Banco: The Further Adventures of Papillon (14 page)

“You don’t think it stinks a little, duping the poor?”

“Never on your sweet life. The tickets cost ten bolivars, so it’s only well-off folk that can afford them. So there’s no harm done.”

Once the partner had checked me out, there I was, all involved with this knavery. It’s not very elegant, but you have to eat, sleep and be, if not well dressed, at least clean. And I had to hold on to my reserve as long as possible--the few diamonds I’d brought from El Dorado and two five-hundred-bolivar notes that I hoarded like a miser in my
plan
--a short aluminum tube that I shoved up my ass for safekeeping--just as if I were still in the clink. I’d never left off carrying my
plan
inside me, for two reasons: my hotel was in a pretty rough part of the town, where I might be robbed; and if I carried money in my pocket, I might lose it. In any case, I’d been storing this tube up my ass for fourteen years now, so a year more or less didn’t make much difference, and that way I was easy in my mind.

The selling of the lottery tickets lasted more than a fortnight, and it would be going on still but for the fact that one day a very eager customer bought two tickets and examined every detail of this marvelous car he dreamed of winning. All at once he straightened up and cried, “But doesn’t this car belong to Dr. Fulano, the bank director?”

Without batting an eyelid, the Colombian replied coolly, “Just so. He put it into our hands to dispose of like this. He reckons a lottery will bring him in a better price than a straight sale.”

“Odd... ,” said the customer.

“But above all, don’t mention it to him,” the Colombian went on, still very calm. “He made us promise to say nothing, because he’d find it awkward if it was known.”

“I can’t understand it; it’s really most unusual for a man of his kind.”

As soon as he’d got far enough away, moving in the direction of the bank, we whipped off the streamer and folded it up. The Colombian vanished, carrying it, and I went to the door of the bank to tell our partner we were breaking camp. Inside myself I was laughing like a hyena and I couldn’t help hanging around near the door so I could catch what I expected would be the sequel. It came off, all right. Three minutes later, there was the director together with the suspicious customer. He was waving his arms wildly and walking so last I knew he was in a real fury.

They saw there was nobody left around the Cadillac, and surprised, no doubt, they came back slower, stopping at a café to have a drink at the bar. As the customer hadn’t recognized me, I went in, too, to hear what they would say, for the laugh.

“By God, that was a nerve! Don’t you think that was an infernal nerve, Dr. Fulano?”

But the owner of the Cadillac, who, like all good Caraqueflos, had a sense of humor, burst out laughing and said, “When I think that if I had walked by they might have offered me a ticket for my own car! And that sometimes I’m so absentminded that I might actually have bought it. You must admit it makes you laugh.”

Naturally enough, that was the end of our lottery. The Colombians vanished. For my part, I’d made close to fifteen hundred bolivars, enough to live on for over a month; which was important.

The days went by, and it was not at all easy to find anything worthwhile to do. This was the period when Pétain’s supporters and the men who had collaborated with the Germans started reaching Venezuela from France, on the run from the justice of their own country. Since I didn’t know enough about the possible distinction between collaborators and Pétainists, I lumped them all together under the label of ex-Nazis. So I did not associate with them.

A month went by and nothing much happened. At El Callao I had never thought it would be so hard to get myself going. I was reduced to selling coffee pots from door to door; they were supposed to be specially designed for offices.

You look rather foolish walking about the streets with a coffee pot in your hand; and I was doing just that when I bumped into Paulo the Boxer, an old Montmartre acquaintance.

“Why, what do you know? You must be Paulo the...”

“And you’re Papillon?”

He grabbed my arm and towed me into a café.

“Well, talk of coincidence--this is a coincidence, all right.”

“What are you up to, walking around the street with that coffee pot?”

“I’m selling them: it’s a goddamn disaster. What with getting it out and shoving it back again, the box tore just now.” I told him how things were with me and then I said, “How about you?”

“Let’s drink our coffee. I’ll tell you somewhere else.”

We paid and stood up; I reached for my coffee pot.

“Leave that where it is. You won’t want it anymore, I give you my oath.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I know it, man.”

I left the vile pot on the table and we went out.

An hour later, in my room, after we had tossed memories of Montmartre to and fro, Paulo came to the point. He had a big job in a country not far from Venezuela. He knew he could rely on me. If I agreed, he’d take me on as one of his team.

“It’s as easy as falling off a log--it’s in the bag, man! I tell you very seriously, there are going to be so many dollars you’ll need an iron to flatten them so they don’t take up too much room.”

“And where is it, this prodigious job?”

“You’ll know when you get there. I can’t say anything before.”

“How many of us will there be?”

“Four. One’s already on the spot. I came here to fetch the other. You know him, by the way. He’s a friend of yours: Gaston.”

“Right. But I’ve lost touch with him.”

“Not me,” said Paulo, laughing.

“You really can’t tell me any more about the job?”

“Impossible, Papi. I’ve got my reasons.”

I thought quickly. Placed as I was, there wasn’t much choice. Either I went on dragging about with a coffee pot or some other goddamn nonsense in my hand or I took up the adventurous life again, with the possibility of making a bundle and making it quick. I’d always known that Paulo was a sober, reflecting type, and if in his opinion there had to be four of us, then that meant this job was serious, too. Technically, it would be a fancy piece of work. And that, I must admit, tempted me, too. So what about it, Papi--banco?

“Banco!”

The next day we set off.

6

More than seventy-two hours of driving. We relieved one another at the wheel. Paulo took endless precautions; every time we stopped for gas, the man who was driving put the others down three hundred yards from the pump and picked them up afterward.

