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  “Let’s not have any more funny business,” Hardesty said calmly, but in his heart he knew he’d shot a cop, and the N.Y.P.D. would be after him for the rest of his life. But this was no time to think of that. He held his gun steadily on the other two cops, who were gazing with astonishment and fear at their bleeding comrade.

  Callahan’s pockets were stuffed with papers and notepads of all kinds. Brody cursed as he went through them. Precious time was passing and he knew that every second wasted was a second closer to danger. He pulled out Callahan’s wallet and a slip of paper fell to the floor. Brody unfolded the paper, and on it were six numbers. This was it.

  “Okay folks, let’s go back to the vault,” Brody said. “Move!”

  The two cops went back past the boxes of heroin and jewels to the vault. Hardesty pushed the three canvas carriers behind them, leaving the carriers beside the vault door. Then he went back to the briefcase Laganello had left, took out nylon rope, and proceeded to drag Callahan back toward the vault. He tied Callahan and the other two cops, and gagged them, while Brody worked the combination.

  Brody tried it once, and the door didn’t open. He realized his hands were trembling uncontrollably and he might’ve been off on one or more of the numbers. Why were his hands trembling so much? He’d thought he had better control of himself than that, but evidently he’d been wrong. He concentrated on calming down, took a deep breath, and tried again. The wheel turned. He pulled it and the door opened wide.

  Before him lay crates of jewels, heroin, and money. The money was on the left side and to the rear of the vault, according to what Ricci had said. Hardesty lifted off one of the canvas carriers and wheeled it into the vault, overhead fluorescent light glinting on his phony policeman’s badge. He and Brody loaded the crates of money in until it was filled. They rolled that carrier out and rolled an empty one in.

  Outside in the corridor, a detective in a Burberry topcoat approached Laganello with a laundry bag. The detective read the sign on the door and looked at Laganello. “An inventory tonight?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought they just had the inventories at the end of the month.”

  “They’ve had some kind of problem that called for an immediately inventory.”

  “No shit.”

  The detective, whose name was Pelletier, walked back to the elevator. His laundry bag was filled with heroin. He was tall, slim, a Detective First Class, and was suspicious by nature. He decided to ask the Sergeant of the Day what the hell was going on.

  In the vault, Brody and Hardesty were filling the last canvas carrier. When it was almost filled, Hardesty ran to the door and got Laganello. They covered each carrier with a blanket, and wheeled them away. Brody was last; he locked the vault shut again. Laganello peeked into the corridor—no one was there. They pushed the carriers out and headed toward the ramp where the paddy wagon would be waiting. Up the ramp they went, and Brody unlocked the door from the inside. He pushed the carriers onto the landing.

  Ricci was standing on the landing, waiting impatiently. When he saw the door open and a carrier come speeding out with Laganello behind it, he opened the back door of the paddy wagon and looked around. There were some cops getting into a patrol car about fifty yards away, but that was it.

  Ricci helped Laganello load the first carrier into the paddy wagon. The two of them helped Hardesty load the second one on. All heaved together to throw Brody’s carrier aboard. Hardesty and Laganello jumped in back and Ricci closed the door. Ricci ran to the front cab and slid behind the wheel just as Brody landed beside him. Ricci started the engine and drove away. He screeched around the corner and headed for Chambers Street.

  “Not so fast,” Brody said. “Do you want to get a ticket.”

  Brody was trying to be jovial, but he didn’t really feel that way. He kept thinking of the cop bleeding on the floor of the Property Room.

  He hoped the cop wouldn’t die.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Detective Pelletier strolled into the office of the Sergeant of the Day and saw the clerk sitting behind the desk.

  “ Where’s the Sergeant of the Day?” Pelletier asked.

  “He’s down in the Property Room.”

  “Oh, for the inventory?”

  “What inventory?”

  Pelletier felt a chill pass over him. “There’s a sign on the door that says there’s an inventory going on, and there’s even a guard there.”

  The clerk wrinkled his nose. “Man, you must be putting me on.”

  Pelletier’s voice was low and deadly. “I’m not putting you on. You’d better come with me.”

  Pelletier walked quickly down the hall. At the elevator he saw two patrolmen and a sergeant. “There’s a problem in the Property Room. You men better come with me.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” asked the sergeant.

  Pelletier took out his detective’s shield.

  They all got on the elevator and rode down to the basement. Pelletier drew his gun and ran through the corridor to the Property Room. It occurred to him that he might be making a big fuss over nothing, and that he’d be the laughing stock of the N.Y.P.D. tomorrow, but he’d rather be the laughing stock than let something terrible happen through negligence. The guard was gone from the door of the Property Room, but the sign was still there.

  Pelletier paused and held his gun ready. The other four cops caught up with them.

  “We’re going in fast,” Pelletier said. “Take your guns out and be ready for anything.”

  The four cops drew their guns. Pelletier turned the doorknob silently, and when it would turn no more, kicked the door open. He and the four cops exploded into the Property Room.

  At first they saw nothing—no one was there. Pelletier kept moving forward quickly, his ferret eyes looking everywhere. He saw a pile of blue on the floor—it was the cop who’d been shot.

