Dahl grumbled a bit but finally put himself in motion. He carried his suitcase out to my car. It was only a three-minute drive to the other motel. 'You sure we're gonna knock this one over next Thursday?' he said when I stopped on the shoulder of the road in front of the motel.
'Unless we get a bad break,' I promised. 'Goodnight.'
' 'Night,' he echoed. He walked up the driveway to the motel office, lugging his heavy suitcase. I watched from the car to make sure he got a room. I drove off when I saw the clerk swing the register in Dahl's direction for him to sign. It reminded me that I should have asked him what alias he intended to use.
At the airport I found I had a forty-five-minute wait for the arrival of Preacher Harris's plane. I left word at the airline counter for him to be paged upon arrival and I left a phone number for him to call. The phone was a pay phone at one end of the terminal. When it finally rang, I was sitting five yards away from it. 'Harris,' the voice at the other end of the line said when I picked up the receiver.
'Drake,' I identified myself. 'Let's meet behind the first row of cars in the parking lot.'
'Be right there,' he said.
He was obviously tired when I met him. 'Bad flight,' he said briefly. 'I chucked twice. I need to sack in.'
I suspected that at least part of the dark circles under his eyes and the strained expression around his mouth came from more than a bad flight. Long, losing hours at the tables in Las Vegas had evidently preceded the flight. 'I'll take Dahl on a dry run in the morning,' I said. 'You can sleep till noon and we'll look it over together then.'
The sound of Dahl's name seemed to rouse him. 'Is he just as cocky as ever?'
'No ego shrinkage that I could see.' I didn't tell him about Dahl's movie made inside the bank. If I knew Dahl, Harris would be seeing it for himself very soon. I drove to a third motel, this one ten miles from the Carousel, on U.S. 1 near Lima. 'What name are you going to use if I want to reach you?'
'Harris James. James is my real first name.'
'That's easy to remember.'
I remembered an armored truck job years before in which a change of plan had come up at the last moment. The critical interval came and went with one partner hammering on door after door of a motel because he couldn't remember what alias his partner was using.
At the motel I waited again until I was sure that Harris had a room, then drove back to the Carousel.
We would be starting the last lap in the morning.
11
Dahl and I drove to Philadelphia at five A.M. the next morning. He picked up a rented car, and I parked the VW. We continued to Thornton with Dahl driving. A light rain was falling and the streets were slick. It was full dark, and would be for another hour of the late-August morning.
Dahl appeared to be in good humor during the thirty-five-minute drive. He hummed as he drove. When I directed him to the street in Thornton where George and Shirley Mace lived, he asked his first question. 'Who we lookin' over this mornin', cousin?'
'The assistant bank manager and his wife. Slow down now.' A block away from the Maces' I noticed a sign on a lawn that said TOURISTS-ROOMS. That would be a good spot to park one of the cars. The police wouldn't pay any attention to a strange automobile parked in front of such a building. 'Turn here. Fourth house on the other side of the street. If a cruiser gets nosy, I'm being transferred out of the territory on my advertising job, and I'm breaking you in.' I opened my briefcase and showed Dahl my Yellow Pages flyers.
He looked speculatively at the house, which was in a neighborhood that had seen better days. 'What's to know about this pair that can do us any good?'
'Their habits, especially in the early mornings. Circle the block and park where we can watch the house.'
'Are they gonna be a problem?'
'The Schemer doesn't think so. They never go out together, for one thing. They don't seem to have any social life at all. Even when he takes a vacation, Mace shows up at the bank almost every day.'
'Sounds like a guy who's afraid someone's gonna find out he's been tiltin' the pinball machine.'
'If he is, he's good at it. He's worked at this same bank for twenty-two years. He refused a couple of transfers with advancement. He and his wife have lived in this same house all those years, too.'
'Refusin' a chance to move up sounds even more like a man who doesn't care to have anyone lookin' too close at his operation,' Dahl said.
'I'm sure the bank took that into consideration.'
'Just so there's somethin' left to grab when we make our move. Maybe he's just not makin' it with his war department. But imagine shackin' up with the same broad under the same roof for twenty-two years if you weren't cuttin' it with her?' He was silent for a moment. 'Speakin' of there bein' somethin' for us to grab on a job,' he resumed, 'what we really need is a union, you know. Some outfit that could set up priorities. A good friend of mine is doin' twenty-to-life because he walked into a bank with his gun out when the FBI was standin' right there investigatin' another heist pulled in the same bank forty-five minutes before. It shouldn't happen to a dog.'
I made no reply. We sat and watched the neighborhood come to life. Men of all shapes and sizes emerged from their homes, climbed into their cars, and drove to work. The teen-age generation was apparently taking advantage of the last few days of summer vacation to sleep in. There were none visible. A few small children appeared in front of their homes in increasing numbers until the neighborhood took on the appearance of a tricycle headquarters. The wives, like the teenagers, remained invisible at that hour of the morning.
'What time we gonna hit the place?' Dahl wanted to know.
'This house? We'll have to work out a timetable. Early enough in the morning to have this home and the manager's under our thumbs so we can get the two men to the bank before daylight.'
'Sounds like an all-night job.' Dahl sighed. He fingered the camera suspended from the cord around his neck. 'Good, clear shootin' day. Hate to waste it.'
I was mentally running through the Schemer's notes again. Shirley and George Mace; no children; seldom any visitors; little social life. Side-door entrance hidden from the street by hedge along the driveway. It was hard to see a problem.
The other house could be a different story. Thomas Barton, the bank manager, had three children. If Dahl and I went to the bank with Barton and Mace-no, after Dahl's antics during the Washington job it had better be Harris and I escorting the bank officials. Dahl could remain behind to keep the families hostage. That meant consolidating the families, and the easiest way would be to shift Shirley and George Mace to the Barton home when the time came.
It could wait until we'd looked over the Barton home.
Some circumstance there might make me want to change it. We wouldn't look it over today, though; we'd already spent enough time in the Mace neighborhood.
When George Mace came out of his side door at 9:10 A.M. and backed down his hedge-bordered driveway in his fender-dented Rambler station wagon, I nudged Dahl. 'Back to the motel,' I said.
'We're not gonna case the manager's house?'
'Harris and I will do that tomorrow.'
'You mean I'm gonna waste the whole day tomorrow?'
'You won't be wasting it. You'll be out buying enough cord to make adequate slip-noose tie-cords for the hands and feet of two wives and three children.'
He grunted acquiescence. 'What about gags?'
I considered it. Who could tell what might happen? 'You'd better have gags ready.' I thought of the children again. 'Yes, you'd better have them ready.'
'Okay.'
We left the city limits of Thornton behind us at 9:15 A.M.
If all went well, on Thursday morning we would also leave the city limits of Thornton behind us at 9:15 A.M.
