Use the opportunity, Balenger warned himself. He raised the bottle to his mouth, gulping the tepid water.
"Where's the vault?" Mack demanded.
An eerie whisper made them turn.
"Moon…," Cora sang to herself. "River." She swayed from side to side, as if hearing private music, ghostly refrains of the melody her dead husband had played for her. "Wide…" Her raw red eyes were huge, but she seemed to see nothing in front of her. "Drifting…" As she shifted her weight from one foot to another, Balenger had the disturbing impression that she danced with someone, slowly, chest to chest, cheek to cheek, never leaving the spot where she was rooted. "Dream…" Tears rolled down her cheeks as candlelight wavered over her. "Heartbreak."
"She's your date," Tod told Mack. "Do something to shut her up."
Conklin gathered the strength to interrupt. Balenger gave the injured man credit for trying to distract attention from Cora. "The vault was hidden. That was the whole idea." The professor leaned back on the sofa, his eyes closed. "If people knew there was a vault, they'd wonder what was inside."
"Hidden where?" Tod asked.
Conklin didn't answer.
"If you don't know, why the hell did we bring you?"
"We'll find it. Vinnie, give me a hand." Balenger sensed lethal impatience building in his captors. He'd been there before, felt it before, from beneath a sack tied around his head. We need to keep making them think we're useful.
He pivoted toward Mack. "Give me the crowbar."
"Don't think so."
Cora kept singing faintly, swaying as if on drugs or dancing with a ghost. Her blank eyes saw nothing. "Cross…" Her throat sounded raw, her voice breaking.
"That bitch is getting on my nerves," JD said.
"No crowbar?" Balenger said to draw their attention. "All right, damn it, I'll improvise." He grabbed a stainless steel ashtray from a glass-and-chrome table, clamped it between his taped hands, and went to the wall on the right. In a fury, he pushed away the bookcase and pounded the ashtray's edge against the wall, the noise blocking Cora's lament. A stylized painting of a woman in a streamlined 1920s roadster, her long hair flying in the wind, fell from the wall.
"No," the professor murmured.
Balenger shifted along the wall, continuing to hammer with the ashtray. Plaster cracked. Another painting crashed.
"Forget the gold coins!" Vinnie told JD, raising his voice to be heard above the noise. "That ashtray he's destroying was in mint condition. You could have sold it for a thousand dollars on eBay. And those two paintings that fell."
"A thousand dollars?"
"Probably more. And then there's the chrome candleholder and the frosted green glass vases and the stainless-steel cigarette case."
Mack picked the case off a table and opened it. "It still has cigarettes." He pulled one out. Paper and tobacco crumbled in his fingers.
"The lamps, the chairs, the glass tables, the lacquered sofa. Perfect condition," Vinnie emphasized. "All told, you're looking at a quarter-million dollars, probably higher, and you don't need to worry about the government coming after you for trying to sell gold coins stolen from the mint. Easy job. Rent a truck. We'll help you load it. We'll smile and wave as you drive away. Just leave us alone. I swear to God, I'll never tell anybody about you."
"A thousand dollars?" Tod repeated. "For an ashtray?"
"But not anymore. Now it's junk."
Balenger overturned a glass table and whacked the ashtray against the continuation of the wall. The table shattered.
"There goes twenty thousand dollars," Vinnie said.
"Hey!" Mack told Balenger. "Stop!"
"But you ordered us to find the vault!"
"How's pounding the wall going to-"
"Aren't you listening? The wall's hollow from bare spaces between the joists!" Balenger's hands throbbed from the force of his hammering. His chest heaved from the frenzy of his exertion. "We need to keep pounding till we find a section that sounds solid. That's where the vault is."
"Then why are you just standing there?" Mack told Vinnie. "Give him a hand!"
Vinnie grabbed a stainless-steel vase and headed toward the wall.
"How much is that worth?"
"Probably five thousand."
"Put it down. Use this." Mack hurled the crowbar toward Vinnie's feet.
"Try to hit us with it," Tod said, "and I'll shoot your eyes out."
Vinnie grabbed the crowbar between his taped hands and walloped it against the wall. It smashed a huge hole in the plaster.
"Now we're getting somewhere," JD said.
"Mighty nice gun. Heckler and Koch P2000, it says here on the side. Forty caliber," Tod emphasized.
Balenger and Vinnie kept pounding.
"More powerful than a nine millimeter. Less powerful than a forty-five. Like Goldilocks and the three bears. Not too much. Not too little. Just right. A forty caliber's a police load, right?"
Balenger kept slamming the ashtray against the wall. – "Hey, hero, I asked you a question," Tod said. "I'm talking to you. Stop and look at me."
Balenger turned. He breathed deeply.
"A forty caliber's a police load," Tod said.
"I'm not a cop."
"Right."
"Far from it."
"Sure. The more I look at this gun, the fancier it is. It's got a slide release lever on both sides so you can reload with either hand if one of your arms is wounded. It's got a magazine release lever behind the trigger guard where either hand can reach it if one of your arms takes a bullet."
"Mostly, those features are for left-handed shooters."
"Of course, of course, why didn't I think of that? What's your name again?"
"Frank."
"Well, Frank, while your buddy works and gives you a rest, why don't you tell us about yourself?"
"Yeah," Mack said, "convince us you're not a cop."
Vinnie paused.
"Hey, Big Ears, nobody told you to quit," JD said.
Blank-faced, Cora sobbed and sang.
Vinnie whacked the crowbar against the wall.
"Frank, maybe you're not taking us seriously," Tod said.
"Believe me, I am."
"Then talk to us," Mack said. "Convince us you're not a cop."
"Yeah," Tod said. "Convince us not to shoot you."
36
Slowly, carefully, Balenger set down the ashtray. He didn't want to tell them what they wanted to know, but he didn't see an alternative. Maybe this would help him bond with them. "I'm former military."
"And how come you know the professor?" Tod asked.
"I took a class from him."
"I don't get the connection."
"I was in Iraq."
"I still don't get the connection."
"The first Gulf War. Desert Storm. 1991. I was a Ranger."
"Hi, yo, Tonto," JD said.
"After I came back home to Buffalo, I got sick. Aches. Fever."
"Hey, I didn't ask for your medical history. What I want to know is-"
Vinnie pounded another hole in the wall.
"The VA hospital in Buffalo kept telling me I had a stubborn case of the flu. Then I heard that a lot of other veterans were sick, and finally the newspapers and TV started calling it Gulf War syndrome. The military said Saddam Hussein might have used chemical or biological weapons on us."
"If you don't answer the question…"
"Or maybe it was caused by a disease spread by sand fleas. The desert has a lot of insects."
"I ask you to prove you're not a cop, and I get your life story."
"But the more I read about it, the more I suspected what made me sick was the depleted uranium in our artillery shells. The uranium hardens them and makes it easy for the explosive heads to go through enemy tanks."