The Procane Chronicle (9 page)

I shook my head. “I like this one,” I said, pointing at the first stall.

“Christ, fella, a stall’s a stall.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s some kind of mental block. I can’t go unless I use the first stall.”

The man slammed shut the door he had been holding open. “You got a real bad problem there, don’t you, sonny?” he said and walked out of the room before I could remind him that he hadn’t washed his hands.

I stood there in front of the first stall, trying not to listen to the sounds and trying not to think much about why I was in a business that required me to stand there and listen to them at ten o’clock in the morning. Finally, at six minutes past ten the toilet in the first stall flushed and a small man of about sixty with a large nose came out zipping up his pants.

“I tried to hurry,” he said apologetically. “I heard what you said about not being able to go except in the first stall. I’m like that at home, except that I can’t go on the first floor. I gotta go upstairs.”

“We both have a problem,” I said and went through the door that he held open for me, thus saving another dime toward early retirement.

Once inside, there was nothing to do but sit down and wait. I waited four minutes until the stall next to me lost its occupant. Fifteen seconds later I heard its door open and close. I held the airline bag on my lap and kept my eyes on the space where the partition that separated the two stalls ended a foot above the floor.

I counted to thirty-five slowly and then a blue airline bag, this one from United, was kicked into my stall. I didn’t see the foot that kicked it. I bent down and picked it up. I put my own bag on the floor. I unzipped the United bag and looked inside. There were five eight-and-a-half-by-fourteen-inch ledgers. I took out the first one and opened it at random. The entry was March 19, 1953. Written in blue-black ink in a precise, but somehow childlike hand was all the information that I would need to steal seventy-three thousand dollars from a Pittsburgh jewelry fence who talked too much to a girl in Manhattan. Everything was there: the time, the date, the method, and a virtual guarantee that the Pittsburgh fence would never complain to anyone. If it had been March 19, 1953, I might have been tempted.

I put the ledger back and took out another one and flipped through some pages. It was the same kind of information, but covered the five years from 1960 to 1964. I started to look at the rest of them, but there were three hard raps on the wall that separated the two stalls. I chose one more ledger at random and quickly flipped through its pages. This one was a complete blueprint of how I could have stolen myself fairly rich if it had been 1955 to 1959.I put the ledger back in the United bag just as three more raps sounded on the stall partition. They were not only louder, but also more impatient. I zipped up the United bag and then used my left foot to kick the Pan-Am bag that contained the ninety thousand dollars under the partition and into the next stall. Then I rose quickly, opened the door, and walked out of the men’s room.

Miles Wiedstein stood to my right about six feet away, his right hand deep in the pockets of his topcoat. He looked at me and I nodded. To my left was Janet Whistler with her right hand tucked away in the large purse that she cradled in her left arm. I assumed that both of them had guns of some kind, but I wasn’t interested enough to ask.

“Let’s go,” I said to Wiedstein.

“Did you get them?” he said and fell into step with me.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I didn’t read every word, but what I did read convinced me that they were worth the ninety thousand—if Procane wants to stay out of jail.”

Janet Whistler was on my left now as we went down the stairs. “Shouldn’t we wait to see who comes out of the men’s room?”

I shook my head and kept on walking. “You can, but I won’t. If the guy I gave the money to comes out and sees me, he may start shooting. Not right now, but later today. Or early tomorrow.”

“You’re sure you got them?” Wiedstein said again.

“There’re five of them,” I said.

Wiedstein nodded, but he still looked worried. Janet Whistler touched my elbow. “We have a car waiting,” she said.

We went out the Forty-second Street entrance and into a waiting Carey limousine. All three of us got in the back seat and Wiedstein gave the driver Procane’s address and then pushed the button that raised the glass partition. The car moved off and I settled back in the seat, the United bag on my lap, my arms clasped around it.

“Maybe I should have a look,” Wiedstein said.

I turned my head and gave him what I hoped was a polite, but apologetic smile. “I’d better hold on to them until I can hand everything over to Procane.”

Wiedstein stared at me for several moments before nodding thoughtfully. “Then you’re assuming full responsibility,” he said.

