Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February 1984.
It wasn’t one of your ordinary hit-and-run, in-and-out bank robberies.
It was, in fact, a real work of art, a model from which any earnest young apprentice in the bank-robbing trade could have learned plenty.
It took place over the frigid New Year’s weekend—a three-day holiday, since New Year’s Day fell on Saturday—so the thieves had three full days and nights to knock a hole through the rear wall of the bank, disarm the bank’s elaborate alarm system, cut open the vault with acetylene torches, and rifle two hundred private safe-deposit boxes of their contents.
Later, when the owners of the stolen valuables came to the bank and reported the extent of their losses, the bank estimated that the thieves had made off with roughly three and a half million dollars’ worth of cash, securities, jewelry, antiques, coin collections, and whatnot.
Not a bad haul for three days’ work—especially since the looters made a clean getaway, leaving behind them, aside from the shambles of empty deposit boxes and a hole in the wall, only a few traces of their three-day visit. A small pile of rubble from the shattered wall. A thin film of plaster dust on the floor of the bank inside the hole, marked with hundreds of indecipherable footprints. Scattered crumbs of crackers and cheese and some coffee splashes on the vault floor. The crusts of several peanut-butter sandwiches on the vault custodian’s desk. And nothing else. Except for embarrassed bankers, puzzled policemen, and rueful insurance adjusters.
About noon on the fourth of January, I was at my desk at the Central Library working on my next overdue-list, when the girl on the switchboard rang through and said a police officer wanted to talk to me.
“Lieutenant Randall?” I asked. Randall was Chief of Homicide and had been my boss for five years before I joined the Public Library staff.
“No, Hal. Somebody named Waslyck.”
Waslyck, Head of the Robbery Detail. Jake Waslyck. Sure, I remembered him from the old days. “Put him on,” I said.
“Hal?” His voice came through like gravel on a tin roof. “How you doing, Hal?
“Can’t complain, Jake. You?”
“I can complain,” he said. “Plenty.”
“The First Federal Bank job, right? I read about it in the papers.”
“Who didn’t? I want to ask a favor of you, Hal.”
“Any time,” I said. “What?”
“I need advice. Can you stop in here or shall I come out there?”
“I’ll be downtown this afternoon. I’ll stop by headquarters. Advice about what?”
“One of your library books. See you about three?”
“Two-thirty would suit me better.”
“See you then.”
* * * *
At two-thirty, I was in Jake’s office. The place is cramped, smells strongly of stale cigar smoke, and is furnished in police-station modern: a battered steel desk, worn linoleum on the floor, a scratched filing cabinet in one corner, an old-fashioned hat rack in another, two uncomfortable straightback chairs, and a grimy Venetian blind over the unwashed window.
Jake sat behind his desk, his squat body overflowing his chair, his bulgy eyes red and puffy. His bushy ginger mustache was badly in need of trimming. And he didn’t seem to have any neck at all.
Same old Jake. He looked a lot like an oversized bullfrog crouching there. But I remembered there was nothing wrong with his brain.
I sat down gingerly in one of his straight chairs. It trembled under my weight as I reached across the desk to shake hands. I said, not entirely sincerely, “Nice to see you again, Jake. It’s been a while.”
In a frog’s croak of a voice he said, “Thanks for coming in, Hal.” He paused.
“You look shot,” I said. “The First Federal job getting to you?”
He nodded. “We got nothing to go on. ID’s still comparing fingerprints, trying to find some that aren’t those of safe-deposit-box holders or bank custodians. Absolutely no luck so far.”
“It’s probably hopeless,” I said sympathetically. “It was below zero that weekend. They needed gloves, for the cold if nothing else.”
“Yeah. So we got zilch. No leads. No suspects. We’re going around in circles on a three-million-dollar robbery!” He cleared his throat. “It’s a hell of a feeling, believe me.”
“Frustration,” I said. “I know what you mean, Jake. I’ve been there.”
“So that’s why I called you. I’m clutching at straws.”
“Like the library book you mentioned?”
He gave one sharp nod, up and down.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s a book we found in our search of the bank vault after the heist. You know those little booths where they let you gloat over your treasures in private?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we found this book from your library under the table in one of those booths.”
“And you think it’s a clue, maybe?” I underlined the “clue” with my voice. Cops hate the word.
“Not really. But a million-to-one chance. See, we figured, considering where the book was found and all, that some box-holder had left it in the booth by mistake when he stopped in last week to count his fortune or whatever.”
