The Friends of Eddie Coyle (7 page)

“Helpful, aren’t you?” the spokesman said.

“I don’t want to get hurt and I don’t want anybody else to get hurt,” Sam said. “You said you’d use that thing. I believe you. Those cameras haven’t seen anything I haven’t seen: just a bunch of frightened people and three men with stockings over their faces. You got to kill all of us, too.”

“All right,” the spokesman said. The third man came out of the vault, the third bag partly full. “Tell them this: my friends’re going to go out and get in the car. Then we’re going out and get in the car and go back to your house. Your people’re to open the bank and say absolutely nothing to nobody for at least an hour. If they do that, maybe you won’t get killed.”

“Will you listen to me, please?” Sam said. “We’re going to leave now. As soon as the door shuts in the back, get up and take your usual places. Open the doors and pull the curtains. Start to do business as usual, as best you can. It’s very important that these
men have at least an hour to get away. I know it’ll be difficult for you. Do the best you can, and if anyone comes in wanting a large amount of cash, you’ll have to tell them there’s something wrong with the vault and we’ve called a repairman to open it.”

To the spokesman, he said: “Will you have one of your friends there close the vault?”

The spokesman pointed toward the vault door. The second man swung it shut. The spokesman nodded and the two men picked up the plastic bags and disappeared into the corridor leading to the back door.

“Please remember what I’ve said,” Sam said. “Everything depends on you to see that no one gets hurt. Please do your very best.”

In the car there was no sign of the plastic bags. Then Sam noticed that one of the men was missing. He sat in the back seat with the spokesman. The driver started the engine.

“Now, Mr. Partridge,” the spokesman said, “I’m going to ask you to put this blindfold on again and get down on the floor of the car. Me and my friend in the front’re going to take off the stockings. When we get to your house I will help you out of the car. You’ll take the blindfold off so nobody gets frightened. We’ll pick up my other friend and come back out to the car. You’ll put the blindfold on again, and everything goes all right, in a little while you’ll be safe and sound. Understand?”

In the family room his wife and children seemed to occupy the same places they had had when he first came downstairs. His wife sat in the rocker and the children stood close together next to her. He knew without being told that they had not spoken since he left. The fourth man rose from the couch as they entered.

Sam said: “I’ve got to go away with these men for a little while now, and then everything’ll be all right, okay?” The children did not answer. To his wife, he said: “You better call the school and tell them we’ve all got the bug and the children’ll be absent.”

“Don’t say anything else,” the spokesman said.

“I’m just trying to do what you told me,” Sam said. “The school calls if you don’t.”

“Fine,” the spokesman said. “Just make sure it isn’t the State Police or something. Now, let’s go.”

Outside, Sam was blindfolded again. His eyes hurt from the sudden change from sunlight to darkness. He was led to the car. He was pushed down on the floor. He heard the car go into gear, the transmission under his head clinking as the car backed up. He felt it lurch forward. He was able to tell as it turned out of the driveway and turned left. When it came to a stop and turned right, he knew it was on Route 47. The car proceeded for a long time without stopping. Sam searched his memory for the number of stop lights or signs that they would have passed. He could not remember. He was unable to say any longer where they were. There was no conversation in the car. Once he heard a match being struck, and soon after smelled a cigarette burning. He thought: We must be getting somewhere. It must be almost over.

There was a crunching sound under the car and it slowed down quickly. The spokesman said: “I’m going to open the door now. Put your hands on the seat and get yourself sitting up. I’ll take your arm and get you out of the car. We’re at the edge of a field. When you get out, I’ll point you and you start walking. You’ll hear me get back in the car. The window will be down. I’ll be pointing the gun at you every minute. You just start walking and you walk as far as you can. Sometime while you’re walking,
you’ll hear the car move off the shoulder here. I promise you, we’ll stay parked on the pavement for a while. You won’t be able to tell by listening whether we’re still here or not. Count to one hundred. Then take your mask off and hope to God we’re gone.”