“That’s my job,” I said.

“He doesn’t trust us, Miles,” Janet Whistler said.

“That’s too bad,” Wiedstein said and then none of us said anything else until we were in Procane’s office-study and I had handed him the United bag that had been kicked my way twenty-six minutes before.

Procane wore an old bluish tweed sports jacket, a pair of gray-flannel slacks, a dark-blue polo shirt open at the throat, and black loafers. He looked pink and well barbered and his hands shook only a little when I handed him the bag. He carried it over to his desk, unzipped it, and took out the five journals. He looked at me. “Did you check them?”

“Yes.”

“How carefully?”

“Enough to know why you wanted them back.”

He nodded at that and then sorted through the journals quickly until he found the one he wanted. He opened it and started turning the pages. His face grew pinker. He looked up at Wiedstein and shook his head. Wiedstein flushed and said, “Goddamn.” Janet Whistler grimaced, crossed over to Procane, and put one hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure?” she said. Procane handed her the journal that he had been looking at. She flipped through it quickly and then tossed it on the desk. She said, “Shit.”

Procane turned and walked slowly around his desk. His hand trailed along the edge of its top as if he needed support. He pulled out his high-backed chair and lowered himself into it carefully, the way an old man lowers himself into a wheelchair. The pink on his face had deepened into a dull red. He reached into a pocket, took out a vial, opened it, shook out a pill, eyed it thoughtfully, and popped it into his mouth. Then he looked at me.

“It is not your fault, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

Both Janet Whistler and Wiedstein turned to stare at me. From their expressions, they didn’t seem to agree with Procane. He saw their looks and said, “It is not his fault. Definitely, it is not his fault.” He sounded as if he were also trying to convince himself and not having too much luck.

“All right,” I said, “whose fault was it?”

The three of them glanced at each other, once more exchanging some private information that they didn’t seem to think was any of my business. Or they may have been taking a vote because Procane said, “Perhaps you’d better sit down, Mr. St. Ives. This may take a while. Would you like a drink?”

“I have the feeling I’m going to need one.”

“Give Mr. St. Ives a drink, Janet,” Procane said.

“Scotch and water, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Janet Whistler went over to a table that had some bottles and mixed a drink. She looked up once, but apparently both Procane and Wiedstein gave her a silent message that it was too early in the morning for them because my drink was the only one she mixed. After she handed it to me she found a chair near the desk. Wiedstein continued to stand, leaning against the wall near one of the oils that showed how Procane’s Connecticut farmhouse looked on a sunny winter’s day after about two feet of snow. I thought it looked nice and cozy.

All three of them were still gazing at me so I felt a little self-conscious about the drink, but not so much that I didn’t take three deep swallows. After that I lit a cigarette, leaned back in my chair, smiled as pleasantly as I could at Procane, and said, “Okay, let’s have it. Who fucked up what?”

The dull red on Procane’s face had subsided to a faint pink. He ran his right hand through his ginger hair and then brushed his knuckles over his moustache. He looked around as if searching for something else to fool with, picked up the ledger that he had leafed through, looked at it for a moment, and then let it drop to his desk. It fell with a faint crash.

He looked at me and his lips worked as if they were practicing what he intended to say. “I should have taken you into my confidence, Mr. St. Ives. Because I didn’t, I am in quite serious trouble.”

“The ledgers are genuine, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they’re genuine. Did you have the chance to read much in any of them?”

“I read all about the Pittsburgh fence. I read about a few others, too. As receipts for a thief, they’re extraordinarily detailed. And your planning would have to be described as meticulous, but writing it all down would have to be called dumb.”

Procane’s face took on a deeper shade of pink, but it disappeared quickly. “Writing it all down is part of the planning,” he said. “It helps me to examine each one objectively, discover possible errors, make needed changes. When I’m sure that I’ve planned as well as I can, I write everything down in here.” He put his hand on the ledger. “Then I let it cool for a few weeks or even a month and reexamine it. It gives me a fresh perspective.”

