‘Armed guards in pairs. They walk it along a corridor under the stands. They wouldn’t be that tough to hit, but they never carry more than a couple grand at a time anyway.’
Parker nodded.
‘Now,’ Kifka said, ‘in the finance office the cash is counted and stacked and banded and put in money boxes to go to the bank. They get it done by the time the last quarter is starting so the armored car can get out of there before the traffic jam starts. The armored car doesn’t come till they phone for it, so it isn’t there very long, just long enough to fill up and take off. It’s bracketed by municipal police in riot cars all the way to the bank. The bank has a special deal where it has people down there even though it’s Saturday, and the money goes in and gets checked all over again right away.’
Parker said, ‘What sort of guard in the finance office?’
‘You got four armed men in there, private police, plus six employees. The way in, you pass through a locked guarded door into a corridor and along the corridor is the finance office. You knock there and they check you with a peephole before they open up.’
Parker nodded. ‘What about the size of it? It’s going to he mostly small bills.’
Arnie Feccio answered, saying, ‘We figure two big suitcases ought to do it.’
‘That’s a lot of weight.’
Negli smiled and said, ‘We don’t want to have to run with it anyway, Parker.’
Parker said, ‘We’ll see.’ To Kifka he said, ‘I understand you’ve got a way in.’
‘A beauty,’ Kifka told him. ‘A natural.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘We go in on Friday.’ He stopped and grinned at Parker, waiting for Parker to do cartwheels. When Parker just sat there and looked at him, Kifka belatedly went on with it: ‘We go in Friday afternoon,’ he said. ‘We get into the finance office then and we spend the night there. Saturday we collar every employee the minute he walks through the door. We’re on top of the situation from the beginning. The cash is brought in; we have the employees stow it right in our suitcases.’
Feccio said, ‘What do you think, Parker?’
‘I don’t know yet. How do you get in?’
‘At the entrances,’ Kifka told him, ‘they got these ornamental gates, you know? With the spear points on top and all that jazz. So they don’t quite reach to the top of the entranceway. I can get Bob up high enough, and he can squeeze through.’
‘Like an eel,’ said Negli. He demonstrated by wriggling his hand through the air.
‘There’s doors here and there in the wall,’ said Kifka, ‘besides the gates themselves. They’re kept locked, but you can unlock them easy from inside.’
‘What if somebody sees you and Bob at the gate?’
Kifka grinned. ‘Early birds. First ones on line at the North Gate. We got this all worked out, Parker, believe me. The South Gate is where the newspaper photographers always take the pictures of the nuts, and the East Gate is right on the main drag, so we do it around at the North Gate. Monequois Park is across the road there, and if anybody drives by what are they going to see?’
‘All right. Then what?’
‘We got three locks to get through and we’re in the finance office. Then we wait till morning.’
Negli said, ‘It’s good, Parker, you know it is. It’s worth your time coming here.’
”If it plays like Dan says it does, and if there’s a way out.’
Kifka said, ‘So what do you want to do?’
‘Is there anything doing out to the stadium tonight or tomorrow morning?’
‘Middle of the week? Nothing.’
‘Then we do a run-through,’ Parker said. ‘Tonight. We want lock impressions anyway, so we can move faster when the time comes.’
‘Good idea.’
They ran it through later that night, and it worked just as Kifka had said it would. Negli went over the North Gate and a minute later let the other three through a green door in the brick wall about ten paces away to the left. They were under the grandstand in a kind of concrete tunnel. Lighting their way with flashlights, they followed the tunnel around to the right and came out in the basement of the stadium building, next to a metal staircase. They went up two flights and Arnie Feccio worked silently and speedily on a locked door. There was no alarm system here, and no guards inside the stadium at night, although private police did patrol the general area by car.
Kifka led the way past the first locked door to the second, which led onto the corridor to the finance office. Feccio got them through this door, too, and then through the third, and they were in the finance office.
The finance office was actually three offices separated by room dividers of wood and glass, plus a small closed-off workroom containing supplies and a mimeograph machine.
They looked the place over, decided the workroom would be the place to spend the night when the time came, and retraced their steps, Feccio taking the time to study the locks as they went so they’d have keys when they came back.
Outside in the car, Kifka said, ‘Well? How does it look?’
‘We can get in,’ Parker said.
