"The Green Eagle Score" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stark Richard)

1

The Phone rang. Parker awoke at once, put the receiver to his ear, and the operator said, “Eleven o’clock, Mr Lynch.”

“Thank you.” It was Wednesday. The heist was tonight.

Parker got out of bed and padded nude to the bathroom. He showered and shaved, then dressed in black rubber-soled oxford shoes, black trousers, white shirt open at the collar. He left the room, locked it after him, and went across the highway to the diner where he’d had breakfast every day of his stay here. He knew now what was safe to order and what was not.

The waitress knew him, too. She came over smiling when he sat down, saying, “Good morning, Mr Lynch. Getting a late start this morning.”

“Leaving today,” he said. He would have preferred a waitress who minded her own business, but this was a cheery gregarious stocky woman and there was nothing to be done about it. Rather than have her remember him specifically as the customer who’d been surly to her, he’d maintained a small conversation with her every day, allowing himself to be just another salesman passing through, spending a couple of weeks at the motel across the way. He would be much less specific in her mind then, and if the law did come around in a day or two her description of him would be that much more vague.

Now, “Sorry to lose you,” she said. “What’ll it be this morning?”

He ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, black coffee, then sat and looked out the window at the trucks going by on the highway. He ate his food when it came, left an ordinary tip, paid the cashier at the door, and walked back across the road to the motel.

He went into the motel office and the woman at the desk looked at him brightly. “Yes, sir?”

“I’m checking out.”

“Yes, sir. What room number, please?”

“Eleven.”

“Do you have your key?”

“I’ll leave it in the room. My luggage is still there.”

“Very good.”

She opened a file drawer and got out his bill. “Any charges this morning? Phone calls, anything like that?” “No.”

“Very good.”

She slid the bill across the counter to him. One hundred forty dollars. He took out his wallet, began to slide some of Norman Berridge’s bills on to the desk.

“Cash?” she said in surprise.

This was a bad moment, and he knew it, but there was no way around it. To skip out on the bill would have the cops looking for him a day early. Have them looking for Devers’ Pontiac, which had been here often enough to be known in the last three weeks. But he couldn’t carry credit cards or a checkbook, at least not legitimately, and it was bad business to kite checks in the neighborhood of a score. Got the law on your trail too soon and too easy. So he was going to have to pay this motel bill, and the only way to do it was with cash.

He shrugged at the woman’s surprise, therefore, and said, “That’s what the company accountant says we have to do from now on. It’s something to do with taxes. I liked it better the old way. Hand over an American Express card and that’s it.”

“You’ll want a receipt,” she said.

“It’s the only way I get reimbursed,” he said. She stamped the bill paid, gave it to him, and scooped the bills off the desk. “Thank you for staying with us, sir. Do come again.”

Parker went back outside. It was a good day, sunny but with a bite in the air. He walked down the row to his unit and unlocked the door. The cleaning girl’s cart was two doors farther along. He went inside, left the door open, and packed his one suitcase, leaving out only a long-sleeve high-neck black pullover sweater, a dark gray sport jacket and a quiet blue-and-black tie. He put the tie in the side pocket of the sport jacket, set the closed suitcase on the floor and lay down on the bed with his eyes closed to wait.

He sensed when the light changed, meaning there was someone standing in the doorway. He opened his eyes and it was the cleaning girl. “I’ll be out of here by twelve-thirty,” he said, and she went away.

It was quarter past twelve when he heard the tires grate on gravel in front of his room. He sat up, saw the Pontiac coming to a stop out there, and got off the bed again.

It was Devers, on his lunch hour. He got out of the car as Parker stepped out into the sunlight, carrying his suitcase in his right hand, his sport jacket and sweater in his left.

Devers said, “You want to drive?”

“Why?”

Devers laughed and shook his head. “I’ll tell you the truth, it’s because I’m a nervous wreck. I’m really shaky today.”

Parker nodded. “I’ll drive,” he said. He put his gear in the back seat and got behind the wheel as Devers trotted around and came in on the passenger side.

Devers had left the engine running. Parker put it in reverse, backed it around in a tight half-circle, switched into drive and joined the thin stream of westbound traffic on the highway.

Devers said, “You get used to it after a while?”

“After a while,” Parker agreed. “Some guys always get flutters before. Some always get them after.”

“When do you get yours?”

“I don’t.”

He wasn’t boasting, it was the truth. The situation they were going into tonight would only make him colder and colder, harder and harder, surer and surer. He knew everything was organized, he knew the way it was supposed to come off, the step-by-step working out of the prepared script, and he was like a cold-blooded stage manager on opening night; no jitters, just a hard determination that everything would happen the way it was supposed to happen. He knew that the others, the actors, were all atremble, but that wasn’t for him. Stage managers don’t tremble.

Not even when something goes wrong. That was what he was there for tonight, just as much as his pre-planned actions. He was there also to be ready for the unexpected, to improvise if anything went wrong, to keep the production safe and moving no matter what. So he couldn’t get the flutters before or during, and it didn’t make any sense to get them after. So he just didn’t get the flutters.

Devers wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Boy, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how you go about getting used to something like this.”

“You keep doing it,” Parker told him.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Just this side of North Bangor there was a white clapboard house with a sign hanging from a tree out front reading: TOURISTS. Behind the house were half a dozen cabins, miniature versions of the house. A black Buick station wagon was parked next to one of the cabins. Devers gestured a thumb at it as they drove by, saying, “They haven’t left yet.”

“They’ll be along,” Parker said.

“They” were the other three men, Jake Kengle and Philly Webb and Bill Stockton, all of whom had come into town on Monday, had listened to the outline of the caper, and had elected to be dealt in. The station wagon was Webb’s, and the only constant about it was its brand; it never stopped being a Buick. But it hadn’t been black more than a week or two, and would be some color other than black by the end of this week. And the Maryland license plates it sported now were only one of the many sets it had known in the past and would know in the future. Webb prided himself out loud on having attained the untraceable car, but Parker thought it likelier that Webb just liked to have something to play with.

He took the right turn before Monequois that bypassed the town and went directly out to the air base. He stopped before the main gate and Devers said, “See you tonight.”

“Right.”

Devers climbed out and walked away toward the gate. Parker turned the car toward Monequois.

