A Fair Share...

It immediately becomes clear that I’m going to do this thing...  that it can’t be avoided...  and even if I wanted to, I have no idea how to find Nadamucho.  I’m left with the almighty envelope that has the keys to the kingdom.

This is going to take some planning but whatever happens has to happen quickly.  At the time, my impression was that it was only a matter of time before the Feds got a judge to open these boxes and the vault.  So I get on the horn to Pfeiffer and tell him we have to meet...  that there’s something that needs doing and it’s something only he can do...  And when I tell him it’s something we can’t even talk about from payphones, he’s in his car in Buffalo and driving down to see me within an hour.

About 8 hours later, Pfeiffer shows up and I give him the details.  We figure out that he’ll be driven by my best, most reliable worker in one of the anonymous cars, followed by me in another anonymous car.  That way, if something goes radically wrong, the lawyers are on it immediately instead of Pfeiffer having to beg for his guaranteed phone call while fighting off the DEA, the FBI and God knows who else.  We decide to do it the following day on the presumption that the sooner we do it, the less we think about it...  there’s less of a likelihood we’ll punk out or run into the Feds.

So he spends the night practicing his signatures (there were several names)...  and after a quick discussion at dawn the next morning, we decide to do the closest one first.  It’s the Dime Savings Bank in Melville, NY and it has a huge parking lot that abuts the big local shopping mall.  For me it’s perfect since I can park in the mall lot and monitor the activities outside the bank.  We drive the two anonymous Caprices up to the area...  the plan goes without a hitch.  Pfeiffer, dressed in a sports jacket and business attire, exits his car with his attache, walks to the bank and comes back out 10 gut-wrenching minutes later, gets back in the car and they drive out of the bank lot and we meet at another pre-planned spot at a local diner.  In the lot, Pfeiffer says there was $65k in the box and a few notes.  He’s got it all and we’ve cleared the first step.  Things went so smoothly that they are all for moving on to the next bank before lunch.

The second bank is every bit as easy as the first...  The clerk hardly even looks at him, opens the safety deposit box door, gives him the box and goes back to some paperwork while he empties the box in the small room.  The box had another $60k, an address book and some more notes.  Now it’s not even lunch and we’re sitting on $125k plus a bit of paperwork.

The third spot is the big enchilada...  the ZDC vault and for this one, there is more than a signature required.  There’s a password and a number that must match a record.  We have all the details but paranoia is high...  What if they know Stu?  Will this place look more closely at the signature?  And the location is odd...  The only place to watch from is across a wide boulevard in a store parking lot.  This time, Pfeiffer is in the place for almost a half hour and comes out empty-handed.  He gets into the car and we meet at another pre-selected diner lot.  “I can’t do this place like the others.”  he says.  “This is not a box guys...  It’s a vault and we’re going to need a hand truck to empty it.”  and adds “And the car won’t do.  There’s a lot of gold in there and boxes and boxes of shit.  We need a van!”

So the first thing we realize is that this isn’t going to happen until at least tomorrow.  And we’re all very aware that a bad-ending clock is ticking somewhere.  Naturally, we retire to the stash house du jour, twist up some joints and feed each other’s growing paranoia.  Pfeiffer describes the deal inside the ZDC.  They actually had a very tough-looking guy there who was openly carrying.  They did look at him and he actually fumbled on one of the code elements but in the end, Pfeiffer was Pfeiffer and he demanded access to his vault.  The Pfeiffer lesson there is that brass balls will take you a long way if you are willing to use them.

The next thing I start doing is ticking off who I know that has a van and isn’t afraid to commit felonies.  The list is actually substantial but it doesn’t take long to pick a prime choice.  The keeper of the stash house had an Astro van with a ridiculously heavy duty lock.  It had been broken into several years back and was reinforced to prevent it going forward.  On top of that, the van had a heavy duty suspension and was registered to someone who had died in 1955.  Needless to say, there was also a commercial-grade hand truck that we kept in the back.

