Now he got out of the Volkswagen, a stocky old man in a long overcoat and a nondescript hat, moving with a little winter stiffness in his joints. He went to the gates, gleaming in the Volkswagen’s headlights, pulled the key ring from his overcoat pocket, found the right key, and unlocked the gates. He swung two of them open, making a space big enough to drive the car through, then went back behind the wheel again, drove in, and stopped well clear of the gates. He switched off the engine, but left the lights on so he’d be able to see to close and lock the gates again. He got out of the car, and three men came through the gates with guns in their hands and handkerchiefs over the lower part of their faces.
Snyder stared at them, refusing to believe it. They said something to him, voices muffled by the cold and the handkerchiefs, but he didn’t understand the words. He just stared.
They made angry, threatening gestures with the guns, and he saw their eyes above the handkerchiefs, cold and impatient, and finally he understood what it was they wanted — though not why, that was incomprehensible — and slowly he raised his hands up over his head.
Two of them held the guns on him while the third came around behind him and patted him all over, finding his Colt .44 revolver in his right overcoat pocket. His own gun, had it for years, always carried it on this job, never used it once. Not for real. Used to do some target-shooting with it, some plinking, shot some rats back in the old days when he lived near the city dump where the new apartment houses were now, but he’d never fired that gun once at a human being. Never even pointed it at a human being. Hadn’t thought of it when he’d seen the masked men with guns coming at him. And now they’d taken it away from him.
He was old, but until just this moment he’d never felt old. Never felt feeble, or useless, or doomed. Not until now. “You people can’t do this,” he said, and hated to hear the new note in his voice. He’d never been querulous before either.
One of them said, “Let’s go into your office. Come on, move!”
He obeyed, his hands still up. He moved slowly, them behind him, prodding his shoulders to make him hurry. Two of them following him, the other staying back with his car and the gates. “There’s no money here this time of year,” he said, but they didn’t answer him.
The door to his office was broken into. It was closed most of the way, but the lock had been broken. “Look at that,” he said. “You fellows do that? What would you do a thing like that for?”
One of them had a flashlight, and shone it on the broken place on the door. The other one said, “Still in there, you think?”
“Only one way to find out,” the first one said, and pushed at Snyder with his gun barrel again. “Open the door, old man,” he said. “Go in there, turn on the light. Don’t do any sudden movements, and don’t turn around.”
Snyder obeyed orders. He stepped in and switched on the light, seeing at once that someone had been in here. Things disturbed, things moved around. A coffee cup on the floor, a map open on the desk, a chair moved over by the window.
They waited a few seconds, then came in after him. “Sit down,” one of them said, and he sat down. “Put your hands behind you,” and he put his hands behind himself.
They tied him to the chair, roughly and well. Then they took adhesive tape and taped shut his mouth. One of them went into the John and came back with two small wads of toilet paper and stuck them in Snyder’s ears, and the other one put adhesive tape over his ears to keep the paper in.
He submitted to it all, but when he saw they meant to tape his eyes, he tried to fight it, lunging backward, waving his head back and forth. Somehow that was a different kind of thing, much worse, much more frightening. He didn’t want his eyes taped.
But they did it. One of them held his head, and the other one put the tape on, and then he was in darkness and silence. He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t hear them. He was helpless, his brain straining inside its prison of bone to know what they were doing.
His feet. Through his feet pressed against the floor he could hear the vibrations. They were walking around, doing things around him in the office. Not touching him, but moving around. Faintly he thought he could hear them talking. Through his closed eyelids and the thickness of tape he could sense a dark reddish orange, meaning the light was still on.
Fire? He suddenly thought of fire, was suddenly terrified that they meant to burn the place down and him in it. He didn’t know why anybody would do a thing like that, he had no rational reason for thinking of it, but once the thought hit him he became convinced, and his heart pounded in terror, and he reared around in the chair, struggling to escape.
A hand closed on his shoulder, and just stayed there. Not squeezing hard, not hurting. Just staying there, a steady pressure, somehow reassuring. Snyder calmed down, and the hand patted his shoulder and went away. But he was less frightened after that.
A minute later the vibrations stopped, the reddish orange went to black, he had the sensation that the door had been closed. He was alone. He knew he was alone.
Nine
CALIATO STOOD looking out the window at Fun Island. He watched Chaka and Abadandi and Pulsone cross the street, watched them gather in the old man. One of them waved the all-clear, and Caliato said, “Okay. Let’s go over there.”
“Right,” Benniggio said. He opened the door and stepped back for Caliato to go first.
Caliato was glad to be getting out of this room at last. Six hours he’d been in here, doing nothing, and that was too long. He stepped outside, inhaled the cold night air, and waited for Benniggio to carefully close the door again and lock it behind them.
“Tomorrow,” Caliato said, “we’ll have to send somebody to clean up our mess in there.”
“Okay, Cal,” Benniggio said. “I’ll remember.”
“Good.”
They started across the road, and behind them the phone rang. “Hell,” Caliato said under his breath. Would it be Lozini, changing his mind? More probably O’Hara, getting ever more frantic. Caliato said, “Go on over there, see they don’t scare the old man too much. See they do things right.”
“Okay, Cal.”
“Shut those gates, but don’t lock them. I’ll be right there.”
“Right.”
Caliato went back to the Lincoln, got into the back seat, opened the phone compartment, put the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”
O’Hara. “We’re still stuck here. What are we gonna do about the night watchman?”
“We’ve already done it,” Caliato said, and told him the new plan.
O’Hara said, “You mean you’re going into the park?”
“That’s right. So don’t call here any more, there won’t be anybody to answer the phone.”
“But you’re not going to do anything, are you? You’ll just stay in by the gate till we get there.”
“I’ve told you that. How much longer you going to be?”
“Christ, it ought to be soon, Caliato, I swear it ought to be soon. We’re not the only ones bitching, everybody here is teed off. No roadblocks are going to catch anybody by this time.”
“Even if there was anybody to catch.”
“Even if,” O’Hara agreed. “There’s talk about keeping them up till midnight, but that’s just stupid.”
Two more hours. “See if you can cut it shorter than that,” Caliato said.
“You know I’ll do my best.”
“Right. Flash your headlights at the gates when you get here, so we’ll know it’s you.”
“Will do.”
Caliato hung up and went across the street, to where Pulsone was on guard at the gates. Caliato went in and Pulsone pointed to the lit doorway where the others were. Caliato went down there and found the watchman trussed up right, except he was jerking around like a fish on a line. Caliato looked at him, looked at Benniggio, said, “I told you to see he didn’t get scared too much.”