Sam was cramped and stiff from lying on the floor. He stood unsteadily on the shoulder of the road. The spokesman took his arm and led him into the field. He could tell he was standing in wet, long grass. “Start walking, Mr. Partridge,” the spokesman said. “And thanks for your cooperation.”

Sam heard the car move off the gravel. He shuffled along in the darkness, the unevenness of the field frightening him. He was afraid of stepping into a hole. He was afraid of stepping on a snake. He got up to thirty-four and lost count. He counted again to fifty. He was unable to breathe. No longer, he thought, no longer. I can’t wait any longer. He removed the blindfold, expecting to be shot. He was alone in a broad, level pasture bordered by oaks and maples that had lost their leaves and stood black in the warm November morning. For a moment he stood blinking, then turned and looked at the empty road scarcely twenty yards away. He began to run, stiffly, toward the road.

At five minutes of six, Dave Foley escaped from the traffic on Route 128 and parked the Charger at the Red Coach Grille in Braintree. He went into the bar and took a table in the rear corner that allowed him to watch the door and the television set above the bar. He ordered a vodka martini on the rocks with a twist. After a white man strenuously stated the headlines, the evening news report began. As the waitress arrived with Foley’s drink, a black man with heavy jowls and an accent that made
er
sounds into
or
sounds delivered the first story.

“Four gunmen, masked with nylon stockings, made off with an estimated ninety-seven thousand dollars from the First Agricultural and Commercial Bank and Trust Company in Hopedale this morning,” he said. “The bandits invaded the Dover home of bank official Samuel Partridge shortly before dawn. Leaving one to hold the family hostage, they forced Partridge to
accompany them to the bank. Employees were held at gunpoint while the robbers looted the vault of most of the bank’s currency, leaving only coins and a few small bills behind. Partridge was then driven back to his home, where the robbers picked up the guard they had left. After being blindfolded, Partridge was turned loose on Route 116 in Uxbridge, near the Rhode Island line. A blue Ford, apparently the getaway car, was found two miles away. The FBI and the State Police have entered the case. Partridge told me this afternoon. . . .”

A bulky black man wearing a double-breasted blue silk suit came into the bar and paused for an instant. Foley stood up and waved him over.

“Deetzer,” Foley said, “how goes the battle for equal rights?”

“We’re definitely losing,” the black man said. “This morning I told her I wouldn’t be home for dinner, and now I got to empty the garbage for three months, and take the kids to the zoo Saturday.”

“What do you hear, Deetzer old man,” Foley said.

“I hear they serve a drink here now and then,” the black man said. “Can I get one of those?”

Foley signaled the waitress and pointed to his glass. Then he raised two fingers.

“Are we eating here, Foles?” the black man said.

“Might as well,” Foley said. “I could use a steak.”

“Is uncle paying?” the black man said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Foley said.

“I’m beginning to remember hearing some things now,” the black man said. “What shall we talk about?”

“I been thinking about going into the holdup business,” Foley said. “What I want to do is get up an integrated gang. We’d
be invincible, Deetzer. Four bastards no smarter’n you and me got ninety-seven K out of some little bank in the woods this morning, no muss, no fuss, no bother. And here we are, deserving young men, family types, hacking along on a fucking salary.”

“I heard on the radio a hundred and five thousand,” the black man said.

“Well there you are, Deetzer,” Foley said. “A day’s work and all they got to worry about now is the Effa-Bee-Eye. You’ll be trotting the garbage from now until Easter, they’ll be getting a tan on the beach at Antigua, and I’ll be beating the bushes with snow to my jock until Washington’s Birthday, tracking down housewives who pay ten bucks for six ounces of Lipton Tea and two ounces of bad grass.”

“I was thinking about joining a commune,” the black man said. “I heard about this place up near Lowell, everybody welcome, you take off your clothes and screw all day and drink boysenberry wine all night. Trouble is, I hear all they get to eat is turnips.”

