Felony File (3 page)

"
Not really, sir," said Masters. "It's
planning that does it, all right—a set routine. Like we told you,
the store closes at six except for Saturdays when it's open till
nine. So at around five-fifteen, the different department heads start
to close out the cash registers, see? The amount in every register is
totaled and entered on a little form. Then they add up the total of
all the checks and put that down too. The cash goes in one little bag
and the checks in another, and then they both go in a bag together,
marked for that department. By this time it'll be getting on to a
quarter of six, and there aren't usually many last-minute customers
but if so it's easy enough to add in those sales. As soon as the
doors close at six-come to think, it is a kind of split-second timed
thing—the department heads take their bags to number three freight
elevator. There's one of us on every floor right by that elevator—I'm
on the seventh floor. Elevator collects the first-floor bags, goes up
to the second floor, and so on. After it's gone up, the guards on the
first, second, third and fourth floors, they go down to secure all
the street entrances, check the rest rooms, be sure all the people
are out. The rest of us go up to Accounting with the bags."

"
That would be about what time usually?"
asked Landers.

"
It doesn't take long," said Lee. "About
twenty past?"

He consulted Masters.

"
Twenty past to half past six," said
Masters. "Split the difference. It's all kind of down pat, see?
In Accounting—I mean the hall by the elevator where the door to
Accounting is—we wheel all the bags in on a big dolly, and there'll
be five or six men to handle 'em. They take it in turns. They take
the paper forms out of each bag, and seal the bags—that takes maybe
another twenty minutes. Tell the truth, I don't know where those
forms go, files somewhere, I suppose, they just take 'em into the
Accounting office and then they leave and we take the bags down by
freight elevator five, that's the one closest to the alley between
the buildings."

Bullock's store had two separate buildings joined by
an arcade below, a mezzanine above. "By that time Decker—he's
the ground-floor guard—has brought the van around, we load the bags
and drive straight to the bank. That'll be about seven-fifteen, it's
only a couple of blocks. The guards there are always waiting, and in
three minutes we've handed over to them and the bags are on the way
to the vault."

"
These birds had to know that routine,"
said Grace, "to catch you all flat-footed the way they did."

"
You can sure as hell say that again," said
Lee feelingly. "What the men in Accounting say—they come out
to the elevator about six-fifteen, to be there when we come up—these
jokers must have hid some place, probably on the seventh floor, until
about ten past six. And something else, they knew how to get up to
the eighth floor, which not everybody would. That elevator's not for
general use, and it's way down at the end of a dead-end aisle in
Ladies' Lingerie on the seventh floor. It only goes from seven to
nine, where Lost and Found is. Anyway, they showed up at the door to
Accounting at ten past six on the dot, and of course there was only
six guys there, everybody else had left. All four of 'em had guns,
and Mr. Anderson said it didn't take three minutes, three of 'em went
to work—they had the rope with 'em—and got them all tied up like
packages. Just in time to come out to the elevator and meet me and
Bob peacefully riding up with all that loot. There wasn't one damned
thing we could do. In about another two minutes they had us tied up,
and down they go in the elevator."

"
Taking off the masks as they went," said
Landers, "to, hopefully, slide out without any trouble
downstairs. As indeed they did."

"Yeah," said Lee. "See, the men on the
first floor then aren't usually very near that alley door. Two
men—Decker and Robinson, but usually Robinson'd be on his way up to
the second floor around then. Decker'd have got the van from the
parking lot and brought it around to the alley, left the keys in it.
And we told you these bastards had on uniforms—not really like
ours, but blue—and unless Decker was close enough, he couldn't see
it wasn't us, if they slid out in pairs."

"
A very smart little operation indeedy,"
said Grace.

They had put out an A.P.B. for the van, and it had
been spotted an hour ago parked over on Garondelet. It was now in the
police garage being gone over by the lab men.

"
Not to tell you your business," said
Masters diffidently, "but we kind of wondered—maybe one of
them used to work as a guard at the store. Knew the routine from
that, see?"

"
It is a thought," said Grace. That, of
course, had occurred to them.

Lee was looking around the big office, at the two
detectives, with interest. Only Glasser was there, bent over his
typewriter. Lee said to Landers, "Excuse me, but you don't look
old enough to be a detective, you know?"

Of necessity, after long suffering, Landers had
learned to bear his cross philosophically. He just had the kind of
face that would look about twenty until he was a grandfather, and he
had to live with it.

It was nearly the end of shift. They thanked the two
guards and saw them out. Grace left, and Landers was just going out
the door when the phone on his desk rang. He went back to pick it up
and found his wife at the other end.

Phillippa Rosemary, unfortunately christened by
parents who never dreamed she would turn into a policewoman, was
annoyed. "These damn Narco men," she said. "I'm going
to be here—" here was Records and Identification downstairs—
"for at least another hour, Tom—they've got three citizens
looking for a pusher. So will you please pick up a pound of hamburger
and some frozen french fries on the way home?"

"Certainly," said Landers. "Maybe this
kind of thing will convince you to start a family and turn into an
old-fashioned homemaker."

"I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about it,"
said Phil. "What with all the stupid civilians I've had to deal
with today, and now Lieutenant Goldberg telling me all about his
allergies—"

Landers laughed. "We'll
discuss it later at closer quarters. I'll expect you when I see you."

* * *

The chief accountant at Bullock's had come up with a
rough estimate of the loot: somewhere around three hundred and fifty
grand. Sergeant John Palliser drove home through the steady rain
thinking about that very smart job. He had never been especially
gifted with ESP—Mendoza was the one with the crystal ball—but a
dim presentiment moved in his mind, and as he pulled into the drive
of the house on Hillcrest Road in Hollywood he thought, that ought to
be enough to last them for a while, but-

Roberta had really been working with the big black
German shepherd Trina, who hardly jumped on them anymore at all. She
brought him a Scotch-and-water, said there were pork chops for dinner
and she'd just got the baby to sleep. "Have you been on that
Bullock's thing?—it was on the noon news. That bunch really thinks
big—are there any leads on it'?"

