Now, while Myers was introducing people to each other on the far side of the room, Grofield said, 'What is all this, Dan?'
Dan shrugged. 'A maybe. We can talk about it later.'
Myers was obviously self-conscious, and Grofield and Dan talking together was making him nervous. Now he finished with his introductions and came to the middle of the room and said, 'Everybody take a seat, or stand if you want, uh, whatever you want to do.' He grinned painfully and said, 'The smoking lamp is lit.' He'd apparently hoped that was going to be a joke; when nobody laughed he started blinking a lot, and became briskly businesslike. 'I have the presentation here,' he said, and quickly pulled a suitcase out from under the bed.
Grofield looked at Dan, but Dan was facing front, watching Myers with no particular expression on his face. Grofield decided the only thing to do was wait it out, so he also faced front, and watched Myers put the suitcase on the bed, unlock it, put his key ring back in his pants pocket, and open the suitcase.
Myers said, 'Now, you boys may not believe this, but what we're talking about here is a payroll job.' He turned away from the suitcase to flash a bright smile around at everybody. 'I know what you're thinking,' he said.
Grofield almost said something, but restrained himself.
Myers said, 'You're thinking there are no payroll jobs anymore. You're thinking there isn't a payroll in the country of any size that isn't done by check these days. But there is at least one, and I know where it is and how to get at it.'
The suitcase Myers had opened was of the rigid type, and the top was now standing straight up. Myers reached into the suitcase and picked up a piece of stiff cardboard almost as long and wide as the suitcase itself, and propped it against the top. It was a blow-up color photograph of a factory building on a sunny day. The building was old, made of brick, and surrounded by fairly dirty snow.
'Here it is,' Myers said. 'Northway Brewery, Monequois, New York. Right near the Canadian border. They used to do their payroll by check, but the union was against it. They have a lot of Canadians working there, a lot of backwoodsmen and so on, and they want their money in cash. They pay weekly, and the average payroll is in the area of a hundred twenty thousand dollars.'
Grofield automatically did the math. Six men. Twenty thousand each. Not very much, but enough to get him into the next season if he were careful with it. He began to hope the lemons would turn out to be wrong, after all.
Myers was reaching for another piece of cardboard, this one turning out to contain a map. 'As you can see, Monequois is less than five miles from the border. That makes a nice escape route for us. We have our choice of these three highways – here, here, and here – all going north. There are secondary roads that bypass the customs stations at the border.' Another piece of cardboard; another photograph. 'Now, this is the main gate. The money is delivered on Friday mornings at ten or ten-thirty.'
Myers went on describing where the money came from, how it was guarded, how it was paid out, and the more he talked the tougher the job sounded. The money, which came every week from Buffalo via Watertown, was heavily guarded every step of the way, including police helicopter reconnaissance on the armored car that drove it from Watertown to the factory. The factory itself was at least half fort, with a high brick wall around the perimeter of the grounds, topped by barbed wire, and with only two entrances, both well guarded. Grofield glanced at Dan two or three times during Myers' recital, but Dan's expression of patient attention never changed.
Finally Myers got to the operation itself. 'I've cleared it with the Outfit,' he said. 'They want ten percent, which seems perfectly all right to me.'
Matt Hanto, the explosives man, said, 'Who the hell are you talkin' about?'
Myers looked surprised. 'The Outfit,' he said. 'You know, the Syndicate.'
'You mean the Mafia?'
'Well, I don't know if it's Mafia up in that neck of the woods, but they're all interconnected with each other around the country, aren't they?'
George Cathcart, driver, said, 'You want us to give ten percent off the top to the local mob?'
'Well, naturally,' Myers said.
'For what?'
'For protection,' Myers said, as though he was telling them something everybody knew. 'For permission to work in their territory.'
Bob Frith, the other driver, said, 'You're out of your mind, Mr. Myers. I never asked nobody permission in my life.'
Myers looked astonished. 'You want to go into that town without clearing things with the local people?'
He was going to get a lot of answers to that, but Dan Leach short-circuited them all, saying, 'Let's forget about that, for a minute. I'm more interested how you figure we're going to
Myers was just as glad for the change of subject. 'Fine,' he said. 'Good idea. Now, it'll take two vehicles, a fire engine and a regular car. The fire engine to do the job, and the car to make the getaway. Now, here's the Municipal Services Building of the town of Monequois-' And damned if he didn't have yet another blow-up photograph to show them. That was about ten photos and maps and graphs so far; Grofield was beginning to feel like a man who'd stumbled by mistake into a lecture on auto safety.
But Myers wasn't interested in auto safety, or any other kind of safety either. His plan, once he started outlining it, was a dilly. The police and fire departments of the town of Monequois were together in the same building; Myers' first step would be to blow up that building. Simultaneously, there would be an incendiary explosion – that is, an explosion followed hopefully by a fire – at the Northway Brewery. Naturally, no gate guard would think of stopping a fire engine from coming through the brewery's main gate with a fire going on. Frith would drive the fire engine, and Grofield and Dan Leach would ride it in firemen's uniforms. They would stop outside the