“It also cost you one hundred thousand dollars,” I said. “But that’s not what you’re complaining about.”

“Something’s missing,” Wiedstein said.

“What?”

“Four pages.”

“From where?”

“From this journal,” Procane said, again indicating the volume that he had let fall to his desk with the faint crash.

“That’s the current one, right?” I said.

He nodded. “It covers 1970 to 1974.”

“I noticed that it takes you about four pages to outline a single job,” I said.

He nodded again.

“So four pages means that the plans or recipe for one theft are missing.”

Procane didn’t even nod this time. He simply looked at me and for a moment I almost thought that I was being let in on his system of silent communication. I stared back at him and my throat began to grow dry so I drank the last of my drink.

“When were you going to do it?” I said. “Next week? Next month?”

This time Procane shook his head slowly from side, to side. “The planning for it has taken six months.”

I rattled the ice in my drink. “All right,” I said, “when was it set for?”

“Tomorrow,” Procane said. “We are going to steal a million dollars tomorrow night.”

“GOOD-BYE,” I SAID
as I rose and headed for the door. Before I reached it, Miles Wiedstein moved in front of me. If I wanted to leave the room, I would have to ask his permission. I don’t think he would have given it. I was about to ask anyway when he reached out and removed the forgotten glass from my right hand. “Let me fix that drink for you, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

I had to decide then between the door and the drink. But there was more to the decision than that and both Wiedstein and I knew it. I stared at him for a long moment as he stood there in front of the door, blocking my way without really seeming to. He gave me a small, polite smile and I returned it, noting that he was a little taller than I and a little heavier and quite a bit younger and no doubt in one hundred percent better shape. He made a small, inquiring gesture with the glass, probably reading my mind.

“Scotch and water,” said St. Ives, the craven.

Seated once more in the chair in front of Procane’s desk with the face-saving drink in my hand, I waited for someone to tell me why I should do something that I was sure I wouldn’t want to do. Procane accepted the assignment.

“A million dollars, Mr. St. Ives, is a great deal of money.”

There was nothing I could add to that so I only watched as he leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and again looked up at the ceiling. It was the act of a man who felt that he had something complicated to say and who needed to gather his thoughts before he said it

“A million dollars,” he told the ceiling, “is usually equated with success and happiness in this country. It’s always been a rather mystical figure. If a man somehow acquires a million dollars, he should never again be financially insecure. Invested conservatively, it can provide him with an income of fifty or sixty thousand a year, which could be sufficient to his needs, even in New York.”

He lowered his gaze from the ceiling, frowned a little, and then smiled briefly, the way a man does who has sorted out his thoughts so that they form a sensible pattern. “A thief’s dream, of course, is to steal a million dollars. In cash. All at once. It’s been done a few times. The Brinks robbery in Boston in 1950 comes to mind. The cash in that one was a little over one point one million. More than one and a half million was taken in 1962 from the mail truck in Plymouth, Massachusetts. And, of course, there was the great British train robbery the next year. That was worth seven million, I believe. Dollars.”

Procane paused to shake his head as if in mild regret. “Many of these thieves were eventually caught, most of them before they could enjoy spending what they stole. Psychiatrists, of course, will tell us that they wanted to be caught, to be punished, as it were. I must confess that I have never suffered from that malady and I should add that I’ve explored it thoroughly with a most competent professional.”

I wanted to make sure that I understood him. “You mean you’ve sought psychiatric help to find out whether you’re the type of thief who has a subconscious desire to be caught?”

Procane raised his eyebrows. “Is that so surprising?”

“Yes. I’d call it that. Surprising.”

“I became quite interested in the subject several years ago. I did as much research on it as I could. After that, I put myself into the hands of an interested analyst and together we explored the entire question.”

“And the answer was that you didn’t have any problem.”

Procane let his eyes wander over to one of his paintings. I followed the glance. The painting was of a tall old oak that rose from a forest clearing. It seemed to be spring, but the oak looked dead, killed either by light or age. Once again Procane had caught the sunlight well. Bright shafts of it seemed to bounce off the oak. He looked at me again.