“A lot can happen in five minutes,” Dommie said.
“A hellofa lot can happen,” Jake said. “But that’s just why you are going to be out there with the chopper. The chopper is the difference. All you have to do is remember that. The difference.”
“You think it would be safe to light a butt?” Vince asked. “They can’t see nothing in here.”
“No,” Jake said. “No cigarettes. And keep your voice low. Now Vince, just to review it. Once we get our hands on the stuff, I come back through the wall and pick up Dommie. We go out the way we came in, through the back door. We pick up the heap and drive around in front. You, Vince, come out through the front door of the jewelry store with the stuff. It’s a simple snap lock, opening from the inside.”
Vince cleared his throat.
“Only thing I don’t like is my coming out through that front door,” he said. “I still can’t see why…”
“I told you a thousand times,” Jake said, irritation in his voice. “I told you. The one really dangerous moment is when we start to drive out of the parking lot. A police cruiser comes along then and stops us and they’d stop us for sure. We’d be blocked in and wouldn’t have a hope. They check that parking lot two or three times a night. Looking for kids laying up. If by any chance they happen to hit us as Dommie and I are getting in, we got a chance to make a breakout. If we get caught, at least we ain’t got the loot and we can ditch the guns when we see ’em coming.
“But you’ll be in the clear and you’ll have the stuff. If everything goes all right, all you gotta do is walk out the front door. It’s a snap lock and closes behind you. We’ll be in front ready to pick you up and then, if the cops should happen by, at least we’re not trapped. We’re in the open and we got a chance.”
Dommie scratched a match to light a cigarette and Jake quickly cursed him and told him to put it out. And so they just sat there then, waiting.
The second time Jake flicked on the light and checked his watch, he grunted and got up from where he was squatting on his heels.
“All right, Dommie,” he said. “Out front. This is it. Vince, let me have the sledge. Hold the light and keep it on the wall. This stuff is nothing but plaster and lathe and it should go like cheese.”
Dommie walked into the lobby, carrying the machine gun under his arm as the first dull blow reverberated throughout the empty theater.
Vince suddenly stopped worrying. Now that they were in action, there was no longer time to worry. Anyway, he felt a quick surge of confidence. It was going to work. It was bound to work.
It was odd, odd and just a bit ironic, that he should have been reflecting upon the utter mediocrity of his life when the incident occurred.
The seven of clubs was responsible. That is to say, the seven of clubs which Gerald Hanna had drawn to fill an inside straight during the last hand of the evening had started him thinking about himself and about his life.
Gerald Hanna was not a man to draw to an inside straight. He wouldn’t, normally, gamble on any kind of straight, even if it was the last hand. As he pushed the money into the pot and asked for the card, he was subconsciously amazed at his audacity.
The fact that he filled, that he drew a seven to make a ten high run, so completely surprised him that for a moment or two he sat there thoroughly stunned.
Bill Baxter had to ask him twice what he wanted to do after he himself checked the bet.
It was the usual Friday night game, which was always held in Bill’s place, Bill being the only one of the regulars who was unmarried, or didn’t live with his family, or who had a suitable apartment. Bill worked down at Seaboard Life with Gerald and several of the other players.
Dr. Harry Kline, an examiner for the insurance company, and four or five other men who were regulars, were playing that evening.
It was a friendly kind of game, the sort of thing which happens in a thousand towns and cities where several men get together once a week for a night out. The limits were modest, usually a ten cent ante and a quarter raise with only two consecutive raises allowed, in keeping with the incomes, and the responsibilities, of the players. They were men in the six to ten thousand dollar a year bracket.
Mostly they would drink a few beers during the evening and the money for this was taken out of the pot a week in advance, although now and then Doc Kline would bring along a bottle of Scotch which he would share with anyone who cared for a drink.
The game started at eight o’clock and broke up sometime after midnight. No one ever got hurt very badly and there was never any ill feeling or anger. The nearest they ever came to it was the time Herb Potter got drunk and insisted on raising the limits after he’d gone for three hours without a hand. Even that was understandable and forgiven as it happened only a couple of weeks after Herb’s youngster died of polio and everyone knew that he was still feeling pretty much broken up.
They played a fair brand of poker, considering everything. It was usually straight draw with jacks or better to open, or five card stud and each player pretty much knew every other player’s game. Packy Wilson was inclined to bluff and Doc Kline was overly cagey, never staying unless he had a little the best of it before the draw, but all in all they played very evenly and conservatively.
No one, least of all Gerald Hanna, would have dreamed of drawing to an inside straight. But on this particular night Gerald did. And he filled. He raised twice and won over a pair of aces and jacks held by Doc Kline, taking in around four-eighty on the hand, which put him about six dollars ahead for the evening.
While he was pulling in the pot, Gerald told Doc Kline that he’d filled an inside straight and Doc Kline laughed sourly and, in a good-natured way, called him the world’s biggest liar.
“Don’t kid me,” Doc said. “You draw to an inside straight? Boy that’s one I’ll never believe. I’ll bet you haven’t left your house on a cloudy day in the last ten years without an umbrella and your rubbers.”
The funny thing was that Doc Kline was right. Gerald hadn’t.
Bill Baxter’s apartment was in the East Seventies and when they broke up, Doc Kline offered to drive Hanna home as he also lived on Long Island. Gerald rented a room and bath in Roslyn from a family who had been friends of his mother.
Gerald explained he’d driven his own car in that morning. He didn’t wait around to have the final post-game glass of beer with the others.
“Want to get to bed as soon as I can,” he said. “Got to get an early start in the morning and the traffic will probably be lousy, it being Saturday.”
They all knew what he meant.
Each week end, after the Friday night game, Gerald went to his rooms for a few hours’ sleep and then got up before dawn on Saturday morning to drive up to Connecticut to spend the week end with his girl.
They knew all about Gerald’s girl. He’d been engaged now for five years. Maryjane lived with her invalid father and worked as a librarian, and Gerald and she had agreed that they wouldn’t get married until he was earning enough to continue sending money to his own family and also support her father. It was the sensible thing to do, Gerald would argue, although now and then he began to wonder if he ever was going to get married, or if he actually really wanted to any longer.
In the meantime he saw Maryjane on week ends, and they did simple, inexpensive things together, like swimming and picnicking and going to the movies. Maryjane had become a habit. It was like everything else in his life, he reflected, a trifle bitterly. Dull, safe, respectable and routine.