1958 - The World in My Pocket (21 page)

Ginny remained motionless, her sea-green eyes completely expressionless.

‘Get out!’ she said softly.

‘Come on, honey,’ Bleck said and sat on the edge of the settee. ‘Don’t be that way. I’ve got plans for you and me. When this job’s over and we’ve got the dough, we’ll go places together. I’ll take you to London and Paris. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘I said get out!’ the girl repeated, and it angered Bleck that she seemed so calm and unafraid.

‘Maybe I can persuade you,’ he said and his hands closed over her shoulders, and then he felt something hard dig into his chest.

He looked down quickly and his heart skipped a beat as he saw the .38 automatic pressing into him.

‘Take your hands off me slowly,’ Ginny said and there was a steely quality in her voice that scared Bleck. ‘Slowly or I’ll kill you.’

Slowly and cautiously, his mouth dry, Bleck took his hands off her shoulders and lifted them. He had a horrible feeling as he looked into her eyes that he was only a heartbeat away from death.

‘Now get up,’ she went on. ‘Slowly; keep your hands like that.’

Slowly, he got up and backed away.

‘Get out of here!’ she said, the gun sight steady and pointing at his chest. ‘The next time you try that little act, I’ll kill you. Now get back into your room and stay in there.’

Bleck drew in a long, deep breath.

‘Okay, baby,’ he said. ‘Watch out! I’ll fix you for this! Make no mistake about that!’

‘Run away, you cheap masher,’ Ginny said.

Bleck went into the bedroom and shut the door. He was shaking with rage. If she imagined, after this, she was going to get her share of the money when the payoff came, she was mistaken, he thought as he got into his bed.

He’d fix her! He’d teach her to throw a gun on him!

She and that bum Kitson! He’d fix them both!

When they got the money from the truck, he’d put a slug through Kitson’s head, and as for her - well, that depended.

He suddenly grinned viciously in the darkness.

Seven hundred and fifty thousand bucks was a lot better than two hundred and fifty thousand. He lay for a long time in the darkness, planning what he would do with the money.

Maybe, he decided suddenly, it might be an idea to get rid of Gypo too - to make a clean sweep of them all.

A million was better than seven hundred and fifty thousand.

Talk about the world in your pocket!

With a million in cash, a man was a king!

CHAPTER NINE

I

T
he next two days followed the same pattern. At dawn, Bleck and Gypo went into the caravan, and Kitson came back to the cabin.

After a few hours sleepy Kitson then went out with Ginny and spent the day with her, swimming and walking or going on the lake.

Bleck sat on the floor of the caravan reading the papers while Gypo toiled at the truck door.

The news as reported in the papers was encouraging. The police and the Army were plainly baffled. Although the search was being continued, there was now a note of helplessness in the police statements to the press. They had finally decided that the truck must have been driven away in another vehicle. There could be no other solution as to how it had vanished so completely. It was thought by now the truck was out of the State. The search had been extended to a five hundred mile radius, and the reward had been raised to five thousand dollars.

Two hundred soldiers and police were combing Fox Wood and hover planes were still patrolling the roads. Sooner or later, Army headquarters announced, the truck must be found. It was a physical impossibility for it to vanish the way it had and stay vanished!

If the police and the Army were having their troubles, so too were Bleck and Gypo.

The result of Gypo’s two days’ work had come to nothing.

He had sat on his stool in the broiling heat of the caravan all day, moving the dial, listening, sweating, cursing and listening again, but the second tumbler had refused to fall into place.

With nothing to do but to watch Gypo and read the newspapers, Bleck’s nerves by now were crawling out of his skin. Added to the insufferable heat in the caravan and the tension of expecting to hear from Gypo at any second that the second tumbler had dropped, he also had the maddening thought that Ginny and Kitson were out in the open air, enjoying themselves.

Surely even though Kitson was a punch-drunk bum, Bleck argued to himself, he must by now be making an impression on the girl. No man, going around with a woman for three solid days, could fail to make an impression. If he - Bleck - had Ginny on his own for twelve hours, she would have surrendered to his technique by now. So the thought of them alone together added the bite of jealous acid to his already frayed nerves.

Around six o’clock on the third day as the evening sun dropped behind the mountains, shedding an orange-red light over the lake, Gypo cracked.

