“Who’s sweating?” The man called Wibber mopped at his face. He was very fat. He lay sprawled on his back on the cheap hotel room bed, perspiration-stained Western hat perched on his mountainous stomach, looking straight at the ceiling. “I just don’t want us to screw up, that’s all. I know this town. I know how they’ll react to a heist like this. It’ll be the biggest thing ever hit this place... and I don’t aim to get caught in the middle.”
“You don’t know nothing. None of you know nothing. If you did, you wouldn’t be scrabbling for peanuts in a penny-ante berg like this.” The soldier — his name was Sammy Travis — reached for his cigarettes. His fingers were slim and white, almost like the fingers of a woman, only the tips were stained dark yellow with nicotine. He got to his feet and said tersely, “What time is it?”
The third man — his name was Bernie White — looked at his watch. He had the dirt-clogged nails and blunted fingers of a man who works with engines. He said, “Twenty-seven after.”
“Three minutes,” Travis said.
Wibber moaned softly and swung his feet to the floor. The bedspread was sweat-sopped where his body had lain. He said, “How can you guys stand it?”
Travis said, “Eh?”
“How can you stand it?”
“Stand what?”
“The heat?”
White said, “You should take off some of that blubber. It ain’t hot.”
Travis didn’t answer. He went to the window and pulled back the drapes. Sunlight came in. What might have been a smile pulled at his lips as he said, “Right on schedule.”
Wibber and White joined him at the window. For exactly four minutes they watched something that was going on in the street four floors below. Then, without speaking, Travis closed the drapes and walked to the dresser. He took out a half pint of whiskey and divided it equally into three glasses. When he had distributed the glasses, he sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette.
Travis’ glass was empty and he was on his third cigarette when the phone rang. Before lifting the receiver he looked at White. “Time?”
White said, his voice edgy, “Eleven after.”
“Exactly thirty-seven minutes.” Travis let the phone ring three times, lifted the receiver, then replaced it without talking into it. The ringing stopped. He said purposefully, “All right. Let’s try to get it straight in our minds.”
“We’ve checked the timing on every run for the past three months, and it’s consistent. That’s important. Perfect timing is the difference between the right way or wrong way of doing a thing.” Travis grinned acidly. “That’s one of the things they taught me in the Army.”
“I ain’t convinced.” Wibber grunted on the bed. “Knocking off an armored car ain’t like maneuvers. Christ, every successful armored car heist in history has been an inside job, and we ain’t on the inside.”
“And that ain’t an armored car.” Travis lit a cigarette from the stub in his hand. The gesture was quick, nervous. “It’s a 1938 klunker that’s about to rust off its axels. Hell, if it wasn’t for the Army payroll, it’d be carrying nothing but cash receipts from the Saturday night Bijou.”
Wibber grunted, fanned his face with his hat.
Travis said, “Now then. Here are some of the things we know. The semi-monthly payroll for the base, discounting civilian employees who’re paid by check, is about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Cash. Beautiful green cash. Almost all of it in small bills.”
“How do you know?” Wibber stopped fanning.
White said, “Wibber, weren’t you ever in the Army?”
“What if I wasn’t?” Wibber fanned. “What’s so goddamned hot about the Army?”
“If you were,” Travis interrupted, “you’d know something. Three quarters of a million, divided into a couple of thousand pay envelopes, ain’t much. Twenties, mostly, except for some fifties they use for the officers.”
Travis laughed softly at his own humor. “The money is transferred to the base by the local armored transport service. Big deal. Three quarters of a million clams floating around in a klunker that would fall apart if you leaned on it. The trip from the bank to the base takes thirty-seven minutes. Add four minutes at each end for transfering the dough and it gives us exactly forty-five minutes from vault to vault. Forty-five minutes to knock this hick town on its ear.”
Wibber said, “You’ve worked on the car, Bernie. What do you think?”
“It’s old. But it’s tough.” White looked at Travis. “We won’t be able to crack it open. If we’re going to stand any chance at all, we’ll have to think our way in.”
“Just like that, huh?” Wibber mopped his face again, eyes still pinned on the ceiling. “There are two security guards to handle the transfer at the bank — three, counting the regular bank guard — and the whole U.S. Army is on hand to unload. What do you figure they’re gonna be doing while we clean house?”
“So we don’t hit ’em during the transfer,” Travis said quietly. “We wait until they’re out on the road. Then—”
“One thing that’s still bothering me,” White broke in. He stabbed his finger at a red line on the roadmap spread between Wibber’s feet. “Route 77 is the only road in or out of Valerie. A hundred and eighty miles to the California border, nearly the same distance to the nearest town east, and nothing but sand in between. Assuming we figure a way to make the heist... how do we get the dough out of the state?”
Travis pulled back the curtain and looked down into the street again, at the busy sidewalk in front of the First Trust and Savings Bank of Valerie, where less than an hour before he had watched canvas sacks containing seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars loaded into an armored car.
He stood at the window for several minutes. When he turned to look at the others his face was expressionless. He half closed his eyes as he said, “Working out the details is my problem. You two just make sure you’re ready to go... two weeks from today.”
3
Bernie White slammed closed the hood of the big tractor, motioned for Womack to cut the engine, and walked around by the pumps.
“Sounds like maybe you got a bent rod,” he said.
Womack cursed softly. “You sure?”
“Nope.” White shifted a wad of something in his mouth. “I’ll have to get inside and take a look.”
“How long will that take?”
White shrugged. He mopped his face and neck. “Can’t tell. I’m the regular mechanic, but the boss is off today, sick; so I’ve got to handle the pumps, too. Depends on how many people come in for gas. Hour, maybe.”
“Okay.”
“You in a hurry?”
“Yeah.” Womack was in no particular hurry, but he didn’t want to be stuck in this burg any longer than was absolutely necessary, not with heat shimmering up out of the pavement like steam in a Turkish bath. He climbed down out of the tractor and said, “Where can I drink a beer and cool off?”
“Frank’s Place is about as cool as any.” White pointed a puffy, freckled forearm. “It’s about two blocks down the main drag. Can’t miss it. You want I should come and get you as soon as I take a look?”
“Yeah. If I’m not back by then, you come and get me.”
White watched the big truck driver walk down Mainstreet toward Frank’s Place and thought how good a beer would taste. Then he went in by the grease rack for his tools. An armored car — PHILLIPS ARMORED TRANSPORT SERVICE said the sign on the side panels — was up on the rack.
White moistened his lips and looked for a long moment at the truck. They brought it in every week to be serviced and, although White had only worked at the garage for four months, he knew it like the back of his hand.