“I have a hunch it’ll be when they think we are least likely to expect a major crime,” Egan told Muriel. “Like on a Sunday night, or the night before a holiday.”
“Thanksgiving’s coming up next week.”
“Thanksgiving eve. My Irish intuition says that’ll be it. The little people are all piping. ‘Thanksgiving eve, Thanksgiving eve.’ Well, we’re ready. One thing worries me.”
“What’s that, Sweetie?” Her tone was casual, but there was concern in it. She loved this man.
“This time they’ve got guns. That means they figure they might have to use them.”
She said soberly: “Phil, promise me something. When it’s over, come up here. I don’t care what time it is or anything. Just come up.”
“Will do,” he said softly, kissing her.
On the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, Egan was tense, chain-smoking little cigars. Outside of Police Headquarters, in downtown Baltimore, people were already in a holiday mood, and the bars were filling up. Hourly reports were coming in from the stakeouts on Belair Road, Harford Road, and Preston Street.
By 4:30 P.M. Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti had not left the apartment. O’Konski was still delivering pies; Heisman was filling prescriptions in the drug-store. He knew that Heisman would get off work at five and that the Elite Bakery would close at six.
He felt it in his bones — tonight’s the night. He had learned to trust his hunches, and he trusted this one. He took a last look at the map with its circle of red pins with one big pin squarely in the center, representing the gang’s only downtown job, the safe-cracking at the Lord Calvert Jewel and Fur Shop.
He checked the Smith and Wesson .44 in his shoulder holster, put on his topcoat, and called Detective Terence Clancy.
“Let’s go, Terry,” he said tightly. The two men went over to the police garage to pick up the black Chevvie.
Up at the Preston Street stake-out everything was ready.
Egan checked his little fleet. On Preston Street across from the apartment was the black Chevvie with himself and Clancy. Further down the street, in front of a neighborhood bar, was another unmarked car, a battered tan Buick about seven years old. In it were Detective, Sergeants Lou Grissom and Con McClure, both big, hard men.
McClure was oddly dressed for a detective on duty. He wore an old gray sweater, frayed blue-jeans, ancient shoes that were run down at the heels and splitting at the seams. On his head was a blue knitted seaman’s cap somewhat the worse for wear. A stubble of beard adorned his chin and his gray-brown hair was growing down the back of his neck. He looked like a bum, a wino — which was the exact idea. But he had something most bums didn’t — a neat little Smith and Wesson .32 in the pocket of his dirty blue-jeans.
Finally, parked in the alley beside the excavation made by the “telephone repairmen” was a blue Volkswagen station wagon containing — conspicuously — coils of wire and various types of telephone repair equipment. On its door in gray was the bell insignia and the words CHEASAPEAKE TELEPHONE COMPANY. The three “repairmen” in the light blue jumpers of the phone company were Detectives Kohnstamm, Smyth, and Murphy — good men all.
Communication between all three of the groups on Preston Street was by walkie-talkie. Phil Egan was using the police radio only to communicate with the stakeouts on Belair Road and Harford Road, and then only by a code he had worked out. The gang’s cars undoubtedly had radios equipped to pick up police calls, and there were probably similiarly-equipped radios in the homes of Heisman and O’Konski, and in the apartment at 674 Preston.
Egan had ordered the cars on stakeout on Belair Road and Harford Road not to tail Heisman and O’Konski as they drove to the rendezvous on Preston Street. These tails would have to cover a considerable distance and might be discovered, causing the gang to break off its plans.
But suppose the rendezvous was not at the Preston Street apartment? Or suppose the gang set out in four or five cars — how could he tail them with three? He felt a moment of panic, but it passed.
He had to go with the probables, and the most probable place of rendezvous was Preston Street, in the center of town, rather than on Belair Road or Harford Road, out in suburbia. Besides, a meeting at the homes of O’Konski or Heisman would involve their wives. Preston Street was the best bet. If it turned out not to be Preston Street, he would just have to play it by ear, that was all. He shrugged and lit another little cigar.
At a few minutes before nine P.M. the police radio crackled: “Car X to Sea Lion — Car X to Sea Lion.”
Egan said tightly: “Sea Lion. Come, in, X.”
Car X replied: “Two drunks in a knife fight at Market and East Baltimore.”
Egan replied: “Got you, X. Roger.”
Heisman had left his Harford Road home in the Fiat sports car.
Thirty seconds later the radio crackled again: “Car Y to Sea Lion — Car Y to Sea Lion.”
Egan said hoarsely: “Sea Lion. Come in, Car Y.”
Car Y replied: “Investigate hold-up of liquor store at Howard and Fayette.”
Egan said: “Will do. Roger.”
O’Konski had left the bakery on. Belair Road in the blue Ford panel truck.
O’Konski arrived at 9:32. He parked the Elite Bakery truck in the alley right in back of the Chesapeake Telephone Company’s Volkswagen. The three repairmen in their, blue jumpers paid — or seemed to pay — no heed as he went in the back door and up the stairs to the third floor of 674 Preston.
Ten minutes later the Fiat came slowly down Preston Street, found a parking space in front of the house next door to 674, and Heisman got out. He went in the front door of 674.
Byers’ black Plymouth was parked in front of the apartment house, right where it usually was. The house had no garages; its tenants had to leave their cars on the street.
By 11:30 the tensed-up men had begun to feel somewhat let down. Nobody had come out of the house, and it looked like a dry run. Egan slouched behind the wheel of the Chevvie, chewing the stub of a little cigar, his topcoat pulled up around his ears against the November chill. He never wore a hat.
At 12:10 A.M. O’Konski and Heisman came out of the front door of the house, conversed briefly for a moment, and then O’Konski went back to the alley where he had parked the Elite Bakery truck. Heisman headed for the Fiat parked in front of the house next door. Upstairs in Apartment 3B the lights went off.
Had Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti gone to bed so quickly? Egan’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. But he picked up the walkie-talkie.
“All right, everybody,” he said. “Here’s the way we’ll play it: Clancy and I’ll take Heisman. You telephone guys stay with O’Konski. If and when the black Plymouth goes, Grissom and McClure will stick with it. Looks like a dry run, but we’ve got to play it out.”
The racy little Fiat, with the tall, tweedy, pipe-smoking Heisman at the wheel, turned north on St. Paul Street with Egan and Clancy in the Chevvie three cars behind it. It went right at North Avenue, turned into Belair Road, and proceeded northeast at a leisurely pace. Heisman put it in the garage of his attractive two-story house. Fifteen minutes later all the lights were out.
Gone to bed. A goddam dry run. But Egan decided to hang on. The hunch was fading, but it was still there. He located the stakeout car and told the two detectives in it to go home; he and Clancy would take over, and stay on the job all night, if they had to.
The men going off duty left them a thermos half full of black coffee. Egan and Clancy sat there, about half a block down from Heisman’s house, on the other side of the broad street. There were several other cars parked along the highway that was also U.S. Route 1, and the black Chevvie was inconspicuous. They sipped coffee, smoked, and listened to the police radio. Even at that hour of the night, there was a good deal of traffic.