The boy gestured at the stickers on the side of the bus. “I’m into the same things myself. Us against the world!” He continued to come on, affable but determined. “Unless you fix that wire you’ll short out your whole system.”
It was the wrong moment, but Shayne stepped out of the way and said quietly, “It isn’t my car. It isn’t theirs, either. They stole it. Take a look, but be careful.”
“You are out of your wig, man. Nobody steals minibuses. It’s a matter of resale value.”
He lit a match to look under the dashboard. He dropped the match as though it had burned him, and backed out.
“Excuse me. I have to train myself to be less friendly.”
“How did you like the movie tonight?”
Lester replied carefully, “It was O.K. I mean actually it was quite a good movie. We were surprised.”
“Four guys from the Coast just broke into the building. They’ll be blowing the safe in another minute. There are four movies they want, and apparently Baruch won’t be able to do anything about it afterward but cry. I’ve called for help. It may not get here in time.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“Michael Shayne, and I’m in favor of clean air and water, and I also wish somebody would manufacture a nonpolluting automobile.”
“In that case—” Lester backed away. “How about calling in some of these cats in the armbands? They’re all over.”
“They’d get themselves shot.”
“Lester,” the girl called again.
“Coming, believe me.”
Shayne was watching the second floor windows. On this side, everything was dark. But by this time, unless something had gone wrong, the men inside must have reached the vault.
He put on the armband he had picked up at Baruch’s party and went across the angle at the end of the parking area, making clear by the way he walked that he was on Warehouse business. Rounding the corner, he saw a service entrance with a short loading dock. Everything was closed up tight except for a missing pane in one of the ground-floor windows. It had been cut out neatly, and Shayne saw it only because he was looking for it.
A lighted flashlight was uncovered at one of the upper windows. The light showed for an instant and was covered again. Rizzo, somewhere in the darkness, had been waiting for this signal, and every light inside the fence blinked out at once.
Shayne moved toward the broken window. As he passed a parked car he was pinned in place by the beam of a three-cell flashlight. The man behind the flashlight was wearing one of the armbands.
A voice at Shayne’s elbow said, “We’ve been watching you. That’s not your armband. What was that light upstairs?”
Shayne shielded his eyes. “How would I know? I came back here to relieve myself.”
A hand came around and took the gun out of his belt. “You must be new in town. One of the things we guarantee when they buy a ticket is that they won’t be robbed.”
“You don’t want to bother with me. I just like to look in car windows when they’re getting undressed.”
A fire siren screamed in the distance, right on time. The men moved Shayne toward the theater entrance, one at each arm. Shayne went without resistance, waiting for the next event in Rizzo’s script.
But what happened next was one of the things Shayne himself had arranged. A big car broke through the front gate, traveling fast — Frankie Capp’s Cadillac. A lighter, less expensive car followed, rocking as the driver sawed at the wheel.
“You see,” Shayne said, “the interesting things are happening out there.”
Still a third car came out of a parking bay and headed straight for the building, headlights on full. Instead of turning, it kept going.
One of the men with Shayne shouted. The car smashed against the building. An instant later there was a clash of fenders involving Capp’s big car and the other that had come in behind it. The two drivers came out of their cars and began grappling under the marquee. A guard tried to push between them.
“Is that Frankie?” one of the men holding Shayne said.
It was clearly Capp. The man he was wrestling was small, fat and quite drunk, with flying hair. Rizzo, in the car he had crashed into the Warehouse, untangled himself from the seat belt and jumped out. Shayne dug in his heels. With an explosive whoosh, the car burst into flame. Only a tick later, there was a puff of sound from inside the building. Shayne heard it, but to the others, it was drowned out by the roar and crackle from the burning car.
They fell back, then started to circle. Shayne stopped cooperating. He jumped backward, throwing his arms upward and outward to break their grip. He pushed one man off balance and nailed the other with a looping left, which dropped him. An instant later, Shayne was around the corner, out of sight.
The second man decided not to come after him, but to continue to the theater entrance and assist Capp.
The fire engine came through the gate and headed for the blaze.
Shayne slid under the loading dock. His hand closed on a short length of two-by-two scrap lumber. Presently, from inside the building, he heard the creak of the descending hoist. A moment afterward, a light showed at the broken window. The sash came up and one of the thieves, the dark-haired boy in the tight pants, dropped to the ground. The men inside lowered a wire shopping cart, filled nearly to the brim with film cans.
Swenson, the safeblower, was next. He ordered the flashlight turned off, and when the last member of the group jumped down in the dark, he landed badly, going to one knee with a grunt. The others were wheeling the cart away.
“Pepe,” Shayne called in a low voice when the hobbling figure reached the dock.
He kept going, so this one must be Angel.
“Angel,” Shayne snapped.
Angel looked back. The gap had widened between him and the cart. Shayne swung the two-by-two at his shins and cut him down.
The men with the cart had now come out into the flickering light from the fire. Pepe looked back when Angel yelled, but Swenson was desperate to get away before anything worse happened, and kept him from returning. Angel writhed on the blacktop, in pain. Shayne took the gun he was wearing and tapped him with it, to confuse him further.
The whole corner of the building was burning, but another piece of apparatus had arrived, and so many firemen had converged on the fire that it seemed likely that they would succeed in halting it there.
A police car pulled in, and Capp ran toward it, waving his arms. Tonight he and the police were in the odd situation of being allies.
Firemen were bringing in hose from a street hydrant, passing it over the fence. Shayne was on the wrong side of the line. A surprisingly large crowd had already gathered, and most of the spectators had presumably come from the parked cars. Shayne looked for a car with nobody in it. He found a purple sedan that had no heads showing. The ignition key was in place. He had started the motor and moved out of the bay before realizing that the back seat was occupied. The seat itself had been replaced by a double mattress, on which a narcoticized couple lay entwined, moving dreamily without noticing that the car was also in motion.
Shayne drove all the way around the building, coming back under the marquee.
The girl murmured behind him, “Like that. Oh, it’s wild.”
Rizzo was standing beside the open rear door of the bus. The shopping cart was now empty. A kick sent it careening into the darkness. The Smaller VW, belonging to the bearded youth who had tried to help Shayne, was no longer there.
The cops came out of their car, looking around to see what crimes were being committed. One of the cars from the wrong side of the fire line forced its way, honking, past the firemen to head for the gate. One of the cops drew his gun and aimed carefully at a tire, blowing it with his third shot.