He reached the Fusco house at one o’clock, and put the car in place beside the house. The day was beginning to warm up a little, but it wouldn’t get much above seventy before starting back down again two or three hours from now.

Parker went into the house. Fusco was seated at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal. He called, “I’m babysitting. Ellen’s off to see her shrink. Said she’ll be back a little after two.”

Parker didn’t care where she was or when she’d be back. He said, “Did you get the coats?”

“In the bedroom closet.”

“Good.”

Parker left the living-room and went down the short hall to the master bedroom. It was neat and plain and functional and impersonal, like the rest of the house. It was Ellen Fusco’s room, and either she or he had managed to create a room that gave no sign of occupancy at all. The dresser top was bare, there was no clothing on the chair beside the bed, the nightstands held neat metallic lamps and clean ashtrays, the bed was anonymously and neatly made.

There were two closets. The one Parker opened first was full of the woman’s clothing, neat and rigid. The other one was Devers’, and it seemed sloppy by comparison, even though the clothing was all on hangers. But the shoes on the floor were not lined up in pairs, and the shelf was cluttered with stray objects.

In Devers’ closet were the coats. Tunics, really, like the white pullover tunics worn by some barbers and dentists. But these weren’t white, they were glistening metallic gold, as bright as the gold foil around a chocolate candy, seeming to glitter and sparkle inside the closet with their own light. They had long sleeves, high hard collars and elastic wrists. They looked as though they should be worn by a team of Cossack acrobats on television.

Parker took one of the tunics out, looked at it in the light, nodded in satisfaction and put it back again. It had been worth Fusco’s trip to New York City, to a costume rental place there. These tunics had the right look to them.

He went back to the living-room. In the kitchen, Fusco was now rinsing out his cereal bowl. Parker called to him, “They look good.”

Fusco shut the water off. “You like them? I had to try three places.” He dried his hands on a dish towel and came into the living room. “You should see what they tried to give me.”

Parker sat down on the sofa. “You got everything of yours cleaned out of here?”

“Sure,” Fusco said. “There wasn’t that much. I sent off a package Railway Express this morning.” He’d checked out of his hotel Sunday morning, had been sleeping on the sofa here since then, except for last night when he’d slept at a hotel in New York.

“To an address?” Parker asked him.

“To Manhattan. To be picked up.”

“Good.”

“You want coffee? Something to drink?”

“Nothing.”

Parker shut his eyes. He knew most people tended to get jumpy the day of a score, knew that jumpy people like to talk. He didn’t want to be talked to, and the easiest way to avoid it was by keeping his eyes shut. People leave you alone if you have your eyes shut, even if they know you’re awake.

He sat there like that, waiting, not thinking about much of anything, giving stray thoughts to Puerto Rico and Claire, until Fusco said, “Here’s the boys.” Then he opened his eyes and got to his feet.

The station wagon was parked out front. Three men were walking toward the house, Jake Kengle in the lead. Behind him was Bill Stockton, a tall skinny guy with black hair and a loose-limbed, stooped way of walking. Bringing up the rear was Philly Webb, who owned the station wagon and who would be driving tonight. He was short, chunky, olive-complexioned, with the chest and arms of a weightlifter, giving him a vaguely apelike look.

Fusco opened the door for them and they trooped in, all dressed like Parker in white shirts, black trousers and quiet-soled shoes. Kengle said, “This is the part I don’t like. Just before, you know? When there’s nothing to do but wait.”

“There might be a deck of cards around here,” said Webb.

“Sure,” said Fusco. “We can play at the kitchen table. I’ll be right back.”

Parker sat out, but the other four worked up a poker game to kill the time, most draw and five-card stud. They played for small stakes; it was a superstition that it was bad luck to gamble with money you hadn’t copped yet.

Parker didn’t gamble. He preferred to sit in the living-room, either doing nothing at all or going over again in his mind each step of what they were supposed to do today, trying to find things that had been overlooked.

Ellen came back about twenty after two. She looked at the four sitting around the kitchen table, and said to Parker, “How much longer are you all going to be here?”

“A little while,” he told her.

She was acting like somebody being calm with a great deal of trouble. She fluttered a bit in the living-room, and then went on out to the bedroom. Parker watched her go, frowning. He didn’t like the way she was acting, hadn’t liked any of the changes she’d gone through the last week and a half.

It had started with that oddball stupid sexless proposition. It had been a proposition, it couldn’t have been anything else, but it had been delivered in such a way as to make it tough to believe it had ever happened. As though she’d done it against her will, and had just gone through the motions without really meaning it.

But she’d meant it, he was sure of that. She’d spent a couple of days giving him cow eyes alternating with bad temper as though he’d been the one trying to put the make on her, and then it had been all over, with a new phase coming in.

The new phase had been hatred, cold silent murderous hatred. Whenever he’d been in the house she was always somewhere around, glaring at him, as though waiting for him to make the one move that would make it all right for her to come after him with a carving knife.

But that hadn’t lasted either. It seemed as though every time she went off for one of her sessions with the analyst she came back with a different set on the world. The next attitude toward Parker had been studied indifference; she’d ignored him as completely as if he weren’t there at all. But not arrogantly, not like a queen ignoring a peasant, which is ignoring in a way that still acknowledges existence. Parker seemed to have ceased to exist for her, as though she had a blind spot and he was standing in the middle of it.

That phase had been the easiest to put up with, but it too had changed, and the most recent attitude had been fear, a kind of guilty jumpy fear that had made him almost as nervous in her presence as she was. He’d asked both Devers and Fusco about it, and they’d both assured him she would have done nothing—like talking to the law—to justify her guilt or her fear. “That’s just the way she gets sometimes,” Devers had said. Fusco’s comment had been, “Ellen wouldn’t fink, period.” Parker had had to take their word for it, but he still didn’t like it; when she slunk and jumped and jittered around him like that it made his hackles rise.

Well, this was the end of it anyway. He’d be leaving this house for the last time this afternoon, and Ellen Fusco could stumble on through life without him.

But there was one last session with her to be gone through. A little after three she came back into the living-room and sat down on the other end of the sofa. She was smoking, and she kept nervously tapping the cigarette on an ashtray.

