And Lee. The eyes and ears. The six. The man for the odd jobs.
Much of the security of the plan rested on monitoring a police scanner and on watching the street. They were to be three hours from start to finish. The police could be there in four minutes. If anything was coming, they were all to drop what they were doing and go their separate ways.
— Quickly but not running, Gilmore had said, you get it? If it’s the street, you just go back down the alley and go home. If you’re in the van, you just get out and leave it where it’s at. Same thing. Split. We all go in different directions.
— And?
— And what? Wait. Keep quiet. Give it a few weeks. What nobody’s doing, Lee, is any time. Nobody’s going up.
Gilmore said there was ten thousand dollars in it for Lee, maybe twelve, maybe more. They would hit the deposit boxes, but there would also be cash in the vault that stores had deposited, last minute, before Christmas. He reminded Lee that it was the season of giving.
But the take would have to be moved first so it could be laundered before they divided it up. And here was the last piece. They weren’t going to drive the take anywhere. At seven-thirty on Christmas morning, a friend of Gilmore’s would land his Cessna Skywagon just outside, right down there on the ice. From there they would fly, all of them, with the take, to the lake country east of Maniwaki. And then by car to Montreal, where Gilmore knew some people. In Montreal they would get the take laundered, see what was happening on the news, and then split up. After that, Lee could take the first-class coach on the passenger train. Gilmore wanted to know if Lee had ever done that, taken first-class anywhere?
Lee drank his beer and asked the barman for another. He had still not been told what bank it was going to be.
Earlier that day, Lee had surprised himself by sleeping in, dreamlessly, waking late in the morning. An hour after he’d finished his breakfast there was a knock on his door. His visitor was the same young man he’d met before, the man whose wheelchair-bound mother had given them the canvas duffle bag.
The man had a Datsun crew-cab in the parking lot. They got in and drove wordlessly to a garage in the industrial park on Douglas Avenue. Behind the garage was a fleet of various cars and trucks, mostly derelict. There was no one in the yard, but the back of the garage was open and Lee thought he spied some movement within.
The man parked the Datsun out front and he and Lee walked around to the back, where the cars and trucks were.
— This is your place? said Lee.
— A friend of mine owns it.
— So you have something for me? said Lee.
— It’s over here.
The man led Lee past a stripped car and a damaged pickup truck to a ‘74 Dodge B100 van. There was a crack in the windshield and one of the side-view mirrors was mended with duct tape. The van had been painted in a kind of matte grey that Lee associated with warships. Or institutions. The man opened the side door. One bench seat. A lot of space in the back.
— Just like Gilmore wanted, said the man.
Lee nodded. He lit a smoke and offered his pack. The man, watching him, took one and lit it. Then he opened the passenger door. The transmission was an automatic floor shifter. The upholstery was old blue vinyl.
— See the radio?
Set in the dash was the faceplate of an AM/FM radio.
— It’s the scanner, said the man. We have the bands for the cops. I was sitting in here listening to the cocksuckers all morning.
The man showed Lee how the scanner was wired to its own battery, hidden at the back of the glovebox, so that it could be used while the engine was off. The rest of the van was in as good shape as it needed to be, but Lee thought he might have a look under the hood anyway, later, when there was nothing much else to do but wait. The man gave him the key.
Driving back to his apartment, Lee tried to determine how he felt, but he had no answer. The one thing he could be sure of was that there was nothing and no one he could invest his certainty in. He could only go forward, alone.
Lee ordered another beer. It was nine-thirty at night. He and the barman made idle conversation. For some reason Lee was thinking about how there’d always been cockroaches in his cell in the pen. He’d never been able to get rid of them.
Not much later Speedy came in through the back door.
— Hey, friend, pour me a drink. It’s Christmas. I want to get right frigged up. I’m only kidding. I just came looking for Lee.
Lee paid for the beers he’d had. He had less than twenty dollars left to his name. He followed Speedy outside. Even at this relatively early hour the street was quiet. They walked to the variety store parking lot.
— There she is, said Speedy, looking at the van.
— The brakes are touchy but it speeds up better than I thought. I never drove automatic before.
— I’ll drive. I know where we’re going.
— Not to the North Star?
— No. We’re done there.
They drove east on one of the side roads past the shopping mall. Speedy fiddled with the radio until Lee told him it had been replaced with the scanner.
— How long? said Lee.
— Fifteen minutes till we get there. Not long.
— No, how long did you know?
— How long did I know what?
— Speedy, do you have any fucking sense? How long did you know what Gilmore was planning?
— Oh. Well. Gilmore talked to me about it in August or thereabouts. He knew about me from around. When he heard I used to be a welder, he came to talk to me about the opportunity.
— August. How come it took so long?
— They needed the time to be just right. They were going to do it earlier, maybe September. But then this one night, after Labour Day, I was out there-the place we’re going now, Arlene’s uncle’s old place-and some crazy little broad shows up and starts yelling at Gilmore. It was almost funny, Lee. She was mad as hell because I guess she’d found out about Arlene. Gilmore manages to talk this crazy broad down a bit, and he gets into her car with her, and off they go. Then I didn’t see the boys for a week or two.
— Who was the girl?
— She was just some broad from town. Kind of had problems, I guess, but you wouldn’t know that if you just saw her. She wasn’t deformed or nothing. She worked at …
Lee saw Speedy was staring hard at the steering wheel.
— Where did she work, Speedy?
— Well, she was a cleaning gal at the bank. After hours. Gilmore would visit her at night sometimes.
— And what, she’s not around no more?
— No. She was real upset about Arlene and Gilmore. She killed herself. Problems, Lee. Nice girl, but. Anyway, Gilmore and Maurice cooled it for a bit after that. They almost quit the whole idea. But then they started talking about it again. Maurice wanted to do it just three of us but Gilmore thought we needed one more. Around then was when I ran into you at the lumberyard. Funny how those things work out.
Lee watched the road through the dark before their headlights. During his first meeting with Lee, hadn’t Wade Larkin mentioned something about a girl who’d killed herself? It had been a meaningless question then, but thinking about it now made Lee feel unsettled and strange. The thin snowfall glittered where the headlight caught it.
The grounds of the marina looked deserted when they arrived. Speedy had told Lee a little of the history, how the property belonged to Arlene’s uncle who’d been in a care home for many years. Arlene used to visit when she was a kid but hadn’t been here since. She’d known Gilmore in Montreal and they’d come out here in the spring, was all Speedy knew. He didn’t have any idea how Maurice and Gilmore had come together.