“You’re too old for a commune,” Foley said. “They wouldn’t take you. You couldn’t get it up enough to meet the specs. What you need is some government-funded job with a secretary that comes in every afternoon, strips down to the garter belt, and gets it up for you.”

“I applied for that job,” the black man said. “I know just the one you mean. Pays thirty grand a year and you get a Cadillac and a white man to drive it. They told me it was filled. Some kid from Harvard Law School, got hair down to his navel and a beard and wears boots. They said I wasn’t qualified to lead the people to the promised land, what they needed was a nice Jewish boy that didn’t wash.”

“I thought they had their rights,” Foley said.

“So did I,” the black man said. “It’s the jobs they want now.”

“The brothers will be very uptight when they hear this,” Foley said. “Should I call Military Intelligence and tell them to load and holster their movie cameras for an imminent demonstration?”

“Probably not,” the black man said. “The way to handle it is to pass the word to some crabby dumb mick of a DA, and he’ll bugger it up fast enough.”

“Would a City Councilman do?” Foley said.

“Even better,” the black man said. “Better still, a City Councilwoman. They’re the best. You know where they stand.”

“How are the brothers, anyway?” Foley said.

“Ah, Deetzer, Deetzer, you never learn,” the black man said. “Whenever the white man calls, it’s because he’s got a hard-on for the Panthers again. Is it the Panthers this time, Foles?”

“I dunno,” Foley said. “I dunno who it is. I don’t even know if it is, to tell you the truth. I’d be very surprised to find out it was Panthers. From what I read in the papers, they spend most of their time in court for shooting each other.”

“Not all of them,” the black man said. “The rank and file run a catering business.”

“Any of them looking out to buy some machine guns?” Foley asked.

“I suppose so,” the black man said. “They run around all the time saying: ‘Off the pigs.’ I was doing that, I’d want some machine guns around for when the pigs get mad.”

“Do you know of anybody looking to buy machine guns?” Foley said.

“Come on, Dave,” the black man said, “you know me: white
man’s nigger. I don’t know any more about the Panthers’n you do. Or any other brothers. Am I the best you can do? Haven’t you guys got somebody in there that can tip you? I mean, you asking me, you need help bad. You want to know what I hear on the street, I can tell you. But I’m on the government tit, too. Different government and all, but still on the government tit. The brothers don’t talk to me. Oh, they talk to me, but they don’t talk serious. If they were buying cannons, they wouldn’t tell me about it.”

“Deetzer,” Dave said, “I need a favor. I want you to go out and see what you can hear. I got a line that the brothers’re mobbing up, getting guns from somebody that’s in with the wise guys. The idea kind of bothers me.”

“Jesus,” the black man said, “competition I heard of. There’s always some lunatic looking around to take the numbers action. But a treaty? News to me.”

“News to me, too,” Foley said. “See what you can find out, huh Deets?”

Jackie Brown found the tan Microbus on the upper level of the Undercommon Garage, near the stairs to the kiosk at Beacon and Charles Streets. The interior of the vehicle was dark. There were flowered curtains covering all of the windows behind the front seat. He rapped on the driver’s window.

There appeared at the window a puffy face surrounded by straggly blond hair, collar length. The face contained two suspicious eyes. Jackie Brown stared back at it. In a while, a hand came up and opened the vent window. The face also had a voice. “Whaddaya want?” it said.

“What do
you
want?” Jackie Brown said. “A man told me you wanted something.”

“That’s not good enough,” the voice said.

“Fuck you,” Jackie Brown said. He turned around and began walking.

The left rear window swung open. Another voice, lighter, said: “Are you selling something?”

“That depends,” Jackie Brown said.

“Wait a minute,” the lighter voice said.

Jackie Brown turned around. He did not walk back. He was about twelve feet from the bus. He waited.

The puffy face reappeared at the driver’s window. The vent window opened again. The voice said: “Are you a cop?”