“Certainly. Anything you wish.”
“I would like to be on hand when your clerk does the count.”
“That’s very gracious of you, but I’m sure your bank has accounted for every dollar.”
“I’m grateful for your trust, but I would like to be present just to be on the safe side.”
Cardoza shrugged. “As you wish.”
“There is one other request.”
“You have but to name it.”
“I have other business to conduct in the morning and cannot return until one-thirty tomorrow. And, since your business is slowest then, it should be a good time for the count.”
Cardoza nodded in agreement. “You’re quite right.” He stood and extended his hand. “Until tomorrow afternoon. I look forward to seeing you.”
Ruskin held up his cane as a good-bye gesture, dismissed Cardoza, and left the office. He walked past the security guard, who didn’t give him a glance, and swung his cane like a baton as he stepped onto the sidewalk.
He smiled to himself, knowing that he had no intention of returning to the bank merely to count the contents of the suitcase.
9
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, RUSKIN WALKED TO THE BANK, making sure he was seen on the street by the passing crowd and stopping in shops to browse, making small talk with the merchants. He carried his gun cane more as a prop than for protection.
Reaching the Salt Lake Bank & Trust at one-thirty, he entered and ignored the guard as he turned the key in the front entrance door, locking it. Then he turned the sign around in the window so that it read CLOSED from the street and pulled down the window shades, as the guard sat there in his bored stupor, not realizing that the bank was about to be robbed. Neither Albert Cardoza’s secretary and the tellers nor the female depositor standing at the counter took notice of the intruder’s unusual behavior.
The guard finally came alert and realized that Ruskin was not acting like a normal bank customer and might be up to no good. He came to his feet, his hand dropping to the holster holding his .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, and asked blankly, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Then his eyes widened in alarm as he found himself staring into the muzzle of Ruskin’s .38 Colt.
“Make no resistance, and walk slowly behind the counter!” Ruskin ordered as he wrapped his gun in a battered, old heavy woolen scarf with burn holes in it. He quickly moved behind the counter before the clerks in their cages became alert and could make a grab for the shotguns at their feet. Never expecting their bank to be robbed, they hesitated in confusion.
“Don’t even think about going for your guns!” Ruskin snapped. “Lay flat on the floor or you’ll get a bullet in your brain.” He motioned his cane at the frightened woman at the counter. “Come around the counter and lay down on the floor with the tellers and you won’t get hurt,” he said in a cold tone. Then he motioned the gun at Cardoza’s secretary. “You, too! Down on the floor!”
When all were lying on the highly polished mahogany floor facedown, he rapped on Cardoza’s door. Unable to distinguish voices outside his office, the bank’s manager was not aware of the macabre event unfolding within his bank. He waited out of habit for his secretary to enter, but she did not appear. Finally, irritated at being interrupted, he stepped from his desk and opened the door. It took him a full ten seconds to comprehend what was happening. He stared at Ruskin and the gun in his hand.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. Then he saw the people lying on the floor and looked back at Ruskin in utter confusion. “I don’t understand. What is going on?”
“The first bank robbery of Salt Lake City,” said Ruskin, as if amused.
Cardoza did not move. He was frozen in shock. “You’re a director of a respectable New York bank. Why are you doing this? It makes no sense. What do you hope to gain by it?”
“I have my motives,” Ruskin answered, his voice cold and toneless. “I want you to make out a bank draft for four hundred seventy-five thousand dollars.”
Cardoza stared at him as if he was crazy. “A bank draft to whom?”
“Eliah Ruskin, who else?” answered Ruskin. “And be quick about it.”
Mired in confusion, Cardoza pulled open a drawer, retrieved a book containing bank drafts, and hurriedly scribbled out one for the amount Ruskin demanded. When finished, he passed it across the desk to Ruskin, who slipped it into his breast pocket.
“Now, down on the floor with the others.”
As if in the throes of a nightmare, Cardoza slowly lowered himself onto the floor next to his trembling secretary.
“Now, then, none of you move, or even twitch, until I tell you to.”
Without saying more, Ruskin walked inside the vault and began stuffing the bank’s currency into leather money sacks he’d seen earlier stacked on a shelf inside the huge five-ton door. He filled two of them, estimating the take at roughly two hundred thirty thousand dollars in larger denominations, none under ten dollars. He had planned well. From inside banking information, he knew that the Salt Lake Bank & Trust had received a large shipment of currency issued from the Continental & Commercial National Bank of Chicago for their reserves. The suitcase with his own money he left on another shelf of the vault.
Laying aside the sacks, he closed the vault door. It swung shut as easily as a door on a cupboard. Then he turned the bog wheel that activated the inside latches and set the timer for nine o’clock the next morning.
