The Big Caper | Page 8

York when they had one of the Wagnerian operas or a Beethoven concert. Those he loved. And in between times he had his own Capehart and his fine collection of records. It was his only indulgence, the only thing beyond the bare essentials of existence on which he spent money and on which he squandered the diminishing fund of his desires.
In the meantime, he sat here in this room that he had rented, his feet thrust into a pair of worn bedroom slippers, his old tired body wrapped in a faded dressing gown, and waited.
Flood had said Wednesday, and today was Wednesday. Today the other one would come and give him the information he had to have. He knew no curiosity about the " man who was going to meet him; he only hoped that he would be intelligent and able to answer his questions. He hoped that he would have competent floor plans of the building, a layman's knowledge of the vault and its location, and, if possible, its make. Anything else would be fine, but that was all he expected and that was all he would really need. And of course the tools.
Those and the protection that Flood had guaranteed him for the few minutes it would take him to do his work.
He understood the risks. He had been taking risks like this all his life. Sometimes he had won out and sometimes he had lost. When he had lost he had paid for it. Usually it was because of someone else's carelessness. Once it had been just as a bad break. That was the time the nitro had been poor and something had gone wrong and he'd had to take a half hour longer than he'd counted on. The patrol car had returned before it was expected and then everything had happened at once.
Old Jonesy, who had worked with him on half a dozen jobs, had been killed in the first blast of gunfire, and he himself had been hit in the leg. He still limped from the wound. That was the job that had drawn him the twenty-year stretch in the federal can; the stretch of which he had done fifteen years before he'd finally got out.--He hoped this one would be different.
One thing had impressed him: Flood himself would be present on this deal. And Flood wasn't one to take any chances at all. Not where his own freedom was concerned.
He lay back in the armchair and his withered hand reached for the pipe on the table at his side. He lighted the dottle that had been left in the bowl from the last time he had smoked it and then coughed an old man's hacking cough.
He hawked and spat, aiming at a wastepaper basket in the corner of the room. And just then he heard the knock on the door.

2.
Kosta didn't get up on Wednesday morning, and Kay and Frank had breakfast together on the patio at seven o'clock.
Both were tired and both looked worried and nervous. As the time approached, the tension was beginning to tell.
Tuesday afternoon, Frank had driven Kosta around the town. He'd shown him the beach first, feeling that maybe Kosta would like to see it, but then, when the dumpy little man had expressed no interest or curiosity, they'd driven back to the main section of the village.
Frank had shown him the courthouse and the public park where the shuffleboard courts were and the old couples from the tourist camps and trailer courts playing in the sun. Later they had driven out past the school, a large sprawling collection of buildings, five blocks to the west of the business district.
Kosta had expressed keen interest in the school auditorium. It was a large frame structure with a great deal of glass, and it contained an indoor basketball court, an enclosed amphitheatre where the high-school students held their rallies and put on amateur theatricals, and several smaller meeting rooms.
This was the building that Flood had picked out as the principal target.
Later he had driven by the warehouse along the railroad tracks and then circled around past the two-story department store at the east end of the business district.
Kosta had looked at the block-square building and shaken his head.
"Never do at all," he said. "Flood should have known. All steel and concrete. It would take forever to get started."
Frank hadn't commented. This was not his part of the business. All he was supposed to do was show the other man around. It was up to Kosta--and Flood himself, of course--to select the spots.
Frank had stopped at the drugstore to get a pack of cigarettes and he'd met Waldo Harrington again, this time in civilian clothes.
"Thought you were going fishing," Frank had said.
Waldo shrugged. "Wife got ahold of me before I could start,"