Parker16 Butcher's Moon (35 page)

Until tonight.

Carlow said, "Here they come."

The routine was, they had Pelzer's Oldsmobile Cutlass spotted, nearly a block from the apartment, and they were parked behind it—in a different car now, Carlow having traded the Mercury in on an American Motors Ambassador. The air-conditioner worked better on this car, but there still wasn't room for all three in front, not with one of them Dan Wycza. He sat in back, leaning forward with his forearms on the seat back, and he and Devers and Carlow watched the three men come out of the small tenement-style apartment house a block away and turn in this direction. The smaller man in the middle carried an apparently heavy suitcase, while the bigger men flanking him kept looking left and right as they walked.

"I look at them," Wycza said, "I look at those people, and I know they aren't sensible."

Devers said, "You think they'll give us a hard time?"

"I think we ought to start right off by shooting them in the head."

Devers looked troubled. "I don't know," he said.

"I do," Carlow said. Nodding his head toward Wycza, he told Devers, "He's right. The two big ones are hired to mother the money. They lose the money, they're dead anyway."

"I'm a pretty good shot," Devers said. "Let me just plink one, and then we'll give them a chance to work it out for themselves."

Carlow twisted around to look at Wycza, get his opinion. These three men didn't know one another, had never worked together, had only met today, Wycza and Devers on the plane and Carlow in Parker's apartment. It was hard for them to know how to deal with one another, in what areas each was reliable, in what areas they would be stepping on sore corns. Carlow and Wycza, looking at one another in the faint illumination of a
nearby
streetlight, tried silently to come to an opinion about
Devers,
and at the same time to gauge one another. Wycza Anally dropped his eyes and nodded slightly, with a small shrug,
as if to
say, "What the hell, let him have his try, we can cover if
we
have to." Carlow pursed his lips and faced front before answering, moves that clearly said to Wycza, "It's your de
cision,
then, I'm only the driver, and if it bounces back on us
later,
I'm not the one that did it." Aloud, Carlow said to Devers,
"If you
think so."

"It's worth a try," Devers said. Twisting around, he said to
Wycza,
"Judge it for yourself. If they're still gonna cause
trouble,
you jump right in." So that Devers, too, was being
.cautious
with a new partnership, and not taking all the responsi
bility
on his own shoulders.

Wycza nodded. Devers would shoot one of them in the shoulder, and then Wycza would shoot all three of them in the
head.
"Fine," he said.

The back room never occurred to stockbroker Andrew
Leffler
when the robbers broke into his house in the middle of
the
night. He woke up when the ceiling light flashed on, and sat
up
astonished to see two men in black clothing, with black
hoods
over their faces, standing in the bedroom doorway,
pointing
pistols at him. In those first seconds of wakefulness, he
thought
of them as merely burglars, come to steal anything of
value
he might have in the house.

Automatically his right hand fumbled to the night table for
his
glasses. In the other bed Maureen had also awakened, and he
heard
the sharp intake of breath that said she, too, had seen the men and the guns. But she didn't scream, and that reminder of Maureen's stability and presence of mind helped diminish his own rising panic, brought on by the
fumbling his startled fingers
were doing with his glasses. Not being able to see properly only made things worse.

"Take it easy," one of the men said, "and nobody gets hurt."

Finally getting his glasses on, fitting each wing over his ears, he changed his opinion all at once, and decided these two were kidnappers.
Let it be me they want,
he thought,
and not Maureen.

With his glasses on, he could see them more clearly. They were both thin men, seeming even narrower because of the black clothing. They held their guns steadily, and they had separated, moving so they now flanked the doorway. But also, Leffler noticed, so that neither was in a direct line with the windows.

One of them said, "Get up. Both of you. You can put on robes and slippers, that's all. You won't need anything else, it's nice and warm out."

Leffler thought,
Both of us?
"Just take me," he said. "I'm all you want."

"Don't waste time," the man said. His voice was strangely altered and dehumanized by the black hood. "If we have to carry you out," he said, "we'll make you regret it."

Her voice shaky but her manner amazingly firm, Maureen said, "We'd better do what they say, Art." And she was the first one to throw back the covers and get out of bed.

Leffler hurried to stay with her. It enraged him that these men were seeing his wife in her nightgown, even though the thick cotton showed nothing, and the gown was so voluminous that even the shape of her figure could only be guessed at. But his sense of personal intrusion, of property violation, began with Maureen in her nightgown. His own voice shaking more with outrage than with fear, he said abruptly, "You two will pay for this, you know."

They didn't bother to answer, and somehow that was worse than any possible cutting reply. Hearing his brave but ludicrous cliché echoing over and over in his mind, Leffler became embarrassed, and found himself hurrying into his robe and slippers, as though to get this humiliating experience over with as rapidly as possible.

When they were both ready, one of the gunmen said, "We'll turn this light off now, but we'll have a flashlight on you, and we can see pretty good in the dark, so don't get cute. You just walk on through to the front of the house, open the door, and go on outside."

Argue with them? Try to talk them out of their plan, whatever it was? Leffler hesitated, but he knew no argument would do any good, that he would only finish by embarrassing himself again, so he took his wife's arm, and the two of them walked together down the hall toward the living room.

