The one with the bag said, “You’re such a smart individual, Nick. You’re really okay.”
”Don’t bother to give me a reference,” Nick told him. The other one said, “I’ll give you something better, Nick. A little suggestion.”
Nick watched him, waiting for it.
“Pretty soon,” the guy said, “you’ll want to make a phone call, tell somebody about this.”
“More than likely.”
“Call Dutch Buenadella,” the guy said.
Nick frowned. “Why?” “He’ll be interested, Nick.”
The one with the bag said, “Nick, you have to come for a walk with us now.”
Nick said, “Why don’t I just sit down here and count to a million?”
The one by the dresser said, “Humor us, Nick. Do it our way.”
They’d given him advice about who he should call, so they mustn’t be planning on killing him, or injuring him very badly. Something like a knock on the head he could live with. “Okay,” he said. “It’s your act, why should I horn in?”
As they were leaving the bedroom the snoring started again. Nick shook his head but didn’t say anything, and walked on downstairs, the guy with the money ahead of him, the other one bringing up the rear.
Downstairs they strolled through the bar, and it occurred to Nick to wonder why he wasn’t hearing from the Vigilant people.
So they must have cut the wires, these two.
They opened the front door, and Nick stood to one side for them to go out, saying, “Come back soon.”
“Come on outside with us, Nick. Wave us goodbye.”
“Listen, fellas,” Nick said, “I don’t have any shoes.”
“Just for a minute. Come on.” And the guy took his arm and walked him outside.
It was warmer out there than indoors. Nevertheless Nick felt stupid to be standing around on the sidewalk barefoot, wearing nothing but T-shirt and shorts. The nearest streetlight was half a block away, and there wasn’t any moon tonight, but still he felt exposed and open, as though hundreds of people were watching him.
Not hundreds. Just three: the two thieves, and their driver in the Pontiac waiting at the curb.
The guy with the money hurried directly to the Pontiac, sliding into the back seat, pushing the leather bag ahead of himself. The other one pulled the bar door shut and tested the door to be sure it was locked. “Goodnight, Nick,” he said, and Nick watched him cross the sidewalk and slide in front next to the driver. The car pulled immediately away, and Nick turned back to the bar door.
It was really locked. He rattled the knob, but that wouldn’t do any good. “Shit,” he said to himself, and walked around to the side of the house, where the bright yellow light marked his bedroom window. “Hey, Angela!” he yelled. Then he found some pebbles and threw them up at the window. Then he yelled some more.
Finally he had to go around front and find a big stone and throw it through the window in the front door and let himself in that way.
* * *
They took all the cash; no stocks, no negotiable bearer bonds, nothing but the hidden cash. Leffler watched it all disappearing into two blue plastic laundry bags, and after the first shock he simply waited it out. Lozini and the others couldn’t blame him; after all, he wasn’t a bodyguard or a murderer. He wasn’t a criminal at all, merely a stockbroker, he couldn’t be expected to defend their money against people like this.
The vault lights were on, since they couldn’t be seen from the street: bright fluorescents reflecting hazily from the brushed-chrome fixtures. The two men in their dark clothing and black hoods had a silence and swiftness and coldness to them that seemed invincible; no one could defend that money against these two.
How miserable Leffler felt. Maureen stood next to him, her hands closed around his arm just above the elbow, giving him strength with her presence and her touch, and he knew this whole thing was his fault. Endangering her, getting himself in this horrible position. Somehow, a dozen years ago, there must have been some other way to deal with the problem, to help Jim without entangling himself with such people as Adolf Lozini and these two gunmen.
And now they had the money. Carrying the laundry bags, they moved to the vault entrance, and one of them said, “We’ll leave the lights on. Or do you want them off?”
The switch was outside. “On,” Leffler said. “Please, on.”
“Right.” The man hesitated, then said, “You’ll be okay. Somebody’ll get you out in the morning.”
The compassion in the man’s voice enraged Leffler more than anything else that had happened. “You’re the ones who won’t be all right,” he said, and his voice was trembling with his fury.
The man shrugged; he and his partner stepped outside, and the heavy vault door was pushed shut. “Thank God,” Maureen said.
“I’m through,” Leffler said. His throat kept closing when he tried to talk, his words came out half-strangled. “I don’t care, Maureen, I don’t care what happens. I’m finished with Lozini. No more.”
“It’s all right, dear,” she said, and put her arms around him, cradling his head against her gray-and-black rough-feeling hair. “It’s all right now,” she promised.
And like a fool, like a child, like some helpless ninny, he found himself weeping.
* * *
Ben Pelzer stopped next to his car, the key in his hand. While Jerry Trask and Frank Slade kept an eye up and down the street, he stooped slightly, holding the suitcase full of Frank Schroder’s money as he slipped the key into the lock in the door.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the movement, and looked up with a sudden presentiment. Two men were getting out of the next car back, and even before he saw the guns in their hands he knew it was a hijack.
Trask and Slade were the defenders. Pelzer had a pistol under his jacket but he never even thought of reaching for it. He turned away instead, his movements fast and jerky as a silent film, leaving the key in the car door as he headed diagonally across the sidewalk, behind Jerry Trask, away from the two guys from the other car.
Trask and Slade had seen them at the same time, and both reached for guns. Stan Devers shot Trask in the shoulder and Trask turned half around and fell to his knees on the pavement. Slade was bringing a pistol out and Dan Wycza waited two seconds after Devers’ shot before putting a bullet in Slade’s forehead.
Mike Carlow was starting the engine of the Ambassador, hunching slightly over the wheel, watching the play outside, ready to drop along the seat out of sight if one of those other people actually managed to get a gun out.
It wasn’t going to happen. Trask, on his knees, in profile to Devers and Wycza, went on doggedly tugging at the gun under his jacket.
“Asshole,” Devers said, and shot him in the ear.
Ben Pelzer kept running, zigzagging away down the sidewalk, toting the suitcase. If he’d dropped it, he might have been able to get away. Wycza and Devers fired at the same time, and Pelzer splayed out, then somersaulted onto the sidewalk. The suitcase skidded away until it brought up against a fire hydrant.
Wycza and Devers got back into the Ambassador, and Carlow drove down the block and stopped next to the hydrant. “I’ll get it,” Devers said, acknowledging that he’d been wrong. He got out, picked up the suitcase, put it in back with Wycza, and slid in next to Carlow again.
Forty-seven
Parker sat and listened to them tell each other about their scores. They were all up, all of them happy and excited because they’d made out tonight. “It was so easy”: they all said that, at one time or another.
Wiss and Elkins were the first ones back, bringing with them the biggest score of the night: one hundred forty-six thousand, four hundred eighty-seven dollars, the money from the vault at the stock brokerage. “They were really putting it away for a rainy day,” Elkins said.
Philly Webb, who had driven Wiss and Elkins here, had immediately gone away again to get Handy McKay and Fred Ducasse from the Vigilant office. Before he got back, Carlow and Wycza and Devers came in, with a scuffed suitcase from the dope dealer containing eighty thousand, eight hundred and twelve dollars. “We should have a night like this once a year,” Wycza said.