a year and a half. The work damn near killed me at first, but I got to enjoy it. And I practiced with a handgun almost every day. When I came out of there, I could handle a crosscut saw and a double-bitted ax with the best of them, and with a gun I could do things people pay to see.

I drifted into tree work later on. It seemed a natural for part-time work. It helped in getting a closeup look at places I was interested in, like banks. When I worked, I worked hard. I had no trouble catching on with a tree crew anytime I wanted a job.

I waited three years before I went back for the Massilon loot I didn't need the money—I'd had two good popovers bat k to hack but it seemed about time. The farmhouse was pair and the farm cut up into a subdivision. I had to buy a lot to do it, but I got the swag. The deed to the lot is still in a safety deposit box in the Riverman's Trust Company in ('Cincinnati.

Long before that I'd arranged with a shyster lawyer to send Barney Pope fifty a month, supposedly from an inheritance. Fifty a month is all a man is allowed to spend in a federal pen. Once I learned via the grapevine that the lawyer had missed sending it three months in a row. I made a flying trip cross-country to see him, and he never missed again.

In jail I used to read nights before lights-out. It was at Doc's insistence at first. Learn something, you stupid lunkhead, Doc would say to me. He had two gods, the dictionary and the encyclopedia. I read aloud to him from both because he had incipient cataracts. He could have had them operated on, but I think he was afraid to let them work on him while he had any light left.

An encyclopedia article would start him talking. He'd been everywhere and seen everything, twice. There was no degree from the school I attended, but I'd have had to be a complete jerk not to learn.

Doc had been a bank man himself. A blaster of the old dynamite and nitro school, when they still carried the nitro in flasks. He wasn't afraid to admit the world had passed him by. Forget the gangs, he told me. Forget the big, involved jobs that get hung up on the first weak link. Two good men is all it takes, he insisted. When you move, smash them. Never let up on the pressure. Never take a backward step once you're committed.

I listened, and I learned. While I was up in the lumber camp getting the smell of the FBI blown off me, I worked it all out down to the last few decimal places. I divorced myself for all time from the vault-blowing jobs and the armored-truck jobs. That was the hard way. A fast, clean operation: that's what I wanted. Hit-and-run. Smash-and-grab. Give them a look for a hundred-fifty seconds, average, with the disadvantage of surprise.

When I left the West Coast I drove to Atlantic City and looked up Bosco Sheerin. Bosco liked the sound of what I had to say. I was younger than he was, but he was a happy-go-lucky type, and he made no objection to my calling the plays. We had a run that was peaches-and cream until one night in Philadelphia the husband of Bosco's blonde girl friend came home early. Bosco wound up on a morgue slab with foreign matter in his gizzard, and I needed a new partner.

I picked up someone whenever I needed a man. I'm no big liver. I had a shack in Colorado at timberline on the road up to Pike's Peak. In June it would snow half the mornings, and in August there were still drifts in the backyard. I had another place near the Vermont-New Hampshire border on the Connecticut River. If I was there in August, I'd drive over to Saratoga and make the race meeting. Usually I spent part of every winter in New Orleans.

I went a year without turning a trick after Ed Morris was killed in a drunken argument in a bucket of blood in Santa Fe. I didn't need money. Then one night I met Bunny in a tavern in Newark. I watched him for a month, and I liked what I saw. He could handle himself, and he had the big advantage that he could pass as a
deaf
mute. He even knew the finger language. He'd been small-time before I picked him up, but he did as he was told. He had complete confidence in me after our first job. Bunny—

It was a damn shame.

I couldn't escape the feeling that I-was going to need another new partner.

I entered the Iatched-back doors of the Suncoast Trust Company and approached a gray-haired woman near the railing which enclosed the executive desks. "I'd like to see Mr. Craig," I said, handing her a Chet Arnold business card. "He won't know me. If he's busy, I'll wait."

"Will you have a seat, please, Mr. Arnold?" She rose and walked to the desk of a big man in a dark suit. She placed my card in front of him and said a few words. I gave him a Hash of the double-bitted ax in its straps on the side of the tool-kit when Craig looked up at me, and his glance lingered momentarily before he returned to the work on his desk. I sat down to wait.

