it back and forth as if wearily drying his fingertips. “Jesus H. Christ.” He had his pants on.
“What happened, Jace?”
“I ain’t sure. I wasn’t here-I just got here. But somebody hit the bank, a bunch of them. They got the cash, pretty close to a million. And that over there…”
Past the crowded people Watchman could see a pair of boots protruding and he heard Cunningham say, “They killed Jasper Simalie, Sam.”
5
Watchman gripped Buck Stevens by the arm. “They didn’t pass by us going out so they’ve gone out the other way-west on 793. Get on the radio and report. Tell those Nevada patrol cars to stop and search anything that moves on that road. On the run, now.”
When Stevens sprinted past him he pushed Jace Cunningham aside with the heel of his hand and shoved into the crowd around Jasper Simalie. He recognized Doctor Jamieson-a gaunt man with a hollow-cheeked death’s head and big yellow teeth, sparrow-chested and frail. The doctor was breathing like a teakettle. He looked up at Watchman and shook his head.
Jasper lay on his face. There was a great deal of blood on the floor.
“Shotguns,” the doctor said through his teeth. “They weren’t pistols, they were shotguns. The poor son of a bitch never had a prayer.”
A pudgy man with pink hands was waiting, licking his lips with a pink tongue, when Watchman straightened and turned. Cunningham said, “This here’s Mr. Whipple. He owns the bank.”
“Not really,” the pudgy man said. “I’m the manager-I work for the San Miguel Copper Company and I’m supposed to-”
“Were you here?”
“What’s that?” Whipple’s eyelids fluttered like semaphores.
“When this happened. Were you here? Can you tell me what happened?”
“I suppose so. It’s all so unreal, you know?”
The doctor came by, lugging his bag. “I’ve got to have a look at those armored-car guards. You coming, Jace?”
Watchman turned with an abrupt snap of his wide shoulders. “What about the guards?”
Cunningham flapped a bony hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it. They’re okay. They got sprayed with something and need gettin’ their eyes washed out, that’s all.”
The doctor said, “I think it was chemical Mace,” and went.
6
It was the biggest bank haul in the history of Arizona.
Watchman absorbed the facts quickly, piecing them together from the disjointed reportage of Whipple and Cunningham and two of the tellers he questioned. The tellers stood awkwardly, trying to ignore the fact that they were standing there in shirts, neckties, and underdrawers.
That was because the bandits had relieved them not only of the better part of a million in cash-Terrell, the head cashier, estimated $930,000-but of their pants as well, to discourage them from venturing out in pursuit.
It wasn’t clear whether there had been four men or five. The company guards who rode the armored truck and its two convoy cars had instructions to stay near the bank in case of trouble and they had developed the habit of playing dime-quarter poker in the mud room in the back of the bank where employees hung their coats and boots on winter days. The bandits had known that; at least two of them had rushed in through the back door and squirted a chemical from spray cans-probably Mace, a disabling gas. It had affected the guards’ vision, disoriented them, made them violently nauseous. Whatever it was, it had taken the eight guards out immediately and silently and none of them was able to give more than a sketchy description of their attackers. The bandits had relieved them of their side arms and locked them in the mud room. When Watchman talked to them the Tally Ho cards and coins were still scattered all over the room.
One man had entered the bank proper from the rear and two others had walked in the front door. They wore stocking masks and carried two double shotguns and an automatic pistol. About eight customers had been in the bank along with Whipple and seven employees. Another robber had waited outside at the wheel of the car. It was possible a fifth man had remained posted by the mud room to make sure the guards didn’t break through the locked door.
In the bank the robbers had told everybody to remove their trousers and get down on the floor. Two of them had leaped over the low fence and gone into the vault, carrying military duffel bags which they stuffed with loot. The third man, with a shotgun, had waited just inside the front door. The bank guard, Jasper Simalie, had sneezed and stirred or had not stirred-there were conflicting eyewitness reports-and in either case the nervous bandit had fired. The shotgun charge had blasted Jasper Simalie back against the tellers’ counter and he had slid down and fallen over on his face, leaving behind a red smear on the face of the counter.
The head cashier, Terrell, had pressed the alarm button under the lip of his desk very shortly after the bandits had entered the place, and the alarm had sounded in the police shack four blocks away. Jace Cunningham had been in the office with one of his patrolmen and he had told the patrolman to get through to the Sheriff and the Highway Patrol; Cunningham himself had grabbed a rifle off the rack and sprinted for the bank. But by the time Cunningham arrived the bandits had fled; he got a glimpse of their car speeding by, heading west.
The entire operation had taken no more than four minutes.
7
“They must have cut the phone and telegraph wires at both ends of town,” Cunningham said. “Everything’s dead except the radio. They had everything figured out-it took a lot of planning. This was no amateur job.”
“But they’re on the main highway,” Buck Stevens said. “They’re on the main road because there aren’t any secondary roads. We can nail them easy. Maybe those Nevada cars have got them by now.”
Watchman looked at his watch. They had been here twelve or fifteen minutes. He said to Cunningham, “Did you get a make on the car?”
“Not really. The play went around the other end. It was an old car-maybe an Olds, Buick, something like that.”
“Anybody get a look at the driver?”
No answer.
Whipple said nervously, “I did notice one thing. One of them had an ugly scar on his wrist-here, like this.”
Watchman’s eyes locked on Stevens’ and Stevens nodded emphatically.
Watchman took Cunningham by the arm and walked him toward the front door, talking while he moved. “They’d have known what the highway situation is around here. They must have allowed for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t doubled back and taken cover somewhere right here in town. You’d better get all your men looking for them.”
“What about you two?”
“We’ll head west, try to catch them in a pincer between us and those Nevada cruisers. If we don’t find them we’ll have to assume they doubled back. I’ll get on the radio and have another Highway Patrol car dispatched from Fredonia to block off the road west of here-we didn’t pass them coming in but they may have tried to get back that way while we’ve been inside here jawing. Now get moving, Jace.”
