"We've been doing fine up till now, George." The light hung on the rim, golden red. The air was so clear you could see individual branches, fall shades of yellow and tan on the weeds and underbrush, turned Technicolor by the sun.
Liss abruptly stood. "Ralph," he said, "put your foot on that gun."
Parker didn't bother to watch Quindero obey. He also stood, watching Liss's hands, waiting for one of them to reach to a pocket or behind his back. "George," he said, "don't fuck things up."
"There's a closet," Liss said. "Ralph and me, we looked the place over when we first got here. Downstairs, next story down, there's a closet with a door on it and a lock on the outside."
"George, you don't want me to—"
"It's that or I wound you," Liss said. The strain was coming back into his voice. "Maybe that'd be easier anyway. Don't have to gut-shoot you, I can take out both your knees, and Ralph can carry you when it's time to go."
Quindero made a little startled sound, not quite a protest.
Parker said, "Better have Ralph test that first. See how far he can carry me."
Quindero stammered and said, "I don't— I don't think I could do that." He was a reedy weedy thing, a poor specimen.
Liss had to know it, but he also had to protect himself. "Goddamit, Parker," he said. "I want you out of the way, locked up, where I don't have to worry about you all the time. Eleven-thirty, we'll let you out, we'll all get out of here. Meantime, Ralph and me, we'll go get a car."
"George—"
"We do it my way!"
Parker was silent, thinking. A closet till eleven-thirty? Half an hour after Brenda and Mackey would drive by the motel, and they surely wouldn't wait. But could a closet hold him that long? Liss and Quindero had to go get a car. He said, "Make it eleven. It could take a while to get there."
"Eleven," Liss agreed. "But I can't have you out here, Parker, you understand that. I'll have to shoot you, either to kill or wound. I can't have you around."
"I'll wait, George," Parker said. "Where is this closet of yours?"
"Downstairs. Next flight down. You lead the way."
The light hung on the rim of the ravine. Parker shrugged and turned toward the stairs. Behind him, Liss said, "Ralph, bring along that fucking gun."
8
It was darker down here, with all these interior walls separating off bedrooms and bathrooms, but Liss and Quindero were behind him, keeping their distance, and there was no advantage to be made of the darkness. Parker went down the stairs, and at the bottom, from behind him, Liss said, "Around to the right," which was the hall through the middle of the building.
Parker saw that the closet Liss was talking about was the one that used to be the elevator shaft. The lock was a hasp, with a wooden dowel stuck in it. Liss, still keeping well back, said, "Take the dowel out. Hand it back to Ralph."
Parker did that, and opened the door, and only a faint odor of dry wood came out. It was black inside there, impossible to see a thing.
Liss, sounding more and more nervous, said, "What's the problem? Get in there."
It wouldn't do to have Liss lose control; he was the one with the guns. Parker said, 'Take it easy, George. It's dark in here, I gotta feel my way."
He took a step forward, reaching his arms out, and at first encountered nothing. The elevator, when it had been in place, had been deeper than wide, comfortable for two people, possible for three if they knew one another. Now that the space was a closet, the front half was empty, but when Parker stepped in deeper, his hands met the round horizontal wooden pole toward the back for hanging clothes on, and the wooden shelf above it. Both were empty, and so was the floor.
The pole and shelf were at head height, but there was plenty of room in front of them. Parker turned around to look out at Liss and Quindero, in the hall with the staircase behind them. "All right, George," he said. "Go get your car."
Liss said to Quindero, "Shut it. Put the dowel in. Make sure it's goddam tight."
Quindero came forward. His eyes met Parker's just before he shut the door, and they were full of panic. But he'd go on obeying Liss, because there wasn't one solitary other thing he could think of to do.
The door closed. In absolute darkness, he heard the dowel scrape into place. Then it sounded as though Quindero was pounding the dowel in tighter, probably with the butt of Thorsen's gun. Shoot his own elbow off, if he wasn't careful.
Late for Ralph Quindero to be careful.
Parker went down on the floor, pressing his cheek to the plywood floor and his head against the base of the door, his ear next to the space under the door. He heard Quindero back away, heard him say, "It's good and tight."
"Good."
"Do we go get the car now?"
"No. When it's dark. Come on upstairs."
The steps went away. Two pairs, receding down the hall, then mounting the stairs.
Parker sat up, rested his back against the plywood wall, and crossed his forearms on his knees. His watch didn't glow in the dark, which was sometimes an advantage and sometimes not.
It didn't matter. He was better in here for now, not making Liss antsy. There was plenty of time to come out.
9
It was probably time. Parker had listened now and then at that space at the bottom of the door, but heard nothing, so Liss and Quindero weren't bothering to check on him in here. He'd seen the faint gray line of light under the door shadow and blur, until at last it disappeared into the general black. He'd gone on waiting, and now it was probably time to get out of here.
Did Liss understand what these closets were? Maybe not. They were afterthoughts, simple structures inserted to make use of the space. These closets were not structural, and therefore had none of the building's support beams going through their ceilings and floors. Simple stringers, two-by-six lengths of wood, had been toed into place to support plywood floors; that was it. And Ed Mackey had already showed them how to lift the floor in the bottom-level closet, to find the motor well for use as a hiding place for the duffel bags.
Parker went down on all fours and started in a front corner, patting the floor, looking for a seam. He found it where he expected it to be, about a foot and a half back from the doorway opening, the same place it had been downstairs. When they'd added these closets, they'd laid one sheet of plywood from the rear of the space to near the front, to give themselves leeway in fitting the piece in, and then they'd cut a second piece to fill the remaining space.
Next, he stood and felt his way to the back of the closet, where he patted the underpart of the shelf until he came to one of the two L-shaped brackets that the shelf rested on. It would have been easier if the shelf had just been placed there, but they'd screwed it to the brackets, so he stood under the shelf, bent down, kept out of the way of the wooden clothes pole, and punched upward with the heels of both hands, flanking one of the brackets, until the shelf broke loose.
When the shelf popped upward, with a quick ripping sound, one of the screws fell out and bounced on the floor. Parker paused, listening for a reaction. There'd been very little noise, but he couldn't be sure they hadn't heard it. If they were in the building.
After three or four minutes, when he still heard nothing, he went back to work, holding the shelf up out of the way with one hand while twisting the bracket back and forth with the other, until the screws holding it to the wall came loose. This part he managed to do with almost no noise at all.
Now he had the bracket for a tool. It was three inches along one side and four inches along the other, thin but strong metal. He put this to work on the floor, gouging along the seam line until he'd torn a slit wide enough to squeeze the bracket into. Kneeling on the larger section of floor, bearing down on the bracket, he pried the smaller section up one fraction at a time. Four screws had been drilled down into the corners of this piece, plus one each at front and back into the central stringer. It was the rear screw in the stringer that Parker pried out first, then the left corner, then the right. Then he could peel this piece up and back toward the door, until the other three screws gave way.