“I do,” Carlow said. Nodding his head toward Wycza, he told Devers, “He’s right. The two big ones are hired to mother the money. They lose the money, they’re dead anyway.”
“I’m a pretty good shot,” Devers said. “Let me just plink one, and then we’ll give them a chance to work it out for themselves.”
Carlow twisted around to look at Wycza, get his opinion. These three men didn’t know one another, had never worked together, had only met today, Wycza and Devers on the plane and Carlow in Parker’s apartment. It was hard for them to know how to deal with one another, in what areas each was reliable, in what areas they would be stepping on sore corns. Carlow and Wycza, looking at one another in the faint illumination of a nearby streetlight, tried silently to come to an opinion about Devers, and at the same time to gauge one another. Wycza finally dropped his eyes and nodded slightly, with a small shrug, as if to say, “What the hell, let him have his try. We can cover if we have to.” Carlow pursed his lips and faced front before answering, moves that clearly said to Wycza, “It’s your decision, then, I’m only the driver, and if it bounces back on us later. I’m not the one that did it.” Aloud, Carlow said to Devers, “If you think so.”
“It’s worth a try,” Devers said. Twisting around, he said to Wycza, “Judge it for yourself. If they’re still gonna cause trouble, you jump right in.” So that Devers, too, was being cautious with a new partnership, and not taking all the responsibility on his own shoulders.
Wycza nodded. Devers would shoot one of them in the shoulder, and then Wycza would shoot all three of them in the head. “Fine,” he said.
* * *
The back room never occurred to stockbroker Andrew Leffler when the robbers broke into his house in the middle of the night. He woke up when the ceiling light flashed on, and sat up astonished to see two men in black clothing, with black hoods over their faces, standing in the bedroom doorway, pointing pistols at him. In those first seconds of wakefulness, he thought of them as merely burglars, come to steal anything of value he might have in the house.
Automatically his right hand fumbled to the night table for his glasses. In the other bed Maureen had also awakened, and he heard the sharp intake of breath that said she, too, had seen the men and the guns. But she didn’t scream, and that reminder of Maureen’s stability and presence of mind helped diminish his own rising panic, brought on by the fumbling his startled fingers were doing with his glasses. Not being able to see properly only made things worse.
“Take it easy.” one of the men said, “and nobody gets hurt.”
Finally getting his glasses on, fitting each wing over his ears, he changed his opinion all at once, and decided these two were kidnappers. Let it be me they want, he thought, and not Maureen.
With his glasses on, he could see them more clearly. They were both thin men, seeming even narrower because of the black clothing. They held their guns steadily, and they had separated, moving so they now flanked the doorway. But also. Leffler noticed, so that neither was in a direct line with the windows.
One of them said, “Get up. Both of you. You can put on robes and slippers, that’s all. You won’t need anything else, it’s nice and warm out.”
Leffler thought. Both of us? “Just take me,” he said. “I’m all you want.”
“Don’t waste time,” the man said. His voice was strangely altered and dehumanized by the black hood. “If we have to carry you out,” he said, “we’ll make you regret it.”
Her voice shaky but her manner amazingly firm, Maureen said, “We’d better do what they say. Art.” And she was the first one to throw back the covers and get out of bed.
Leffler hurried to stay with her. It enraged him that these men were seeing his wife in her nightgown, even though the thick cotton showed nothing, and the gown was so voluminous that even the shape of her figure could only be guessed at. But his sense of personal intrusion, of property violation, began with Maureen in her nightgown. His own voice shaking more with outrage than with fear, he said abruptly, “You two will pay for this, you know.”
They didn’t bother to answer, and somehow that was worse than any possible cutting reply. Hearing his brave but ludicrous cliche echoing over and over in his mind, Leffler became embarrassed, and found himself hurrying into his robe and slippers, as though to get this humiliating experience over with as rapidly as possible.
When they were both ready, one of the gunmen said, “We’ll turn this light off now, but we’ll have a flashlight on you, and we can see pretty good in the dark, so don’t get cute. You just walk on through to the front of the house, open the door, and go on outside.”
Argue with them? Try to talk them out of their plan, whatever it was? Leffler hesitated, but he knew no argument would do any good, that he would only finish by embarrassing himself again, so he took his wife’s arm, and the two of them walked together down the hall toward the living room.
For the first few steps they had light-spill from the bedroom for illumination. Then that was turned off, and a small uncertain flashlight beam took its place; mostly it was aimed at their backs and threw great misshapen shadows of them out ahead, lighting little but the walls and furniture to either side. They were moving through their own home, along a route they could have walked blindfolded, but somehow this method was worse than being blindfolded; the constantly altering shadows, the flickering flat distorting light, changed the familiar terrain into unknown territory, and when they entered the living room Leffler struck his knee painfully against the corner of the piano stool.
Maureen’s hand grasped his forearm. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, and though it hurt like fury, he managed to walk without a limp and to restrain himself from bending down to rub it. He would not display weakness in front of these men. Nor, under the circumstances, in front of Maureen. Patting her hand on his forearm, he whispered, “I’m sorry, dear.”
“Don’t be silly.” She squeezed his forearm, and he felt her smiling at him. “This is just an adventure, that’s all,” she said.
An adventure. I am fifty-seven, he told her in his mind, and you are fifty-four. We have no need for adventure.
But he didn’t say anything aloud. And her calm bravery carried him through the house and out the door, the two gunmen following silently in their wake.
And still he hadn’t thought of the back room.
* * *
Nick Rifkin lived upstairs over the bar. The bar was called Nick’s Place, and the whole building was in Nick Rifkin’s name, but he didn’t actually own any of it. As he explained to his friends sometimes, “I just kinda hold it for some guys.”
Nick was fifty-two years old now, a cheerful heavy-set guy who enjoyed playing bartender, living in a kind of semi-retirement. A reliable soldier with the local organization since he was in his teens, he had stood still for a vehicular homicide rap one time that had really belonged to a very important local guy; he’d served five years and three months, and when he’d gotten out his reward had been Nick’s Place. Downstairs the bar, upstairs the apartment and the unofficial loan operation. He got slices in both places, did very well, had some fun, and enjoyed life.
The loan operation was quiet and simple, and most of the borrowers were people from the straight world: businessmen in a bind, operators who needed some quick short-term cash, people whose square-world credit rating was maybe bad, or credit all used up, or something like that. They could borrow big amounts from Nick, amazingly big amounts, and it didn’t matter much to Nick or the people behind him if the debts were ever paid off. All you had to keep current with was the interest: two percent a month, every month. Miss a month and some guys come to visit and talk. Miss two months and the same guys come back, but not to talk.