  “Oh my God,” Pelletier said. He ran to the cop, and kneeled over him. The cop’s chest was covered with blood. Pelletier turned to the clerk. “Call an ambulance and give a 384 to the operator. Tell her there’s been a shooting in the Property Room.”

  “There’s somebody in the back room!” shouted the sergeant.

  Pelletier jumped up and walked quickly through the door to the back room. He saw the sergeant and two other cops untying and ungagging the Sergeant of the Day, the cop in charge of the Property Room, and the cop who’d been checking in a cardboard box.

  “Three men disguised as police officers have robbed the vault!” Callahan shouted, his face a bright shade of scarlet.

  Pelletier dropped his gun into its holster.

  His first thought was that there was going to be hell to pay.

  The paddy wagon slowed to a stop on the side street near the Fulton Fish Market. Directly in front of it was the rented Chevy van. Ricci got out and unlocked the back door of the van, and they all went to work loading the carriers from the paddy wagon to the van. Ricci returned to the paddy wagon and wiped his prints off the steering wheel, shift lever, and everywhere else he thought he might have touched.

  Brody put on the oversized raincoat and fedora, and the others got in back of the van with the three containers full of money. Brody got behind the wheel, started her up, turned on the lights, and pulled away from the curb. From the direction of Police Headquarters, he heard the sound of sirens.

  “They know what’s happened,” Brody said.

  Ricci was kneeling behind him. “They’re probably going out of their minds.”

  “I hope that cop doesn’t die,” Hardesty said.

  Laganello snorted. “The sucker shouldn’t have gone for his gun.”

  “Everybody wants to be a fucking hero,” Brody said.

  “The asshole,” Ricci replied.

  “He got what he fucking deserved,” Laganello said.

  “I still hope he doesn’t die,” Hardesty said.

  They drove uptown on the East River Drive. At 59th Street they took the Queensboro Bridge over
the East River, passed through Queens Plaza, and took Queens Boulevard to the Corona district, a neighborhood of single family homes, where Brody had rented a one-car garage from an old Cuban guy who barely spoke English.

  The neighborhood was dark and silent at that hour of the morning, for most of the people living in the area had jobs during the day. Quietly Brody got out of the truck and opened the door of the garage. Then he backed the truck in and closed the door.

  They took out their flashlights and congregated in back of the van. The plan was that each of them would get twenty thousand dollars immediately so they could put their getaway plans into operation. Brody tore open one of the crates; it was filled with hundred-dollar bills. He counted out the money into four piles, while Ricci, Hardesty, and Laganello changed into civilian clothes. They came and counted their money while he changed into his jeans and leather jacket.

  He locked the doors of the van and they left the garage, each carrying his uniform in a shopping bag and his money in his pockets. A short way up the street was Ricci’s girl friend’s car. They’d timed the robbery for a night when she was on a flight someplace, and Ricci could have use of the car.

  They all got in, Brody in the front seat with Ricci and the other two in back. Ricci turned on the engine, lights, and radio, then drove toward Queens Boulevard. He was tuned to an all-news station. They listened to sports, the weather, there was a station break, the international news, and then the national news came on. “There are still no leads/* the announcer said, “in the daring early morning robbery of the Property Room at Police Headquarters in New York City. An estimated four and a half million dollars were stolen from the vault by three hold-up men disguised as patrolmen. One police officer, Matthew Leary of the Bronx, was wounded during the hold-up, and is in critical condition at Bellevue Hospital. The hold-up, in the very headquarters of the largest police department in the world, has been a serious blow to the morale to the already demoralized New York’s Finest, which has been plagued by scandals and mass layoffs recently. Mayor Koch has called for a complete investigation. The Police Station Robbery, as it is already being called, has the distinction of being the most successful robbery in history.” The announcer moved on to the next story, and the car climbed the ramp to the Queensboro Bridge.

  “They’re going to know it was an inside job,” Laganello said. “No civilians could ever know that much about the workings of the department.”

  “So what,” Brody replied. “There are thirty thousand cops on duty now, and maybe half a million in retirement. The main thing is for us to get out of town fast. We meet Wednesday night at midnight at the garage for the final division of the money. Each of us will have a vehicle at that time to take away his cut. Then it’s every man for himself.”

  Ricci let Hardesty off at the corner of Hudson and Bethune in Greenwich Village, not far from Hardesty’s apartment. Then he drove uptown to West 88th Street to drop off Laganello. Finally he drove back to Queens, Brody smoking a cigarette beside him.

  “Well, we did it,” Ricci said cheerily. “Let’s go have a drink.”

  “No, we’d better stay out of sight.”

  “The biggest robbery in history, and we did it!”

  “We’re not clear yet. We can’t take it easy at least until a couple of years have passed. The N.Y.P.D. will stay on this like stink on shit until they make some arrests. They’ll follow every lead, no matter how faint. We’ll have to be careful for a long time.”

  Brody got out at Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, and walked to his rooming house. He felt tired and depressed, now that all the planning and the actual operation was over. The N.Y.P.D. were looking for him, although they didn’t know who he was. He knew how tenacious city detectives were, how thorough, how fanatical. He didn’t think there were any loose ends, but all criminals think that.

