The Freeloaders, page 10
I saw Charley and Ed coming up the street, walking fast. I was surprised Ed wasn’t home with his Daniele at that hour. Sitting at my table, Charley asked, “Al, where the hell you been? We were at your hotel, Pascale’s restaurant, the casino … looking for you.”
“I had a business dinner with a producer,” I told them, amused at the very sound of the sentence. You’d never think it meant two four-flushers bulling each other.
Charley stood up. “Come to my place. Gil should be along any minute. We got some talk to make.”
“About what?” I didn’t like his bossy attitude.
Charley actually lifted me to my feet, hissing into my ear, “Gil’s gone crazy! Tell him, Ed.”
“Not here,” Ed said, his sharp face furtively glancing around like a ham in a bad movie. “Let’s walk.”
I paid for the rhum and on our way to Charley’s apartment Jonesy told me, “Gil came to the shop this afternoon with twenty dollars. He wanted me to buy him some hair dye and face make-up, get a couple of tanks of compressed air. I didn’t see any reason why he couldn’t buy this himself, and told him I was busy. Then he tells me this dumb scheme he has—to rob a cambio shop on Bastille Day!”
“Rob?” I repeated, as if I didn’t know the meaning of the word.
“The dumb jerk plans to stick up one of these money joints!” Charley said. “Really going to do it. Swore Ed to secrecy but Ed told me. Ed’s got good sense but Gil is way off his feed. That hippy broad must be softening his brains. He can’t know what he’s getting into. Of all the dopey ideas!”
As we turned into Charley’s street I saw Gil’s lanky frame leaning against a store front, a cigarette hanging from his thin lips. He was wearing the same paint-spotted jeans, but also sneakers and an old terry cloth pull-over. He waved at us, drawled, “Hi, dads, what’s this big conference bit about?”
“About a goddamn ass—you!” Charley actually hissed. “You think a stick-up is the same as doing a painting or …”
Gil spun on Ed. “You runty bastard! I asked you not to run off at the mouth!”
Jonesy didn’t back up. He said gently, “Gil, Gil, listen for once, instead of getting up a head of steam. Sure I talked, but only to Charley and Al. You’re in over your empty head. Hell, this is serious stuff.”
“Robbery always is, for an amateur punk,” Charley said. I noticed he wasn’t forgetting to look into the lobby of his building—careful if casual scrutiny—as always.
“Why don’t you guys talk louder?” Gil asked, his voice high with sarcasm. “The Palais de Justice is only a few blocks from here. I wouldn’t want them to miss hearing a single word!”
“We’re going up to my place where nobody can hear us, and talk some common sense into your stupid head,” Charley told him.
“Not me. This happens to be nobody’s cotton-picking business but mine. I’m not cutting anybody in and I’m not talking about it. I made one mistake telling this creep. None of you better chatter about my business, either!” Gil started to walk away but Charley grabbed his arm, got some kind of hold on him, actually threw him into the doorway. Gil grunted, “I’m warning you, Charley, I won’t stand for being manhandled!”
“You can walk up to my place or you can be carried up…. What the hell, Gil, we’re your pals.”
Gil groaned. “Tell me you’re doing it for my own good and I’ll puke!” Suddenly he giggled and I wondered if he was high. He didn’t smell drunk. “Sure, Charley, you’re right, we are all buddy buddies. Sure, we’ll talk. Now let go of my arm, damn you.”
Charley unlocked his private elevator and it took two trips for the four of us to reach the penthouse. I rode up with Ed, who asked, “Al, you think Gil is nuts? He’s been acting like a sourball all day.”
“A desperate man has to be a little crazy,” I said, sounding like the wise old bird and saying nothing.
But Jonesy nodded slowly and muttered, “That’s true, very true.”
Charley broke out a couple of beers as we sat on the terrace. I stared out at the tiny lights of the fishing-net markers floating on the calm and dark Mediterranean, and the flashing red beacon light at the airport. It was a stirring view. The Corsica boat was coming out of the harbor breakwater, looking like a big luxury liner, with all its lights. Gil started talking and I took a chair.
