Poe led him into the stone alley. “Where to?”
“There’s a branch of the Emigrant Savings Bank on Third Avenue I was casing before I went away for a few years. If we went back there in 1971, I know it cold. Two-man job. Everything planned, prepped, and rehearsed. In quick, out fast.”
Poe shook his head. “That’s only ten years ago. Witnesses, cops, guards will still be around to finger us.”
“Let me get a look at the job. If it’s still like I remember, we’ll be in quick, out fast, no one will see us.”
“What if it’s not like you remember?”
“Then we try a better one.”
“The problem is,” said Poe. “I can’t keep doing this all day. We’ve already gone back to Greenwich Village. If we go to Third Avenue in 1971 and it doesn’t work out, I’m done for at least twenty-four hours. Exhausted.”
“Okay. Let’s go so far back all the witnesses die of old age.”
“Ahead,” said Poe. “We go ahead.”
“Why?”
“They can’t come back for us.”
“Nice. Where? When?”
“Place I visited once.”
Stark followed Poe through the stone alley with a funny feeling that Poe had a plan. They emerged on the waterfront at the corner of Twelfth Avenue and Fifty-First Street facing Midtown skyscrapers ablaze in light, and their backs to the Manhattan Cruise Terminal piers. Disoriented, Stark looked up. Overhead, he saw only the night sky. “What happened to the West Side Highway?”
“They tore it down in ’89.”
Stark looked around. The shapes of the cars did not look familiar. “When is now?”
“Early two-thousands. Oh-five or oh-six. Before they changed the currency.”
“What are they doing to the currency?”
“Making it harder to counterfeit.”
Stark shrugged. Counterfeiting was indoor work. You might as well slave in a factory.
Poe said, “What we take here, now, we can still spend in ’81.”
Across the many lanes of car and truck traffic, a two-story stucco structure stretched a full block wide from Fifty-First Street to Fifty-Second. It managed to look vaguely Roman, an impression heightened by the stucco and a columned portico on its roof. It didn’t appear to have any windows, and Stark, who maintained a professional interest in buildings without windows, assumed it contained something valuable. Must have been a warehouse many years ago when the waterfront was still active, which meant a lot of big, open space inside. Might even connect to the tall loft building behind it. Which was also blank walled.
There was a single door on the street corner at the downtown end.
“What’s that?”
“That is where guys making fortunes on Wall Street spend it.”
Stark noted limos pulling up. Laughing men in suits reeled through the door. He said, “A strip club.”
“For the highest rollers. They call it a gentlemen’s club.”
“Cash,” said Stark.
“Mostly,” said Poe. “There’s some credit cards, but most use cash. Private from their wives.”
“How many girls?”
“At least a hundred, a busy night like tonight,” said Poe. “Plus hostesses, cocktail waitresses, and bar maids.”
“Did you case the joint, or were you just hanging out?” asked Stark.
“Research. I’m a writer.”
“Right,” said Stark, and ran the numbers aloud. “Five hundred customers spending five hundred a head. Quarter million in that one building. Minus a hundred grand stuffed in the girls’ drawers, we’re still looking at a hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Drawers these days,” said Edgar Allan Poe, “don’t hold that much.”
“They’ll find someplace to put it.”
Poe looked troubled. “You wouldn’t rob the girls, would you?”
Stark returned a look that would freeze vodka. “Even if we wanted to, can you imagine parting cash from a hundred women who worked that hard to get it? No, we’re not here to rob the girls. We’re here to rob the club’s cash room.”
“They have heavy security,” said Poe.
“I would, too, in their position.”
“I should tell you that the mob owns a piece of the business.”
“The mob controls a strip club?” asked Stark. “I am shocked.”
“I’m just warning you.”
“Wait here.”
“Where are you going?”
“We need chauffeur uniforms,” said Stark, and he stalked across Twelfth Avenue.
Poe waited anxiously, wondering whether he had underestimated or overestimated the heist man. But surely Stark couldn’t just rob the club and leave him stranded? How would he get back to 1981? An hour passed. A second crept by, and Poe reflected gloomily that the crook had decided to stay in 2005 forever and rob the club on his own.
A long limousine stopped at the curb. Stark was at the wheel, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform that fit perfectly and licking blood from a knuckle. “Get in back.”
Poe slid into the passenger compartment, and Stark steered the limo into traffic. On the seat were a chauffeur’s jacket, pants, and visored cap. They fit perfectly.
“Got a gun?” Stark asked once Poe was dressed.