Chapter 10: Maniac on the Loose
Storming angrily along the sidewalk Maniac paid no attention to where he was going. When someone got in his way he shoved them out of it, unless they were quick enough to avoid him. When one man tried to stop him by grabbing his arm, he swung the opposite one up and punched him in the jaw.
The man staggered away with a cry of surprise, while Maniac traveled on in long strides. Stupid, stupid Eugene. Stubborn, idiotic Leaflow. Why did they have to go ruining everything now by arguing? They had only been a step away from earning some money and either driving the car or taking a bus to their destination. It didn’t matter which. Either would have got them there. They could have all owned as many cars or buses as they wished, or bought a mansion and stayed in one place if they preferred. But, oh no, they both had to be intractable and let everything go to smash because of it.
Without even noticing it, Maniac walked right out of town along the highway. The trees closed over him on each side, making a dark passageway of green. Finally his ire wore away and he came to a stop under a huge, spreading fir. Putting his hands to his hips, he looked up and down the road.
“Well, now you’re in a fix,” he said to himself, “the bus is gone, Leaflow will get his car without you and you are all alone in the woods. Talk about stubborn.”
He snorted at himself, shaking his head in disgust at the world in general. Of course, he was not very deep in the woods yet. In fact, he was still standing on the verge of the highway, where it ran past him from west to east. If he followed that road long enough it would bring him to another town, with roads off of them that would eventually take him where he was going. Or he could backtrack and wait for the next bus to leave Chester. He was hesitating between one way and the other when a car slowed on the highway, turned around a few hundred yards in front of him and crept back along the edge to stop nearby.
A gray, foxy face poked out of the driver’s side window, “Maniac? Walter the Maniac? Is that really you?”
A grin suddenly spread over the ex-convict’s face, “Why, Crescent Moe. I thought you had got out of the country.”
“And I thought that you were in the thief-bank,” Moe was Maniac’s old rival, best enemy and closest partner. They had worked on some big jobs together in the past and also worked on a few jobs from competing angles. One time they had come near to killing each other in a mutual fit of rage, but another time Moe had pulled Maniac out of the fire when he was almost caught by the police.
“I was in prison, but I escaped,” Maniac grimaced, “now I’m trying to go straight, though my two friends just quit on me. It’s enough to make a fellow miss the old trade, when he finds that people outside of it will stab you in the back almost as much as those within.”
“Heh, you sound like you need a lift,” Moe flipped his head toward the other door. “Get in. Let’s go for a ride.”
Maniac checked the back seat through the windows carefully, making sure that there were no goons hiding there waiting to jump him. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his old friend; it was just that he knew what sort of tricks he would have expected from himself in the same circumstances.
But the back seat was empty, so he got in across from Crescent Moe and they turned around again to head down the road. For a bit they only made conversation with light stuff, reminiscences about fun they had been through before and the like. But after a while Moe became more serious.
“Now look here, Maniac. I’ve hit a bit of a low in my career. Not as far as you have, but I had to lay off a lot of the boys for a while. Nothing to pay them on. I’m on my way to a big job now, one that can put me back on my feet. But I need a partner in it. You get the drift?”
“I think so,” Maniac glanced at him thoughtfully, cracking his knuckles, “and I do still owe you one. Would there be anything in it for me?”
“Say, five, six thousand,” Moe shrugged. “Ain’t as big as you would like, I know. But it’s all I could afford to give ya. And as you said, you still owe me one.”
“That’s true. And this isn’t the only iron I’ve got in the fire,” the ex-convict told him, explaining a little of his friends’ quest.
“I can’t remember the address at all, but I know the name of the city and that it’s in Montana. I saw it written on that envelope.”
“Hey, so’s my job,” Moe shot an excited look at him, “if you still want to leverage some money from this 'Yad’ goon, you can get to it right after helping me with my gig. With the touch of dough you’ll make workin’ for me, you can find him easy. I know some people around that town who collect that sort of info.”