Once we settle the van issue, Pfeiffer starts off telling us that there are ‘at least’ a half dozen boxes of cash and that it is way more than anything he’s ever seen in one place.  This in itself was significant because I had personally delivered a half mill to Pfeiffer on a deal and he was no newbie.  Next he talks about a few boxes that he couldn’t lift.  He opened an edge of one and he’s convinced it’s filled with metal.  To boot, there’s another bunch of stuff that seems to be very personal...  family pictures, a high school yearbook, lots and lots of paperwork, a handful of address books...  He thinks it’s going to take more than one trip with the hand truck to get it all out of there.  Next he starts talking about how much he wants for what he’s doing and the conversation starts at 20%.  I’m arguing that it’s way high and the other driver is joining the conversation about what he thinks his role is worth.  We’re all pretty stoned and we’re negotiating something big here.  If the vault has a mill, and we’ve already gotten $125k, 20% is going to be a ton of dough.  If the vault has 2 mill, 20% will be an insane cut.  The driver says he’ll take half of whatever Pfeiffer’s cut becomes.  So now, I’m looking at a 30% attrition and the Astro van isn’t even part of it yet.  He chimes in that he wants the same as the first driver.  It doesn’t take long to convince everyone that we’re all going to make a lot of money here but this was not the time or deal to be greedy on.  We all agreed that if we got hot after the act, we’d keep everything and use it to either hit the road or hire lawyers.  A short while later, Pfeiffer, who is the only one who has actually laid eyes on what’s inside the vault says he’ll make do with 10%.  This means the three of them will clear 20% off the top and the deal is struck.  Amazingly, nobody asks me what I want and I don’t even raise the question.  I know I’m going to be fair but I have no idea what that means.  Fair?  After all, what’s fair when you are robbing banks in order to obstruct justice?

 The next day comes and we set out...  and in the end, it’s just as Pfeiffer predicted...  It takes over an hour, and two trips with the hand truck.  I’m watching from across the boulevard as they load box after box into the back of the van.  I can see at least one box is so heavy it takes both of them to lift and move.  As we pull away, I can only describe the feeling as one of total exhilaration.  We did it...  The boxes and the vault were empty, and nobody was onto us.  My heart was racing as we drove back and I’m trying to get a feel for what I should do now.  Obviously, we have to do an accounting and the guys have to get paid.  But how do I safely get the stuff back into the right hands?  There’s just no way I want to hold the dough.  It takes about five minutes to decide that I need to get it to Stu’s wife.  After all, she’s his family and she’s the one who will be paying his legal bills...  and raising their three children.  I set the thought aside and we set about tallying up the haul.  Personally, I don’t really care how much there is.  I’d rather do a flat sum payout but the guys are adament...  they want the percentage.

So we tote the boxes down the steps to the basement and begin the count.  There’s over 1.5 mill in cash...  plus Maple Leaf coins, American Eagle coins, gold kilo bars, silver...  and incredibly, several thousand tickets to Phantom of the Opera which was a huge hit playing on Broadway.  It turns out, Stu was backing a scalper and holding the tickets as collateral.  He’d release tickets as he was repaid.  We had a good laugh about that, and I actually took a half dozen tickets.  (Great seats!!)  As it turned out, though, and I had no way of knowing it at the time, the real value was in the family pictures, the paperwork, address books, the high school yearbook and the other non-negotiable stuff in the vault.  We actually flipped through about ten address books trying to figure out whether to destroy pages or entire books.  There were long number series that Pfeiffer was sure led to offshore and international bank accounts.  In the end, we left them intact in the belief that they'd be safe.  Once we separated all that stuff out, the boys took their cuts and I went about repatriating the bulk of the cash, metals and show tickets to his wife.  A few days later, I had my top guy deliver the car to her, trunk filled with all the valuables.  Meantime, I put together a few boxes with the paperwork and personal stuff and drove it out to New Jersey.  My long time best friend forever, Gregg, who I went to school with, did the Far Rockaways with, and who got me the opportunity at the Times, wasn’t connected in any way and would never ask a question.  He let me come out, deposit the stuff in his basement and leave without a single question.  He knew I was in deep but never asked for anything in return and never wanted to know what was in those boxes.

You can imagine how I felt a couple days later when I heard the Feds raided her father’s house in Virginia and seized the entire stash.  Oh well...  at least the vault and boxes were empty and the boys had plenty of party money...  We had done the job and the rest was out of our hands.