The guy by the door said, casually, “Nothing’s going to happen, dear. Just another walk through the club together, like before.”
The big man was still looking at Faran. He said, “You got that, Frank?”
“I’ve got it,” Faran said. He was thinking that this was some kind of vendetta between these two and Mr. Lozini, or more likely between Mr. Lozini and some big shot who’d hired these two, and he was very glad all they’d wanted was the night’s receipts. Sometimes, in Mr. Lozini’s world, big shots showed they were mad at each other by killing off each other’s people. Faran was suddenly thinking he’d been a lot closer to major trouble than he’d realized.
The big man nodded at him, and turned to Angie. “Let’s go,” he said.
Angie stared toward Faran, as though needing him to help her start. He said, “It’s okay, Angie. They’re not out to hurt any people.”
“That’s right,” said the one by the door. “Absolutely right. We just don’t hurt people, and that’s all there is to it. Come on, Angie, take a walk down me alley and tell me who do you love.” He said the last in a deep Bo Diddley voice, and Angie even managed a shaky grin toward him as the three of them walked out of the office, the big man going last and closing the door behind him.
Faran slapped his hand out immediately onto the phone, but he didn’t lift the receiver. He could have, it didn’t make any real difference whether he waited for Angie to come back or not, but he didn’t. For some reason he just felt better doing it the way the big man wanted.
With his free hand he tapped the gouge marks in the desk top. Ruined, absolutely ruined. And a goddam expensive desk too, solid walnut. Deep bad gouges, rough splinters; no way to patch that up.
Angie came in, running, loud with relief. “Oh, Frank! Oh, my God!”
Faran lifted the receiver, started to dial.
“They had a car,” she was saying. She was panting, out of breath as though she’d run a mile. “There was dirt all over the license plate, but it was a dark green Chevrolet.”
“Rented,” he said. “Under a phony name. Forget it.” He finished dialing and listened for the ringing to start.
Angie came around the desk, leaning toward him, putting her hand on his shoulder for support. “God, Frank,” she said, “I was so scared.”
“Later,” he said. For the first time in the last five minutes his stomach growled and rolled. He had to break wind, he couldn’t help it; something he hated to do in the presence of a woman. If only it would be quiet; squeezing it out, he heard a horrible long muffled Bronx cheer from behind him. “Jesus,” he said, embarrassed and angry and upset and frightened and relieved and hungry and worried and wishing he didn’t have this goddam phone call to make. “Jesus Jesus Jesus.”
“Frank?”
“Later, for Christ’s sake!” With a wild arm movement, he flung her hand away from his shoulder. The phone was ringing at last.
Angie backed away from him, looking at him as though he’d betrayed her. He knew what it was, he knew he was supposed to comfort her, put his arms around her, that whole number, but good Christ, first things first!
A voice came on the line.
“Yeah,” Faran said. “This is Frank Faran, down at the New York Room. I have to talk to Mr. Lozini. Yeah, well, you better wake him up, this is important. Yeah, I know, I know, but do it anyway. It’s my responsibility. He’ll want to hear this.”
Eight
Two-thirty a.m. In the watchman’s shed by the main gate, Donald Snyder put down his paperback book, got to his feet, and reached for the flashlight and key ring. Time to make his half-hour rounds through the plant. He left the yellow brightness of the watchman’s shed for the red-tinged darkness outside and plodded across the blacktop loading area toward the main building. Great red neon letters on the roof of the three-story plant spelled out KEDRICH BEER brightly enough to obscure the splinter of moon above them in the sky, and brightly enough so that Snyder didn’t need to use his flashlight at all until he was inside the main building.
Kedrich was a strictly local brand of beer, unknown fifty miles from Tyler but nevertheless a successful brewery for over seventy years. It was an ordinarily good beer, about the same as most others, but its success didn’t depend on its excellence. The unstated but generally understood fact was that no bar in Tyler could obtain or keep a liquor license unless it carried Kedrich beer on tap. “We all want to support local business” was the way the Kedrich salesmen described the situation to newcomers.
Unlocking the side door, Snyder stepped into the building, switched on the flashlight, and aimed it down the long empty corridor. No trouble, everything as quiet as ever.
Good. He strolled on down the corridor, flashing his light to both sides, expecting nothing wrong and seeing nothing wrong. Both corridor walls were lined with small-paned windows, and through the glass Snyder’s flashlight shone on bottling equipment to the left and brewing equipment to the right. Everything fine on the first floor.
And on the second. The raw materials were stored here, in large cool low-ceilinged rooms lined with rows of fluorescent lights. Snyder opened each door he came to, flicked on the wall switch that turned on all the lights, and saw every time the same proper silent emptiness, the rows of boxes or bins or bales, the clean concrete floors. No smell of smoke, no scampering sounds of rats, no trouble. Unbroken silence and peace.
Third floor. Here were the offices, all the white-collar workers and the bosses. Some of the executives, down at the far end, had really plush suites to themselves, with big picture windows overlooking the river, plus paintings on the walls and thick carpets on the floors and their own private bathrooms and kitchens. Snyder would never touch anything he wasn’t supposed to, but he did like sometimes to walk around in those offices, just looking, enjoying the aura of warmth and security that always surrounds well-spent money.
At the near end, though, were all the clerical offices: crowded, busy, brisk, filled with metal desks and filing cabinets, still with their original small-paned windows looking out on the loading area or the parking lot or the secondary buildings. Snyder strolled along, opening doors, flashing his light inside, and at one point as he was walking down the corridor he became aware that there was somebody walking beside him.
He thought his heart would stop. His moving foot fumbled, the flashlight wobbled, he had to touch the wall next to him for balance. Then, blinking repeatedly in fear, he turned his head to look at the man beside him.
He was tall, slender, dressed in dark clothing. Over his head and face he wore one of those wool ski masks, the way terrorists did in photos in the newspaper. He had no weapons in his hands, and he wasn’t making any threatening gestures, yet he was terrifying.
Snyder couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He was afraid to shine the flashlight directly at the man, but still kept it pointed more or less down the corridor, showing the emptiness down there. Light-spill from the smooth walls was enough to see the man, to watch him nod and make a small strange half-saluting gesture, like the hero of a movie comedy from the thirties. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”
It was such an absurd statement, said so quietly and casually, that for a few seconds Snyder could make no sense out of it at all. He just stood there, until the man leaned slightly toward him, obviously concerned, saying, “Are you all right?”
“I—” Snyder moved his hands vaguely, the light beam swinging this way and that. His fright and confusion left him speechless, until he managed to distill it all into one central question; he blurted it out like an actor onstage belatedly remembering his line: “Who are you?”
“Ah.” It seemed somehow that the man was smiling, though the mouth-hole in the mask was too small and the light too bad for Snyder to be sure. “I am,” he said, “a thief. And you are a night watchman.”