She was going to say something, but she was taking her time. Parker waited, and finally she said, not looking at him, “What if something goes wrong?”

He turned his head and looked at her. She was studying the ashtray on the coffee table, tapping and tapping the cigarette against it. He said, “Like what?”

She made a convulsive shrugging movement. “I don’t know. Anything. The alarm goes out too soon. Somebody asks for identification at the wrong time. Anything at all.”

“We handle it, if we can,” he said.

“But it could happen.”

“It can always happen.”

“Maybe it’s the wrong kind of job,” she said.

He looked at her, waiting for her to go on. She sat there, tap-tapping, huddled in on herself, clasping her left upper arm with her right hand as though to hug herself, and although the fear of him seemed to be gone now—another change—the nervousness was even worse than before. She was like an old car with an engine that’s falling apart; you can just see the hood vibrating, but underneath there it’s throwing a rod.

When he kept on being silent, not responding to her comment about the wrong kind of job, she tossed him a quick look—her eyes were large and round and panic-stricken—stared back at the ashtray, and said, “Oh, not for you, maybe. Maybe you like this kind of thing. But maybe it’s wrong for Stan. Or even Marty. But mostly Stan.”

“It’s his choice,” Parker said.

“I wish he wasn’t involved.”

“Talk to him.”

“I did. A long time ago. The point is—” She stopped, shook her head, frowned at her cigarette, all as though she wasn’t entirely sure what the point was. Finally she said, “The point is, what happens to Stan if something goes wrong? He isn’t a professional, maybe he won’t be able to get away. And it would matter to him, don’t you see? Marty, it doesn’t matter to Marty, he goes to jail, he comes back out, he does the exact same thing again. Jake Kengle was in jail, too, it’s the same thing. But Stan isn’t like that. It would matter to him, if he was in jail.”

Parker wondered how she could believe there was anyone on earth to whom a jail term didn’t matter. But what he said was, “Maybe Stan thinks he won’t go to jail.”

“I know. It’s worth the risk, everybody’s sure it’s worth the risk.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Why don’t you—?”

She stopped again, shook her head violently, finally took a drag on the cigarette. With one last tap at the ashtray, she rose in a cloud of expelled smoke.

Parker said, “Why don’t we what?”

“Nothing,” she said, turning away.

“Why don’t we call it off?”

She shook her head and walked out of the living-room. He knew that’s what she’d been about to say, that while starting to say it the impossibility of it all had come through to her—the costumes were in the closet, the guns in the kid’s room, the bus out at the lodge, the string assembled and playing poker in the next room—and she’d stopped herself before saying the whole thing. But it was what she wanted, that much was obvious. To have it not happen, never be going to happen.

It wasn’t the first time Parker had seen somebody’s woman get that kind of last-minute jitters, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. It was good to have a woman like Claire, strong enough and secure enough and smart enough to stay out of it entirely. It would be good to get back to San Juan, to see Claire again, to relax beside the ocean, to spend some time in the casino.

Parker didn’t go to the casino for himself, but for Claire. She did the gambling, if it could be called that.

The casinos in San Juan didn’t have the desperate greedy urgency of Las Vegas, where the gambling rooms have neither clocks nor windows to remind the fish of the passing of time. In San Juan the casinos were merely entertainment appendages of the tourist industry, along with the beaches and the floor shows and the boat rides to St Thomas for duty-free liquor. The hotel casinos were only open eight hours a day, from eight in the evening till four in the morning, and only three kinds of gambling were available for the idle speculator: roulette, blackjack, craps.

Claire’s specialty was craps. She invariably, upon entering the casino, bought fifty one-dollar chips and headed for whichever crap table was the least crowded. There she would spend her fifty chips one at a time, exclusively on side bets, always passing the dice when they came around to her, and winning about one time in three. She was the most passive of gamblers, but the action exhilarated her, so that as the stack of fifty dwindled slowly away her eyes always got brighter, her movements more electric, her expressions more excited. Every time, she would turn away from the table after the loss of the final chip as vibrant and exuberant as if she’d just broken the bank. Gambling was like a good alcohol high with her, it made her enjoy life more, enjoy herself more. Afterward, they always went from the casino straight back to the hotel and to bed, where she would be at her most inventive and eager.

Yes. It would be good to get back to San Juan, good to see Claire again.

It surprised him a little that his thoughts were becoming sexual. That was another change Claire was making in him. The way it used to be, sex was always an urgent, vital, all-consuming thing with him right after a heist, slowly then tapering off until he had no interest along that line at all, and that’s when he would be ready for another job. But now, because of Claire, it was different. Here he was, the day of the heist itself, his mind full of pictures of Claire on white sheets in the semi-dark air-conditioned room in San Juan, the sun bright outside the windows, all the tourists and natives hustling in the outside world while Claire’s arms reached up and folded around him.

He sat there in the living room and let his mind drift wherever it wanted to go until his watch read four o’clock. Then he got to his feet and went out to the kitchen and said, “Time to go.”

“Right,” said Webb. He was out of the hand being played, so he got to his feet, took his handful of bills from the table and lucked them away in a pocket, and yawned and stretched, his arms seeming grotesquely long for his stubby body when he spread them out.

The other three finished the hand, which Kengle won with jacks over threes.

Raking in the pot, Kengle grinned and said, “Looks like my luck’s changing. It’s about time.”

Stockton said, “Mine better change before tonight.”

“How’d you do?” Fusco asked Kengle.

“Made about eighteen.”

“I’m ahead three,” Webb said.

“I took a bath,” Stockton said, getting to his feet.

Fusco said, “Parker, I’ll be with you in a minute. I’ve got to say so long to Ellen.”

“Bring the costumes out with you.”

“Right.”

Stockton said, “Where’s the armament?”

“This way.”

Stockton and Kengle followed Parker down the hall to the kid’s bedroom. She was in bed now for her afternoon nap, all wrapped up in a filthy blanket she carried around with her all the time. Parker opened the closet door and handed out the cartons to the other two, who took them and tiptoed out of the room. Parker shut the door of the closet and followed them.

Fusco was still in the bedroom with Ellen. Kengle, his arms full of boxes claiming to contain road-racer sets, stood in the middle of the living-room and gestured toward the bedroom with his head, saying, “Marty getting a little off the ex-wife?”

