Today, at a little past five now and with the store officially closing its doors at six, Drits kept a little eight-year-old curly headed blond girl on his lap for almost five minutes, his eyes glazed as he listened rapturously to her various requests. He reminded her to leave a cup of hot chocolate for him before she went to bed tonight, and then he helped her off his lap, his big meaty right hand clenched into her plump right buttock as he lifted her to the floor, and then he turned to the next little girl in line—a darling little Hispanic girl with bright button eyes and a mouth like an angel’s—and he said, ‘Come, sweetheart, sit up here on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want for Christmas.’
Drits wanted her for Christmas.
He looked at the clock hanging on the wall across the store and wished this job would never end.
* * * *
This was what burglars called a lay-in job.
One guy went in the store, he hid himself someplace inside the store, stayed there till they locked up and went home. Then the lay-in man knocked out the alarm, let his partner in, and together they ripped off the joint. Only this wasn’t going to be a burglary, this was going to be an armed robbery. And Charlie wasn’t going to wait till the place was locked up because then he’d never get the fuck out of here. In every other respect, though, it was a lay-in job. Charlie here in the men’s room on the sixth floor of Gruber’s, waiting for the store to chase all the customers out. Then down the hall to the cashier’s office, and Merry Christmas, ladies.
Not many people realized that a lot of department stores had their own vaults, same as banks. The vaults were necessary because department stores did a big cash business, and most of them stayed open later than the banks did. So what did you do with all that cash once the banks were closed? What you did, you had a vault ol’ your own, with security just like a bank’s, and you kept the cash locked up overnight till you could go deposit it. Some department stores had armored cars picking up the cash to take to a security vault overnight, but Lizzie Turner had told them that Gruber’s didn’t have any armored cars coming around for any pickups. Gruber’s had us own vault with its own safe inside it.
Tomorrow was Sunday.
Under ordinary circumstances Saturday’s cash receipts would be tallied in the cashier’s office early Monday morning, and then a pair of Gruber’s armed square-shields would take it to the bank for deposit.
But tomorrow was not only Sunday, it was also Christmas Day.
Which meant that Monday, December 26, was the legal holiday, and the banks would be closed then, too. If all went well, Dennis figured that nobody would even realize the store had been robbed till Tuesday morning, when the cashier’s office was opened again.
Charlie was sitting on a toilet bowl with his trousers down around his ankles. He had been sitting on the toilet bowl for close to half an hour now, listening to the traffic in and out of the men’s loom on Gruber’s sixth floor. He was not expected to make his move until six forty-five.
Lizzie had told them that the security in the cashier’s office was very good, better than some banks had. Two different combinations on the two steel doors that led into the vault, another on the safe itself. No windows in the vault. Just the two desks, the various adding machines and computers and such, and the big walk-in safe on the far wall. After the store closed at six, it normally took a half hour at most for each department head on the separate floors to tally his or her cash register receipts, put them into zippered plastic bags, and carry them up to the cashier’s office on the sixth floor.
Lizzie said that she and her assistant then put the plastic bags of cash in the safe, triggered the safe alarm, and triggered the alarms for both vault doors before they left the office at a little before seven each night. It was rare that any employee, including all the managers, were still in the store after seven. The employees all left by the employee’s entrance on the ground floor. The security officer there watched them while they punched out at the time clock. When all employees had punched out, the security officer set the store’s external alarm.
She had told them all this while they were laying out the job.
Nice girl, Lizzie. Smart, too. Quit Gruber’s early in October, was laying low now till it was time to split the money. That would be tomorrow morning. Christmas Day for the three of them. Christmas in Charlie’s room at the Excelsior the minute Dennis arrived with the...
A loudspeaker on the wall suddenly erupted with the sound of a woman’s voice, startling here in the men’s room.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, Gruber’s will be closing in twenty minutes,’ the woman’s voice said. ‘We ask you to kindly complete your shopping before six o’clock. Thank you and Merry Christmas.’
Charlie looked at his watch.
He rose then, pulled up his undershorts and his trousers, belted the trousers, and reached for the suitcase he’d tucked against one side of the stall.
He checked the lock on the door again and then opened the suitcase.
* * * *
A huge red banner trimmed in gold hung from a flagstaff and flapped in the wind outside Gruber’s side street entrances. Greetings were stitched in gold to the banner, one beneath the other:
MERRY CHRISTMAS
FELIZ NATAL
JOYEUX NOEL
BUON NATALE
Under the banner, and closer to the curb, a man in a Salvation Army uniform stood alongside an iron kettle hanging from a tripod. A sign affixed to the tripod read:
A cassette player blared ‘Silent Night.’
The man in the Salvation Army uniform was wearing a hearing aid in his right ear, but no one could see it because he was also wearing ear muffs.
‘God bless you,’ he said to a man who dropped a quarter into the kettle.
* * * *
‘Ladies and gentlemen, Gruber’s will be closing in fifteen minutes,’ the woman’s voice said. ‘We ask you to kindly complete your shopping before six o’clock. Thank you and Merry Christmas.’
* * * *
In the sixth-floor men’s room Charlie looked at his watch again. He had already fastened the pillow to his own not-insignificant potbelly and had put on the red trousers and the black boots, and now he was slipping into the red tunic. He buttoned the tunic. He tightened the wide black belt around his waist and then put on the beard and the red hat with the white fur trim. He would give the beard a final adjustment at the mirrors over the sink before he left the men’s room. He reached into the suitcase again, took out the big canvas sack with merry Christmas lettered on it in green and red, and then picked up the gun with the silencer on it. He tucked the gun under the tunic, over the pillow and his own potbelly.
Outside the stall someone was pissing in one of the urinals.
* * * *
‘Ladies and gentlemen, Gruber’s will be closing in live minutes,’ the woman’s voice said. ‘We ask you to kindly complete your shopping before six o’clock. Gruber’s will be open again on Tuesday, December twenty-seventh, at which time all items in the store will be on sale at thirty- to fifty-percent savings. Thank you and Merry Christmas.’