Chaz spat on the floor and muttered, “told you so,” while Mickey & Manny, the safe-cracking Barton twins, whistled and swore.  Leo just stared back at Red, who was still rubbing his hands together, which seemed to indicate that the surprises were not over.  Leo asked it again.

“And?”

“That’s not the end of it? How can it get worse?” Chaz asked.

“Well, it must be much worse because Red here sure ain’t done spilling it.  He’s sweating like a pig,” Leo responded while still staring at Godding.

“So, so, well, the rest of it,” Red stuttered a little which was unusual for him, “it, it, well you have to take it on Christmas Day and leave it on the corner of 9th & Jefferson.”  Red still was not done and Leo did not bother asking again.  He just waited and finally the last part of the job was revealed.

“It, it, needs to have a sign on it,  you know, making fun of the Rabbits.”  Little Red shrugged his big shoulders and then continued.  “They didn’t tell me what it was supposed to say, it just needs to be, well, you know, mocking I guess.”  Red stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned away with a final, “That’s all of it.”  He then slumped into a chair and pulled a flask from the inside of his coat, taking a long pull before closing his eyes and leaning back into the soft leather.

Chaz summed up what the rest of them were thinking.  “Leo, you would be an idiot to take this job.  There ain’t nothing good that can come from taking Joe Shannon’s car and then making fun of him right in the middle of his ward.  That corner is right by the stockyards and it’s Rabbit central.”

Mickey and Manny were nodding vigorously and talking to each other about how stupid it would be to get involved.  Leo seemed to have another opinion.

“One thing it would do for sure though is get me in good with Pendergast.  He’d owe me.”

“He’s already paying you and you don’t mean nothing to him.  Your just a small-time sucker getting hired out to take the fall,” Chaz replied, “stay away from it Leo.”

“Can you get me the money up front Red?”

Godding cracked one eye open from the chair.  “You really want this job?”

“I’ll do it,” Leo replied, “just get me that money.”

Red had a smile on his face now, his mission accomplished.  “I’ll go see about it right away.”

Two days later there was a knock at Leo’s apartment.  As he opened the door, Red handed him fifty dollars, stating that there was just no way that he could get any more of it before the job was done.  He also mentioned that there better not be any backing out of the job now or Mr. Pendergast would take such an insult very personally.  Leo nodded in reply and closed the door.  He went back to the small table that was tucked under the window that faced Ninth Street where he had been working on his plan.  There were only thirteen days to go until Christmas and Leo still had a few things that needed to be done.

One of these was to make sure he was familiar with the vehicle he was supposed to steal.  Although Leo was a proficient driver, he had never driven any vehicle made by Renault.  There were enough variations and idiosyncrasies among the wide variety of cars in the 1920’s that one could never be sure exactly how to operate a particular version or model.  As far as Leo could tell from asking around, there was exactly one Renault NN in Kansas City, namely the one he was supposed to steal. He doubted that he could manage to convince Joe Shannon to let him take it out for a drive so he had to find another one somewhere close.  Eventually he did, with several of them available in Independence, and he marked that item off his planning list on the eighteenth of December.  He did find out that the vehicle was more prone than some others to not starting right away, and often needing to be hand-cranked, all of which of course worried him.  Although he had not shown it to any of the Savoy Seven, he was indeed very nervous about this particular job.  He knew it was risky but he had a strong desire to get in good with the main Kansas City crime scene and felt that this was his ticket to accomplish that goal.

The last item that he needed to complete was to scout out the locations from which he might have to steal the Renault.  After a couple  days of observing Joe Shannon around town Leo realized how difficult this job might become.  Everywhere that the Rabbit’s leader went, he always had a group of three to four bodyguards with him and one of them was always left standing by the car.  This even happened when the group would eat, with the man left on guard having to dine from a plate delivered to the vehicle by the restaurant staff.  Then Leo hit upon the idea of taking the car from wherever it was parked at night, as he doubted it was guarded at those times.

He turned out to be correct about that; however, the location of the Renault’s night storage was less than ideal, as it was in a small building directly behind Shannon’s house.  That building, from what Leo observed over two nights of nocturnal spying, also had the large, swinging access door bolted and locked shut every night.  This was going to be a very difficult caper indeed, but one that he was going to have to pull off, both for his own safety and his future.  The main problems were how to get past the locked door, and then how to get the vehicle out of the building without alerting Shannon’s bodyguards, who all slept in the same house as their leader.

Sargent padlock

It was time to get a little bit of advice and for the first part he knew exactly where to go.  Manny and Mickey Barton, members of the Savoy Seven, some of the best known and most successful safe-crackers in Missouri, were also very skilled with any kind of locking device.  Leo strolled past Shannon’s house one day, noted the kind of lock used and then went and purchased one at the hardware store.  Twenty minutes later, and with only two days to go until Christmas,  he knocked on the door of the Barton’s second floor room at the Savoy.