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armored car guards were just dog-eared working stiffs. On the other hand they wouldn’t be inclined to buy the FBI trusting a staged sixty grand heist to dog-eared working stiffs. I couldn’t very well tell the Fulton Road Mob they’d be stealing Christmas donations to the poor. But I decided to give them this one.
    â€œYeah, the armored car guards will be FBI agents.”
    The Schooler smiled at me in a knowing way. “Of course they will.”
    We drank up and headed out. Jimmy and Kelly made for the Buick. The Schooler asked me if I knew how to drive.
    â€œSure.”
    He opened the door of the Packard touring sedan and handed me the keys. I climbed behind the wheel. It was more like a gentlemen’s club than a car. The Schooler slid in on the passenger’s side. I keyed the ignition and put my foot down on a clutch pedal that wasn’t there.
    â€œIt’s an automatic transmission.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œThe shift is on the column.”
    â€œOf course.”
    The Schooler leaned over and put the Packard in reverse. We lurched back about ten feet. I found neutral and hit the brake. This was a serious beast. I eased into drive and wheeled down the road. “Where are we going?”
    â€œFor a drive,” said The Schooler.
    I crossed the two lane cantilevered Whiskey Island bridge and drove south on Riverbed, along the Cuyahoga. We passed a locomotive hauling flat cars of molten steel from the blastfurnaces to the rolling mills. The plant stacks belched white clouds as the frigid air turned their smoke to steam.
    â€œVending machines,” he said.
    â€œBeg pardon?”
    â€œSports betting, loan sharking and vending machines. That’s what we do now.”
    We passed an out-of-commission oil derrick on the flood plain. A reminder that this was all John D. Rockefeller territory once upon a time. “It pays money,” I said.
    â€œSo does running a cigar store, ten hours a day, seven days a week, closed on Christmas, Easter and the Fourth of July. That’s what my old man did for a living.”
    I wheeled the great beast under the concrete pylons of the Detroit-Superior Bridge. “My old man had to work on the Fourth of July.”
    The Schooler smiled. We drove on.
    â€œChester Halladay disagrees with you,” I said. “Chester Halladay said you were hurting, said you
were
racketeers but now you’re gangsters.”
    The Schooler told me to take a right on Franklin. I did so. He told me to take another right on West 25 th . I did that too. We were headed back towards the Angle.
    â€œChester Halladay’s an idiot,” said The Schooler mildly. “What do you need from me?”
    Huh? This was not a question I was accustomed to hearing from persons in authority.
    â€œWell, I need you to tell Mr. Big the feds need an answer in twenty-four hours,” I said. “And I need you to tell Jimmy not to get up on his hind legs and piss all over what might be the sweetest heist in the history of plunder.”
    The Schooler grunted his assent. We drove in silence to the corner of Winslow and West 25 th .

Chapter Nine
    Wigman and East 7 th is in a downtown neighborhood they call The Haymarket, near the east end of the Detroit-Carnegie Bridge.
    We were parked in a blind alley, in a souped-up Lincoln four-door, Jimmy and me in the front seat, and two young hoodlums with slicked back hair and striped shirts with white collars in back. One of them sported a pencil thin mustache. I forget their names. Another hood was behind the wheel of a box truck, idling on Wigman a block away.
    I checked my watch and looked out the passenger’s side window. Mr. Big had, to my surprise, agreed to a fifty-fifty split. We were ten minutes from H-Hour. A gaggle of stew-bums huddled around an oil drum fire on the corner. The pomade twins in the back seat chattered nervously.
    â€œThis used to be Blinky Morgan’s turf, down by