A Pure Double Cross (14 page)

“What? You want to knock off the Philadelphia Mint?”

“Not quite,” said The Schooler, eyes alight, smile suppressed. “I want to knock off the Cleveland Branch of the Federal Reserve.”

Well, so much for keeping a low profile. “Uhh, I don't know a great deal about the Federal Reserve Bank but I'm guessing it's a fort.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Big, cheerily. “The vault is underground. It's constructed of four-inch drill-proof steel plate with dual time-delay locks. The bank is guarded by the Federal Reserve Police, a rotating spit and polish crew of ten, heavily armed. And the Cleveland PD comes running at the push of a panic button.”

I nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“And those twenty foot Greek statues by the front entrance on Sixth Street? They're hollow, connected by tunnels to the bank interior.”

“Uh huh,” I said. Still no shoe.

“The bank gets a delivery on December 13
^th
from the Federal Bureau of Engraving, an extra large delivery due to the liquidity demands of the holidays.”

“And you plan to hijack that shipment?”

The Schooler shook his head. “Too public, too many loose ends.”

“O-kay.”

The Schooler took his time, puffed on his cigar, played the moment. I stood still on shaky legs and listened to my head pound and my stomach growl.

“The Federal Reserve Bank is required to count deposits by hand before they're placed in the vault. Approximately one million dollars will be in the counting room of the Federal Reserve Bank on the night of Thursday, December 13
^th
. And it won't be counterfeit.”

Jimmy and Lizabeth reacted with surprise to this big revelation. Me personally, I got tired of waiting for that damn shoe.

“And you'd need an armored battalion to bust in.”

“Not so,” said Mr. Big, “all I need is you.”

“Me?”

“You're my key to the front door.”

I snorted. “Sir the Federal Reserve Police don't know me from Adam.”

“They're feds. They play pinochle with the FBI every Friday night at Rohr's. They know all about you.”

I put that in my pipe and smoked it. Maybe the Federal Reserve Police do know all about me. Sir. But they don't care, no more than the FBI does. I'm just a castoff agent of the hated Oh So Secret. Nothing I could do or say would convince them to lower the drawbridge.

That was what I wanted to say. But I didn't have the energy. Those four aspirin were burning a hole in my gut and my knees got wobbly when the oompah band that had set up shop above my right temple struck up a German beer hall polka. Somebody caught me before I hit the floor.

Must've been Jimmy. My hero.

I woke up on a narrow bed in a small spare room with a crucifix on the wall. Someone had stripped me down to boxer shorts and covered me with a sheet and blanket. Had to be Lizabeth. Jimmy would gouge out his good eye before he'd undress me and tuck me in.

I looked out the window. Pink dawn painted the frosted panes as icy winds rattled them. I took inventory. My brass band headache was down to a dull roar, I had feeling and movement in my extremities, I knew my name, rank and serial number. And I was hungry, so hungry my stomach was attempting to digest itself.

I sat up in bed, saw stars and lay back down. There had to be something to eat in this brown brick mausoleum. I took a couple deep breaths and tried again, slowly. That seemed to work so I winched my feet out of bed and set them on the floor. Bare floor, cold floor. It felt good. I took a breath and stood up.

Ha! Who says Hal Schroeder can't stand on his own two feet? I took a step for the doorway and froze as the door swung open.

Lizabeth, carrying a tray, backed into the room. I sniffed the air hopefully. Bacon? Eggs? Rye toast slathered in butter? Lizabeth turned to face me and I slunk back to bed. All I smelled was Unguentene.

Lizabeth had her jet black hair pulled back. She wore black toreador pants and an untucked man's white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top two buttons undone.

“I went to nursing school a hundred years ago,” she said as she plopped a thermometer in my mush and swabbed my face
with cotton balls soaked in isopropyl. She gently uncurled the crusty bandage on my severed ear and clucked her tongue.

I enjoyed these ministrations, don't get me wrong. No feverish GI in no improvised field hospital ever fantasized a more fetching nurse. But I was about to expire from malnutrition. I tried explaining this with a mouth full of thermometer. Lizabeth shushed me.