For three days he had slaved at this lock in almost impossible conditions, and now he felt he was completely defeated. The second tumbler had refused to fall. He had moved the dial a hair breadth by a hair breadth over the whole circuit, and still it hadn’t fallen. It meant he was moving the dial just that much more than it should be moved. It meant that the hand he was so proud of wasn’t sensitive enough to control the knob on the dial.

‘I can’t do it!’ he suddenly moaned, slumping against the door of the truck. ‘I can’t do it, Ed! It’s no use! If I try for twenty years, I won’t do it! If I don’t get out of here I’ll go crazy!’

Alarmed by the hysterical note in Gypo’s voice, Bleck jumped to his feet and came around the truck, gun in hand. ‘Shut up!’ he snarled, ramming the gun into Gypo’s ribs. ‘You’re damn well going to open that truck or I’ll kill you!’

Gypo began to cry helplessly, his fat body trembling with exhaustion.

‘Go ahead,’ he gasped. ‘Kill me! Do you think I care? I’d rather be dead than work anymore on this sonofabitch! Go ahead and kill me! I can’t stand any more of it!’

Bleck hit Gypo savagely across his face with the barrel of the gun. Gypo flinched away, blood running from a cut in his fat cheek down his face into his collar. He sagged against the side of the truck, his eyes shut.

‘Go ahead!’ he cried, his voice shrill and as hysterical as a frightened woman’s. ‘Kill me! I can’t go on! I’m through!’

‘Pull yourself together, you creep!’ Bleck shouted, alarmed to see how bad Gypo was looking, and thinking if he was going to get out of control, the whole plan would blow up in their faces.

‘I tell you I can’t do it!’ Gypo wailed and collapsed on the stool, hiding his face in his hands.

At that moment there came a gentle tap on the door of the caravan: a sound that made Bleck stiffen and his heart skip a beat. He had seen Ginny and Kitson go off in the Buick for a shopping trip to town so he knew it couldn’t be either of them knocking on the door.

As Gypo started to moan, Bleck grabbed him and shook him, whispering fiercely, ‘Shut up! There’s someone outside!’

Gypo stiffened and stopped his noise.

The two men waited, listening.

The knock came again.

Bleck signalled to Gypo to remain where he was. His gun in his hand, he crept to the curtained window. Keeping to one side, he peered forward to look through the curtain.

At the door of the caravan was a small boy of about ten, knocking and frowning and staring up at the caravan. In his hand, he held a toy pistol which he pointed at the door.

Bleck watched him, his lips drawn off his teeth in a snarl.

The boy, clad in jeans and a white and red checkered shirt, his feet bare, a battered straw hat on the back of his head, stared curiously at the door of the caravan, his sunburned face puzzled. There was a long pause as the boy continued to stare at the caravan, then, as if making up his mind, he moved forward and hooked his fingers on the windowsill, preparing to hoist himself up to peer through the window.

Gypo, seeing the sudden murderous, frightened expression on Bleck’s face, got up off the stool and joined Bleck at the window. He caught his breath sharply when he saw the boy, and his hand clamped down on Bleck’s wrist.

‘No!’ Gypo hissed. ‘Not a kid! Are you crazy?’

Bleck wrenched his wrist free, relaxing as he saw the boy hadn’t the strength to pull himself up as far as the window. The boy dropped back, and again stared up at the caravan, his expression frustrated. After staring at the caravan for some moments, he turned abruptly and hurried off down the path that ran along by the lakeside.

‘Do you think he heard us?’ Bleck asked anxiously.

‘I don’t know,’ Gypo said. The shock of the boy’s unexpected appearance had brought him abruptly to his senses.

‘He certainly scared me,’ Bleck said and wiped his face with his hand. ‘Here, you sit down, Gypo, and take it easy. Suppose I try to fix this goddamn lock?’

‘You?’ Gypo’s face wrinkled in disgust. ‘No! You could dislodge the first tumbler if you don’t have the feel of it. Keep away from it!’

Bleck reached out and took hold of Gypo’s shirt front, giving him a hard shake.

‘So if I don’t do it and you damn well won’t do it, how do we open it?’ he demanded, his voice thick with rage.

‘Don’t you understand?’ Gypo said. ‘We’re not going to open it! For three days I’ve worked on it! Hour after hour after hour! What happens? One tumbler falls, then nothing. That lock has at least six tumblers. I’ve got five more to find. Okay, maybe in a week I’ll find the second one; maybe I won’t. If I find it, I’ve got four more to find. By that time I’ll be crazy in the head! No one can work in this heat! No one! I’m quitting! I can’t do any more! I’ve had enough! No money is worth this! You hear me? No money can be worth this!’

