cold, wet asphalt.
Kilduff jumped forward and caught Conradin’s arm and spun him around. “You stupid son of a bitch!” he said between clenched teeth. “What did you do that for?”
Conradin stood trembling. There was a thin, silvery sheen of sweat on his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Kilduff looked at Helgerman and saw that he was still breathing. He pulled Conradin toward the DeSoto, opened the passenger door, and shoved him inside. He went around and slid in under the wheel. The starter made a labored whirring sound, took hold, and Kilduff let out the clutch; he turned onto the company road which led to the western gate.
Conradin sat with his hands clenching his knees, and the sweat streamed down into the collar of his white shirt, smearing some of the make-up on his face and neck. He was still trembling.
“Snap out of it, will you?” Kilduff told him grimly. “Do you want to blow the whole thing?”
“Jesus,” Conradin said. He was staring straight ahead. “Oh Jesus, Jesus.”
But they had no trouble at the gate ...
The stolen yellow tow truck, with the words “Dave’s Garage” in blue letters on the body, was parked in a clump of willow and buckeye trees—just off the three-hundred-yard paved access road which wound through grassy fields to connect the eastern gate of Mannerling Chemical with State Highway 64.
Three men sat waiting in the cab, each of them dressed in gray work coveralls. The driver, whose name was Gene Beauchamp, said, “What if the goddamn tire doesn’t blow when it’s supposed to?”
“It’ll blow, don’t worry,” the man in the middle said. He was Larry Drexel. “We tested the corrosive a dozen times, didn’t we?”
“At least that.”
“Okay,” Drexel said. He looked at his wristwatch. “They should be coming out of the gate right about now. Let’s get set.”
They took grotesquely designed Hallowe’en masks from the pockets of their coveralls, slipped them over their heads, and put on peakedbill caps pulled low. Drexel and the third man, Paul Wykopf, took blued-steel revolvers from under the seat and held them in their laps.
Drexel said, “All right. Kick it over, Gene.”
Beauchamp switched on the ignition, and there was a quiet rumbling from beneath the hood. He moistened his lips. “Do you figure everything went okay?” he asked Drexel.
“Sure it did.”
“I just hope there wasn’t any trouble.”
“Christ, will you shut up?” Wykopf said. “Kilduff knows his end of it, and so does Conradin.”
“Look, I’m nervous, that’s all.”
“We’re all nervous,” Drexel said. “Cool it, now.”
Wykopf hunched forward, peering through the leafy branches of one of the willow trees. “Here it comes.”
The armored car was almost halfway along the access road, less than fifty yards from where they were. Drexel’s hand worked spasmodically around the revolver’s grip. “Blow, baby,” he said softly. “Come on, baby, blow.”
And the car’s left front tire blew.
The heavy vehicle lurched to the side of the road, swaying as the driver fought for control, and finally shuddered to a stop. The door opened, and Felix Marik stepped out and went to inspect the damage, shouting something to the guards inside.
Drexel said, “Go!”
Beauchamp brought the tow truck out from its concealment and to a skidding halt, nose in to the armored car. Wykopf and Drexel were out and crouched ready, their guns held low and in close to their bodies, before the tow truck had ceased rocking. Marik whirled, his hand dropping toward the service pistol holstered at his side, but Drexel took two steps forward and put the muzzle of the revolver in his stomach. Marik’s hand froze in midair, and Drexel took the pistol and put it into the pocket of his coveralls.
He said in a cold, sharp voice, “If you want to live to see your family again, you get the guards out of there without their guns. Now, baby!”
Beauchamp swung down from the tow truck as Drexel and Wykopf pushed Marik toward the rear of the armored car. He had several small white flour sacks strung over his left arm.
From inside the car Lloyd Fosbury said, “Felix? What in hell’s going on out there?”
“Holdup,” Marik said tightly. “They want you to come out unarmed.”
“You heard the man,” Drexel said. “Now if you want your friend Felix here to keep on living, you do exactly what we tell you. You got that, baby?”
There was silence from inside, and then Fosbury said, “Yeah. We’ve got it.”
“Unlock the doors,” Drexel said to Marik.
Marik obeyed the order, using a key from his belt ring. Drexel took the ring, and then motioned Marik to one side. He called out, “The outside locks are open now. You spring the inside locks and push one of the doors open just enough to throw out your guns. All of them. I don’t want to see anything come out of there but the guns.”
There was the sound of movement from inside the car, and then the left door opened just a little. Drexel and Wykopf, standing off to the side, held their breaths. Two service pistols like the one Marik had worn came flashing out and fell into the grass at the rear of the truck. The door closed again.
Drexel said, “Is that all?”
“That’s all,” Macklin, the other guard, said.
“Now come out, one at a time, with your hands on your heads. Nice and slow.”
The guards came out that way, and Drexel looked at Wykopf and nodded. “Watch them.”
“They’re all mine.”
Drexel motioned to Beauchamp, and the two of them went inside the armored car. They began to fill the white flour sacks from the canvas money sacks. When they had all the money—something more than $750,000, although they didn’t know that until later—they jumped out again, carried the flour sacks to the tow truck, and put them behind the seat. Then Drexel went back to where Wykopf was holding the three Smithfield employees.
“Into the car,” he said to them, and he and Wykopf herded them inside. Drexel threw the door closed and locked it with Marik’s key. He tossed the ring into the front seat of the armored car as he and Wykopf went by.
They climbed quickly into the tow truck, and Beauchamp backed the machine and got it turned around. They headed toward the entrance to State Highway 64 ...
A half mile to the south, in a sparsely traveled area just off the Maypark Road overpass, Fred Cavalacci sat nervously waiting in a wood-paneled 1954 Chevrolet station wagon. He looked at his watch for perhaps the twentieth time in the past ten minutes, and then up at the positioned rear-view mirror.
The tow truck appeared on the overpass.
Cavalacci took the ignition key, breathing through his mouth, and got out and opened the rear door. The tow truck pulled up parallel to the wagon, and Drexel and Wykopf and Beauchamp swung out of the cab. Drexel said, “Clockwork, Fred.”
Cavalacci nodded, exhaled, and drew back the heavy tarpaulin that lay on the floor of the wagon, revealing a wide rectangular space which had been hollowed out to form a pit. The four men then transferred the white flour sacks from the tow truck to the wagon. Three cars passed during the time it took them to make the switch, but none of the occupants took more than passing notice of what they assumed was a stalled motorist and the tow truck he had summoned.
When all the flour sacks were in the floor pit, Cavalacci rearranged the tarpaulin. They made sure no one was approaching in either direction, and then the four of them got inside the wagon. Cavalacci drove east, heading toward Collinsville, where they would meet Kilduff and Conradin.
They had gone almost a mile in silence when Cavalacci glanced at Drexel beside him. “We did it,” he said, and there was a touch of awe in his voice. “We pulled it off.”
“We did it, all right,” Drexel said. He pivoted on the seat, looking at Wykopf and Beauchamp in the back. And
