unwrapped and lit a cigar. The cigar in his left hand, he reached out for the phone again.
But it wasn’t good news. It was bad news, very bad news. Someone had just knocked off the Club Cockatoo.
2
The neon sign which hung out by the road was green. It said:
CLUB
C
O
C
K
A
T
O
O
DANCING
Town was five miles away to the east, along the two-lane blacktop road, moving gradually down the decline into the valley where the city was situated. From the direction came an orange Volkswagen. The driver was alone in the car, a bulky canvas-covered bundle lay on the back seat. It putted by the Club Cockatoo, with the characteristic cough of the VW. A mile and a half farther along there was an Esso station, closed for the night. The VW putted in there and stopped. The lights were shut off. The low, small silhouette of the car could hardly be seen in the dark couldn’t be seen at all unless you knew it was there. The driver, a short thin man named Rico, got out and walked back down the road towards the Club Cockatoo.
It was a Saturday night, so the parking lot was crowded. Rico walked through the ranks of cars to the line parked facing the side of the building. There was a door on the side, near the rear, and Rico headed for that. The car nearest that side door was a white Ford Thunderbird. Rico tried the door on the driver’s seat, found it locked, and shrugged in irritation. Then he tried the next car, a dark green Continental. The door was unlocked. He stood next to it, waiting.
After a minute, a black Buick, two years old and stolen that afternoon, turned into the parking lot. The driver was alone in the Buick. He was tall and slender, about forty, with a pock-marked face. His name was Terry. He nodded when he saw Rico.
Rico looked at the Buick, then got behind the wheel of the Continental. He bent and fiddled under the dashboard for a minute. Then the engine started and he backed the Continental out of its place. He headed it around several lanes towards another parking space. The Buick nosed forward and slid into the vacant spot. Rico fiddled under the dashboard of the Continental again, and the engine stopped. He got out and walked over to the Buick. Terry got out and they both walked around to the front and entered the club. They wore dark suits and ties, and took their hats off as they stepped through the entrance.
This was an Outfit operation, a rambling cream stucco structure two storeys high. It was in a dry county where liquor is illegal, in one of the forty-nine states in which gambling is illegal, and in one of the fifty in which prostitution and narcotics are illegal.
The only legal activity going on in the Club Cockatoo was dancing. On the first floor was the bar, where every drink ever heard of in New York City was available at a price a little higher than New York City. The waiters and bartenders had decks of marijuana for sale; the stronger drugs had never really caught on in that part of the country. Upstairs were the beds, and the maidens who manned them. And downstairs were the games. It was a good operation, profitable and safe. The local law was well-greased, and there had been no problems. Not until tonight.
No building is safe from robbery, if professional can get his hands on the blueprints. There were a few basic flaws in this particular building from a robbery-proof viewpoint that the Outfit had never considered before, but would have an opportunity to consider tonight.
The side door. It led to a short hallway, which, in turn, led to the bar. This hallway also opened on to a flight of stairs which led down to the gambling room. A man going down these stairs would find himself in another hallway with a barred window on his left and the main gambling room to his right. Directly across the hall, he would see the doors to the rest rooms. Turning to the right and entering the main room, he would see that it was filled with tables of various kinds, and that along one wall there was a wire wicket, like a teller’s cage in a bank, except that the wire enclosure extended to the ceiling. Behind this were the cashiers, with drawers full of money and chips. And behind the cashiers was a wall with a door in it. Turning around and going back to the hallway and thence to the men’s room he would discover that the men’s room and the cashiers’ space shared a wall, and that the door he had already noticed led into the men’s room. This door was kept locked; it could be unlocked from either side only by a key. Each cashier had a key which he was required to turn in when going off duty. The arrangement had been designed as a convenience to the cashiers, who worked long hours and were permitted an occasional beer.
And the office. It was behind the cashiers’ wicket, to the left of the men’s room. The door to the office was about eight feet to the left of the private door to the men’s room. This door was not kept locked, because the cashiers used it fairly often, clearing checks, bringing money in or taking money out, coming on or going off duty. The office was windowless, having an air-conditioner high on the outside wall, and the door to the cashiers’ space was its only entrance. The three men who worked in the office were armed.
Rico and Terry entered the club and stopped at the bar long enough for a bottle of beer, then they went downstairs to the gambling room. They entered the men’s room. Each went quickly into a stall and closed the door, and then they both put on rubber masks which covered their faces completely. The masks had two oval eyeholes and two round nostril holes, and for the rest were flesh-coloured rubber, loosely fitted to the contours of their faces. They put their hats on over the masks and waited. Patrons came and went.
They waited forty minutes before they heard the sound of a cashier’s key. They heard a door open and close, they heard footsteps on the floor. They came out of the stalls.
They each had guns now stubby English .32’s. The cashier was a small, bald man with spectacles which reflected the light. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his forearms were thin and pale and almost hairless.
There was one other customer in the room, washing his hands at one of the sinks. Terry, the pock-marked man, pointed a gun at him. “Come over here.”
