"Nothing that isn't too risky," he replied. "I'd really like to see you take this job on. I've been saving it for someone who's an organizer. You saw the list of names?"
"I saw them. Harris is the only one I know favorably. What the hell are you doing recommending a drunk like Thirsty Huddleston?"
"I'm not recommending anyone." A touch of acid crept into the Schemer's smooth delivery. "I gave you a list of the men available. If you don't want to work with them, that's your business."
"Why didn't you give one of them the package?"
"Because they're followers, not leaders. I have to hitch them onto the tail of someone else's kite." There was exasperation in Frenz's tone. "Listen, I haven't all day. If you don't like the look of the job, I'll give you a post office box number to return the envelope."
The trouble was I had to like the look of it. "Don't jump the rails, man. Where's Harris now?"
"Vegas."
That figured, all right. "Can you reach him?"
"Sure."
I crossed the Rubicon with a rush. "Have him meet Earl Drake at the Marriott Motel across Key Bridge from Washington, D.C., day after tomorrow."
"Fine. Who else do you want?"
I ran through the list of names again in my mind. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. "What about Dahl? Is it true he's a womanizer?"
"Professionally, perhaps."
"Professionally?"
"He makes nudie movies, which he distributes through a chain of art theaters. It takes him a long time to get his money back from his releases, if he ever does. He finances his films by jobs like this."
A gambler and a maker of nude movies. It hardly sounded like a winning team. The Schemer sensed my hesitation. "Dahl has nerve and can pass anywhere," he said.
In the end it always comes back to nerve, I thought. There were a lot of good workmen on the street who had lost theirs and were out of the business. If a man had nerve, he had a chance in the racket. Without it, nothing else could do him much good.
I made up my mind. "Send him to the Marriott, too."
"Will do." Frenz said it in the manner of a businessman who has just seen the prospect sign the contract. "And good luck."
Once I'd thought I didn't need luck. I was younger then. I'd take all I could get now. "Where do you want your end sent, Schemer?"
He gave me a post office box number, said good-bye, and hung up.
I had a day and a half to study thoroughly the Schemer's plan before I met Harris and Dahl.
I went back to my room.
8
People tend to think that a bank robber does nothing else for three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I've known professionals who ran legitimate businesses in their hometowns and left them only for the quick trips necessary to bring off a job. One of the best I ever had contact with was a middle-aged funeral director in a small town.
I probably came closer than most to being full-time, but even I always took a legitimate job a couple of months each year, usually as a tree surgeon. The one infallible way to be sure of taking a bumpy ride was to be picked up on suspicion and have no visible means of support.
Except at the highest level, bank robbery is far more of an avocation than it is a vocation. As is the case with most hobbies, not enough time is given to it. I'd always avoided that pitfall. I made it my business never to make a move until I was sure I had eliminated as much of the risk in a job as possible.
By the time I left the Holiday Inn in Richmond, I knew more about the operation of the Manufacturers Trust branch bank in Thornton, Pa., than the majority of its employees did.
Dahl reached the Marriott first on Monday afternoon. My first ten minutes with him nearly put me off the whole deal.
He was good-looking, with a big, toothy smile. He was also brash, extroverted, and noisy. I didn't appreciate any of it. He walked into the motel room wearing a sixteen-millimeter movie camera of the hand-held type slung by a cord about his neck. I was to find out he never went anywhere without the thing, unless it was into the shower. Later I was able to convince myself that it wasn't wholly a bad idea. A camera-carrying bankrobber? Hardly. But at first sight it set my teeth on edge.
"What's the deal, cousin?" he demanded breezily after we'd shaken hands. "I'm a busy man. I'm shooting a movie in New York City right now. If anyone except the Schemer had called me, I wouldn't have dropped everything to come down here."
"Let's wait until Harris gets here and I won't have to go through it twice," I said to put him off.
He shrugged and sat down on the bed. His glance as he examined me was speculative. "Why the makeup, cousin?"
"I'm actually a lesbian in drag." I tried to say it lightly, but it nettled me that he had spotted the makeup so easily.
"It's not that obvious, but makeup's my business," he said. He studied me intently. "Do I know you, cousin?" he continued. "What's your passport?"
"Schemer's my passport," I retorted. "And you know me right now as well as you ever will."
His eyes narrowed. "The bossy type, huh? How'd I get on your list?"
"It was the Schemer's list. He said you had nerve."
"That's me." He said it complacently. The compliment appeared to mollify him. "Okay. Just don't try putting a ring in my nose, see?"
I didn't answer him. I picked up the telephone and ordered sandwiches and beer from room service. When the knock came at the door and I opened it to admit the boy with the tray, Dahl disappeared into the bathroom without my having to say anything. He had passed a test, and I began to feel a little better about him.
In the next two minutes he lost the ground he had gained. He paced the floor while gulping down a sandwich. Then he flicked aside the draperies pulled across the window. He seemed charged with nervous energy. "Good-lookin' head in a bikini by the pool," he announced. "Be right back."
He was out the door by the time I reached the window. He strode across the intervening courtyard, unlimbering his camera as he went. He took a slow, sweeping panoramic shot of the pool area, then the camera lingered lovingly on the mini-bikinied girl, who eventually reached self-consciously for a towel. Dahl gave her a white-toothed grin and a wave of his hand as he started back toward my room. En route he paused to take a shot of two school-teacherish-looking women who were unlocking the door to their room.
"Suppose the girl's boyfriend or husband had arrived and objected to your making free that way?" I said to Dahl when he was inside again.
"The chick would slow him down," he asserted cheerfully. "They love bein' on film, with or without clothes. Ninety-eight percent of 'em, anyway."
"What about the two older women?"
"Never know when you can blend alfresco shots like that. Cut to a pair of lesbians frolickin' on a bed an' you've saved some footage."
"You mean you'd show innocent people in the kind of stuff you film?"
"Don't get shook, cousin. There's two hundred million people in this country, an' a lot of them look like other people. I never been sued yet." He sank down into a chair. "What time's Harris gonna get here? I got to get back to New York."
"If that's the case, what are you doing here at all with a job in prospect?":
"I'm here to do a quick job, cousin, an' then cut out."
"It's not that kind of a job," I began, and stopped at the sound of a knock at the motel door. Dahl did his disappearing act again while I opened it. None of us wanted to be seen together by anyone who could identify us as a pair or a group afterward.
The man at the door was tall, slim, and dapper. He had deep-set eyes, and there was a touch of gray in his brown hair. He wore a dark suit and carried a Panama with a conservative band in one hand. "I'm Harris," he said.