McNally's caper

‘We’ll need more,’ Fleming said, ‘if we go along with the cleaning truck gimmick. Another driver there. Another two or three to go inside.’

‘Not to worry,’ Black Jack said. ‘This town is crawling with out-of-work bentnoses. We’ll have our pick. How we’ll pay them — flat fee or a split — is something we’ll have to decide after we get the ball rolling.’

He rose, poured us more vodka. We raised our glasses to one another.

‘Success,’ Dick Fleming said.

‘Luck,’ Jack Donohue said.

I didn’t say anything. Donohue too fell silent, looking pointedly at Fleming. Dick got to his feet, muttered something about having to see someone, and left us. But not without a reproachful glance at me. I was certain he knew how my evening would end.

‘He’s okay,’ Donohue said, moving about, mixing us fresh drinks. ‘Not a bad asshole after you get to know him. And he’s no dummy. He knew right away about hijacking the cleaning truck. Not the kind of man I’d want for a close friend, but I can work with him. I just hope he’s a stand-up guy if things get rough.’

‘He will be,’ I said. ‘I trust him.’

‘I hope you’re right. Bea. You want to go to bed now?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

I did everything for him. Guilt racked me.

THE PLOT THICKENS

So, for five days I spent my early mornings on East 55th Street, watching closely as the Bonomo Cleaning Service van arrived in front of Brandenberg amp; Sons. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I was Beatrice Flanders. On Tuesday and Thursday, I was Jannie Shean. Schizophrenia, where is thy sting?

I watched from the luncheonette across the street, from the rented Ford, and from my own XKE. I even took notes, marking down the precise times of the arrival of the cleaning van, the unlocking of the front door of the jewelry store, the entrance of the cleaning crew, and their departure.

This is what I found:

On the first four mornings of the week, things went just as Donohue had reported: The truck doubleparked in front of Brandenberg, and almost immediately the door was unlocked and opened. Obviously Noel Jarvis had been awaiting its arrival.

But on Friday morning, something different and disconcerting happened. The truck parked, the crew got out carrying their mops and vacuum cleaner. They crossed the sidewalk. But the door of Brandenberg amp; Sons remained closed and locked. The cleaners banged on the door. It was almost a minute before Jarvis appeared to let them in. Maybe he’d been busy in the back room, maybe he’d been in the can. Who knows? But meanwhile the Bonomo cleaning crew cooled their heels outside.

I know it sounds like a ridiculously small detail, but our whole scheme of barreling into the store from the cleaning truck was based on the door being unlocked and open. On such tiny details the entire Big Caper depended. A good lesson for me. I had never realized that a major crime must be as precisely timed as a military operation.

I made copious notes, and included everything in the Project X manuscript. I also found time to call Sol Faber — remember him? my agent — and reported that the new book was coming along famously. I hoped to have the ms. in his hands by late January.

He was delighted.

‘Jannie, doll,’ he said anxiously, ‘is it realistic, like Aldo Binder wants?’

‘Completely realistic,’ I assured him.

‘And it’s got a real ending? 1 mean, it doesn’t just stop? Everything gets tied up neat and tidy?’

‘You wouldn’t believe,’ I told him.

On Friday night, Donohue, Fleming, and 1 met again. This time in the back room of Fangio’s. Dick and I had dined at Tommy Yu’s. I don’t know where Jack Donohue ate his dinner, but he was waiting alone in a booth when we arrived. He looked tired. And not too happy.

‘Been up every night since Sunday,’ he grumbled, after our vodka-rocks were served. ‘From like midnight to ten. I try to sleep during the day. I’m dead.’

‘So?’ I asked coldly. ‘How did you make out?’

‘I found the Bonomo Cleaning Service garage. It’s on Eleventh near 54th. Most of the trucks go out at one in the morning when a new shift of cleaners comes on. That outfit have fifty trucks. Took me two nights to spot truck number 14. I mean, suddenly they all come pouring out of the garage, and at that hour it’s tough to spot the numbers.’

‘You followed it?’ Dick asked.

Black Jack sighed. ‘That’s where it gets screwy. You’d think they’d have a regular schedule of places to clean, a regular route to follow. But they don’t. On each of those three nights I tailed truck 14, they went to different places. All over Manhattan. They always ended up on East 55th Street, but there was no way of knowing where they’d be before that or where we could be certain of hitting them.’

Depressing news. The three of us sat hunched over our drinks, trying to figure it out.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘The cleaning service has

X-number of customers. You’d think each truck would be assigned to the same places every night.’

‘You’d think so,’ Donohue said mournfully, ‘but that ain’t the way it is.’

It was Dick Fleming who came up with the answer. He raised his head and looked at Jack and me, back and forth.

‘Sure they work a regular route,’ he said, smiling. ‘But on the same days each week. Get it? Brandenberg is an expensive shop. It’s got to be spotless. So it gets cleaned every morning. But the other places truck 14 goes to, maybe they get cleaned three times a week, or twice, or only once a week. So each morning’s route would be different. But I imagine if you followed truck 14 for a month, you’d find their route on Monday is the same every Monday, and every Tuesday is the same, and so on.’

Black Jack reached across the table and patted Dick’s cheek. ‘Brains,’ he said. ‘The kid’s got brains. I’ll lay five to three he’s exactly right. Now why the hell didn’t think of that?’font>

‘So all we have to do,’ I said, ‘is decide what day of the week we want to hit, and chart the route of truck number 14 for that morning.’

‘Let’s make it a Friday,’ Donohue said. ‘Fridays have always been lucky for me.’

‘Friday is good,’ Fleming said. ‘Around Christmas time most New York stores stay open on Saturdays. That means that on Friday morning Brandenberg and Sons will probably have a big stock on hand for Friday and Saturday.’

‘Beautiful,’ I said. ‘I’ll drink to that. Friday it is. We’ll decide the exact date later.’

We ordered another round. After it was brought, I gave Donohue the bad news of how, that morning, the cleaning crew had to wait at least a minute on the sidewalk before the manager unlocked the door.

‘Dick and I came up with the answer,’ I said. ‘See what you think of it. We hijack the truck and cleaning crews as planned. But only one of them, the helper, gets tied up and tossed in the back of the van. The other guy, the driver, keeps his coveralls on, and he really does the driving, with a gun in his ribs. The guy holding the gun is wearing the helper’s coveralls. They pull up outside Brandenberg and

Sons. The driver gets out because he knows that piece is pressed into his spine. He collects a few mops and buckets and walks up to the door. Our guy is right behind him, prodding him with-’

‘I get it, I get it!’ Donohue said excitedly. ‘If the manager has already unlocked the door, all well and good. The rest of the guys pile out and in. But if they have to wait, or the manager looks through the door before he unlocks it, he sees his regular cleaning man with a new helper. Naturally he’s going to unlock.’

‘You think it’ll work?’ Fleming asked.

‘Money in the bank,’ Black Jack assured him. ‘Can’t miss. I got to hand it to you two; you come up with the answers. Jesus. All right, now I can tell you. Our two heavies are waiting at the bar, right over there. I wasn’t going to say anything to them until I was sure we had a workable plan. Now I think we better bring them in. We got a lot