“Since you know anyway, I’ll tell you guys my plans. But on one condition: not a yap is to go beyond this terrace. I mean that. Not Pascale, Daniele, or anybody. Not even for my ‘own good.’ One leak and my can will be deep freeze in that sling, so … Jonesy, have you already told Daniele?”
“No.”
“Okay then, is it agreed, whether you think I’m nuts or wrong, nobody repeats anything I say? No more sidewalk discussions?”
The three of us nodded. Gil lit one of Charley’s cigarettes, sprawled in a beach chair and for a long moment seemed to examine his torn sneakers. Then he said, “I guess this idea has been in the back of my head for a long time, but Al said something which brought it into focus. I’d….”
“Me? Just what did I bring into focus?” I asked.
“Al, remember the time we were all gassing about the French buying more detective novels than folks back in the States do? You thought it was because there’s so little real crime here. Well, it came to me that the answer to my own problems might be … I mean, I’d show them a real crime, and get away with it. I thought about …”
“You’re talking like a snotty kid!” Charley cut in.
“You got me up here to talk, so let me finish my speech before you jump in. I thought about things very objectively. I need dough badly. Simple logic: you want money, go to where money is. In the States money is in a bank, and banks are well guarded. Over here, too, I suppose. But over here there’s other places busting with money—the cambios!
Simone often tells me they have as much as a million francs around her shop—that’s two grand. There’s a change joint near the railroad station which has ten American hundred-dollar bills in the window, plus pound notes, Swiss, Canadian, and German money. With that much in the window display, think what they must have inside. You know the old line about opportunity knocking only once. So there’s this four-day Bastille holiday coming up, meaning the banks will be shut for four days … no place to deposit any dough. But the cambios will be open, some of them even on Sunday. I figure by Tuesday, what with a couple of US battleships anchored in Villefranche and Monte Carlo and the tourists flocking to Nice, a cambio should have about four grand in it. They all have safes, but during business hours the safes are generally open so they can get to the cash. Most times Simone is alone in her store, and in the other shops either a wife is running the place, or maybe her and the husband. So …”
“You going to rob Simone’s joint? Is she in this?” Charley asked.
“You think I’m stupid? She doesn’t know a thing about this, and I’m sure not going to heist her place.”
Charley shook his head. “Heist? Damn, you’re even talking like an amateur mug.”
Ed grinned. Gil waved a long hand, a lazy motion. “Nothing amateur about this. I’ve given it a lot of hard thought, have everything planned, every “i” dotted. You wanted to hear this, so shut up and listen. First, I have a couple of things going for me. The French aren’t expecting anything like this, won’t be prepared for it. And you clowns are always making fun of mah ole drawl, when I speak English—but which vanishes when I talk French. My French is good, fluent. Okay, I’m going to capitalize on that. I’ve done a little acting in college, enough to know something about make-up. And being an artist, I understand facial planes and bone structure. I’m going to use that, too, plus my height. In short, the cambio people will be able to give the police a clear and detailed description of the holdup oscar: a big blond Frenchman with a scar on his right cheek!” Gil took a long puff on his cigarette and smiled at us proudly over the smoke.
“You mean you have a partner?” Ed asked.
“Ed, get with me. No partner. It’s going to be little me with my hair dyed a bright yellow. With make-up, I’ll arrange an ‘old’ scar on my cheek. I have some cheap French slacks and a coat. I’ll wear sandals. It’s shoes which say a guy is from the States or England. I’ll even have a cheap Bic ballpoint sticking out of my shirt pocket. My nose and cheeks will be distorted with cotton pads, an extra heel on one shoe will give me a slight limp. Tomorrow I go to Vintimille and register at a hotel I’ve stopped at before, to paint some seascapes. My passport will be stamped, and I’ll still be there Wednesday, painting away. In short, my passport will prove I was in Italy while the stick-ups took place. Then …”
“You plan to hold up more than a change store?” Charley asked.