“Breakfast is on the stove,” she said. “We were all out of bacon so I fried up a T-bone with onions. That okay?”

Jeannie, please forgive me but I love this woman.

-----

There is something about early morning that pierces the veil. It's tough to look tough in a breakfast nook wallpapered with pink primroses, early morning sunshine glancing off the snowy backyard and splashing through the louvered windows. I leaned back in my chair, having polished off a T-bone steak, four eggs, three pieces of toast and a mountain of cottage fries.

The Schooler sat across the table from me, head down, picking at his breakfast. He looked old.

Jimmy padded in in stocking feet, unshaven, sleepy-eyed, squinting against the sunlight and the pink wallpaper. He looked hungover.

Lizabeth bustled in from the kitchen wearing a black and white checkered apron. “Everybody happy?”

I raised my hand. The Schooler grunted. Jimmy poured coffee into a blue and white speckled mug and left the room. I loosened my belt and pushed my chair away from the table. America's most unlikely homemaker slid me a sideways glance before she returned to the kitchen.

The Federal Reserve job was still two days away. The Schooler wasn't going to let me return home for a hot shower and a change of clothes. He looked up from his half-eaten breakfast and read my mind.

“Razor and toothbrush in the bathroom upstairs. Couple clean shirts in the closet.”

I nodded and got up to go. Lizabeth returned from the kitchen carrying a roaster pan. More grub? She stood by the door to the back stairs. I opened it for her.

Kingdog the wolf came galloping through the snow. Lizabeth stood on the top step and dumped the contents of the pan, a raw five-pound capon suitable for Sunday dinner at Grandma's, into the snow. The wolf attacked it as if it were still alive.

I went upstairs to shower up, any thoughts of attempting to slip out the door and sneak down the drive banished from my mind.

-----

“We'll give Hal a gun and send him up the front steps on 6
^th
Street,” said The Schooler to Jimmy and me couple hours later. We were sitting around a burled walnut dining table in a room with a matching sideboard. A small statue of the Virgin Mary looked down upon us from a corner cabinet and a crucifix hung from the back wall.

Odd. I hadn't figured The Schooler for a Holy Joe.

“Hal will ID himself through the intercom and insist on speaking to the Police Commander on duty. It's Frederick Seifert on Thursday nights. He's a twenty-year vet who thinks he's long overdue for a promotion. He'll jump at the chance.”

“What chance?” grumbled Jimmy, still swilling java from that speckled blue and white mug. He was Turkish maybe. Turks were addicted to coffee.

Mr. Big ignored him. “Hal will tell Frederick Seifert, breathlessly, that the Fulton Road Mob is coming hard, in full force, that they sent him ahead to talk his way in and take Seifert hostage. At which time Commander Seifert will send his troops into the tunnels that run to the statues outside.”

“Why?” said Jimmy.

“I'll get to that,” said The Schooler. “Once the Federal Reserve police are dispersed Hal
will
put a gun to Seifert's back and march him downstairs to open the side delivery gate
on Rockwell. At which time Jimmy and the boys will drive to the loading dock, gather up the cash from the counting room, wheel it to the waiting vehicle and take off.”

Jimmy inhaled the dregs of his coffee and belched. He looked formidable again, head down, chin prowed out like a cowcatcher, his good eye searching the room like a locomotive's rotating head beam. “What I'm hard swallowing is this Seifert sending his boys to tunnels outside the bank. The place is a fort, why leave it?”

“Because Frederick Seifert is a lot like me. He's been waiting for this opportunity a long time.”

Jimmy shook a Lucky from his pack and thumbed his lighter. “He in on this?”

The Schooler shook his head. “But if Seifert simply bars the door and calls the cops to come clean up the mess he has blown his big chance.”

Jimmy sucked down half his cig in one drag and flicked the hanging ash into his cupped hand. “
What
chance?”

“His chance to be a hero.”

“You got it all worked out,” said Jimmy, jabbing at me with his burning pill. “‘Cept you gotta send the G-man up those steps on 6
^th
Street and trust he's not gonna sell us out.”

I could have washed out my socks and underwear in the upstairs sink in the time it took The Schooler to say, “There are no rewards without risks Jimmy.”