“No,” Parker said. “He’s just being a good guest, thanking her for all the breakfasts.”

Kengle made a face and nodded. “That sounds like Marty,” he said. “You should of seen him in stir. Polite to the screws.”

Webb, his hand on the doorknob, said, “We’ll see you out there, Parker.” “Right.”

The three went out, Webb leading the way and the other two carrying the cartons. They were put in the back of the station wagon and a minute later the wagon pulled away.

Parker stood by the open door, waiting. It was three or four minutes before Fusco came out, holding the tunics up by their hangers, a worried expression on his face. “Boy, Parker,” he said. “She’s really nervous. I guess me taking a fall really shook her up.”

“She’ll survive,” Parker said. “You want to put those things in a bag or something. Somebody’ll see us going out with those things.”

“Nobody pays any attention in a neighborhood like this,” Fusco said. “Nobody’s looked at either of us any time we came in or out here.”

“That’s because they can figure us, even if they’re wrong. Ellen’s a divorcee, we’re men. But those are crazy gold pajama tops, and people’ll remember them. We don’t want the law around here tomorrow, asking Ellen where’d the guys go with the gold pajama tops.”

“And the gold. Okay, you’re right. Just a minute.”

Fusco got a brown paper bag from the kitchen, took the tunics off their hangers, rolled them one at a time and stuffed them into the bag. When he was done, he and Parker went out to the Pontiac. Parker’s suitcase and sweater and sport jacket were still on the back seat, and Fusco now added the bag of tunics to them. Parker got behind the wheel.

They drove east out of Monequois, past the air base, and left up Hiker Road. They went past the South Gate and continued on northward another four miles, until they came to a dirt road leading uphill away to the left. They took this and Parker shifted into low. The road climbed steeply, with sharp curves. Never anything more than a track beaten into and scraped out of the mountainside by a bulldozer, it had now been out of use for three years and showed it. Deep meandering grooves showed where the runoff from mountain rains was making paths for itself toward the valley. Here and there tree branches hung low, scraping the roof of the car, and in two spots thick fallen branches lay beside the road where Parker and Devers and Fusco had shoved them out of the way the first time they’d driven up here.

It was three miles, almost all uphill, all on minimal road, until at last they came to the burned-out lodge. It had been a large building, two storeys high, of stone and log, and it had been almost entirely gutted by fire. A garage behind it, originally large enough for a dozen cars, had been partially burned away, with now only one end of it still intact, enough for three cars. Another out-building, a large work-shed, hadn’t been touched at all.

Of the original building only the stone walls were left, extending from three to seven feet up at different spots around the perimeter. Inside these walls was a jumble of black lines, the charred remains of beams and walls, made anonymous and smooth by three summers and winters. Grass was growing here and there inside, little areas of green.

Half a dozen “No Trespassing” signs had been fixed to trees or the remaining stone walls, but there was no sign anyone had been around recently to see if the signs were being obeyed. The garage and work-shed were both stripped and bare, and it was obvious no one was in any hurry to rebuild Andrews’ Lodge. It looked, in fact, suspiciously like the result of somebody’s having burned his business down for the insurance, which doesn’t happen when the business is showing a steady profit. Andrews’ Lodge had probably been losing a lot of its business to Canadian hunting areas, which hadn’t been as extensively hunted, so that game was still plentiful.

The station wagon was nowhere in sight, but when Parker drove the Pontiac around the corner of the lodge shell Stockton was standing beside an open garage door in the unburned end of the garage, motioning at them to come on. In this setting he looked like a modern-day Ichabod Crane, tall and skinny and stoop-shouldered.

Parker drove the car into the garage and cut the engine as Stockton shut the two doors. He and Fusco got out of the Pontiac, and Parker got his sport jacket and sweater from the back seat.

There were no interior walls separating the garage stalls. The Pontiac was the nearest to the burned portion, and next to it on the other side was the Buick station wagon. At the far end was the bus.

It was a small bus, shorter than usual, the kind of thing frequently used by small private schools to transport their children. It had been that yellow color when Parker had first seen it at the junkyard in Baltimore, but a lot had been done to it since then. It had a different color now, a rich royal blue that looked dark inside the garage here but would look as bright as a swimming pool out in the sunlight. It also had a different engine, much hotter than the original plant it had had under its hood. The false set of Maryland plates that had brought it up here were in the process of being changed now by Webb to New York plates which were equally false but for which they had faked-up registration. Kengle was in the process of attaching to the near side one of the two cloth banners they’d made, in red letters on white, reading:

ERNIE SEVEN AND THE FOUR SCORE

This was where most of Norman Berridge’s money had gone, into this bus and the musical instruments showing conspicuously through the rear windows.

Parker walked around the Buick and stood looking at the banner for a minute. Kengle grinned at him, saying, “Looks good, don’t it?”

“Just so it looks real,” Parker said.

“Then that’s what it looks,” Kengle said. “It looks real.”

Parker agreed with him. A bus that made itself as conspicuous as this had to lull suspicions.

Parker carried his sweater and sport jacket into the bus and dropped them on a seat toward the rear. Fusco had followed him aboard, and when he turned round he saw Fusco getting the gold tunics out of the brown paper bag, shaking them out one at a time, smoothing out the wrinkles, and draping each across the back of a bus seat.

Parker edged by Fusco and stepped down out of the bus again. Kengle was now around on the other side, putting the second banner there. A third, smaller but just as bright was being put on the back by Stockton. Webb, having replaced both license plates, was putting his tools away in the kit in the back of his station wagon.

They were ready to go at ten to five. They all got aboard the bus except Stockton, who opened the garage doors. The doors had been padlocked shut, but Parker and Fusco had sawn through the padlocks so they could be removed and then replaced to look as though they were still secure.

Those in the bus slipped on their tunics and settled in seats, all toward the front. Webb got behind the wheel, started the engine, which sounded deceptively ordinary, and backed the bus out into tree-dappled sunlight. Stockton shut the garage doors and replaced the padlock while Webb turned the bus around, then came over and climbed aboard, but didn’t put his tunic on yet.

