After a minute, a black Buick, two years old and stolen that afternoon, turned into the parking lot. The driver was alone in the Buick. He was tall and slender, about forty, with a pock-marked face. His name was Terry. He nodded when he saw Rico.
Rico looked at the Buick, then got behind the wheel of the Continental. He bent and fiddled under the dashboard for a minute. Then the engine started and he backed the Continental out of its place. He headed it around several lanes towards another parking space. The Buick nosed forward and slid into the vacant spot. Rico fiddled under the dashboard of the Continental again, and the engine stopped. He got out and walked over to the Buick. Terry got out and they both walked around to the front and entered the club. They wore dark suits and ties, and took their hats off as they stepped through the entrance.
This was an Outfit operation, a rambling cream stucco structure two storeys high. It was in a dry county where liquor is illegal, in one of the forty-nine states in which gambling is illegal, and in one of the fifty in which prostitution and narcotics are illegal.
The only legal activity going on in the Club Cockatoo was dancing. On the first floor was the bar, where every drink ever heard of in New York City was available at a price a little higher than New York City. The waiters and bartenders had decks of marijuana for sale; the stronger drugs had never really caught on in that part of the country. Upstairs were the beds, and the maidens who manned them. And downstairs were the games. It was a good operation, profitable and safe. The local law was well-greased, and there had been no problems. Not until tonight.
No building is safe from robbery, if professional can get his hands on the blueprints. There were a few basic flaws in this particular building from a robbery-proof viewpoint that the Outfit had never considered before, but would have an opportunity to consider tonight.
The side door. It led to a short hallway, which, in turn, led to the bar. This hallway also opened on to a flight of stairs which led down to the gambling room. A man going down these stairs would find himself in another hallway with a barred window on his left and the main gambling room to his right. Directly across the hall, he would see the doors to the rest rooms. Turning to the right and entering the main room, he would see that it was filled with tables of various kinds, and that along one wall there was a wire wicket, like a teller’s cage in a bank, except that the wire enclosure extended to the ceiling. Behind this were the cashiers, with drawers full of money and chips. And behind the cashiers was a wall with a door in it. Turning around and going back to the hallway and thence to the men’s room he would discover that the men’s room and the cashiers’ space shared a wall, and that the door he had already noticed led into the men’s room. This door was kept locked; it could be unlocked from either side only by a key. Each cashier had a key which he was required to turn in when going off duty. The arrangement had been designed as a convenience to the cashiers, who worked long hours and were permitted an occasional beer.
And the office. It was behind the cashiers’ wicket, to the left of the men’s room. The door to the office was about eight feet to the left of the private door to the men’s room. This door was not kept locked, because the cashiers used it fairly often, clearing checks, bringing money in or taking money out, coming on or going off duty. The office was windowless, having an air-conditioner high on the outside wall, and the door to the cashiers’ space was its only entrance. The three men who worked in the office were armed.
Rico and Terry entered the club and stopped at the bar long enough for a bottle of beer, then they went downstairs to the gambling room. They entered the men’s room. Each went quickly into a stall and closed the door, and then they both put on rubber masks which covered their faces completely. The masks had two oval eyeholes and two round nostril holes, and for the rest were flesh-coloured rubber, loosely fitted to the contours of their faces. They put their hats on over the masks and waited. Patrons came and went.
They waited forty minutes before they heard the sound of a cashier’s key. They heard a door open and close, they heard footsteps on the floor. They came out of the stalls.
They each had guns now stubby English .32’s. The cashier was a small, bald man with spectacles which reflected the light. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his forearms were thin and pale and almost hairless.
There was one other customer in the room, washing his hands at one of the sinks. Terry, the pock-marked man, pointed a gun at him. “Come over here.”
Rico went over to the cashier. “Turn around. Put your palms against the wall.” Then he patted pockets till he found the key.
They marched the cashier and the customer into adjoining stalls and made them kneel down. The cashier was silent, but the customer kept babbling they could have his wallet without killing him. Rico and Terry sapped them and lowered them gently to the tile floor. If there were no killings and no injuries needing hospital care, there would probably be no official squawk from this job. The club wouldn’t be making any reports to the law if it could avoid it. And the customer would probably be paid off if he raised a stink on his own. If the job was clean and quiet, the law would never hear about it at all.
They closed the stall doors and went to the private door. Rico unlocked it and led the way through. They had the guns in their pockets now, their right hands tucked into the same pockets.
To the right was a long table. Felt-lined boxes full of chips were stacked up on the table, and empty ones were under the table. To the left was another table which held adding machines, telephones, and a few single-drawer filing cabinets for three-by-five cards. Beyond that table was the door to the office. In front stretched the counter and the wire cage. All but one of the cashiers had their backs to them. This one sat at the table to the left, running an adding machine. He looked over when Rico and Terry came through the doorway, and his eyes widened. He was the only one who could see the masks; the other cashiers were facing away and the customers and stickmen beyond the wire mesh were too far away to see what was happening. Anyone looking through the wicket towards the dim area by the back wall wouldn’t realize that those pale expressionless faces weren’t faces at all.
Speaking softly, Rico said to the man at the adding machine, “Come here. Be nice and quiet.” There was a steady flow of noise from beyond the wire, the rustle of conversation and the clatter of chips. None of the other cashiers heard Rico’s voice.
The man at the adding machine slowly got to his feet. He understood now, and he was terrified. He was blinking rapidly behind his glasses, and his hands gripped each other at his waist. He came over slowly.
Rico said, “Stand in front of me.” Rico pulled out the gun and showed it to him. “My partner has one, too.”
The man nodded convulsively.
“What’s your name?” That was part of his pattern. Rico always wanted to know the name. He said it was psychological, it calmed the victim down and made him less likely to do something stupid out of panic, but that was just an excuse, something Rico had thought up. He wanted to know the name, that was all.
“Stewart. Rob Robert Stewart.”
“All right, Bob. We’re cleaning this place. We want to do it quiet, we don’t want your customers all shook up. And we don’t want the cops coming down here and seeing all the wheels and everything. You don’t want that either, right?”
Stewart nodded again. He was staring at Rico’s mouth, watching his lips move behind the rubber mask, making it tremble.
“Now, Bob, the three of us are going to walk into the office. Smile, Bob. I want to see you smile.”