Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [10]
It was well past four in the morning now, well past their deadline, as they all gathered around a Ping-Pong table in the large open warehouse area. The Pro emptied his blue gym bag onto the table, dumped out the cash, and made the big count. It all came to just under $80,000.
“Not exactly a million, but a damn good night’s work,” said the Pro, and divided the loot into five equal stacks. Everybody took one, the Pro taking his last. About $500 remained in loose bills. He pushed it toward the others, and while they hesitated, the mystery man quickly reached out and pocketed it all.
Unzipping his fly, the Pro took a leak. His partner and the Jiggler also urinated on the floor. And having looted and defiled the sacred Hughes sanctuary, they loaded the billionaire’s secret papers into a stolen Ford van and vanished into the night.
Holed up alone at his hideout, the Pro had no idea what forces he and his cohorts had unleashed. He had no idea that they had hit Romaine just days after the SEC and Maheu subpoenas, that Watergate investigators were also after the files, that the president, the CIA, and the Mafia were all now suspect, and he also had no idea who was really behind the break-in.
But he did know who had the stolen secrets. He did.
It had been a tense ride away from Romaine. With his partner at the wheel, the Pro sat up front holding a gun on his lap, keeping a constant eye on the mystery man, who was sitting in the back next to the Jiggler, his hand in a brown paper bag gripping a pistol that lay on top of his share of the loot. Behind them all, in the rear of the van, lay Transfiles and cartons filled with the stolen documents.
The stranger was supposed to get the papers, take them on behalf of Mr. Inside, who had gone his own way after the heist. That was all understood. But who was this mystery man, and what else did he have in mind?
All night the Pro had been waiting for the stranger to make his move. Now, at close quarters in the getaway van, it felt like High Noon. They were all on edge from the heist, the adrenaline really pumping now as they made their escape, watching for the cops, waiting to hear the wail of the sirens, see the flashing red lights; but mainly they were watching each other, wondering who would start shooting first.
And all the while the Pro’s mind was racing. Why had he been brought in on this job? There was nothing of value in the vaults, and they hardly needed a professional to bust into some filing cabinets. Did they want a vault torched just to divert the police? Divert them from what? Why was there no alarm, why were keys for the entire building just lying in a desk drawer, why had everything been made so damn easy?
And, above all, why had the secret papers been so conveniently assembled and left right out in the open? Had Hughes plotted to “steal” his own files, only to have them actually stolen? Because whatever was up, the Pro had already decided to turn the tables on whoever was behind the heist.
It was a notion that had begun to take hold from the moment he first saw the papers, that had grown along with his suspicions about his cohorts, that had become a fixation as he became increasingly obsessed with Hughes, and that had finally seized him in the last moments of the break-in when Mr. Inside suddenly announced that he would keep the papers. At that instant, the Pro knew that the secrets, not the money, had been the true object of the break-in all along and decided to hold on to the papers himself.
Now, in the van, there was no one but the mystery man to stop him. The Pro looked back again at his adversary. The stranger shifted nervously, his hand still inside the bag, still gripping the pistol. The Pro knew he could take this guy, whoever he was. And whoever was behind him, whoever had masterminded this job, wasn’t in the van.
They were headed north into the valley, going to Encino, but the Pro was not about to drive into a trap, go to some unknown place where anyone