The trip down the dirt road was painfully slow, Webb being careful not to rattle the goods inside the bus too much. The toy cartons were now on the floor unobtrusively near the back seat, surrounded and hidden by the musical instruments: snare drums, electric guitar and amplifier, tenor saxophone, three or four others.

Near the exit to Hilker Road, Webb stopped the bus and Stockton got out and continued down on foot. He was just barely in sight when he stopped, and they waited for the arm signal from him that would mean no traffic in sight in either direction.

It was a couple of minutes before it came, and then Webb slid the truck down the last several yards, slewed out onto the paved roadway without touching the brakes, and Stockton swung up through the open door as the bus rolled by him. Webb tapped the accelerator and they surged forward, running south.

It was a five-minute run to the South Gate. There was talk among Kengle and Stockton and Fusco on the way, but when Webb made the turn off the road and slowed to approach the gate the talk inside the bus died away and tension clogged the air like a heavy fog. It was ten after five.

Webb stopped at the gate, slid his window open, and shouted at the AP just outside. “Which way to the Officers’ Club?”

The AP said something. Webb, playing it stupid, said, “Hah?” and the AP said it again. Webb said, “Hold it,” turned his head, and shouted toward Parker, loud enough for the AP to hear: “He says he wants to see some authorization.”

Parker took the letter out of the inside pocket of the sport jacket lying on the seat beside him. He walked up to the front of the bus, handed the letter to Webb, and Webb handed it out to the AP, saying, “This what you want?”

It had better be. The letter was written on legitimate Officers’ Club letterhead stationery, stolen last Friday by Devers. It was addressed to Sheehan amp; Wilcox, a legitimate booking agency in New York City as gotten out of the phone book; it was signed by Major J. Alex Cartwright, which was the legitimate name of the officer in charge of the Monequois Air Force Base Officers’ Club; and it requested the appearance of Ernie Seven and the Four Score for a one-night appearance at the Monequois Officers’ Club on Wednesday, September 30th, at terms already agreed upon in prior correspondence. “This letter,” the letter concluded, “will serve as authorization for the group’s entrance onto the base on that date. We expect them no later than five p.m.”

Parker watched through the window until he thought the AP had just about finished the letter, and then he leaned down past Webb and called, “Buddy, we’re late now. Can we go through?”

This was the tricky part. If the AP let them through they’d be all right. If he insisted on checking with Major Cartwright at the Officers’ Club the only thing for them to do was back-out of the slot, turn the truck around fast, and get the hell out of there.

The problem was the bus. They needed a vehicle in which to get the goods off the base, and if they used Devers’ Pontiac, it might be traced to him later. Gate guards would be encouraged to remember what vehicles left the base in the time immediately after the robbery. To simply steal a truck from the motor pool was no good unless they intended to crash out through the gate, which they wanted to avoid; they needed half an hour anyway in order to lay a false trail and get themselves to ground. So they had to have a vehicle with papers, even if the papers were false.

Which meant, before they could get the vehicle off the base, they would have to somehow get it on. Which was why all this.

Including a letter that indicated they were already ten minutes late. Over on the exit side, the gate was crowded with people who’d gotten off-duty at five o’clock. The AP should have his hands full now, the letter should convince him, the time element of their being late should encourage him to speed them through.

Maybe.

The AP frowned at the letter, squinted up at Parker and Webb in their gold tunics, looked at the banner on the side of the bus, looked at the musical instruments and the other gold-tunic’d passengers he could see through the windows, and finally said reluctantly, “I didn’t hear anything about you guys.”

“It’s just a one-nighter for the big wheels, buddy,” Webb said.

Parker said, “You want to see some identification? Driver’s license? Registration?” He was ready with both, in the name of Edward Lynch, one of several sets of false papers he’d picked up here and there over the years.

Still frowning, still hesitant, the AP looked at the letter again. Then the other AP, over on the other side, called something impatient to him, and he said, more to himself than Webb and Parker, “I guess it’s okay.”

“Sure it’s okay,” Webb said. “Unless we get there too late.”

“I’ll get you a pass,” the AP said, and walked into the shack.

Moving casually, Webb moved the shift lever into reverse. But when the AP came out, he had a square oblong of green cardboard in his hand.  “Display this in the windshield,” he said, handing it up to Webb. “And you’ll have to turn it back in when you leave.”

“This is yours,” the AP said, and handed the letter up to Webb.

“Thanks, pal. Now all we need is where’s the Officers’ Club.”

The AP pointed the direction they were headed. “Straight down that way to G Street, then right. You can’t miss it, it’s the big building with the stained-glass front.”

“Stained-glass front. Ain’t that nice. Thanks again, pal.”

Webb handed Parker the letter, put the bus in gear, and they rolled through the gate and onto the base.

Parker went back and sat down. Webb drove straight until he reached G Street, and then turned right, as the AP had said. After he made the turn, Parker and the others slipped out of their tunics and put on ties and jackets in their place. Webb kept the tunic on until he parked the bus on the cross-street between the Officers’ Club on the right and the NCO Club on the left, then he too switched to tie and jacket, while Kengle and Stockton got out and removed the banner from the back of the bus. A few people walked by, in both uniform and civilian clothing but no one paid them any attention.

When Kengle and Stockton were back aboard, Webb started the bus again and drove it into the Officers’ Club parking lot, putting it down at the far end, in the shade of a thick-trunked tree, one of the few trees left on the base. The other banners, tied by string to small hooks protruding from the sides of the bus, could be removed from inside by people reaching out the windows. They untied both banners, pulled them in, and rolled them carefully so as not to smear the writing on them. Then, one at a time, they left the bus and strolled across the parking lot and out to the street.

Parker went next to last, leaving Webb to lock the bus after him. It was starting to get dark with that fast-falling evening of the north country in the autumn, and about one passing car in three already had its parking lights on. Parker crossed the street and went up the walk and into the NCO Club.

Devers had said there was never any ID check at the door of the NCO Club, since the name was a misnomer. “Every base is supposed to have an airman’s club,” he’d said, “for the lower four grades, but I’ve never been on a base that does, and where there’s no airman’s club the NCO Club is open to all enlisted men. So when even Airman Basics can get into the NCO Club there’s nobody left to keep out, so there’s no check at the door.”