“Everything seems to be coming together just right for both of us. You can count me in. For one last time,” Maniac stuck out a hand and they shook on it. The rest of that day’s journey was spent in making plans for the upcoming job, which was a bank robbery. Moe had some inside information on the alarm systems of one particular bank and its vault, as well as assurance that the night-shift security guard could be bribed. Of course, he did not put it to Maniac in those words. They both spoke in a dialect of heavy slang, so that security guards became ‘mercenary squealers’ and the vault became the ‘piggy bank’.
“We got some hot stuff to smash the piggy bank with,” Moe gestured at the trunk of the car with one hand, “you still know how to handle that item, don’t you?”
“Just was well as you know how to slop a Grizzly on the Freeboard,” Maniac replied, grinning.
Though when he thought of it, it had been quite a time since he had handled any explosives. He hoped, secretly, that he hadn’t forgotten anything important in the intervening time. Still, it couldn’t be too hard to blow up a bank vault with whatever Moe had in the back. It was all just a matter of placement and activation.
Later on that day they stopped in a city on the border between California and Nevada. Moe agreed to pay Maniac’s traveling expenses until they reached the city in Montana, if Maniac would in turn help him with the job. As he had already promised to be in on the ‘piggy bank smashing’, Maniac thanked his old pal for the lift and let himself be taken out to dinner. In the diner which they ate at rumors of a hook-handed waiter were circulating. No one there knew where he had come from or gone to. Maniac knew, but he said nothing.
---
When, days later, they reached the city of their destination the first thing they had to do was pick up another friend. This was a thin, dark-haired man with a slinking, crafty glint in his eyes. He was an expert on alarms, Moe explained, on deactivating them particularly. His name was Smothers, or at least that was the only name he would answer to anymore. Smothers had been in the clink three times as of late and escaped every time.
“Nice ta meet’cha,” the alarm expert nodded repeatedly during the introductions, “Moe is da boss for me, no matter if he can pay me or not. He wants in da bank, I get’em there.”
“A pleasure,” Maniac extended a hand, but the little man refused to shake. He seemed worried that his nervous, sensitive fingers would get injured in Maniac’s beefy, strong ones. Forgetting the formalities, Maniac rubbed his own hands together instead.
“So, what bank are we going to and when can the job begin?”
“The National Freedom is the name of the place,” Moe snorted, “though all that money is, is a chain for those that wield it. Anyway, we’ve got to wait for word from the inside before we move. It might be a day or two, so you two make yourselves at home in the town for now. But don’t go near that bank. I don’t want your ugly faces becoming known around there!”
The two nodded assent, before marching out of the hotel room where Crescent Moe was staying.
“So, ya like to go see da city?” Smothers invited, pointing at the beat-up old pickup truck which he drove and possibly owned.
“I would love to,” Maniac shrugged, “but I’m broke until we finish our job.”
Smothers smiled slyly. “Dat’s alright, I lend ya a few bucks until then. Come on, havin’ fun by myself wouldn’t be no fun at all!”
Deciding that it didn’t matter how much he backslid until the job was over, Maniac agreed to see what sort of fun Smothers could get into. He soon found that it included going to Smother’s favorite bars, getting Maniac in fights with all of the toughies there and throwing empty bottles off of overpasses onto the pavement below until they got in trouble with the police. Smothers barely got them out of that one by bailing his pickup over the fills which held up the overpass and doing some fine footwork to ditch the cops afterwards.
“I don’t know about this, Smothers,” Maniac said afterwards, when they were sitting in the parking lot of a public park with the rattletrap parked nearby, engine still running, “all you’ve done so far is get me in to trouble. Now, I’m not the sort of guy to mind a little trouble if I get fun in return, but you’ve had most the drinks and I’ve had most of the bruises all morning.”
As he spoke he felt the purple one which had just come out on his arm and were starting to turn green around the edges. There was a bump on his head to keep it company, and a nasty little scratch down one cheek which had been put there by a broken bottle.
