Spree (17 page)

“Say what?”

“Don’t say anything unkind about Phil. He’s a real gentleman, and I expect you to treat him that way.”

“Why, of course. No disrespect meant. We need his special talent—there’s going to be lots of doors that need unlocking.”

Hearing Comfort’s soothing, southern-accented tone made Roger queasy; the man was a liar, and a small-timer to boot. Roger couldn’t think of Comfort without thinking of heisting grocery stores, loading frozen meat into trucks. A nickel-and-dimer, Comfort was, and a dangerous one.

“I don’t know, Cole,” Roger said, wanting very much to take the job, but not feeling it prudent.

“It’ll be fifty gees each, minimum,” he said.

“Hmmm.”

“It’s an inside job. Very safe. More than that I dare not say.”

“Who else is in?”

“Nolan.”

That decided it.

“Count me in,” Roger said.

“How about the . . . your pal?”

“He’s in.”

“You can speak for him?”

“I can speak for him.”

Now it was a week later, in Davenport, Iowa, in the restaurant/nightclub called Nolan’s. It was just past three o’clock in the morning. They had come in two cars; he and Phil had been picked up downtown, at the Hotel Davenport, where they shared a room (he had no qualms about sharing a room with Phil—Phil never fooled around on the job). Cole Comfort himself had been driving, a blue Ford pickup; Roger sat next to driver Cole, and Phil sat next to Roger. In the other car were the three Leech brothers (as it turned out) and Dave Fisher, the slightly nerdy electronics guy.

They sat at a big table in the dimly lit bar area of Nolan’s. Nolan himself, in a pale blue shirt and dark new-looking jeans, stood off to one side, leaning against a pillar, among hanging plants, lurking in the foliage like a jungle cat. Cole Comfort sat at the head of the table, a white-haired, blue-eyed near coot in a plaid shirt and overalls. Overalls, God help us. Roger glanced at Nolan, wondering why the man would lower himself to work with Comfort. Nolan, as usual, was expressionless.

Next to Roger was Phil, looking professorly in a tweedy brown sport jacket over a sweater-vest and tie; sitting like a student next to him was Fisher, a serious, earnest man in his late thirties, wearing thick glasses with heavy black frames and a white shirt and black tie with pens and gizmos in a plastic pouch within his shirt pocket, a pocket-size notebook on the table in front of him. Across from them were the Leech brothers—Ricky, Jerry, Ferdy—three lumberjack-brawny guys in their late thirties with five-o’clock shadow and dirty sweaters and stocking caps, which they were wearing indoors, just as they were wearing the same blank-eyed expression. They were triplets. No one on earth, outside of their family, could tell them apart.

Seeing them here had not made Roger’s night. They were the same truckers who’d worked with Comfort on the supermarket heists. They were not really stupid men; they showed signs of being smart. But they were brutes—crude, lewd and rude, as Phil had once put it. Roger knew Phil would be equally less than thrilled to see the owners and operators of Leech Bros. Trucking of Sedalia, Missouri.

“I don’t like working with faggots,” a Leech said to Comfort.

“I don’t neither,” another Leech said, also to Comfort.

The third Leech merely nodded.

“Shut up,” Comfort said. “Phil’s good at what he does. We need him.”

“Thank you,” Phil said. The sarcasm in his voice was faint, but there. The Leeches missed it; no one else did.

One other person was there—a young guy of about twenty-five, with short blond curly hair and a sweatshirt with some sort of space-cadet comic-book character on it. He wasn’t sitting at the long table—he was at a small table for two nearby, sitting in a chair that was turned around, leaning over it, head on his crossed arms, like a kid in study hall. He did not want to be here.

“Do we all know each other?” Comfort said.

“I don’t know
him
,” a Leech said, pointing back to the blond kid.

Nolan said, “He’s with me.”

“Does he have a name?” a Leech said.

“Jon,” the kid said. “I caught your names earlier. Huey, Dewey and Louie, isn’t it?”

The Leeches didn’t get it.

One said, “I’m Ricky.”

Another said, “I’m Jerry.”

Another said, “I’m Ferdy.”

Nolan said, “We’re supposed to be ten. I only count nine.”

Comfort looked over at Nolan and said, “My boy Lyle can’t be with us tonight.” Then he said, “Come join us, Nolan,” waving him over.

Nolan walked past Comfort to the table for two and joined the kid named Jon.

“How about some beer?” a Leech said, pointing over toward the bar.

Nolan said, “We’re not socializing. We need to make this as short as possible. I don’t like hanging around here.”

Comfort smiled at Nolan and said, “I just thought this was as good a place as any to meet.”

“It’s a stupid place to meet,” Nolan said.

Comfort glared at him, then the glare melted into a seemingly sincere smile. “You’re mistaken, Nolan. It’s a real smart place to meet. We’ll meet here tomorrow night, too. It’s better than meeting at one of our motel rooms where we might be seen together. This is real out of the way and private.” Comfort smiled like Daddy at the men sitting at his table. “Nolan’s nervous about meeting here because this very mall we’re sitting in is our target.”