The Schooler took another pause. Jimmy filled his cupped hand with ash. I examined my fingernails in order to avoid making eye contact with Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

“I believe we can trust Mr. Schroeder,” said The Schooler. “He told the truth. He didn't know the previous heist money was counterfeit. In fact he has a big chunk of it stashed in a safe deposit box at National City Bank.”

What in the hell? I hadn't been tailed to National City Bank. I had made sure!

“Mr. Schroeder was duped by the FBI just as he was hung out to dry by the OSS. Two years of high-risk service without so much as a letter of commendation. Tsk tsk. I believe we can trust Mr. Schroeder because he feels the federal government owes him a large debt. And he needs our help to collect it.”

Jimmy and The Schooler swiveled their mugs in my direction. I met their looks and then some. I was hacked off. That The Schooler's estimation of my particulars was dead nuts on only made me more so. They were waiting on my answer, my affirmation, my pledge of loyalty.

I let them.

The library was a snug room in the left front corner of the brown brick building, on the opposite side of the parlor. It had a bay window and ceiling-high bookcases crammed with leather bound volumes. And a crucifix. I had coaxed the pot bellied stove in the corner to life. It was late, I was dealing solitaire.

I had finally given in and pledged my fealty to The Schooler and his cockeyed plan. He seemed to buy it. Why not? What other choice did I have?

I slapped down card after card on the reading table, finding no joy. What other choice
did
I have? The way The Schooler laid it out made some sense, Frederick Seifert might take a chance for glory. Still, an awful lot of dominoes had to fall in precise order at the proper time. I scooped up my losing hand and reshuffled the deck.

I heard the clocking of soft heels on hardwood. I turned to see Lizabeth standing in the doorway. She wore a sheer, pale green chiffon nightgown over a satin sheath and high-heeled mules with feathers at the toe. She had her hair down.

“The old man's sawing logs,” she said, languidly. “May I join you?”

“Sure.”

Lizabeth pulled up a chair across the reading table. “There's another deck in that drawer,” she said, indicating a round lamp table with a green felt top. I dug it out and handed it over. She side shuffled the deck in her hands. “You ready for some double solitaire?”

I tried to concentrate on the game as Lizabeth's filmy peignoir dissolved in the light from the table lamp. She buzzed
through her deck in no time, kinged the aces and said, “Would you like a nightcap?”

What was I supposed to say to that?
No
?

She crossed to one of the ceiling-high bookcases and slid a panel of leather-bound book spines aside, revealing a liquor cabinet. “They took a vow of silence, not sobriety.”

“Who's that?”

“The monks. This was a monastery not so long ago.”

“Of course. I wondered about all the crucifixes.”

Lizabeth handed me a snifter of brandy. “Henry won't let me take them down. He says it's bad luck.” She raised her glass. “Here's how.”

We clanked and drank. We reshuffled our decks and started over.

“So how does it feel to be a kept man?”

“It stinks. Royally”

“You get used to it. It gives you time.”

“To do what?”

“To think, to speculate about things,” said Lizabeth, raining cards down on the reading table. “And get really good at solitaire.”

She was that. I tossed my deck on the table and raised my hands in surrender. Lizabeth reached down and produced one of her skinny black cigarettes. Did she keep them in her garter belt? I wondered this with a greater degree of curiosity than the question seemed to warrant.

“Got a light?”

I did not. But the way she said it made me wish I had. I searched the drawers of the lamp table, eyed the fading embers in the potbellied stove. “Allow me.” I removed the perfumed cigarette from her fingers and returned with a lit cig and singed knuckles.

“Thank you kind sir,” said Lizabeth, inhaling deeply, swelling her breasts.

It had grown cold in the room as the fire ebbed. Or so I surmised from the stiffening of Lizabeth's nipples against her satin undergarment. I felt quite warm myself. Lizabeth smiled through a shroud of perfumed smoke.

I took a slug of brandy. Enough of this foolishness. “Why is he doing this? The Schooler. Henry. Mr. Big. This crazy bank heist?”

Lizabeth sat back. “Crazy?”

“Seems that way to me.”