“Doesn’t the vault custodian always come in afterward and check out the booth to see you haven’t left anything behind? Mine always does.”
Jake said, deadpan, “You mean you rent a safe-deposit box?”
“Sure. But not at First Federal, thank God.”
“What do you keep in it?” He was needling me.
“I skim a little off the top of the fines I collect.”
“That must come to—let’s see, maybe forty cents a week?”
“In a good week,” I said. We both laughed. My laugh had a little edge in it, I’m afraid. “You’re saying that a vault custodian might not notice a library book under a booth table?”
“It’s possible. Those guards are only checking the booth to see if you’ve left a thousand shares of IBM or something like that lying around.”
“So?”
“So last night when I couldn’t sleep, it suddenly occurred to me that the library book just possibly might be something the thieves took into the vault when they broke in.”
“You mean so they’d have something to read during coffee breaks?” The idea tickled me.
“Why not? They’re in there for three days and nights, remember. They bring in cheese and crackers, thermoses of hot coffee, sandwiches—we even found some bits of fabric the lab says could be from a sleeping-bag lining. So why not something to read during their rest periods? Maybe one of them is a book nut. You know, queer for books.”
“It’s a long shot,” I said, grinning. “But possible, I suppose. Let’s see the book.”
Jake yelled “Josie!” at the top of his voice and a minute later Detective Second-Class Josie Evans came into his office from the squad room across the hall. I remembered Josie from old times, too. She’s black, slender, and very attractive in her navy-blue skirt and white blouse. To look at her you’d never guess she can toss a two-hundred-pound man over her shoulder without even mussing her hair.
She recognized me. “Hi, Hal,” she said.
I said, “Hi, Josie. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“Defending my virtue most of the time,” she answered tartly. “What is it, Jake?”
“Bring me the library book we found in the bank vault. He turned to me. “Josie’s a book nut, too. She’s reading the damn thing.”
“I’ve finished it,” Josie said. “It’s a swell story.” She went out and returned shortly with it. After she left I said to Jake, “You think this book may be evidence in the biggest bank robbery this state ever had, and you’re letting Josie read, it, for God’s sake?”
“Relax, Hal. Relax. The book’s been put through the works by the lab already and gives us nothing. Except about two hundred sets of smudged latents from former readers. That’s why I asked you to come in. Maybe you can get more from it than we can.”
I picked up the book. “It’s from our Central Library.”
“I can read, Hal. I saw the stamp.”
“There’s no return card in the pocket.”
“I noticed that, too.”
I grinned at him. “And furthermore,” I said, not averse to needling him a little, “It’s a hell of a good yarn, like Josie said.” The book was a popular novel by Wilbur Smith called The Eye of the Tiger. “It takes place in Africa,” I said, “just like the old-time goodies by Rider Haggard.”
Waslyck grunted. “Can you find out who borrowed the book from the library?”
“Sure. Name, address, and library-card number. Simple. Our computer coughs that stuff up on demand. But—” I held up a hand as he started to speak“—wait a minute, Jake.” Another small jab of the needle wouldn’t hurt, I thought. I had it on good authority that Jake Waslyck was one of my many former colleagues in the police department who had been known to refer to me slightingly as Library Fuzz Hal, the sissy ex-homicide cop who now spent his time tracking down library books instead of murderers—and although this was perfectly true, I didn’t like them patronizing me. My work’s a lot quieter than theirs, it pays just as well, and I can sleep better at night. So I said, “Our computer coughs up what you want only if the book happens to be overdue.”
“Why the hell’s that?”
“Invasion of privacy,” I said. “Until a book is overdue, it legally belongs to the borrower. Our library is a public library. It’s none of our business who has a book until it goes overdue. Then it belongs to us again.”
Waslyck swore. “Listen, this is an official request from a police officer—a public servant—for the name and address of a suspect who may have been involved in the commission of a major felony.” He glared at me.
I smiled. “In that case, our computer might be conned into making an exception. You see, Jake, we have this nifty secret code to bypass our computer’s compunctions about breaking the privacy laws. We feed in the first three letters of the author’s name—his last name—then we feed in the middle two digits of the book’s Zebra patch number. Then comes the middle initial of the city’s current Democratic mayor—”
“Knock it off, Hal. This is serious. Can you get me the information I want?”
“I’ll try.” I stood up. “I’ll have to take the book with me, okay?” He made a dismissing gesture.
I took the book and left.
I called him back within half an hour. “I’ve got it,” I said. “The book is overdue. You ready?”
“Shoot.”
“The address is 1221 Bookbinders Lane.”