For the first few steps they had light-spill from the bedroom
for
illumination. Then that was turned off, and a small uncertain flashlight beam took its place; mostly it was aimed at their
backs
and threw great misshapen shadows of them out ahead,
lighting
little but the walls and furniture
to
either side. They
were
moving through their own home, along a route they could
have
walked blindfolded, but somehow this method was worse
than
being blindfolded; the constantly altering shadows, the
flickering
flat distorting light, changed the familiar terrain into
unknown
territory, and when they entered the living room
Leffler
struck his knee painfully against the corner of the piano
Stool.

Maureen's hand grasped his forearm. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said, and though it hurt like fury, he managed
to
walk without a limp and to restrain himself from bending
down
to rub it. He would not display weakness in front of these
men.
Nor, under the circumstances, in front of Maureen. Patting
her
hand on his forearm, he whispered, "I'm sorry, dear."

"Don't be silly." She squeezed his forearm, and he felt her smiling at him. "This is just an adventure, that's all," she said.

An adventure.
I am fifty-seven,
he told her in his mind,
and you are fifty-four. We have no need for adventure.

But he didn't say anything aloud. And her calm bravery carried him through the house and out the door, the two gunmen following silently in their wake.

And still he hadn't thought of the back
room.

Nick Rifkin lived upstairs over the bar. The bar was called Nick's Place, and the whole building was in Nick Rifkin's name, but he didn't actually own any of it. As he explained to his friends sometimes, "I just kinda hold it for some guys."

Nick was fifty-two years old now, a cheerful heavy-set guy who enjoyed playing bartender, living in a kind of semi-retirement. A reliable soldier with the local organization since he was in his teens, he had stood still for a vehicular homicide rap one time that had really belonged to a very important local guy; he'd served five years and three months, and when he'd gotten out his reward had been Nick's Place. Downstairs the bar, upstairs the apartment and the unofficial loan operation. He got slices in both places, did very well, had some fun, and enjoyed life.

The loan operation was quiet and simple, and most of the borrowers were people from the straight world: businessmen in a bind, operators who needed some quick short-term cash, people whose square-world credit rating was maybe bad, or credit all used up, or something like that. They could borrow big amounts from Nick, amazingly big amounts, and it didn't matter much to Nick or the people behind him if the debts were ever paid off. All you had to keep current with was the interest: two percent a month, every month. Miss a month and some guys come to visit and talk. Miss two months and the same guys come back, but not to talk.

With loans going out and interest coming in, there was always quite a bit of cash moving through Nick's Place, but there wasn't much to worry about. Nick subscribed to the Vigilant Protective Service, and the local police patrol car knew to keep a special eye on Nick's Place; and anyway, who would be dumb enough to go after money that belonged to men like Ernie Dulare and Adolf Lozini?

Somebody. The bedroom light went on and Nick opened his eyes and two guys were standing there with hoods and guns. "Holy Jesus," Nick said, and struggled to sit up. His wife Angela's heavy arm was across his chest, pinning him to the bed, but he finally managed to shove the arm away and hunch up to a sitting position, blinking in the glare of the overhead light.

"Get up, Nick," one of the hooded men said. "Get up and open the closet."

"You're out of your minds," Nick said. Squinting, rubbing his eyes, trying to wake up enough to think, he said, "You got to be crazy. You know whose money that is?"

"Ours. Come on, Nick, we're in a hurry."

Angela groaned, bubbled, snored, and rolled heavily over onto her other side. One thing you could say for Angela: when she was asleep, she was asleep. Nick, with one tiny corner of his mind grateful that she wasn't awake to yap and complain and carry on, slowly kicked his legs out from under the covers and
over
the side of the bed. "Christ on a crutch," he complained. "What the hell time is it?"

"Move it, Nick."

The floor was cold. The air-conditioner hummed in the
Window,
making cold air move like invisible fog along the floor.
Nick,
sitting there in white T-shirt and blue boxer shorts, frowned at the one who was doing the talking, trying to see his
face
through the hood, trying to recognize the voice that was calling him by first name. He said, "Do I know you?" And then,
in
the process of asking the question, he suddenly came fully
awake
and realized he didn't want to know the answer to it. If a
guy
has a hood and a gun, then neither one of you wants you to
tee
his face.

Besides, Vigilant had to be on the way. These guys must
have
busted in here, so that meant Vigilant would be coming,
and so
would the cops. So all Nick had to do in the meantime
was
obey orders and be ready to drop to the floor.

Right. He got to his feet, saying, "Forget it. I don't want to know if I know you."

"That's smart. Open the closet, Nick."

"Yeah, yeah." He wished he had his slippers. "And the safe
,"
he said.

"That's right," the gunman said.

These people knew a lot. They knew the money was in a
safe,
and they knew the safe was in the bedroom closet. Thinking about that, wondering how much else they knew and
what
was letting them be so calm about heisting mob money,
Nick
opened the closet door and went down on one creaking
knee
to slowly work the combination dial on the safe. While behind him the two guys stood waiting, guns in their hands. And Angela snored. And Nick wondered how long it would take the Vigilant people to get here.