Surrounded (10 page)

    "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.

    "What are you doing?" Meyers shouted, his ruined voice cracking.

    Bates turned and looked at them. His face was drawn, his eyes as wide as Evelyn Ledderson's eyes had been when Tucker had first seen her. When they reached him, just as the gate clanked against the terrazzo floor, Bates said, "There's cops in the parking lot."

    Meyers pushed past him and grabbed hold of the gate, shook it, tried to heave it up out of the way. "You dumb bastard! You'll trap us all in here."

    Bates laughed without humor, his eyes flat and glassy. "Who's the dumb bastard? Don't you see, Frank? We already are trapped in here."

    Tucker moved to the gate, pulling the woman along with him. He stared out through the grid of thin steel rods, past the glass outer doors that were only three feet away. One prowl car, made colorless by the ranks of mercury vapor lights out there, was already stopped about five short yards from the mall entrance. What Tucker had told Evelyn Ledderson a few minutes ago now held true for all of them- there was nowhere to run. Abruptly, a second squad car wheeled in beside the first, nearly scraping paint with it, braking so hard that tires squealed and the big Detroit frame rocked back and forth on its springs.

    "We could shoot our way out," Meyers said.

    "Forget it," Tucker said.

    "We have to try."

    "We'd get about two feet," Tucker said.

    Edgar Bates was busy fixing the gate to its bolt holes along the baseboard. "We wouldn't even get through those doors," he called over his shoulder.

    "He's right," Tucker told Meyers. "He did the right thing by sealing this off. We aren't going to get out this way. All we can do is make sure they can't come in, either."

    "We can't hole up here," Meyers said.

    "I know that." The specter of failure, linked arm in arm with the image of his father, rose in the back of his mind.

    Meyers pointed to the gate. "Then what does this really buy us in the end?"

    "Time," Tucker said.

    "Time for more prowl cars to get here," Meyers said, making a sour face.

    "We might come up with something," Tucker insisted as he watched the four cops outside move in toward the glass doors.

    "Like what?"

    "We might find another way out."

    "How?"

    "I don't know yet."

    "If we can't leave by this door," Meyers said, "we can't leave by any of them. They'll have the other three covered, too."

    "I know," Tucker said. "But all the entrances are shut tight from the inside. The loading bays in the warehouse are down and locked. That is everything, right? They can't get in at us."

    "You keep on about that," Meyers said. "You make it sound like some fantastic advantage. But we can't just sit here and wait them out, for Christ's sake."

    Two of the policemen tried the outer doors, held their hands over their eyebrows to shield out the glow from the parking-lot lights around them, and peered inside.

    Still holding the woman where he hoped they could see her, Tucker poked the barrel of his Skorpion through one of the four-inch-square openings in the gate grid, pointed it right at the two cops.

    Frank Meyers did the same thing.

    "Move back!" Tucker shouted. "Stay far back!"

    But they did not need to be told. The moment they saw the guns, they jerked out of the way like puppets pulled back on strings, and they ran to the squad cars where they could take shelter. They were excited, shouting back and forth at one another. Tucker could not quite make out what they were saying.

    "They won't hold off for long," Meyers said. "You can bet on that. What we should do, we should-"

    "Shut up," Tucker said.

    The two words were delivered so sharply, with such anger, that Meyers was surprised into silence. He blinked stupidly, licked his thick lips, and wondered how to respond.

    Tucker said, "We wouldn't be in this fix if you hadn't gone after Keski. Don't start bitching at me now. Accept the responsibility like a professional, it's your fault and yours alone. You have to face that, and shut the hell up."

    Meyers cleared his throat, shook his head to express a mixture of dismay, anger, and respect. "You talk pretty damned freely."

    Tucker glared at him. "That's right."

    After a short staring match which Tucker won, Meyers said, "But you got to admit we're in a bad way."

    "I never said differently."

    "I don't see what you expect to do."

    "Look," Edgar Bates said, "we have three hostages here. We can use them for a shield." His voice was thin, quivering.

    "That's an idea," Meyers said.

    Evelyn Ledderson went rigid, tried halfheartedly to pull away from Tucker. "You said you wouldn't hurt me. Now you want to hide behind me."

    "She's right," Tucker said. "It's a bad idea. I've never heard of anyone making good an escape behind hostages. The cops might shoot at us, anyway. These days, they don't always seem to care much about the fate of innocent bystanders. And even if they let us get to the station wagon and leave, they'll just tag along until we let these people go. Then they'll blow the crap out of us."

    "But what other chance do we have?" Bates asked.

    "I've got a couple of ideas," Tucker said. "But before we start to talk about that, I want to get to a telephone and call the police. They've got to understand that we do have hostages."

    "They saw the girl," Bates said.

    "But maybe they think she's one of us."

    Meyers wiped his face with the back of a seersucker sleeve. "They know we have the guards."

    "And maybe they think we killed the guards," Tucker said. He looked at Bates. "Take Evelyn into the warehouse and tie her up with Chet and Artie."

    Bates picked up his gun, which he had put on the floor by the gate, and he pointed at the woman. "Come along, please."

    She looked at Tucker. Her face was puckered with doubt.

    "It's okay," he assured her. "This man won't make a mistake. He won't hurt you."

    Reluctantly, warily, she preceded Edgar Bates into the warehouse. The jugger turned as he was about to follow her through the gray door, and he said, "Hey, I left my satchel back up there at the bank. It's got the wire in it. What do I use to tie her up?"

    "There ought to be some wire on the workshop shelves," Tucker said. "Look around in there."

    "Oh," Bates said distractedly, as if he were half in a trance. "Yeah. Sure. I should have realized…" He went into the warehouse after the woman.

    "He isn't going to be much good if the situation gets any worse than it is now," Meyers said, looking after the older man.

    "I have stronger doubts about you," Tucker said pointedly, staring at the big man.

    Meyers's face reddened. His blue eyes couldn't hold Tucker's darker ones. "Look, I admit I fouled up. I should have known as much about Keski's office as I knew about the rest of the mall. I should have known about that alarm pedal, and-"

    "Save it for later," Tucker said shortly. "I've got to call the cops before they do anything stupid." He looked past Meyers, out at the two squad cars, the revolving red dome lights, and the very cautious movements of the four policemen hovering around the cars. "You keep a close watch on them. But don't start any shooting."

    "Of course not."

    "I mean it."

    "You can count on me," Meyers said.

    Tucker smiled ruefully. Sure I can, he thought. Oh, I can really trust old Frank Meyers. He wished he didn't have to turn his back on the big man in order to walk up to the mall lounge.

    

    He closed the telephone-booth door, shutting out the worst of the fountain's roar. Though he was rewarded with relative quiet, he now had to endure the clinging odor of a strong perfume that permeated the booth, an almost tangible spirit shed by the last customer. Wrinkling his nose and trying to breathe shallowly, he put a dime in the box and dialed the operator.