“Ya sayin’ I’m a coward, ay?” Smothers jumped up a little unsteadily, “ya sayin’ I wouldn’t put the mustache on the statue myself, ay? Well, I’ll show you.”
“Now, just wait a minute,” Maniac stood up and tried to grasp his companion’s shirt, hoping to stop him from doing anything rash. But Smothers was too oily for him. He ran across the grass lawn toward a giant statue which stood not far off, shouting over his shoulder, “dis will show ya!”
“You’ll slip, you fool! Wait until you’re steadier,” Maniac called after him, though he made no move to run after the alarm expert.
It was too tempting to see the deed done for him to make a real effort to stop him.
In one hand Smothers had a permanent marker with an especially wide tip. Their plan was to put a mustache on the statue of Lady Halaria Ross, which stood near the main footpath of the park. Not because they knew who she was, or had any especial grudge against her being there. Just because it was something that would disturb the peace-loving populace and satisfy their childish greed for trouble.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Grabbing onto the foot of the statue, which was up on a yard-tall pedestal, Smothers began to pull himself up. His progress was slow at first, getting over the old-fashioned skirt of the matriarch. But once on top of it he used the giant cement belt to pull himself up by and was soon crouching on the statue’s shoulders.
“Heh, heh!” He stood up and waved a hand, flailing it around in the air. “Look at me up here, Manny! Ya wish that it was you up here now?”
“No, you’re going to break your neck!” Maniac called up to him, “just get on with it and get down before the park security finds us.”
“Alright, alright. But first I’m gonna tweak 'er nose!” Smother swayed forward, leaning far out and around to grab at the statue’s main facial feature. Just as his fingers closed on it he lost his balance, feet slipping off of the slick cement of the shoulder. His hand on the tip of the nose was not enough to keep him in place and with a shriek he fell windmilling through the air.
Maniac jumped forward a few steps as if to catch him, though he knew that it was no use. Before he had even got half way to the base of the statue, Smothers had bounced off of the pedestal and lay on the ground in a heap.
“You fool!” Maniac hissed between his teeth, hurrying up to bend over him, “if you’ve killed yourself...”
He reached down to turn the little man onto his back, upon which Smothers let out a low moan to prove that he was not entirely gone.
“Now I remember why I decided to go straight,” Maniac rolled his eyes and slapped his forehead, “too many pointless failures. Now what do I do with you?”
But Smothers was in no position to answer. Except for the moan he made no noise, laying unconscious with his face turning purple and blue from the fall. And red, from the scrapes it had received on the cement.
“I would never get in such a stupid position,” Maniac told himself, shrugging his companion to his shoulder, “sitting there unconscious, with nothing to say to excuse yourself. Now I’ll have to take you back to the boss and tell him what we’ve been up to.”
Staggering back to the pickup truck, he dumped his load into the passenger seat. Smothers only muttered some gibberish in another language while Maniac got into the driver’s seat and began to back out of the lot. Luckily it was already running, as they had experienced trouble getting the engines to start earlier that day.
After getting the vehicle turned around, he drove it all of the way back to the hotel. Smothers was a little more conscious by the time they got there and only had to be half-carried up to the boss’s room. Maniac kicked open the door to lead him in, dumping him unceremoniously on Moe’s bed.
“What happened?” Crescent Moe exclaimed, getting up from where he had been drawing at a desk, “you boys run into some trouble?”
“Fell into it, more like,” Maniac gave him a brief sketch of what they had done that day, ending with, “so the fool slipped. And there he is.”
Moe’s expression became dark as he moved over to look at his alarm expert, “that was a stupid thing to do. Why did you guys have to pick today of all days to have a fling? I just got a call and tonight is the night to smash the piggy bank!”
“That’s bad,” Maniac frowned, realizing that it had been pretty stupid to do the things they had when they were on the brink of a big job. “Do you think we can patch him together enough by then?”
“I don’t know,” Moe shook his head, poking at Smothers to see if anything was broken, “looks like he has a busted arm, maybe ankle too. And he ain’t very coherent right now, either.”