Devers was right, there was no one there. Parker stepped inside, into a large red velvet area that could have been the lobby of a recently built theater or of a small resort hotel. Devers had told him the bar was to the left and the dining room to the right, so he went to the right along a broad hallway that continued the red velvet motif and emptied into a large rectangular dining-room, full of tables with white table cloths. At the far end was a raised platform containing a shrouded piano. Only about a quarter of the tables were occupied, mostly by men in civilian clothing. One table had four women in blue WAF uniforms, looking like chunky truck drivers.

Stockton and Kengle were at a table midway down on the left, Fusco at a closer table to the right. Parker went over and sat down with Fusco, who said, “No menu yet. That’s the kind of service you get.”

“We’re in no hurry,” Parker said. He was facing the entranceway, and a minute later saw Webb come strolling in and go over to join Stockton and Kengle. He made no sign toward Parker, which meant everything was as it should be. If there was trouble he would have managed to let Parker know it.

The waitress showed up a while later, gave them menus, took their drink orders, and left. They took their time over dinner, and then sat with drinks afterward. They drank slowly and sparingly, needing to be at their fastest and most alert later on tonight.

About six-thirty Devers came in, in civilian clothing, with three other young men about his age. They sat in a corner table and drank beer and talked urgently together. Devers never looked toward Parker nor the other table, and he drank much more slowly than his friends.

A little after eight, Parker paid the check and he and Fusco left. Devers had showed them on the map how to get from the NCO Club to the movie theater, and they strolled in that direction now.

The problem was, the rush-hour confusion around five o’clock was the best time to bring the bus in—and any arrival much later than seven would have caused suspicion anyway—but that meant they had a long time to kill before they could go after the money and leave the base again. Part of it could go to dinner, and now some more of it would be spent in a movie.

The base theater had two showings of its feature, one at eight-fifteen and one at ten-fifteen. There was a line when Parker and Fusco reached the theater at eight-ten, and they joined it. When they got their tickets and started inside they saw Webb and Stockton and Kengle just getting on the end of the line.

There was a cartoon and then the feature. It was a musical comedy, and Parker sat there and looked at the bright colors and listened to the sounds and paid it all only the slightest attention.

They cleared the theater after each showing, so they had to get back on line and pay a second time to see the movie again. This time the other three were ahead of them in the line.

Parker paid just as little attention to the movie the second time, hardly recognizing it as something he’d just seen. When it was done and the lights went on, his watch read five minutes past twelve.

It was a six-block walk back to the bus. Parker and Fusco got there first, and stood waiting for the others to come and unlock it. The Officers’ Club was going strong, and where the parking lot had been almost empty before now it was full. A white MG squatted beside the bus, which was almost invisible now, its bright blue of the daytime now blending with the darkness.

The others showed up a minute or two later, and Webb unlocked the door. They climbed aboard and kept the bus in darkness. Parker changed out of his tie and jacket, putting on the long-sleeved high-neck black sweater in its place. Around him the others were putting on similar clothing, black and clean-lined, with no extraneous lapels or flaps.

Parker broke out the guns. There were two machine guns, stripped-down Stens, partly disassembled to fit into their boxes. Parker reassembled them in the dark, handed one to Kengle and one to Stockton, and then got out the pistols, all snub-nosed .32s, two Smith amp; Wesson, one Firearms International and one Colt. He took the Colt, gave Fusco the FI and Webb one of the S amp; Ws, and put the other S amp; W aside for Devers.

Next he got out and handed around sets of rubber gloves, the kind women use when they wash dishes. These were pale blue, which were less bright in the dark than either the yellow or the pink that were the only other choices. It was advertised that with these gloves on you could pick up a dime. You could also hold a gun and pick up four hundred thousand dollars.

There was a quick knock at the door. Webb opened it and Devers swung up and in. He too was in dark clothing, and when Parker handed him a revolver and a pair of rubber gloves he whispered, “Stage fright gone.”

“Good,” Parker said.

Next came the hoods, black cotton bags made from dyeing pillow cases and cutting out eyeholes. Each man stuffed his hood under his sweater, to keep it out of the way until it was needed.

Last were an Air Force fatigue cap and fatigue jacket. Webb put these on, everybody else sat out of sight on the floor, and Webb started the engine. He drove out of the parking lot and made his way slowly across the base.

It was ten minutes to one when he came to the finance office. The street was fairly well lit, and empty. There were lights on the second floor of the building, and an AP in a white helmet was marching back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the building with a carbine on his shoulder.

Devers, peeking out the window, whispered, “Is that a dumb way to guard a place? If they had him stand in front of the door they’d make a lot more sense.”

Webb whispered back, “That isn’t the Army way, my boy.”

They were almost even with the marching AP now. When they reached him, Webb hit the brakes. The building and the AP were on the right side of the bus. Webb opened the door from the handle by the steering-wheel, leaned far over, and called, “Hey, buddy! Which way to the Motor Pool Receiving Depot?”

There was no such thing. The AP looked, saw a blue bus—like any Air Force bus, if somewhat brighter and cleaner than most—saw a driver in Air Force fatigues leaning over toward him, gripping the steering-wheel for balance, and saw nothing else to make him wonder or question. Still with the carbine on his shoulder, he took a step closer and said, “What was that?”

“The Motor Pool Receiving Depot,” Webb said, slurring the last words. “I got to deliver this goddam thing sometime tonight. The stinking snowtop at the gate gave me the wrong directions.”

“Snowtop?” That was a slang word for Air Policemen, because of the white helmets they wore, and most APs didn’t like it. This one was no exception. Taking the carbine off his shoulder and holding it at a loose port arms, he came another step closer, almost to the curb, and said, “Maybe you heard him wrong, my friend. The motor pool isn’t anywhere around here.”

“I don’t want the motor pool,” Webb said, being angry now. “You as dumb as that other one? I want the Motor Pool Receiving Depot.”

The AP was now bridling. Coming all the way to the bus door, he said, “You got any orders on you, smart guy?”

Parker was out of sight just beside the door. Now, softly, he said, “I’ve got one. If you’re smart, you’ll step up into the bus.” As he spoke, he extended his hand out so the AP could see the revolver in it, aimed at his forehead. The AP blinked. “What?”

