The two men with the three suitcases were running toward the refreshment stand. They didn’t run very fast, not with what they were carrying.
“They took the heroin,” Procane said. He sounded surprised.
“About one hundred and ten pounds’ worth, I’d say. Wasn’t it part of your plan?”
He started the engine. “No, that wasn’t in my plan.”
“Now what?”
“Put the speaker back and watch Wiedstein.”
I watched Wiedstein. He was no longer in the clinch with Janet Whistler. He was backing his car out savagely. The rear wheels chewed up the gravel as he slammed into drive and gunned forward, heading for the exit.
I watched Wiedstein’s car as it streaked toward the narrow exit that was lined by two high board fences. The exit road curved on its way back to the highway and I lost sight of Wiedstein’s car.
“Now what?” I said again.
“We back out like this,” Procane said and reversed the car sedately until we were headed toward the exit “Now we wait another moment or two.”
A small green Mustang with its lights off came out from behind the refreshment stand and sped toward the exit. Procane glanced at his watch and then put his car in drive and headed toward the exit. His speed was barely above normal.
“They didn’t do too badly, everything considered,” he said.
“I thought they looked like pros.”
“Well, they were a little off.”
“How?”
“I had it timed for forty-five seconds. It took them nearly fifty-five.”
I looked back at the Dodge and the Oldsmobile. I could see three or four men weaving around. They all seemed to have handkerchiefs to their eyes. “How long will that bunch be out of action?”
“Oh, several minutes more. Perhaps even longer. That Mace is very tricky stuff.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said and then asked, “What now?” for the third time.
“Now? Now we steal a million dollars from a couple of thieves.”
21
It was a trap. I could see it when Procane rounded the curve of the narrow, fence-bordered exit road. About thirty feet from where the fences ended, Wiedstein had blocked the road by angling his car across the narrow strip of asphalt. The hood was up. I could see neither Wiedstein nor Janet Whistler.
The green Mustang was just skidding to a stop when we came around the curve. Its taillights glared at us for what seemed to be a long time before the car stopped some ten feet from Wiedstein’s Chevrolet. I rolled my window down. So did Procane who kept on driving slowly toward the stopped Mustang.
The doors of the Mustang flew open. A man got out on the right side. I could see the gloss of the nylon stocking that covered the back of his head beneath the brim of his hat. He yelled something. It sounded like, “Move that fuckin thing!”
Wiedstein came out from behind the raised hood of his car. He was fully illuminated by the Mustang’s headlights. He spread his hands in a gesture that seemed to say, The damned thing stopped on me and I can’t get it started. The man with the stocking mask ducked back into the Mustang and when he reappeared he was holding something in his hands. It was a sawed-off pump shotgun.
Procane switched on our bright lights. The man looked back at us, called something to the Mustang’s driver, and started walking toward Wiedstein’s stalled car. The driver of the Mustang got out and turned toward us. He waved something. It was a gun, an automatic.
“Brace yourself!” Procane snapped. He pressed down on the accelerator. I grabbed for the padded dash. We slammed into the rear of the Mustang at about fifteen miles per hour. It made a sickening, grinding kind of a crunch and crash, the kind that you know is going to cost at least four hundred dollars.
The Mustang bounced forward, but not much. It must have been in park gear. The man with the automatic pistol staggered back a step, but recovered quickly. He used his left hand to shield his eyes against the glare of our left headlight. Procane hadn’t hit the Mustang’s rear squarely. The man with the pistol fired. The gun flash and the cobwebbed hole in our windshield seemed to happen at the same time.
“Out on your side!” Procane said, barking the words.
I opened the door and tumbled out onto the asphalt, skinning my left knee. Procane followed. We knelt behind the car and its open door.
“Close it,” Procane said.
I slammed the door shut.
“Not much of a view from here,” I said.
“Just imagine it,” Procane said. He had his engraved automatic in his right hand now. He knelt next to me, trying to peer around the Mustang we’d slammed into as though he wanted to see what Wiedstein and Janet Whistler were doing.
We heard three shots. They weren’t rapid fire, but as if someone were squeezing them off carefully, counting by thousands between each pull of the trigger.
The man with the sawed-off shotgun darted out from in front of the Mustang and ran toward the right side of Wiedstein’s car. He was bent over low, trying to scuttle toward the upraised hood at the front of the car. I decided that the carefully spaced shots had been covering fire.
“Hold it right there!” Procane yelled at the man with the shotgun. I thought there was a lot of authority in Procane’s tone. So did the man with the shotgun, because he twirled around. If he’d have pulled the trigger a fraction of a second later, he would have cut us in two.
The man with the shotgun was about twenty feet from us. Procane fired at him, but missed. I had started backing toward the rear of the car. Procane fired again, but again missed. I decided that he was a lousy shot.
The man with the shotgun seemed to smile. At least I thought I saw something white through his stocking mask. He raised the shotgun to his shoulder. I was still backing crablike toward the rear of the car. Procane got off another shot, but I didn’t expect him to hit anything. He didn’t. The man with the shotgun was aiming it now. He couldn’t miss Procane. If he did, he’d hit me. Procane started backing up.
Janet Whistler stepped out from behind the raised hood of Wiedstein’s car and killed the man with the shotgun by shooting him in the back three times.
His head jerked back like in whiplash and his hands flew out at the first shot. The shotgun sailed off somewhere. He took a small, mincing step toward us and when the second bullet hit him he twitched a little, almost as if it were the second step of some new and elaborate dance. He was beginning to fall when the third bullet hit him and hammered him to the ground. He fell toward us, full length, like a toppled tree. He didn’t use his hands to break his fall. He twitched once, then twice, but after that he didn’t twitch anymore.
“I’m a rotten shot,” Procane said. I agree.
Janet Whistler looked at the dead man for a moment. She stood quite still, her arms at her side, the automatic almost dangling from her right hand. Then she turned and disappeared behind the front of Wiedstein’s car.
“This way,” Procane said. He bent over, almost double, and started to move slowly around the rear of his car. I followed him, not because I thought that he was much protection, but because I didn’t want to be alone.
When we were on the other side of Procane’s car we started edging toward the Mustang. Its left door was open. The left headlight of Procane’s car was still on bright and it bathed that side of the Mustang in harsh yellow light.
When we had crept almost even with the front wheels of the Chevrolet, Procane called, “There’re four of us and we’re armed. Your partner’s dead. You’d better give up.”
We waited, but there was no reply. Procane rose. I was next to him now and I rose too. Slowly.