The Heckler

Chuck had not wanted out. Now, as he headed for Union Station, the suitcase was noticeably and happily lighter. He was itching to get the job over and done with. He didn’t want to be anywhere south of the Mercantile Trust Company after four o’clock. If everything went according to the deaf man’s plan, that part of the precinct would be an absolute madhouse along about then, and Chuck wanted no part of chaos.

THE OIL REFINERYwas set on the River Dix, at the southern tip of the island of Isola. Pop walked up to the main gate and reached into his pocket for the identification badge the deaf man had given him. He flashed the badge casually at the guard, and the guard nodded, and Pop walked through the gate, stopped once to consult the X’s on his map, and then walked directly to the tool shed behind the administration building. The tool shed, besides being stocked with the usual number of saws and hammers and screwdrivers, contained a few dozen cans of paint, turpentine, and varnish. Pop opened the door of the shed and put one of his explosive bombs in a cardboard carton of trash just inside the door. Then he closed the door and began walking toward the paymaster’s shack near the first of the huge oil tanks.

By one-forty-five he had set four bombs in the refinery. He walked through the main gate, waved goodbye to the guard, hailed a cab and headed for a plant some thirty blocks distant, a plant which faced south toward the River Dix, its chimneys belching smoke to the city’s sky twenty-four hours a day.

The sign across the top of that plant readEASTERN ELECTRIC . It produced electric power for 70 per cent of the homes and businesses on the south side of the 87th Precinct.

AT 3:00P.M .,they closed the doors of the old Mercantile Trust for the last time.

Mr. Wesley Gannley, manager of the bank, watched with some sadness as his employees left for the new bank in the completed shopping center. Then he went back into the vault where the guards were carrying the bank’s stock—two million, three hundred fifty-three thousand, four hundred twenty dollars and seventy-four cents in American currency—to the waiting armored truck outside.

Mr. Gannley thought it was nice that so much money was being taken to the new bank. Usually, his bank had some eight hundred thousand dollars on hand, an amount which was swelled every Friday, payroll day, to perhaps a million and a quarter. There were a great many firms, however, which paid their employees every two weeks, and still others which had monthly bonus programs. In any case, April 30 was the end of the month, and tomorrow was a Friday, May 1, and so the bank was holding, besides its usual deposits and money on hand, an unusually large amount of payroll money, and this pleased Mr. Gannley immensely. It seemed fitting that a spanking-new bank should open shop with a great deal of cold cash.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk as the bank guards transferred that cold cash to the truck. From the grimestained window of his loft upstairs, Dave Raskin watched the transaction with mild interest, and then took a huge puff on his soggy cigar and turned back to studying the front of Margarita’s smock.

By 3:30P.M ., the $2,353,420.74 was safe and snug in the new vault of the new bank in the new shopping center. Mr. Gannley’s employees were busily making themselves at home in their new quarters, and all seemed right with the world.

At 4:00P.M ., the deaf man began making his phone calls.

HE MADE THE CALLSfrom the telephone in the ice-cream store behind the new bank. Rafe was waiting in the drugstore across the street from the bank, watching the bank’s front door. He would report back to the deaf man as soon as everyone had left the bank. In the meantime, the deaf man had his own work to do.

The typewritten list beside the telephone had one hundred names on it. The names were those of stores, offices, movie theaters, shops, restaurants, utilities, and even private citizens on the south side of the 87th Precinct. The deaf man hoped to get through at least fifty of those names before five o’clock, figuring on the basis of a minute per call, and allowing for a percentage of no-answers. Hopefully,all of the persons called would in turn call the police. More realistically, perhaps half of the fifty would. Pessimistically, perhaps ten would report the calls. And, figuring a rock-bottom return of 10 per cent, at least five would contact the police.

Even five was a good return for an hour’s work if it compounded the confusion and made the ride to the ferry simpler.