“Come up here,” Webb said, speaking more quietly himself now. “Just like there’s nothing wrong.”

“This isn’t the war to be a hero in,” Parker said.

“I don’t—” The AP was squinting, trying to see up the arm past the gun. “What is this?”

“Just money,” Webb told him, “We’re just taking the payroll. Don’t worry about it, we’re not spies or saboteurs or anything.”

“The payroll? You’re going to steal— You’ll never get away with it!”

“If you raise your voice again,” Parker said, “your buddy on the other side of the building is going to hear a car backfire. Now get in here.”

“But—”

“One,” said Parker. “Two.”

The AP didn’t know what the top number was. He put his foot up on the bus step before Parker could say three. Webb said, “Hand me the rifle.”

The AP came up the steps, and anger was struggling with fear in his eyes. He was being humiliated, and he hated it, and he suspected that if he tried to do anything about the humiliation he would lose his life, and he hated the cowardice that weighed those factors and opted for cooperation. He was calling it cowardice now, in his mind, but what it was was intelligence.

Webb took the carbine from him, and Parker prodded him to move on down the aisle into the bus. His uniform was stripped off him, and Devers put it on, took the carbine from Webb, and got out of the bus.

“Thanks, buddy,” Webb called, and shut the bus door, and started away.

Devers began to march up and down in front of the building. He looked bulkier than the other AP because, although he was about the other man’s size, he was wearing another complete set of clothing under the borrowed uniform, complete to a snub-nosed .32 revolver in the hip pocket of the trousers. But to anyone passing by, or to either of the APs inside the building upstairs who might decide to look out a window, he would pass.

Webb drove straight for a block and a half, turned right for one block, turned right again, and parked. Meanwhile the AP had been put down in the aisle in his underwear and tied and gagged.

Stockton, wearing his hood and carrying his Sten gun, got out of the bus and moved away in the darkness like a long thin shadow. Three strides from the bus he was out of sight, these side streets being lit only by overflow from the lights at the intersections with the main avenues.

There was a second guard on duty behind the building, and this was who Stockton had gone after.

He brought him back three minutes later, a young scared boy, his face almost as white as his helmet. Stockton held the Sten gun in his right hand, butt braced against his hip bone, with the boy’s carbine hanging loose in his left hand.

They tied and gagged number two, left him in the bus with the first one, and they all moved off except Webb, who was to stay with the bus, move it if it seemed necessary and keep an eye on the two APs.

Parker led the way through the darkness. The sky was clear and full of stars, but they were only three days from the new moon, so that only a thin curved sliver, like a fingernail clipping in light, showed to mark where the moon would be a few nights from now.

They came at the finance office building from the rear, moved around it on the side between it and the other building on that block, and at the front corner waited, the others strung behind Parker, who watched Devers marching back and forth out there with the same stoop-shouldered fatalistic tread as the boy he was replacing.

Parker stepped around the corner, stood against the front of the building. He showed there as a dark man-shaped shadow against the stucco wall. His hood was on, the only pale thing about him were the rubber gloves on his hands. He moved these back and forth in front of himself, fingers splayed, until Devers saw the motion. Then he stopped marching, yawned, stretched, and walked over to the building entrance in the middle of the long front wall. He stood there and lit a cigarette, the signal that it was all right to come on.

Parker had Devers’ bootleg keys in his hand when he reached the door. He unlocked it and stepped through, stood just inside holding the door, and felt the other three slide in behind him. Devers, who had said nothing and who had looked ashen-faced beneath the helmet, field-stripped his cigarette and went back out to march up and down on the sidewalk some more.

Devers had given them complete maps of the building. Parker and the others moved without hesitation through the darkness to the stairs and up, their shoes silent on the metal stairs.

The door to the left at the head of the stairs had glass in the upper half. Through it, Parker could see two overhead globes lit, both down at the far end of the finance office; the one inside Major Creighton’s office and the first one on the right on this side of the Major’s office. The two APs on guard here were sitting at a desk under this second light, playing cards. They were about twenty-five feet from the door where Parker was standing, and the area between was lined with two rows of desks up to a chest-high counter which stretched across the room about six feet in from the door. To the left of the door was a bench for people who had to wait.

Parker used another key, opened the door with a faint click timed to happen when one of the APs was shuffling the cards, and, as down there under the light a new gin rummy hand was dealt out, Parker and the other three slid through the slightly open door and moved at a half-crouch to the counter. They straightened slowly and stood spread out there, Kengle and Stockton at the ends with the Sten guns resting on the countertop, Parker and Fusco in the middle with their revolvers in their hands. Ahead of them, the APs continued to be absorbed in their game.

A cord was hanging down over Parker’s head. He reached up with his free hand and pulled it, and the globe up there came on, flooding their end of the room with light.

The APs looked over, startled.

“Freeze,” Parker said.

One of them would have, but the other was a cowboy. He made a lunge for where his carbine was leaning against another desk, and Kengle’s Sten gun rattled briefly. The AP half-turned in midair, slid over the desk, and crumpled like used cardboard on the other side.

The shots shook the other one, who had frozen the way Parker told him to. He abruptly dropped out of sight behind the desk.

Parker said, “Don’t be stupid, son. You don’t want to die.” Nothing happened.

Parker nodded at Stockton, who was nearest the flap in the counter. He pushed it up, left it up, and went on through. Moving fast and silent, he went down along the rear wall, where he wouldn’t be seen by anybody passing in the street, and when he got to where the second AP had disappeared he waved to the others that it was all right.

When they walked down to him, they saw that AP number two hadn’t ducked, he’d fainted. AP number one wasn’t dead, but his breathing was shallow and his color bad. He had one hit in the left side, just above the waist, and one that had gone in his left shoulder and out his back above the shoulder blade. Fusco used some of the boy’s clothing to make simple bandages to stop the bleeding; they weren’t in a hurry for a murder rap. The law might think it looks as hard for every kind of felon, but it doesn’t. Just as the cop killer is tracked with more savagery and singlemindedness than is the ordinary killer, the ordinary killer in his turn is hunted more fiercely than is the robber.

Stockton used the rope and handkerchief he’d brought to tie AP number two, and even though AP number one looked to be out for it for the rest of the night, Fusco did the same for him. Meantime Parker helped Kengle out of the small knapsack he’d put on just before leaving the bus.

