NYPD-SIS RECORDING #146-83C.
HASKINS: Now it’s a quarter to three. Maybe a smidgen before. We were all in Five B. The second team had caught up with the first. The tech was having trouble with a wall safe. This was the apartment of Longene, the theatrical producer. We already had his collection of gemstones, and the brothers had taken a very nice Kurdistan down to the truck. We figured the wall safe for Longene’s cash and his wife’s jewels—if she was his wife which I, for one, am inclined to doubt. Then Ed Brodsky came running in, breathing hard. He had just pounded up all the stairs. He told Duke a squad car had cruised by, just as he and his brother were loading the rug into the truck. Duke cursed horribly and said the cruise car for that street was supposed to be in the coop at that hour.
QUESTION: Is that the term he used—“In the coop?”
HASKINS: Yes, Tommy, it was. Definitely. Duke then asked Brodsky if he thought the fuzz had seen him. Brodsky said he couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought they had. Just as the car came past, Ed and his brother were carrying the rug out the service entrance. The inside of the service staircase was lighted. We had to keep the lights on so the brothers wouldn’t break their necks coming downstairs with the stuff. Brodsky said he thought he saw a white blur as the face of the driver turned toward him. Ed and his brother were still wearing their masks, of course.
QUESTION: What did Anderson say to this?
HASKINS: He just stood there a while, thinking. Then he called me over to a corner, and he said he had decided to cut the whole thing short. We would just hit the things we were sure of. So he and I went over our checklists together. We decided to do the wall safe in Five B, which the tech was still working on. We’d skip Five A completely. This was where the crippled boy was in his bedroom, but there was really nothing worth risking our necks for. Then we’d go down to Four A and get Sheldon’s coin collection and also spring his wall safe. That’s all we’d do there. Then we’d move all the tenants from Four B to Four A, and then we’d do as much as we could in Mrs. Hathway’s Four B apartment as I anticipated a veritable treasure trove there. So we agreed on this, and Duke told everyone to move faster—we were getting out. About this time he also sent the spade down to the lobby and told him to stay there, out of sight, but to report any police activity in the street outside. That maniac from Detroit would guard the people in Four A. Just then the tech sprung Longene’s wall safe, and we got a nice box of ice, some bonds, and at least twenty G’s in cash. I took this as a good omen, although I didn’t like the idea of a prowl car going by outside.