That confused Roger, who said so: “You mean, the mall bank here’s our target? I don’t do banks . . . you can’t blow a vault like that without noise to raise the dead—”

“Shush,” Comfort said gently. “I mean, we’re gonna take this whole dang mall. We’re going shopping; a regular moonlight madness sale, only it’s all on the house. Thanks to Nolan, here.”

Phil was sitting forward; even the generally bored-seeming Fisher was shifting in his seat. The Leech brothers weren’t impressed; they obviously were already in the know. Nolan and Jon, too.

Fisher said, “What exactly do you mean? This mall has, I would guesstimate, fifty-some stores.”

Comfort turned to Nolan, who then said: “Fifty stores exactly—not counting the bank, this restaurant or the three major department stores.”

A rather stunned Phil asked Comfort, “How in God’s name do you heist a mall?”

Comfort said, “Nolan?”

Nolan, still seated at the nearby table, said, “Right now, as we sit here, there are no security guards on duty. Only a single janitor. The alarm system is silent—no audibles at all—on a phone line to a security company and the cops.”

“Lead me to it,” Fisher said, smiling smugly.

Nolan cautioned him: “I’m told the change in pulse rate, if you jump it, automatically sets off the alarm.”

Fisher shrugged. “Not with one of my little black boxes wired in, sending them the right pulse rate. Go on.”

Nolan did: “The security guard goes off at ten. He doesn’t even come back on duty till one o’clock the next afternoon. The maintenance man opens the doors at seven A.M. Merchants start arriving around eight-thirty, and stores open at ten.”

“We would have from ten till six-thirty or so,” Roger said, “inside this mall, to do what we pleased.”

“That’s exactly right, friends and neighbors,” Comfort said.

Nolan said, “I don’t think we need that long. Cole, here, wants to use the Leech brothers and three semis to loot the place. I don’t think that’s necessary.”

Comfort glared at him again. “You don’t?”

“No,” Nolan said. “You got two jewelry stores—each with at least a quarter million worth in their safe. The bank has three safes—Roger is right, the main vault is out—but they have an automated cash machine, which has twenty-some thousand bucks in it at any given time. And two smaller night depository safes, which at this yuletide time of year could have anywhere from ten to fifty grand each in ’em.”

Phil said, “So you’re saying, fuck the small shit.”

“Right,” Nolan said. “Even allowing for fencing the diamonds, we can clear three hundred thousand, probably more, for a few hours’ work. And no heavy hauling. Roger just goes in, blows all five safes, and you don’t need trucks to haul away diamonds and cash.”

A Leech said, “Where does that leave us?”

“You’re in,” Cole said. Anger hung off his voice, as cold and brittle as icicles. “You’re a fool, Nolan. We got
all night
in this place, to do as we like, take as we like, and you want to stay for a few minutes and play it safe grabbing the easy stuff.”

Roger said, “Blowing five safes isn’t easy, Cole.”

Comfort nodded, saying, “And it takes time. During which, we’re taking advantage of the situation. We’re going the whole fucking route. This place is Disneyland for thieves, and we got all the free tickets we want. We’re all gonna pitch in and help the Leeches, here, load their three semis, which’ll be pulled up to loading docks out back, and fill ’em with refrigerators and microwave ovens and TVs and VCRs and stereo shit and computers and washing machines and furs and leather goods and cameras and designer clothes and sterling silver and china and Cuisinarts and every other goddamn thing we can lay hands on, before this place opens the next morning, at which time there’ll be tumbleweed blowing through this goddamn place, it’ll be so empty.”

“You forgot jockey shorts,” Nolan said.

“What?” Comfort said.

“You can probably get a quarter each for jockey shorts,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to leave any of them behind.”

“You just cooperate,” Comfort said, raising a lecturing finger.

That was weird, Roger thought. It was almost like Comfort had a hold over Nolan . . .

Fisher was taking notes; he looked up from them and said, “You have a fence lined up who can handle a load like this?”

“Burden in Omaha,” Comfort said, “for everything but the stones. We got to go to Chicago for the stones.”

“What’s the rate?” Phil asked.

“We’re getting thirty percent of wholesale on the goods; forty on the stones.”

“Not bad,” Phil admitted. “And this goes down how soon?”

“Thursday,” Comfort said.

“
This
Thursday?” Roger asked.

“This Thursday,” Comfort said.

“What’s the rush?” Fisher asked.

“No rush,” Comfort said. “I been working on this for weeks, now. We got all the inside dope we need. Christmas money is flowing, out there. We’re all here. Thursday’s as good a time as any.”

Roger looked at Nolan. “Nolan? Opinion?”

Nolan shrugged. “Thursday’s fine.”

Fisher looked at Nolan sharply. “Why are you doing this?”

Nolan said, “Why else? The money.”

“You have a good thing going here,” Fisher said, looking around the place like a tax assessor. “Why risk it?”

Comfort said, “You can never have too much money, right, Nolan?”

“Right,” Nolan said.

They talked till after four, and agreed to meet back here at two-thirty tomorrow night. In the meantime, Comfort instructed, they would all, on their own, walk around the mall tomorrow during business hours. Each, in his own way, casing the joint.