“They were not smart as we will be,” I predicted.
“Smart ain’t everything,” Squint said.
“I can picture us holding our first battle-staff meeting after your big project in the Recreation Room at the State Reformatory for Boys,” Thing said.
“If you gentlemen have got thin blood, nothing more need be discussed,” I said. “We can send the juniors and the girls’ auxiliaries out to swipe empty pop bottles, which we will sell for the two-cent deposits; and never mind that we are the laughing stock of the city’s younger set.”
“I move that the Prez be required to give us the details of his epoch-making heist,” the Mouse said. “We can give it our considered thought, that way, before we vote it down.”
“I second the movement,” Brother Squint said. “Tell us what’s on your mind, Prez.”
“It is simple,” I said. “We will rob a train.”
“Maybe I do have thin blood, after all,” Mouse remarked. “I’d as soon keep it bottled up inside me, though, and not spill it over any railroad tracks now, or any time.”
“I hope you propose to give our business to the Pennsylvania or the B&O, and not one of the short-haul outfits,” Thing said. “Shall I pick us out a railroad from the Dunn & Bradstreet?”
“Some people could not notice a brilliant notion if it bit them in the thigh,” I said.
“This one’s got teeth,” Squint admitted. “I think maybe the Club needs more practice swiping small stuff before we hold any train robberies, Prez.”
“As my old English teacher back in freshman year, Miss Hanna Henniker, used to say,” I quoted, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“Is she going to be in on this caper?” Squint asked.
I ignored him. “Listen to my plan,” I said, and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper on which to draw diagrams and list the equipment we’d need to make my dream a rich reality.
I had hoped to keep the secret plans of the train robbery among the senior members of the Hayden Street Social & Athletic Club; but hardly anyone outside the Girls’ Auxiliary knew how to sew well enough to make masks that didn’t droop, and the juniors were the only ones who could use the band-saw at the YMCA to turn out our artillery. As Miss Henniker once said, talking about poetic imagery, when you toss a pebble into a pool, the ripples go out to the furthest verge. Twenty of the juniors, whose fare is cheap, rode trains every day, for instance, counting people in each car and timing the ride between each stop with watches our track team had lifted from the coach’s locker at school.
The choice of the railroad to rob, I admit, was a lightning stroke of genius. We were going to hold up the subway.
There have been said things about Dwight D. Eisenhower in my hearing that suggest disrespect. Now, though, after I have myself borne the burden of command, of building an organization into a tight-knit machine, of maintaining security from the enemy (i.e., our parents and the fuzz) till H- Hour of D-Day, I feel the closest kinship with that man.
But, “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip,” as Miss Henniker used to say when mentioning her dream to retire and write lyric poetry in rural Mexico. It was my task to x-ray out the flaws in our project before committing my forces; to impress my troops with the need for post-caper silence (I shuddered to think of one of the younger kids compromising the entire membership, for instance, by maybe writing his first essay after school began on, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”). Moreover, I had to plan so as to avoid bloodshed, which must be a consideration in any major crime, such as ours would be.
My lieutenants and I synchronized our watches and took off at noon on D-Day to take up our positions along the Quigly Avenue Line. We were to board the train we’d picked from stops in the east and the central parts of the city, so as not to alert the Subway employees by a sudden rush of riders they did not recognize.
In each man’s pocket was a silk mask and a wooden pistol, the former lovingly stitched by the girls of the Auxiliary, the latter blackened and polished to a high gloss with lubricating graphite from a lock greaser. We had each made the trip on the Quigly Avenue Line many times, and knew the route better than the track crews.
At the Quigly Avenue Station, our underground contingent was disposing itself for its part in the operation. Boys had gathered outside the entrance, above ground, and had clustered beside the newsstand downstairs by the turnstiles. Several lurked on the platform, as though waiting for our train, having spent the last few pennies of the club’s treasury on their fares. In charge of this last group, whose function it would be to tangle up the legs of any pursuers, was the Mouse. He had explained to me that he had troubles getting train sick.
Rattling along in the three-car train, my still-naked face hidden behind a copy of the evening paper, I felt queasy myself, like an infantryman in a landing craft off foreign shores. Each car in the train was occupied by three or more of my best men. We had practiced every step of the robbery so many times we could do it in our sleep. I had nothing to worry about. I kept repeating that in my mind.
The wooden gun in my hip pocket felt big as a water-cooled machine gun, but it didn’t have enough weight to have real authority. I felt like in one of these dreams where you’re standing on a table in the school cafeteria, set to make a speech, and discover all at once you’re only wearing undershorts. Insecure. I felt sure some joker would laugh as I stuck my phony pistol in his belly, and that he’d bust my wrist taking the gun away from me.
Fortunately, my troops were unaware of their leader’s pusillanimous (that’s one of Miss Henniker’s favorite words) thoughts.
The train slowed through the tunnel that led out to the Quigly Avenue Station. My cue. I worked the wooden gat and my silk mask out of my pockets, crinkling the newspaper as if I wanted to call attention. I looked at my watch. I glanced up to make sure that the red “EMERGENCY ONLY” lever was within reach of my right hand.
As they say in the military, the balloon was up, the minute our train started out of the station. We wanted the first two cars nosed into the far tunnel, and the rear door of my car the only exit to the Quigly Avenue Station. Our G-2 had established that the next train was due here in four minutes, which would give us time to collect our booty and cut out to the streets and alleys upstairs before the trainmen knew they’d been played for patsies.
I strapped on my mask and reached up, still huddled behind my newspaper, to the Emergency lever. The lights of the platform slid past. “Geronimo!” I whispered, and grabbed hold.
The train squealed to a stop just where we’d put: it in our battle-staff blueprints. I dropped the paper and jumped to my feet, the wooden gun pointed at the left side of the car. Brother Thing, working this car with me, covered my side. “Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt,” Thing yelled. Very good.
“This is a stickup,” I added.
“Hallowe’en,” a woman across the aisle remarked, “is the end of October. Isn’t it early for trick-or-treat?”
“Just for cracking wise, you’re first,” Squint said through his mask. Squint was bagman for this car, and had his shopping bag at the ready. “Let’s have that purse, Lady,” he said.
“I should say not,” she snapped.
“What’s going on here?” the conductor demanded, sliding through the door from the car ahead. “Who bought that sudden stop for fifty bucks, or don’t you know there’s a fine for fooling with the emergency?”
“Cool it,” I said, walking up close enough to the conductor so that he can see my gun clearly, but not so close that he will recognize that it’s made out of the ends of orange-crates.
Squint snatched the stubborn woman’s purse from off her lap and was rifling through it while she swatted at his head with a folded newspaper. Squint wasn’t flustered. He eased the bills out of her wallet into his shopping bag, then dropped the billfold on the deck near the woman’s feet. We had this idea, that anyone would be so anxious to get back his wallet, even empty, that they’d ignore us for a few seconds while they picked it up. “Divide and conquer,” as Miss Henniker has said.