"
Not so far. And I do
just wonder—" said Palliser.

* * *

Hackett went home, having failed to find any
beautiful blonde heisters in their records, to an annoyed Angel and
two noisy children. "Seven people came to see the house,"
said Angel, "and I have had it, Art. Let's for heaven's sake go
to those Gold Carpet people they'll buy the house outright, and we
can move." She sounded cross and tired. They had put a down
payment on the new house she had found, high up in Altadena, a nice
house on a dead-end street; but here they still were in Highland
Park, with the local crime rate soaring and two house payments to
make for the second month. "I know they only offered seventy
thousand, but we might not get much more anyway."

"
You're probably so right," said Hackett.
"We'd better. George and Mary were lucky." In the
background, Mark was being an airplane and Sheila imitating him.

"
The happy home."

Angel hugged him. "I
mean, when we know we're moving, I want to get on with it. I'll call
them in the morning."

* * *

The Higginses had been lucky because the house on
Silver Lake Boulevard—the house which Sergeant Bert Dwyer and Mary
had bought sixteen years ago when they were expecting their first
baby—had been in a location where the soulless new condominiums
were going up. The years had passed too quickly, since it had been a
quiet family home on a not-too-busy street; and Bert Dwyer had died
on the marble floor of the bank with the heister's slugs in him, and
that confirmed bachelor George Higgins had finally persuaded Mary to
marry him. These days they had their own Margaret Emily who had
turned two in September. Steve Dwyer was past fifteen and Laura
thirteen, and—a good thing—they both adored George Higgins. But
the years went by too fast.

He knew it had been a wrench for Mary, leaving the
old house. The realty firm had bought it, and it would be torn down
to make room for another tall condominium. But the new house was
occupying her attention; a nice four-bedroom house on a quiet street
in Eagle Rock, it needed a good deal of paint and tender loving care.
Fortunately, Steve and Laura liked the new school. When Higgins got
home that Friday night Mary informed him that she'd given the kitchen
the second coat of paint. "I wanted to get it done, George. But
it did take longer than I'd thought, I'm afraid dinner isn't—"

Higgins surveyed her fondly, his lovely Mary, and
said, "I see you did. You've got paint all over your face."

"
I only finished ten minutes ago—Laura did
offer to help but she had her music lesson to study, and Steve just
got home—"

"
Go wash the paint off," said Higgins, "and
I'll take us all out to dinner."

He wasn't thinking about
the Whalens, or the other body he'd looked at that day; that was just
the job, and after the years he'd spent at the job, he'd learned to
leave the current work at the office. See what showed tomorrow.

* * *

Mendoza, not thinking much about the Whalens, or
Hackett's female heister, or the Bullock's job, drove home through
the rain, which seemed to be coming down harder. The house on Rayo
Grande Avenue in Hollywood wasn't going to be home much longer.
Alison's estate—the old estancia and winery in the hills above
Burbank—was ready to be moved into. The new apartment, constructed
for their newest retainers Ken and Kate Kearney in part of the old
winery building, was finished; the fence around the four and a half
acres was up, and the special wrought-iron gate bearing the name of
the house, La Casa de la Gente Feliz, the house of happy people.
These last few days, Alison had been in a frenzy of sorting out
possessions and consulting with movers; they would be in the new
house by Christmas.

But he came home to a tranquil atmosphere tonight.
The twins Johnny and Teresa, just turned five in August, greeted him
exuberantly but settled down again to coloring books. Alison had been
curled in her armchair with the latest House Beautiful, while the new
one rolled on a blanket on the floor. The new one, Luisa Mary, was
fulfilling the prophecy of that nurse in the obstetric ward: she was
a live wire all right, and her hair—coming in more vigorously by
the day—as red as Alison's.

"
I have no doot," said Mairi MacTaggart in
the door to the dining room, "she'll turn out left-handed, the
way she has of going backwards at things. You stay where you are,
it's only the steak to broil—give the man time for a drink."

Certainly, when Mendoza was settled in his armchair
with the drink (having necessarily provided El Señor, the alcoholic
half-Siamese, with his own half-ounce of rye) Luisa Mary was
energetically making swimming motions backward and complaining
vociferously that she was no nearer her objective—the complicated
tangle of the other three cats—Sheba, Bast and Nefertite—curled
on the big, round, velvet ottoman.

"
We're going to be in before Christmas if
possible," Alison was exulting. "It's going to be hell,
sorting everything out, but Mairi says better to do it at this
end—Lord, we've been here five years, not all that long, but the
things you accumulate—"

Cedric the Old English sheepdog galloped into the
room with Mairi in hot pursuit. "The creature!" she said
crossly. "In the wading pool all summer and footprints all over,
and now bringing in the mud—"

Mendoza leaned back and shut his eyes. One of these
days he might quit the job, and spend more time with the feudal
household his Scots-Irish girl had wished on him. Or maybe not ....
With the rye warm in his stomach, he was thinking again about that
very sharp operation at Bullock's. Dimly, the same presentiment
Palliser had known moved in his mind.
 

TWO

ON SATURDAY MORNING, with Sergeant Lake off and
Sergeant Farrell sitting on the switchboard, they got Nick Galeano
back; he'd been off yesterday. He'd heard about the Bullock's job on
the news, and was interested to hear what had showed. But Piggott and
Schenke on night watch had left them a new heist to work, with at
least one suggestive lead—the bartender who'd been held up thought
he recognized the heister as some dude around the neighborhood.
Galeano and Conway went out on that.