Gaston and I had been waiting half an hour in the driving rain, waiting for Paulo to come back. I was furious. “You really think all this act is necessary, Paulo? Just look at us. We’ll catch our goddamn deaths.”

“What a fucking bore you are, Papi. I had air put in the tires, changed a back wheel and filled up with oil and water. You can’t do that in five minutes.”

“I never said you could. But I tell you I don’t see the point of all these precautions.”

“Well, I do, and I’m the boss. You may have had a fourteenyear stretch, but I copped ten of solitary in our loving homeland; so I don’t think you can ever do enough in the way of precautions. Suppose there’s a tip about a car, a Chevrolet with one man in it, say--well, it’s not the same as a car with three men in it.”

He was right. Ten hours later we reached the town we were aiming for. Paulo dropped us at the end of a road with villas on either side.

“Take the pavement on the right. The villa’s called Mi Amor; it’s along there. Walk in like you owned it, and inside you’ll find Auguste.”

There was a yard bordered with flowers, and a neat path leading to the door of a pretty little house. The door was shut; we knocked.

“Hi there, brothers, come right in,” said Auguste, opening the door. He was in shirtsleeves; he was covered with sweat, and his hairy arms had earth on them. We told him Paulo had gone to park the car at the other end of the town. It made sense not to have a Venezuelan license plate seen too often in the road.

“Did you have a good trip?”

“Yes.”

No more than that. We sat down in the dining room. I felt the decisive moment was coming, and I was rather tense. Gaston had no more idea than I what the job was all about. “It’s a matter of trust,” Paulo had said in Caracas. “Either you come along or you don’t. Take it or leave it. Just one thing: it means more liquid cash than you’ve ever dreamed of.” Okay, but now it was all going to have to be clear, open and exact.

Auguste gave us coffee. Aside from a few questions about our journey and how we were, there wasn’t a word that shed any light at all. They were prudent, tight-mouthed, in this family.

I heard a car door slam in front of the house. It must be Paulo, who’d hired a car with local plates. Just so.

“Here we are,” Paulo cried, coming in and taking off his leather jacket. “Everything’s going just fine, boys.” Calmly he drank his coffee. I said nothing; I was waiting. He asked Auguste to put the cognac bottle on the table. Without any hurry, and still looking thoroughly pleased with life, he poured some for us; and then at last he came to the point. “Well, boys, here you are on the spot; this is where we work. Listen, now: just in front of this little house, on the other side of the street you came by, there’s the back of a bank. Its main entrance is on the big avenue that runs parallel with our little road. And the reason why you see Auguste’s arms all covered with clay is because he knew you were idle, good-for-nothing bums, and he set to work so there would be less for you to do.”

“Do what?” asked Gaston, who was no fool but still wasn’t very quick on the uptake.

“Not much,” said Paulo, smiling. “Just dig a tunnel. It starts in the room next to this; it’ll go under the yard, then under the street and come out just beneath the bank’s vault. If my calculations are right. If they’re not, then maybe we’ll find ourselves nearer the street side. If that happens, we go deeper and try again for under the very middle of the vault.” A short silence; and then he said, “What do you say about it?”

“Just a second, man. Give me time to think. It’s not quite the kind of job I was expecting.”

“Is it a big bank?” Gaston asked; this was not one of his brighter days. If Paulo had set all this going, and on such a scale, it was certainly not just for three packs of licorice.

“You walk by the bank tomorrow, and you’ll have something to say,” Paulo said, roaring with laughter. “Get this: there are eight cashiers. That gives you some idea of what they must handle by way of bills in the course of a day.”

“Christ!” said Gaston, slapping his thigh. “So it’s a real bank! Well, I am pleased. For once I’ll be in on a big-time job, in keeping with my title of big-time crook.”

Still with his broad grin of happiness, Paulo turned to me. “You got nothing to say, Papillon?”

“I don’t need any titles. I’d rather stay just plain mister with enough dough to carry out a job I have in mind. I don’t need millions. I’ll tell you what I think, Paulo: it’s a prodigious job, and if it comes off--
when
it comes off, I should say, because you must always believe in a job--we’re set up for the rest of our lives with enough for the rent and the telephone. But... - there are a good many buts to get around. I can ask questions, boss?”

“As many as you like, Papi. I meant to talk over every part of the job with you anyhow. For although I’m the top man, since it was me who worked it out, each one of us is risking his freedom and maybe his life. So ask all the questions you want.”

“Right. The first is this: from the room next door, where the shaft is, how far is it to the pavement on this side of the road?”

“Exactly eighteen yards.”

“Second, how far from the edge of the pavement to the bank?”

“Ten yards.”

“Third, inside the bank, have you worked out exactly where the door to the vault is?”

“Yes. I’ve hired a box in the safe-deposit room. It’s just next to the bank’s own vault and separated from it by an armored door with two combination locks. There’s only one way in, and that’s from the safe-deposit room. You go from there into the main vault. One day, after I’d been down there a good many times, I was waiting for them to give me the second key to my safe and I saw the armored door open. As it swung around, I caught a glimpse of the vault and the big safes lined up all round it.”

“Could you get an idea of how thick the wall was between the two rooms?”

“It was hard to tell on account of the steel casing.”

“How many steps down to the vault door?”

“Twelve.”

“So the floor of the vault is about ten feet below street level. What’s your plan?”

“We must try and hit just under the wall between the two rooms. We can guide ourselves by the bolts under the floor of the vault--the ones that hold the safes. That way we get into both rooms at once with just one hole.”

“Yes, but since the safes stand right against the wall, you’re likely to come out under one of them.”