  For the first time in his life, Brody knew what it felt like to be wanted by the N.Y.P.D., and it didn’t feel good. But at least his money worries were over.

  A half-mile away, Ricci drove his girl friend’s Pontiac down the ramp into the garage in the basement of her building. He parked it, got out, and went to the elevator, pressed the button. The elevator came and he rode it up to the eighth floor. Walking down the corridor, he opened the door and entered his girl friend’s apartment.

  It was a tiny studio with a sofa that opened up into a bed. She flew to L. A. a few times a week, and let him use the apartment while he was gone. She was a brunette from Nebraska and she was in love with Ricci, although he was tired of her already. He always got tired of women after a few months, although when he first fell in love he thought it would last forever. He generally fell in love a few times a year.

  Although he was tired of her, he wasn’t tired of her apartment. It was someplace to go so he could get away from his parents nagging him to get a job, get married, and so forth.

  He took off his topcoat and hung it up, then opened his attaché case on the sofa. Inside was twenty thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills. Tomorrow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was five o’clock in the morning, and Police Headquarters was buzzing like a beehive. TV camera crews were filming in the halls, and the top echelon of the N. Y.P.D. had come to their offices to answer questions from the media and contribute whatever they could to the solution of the robbery and murder. The vengeance factor was high because a cop had been killed.

  The hub of the investigation was the office of Chief of Detectives Albert Sutherland, an athletic-looking man of fifty-five who dressed like a bank executive. He had graying hair, smoked cigars, and recently had been cleared of charges that he’s taken gifts of money from the manager of the Pierpont Hotel on Park Avenue. He sat behind his desk and puffed a cigar as he listened to Detective Pelletier.

  “It had to be an inside job,” Pelletier said. “No civilian could ever know the workings of the Department the way these guys did.”

  “You’re right. I want you and every other man who say the perpetrators to look at mug shots of every copy in the Department now, and if we can’t come up with anything, then every copy who’s been in the Department for the last ten years.”

  “Most cops don’t know anything about the functioning of the Property Room, but these guys even knew where to get the combination. I think it was an inside job right out of the Property Room.”

  “You think a copy that worked in the Property Room was in on the robbery?”

  “I don’t see how we can avoid that conclusion.”

  “Then get up a list of cops who work in the Property Room now, and who have been assigned there in the past. I don’t care how many people we have to interrogate. We’ve got to crack this case and we’ve got to crack it fast.”

  Through the night and morning, Callahan, the copy who’d been on duty in the Property Room, and the cop who’d been checking in stolen goods when the robbery took place, looked at mug shots of cops now with the department, and cops who had recently been with the department. By noon they had fifty-three suspects.

  In Pelletier’s office, he had two stacks of photos. One stack was of the fifty-three suspects selected by the three eyewitnesses, and the other was of personnel who now worked or had worked in the Property Room. It would be a long agonizing process, but each one of these guys would have to be checked out.

  On Thursday at midnight, three trucks were parked on the quiet street in Corona where Brody had rented the garage. Inside the garage, he and the others were dividing the money, stacking it into four equal piles. They worked in the light of flashlights and didn’t speak much. They were starting to feel the pressure of the manhunt.

  By two-thirty in the morning, they had the money divided. Next they drew straws, to see who would leave first. Laganello won, and backed his truck into the garage. They helped him load his money on, and he departed. Next was Ricci, and they put his money into the trunk and under the back seat of the Lincoln Continental he had bought. Ricci shook everybody’s hand, told a joke that wasn’t funny,
and drove off into the night.

  Hardesty backed the van he’d rented into the garage, and Brody helped him load up.

  “How’re you getting along?” Brody asked as they worked.

  “I’m getting along.”

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “We’re all under strain.”

  “You worried about the cop who died?”

  “It’s on my mind.”

  “I thought it was. Look at it this way: when the son-of-a-bitch pulled his gun it was like he committed suicide. He should’ve known better.”

  “But I pulled the trigger.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It will if I ever got caught.”

  “You’re not getting caught. Don’t think that way.”

  “Smarter guys than us have been caught.”

  Brody grabbed Hardesty’s shoulder. “Stop worrying.”

  “I’m not worrying.”

  “Sure you are. The main thing is to keep a low profile, and don’t leave any of this money lying around, got it?”

  “I know what to do, Brody.”

  They shook hands; Hardesty got into the truck he rented and drove off. Brody waited until Hardesty’s taillights had disappeared around the corner, then drove his new Dodge pick-up with camper attached to its bed, into the garage. He loaded the crates of money into the camper section, where he had previously stashed his clothes. After finishing, he locked the garage, got in the van he’d rented, drove it to the garage on Northern Boulevard where he’d rented it, and turned it in. Then he took a cab to within a few blocks of the garage in Corona, walked the rest of the way, went into the garage, and opened the door of his Dodge pick-up.

  “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?”

  Brody turned around and saw his landlord, the old Cuban guy who lived in the rickety wooden house next to the garage.