8.
The Hackensack Coat Company was a fat hen waiting to be knocked out. Team Bones eyeballed the full service operation. A retail salon advertising better than wholesale pricing. Those bargains racked mink, fox, and chinchilla. They even ran commercials on local TV. An older broad, puffed-out hair, wrapped in the monthly special.
Being a hub, all operations were on station. Offices, accounting, alterations. For Bones, that meant the cash.
Hackensack main housed all the drops, counting, and pick up for one haul. Mondays were spent collecting, and logging weekend sales from all the satellite locations. By Tuesday, the wool was bundled, and readied for bank.
The tip came from a disgruntled worker. Joe Info pushed Bones the floor plans and cash news. Where they kept it, how to sack it. The armored car schedules were key. The plant opened at eight, the armored truck would arrive between eight thirty and nine every Tuesday morning. It would back into the rear of the building, and idle. The driver chills, as two guards enter, bag, and hustle off the loot. The rear of the building, shaded from the street, and penned in. Hell, it was perfect.
"Shit, we could ambush the truck, right as they‘re comin‘
out," said Bones, shooting the scene through his mind.
Action: A group of bandits, guns blazing, storming the area.
Cut. The director timing action to the millisecond.
Action: When the two guards returned, they’d grab ‘em, as a stolen box truck horns in the armored wheels.
Cut.
"I wouldn’t suggest that."
"Why not?" Bones said.
"The guards are ex-military," said Joe Info.
"You could say that again." Bones scrapped that scene, and wrote another.
Scram stewed the Yankees job. A clean break. Transferred to county, pound out the stretch. Bones used a stand in. A van hawked the street. Bones zoomed in. Super-barrel binocs. The stake. Clocking routine. He hired a buddy photag. Long lens pops.
Dark room blow-ups. They plastered Eddie's pad like dream weaver tail. The older broad beamed through his TV tube.
Witching hour brewed. Tony stewed. Bones slotted the gang.
If Tony could wheel, the stand-in, an extra gun. Bones kept a deep roster. This was going down. Tony’s lawyer fumbled. Scram rode a chrome bench.
Bones and cronies hit the coat company. Sawed offs tucked beneath flannel shirts. Team Bones bounced into the eight O’clock call. The rooster rang. The crew squeezed through warehouse doors, joining the mob rush. They blended. Schools of workers filtered to stations. Bones and boys banged a turn. Blood raced.
Adrenalin fried. They slipped on foam-rubber masks. They bumped into a supervisor. Out came the barrels.
"Hey buddy, you know what time it is," Bones said.
"Let’s go," a crony chipped in. They spun the supervisor around. Pacing a deep hallway, hemmed in by glossy tile, and cinder block walls. They reached a pebble glass door brewing shadows. They entered. A group of stunned workers, mainly ladies, were ordered to sit down, and put their hands behind them. All did as told. Two bandits dashed the joint with cord and bandanas.
"Don’t hurt ‘em," said Bones.
"Thank you," said a lady. Eddie’s jaw dropped behind the mask as he inched to the midget Fort Knox.
"We ain’t those kind a guys, ma‘am," eyes fixed on the cash brickyard. Bones and his second in command blitzed the safes, lined up like soda machines. They padded the army style duffle bags, busting out the back door.
They tossed sacks in the shell of an awaiting van. They piled in. The driver punched the gas. The cash wagon sailed Tony‘s pen en route to the Interstate. The van grabbed the jug handle, tapping the highway vein. Through the dog leg, they breezed an incoming armored truck. Bones chuckled as they passed.
Channel 7 sent a team to report the heist for it’s Eyewitness News broadcast. Yellow caper tape boxed the scene. The same gal that spoke to Bones beamed TV land.
"Of course I was frightened. But what gentleman…."
"Excuse me?" a bewildered black guy with mike, Hendrix fro, and super-sized aviators.
"Oh yeah. They wouldn’t hurt us. They just wanted the money," eyes glossed over, smacked up by bug house dope. The news hound shook his head, turning towards a cameraman.
"You heard it here Bill," said the reporter. "The gentlemen bandits…."
Whitey taped the news coverage and gave Tony a VHS copy.
Bones bagged a cool half-mill. Mad loot. He split the country humping a suitcase stuffed with cold, untraceable cash.