"Yes, Sergeant," Lepski said, his face dead pan.
"Okay, Tom," Terrell said. "Get off. I hope we won't be hearing from you."
"Yes, sir," Lepski said and walked out of the office. He stabbed a finger at the door when he had shut it, and then walked down to where Charlie Tanner was handing over to another sergeant.
Tanner said, "I bet Joe loved you, dressed up like that."
"He did," Lepski said. He shot his cuffs, flicked at his tie and, leaving Tanner gaping with admiration, he walked down to the waiting police car.
* * *
At midnight, Harry Lewis locked away the papers on his desk, lit a cigar, and left his office. His secretary had gone home a few minutes before. Now, he could concentrate on the activities in the gambling hall. He would remain, moving around on the first floor until three a.m., before going back to his luxury villa. He took the elevator down to the first floor.
So far, the evening had been uneventful. The gambling had begun at ten-thirty. Every fifteen minutes, Lewis received reports from the croupiers. As was expected, the gambling had been high and reckless. So far the Casino was ahead, but there was a syndicate of Brazilians who could be troublesome. Lewis decided it was time he went down and watched the play.
As he wandered into the gambling hall, he spotted Lepski, his alert ice-blue eyes surveying the scene.
Lewis went over to him.
"Glad you are here, Tom," he said, shaking hands. "How is Carroll?"
Carroll Mayhew was Lepski's fiancée. They were hoping to get married at the end of the year, and Lepski felt certain Lewis would donate a handsome wedding present.
"Fine, sir," he said. "No trouble there. No trouble here. These guys are certainly tossing their money around."
"Well . . . if you have, you toss it . . . if you haven't, you shouldn't," Lewis said and smiled. "Your men around?"
"On the terrace, sir. They have instructions to wander in every ten minutes. You wouldn't want a bunch of flatfeet in here all the time."
Lewis laughed.
"I'll leave it to you, Toni. Just keep an eye on the money," and nodding he walked on.
There's a guy, Lepski thought. A real, nice, regular guy. He straightened his bow tie which was worrying him, then he went out on to the terrace where his four patrolmen were standing watchfully in obscure corners.
He wasn't to know he was wasting their and his time. When the attack was to come, it would come in the soft underbelly of the Casino — in the vault where no police officer was on guard.
The money passing across the green-baize tables was as nothing compared to the money steadily piling up in the vault. The gamblers were having a bad night. The money was flowing into the Casino's vault . . . thousands and thousands of dollars.
In the cool atmosphere of the vault Rita Watkins directed the operation of handling the in-and-out flow of the money.
The girls fed the stacks of money as the money came from the elevators into an electronic device that automatically sorted the bills into their various denominations. The machine then counted them, clocking the total on a calculator. The bills were then paper-banded in fifty lots by the machine and were fed through a slot where two other girls piled the banded money in its various denominations on a rack.
Money came in: money went out. When a red light flashed under a number on Rita's desk, she directed more money to be sent up in the elevator, noting the number of the table in the gambling hall that had called for more supplies. The work was fast and non-stop, and no girl could afford to fumble.
Watching them, seated on stools, either side of the steel door of the vault, were two armed guards.
One of them, a tall, rangy youth whose name was Hank Jefferson, was bored to tears with his job. He thought if he had to sit on this stool, watching all that money for another few weeks, he would go screwy. He was planning to put in for a transfer. Even walking around the outside of the Casino endlessly was better than sitting in this vault just staring at thousands of dollars.
The other guard, an older man, heavily built and slightly balding, was Bic Lawdry. He had the mind of a vegetable and was happy enough to watch the girls, studying their trim bodies, dreaming erotic dreams as he picked his teeth with a match end, satisfied that he had the softest job in the world.
Beyond the steel door was a long passage that led to the Staff entrance to the Casino. At the door that led to the rear of the Casino and to a broad strip of tarmac where trucks arrived each morning delivering food, drink, cigarettes and other provisions for the restaurant, was a doorman.
Sid Regan, the doorman, was sixty-one years of age. In another four years he would have to retire. He had worked at the Casino for thirty-eight years. He was short, fat and bulky with an amiable, freckled face, thinning, greyish hair and small, humorous eyes. Regan loved his job. He regretted he was slowly but inevitably reaching the age when he would no longer work at the Casino. He was what is known as a character. This, perhaps, was kind. The younger members of the staff called him a goddam, yakiting, old bore.
The trouble with Regan was he had too many memories. He couldn't resist talking about the good old days. Few bothered to listen to him, but this didn't discourage him. He always managed to find some unwary person who, trapped by his guile, had to stand impatiently while he described with a wealth of detail the glories of the past.
This bulky, elderly man, who did his job well, who had given years of faithful service, represented Harry Lewis's most serious mistake with his staff. Regan had a very important job: to see no one should ever pass his glass box without being known or without he being absolutely sure of their credentials. Regan was proud of his responsibility, and this Maisky had discovered. Maisky had found out by listening to gossip that Regan liked to act on his own initiative. He disliked being told anything. He had held his job successfully for years . . . he wasn't a kid. Why should he be told what to do? Maisky was gambling on this attitude of Regan's, and it was a successful gamble.
When Regan saw a small truck with the well-known I.B.M. letters painted on its sides pull up at the Staff entrance, he was puzzled, but not suspicious. He decided that something had gone wrong and Head Office had failed to alert him. He was thinking, as Jess Chandler got out of the truck, that those girls in the office were getting more and more inefficient.
Chandler had been well coached by Maisky. He walked up to the glass box, pushed his peaked cap to the back of his head and nodded to Regan.
"You have a breakdown in the vault," he said. "My goddam luck! I was right in the middle of a musical on the Telly when the call came through. What a time!" He handed a delivery note to Regan. "Let's snap it up, mister. You know about it, don't you?"
Maisky had impressed on Chandler to use this phrase. He had watched Regan as he had walked to and fro from the Casino to his home. He had seen him stop and talk to people and had seen their desperately bored expressions. He had come to the correct conclusion that Regan imagined that he was the Casino, and he felt certain that Regan would never admit to not knowing about such an important event as a calculator having broken down in the vault.
But his guess hung on a knife's edge. For a split second, Regan was in two minds whether to call the office for confirmation, then, knowing the office was shut and feeling hurt that no one had bothered to consult him, he accepted the delivery note, shifted his glasses to the end of his nose and studied it. This was in order. It had taken Maisky some days to get a printed form from I.B.M.'s local office, but he had got it.