He wrote it down. “What’s the name?”
“You won’t like this, Jake. The name is Adelaide Westover.”
Jake swore. “A woman!”
“Seems like it,” I said. “I’m sorry. It kind of blows your theory, doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily,” said Jake, but his disappointment was evident in his tone. “I’ve heard of woman bank robbers before. Like Clyde’s lady friend, Bonnie.”
Trying to cheer him up, I said, “This Adelaide Westover may have wanted to spend the long weekend with her boyfriend, so she went along with him on the bank job and curled up with a good book while he worked.”
Waslyck ignored that. After a moment’s silence, he said, “I think we’ll give it a whirl anyway, Hal. We might get lucky.”
* * * *
Ten minutes later, my phone rang and it was Jake Waslyck. He said harshly, “You sure that’s the name and address your computer came up with?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“Then your computer has a slipped disk. There’s no such street as Bookbinders Lane in this city or any of its suburbs. And there’s no such person as Adelaide Westover listed in the City Directory or the phonebook.”
I sighed. “Then the book was borrowed on a phony card, Jake—a card issued to a fictitious person at a fictitious address. Sometimes people lie about their names and addresses when they apply for a library card and show us fake references. We can’t check up on every citizen who applies for a card. But it doesn’t happen often.”
“I thought it was your job to prevent that sort of thing.”
“It is. I’ll see what I can do about this. If I come up with anything, I’ll let you know, Jake…
Four days later I telephoned Waslyck. It was around five o’clock in the afternoon and he’d gone off duty. I called him at home.
His wife answered the phone. “Hello?” she said in a rich creamy contralto that made me wonder how she ever came to marry a cop with a voice like a bullfrog.
“I’d like to speak to Jake if he’s there,” I said.
“Who’s calling?”
“Hal Johnson from the public library.”
“Hold on.”
“Hi,” he said when he came on the line.
I said, “I think I’ve got something for you on that library book, Jake. It’s complicated for the telephone. I better see you.”
“Okay. Be in my office at noon tomorrow.”
“Right,” I said. I hung up, feeling unappreciated and put upon.
* * * *
I was in his office at noon, sitting on the same shaky chair. Jake greeted me with a short question.
“What you got?”
“Well, our library thief might possibly—just possibly—have something to do with your problem. I think I’m onto his real identity. But I’m not sure. I need your advice this time.”
Waslyck sat back in his creaking swivel chair. “Make it short. Okay?”
I said, “I questioned all the check-out people at Central Library about Adelaide Westover. Did anybody remember anybody checking out a book called The Eye of the Tiger by Wilbur Smith on a card made out in that name on that date—it didn’t have to be a woman. Nobody remembered anything.”
“Figures,” said Jake.
“So then I thought, what if this Adelaide Westover, whoever she really is, borrowed other books by Wilbur Smith with her phony library card? Your library card is good,” I explained parenthetically, “at any of our branches. And you can return borrowed books to any branch you want to. Did you know that, Jake?”
“To my shame, I didn’t.” Jake tapped his fingers impatiently on his desk.
“Well, I checked out all our Wilbur Smith titles, both at Central and all our branches—no easy job, since Smith has had six or eight successful books published in this country and some of our branches have as many as six copies of each one circulating. Thank God for our computer.”
Jake said an unpleasant word.
I went on blithely, “Which is how I found out that three other Smith titles have gone overdue—although not long enough overdue to have been brought to my attention just yet.”
Jake was following me closely now. “And the three overdue Smith books were checked out to Adelaide Westover?” he guessed.
“No, only one of them. A book called The Delta Decision. The other two titles—A Sparrow Falls and Hungry As the Sea—were checked out at our North Side and East Gate branches by two different people entirely. The book from North Side branch was checked out to Alexander Warfield. 15101 Quarto Avenue, the book from East Gate was checked out to Alan Woolfolk, who supposedly resides at 6225 Doubleday Drive.”
“But doesn’t?”
“But doesn’t. Nor does any Alexander Warfield reside at 15101 Quarto Avenue. There are no such people and no such addresses in the city.”
“More phony library cards?”
“Seems like.”
Jake mulled it over for a few seconds. “And you figure the three phony library patrons are one and the same person? Because they all borrowed Smith’s books?”
I nodded. “Sometimes people borrow a book by an author they’ve never tried before and they like it so well they want to read all the other books the author has written.”
“And this joker who uses fake library cards has gone ape over Wilbur Smith.”
I shrugged. “Could be. If the three phony names and addresses are the same person.”
