Meyers grinned. "And I got him."
Confused and angry, Tucker pushed past him into the room. This was the outer office, a reception area. The walls were cream-colored, the carpet a deep forest green, the furniture all dark and heavy and vaguely Mediterranean. Three good oil paintings caught his eye, held it for a moment.
In the center of the room an extremely pretty young woman sat behind an enormous desk. She was in her late twenties, with a dusky Italian complexion and thick black hair that fell to her shoulders. She was terrified. Her brown eyes were open wide. She was sitting as stiff as a statue. Her hands were on the blotter in front of her where Meyers had probably told her to keep them, and the long fingers were knotted like trysting worms, the knuckles white.
"Who's she?" Tucker asked.
"His secretary," Meyers said.
"Whose secretary?"
Meyers pointed at the open door to the inner office.
Tucker went in and looked at the dead men. One of them was on the floor to the right of the desk, the focal point of a widening pool of blood. In his hand he had a gun he had not used, and he looked like the bodyguard type. Another dead man was sitting in a swivel chair behind the desk. He was about fifty years old, thickset and ugly. He had two holes in his chest and one in his neck, and he was grinning at Tucker.
Tucker felt sick. He wanted to turn and cut Meyers down as the big man had done with these two. But he was incapable of that, just as he would have been incapable of the senseless murders Meyers had just committed.
He turned away from the carnage, for he could not look at a dead man without suffering intimations of his own mortality. Facing Meyers, struggling to keep his anger and disgust in check, he said, "Who was he?"
"Rudolph Keski," Meyers said. "The other one was his protection. Some protection." He laughed. Tucker winced.
"Why did you want him?" Tucker's voice was low and cold. No one should have had to die.
"Keski gave me this voice," Meyers said. "He put me in the hospital for months." For the first time he realized that Tucker didn't take killing quite so lightly as he did. Now Meyers was trying to justify himself.
"Mafia?" Tucker asked.
Meyers was amused by that. "Hell, no."
"Our friend in Harrisburg said you got mixed up with Sicilians."
"That's just a rumor, then," Meyers said. "Keski headed the local organization. But he was Polish, not Mafia. There's no connection between him and any national group. He wasn't exactly small time, but he wasn't big, either."
"Why didn't you tell me about him?" Tucker asked.
"You wouldn't have thrown in with me," Meyers said. He was smiling jauntily. The personality change that had occurred between New York and Los Angeles was now firmly established. "No one would have come in on the job So I said it was just robbery-which it still is, by the way."
"I'll want to hear the whole story. Later." He looked at the woman, tried to smile even though he was frightened and sickened by the slaughter. "You okay?"
"I didn't touch her," Meyers said.
"You okay?" Tucker asked again, ignoring Meyers.
She nodded, tried to speak, could not. She made a little croaking noise and twisted her fingers together even tighter than they had been.
"Don't worry," Tucker assured her, striving for a calm and gentle voice. "You won't be hurt."
She looked at him as if she were deaf and dumb.
"You really won't," he said. "You'll have to come with us to the storage room and let us tie you up. But we won't hurt you."
"He killed Mr. Keski," she said. Her voice was low, sultry, delightful. It was out of place in this morgue.
"I know he did," Tucker said, going over to her and prying her hands apart. He held her right hand as tenderly as if they were lovers. "But that was something between him and Keski. It had nothing to do with you. Right now, all he cares about, all I care about, is taking some money out of the bank safe up the hall. We'll have to tie you up while we do that. You understand?"
Her hand was cold and motionless in his.
"You understand?"
"Yes."
"Good," Tucker said. He let go of her hand and walked around behind her and pulled back her chair as she got up. "Don't try to run. There's nowhere to go. Just cooperate and you won't get hurt. Under-" He stopped talking when she stepped away from the big desk, and he moved in closer to it, bending down to look into the cavity beneath the work surface. What he thought he had seen turned out to be no illusion, no trick of shadows, no stain on the carpet. It was there. "Christ!"
"What?" Meyers asked.
"You stupid ox," Tucker said. In the knee hole underneath the desk the green carpet had been cut away in a neat circle and molded down with metal tacking strips. In the center of that cleared space there was a small rectangular foot pedal, like a miniaturized automobile accelerator. "It's a pump-action alarm pedal," Tucker said. He stood up and looked at the woman. He felt like a wire being drawn tighter and tighter between two winches. "Did you use it?"
She backed away from him and came up against the wall, bumping her head on an oil painting in a rococo frame.
"Did you use it?" he repeated.
"Don't kill me."
"We aren't going to kill you," Tucker said.
"Please " Her eyes were wide again. All the blood had drained out of her lovely face. Beneath that natural olive complexion she was pale.
Tucker went over to her and took her hand again, held it to his lips, kissed her fingers. She looked at him as if he were mad. "I know how scared you are. I'm extremely sorry that this had to happen."
She blinked at him, and he thought there was a growing blank spot behind her eyes. Shock was catching up with her fast.
"What's your name?" he asked, quickly trying to establish some rapport with her.
"What?"
"Your name. What is your name?" Seconds might be precious if the cops were on the way, but patience was the only way to get through to her right now. She was stunned half out of her senses. If he had been in her shoes when Meyers opened up on Keski, Tucker knew he would be no better.
"I'm Evelyn Ledderson," she replied, as if her own name were entirely foreign to her, as if those few syllables made no sense whatsoever.
"Evelyn," Tucker said, his voice so soft that Meyers had trouble hearing him clearly, "do you understand that we don't want to hurt you? We have nothing to gain by hurting you. Just tell me That alarm pedal under your desk must connect to a light board in a police station somewhere nearby." He was amazed at the reasonable, calm tone of his own voice. Inside, he was screaming and running around in circles. "We have to know, Evelyn Did you use that pedal?"
She looked into his eyes and seemed suddenly calmed by them, as if she read his sincerity like a large-type message on his retina. The fear was still in her, but it was under control now. It did not paralyze her anymore. "Yes," she said. "You bet I used it. I pumped the hell out of it."
Tucker looked at Meyers.
"Let's get out of here," the big man said, his good mood shattered.
Tucker grabbed the woman's arm. "You'll have to come along with us," he said, forcing her out of the office behind Meyers.
She did not want to go, but she knew that she would only make things worse for herself if she resisted. Kicking off her shoes to keep from stumbling in the built-up heels, she ran along beside him.
In the distance there were sirens.
When they entered the east corridor, they saw Edgar Bates down at the far end standing on the left just beyond Surf and Subsurface, across from the warehouse entrance. He had gotten a set of keys from one of the night watchmen, had inserted a key into a slot on the wall, and had activated the steel-bar gate that was recessed in the ceiling. An electric motor hummed loudly. The gate made a lot of noise itself, clattering like tank tread as it descended to block the entire width of the hall.