Liss made his way through the junk across the yard to the other fence, and looked down the row of yards. Some were neater than this, some as messy. A few had been turned into cared-for gardens and some had outdoor furniture in little conversational groups. Almost all the yards were defined or separated by some kind of fence. Every house had the exterior metal staircase giving access to the second floor. Every window down the entire block was dark, and the outside darkness was deeper the farther you went toward the middle of the block.
Liss went over four fences, looking for the yard with the least sign of activity; neither a garden nor an accumulation of junk. He wanted a yard that suggested either a vacant apartment or a stay-at-home tenant, and when he found the right one he went silently up the stairs to that second-floor door, and just as silently through the door with a credit card.
He was in a kitchen, small and old-fashioned, not remodeled for maybe thirty years. There was very little light, just enough to suggest the place was neat, cared for. He opened the small old refrigerator with its rounded corners and found it contained small amounts of just a few things; milk, orange juice, a few eggs, some tiny leftovers in plastic. A solitary; good.
The refrigerator's interior light, in the few seconds he'd had the door open, had spoiled his night vision. He stood patiently in the middle of the room, one hand touching the refrigerator door, until shapes took form in his sight again, and then he moved forward, through the deeper darkness of the doorway on the other side of the room.
Night vision no longer helped. Shuffling forward very slowly, as silent as possible, both hands moving to the sides and out ahead, Liss made his way down a short black hall with a pair of closed doors facing one another partway along. A little farther, his groping right foot touched the saddle of a doorway. He stopped. He felt the wood of the frame, then the closed door itself, and then the old faceted glass knob. He turned the knob as slowly and gently as though it were a safe in the back of a store still open for business, and when it gave a tiny chick sound he eased the door open, out away from himself.
Light, thin diffuse gray light defining the rectangles of two windows. This was the small living room, facing the street. Liss came on through, still holding the doorknob turned, and reached his other hand around to grasp the knob on the other side. He held that one in the same position as he eased the door shut again, then turned to look the place over.
A living room, underfurnished. Two sagging armchairs, one near each window. A small TV, on a low wooden crate. A couple of end tables and lamps. One side wall was absolutely empty; that's where the sofa would have been.
Liss crossed the room and looked out a front window, just in time to see a car turning in at the parking lot entrance across the way. Brenda? No, it wasn't the station wagon. Liss sat on the arm of the chair behind him, and watched through narrowed eyes. Who was in that car? What did they want?
The car made its hesitant moves around the
parking lot, and Liss tensed up when it stopped over by the construction trailer. People out of the car, fucking around over there at the trailer. He didn't like that, he didn't want anybody else around his money. That's my money, he thought. Keep away.
"Who's there?"
Liss automatically rose to his feet, while his mind registered that voice. Old, male, querulous. Liss moved catlike away from the windows.
"Who's there? /hear you!"
Liss slid along the empty wall, coming the long way around to the door, so he'd wind up behind it when it opened.
"You better speak up! I've got a gun!"
Oh, have you, Liss thought. Good; I need a gun.
The doorknob rattled. "I'm warning you! I'm coming in!"
Do it and get it over with, Liss thought.
The door opened. Liss leaned close to it, eyes fixed on the gray rectangle of window past the dark vertical line of the edge of the door. A figure moved into that space, and Liss clubbed down with his forearm, hitting the top of a shoulder, the side of a neck. The old voice cried out, and Liss swung around the door, punching hard into the indistinct figure, connecting three times before it could fall.
Light switch. Should be beside the doorway, same side as the knob. Yes; Liss flipped it, and a ceiling light came on, the bulb discreetly behind a round pink glass saucer.
The unmoving old man on the floor bled slightly from nose and mouth. He wore gray pajamas and a thick wool maroon robe and dark blue slippers. Liss rolled him over, frisked him, searched the floor all around him, and there was no gun. The old son of a bitch lied.
Liss switched off the light, hurried back to the window, and was just in time to see that unwelcome car come across the parking lot, moving as slowly and hesitantly as ever, and jounce out the exit onto the street. It drove away, out of sight.
Good, Liss thought. I don't know who you people are, but stay out of the way.
8
Zack was still driving. He steered them out of the stadium parking lot and down the empty street, as Ralph said. "All for nothing, the whole thing for nothing."
"We don't give up," Zack said. He'd grown less cocky, but more sullen and just as determined, since he'd lost the woman in the station wagon.
When she'd come out of the motel, moving with purposeful speed, all three of them in the car had perked up, even Woody, who'd been sulking about something for hours. And at first they'd liked it that she was pushing hard, driving a little too fast for the city streets. It meant action at last, something happening.
They'd heard on the car radio about the half-million-dollar robbery—a half a million dollars!—and they knew the robbers had gotten away with it clean and clear. They were still at large. And this woman in the station wagon would lead them right to it.
Except she didn't. "Shit," Zack said at one point, "she's onto us."
"Oh, goddamn it," Woody said. "I knew it'd be something." His brief return of high spirits was over, already.
Ralph was leaning forward again, forearms atop the front seat. "Maybe she isn't," he said. "What makes you think she is?"
"We went down this block before," Zack said, angry and disgusted, "and made that fucking turn!"
Half a block ahead, the woman took a right turn very hard and fast, the heavy body of the wagon sagging way leftward as she went around the corner and out of sight. Zack took the turn as fast as he could, not quite as quick as the woman, and when they came around— Goddamit, the station wagon's coming the other way!
How did she do that? A hard right, an impossibly tight U-turn to the left, and coming back the other way as Zack completed his own turn. All three of them gaped at her, and she pretended they weren't even there. A good-looking woman, dramatic in the rose-glow of her dashboard, jaw set, eyes facing front as she flashed on by.
Ralph twisted around to look out the back window, and saw her take a left so fast and so sharp she left rubber all over the street back there. Going back the way they'd come. And of course, by the time Zack got them turned around and back to the intersection she was long gone.
Still, he drove in her imagined wake for a while, as they argued about what it meant and what to do next. "It doesn't come out right," Woody kept saying. "Everything screws up, it just gets worse and worse, we should never of got into this, we're fuckups, that's all, we're just fuckups."