Deuce is depressed. He is convinced that coming to Rhode Island is the worst move he has made in years, and he’s got a few bad ones to pick from. He’s batting zero on both of the jobs he’s taken. First, hitting Sciarra, though he’s just as glad that didn’t work out because he hasn’t killed anyone before. Then there was the fiasco at the coin shop, which should have gone like clockwork.
How could he know Lanoue would blow up on him? He figures Lanoue is his biggest liability, but he sort of likes the old guy. He’s funny, and he doesn’t put up with much crap from anybody. Thing is, he just never seems to stay on the same track for too long, kind of flits from one thing to another, sort of in control, sort of not. So over the weekend, Deuce takes him aside and starts selling him on the notion that as driver of the getaway van, Lanoue has the key role in the heist, more important, in fact, than anybody else’s.
“Everything you do,” Deuce says, “is going to make the difference between us pulling off this job or getting caught with our pants down.” He has Lanoue drive the route to and from Bonded Vault more than a dozen times, every time repeatedly going over the details of the guy’s job.
Deuce tells him flatly and forcefully, “When everyone’s in the truck, you’re the boss. You call the shots. There’s no talking.” He reminds Lanoue to make sure the men put on their coveralls and masks before they leave the van, and he says they must walk to the building in pairs about a minute apart so as not to attract attention. He warns Lanoue to stay alert and, if he sees anything really suspicious, to come in and get him.
The getaway should be simple too. Lanoue is to help load everything into the van then drive the men to their three cars, which will have been parked nearby in different spots around the block. Then he is to drive slowly back to the hideout.
Lanoue laps it up, and Deuce is convinced the old man will be okay. With Lanoue more or less neutralized, Deuce tries to relax a little.
The next day, Monday, August 11, Ouimette stops by, tells the crew they will hit Bonded Vault first thing Wednesday morning, August 13, and gives them five hundred dollars. Deuce and Byrnes go shopping for the tools they’ll need for the break-in—a few crowbars; a couple of power drills with the hardest bits available; long, heavy-duty extension cords; and sets of dark worker’s coveralls. They go out of state, to stores in New London and Groton, Connecticut, figuring that by changing the venues they will throw police investigators off their scent.
Back at the hideout, Deuce fills toolboxes for the crew and goes over the plan he and Chucky came up with. He reminds everyone that if they need to speak with one another on the job, they are to use the name “Harry.” That’s everyone’s name, “Harry.” If they can shut up all together, that’s even better.
Lanoue, in his stolen van, is to pick up the men as they drop off their three cars, then drive everyone to Cranston Street. He’ll park the van down the road just out of sight of the building. When he sees the first of the men come out to the curb with a full bag, he will ease the vehicle up the street and stop in front of the building. Until then, Lanoue is to simply sit, watch, and wait.
On August 12, the day before the heist, Ouimette tells Flynn and Deuce the score will have to wait a day because somebody higher up the food chain needs time to get his machine gun out of one of the safe deposit boxes.
“It’d bring too much heat if it got left behind,” Ouimette says.
Deuce lets loose with a string of obscenities. He doesn’t believe the machine gun story. Except for Byrnes, everybody involved in the robbery has a rap sheet you could wallpaper a small room with. They get caught with cap pistols, it’s all over. And now it’s time to worry about a machine gun?
He figures somebody’s moving valuable goods to safety. He has been on edge anyway, and now he is seething, his mind racing. He feels as though he’s about to explode again when Byrnes bursts into the house.
“We just blew the truck,” he announces. “We were cleaning it out, and some cop in the neighborhood spotted us standing next to it. If the cop remembers, he’ll be able to make us when they find the truck after the score.”
The men agree to steal a new van. The task goes to Walter Ouimette. They have to wait another day anyway, thanks to the supposed machine gun problem. As soon as everyone leaves, Deuce tries a final time to talk Chucky out of the job. He might as well have struck up a conversation with a gravestone.
Exasperated, Deuce calls a cab and announces to Chucky that he’s going out to buy some Chinese chicken wings.
Thirty minutes later, at Ming Garden, a popular Chinese restaurant on Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence, Deuce asks for a double order of chicken wings and sits down to wait. Ten minutes later, order in hand, he walks outside and signals another cab. He climbs in the back, and the taxi heads out. The muffler is loud enough to announce the Second Coming. Less than a mile from Flynn’s hideout, the cab is stopped by East Providence police officers. Turns out, the taxi’s taillights don’t work either; the cops spotted that even before they could hear the car.
Deuce cracks open the rear door, letting out a scrumptious aroma cloud of soy and ginger. He tells the two patrolmen that if it’s all the same to them, he’d just as soon walk home with his chicken wings; no hard feelings. He says his kids are waiting for him and they’re hungry. He puts one foot on the pavement and starts to get out of the cab.
“Stay right there, sir,” one of the cops says. “Get back in the vehicle, please.”
Deuce winces but obliges.
The patrolman sneers at the cab and tells the driver curtly, “What a piece of junk. I should order you off the road.”
“No,” says other man, a patrol sergeant. “Just give him a citation. This guy’s family’s waiting for supper.”
Deuce mutters his thanks to the cops. He exhales and sinks back into the car seat. He has lost his appetite. He leaves the double order of chicken wings on the kitchen table and tells Chucky he needs a good night’s sleep.
“All I got to say is, if things don’t go any better tomorrow, Charles, we’re royally fucked.”
“It’ll be fine, Deuce,” Chucky says. “We’re going to get rich.”