The station wagon was nowhere in sight, but when Parker drove the Pontiac around the corner of the lodge shell Stockton was standing beside an open garage door in the unburned end of the garage, motioning at them to come on. In this setting he looked like a modern-day Ichabod Crane, tall and skinny and stoop-shouldered.
Parker drove the car into the garage and cut the engine as Stockton shut the two doors. He and Fusco got out of the Pontiac, and Parker got his sport jacket and sweater from the back seat.
There were no interior walls separating the garage stalls. The Pontiac was the nearest to the burned portion, and next to it on the other side was the Buick station wagon. At the far end was the bus.
It was a small bus, shorter than usual, the kind of thing frequently used by small private schools to transport their children. It had been that yellow color when Parker had first seen it at the junkyard in Baltimore, but a lot had been done to it since then. It had a different color now, a rich royal blue that looked dark inside the garage here but would look as bright as a swimming pool out in the sunlight. It also had a different engine, much hotter than the original plant it had had under its hood. The false set of Maryland plates that had brought it up here were in the process of being changed now by Webb to New York plates which were equally false but for which they had faked- up registration. Kengle was in the process of attaching to the near side one of the two cloth banners they’d made, in red letters on white, reading:
ERNIE SEVEN AND THE FOUR SCORE
This was where most of Norman Berridge’s money had gone, into this bus and the musical instruments showing conspicuously through the rear windows.
Parker walked around the Buick and stood looking at the banner for a minute. Kengle grinned at him, saying, “Looks good, don’t it?”
“Just so it looks real,” Parker said.
“Then that’s what it looks,” Kengle said. “It looks real.”
Parker agreed with him. A bus that made itself as conspicuous as this had to lull suspicions.
Parker carried his sweater and sport jacket into the bus and dropped them on a seat toward the rear. Fusco had followed him aboard, and when he turned round he saw Fusco getting the gold tunics out of the brown paper bag, shaking them out one at a time, smoothing out the wrinkles, and draping each across the back of a bus seat.
Parker edged by Fusco and stepped down out of the bus again. Kengle was now around on the other side, putting the second banner there. A third, smaller but just as bright was being put on the back by Stockton. Webb, having replaced both license plates, was putting his tools away in the kit in the back of his station wagon.
They were ready to go at ten to five. They all got aboard the bus except Stockton, who opened the garage doors. The doors had been padlocked shut, but Parker and Fusco had sawn through the padlocks so they could be removed and then replaced to look as though they were still secure.
Those in the bus slipped on their tunics and settled in seats, all toward the front. Webb got behind the wheel, started the engine, which sounded deceptively ordinary, and backed the bus out into tree-dappled sunlight. Stockton shut the garage doors and replaced the padlock while Webb turned the bus around, then came over and climbed aboard, but didn’t put his tunic on yet.
The trip down the dirt road was painfully slow, Webb being careful not to rattle the goods inside the bus too much. The toy cartons were now on the floor unobtrusively near the back seat, surrounded and hidden by the musical instruments: snare drums, electric guitar and amplifier, tenor saxophone, three or four others.
Near the exit to Hilker Road, Webb stopped the bus and Stockton got out and continued down on foot. He was just barely in sight when he stopped, and they waited for the arm signal from him that would mean no traffic in sight in either direction.
It was a couple of minutes before it came, and then Webb slid the truck down the last several yards, slewed out onto the paved roadway without touching the brakes, and Stockton swung up through the open door as the bus rolled by him. Webb tapped the accelerator and they surged forward, running south.
It was a five-minute run to the South Gate. There was talk among Kengle and Stockton and Fusco on the way, but when Webb made the turn off the road and slowed to approach the gate the talk inside the bus died away and tension clogged the air like a heavy fog. It was ten after five.
Webb stopped at the gate, slid his window open, and shouted at the AP just outside. “Which way to the Officers’ Club?”
The AP said something. Webb, playing it stupid, said, “Hah?” and the AP said it again. Webb said, “Hold it,” turned his head, and shouted toward Parker, loud enough for the AP to hear: “He says he wants to see some authorization.”
Parker took the letter out of the inside pocket of the sport jacket lying on the seat beside him. He walked up to the front of the bus, handed the letter to Webb, and Webb handed it out to the AP, saying, “This what you want?”
It had better be. The letter was written on legitimate Officers’ Club letterhead stationery, stolen last Friday by Devers. It was addressed to Sheehan & Wilcox, a legitimate booking agency in New York City as gotten out of the phone book; it was signed by Major J. Alex Cartwright, which was the legitimate name of the officer in charge of the Monequois Air Force Base Officers’ Club; and it requested the appearance of Ernie Seven and the Four Score for a one-night appearance at the Monequois Officers’ Club on Wednesday, September 30th, at terms already agreed upon in prior correspondence. “This letter,” the letter concluded, “will serve as authorization for the group’s entrance onto the base on that date. We expect them no later than five p.m.”
Parker watched through the window until he thought the AP had just about finished the letter, and then he leaned down past Webb and called, “Buddy, we’re late now. Can we go through?”
This was the tricky part. If the AP let them through they’d be all right. If he insisted on checking with Major Cartwright at the Officers’ Club the only thing for them to do was back-out of the slot, turn the truck around fast, and get the hell out of there.
The problem was the bus. They needed a vehicle in which to get the goods off the base, and if they used Devers’ Pontiac, it might be traced to him later. Gate guards would be encouraged to remember what vehicles left the base in the time immediately after the robbery. To simply steal a truck from the motor pool was no good unless they intended to crash out through the gate, which they wanted to avoid; they needed half an hour anyway in order to lay a false trail and get themselves to ground. So they had to have a vehicle with papers, even if the papers were false.