“You think they are?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Why?”
“Look at the names.” I passed him my notebook. “Look at the addresses.”
“The names have the same initials—Adelaide Westover, Alexander Warfield, Alan Woolfolk.”
“Right. And as I remember my homicide work, a lot of people use their own initials when they’re dreaming up an alias.”
“Are you saying your book borrower’s real initials are A. W.?”
“It seems reasonable.”
“I’ll buy that. But what about the addresses?”
“All three street names have something to do with books. The kind of phony names a guy who likes books might come up with. Bookbinders Lane. Quarto Avenue. Doubleday Drive.”
“Okay. So what’s the phony’s real name then?” Waslyck leaned forward in his chair.
“Don’t you want to hear how I nosed him out?” I asked innocently.
“No, I don’t. But you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“All three phony library cards were issued at our South Side branch,” I said. “That narrowed things down. But naturally nobody at South Side remembered anything about issuing them, so I pulled the application files of all the library volunteers who work at South Side and are authorized by our librarian to issue new library cards. Did you know we have twenty-seven volunteers working an average of four hours a week without pay at the South Side branch?”
“I know it now.”
“So after examining the applications of volunteers over the past few years at South Side, I talked with the librarian and her assistant—and came up with a really hot-looking suspect for you.”
“Who?” asked Jake.
“A volunteer named Arthur West. Sixty-nine years old, authority to issue new library cards, ready access to the check-out and check-in machines, considered a compulsive reader by his associates. He works twelve hours a week at our South Side branch without pay, has a pleasant personality, a minuscule income from Social Security, and a negligible pension from his former employers.”
Waslyck interrupted. “But what’s this Arthur West got to do with the First Federal Bank job?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask your advice about,” I said. “He’s got a small checking account at First Federal, for one thing.”
“So have hundreds of other people.”
“Our South Side branch is right next door to the bank.”
That got me nothing but a blank look.
“Arthur West often brings his lunch to the library in a paper bag—and the lunch invariably consists of peanut-butter sandwiches.”
“Half the people in the world eat peanut-butter sandwiches for lunch,” Jake said wearily.
“But Arthur West doesn’t eat his crusts,” I said. “Just like one of your bank robbers.”
“The world’s full of people who don’t eat their crusts.”
“True, Lieutenant,” I said, “but the world’s not full of library volunteers whose names begin with the letters A and W, who are peanut-butter-sandwich fiends who don’t eat their crusts, who are living on inadequate incomes and who—” I paused for dramatic effect “—were employed before their retirement by the Universal Security Company of Chicago, whose specialty is the manufacture and installation of sophisticated alarm systems for banks.”
Waslyck acted as though a bomb had exploded under his chair. He shot to his feet. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Where can I find this Arthur West? You do know his address, I take it?”
“He lives in a rented room over The Corner Cupboard Bar and Grill out in Lake Point. You know The Corner Cupboard, Lieutenant?”
“Who doesn’t? It’s a dive. Some very hard characters hang out there.”
“Well, that’s where Arthur West does his beer-drinking and eats most of his dinners,” I said. “And maybe it’s where he recruited his help for the bank job.”
Waslyck yelled for Josie. When she showed up in the doorway, he said, “Get your coat on and check out a car for us—I’ll meet you down in the garage.” He took his own overcoat off the hat rack in the corner. The thermometer was still flirting with zero outside.
I said, “Aren’t you going to get a search warrant before you go out there? You want to keep things legal, don’t you?”
Jake gave me an exasperated look. “You know something, Hal?” he asked. “I’m really glad you don’t work here anymore.” He turned for the door. “So now get lost, will you? I’ll let you know how this turns out.”
* * * *
The morning newspaper next day told me all I needed to know—under a front-page headline. The police, the story went, acting on a tip from an informer, had arrested an elderly man named Arthur West in The Corner Cupboard Bar and Grill the previous afternoon and charged him with complicity in the sensational robbery, ten days ago, of First Federal Bank on the South Side. According to police Lieutenant Jacob Waslyck, other arrests were imminent. A search of West’s rented room above the bar led to the recovery of almost a third of the loot stolen from First Federal’s safe-deposit vault. The stolen valuables had been found hidden in a sleeping bag under West’s daybed. The police reported that West’s room also contained seven hundred and forty-two books bearing the identification stamp and card pockets of books from the Public Library.
That last item, I knew, was a direct message from Lieutenant Waslyck to me. His way of saying thanks—or a malicious reminder that I wasn’t any better at my job than he was at his.