‘Aw, shut up!’ Bleck shouted violently. ‘Don’t start that again!’

But he was worried. He realized that Gypo was talking sense. The thought of being cooped up in this oven of a caravan for another three or four weeks appalled even him.

Gypo had slumped down on the stool again, holding his hand to his aching face as he stared hopelessly at the dial.

‘Could you cut the door open?’ Bleck asked.

‘Here? Impossible! People would see the flame through the curtain. Then think of the heat! The caravan would catch fire.’

‘Suppose we take the caravan up into the mountains? Frank said we might have to do that, and it looks to me that’s what we’ll have to do,’ Bleck said. ‘Then you can work with the back of the caravan open. It would be okay like that, wouldn’t it?’

Gypo took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his bleeding cheek.

‘I’ve had enough. I want to go home. No one’s going to open that sonofabitch - no one!’

‘We’ll talk to the other two,’ Bleck said, a rasp in his voice. ‘Where are your guts? There’s a million bucks behind that door! A million bucks! Think of it!’

‘I wouldn’t care if there were twenty million,’ Gypo said, his voice shaking. ‘I’ve had enough, I tell you! Can’t you understand English?’

‘Relax, will you?’ Bleck said, sitting on the floor. ‘We’ll talk to the other two.’

Unaware of Gypo’s crack up, Ginny and Kitson were returning from town, some fifteen miles from the caravan camp, after an afternoon’s shopping.

They had decided it would be unsafe to shop any more at the store on the camp. The storekeeper was certain to notice the amount of food they were buying and would know it couldn’t have been for two people, so now they did a daily run into town.

During the past two days, Ginny and Kitson had been constantly in each other’s company. Ginny was still trying to make up her mind whether to join up with Kitson when they got the money. She knew he was in love with her and she found that she was growing to like him. Unlike Bleck, there was nothing dangerous about him and she felt safe with him.

As they drove along the highway, heading back to the caravan camp, she kept glancing at him. Apart from his broken nose, he was quite handsome, she thought, and she had a sudden urge to confide in him

‘Alex.’

Kitson glanced at her and then back to the road. When he had her by his side, he was a very careful driver.

‘Yeah? Something bothering you?’

‘Well, yes.’ She lifted her copper-coloured hair off her shoulders and then let it drop back into place. ‘You asked me once how I knew about the truck and the payroll. Do you still want to know?’

Kitson was surprised, ‘Well, I’ve wondered, but it’s no business of mine,’ he said. ‘What made you think of that?’

‘You’ve been pretty nice to me,’ Ginny said. ‘Most men in your place would have been troublesome. I appreciate it, I want you to know I’m not a gangster’s moll.’

Kitson shook his head, ‘I never thought that.’

‘Morgan did. He thought I had stolen the plan from a mob I had been working with and brought it to him for a bigger share. He didn’t say so, but I knew that’s what he thought.’

Kitson shifted uncomfortably. He knew that was exactly what Frank had thought.

‘Well, maybe. I didn’t.’

‘I knew about the payroll and the truck because my father was the gate man at the Research Station,’ Ginny said quietly.

‘He was?’ Kitson gave her a quick look. ‘Yeah, so you would know about it.’

‘I’m not trying to whitewash myself,’ Ginny said, leaning her head back against the seat. ‘My mother was no good. I guess I have a lot of her badness in me. She left my father when I was ten. She was always talking about money, telling me without it, I’d never do anything. My father was a good man, but he didn’t earn much. He was good to me, but that didn’t stop me having an itch for money. As I grew up, the itch got worse. It tormented me. I never had any decent clothes. I seldom went to the movies. I used to spend all my time staring into the windows of the luxury shops, envying people who could buy what I saw there and what I wanted. My father often talked about the payroll, and I often dreamed of having all that money. Then the new truck arrived. My father thought they were crazy not to insure the payroll any longer. He said it wouldn’t be so hard to hijack the truck. He and I used to discuss it. It was his idea to hide the truck in a caravan. Don’t imagine he ever thought of doing such a thing. There was nothing like that about him, but it made me think and the idea of grabbing that truck became an obsession with me.’