Willie struggled to his feet. “What happened to the other fella?” he asked.
“I hit him with a hammer,” said Arno. He was very pale. “His gun went off when he fell. You okay?”
Willie nodded. His nose hurt like damnation, but he was alive. His hands were shaking, and now he felt sure that he was going to vomit. He reached out and gently removed the gun from Arno’s hand, putting the safety on as he did so.
“What was all that about?” asked Arno.
“I need to make a call,” said Willie. “Find some wire and tie up the guy in the storage room.”
Arno didn’t move. “I don’t think we’re gonna have to do that, boss,” he said.
Willie looked at him. “Jesus, how hard did you hit him?”
“It was a hammer. How hard do you think?”
Willie shook his head, although he wasn’t sure whether in despair or admiration.
“I’m working with fucking Rambo now,” he said. “I don’t even know how you managed to wing that other guy.”
“I was aiming for his feet,” said Willie.
“What were you trying to do, make him dance? Aiming for his feet. Jesus. Lock the doors.”
Arno did as he was told. Willie went into his office and picked up the phone. He knew by heart the number that he dialed.
The call transferred to a machine. Then he tried the service, and the woman named Amy took his number and said that she’d pass on the message. Finally, he tried the cell, using this week’s number, to be utilized only in the gravest of emergencies, but a voice told him that the phone was off.
For Louis and Angel had troubles of their own.
Mrs. Bondarchuk was in the hallway when she heard the buzzer sound. She looked through one of the frosted-glass panes of the inner door and saw a man standing on the stoop outside the main door. He was dressed in a blue uniform and had a package in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Mrs. Bondarchuk pressed the intercom switch just as the buzzer sounded again. Her Pomeranians began yapping.
“Can I help you?” she asked, in a tone that suggested any help would be a long time coming. Mrs. Bondarchuk was wary of all strangers, and especially men. She knew what men were like. There wasn’t a one that could be trusted, the two gentlemen who lived upstairs excepted.
“Delivery,” the voice came back.
“Delivery for whom?”
There was a pause.
“Mrs. Evelyn Bondarchuk.”
“Leave it inside,” said Mrs. Bondarchuk, hitting the switch that opened the outer door only.
“Are you Mrs. Bondarchuk?” said the delivery man, as he stepped into the entrance.
“Who else would I be?”
“Need you to sign for it.”
There was an inch-wide slot in the inner door for just such eventualities.
“Put it through the hole,” said Mrs. Bondarchuk.
“Lady, I can’t do that. It’s important. I need to hold on to it.”
“What am I going to do with a clipboard?” asked Mrs. Bondarchuk. “Sell it and fly to Russia? Put the clipboard through the hole.”
The front door closed behind the man. She could see him properly now. He had dark hair and bad skin.
“Come on lady, be reasonable. Open up and sign.”
Mrs. Bondarchuk didn’t like the suggestion that she was being in any way unreasonable.
“I can’t do that. You’ll have to go, and you can take your parcel with you. Leave the number and I’ll collect it myself.”
“This is stupid, Mrs. Bondarchuk. If you don’t accept it, I got to haul it all the way downtown again. You know, it could get lost,” the man said, his implication clear. “Maybe it’s perishable. What then?”
“Then it’ll start to smell,” said Mrs. Bondarchuk, “and you’ll have to throw it away. Leave now, please.”
But the man did not leave. Instead, he drew a pistol from beneath his uniform and aimed it at the glass. It had a cylinder attached to the end of it. Mrs. Bondarchuk had seen enough cop shows to know a silencer when she saw one.
“You dumb old bitch,” he said as Mrs. Bondarchuk’s finger left the intercom button, ending their conversation, while her left hand hit the silent alarm. The man glanced over his shoulder at the empty street behind him, then aimed the pistol at the glass and fired twice. The sound was like a pair of paper bags bursting, and almost simultaneously two impact marks appeared in front of Mrs. Bondarchuk’s face, but the glass did not break. Like most things about the building, Mrs. Bondarchuk included, it was more formidable than it first appeared.
The man outside seemed to realize that his efforts were in vain. He slammed his gloved hand once against the glass, as though hoping to dislodge it from its frame, then opened the main door again and ran onto the street. For a time, all was quiet. Then Mrs. Bondarchuk heard noises from the basement at the back of the house. She checked her watch. Five minutes had passed since she had hit the silent alarm. If, after ten minutes, nobody came, her instructions were to call the police. Her two gentlemen had been very specific about this when the new security system was installed, and it had been repeated in an official letter to Mrs. Bondarchuk from Mr. Leroy Frank himself. It informed her that a private security firm, a very exclusive one, was employed to monitor Mr. Frank’s properties in order to take some of the pressure from the city’s finest. In the event of trouble, someone would be with her in less than ten minutes. If, after that time, no help had arrived, only then should she call the police.
The sounds from the back of the house persisted. She hushed her Pomeranians and quietly made her way downstairs to where the back door opened onto a small paved area where the trash cans were kept. The door was reinforced steel, and there was a spy hole in the center. She looked through it and saw two men, both of them wearing courier uniforms, attaching something to the exterior of the door. One of them, the man who had fired at the front door, looked up, and guessed that she was there from the change in the light. He waved a slab of white material, like a piece of builder’s putty. Something that resembled the stub of a pencil stuck out of one end, with a wire attached.
“You ought to step back from the door,” he said, his voice muffled by the steel yet audible. “Better still, lie against it, see what happens.”
Mrs. Bondarchuk moved away, her hands pressed to her mouth.
“No,” she said. “Oh, no.”
She had to call the police. She retreated farther. She needed to get back to her apartment, needed to summon help. Mr. Leroy Frank’s security people had not come. They had let her down, just when she most needed them. She began to run, and realized that she was crying. Her ears were filled with the sound of yapping Pomeranians.
Twin shots came from outside the door. They were much louder than the earlier shots, and they were followed by the sound of something heavy falling against the metal outside. Mrs. Bondarchuk froze, then turned in the direction of the door. She raised the tips of her fingers to her mouth. They trembled, tapping lightly on her fleshy lips.
“Mrs. Bondarchuk?” someone called, and she recognized Mr. Angel’s voice. “You okay in there?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Who were those men?”
“We don’t know, Mrs. Bondarchuk.”
We. “Have they gone?”
There was a pause. “Uh, in a way,” said Mr. Angel.
Mrs. Bondarchuk went back to her apartment, closed and locked the door, and sat with a pair of Pomeranians on her lap until Mr. Angel came to see her some time later with a chocolate cake from Zabar’s. Together, they ate a slice of cake each and drank a glass of milk, and nice Mr. Angel did his best to put Mrs. Bondarchuk’s mind at rest.
CHAPTER SIX
TO WILLIE’S SURPRISE, AND to Arno’s relief, the man in the storeroom wasn’t dead. His skull was fractured, and he was bleeding from his ears, which Willie didn’t consider to be a good sign, but he was definitely still breathing. This took the decision on what to do next out of Willie’s hands. He wasn’t about to let a stranger die on his floor, so he called 911 and, while they waited for the ambulance and the inevitable cops to arrive, he and Arno got their stories straight. It was a bungled holdup, pure and simple. The men had been looking for money and a car. They were armed and, in fear of their lives, Willie and Arno had tackled them, leaving one unconscious on the floor and forcing the other to flee, wounded.