The exterior of the bank was old-fashioned but the interior showed signs of a recent facelift. The indirect fluorescent lighting was bright without being harsh. The tellers' cages were behind head-high glass panels. The only bars visible were in the rear around the vault with its huge door gaping open.

A safe prediction nowadays is that a cosmetic job on a bank's interior will result in the appearance of a lot more glass at the expense of a lot less steel. They've made it a little too easy. The pendulum's got to swing the other way. People shoving notes through tellers' windows and walking out with paper bags full of cash are beginning to get under the skin of bank architects, to say nothing of the bonding companies.

Not too long ago knocking off a bank on a smash-and-grab was tough tissue. I believe it will be again. It goes in cycles. Now the thinking is positively no violence inside the bank. Whatever the bank robber wants, give it to him. Most likely it will be recovered, and if it isn't, it's insured.

Human nature being what it is, the script isn't always followed. Bank guards suddenly acquire hero complexes. So do bank customers. It's a rare banker who hasn't testified at an inquest or two concerning the final moments of such a paths-of-glory candidate.

The only real edge a pro has is in how he plans his getaway. The amateur is more likely than not to run straight into the arms of the beat patrolman outside the bank front entrance. Once on the sidewalk, the pro's three-in-ten chances of getting that far blossom into three-in-four of going the rest of the way.

The amounts of cash even branch banks carry today make anything over a job or two a year an unnecessary risk. A job or two leaves time to study an operation. Most bankers tend to become rigid in their defensive thinking. A little probing for the soft underbelly will usually—

"Mr. Arnold?"

I looked up. The big man was standing at a gate in the low railing, my card in his hand. I picked up my toolchest and followed him to his desk. Up close, his color was flat white, and pain lines were at the corners of his mouth. He had a big, lionlike head with shaggy gray hair. He was still looking at the ax, so before he sat down I slipped it from its loops and handed it to him.

He swung it lightly in his left hand, his right unbuttoning his jacket before he remembered where he was. He re-buttoned it. "Nice balance," he said. "Feels a bit light, though."

"You're a big man, Mr. Craig."

His mouth twisted wryly. "I
was
a big man." He sat down, running a fingertip along the helve. I hadn't made any mistake coming here; this man had seen an ax or two before. "Make your own handles?"

"Yes, sir."

"I used to, too. Except for boning and polishing them." He handed me the ax. "What's your business with me, Mr. Arnold?"

"I'd like to clean up the trees on your place on Golden Hill Lane, Mr. Craig. They need it."

He nodded. "References?"

"Nothing local. I've been working up around Bellingham, Washington, but I ducked out ahead of the rainy season. I'd be glad to meet you at your place at your convenience and show you what I can do. You were in lumber. I couldn't kid you for three minutes."

He nodded again. "Per diem or flat contract?"

"Write your own ticket, Mr. Craig," I said earnestly. "I'll do a job for you, because with your recommendation there's more work in the area I should be able to get. Like tin-Landscombe estate."

"Be out at my place at eight tomorrow morning," he said, rising to his feet. "When did you get into town, Arnold?"

"Yesterday afternoon." His calling me Arnold with no Mr. in front of it was the best sign yet. I had a foot well inside the door.

"I like your style. You've rounded up your information and boarded ship here this morning before the sun's over The yardarm. We've got a breed around here that doesn't move that fast. Eight o'clock," he repeated.

"I'll be there, Mr. Craig. And thanks."

"Don't thank me yet." His eyes had already returned to the papers on his desk. "If you can't cut the mustard, you don't get the job. And you're right about one thing: you won't be able to fool me. See you in the morning."

"With bells on," I promised. I slipped the ax back into its straps while I walked away from his desk. Outside the executive enclosure, I walked to a window, caught a fat lady's eye, and opened up a checking account with eighteen hundred dollars in cash.

On the way out I glanced at Craig's desk. I was sure he'd know about that deposit by the time I saw him in the morning. I wanted him to know. I wanted to look like something more than a fly-by-night county-jumper.

Around Hudson, Florida, Roger Craig's good will could be as sharp a tool as any I had in my kit.

That afternoon I called Jed Raymond's real estate office from the Lazy Susan. "Chet Arnold, the tree man, Jed," I said when I had his molasses drawl on the line "Where do you recommend I do my drinking in town?"