“I keep telling you I have this completely planned—and timed. Within sixteen minuutes I’m going to rob four cambios, and be on the 10:57 A.M. Rome Express with at least ten grand!”
Charley seemed to rinse his mouth with beer, then spat at one of his potted flowers. “You’ll be a sitting duck for the police before the train reaches Monaco! You think the cambio people aren’t going to scream for the cops at once?”
Gil took his time giving us a superior smile. “The cambio people are going to be slugged and bound with masking tape. Unless I get a bad break, like somebody coming into the shop while I’m in action or seconds after I leave, nobody will be able to shout anything for at least a half hour. Also, on Bastille Day the cops are all out regulating traffic and showing off their best white uniforms. I figure I’ll have about an hour’s start on ‘em. The four exchange stores I’ve picked are all within a radius of two blocks of the railroad station. I knock ‘em off and will be on the train within sixteen minutes, so …”
“Knock ‘em off? Why don’t you stop the tough talk? It sounds dumb, coming from you,” Charley said, disgust in his deep voice. “You think the ticket man in the station and the others, won’t recall a tall blond guy taking the train?”
“Charley, don’t sell me short; that’s exactly what I want them to remember!” Gil said happily, throwing his lit cigarette on the tile floor. I went over and stepped on it. “You’ve hit on the mothersure beauty of my plan. Get the picture: the cops will be running from one cambio to another as the stick-ups are reported. After a while—at least an hour or more—since the shops are around the station, they’ll assume the guy must have made his getaway via the trains. Sure enough, the platform men will confirm it. But by this time the train will be in Italy so they’ll phone the Italian cops to be on the lookout for a tall blond cat. Only I’m getting off at Menton.”
“Which the police will also trace!” Charley cut in again.
Gil nodded. “You bet; I’m counting on that. Be a snap for them to learn a big blond guy stepped off at Menton … and the same blond guy will simply vanish in Menton! I’ll have my aqualung hidden on the beach there and I’ll leave Menton the same way I’ll have returned from Vintimille for the robberies—underwater, man. Underwater both ways!
“Isn’t that a long swim, with a lung?” I asked.
“Al, I’m not swimming. Be far too slow and too rugged. Remember the idea we gave you for a smuggling yarn? A guy sitting on the ocean floor would grab the keel of a certain boat and be carried ashore. Well, I figure I can stay under for at least an hour each way. I’ve got extra air tanks which will be hidden with my lung. There are dozens of fishing boats going between Vintimille and Menton. Once I latch on to one, I can lay up alongside the boat so they won’t notice the drag of my body, and save air by using a snorkel. The boat guys will never see me, and I’ll drop off whenever I want and make for shore underwater. How does it sound now?” Gil asked Charley.
“I’ve never heard anything so dumb! You think you’re a movie hero or some such crap? There’s …”
“Listen again,” Gil said calmly. “I leave the train at Menton—and with any luck I’m still a good twenty minutes—at least—ahead of the cops even starting to look for me. I walk to a spot on the beach, on the outskirts of the city. There I put my clothes and the loot in plastic bags I’ll have ready, strap on my lung, submerge and wait for the first boat making for the Italian side. There, I come out of the water at a deserted spot … the blonde dye has been washed out of my hair, the scar and cotton padding have disappeared. My cheap French clothing is buried in the sea bottom … along with the money which will be safely anchored opposite a landmark I have in mind. Now I pick up my painting gear, hidden there, and take my time returning to the hotel … supposedly from another day on the beach. From any angle, I’m in the clear.”
“In a pig’s rump!” Charley snorted. “Suppose it rains that day. Then you can’t be painting on the beach.”
“It hasn’t rained in weeks. And if it should, so I camped under a rock or someplace, waiting for it to stop. You see any other holes in my plan?”
“The cops will sweat you and you’ll babble and crack into a hundred screaming pieces!”