“Oh, boy,” Maniac sighed, putting a hand to his forehead, “sorry, Moe. If I’d known that this nut would get himself pulped like that, I would have bundled him up and taken him home first. Do you think that the plan is off now?”
Moe was pacing up and down, continuing to shake his head. He didn’t answer for a long time, finally coming out with, “I hope you know that you two have just about cost me the big break I needed. You do? Good. Now listen up. We’re going to patch up Smothers the best we can, but he won’t be able to come with us. It would slow the whole operation down too much. What we’re going to do is this:”
He moved quickly over to the table, pointing out the sketch he had been making there. It was a floor plan for the bank, with alarms, security cameras and suchlike on it. It had notations on the side, which told things like dimensions and how much the security guard needed to be paid in return for his information.
“Originally, Smothers was going to take out the alarms and cameras from the control room, here,” he indicated the space on the edge of he bank, “but now that he can’t come along, I’ll have to do that. We’ll use a microphone, so he can walk me through the steps. You’ll wait five minutes, then start coming in, this way.”
He pointed out a hallway going toward the back of the building. “To the vault. Set the explosives and light them off, you know the way, so that the vault can be accessed. But don’t try to pick up any of the dough until I reach you, got it?”
“I understand,” Maniac nodded, “is the vault rigged?”
“That’s right. Ink spots. Originally I was going to be there right away to help you with those, as getting around ink sprinkler cases is one of my specialties,” Moe explained, “now you might have to wait a minute or two. That’s when things will begin getting hot. Someone might hear the blast, or it might set off an alarm that I can’t shut off. Anyway, as soon as I get there we’ll take the money and run, but not before I get there. Understand?”
Maniac understood and was ready to follow his lead. Though he was still just a touch worried about the explosives as he had not set any on this sort of mission for many years. Trying to remember the whole procedure, he asked what sort they were.
“The usual. C-4 sachets with a wired trigger,” Moe shrugged, as if that was the only way he would even think of doing it. Finished with the explanation, he tucked the paper in his pocket and went to get a first-aid kit from one of his suitcases.
Together they bandaged up Smothers as best as they could, before bringing him around with a shot of brandy. Once he was awake the boss explained the whole plan over to him again, pointing out that he would have to stay awake and alert to help them through the microphone.
“I can do it, boss,” the little man said in a thin voice, “you can rely on me. And about dis whole mess; I don’t even deserve ta work for ya any more.”
“Ah, you’ll pay me back some time,” Moe ruffled his hair affectionately, “probably when I need it even worse than now. But no more foolishness so close to business, got it?”
His last words were hard and pointed, making Smothers nod unhesitatingly. “Yes, sir. No more for me, thanks.”
After that, all they had to do was wait. As evening came on Maniac made himself comfortable in a chair in the corner of the room, dozing on and off as night fell. The job was planned for late at night, when the city would mostly be asleep and their inside man would be on duty. He fell asleep and slept more heavily until around one o’clock, when the boss awakened him with a shake.
“Hey, time to get going. Drink this down first.”
Moe gave him a steaming cup of coffee, which Maniac drank in gulps which scalded his throat. It woke him up, though, and put him on edge. Feeling invigorated, he jumped up and moved over to look out of the window. A cold breeze rattled it, while outside the dark shapes and bright lights of the city spilled over the land toward the orange-hazed horizon. Hardly any vehicles headlights moved on the streets and those that did seemed stealthy in the shadows.
“We’ll make another pair of headlights soon,” Moe told him, as if he had read his thoughts, “just got to make sure that the microphone with Smothers works alright.”
It was soon tested and found to work perfectly, so the two uninjured gangsters made their way down the hotel steps in the late night (or early morning) hush, to where Moe’s car was parked. There Moe took the heavy sack containing C-4 and trigger out of the trunk, giving them into Maniac’s care. He held them on his lap as the car started up and pulled out onto the street, sliding through the mostly sleeping city like a penguin on oily ice.