The knapsack contained tools: drill, various bits, screwdrivers, two hammers, a chisel, some other things. With it all, while Stockton kept an eye on Devers and the street and Fusco watched the two APs up here, Parker and Kengle went to work on the vault.

“Vault” was a little too grand a name for it, but on the other hand “safe” was too small a word. It was like a reinforced metal closet in one corner of the room, with a heavy rectangular vault door on it. There was no point trying to go through the wall, so Parker and Kengle concentrated on the door itself, on the combination lock and the hinges.

The hinges proved to be impossible to get at, no matter how they drilled. The weak spot was in the lock. With a combination of drilling and sawing they managed to remove it completely, leaving a hole they could reach into and get at the lock components on the inside. The whole job of opening the door took forty-five minutes.

When the door was open, they saw several metal shelves. The floor was higher than the office floor, because it was reinforced, and on it were two large metal cases, side by side, filling up the whole space. These were what the payroll had arrived in by air this morning. Parker and Kengle pulled them out and opened them.

Several of the shelves were lined with metal boxes, dark green, like long squared-off tool kits, and in each of these was the payroll for a different organization on the base. There was too much bulk and weight to carry all these separate boxes, so Kengle and Parker now went to work forcing each of them open and dumping the money into the larger crates. In each box, beside two or three stacks of bills with red rubber bands around them, there were always a few rolls of coins and a list from a computer giving each man’s name and how much money he was to receive. Only the bills went into the crates, the coins and lists being discarded with the boxes.

It took another half hour to unload all the boxes, and when they were unloaded the two crates were both about three-quarters full. It was now two-fifteen; they’d been at work an hour and a quarter. In that time, Devers had not had cause at all to high-sign Stockton. This part of the base was strictly offices, and deserted at night. And tonight, just before payday besides being a week night, there weren’t very many men with the money or inclination to be out for any reason. They had the area to themselves.

The crates had been pretty heavy to start with, being made of steel, and now that they were full of money they were a full two-man job each. Parker and Fusco took one, Kengle and Stockton took the other, and they moved out of the office and down through the blackness to the first floor.

Parker lit a match in the doorway, and when Devers saw it he stopped and shifted his carbine to port arms. He stood there, his back to the building as he watched in both directions, and Parker and the others carried the two crates out, hurried along the front of the building with them and around the corner into the deeper darkness between the buildings. Here they put them down to rest for a minute, and out front Devers went back to his marching.

From the side of the building to the bus was fast and easy, in solid darkness. Webb opened the door for them and they piled the cases aboard, then carried the two APs out and put them under some bushes at the side of a building across the street, where it was unlikely they’d be found before morning.

When they got back to the bus Webb had put the rear banner on again. They quickly put the side banners on and climbed aboard. Webb had discarded his fatigue jacket and cap and switched to his gold tunic. Now, as the bus started forward, the others got out of their hoods and black sweaters and put their own tunics back on.

Webb turned the corner, stopped for a second, and Devers swung on, grinning from ear to ear, “Beautiful,” he said.

“Get changed,” Fusco told him. It wasn’t over yet.

Devers quit grinning. He shucked out of the borrowed uniform, put his tunic on, and rolled the uniform and carbine and helmet and Webb’s fatigue cap and jacket into a ball. Webb stopped on one dark street and Devers went out to stow these things in a litter basket. Then they drove on.

By the time they reached the South Gate the money crates were stowed way in back, hidden by the musical instruments. The machine guns were back there, too, but the four revolvers were still in pockets, close to hand, when Webb pulled to a stop beside the AP shack.

The guard who came out was young and heavy-lidded. Webb handed the pass to him and the guard looked at it with sleepy suspicion. “You guys are leaving awful late,” he said.

“We were a smash, pal,” Webb told him. “They wouldn’t let us go.”

“Sure.” He waved them through, saying, “Okay, go ahead.”

“Right, pal.”

Out on Hilker Road they turned left and accelerated. There was no traffic anywhere. The speedometer touched ninety, and in under three minutes Webb slowed for the dirt road. This time he went up as fast as the road and bus would take it, not caring how much he jounced the contents or the passengers. Parker and the others clung to seat backs and got bounced around.

At the top, Webb stopped in front of the garages. Stockton ducked out to open one of the doors and Parker and Fusco and Devers and Kengle carried the two crates out and put them in the garage. While they were doing that, Webb turned the bus around and Stockton opened the other garage doors.

Devers said, “See you next week.” The plan was that he was to meet Fusco in New York in ten days to get his piece of the pie.

“See you, Stan,” Fusco said.

Devers got into his Pontiac while Parker slid behind the wheel of Webb’s station wagon. Webb had already started back down the slope.

Parker went second down the dirt road in the Buick, with Devers behind him. At the bottom, Devers blinked his lights in farewell and headed south while Parker turned north after the disappearing taillights of the bus.

They took it up to within two miles of the border, where Webb ran it deep off the road into a stand of trees where it couldn’t be seen from the road. But the tracks would be seen. The law would find the bus early tomorrow, probably within an hour of the alert going out. They would believe the bandits had gone over the border into Canada.

Parker turned the wagon round and slid over to the passenger side. Webb opened the door, got in behind the wheel, and headed them south again. “Worked out nice,” he said.

“It did,” Parker said.

Neither of them was much of a talker, so they were quiet after that. Parker liked that about Webb, his close-mouthedness. They’d worked together a couple of times several years ago, and all Parker knew about Webb was that he was a good hard driver, that he had a passion for playing with cars, and that he was solid in a pinch. It was all he needed to know.

After they made the turn now they stopped and, in the red glow of the taillights, smeared away the tracks their tires had made. They didn’t want anybody coming up here for any reason in the next few days. For the same reason, they stopped again partway up, spent a while brushing away more tracks, and dragged a heavy branch back across the road where it had been before Parker and Fusco had removed it the other day. Then they drove the rest of the way up.

The darkness at the top was complete, broken only by their headlights. All the garage doors were shut.

Webb and Parker got out and opened a set of garage doors and there wasn’t anybody there. Kengle and Stockton and Fusco, all gone. And the money gone too.