Gil lit another of Charley’s cigarettes and said nervously, “Change your record. At least try and point out any holes in my plan. As for sweating me, first, assuming they even suspect me, they’re damn sure not going to work over an American….”
“Bullshine! Gil, a cop is a cop, the world over. Don’t think these French cops can’t be rough, that violence is an American invention!”
“You’ve heard these stories about what they did to the Algerians in Paris and Marseille,” Ed said, pouring a head on his beer.
“But what have they got on me? A blond joker with a thicker nose, a wider face, a scar, speaking good French, holds up four cambios in Nice. Little ole me is just a slow-speaking Americano, with dark hair, no scar, and a passport which says I’ve been in Italy three days before Bastille Day and a day or so after. Sure, I’m a tall guy, like the blond, but there must be a couple of hundred other guys over six feet on the Riviera. Let them search me, take my pad in Cagnes apart, they won’t find a dime. I won’t even have an aqualung—I already sold mine to Al. They can’t suspect me because they haven’t a damn thing to go on except my height. All I have to do is cool it for a time, then one day I borrow Al’s lung and swim out for the loot. I’ll make certain to spend that evenly, no flash. Hell, all I want is to spend it slowly, make sure it lasts for as many years as possible. This will work. It has to!”
When Gil’s voice died there was a moment of silence. There was an unreal feeling about it all, as if it was a mild nightmare. Ed Jones was leaning forward on his chair, staring at Gil with frank admiration. Charley got up and began to pace the terrace. After a couple of laps he growled, “Saying it ‘has to’ work doesn’t mean a damn thing! You’re just selling yourself. Let me tell you the facts of life—not the birds and the bees, but the saps on your ass and a rubber hose lashing your kidneys! The low crime rate in France ain’t because the French are any different from Americans, or not as hard up and pushed to the damn wall. It’s because the French jails are hell and their cops tough! For example, I think any form of armed robbery means the guillotine— So forget the idea that the French police are simple clowns. As for the crime itself, perfect-crime nuts are all alike—dumb and overconfident. Know what causes a crime to go sour? Plans! Every plan means the possibility of a mistake. You have a dozen things timed perfectly—on paper. But let one item fall in the wrong place, and something goes haywire—and if you have a dozen parts to your plan remember the odds are twelve to one against you, and you’re collared! If you got up this second and blindly tried to rob a cambio shop you’d have more chance than if you stewed around planning it!”
“Still the same record, Charley. Instead of talking me down, tell me what can go wrong? I’ve thought this out very carefully so….”
“Hell, you’re one amateur against a couple of thousand cops, including Interpol—that’s the first thing wrong! Kid, I know how the odds are stacked against you. I was a cop once.”
The three of us stared at Charley in what had to be astonished silence. Jonesy began playing with the slightly curled front of his hair—certainly a nervous reaction—as he asked, “You were or are a cop?”
“Was. I….”
“Where?” Ed Jones asked, still playing with his Julius Caesar hair-do, almost curling the hair ends around his little finger—an utterly ridiculous movement.
“Look, all that doesn’t matter, has nothing to do with this,” Charley said quickly, rubbing the knuckles of his left hand. “In my younger days I was on a hick police force … for about a year. Long before I went into the advertising game. Only reason I’m mentioning it is to show Gil I know what I’m talking about, what a dope he is. There There are too many possible slips. It’s a completely wacky idea.”
“Stop talking around it; give me a couple of concrete holes. You say plans equals mistakes,” Gil went on, his voice low and calm. “Weren’t some of the real big robberies, like the Brink’s, planned carefully to the last detail ahead of time?”
“You bet, and by professional crooks. And they were plenty lucky, too. Kid, face it, you don’t know which end is up when it comes to crime. Sure, I’ll give you concrete holes a mile wide in your so-called plan. You say Bastille Day is a good time to pull a stick-up because the cops will be busy. You’re nuts. It’s the worst day possible. On a national holiday every cop is working. They usually cancel leaves and vacations, have everybody patrolling the street just looking for trouble. Then….”
