Photo by Underwood & Underwood
THE MARKET FOR SHELL FISH
The black spots on the roof are vultures, the official scavengers
The present town of Panama does not impress one with the air of being the scene of dark crimes of covetousness, lust and hate. Its police system, viewed superficially, is effective and most of the malefactors in the Chiriqui Jail are there for trivial offenses only. One crime of a few years ago however bids fair to become historic. One of the banks in the town was well known to be the repository of the funds needed for the payroll of the Canal force. It was the policy of the Commission to pay off as much as possible in gold and silver, and to a very great extent in coins of comparatively small denomination in order to keep it on the Zone. The money paid out on pay drafts comes swiftly back through the Commissary to the banks which accordingly accumulate a very considerable stock of ready cash as a subsequent pay day approaches. Now the banks of Panama do not seem to even the casual observer as strongholds, and probably to the professional cracksman they are positive invitations to enterprise. Accordingly, three men, only one of whom had any criminal record or was in any sense an habitué of the underworld, set about breaking into one of the principal banks. They laid their plans with deliberation and conducted their operations with due regard for their personal comfort. Their plan was to tunnel into the bank from an adjoining building, in which they set up a bogus contracting business to account for the odds and ends of machinery and implements they had about. The tunnel being dark they strung electric lights in it. Being hot, under that tropic air, they installed electric fans. All the comforts of a burglar’s home were there.
THE CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA
THE CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA
From a strictly professional standpoint they made not a single blunder. Their one error—almost a fatal one—was in not being good churchmen. For they had planned to enter the bank late on a Saturday night. Tuesday was to be pay day and on Monday the full amount of the pay roll would be drawn out. But Saturday night it would all be there—several hundred thousand dollars—and they would have all day Sunday to pack it securely and make their getaway. Midnight, then, saw them creeping into the bank. The safe yielded readily to their assaults, but it disgorged only a beggarly $30,000 or so. What could be the trouble? Just then the knowledge dawned on the disappointed bandits that Monday was a Saint’s day, the bank would be closed, therefore the prudent Zone paymaster had drawn his funds on Saturday. The joke was on the cracksmen.
With the comparatively few thousands they had accumulated the disappointed outlaws took a motor boat and made for Colombia. Had they secured the loot they expected they would have been made welcome there, for Colombia does not recognize her run-away child Panama, and no extradition treaty could have been appealed to by the Panamanians against their despoilers. As it was they quarreled over the booty. One of the three was killed; the other two were arrested for the murder, but soon went free. Their complete immunity from prosecution calls attention to the fact that a few hours’ trip in a motor boat will take any one guilty of crime in Panama to a land where he will be wholly free from punishment.