* * * *
I found a message on my desk when I got to the library that morning. Dr. Forbes, the Library Director, wanted to see me in his office right away. His spacious office is right next to my cubbyhole. He could have yelled for me and usually does. But this morning the message was formal. Dr. Forbes must be upset. And I thought I knew why.
He looked at me over the newspaper he was reading. Before he could say anything, I blurted out, “Dr. Forbes, I know what you’re thinking and I don’t blame you. But that newspaper article didn’t mention two important facts. One, that Arthur West, the bank robber and library-book thief, is also a trusted volunteer who works at our South Side branch. And two, the informant who tipped off the police to him was me.”
His expression went from stormy to partly cloudy. “Tell me about it, Hal,” he said.
I told him everything. When I finished, his expression had gone from partly cloudy to fair and warmer. He said, “No wonder we didn’t realize the books were missing. West checked them out to himself on spurious cards, and before they were overdue he checked the cards back in again without actually returning the books.”
“Exactly. We were lucky he forgot to check those Smith titles in before they showed overdue on our computer.”
“Why do you suppose he forgot to do it?”
“Maybe he was too busy planning the bank robbery—or more likely, after over seven hundred book thefts he began to think his system was foolproof and we’d never get onto him. He got careless.”
Dr. Forbes smiled.
“So am I fired, or not?” I ventured to ask him.
“Not,” he said.
* * * *
Two weeks went by. Two weeks during which I carried out my duties as usual. Two weeks during which Arthur West plea-bargained himself down to a charge of petty book theft in return for naming his accomplices in the bank robbery and agreeing to testify against them when their trials came up. Two weeks during which said accomplices—an apprentice plumber and a backhoe operator, both local citizens and regular patrons of The Corner Cupboard Bar and Grill—were duly charged with bank robbery. Two weeks during which, to everyone’s relief, the other two-thirds of the missing loot was recovered almost intact, the plumber’s share from a beat-up suitcase in a locker at the Greyhound Bus Station, the backhoe man’s share zipped into one of his wife’s drip-dry pillow-covers and stashed in the crawl space between his garage ceiling and roof.
On Saturday night of the second week I took Ellen Thomas out to dinner at Jimmy’s Crab House. Ellen is the girl who holds down the check-out desk at the Central Library. She has promised to marry me as soon as we can acquire an adequate nest egg to see us through any rainy days in the future.
We were facing each other across a narrow table in a booth. Ellen looked at the prices on the menu and said, “Are you out of your mind, Hal? This place is too fancy for us.”
I said, “I’m going to have Maine lobster, myself.”
“Maine lobster?” She hesitated. “If you say so.” Another pause. “Me, too.”
The waiter took our orders and in due course brought in the lobsters. They were delicious. Not worth the price, but delicious.
Between bites, Ellen said, “What’s the occasion, Hal? It is one, isn’t it?” She gave me her up-from-under keen look.
“Yeah,” I said, “a celebration of sorts.”
“What sort? A celebration of what?”
“Wait till dessert,” I said. “I want to surprise you.”
“Okay. I’ll wait.” She worked on her lobster for a bit. Then she said, “I can’t wait any longer, Hal. Tell me now. Why are we blowing a week’s wages at this elegant restaurant?”
“Because,” I replied, “the First Federal and their insurance people got together and decided to give the Police Benevolent Fund and Hal Johnson from the Public Library a small reward in recognition of their services in solving the robbery and recovering their loot.”
“Hey!” cried Ellen, her eyes shining. “My hero! How much?”
“Ten thousand for the PBF, ten thousand for me.”
She was stunned. She stared at me, her eyes wide with outrage. “Ten thousand dollars,” she said indignantly. “Ten thousand dollars for saving them three and a half million!”
I agreed. “But ten thousand is better than nothing.”
She brightened.
“It’s pretty wonderful when you think about it. We’ve got our nest egg in one fell swoop. Now we can get married.”
I said, “On ten thousand dollars? You call that a nest egg? It’s hardly enough for a decent honeymoon. Not nearly enough to pay the obstetrician for the sixteen children we’re going to have. Think of the college tuition for only one of the sixteen.” I shook my head. “No way, Ellen. Suppose I lose my job or you lose yours? Suppose one of us has to spend a couple of weeks in a hospital sometime? Or we get divorced and I have to pay alimony and child support? Where would the money come from?”
Ellen leaned across the table and gave me a buttery kiss. “Well,” she said, “we could always rob a bank, couldn’t we?”