"There's a place a little north of town on 19, Chet. The name is the Dixie Pig, but everyone calls it Hazel's."

"Can I get a meal there?"

"If you're not a vegetarian. Hazel's got a habit of running a slab of beef between a candle and a lightbulb and calling it a well-done steak. You've got to watch that her beef doesn't get up from the platter and bite you back."

"That's for me. See you there?"

"Not tonight." Regret tinged his voice. "I'm doin' a little livin'-room-couch missionary work with a gal whose daddy's plannin' a new development. Ain't it hell what a man's got to do to make a livin'? Say, how'd you make out with Roger Craig?"

"I take a test flight in the morning."

"Hurray for our side. Tell Hazel I sent you, Chet. An' don't let her bull you around. She's a character."

"What kind of a character, Jed?"

He laughed. "You'll see," he predicted. He laughed again and hung up.

I showered, shaved, and dressed. A drink and a good steak sounded just about right. I drove north from the Lazy Susan in the early twilight. Five hundred yards beyond the business district I took my foot off the gas pedal when a big German shepherd burst out of some underbrush and loped along the shoulder of the road in front of me.

I was still trying to decide if he was going to cut across in front of me when a blue sedan swung around me. It must have been doing sixty-five in a thirty-mile zone. The driver crossed over sharply, almost cutting me off, shot out onto the shoulder, and hit the dog. Deliberately.

At the last second the shepherd either heard or sensed the car. He jumped sideways, but not far enough. Either the fender or the wheel rolled him down into the ditch. The blue sedan veered back onto the highway and roared off down the road.

I stuck my foot into the accelerator and held it there for three seconds. Then I backed off. I couldn't afford to catch that sonofabitch. II I left him in a ditch I'd be jeopardizing the project that had brought mc to Hudson. I braked the Ford, put it in reverse, and backed up. Maybe I could do something for the dog.

I stood on the edge of the ditch and looked down. The shepherd was trying to get up. He had a long scrape on his head and one leg wasn't supporting him. I reached in the car window and got my jacket, wrapped it tightly around my left hand and forearm, and scrambled down the bank. The shepherd was still floundering. "You gonna let me help, fella?" I asked him. I held out the wrapped arm until it touched him. I had to know if he was hurting so bad he'd bite anything he came in contact with.

He didn't bite. I moved closer, stooped down, and picked him up. He growled a little, but that was all. An animal has to be in a real bad way to bite me. They just don't do it. He was a big dog, and it was a steep climb, but I made it to the car and put him on the front seat. I turned around and started back toward town. A guy walking on The road told me where I could find a vet.

"Shoulder sprain," the vet said when he'd gone over the shepherd on the table. "And a few gashes. Nothing serious. He'll be lame for a few days. Leave him with me overnight. You ought to get tags for him."

As though on cue the shepherd reached up from the table and took my wrist in his mouth, lightly. "I'll get the tags tomorrow," I told the vet. "Give him whatever he needs."

Outside, I had to stop and think where I'd been going.

I headed north again for the Dixie Pig.

I had no trouble finding the place. It was a long, low building encrusted with neon. No cars were visible although there were marked-off parking spaces in front. I followed a crushed stone driveway around to the rear and found a dozen cars parked. Hazel's customers evidently didn't care to advertise their drinking habits to passersby on the highway.

Inside it was like a thousand others, low-ceilinged, smoke-misty, and dimly lit. Three or four booths were occupied, while another six or eight customers lolled on bar stools. Nobody even looked around as I sat down at the bar.

A curtain rustled in an opening at the center back bar, and a woman's head poked through. She stepped forward onto the business side of the horseshoe-shaped bar at the sight of a strange face. My first impression was that she was standing on elevated duckboards. She seemed enormous.

I looked again, but the back bar flooring was on the same level as my side of the mahogany. The woman wasn't enormous, perhaps, but she sure as hell was big. Six feet, at least, and straining every seam of skin-tight Levis and a sleeveless fringed buckskin shirt that was no more than a vest. Her upper arms looked larger than mine, but the skin was like a baby's. She had flaming red hair and a pleasantly wide mouth.