It was not a long drive to the National Freedom bank. Crescent Moe pulled up across from it, stopping beside the curb but leaving the engine running. Not because it had a difficult time starting back up, like Smother’s rig, but because it might save precious seconds of their precious lives later on. On their side of the road was a restaurant, one light glowing dimly in the back.
“Alright, the Mercenary Squealer should be waiting outside the bank for me,” Moe reminded his assistant, “you wait five minutes, then come on in. Remember the floor plan? Well, go to the vault and do your stuff. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“Got it.” Maniac clutched the sack in his hands, keeping still with an effort. This was the part of gigs which always made him anxious; the waiting. Once he got going nothing mattered anymore except for getting the job done. He could normally smash his way through any problems which got in the way. But just sitting made him antsy.
Moe disappeared into the shadows to find the security guard. A car went slowly past, headlights shining in the window. Maniac squeezed his eyes shut and pretended that he was asleep. Though if anyone had looked closely it would have appeared more like he had stepped on a nail and was trying not to scream.
Once the lights were gone Manic took the broken watch from his pocket and followed the changing numbers by holding it near the glowing stereo light. Three minutes slipped past while he waited. Then one more, as he tapped fingernails of the unoccupied hand nervously on the dash. Finally, the fifth minute turned and it was time to leave.
With a sigh he grasped the bag once again, opened the car door and strolled easily across the street. The bank had a glass door in front, which was usually locked at night and kept sealed with an alarm. As Moe had gone in a back way with the guard, this would be the first real test of their plan. Putting out a hand, Maniac pushed the bar to open the door.
Silently the door swung open, letting him in to the hushed sanctuary of the citizen’s money and monetary dealings. The carpet, wallpaper and ceiling were all hidden by gloom, but Maniac could smell the dollars on them like the fragrance of a spring flower. Alluring, heady and strangely off-putting all at the same time.
Turning on the small flashlight which Moe had given him, he hurried over to the counter where the clerks would stand in the daytime. There was a swinging door there, locked but only waist-high. Holding the light in his teeth, Maniac vaulted easily over it with one hand to the other side. Down a hall leading to the right was where the vault was supposed to be. Machines were used to spit the bills into the clerks hands and machines sucked it up when it was time to put it away. But the bank officials still needed access to the vault for checking their real-world storage.
The doorway guarding the hall was locked and alarmed, but Moe had the alarms off and the keys had been thoughtfully hung on the handle. Maniac got through with a minimum of effort, making his way down the hall past offices to a second door, unlocked it and was in the antechamber of the piggy bank.
There were windows here, small and barred with curtains over them. A very faint night-time luminescence came through into the room. The carpet was thinner and less rich, the walls a plain beige color when he shone his light on them. But the smell of money was even more intense, making it somehow more sterile at the same time.
Holding his flashlight in his teeth again, Maniac began to unpack the explosives. They were in two long, thin packages with the cords running out of one end and down to the trigger that would link them up with the detonator. In the bag there was also a cordless drill with a large bit, for drilling the vault door to place the explosives. And some clay-like material that Maniac could not remember the use for in his haste, so put entirely out of his mind.
The drill was a powerful one and the bit sharp, but still it took precious minutes to make the holes. Moe was not with him by then, so he went jauntily along with the job of stuffing the explosives into the holes, whistling quietly between his teeth all the while. It was always Christmas music when he was busy, no matter the time of year.
“Well, time for fire in the hole, I suppose,” he told himself, snapping together the link which connected the wires and the trigger. Picking it up, he moved over by one of the windows on the far side of the room and stood for a minute, listening to see if Moe was on his way.
Not hearing him, Maniac shrugged and flipped a switch to activate the detonator, then pushed the button to send the electrical pulse to the blasting caps on the C-4.
It was in that very moment that he remembered what the clay wadding was for. It was packing, to make sure that the explosives did not take the easy route out of the holes straight toward him. He did not even have time to wish that his old prison buddies were there to help him before the world cut loose in a flash, a roar and the tinkling of breaking glass.