Surrounded (17 page)

    The newspaper reporters and the radio and television people had given up at last and gone away. The owner of the jewelry store, his very nervous insurance agent, and the manager of Countryside Savings and Loan had all gone back to their homes to lie sleepless for the remainder of the night. The four corridors and the nineteen stores were deserted, silent.

    Lieutenant Kluger walked over to the pool and sat on the edge of the fake rocks. The fountain rose in front of him, two hundred jets of water that shot twenty feet into the air and rained back into the artificial pond. The surface of the pool was like a sheet of opaque white glass through which and in which one could see nothing at all except milky angles, whirlpools of foam, silvered bubbles. It was a restful thing to watch while he went over the night in his mind to see if he had overlooked something, anything.

    The two night watchmen came up to the lounge to see if there was anything he needed or wanted.

    "Take the chairs and table away," he said, reaching out to pluck the blueprints from the table top.

    As the two men folded the furniture, the big man said, "How in the hell did they do it, Lieutenant?"

    "Do what?" Kluger asked, looking up from the pool.

    "Get away."

    "They didn't."

    "What do you mean?"

    "They're here."

    The guard looked around at the mall. "I don't think so," he said, glancing pityingly at Kluger.

    The other watchman, the quiet one, said, "We were told not to touch anything after we were untied. Does that still go? Or can we finish closing up for the night?"

    The lieutenant hesitated, then sighed. "Go ahead."

    "Will you be leaving soon?" the first guard asked.

    "Soon," Kluger muttered dismally.

    They picked up the folded chairs and the collapsed table and carried them out of the lounge, down the east corridor to the warehouse. The carpet soaked up their footsteps. In a moment all was quiet again.

    How? Kluger wondered.

    Through the north exit? No, that had been guarded.

    Through the west? No.

    Out of the south doors or the east? No.

    Up onto the roof? Impossible and pointless.

    Out the storm drains?

    He got to his feet and folded up the blueprints. Still thinking about it, searching for the hole they'd used, he walked slowly across the public lounge.

    Behind, the fountain suddenly died.

    He whirled, then realized the guards had turned it off from the control panel in the warehouse.

    Out one of the bay doors in the east wall?

    Impossible.

    He walked slowly along the east corridor and was passing under the breached steel-bar gate when two of the three strips of fluorescent lights in the ceiling behind him fluttered out.

    "Good night, Lieutenant," Artie said as he came out of the warehouse behind Kluger. "Tough luck."

    "Yeah," Kluger said.

    "You'll get them sooner or later."

    "Yeah."

    In the parking lot he stood alone, the wind from the Pacific Ocean slicing past and over him. It carried the odor of salt and seaweed. In the last few hours the cloud cover had grown more dense, and the smell of rain now lay on the air, a portent.

    Hawbaker and Haggard were not waiting for him as he had thought they would be. Apparently they had gotten dispatched to the scene of another crime.

    Kluger looked at his watch.

    

    

    He turned and stared at the Plaza, wondering if it could really be only three hours since he had broken into it with the acetylene torch. He saw one of the watchmen lowering the ruined gate-and that was all he saw. Everything else was still, at peace, shrouded in the early-morning calm.

    Dawn would soon come. Already the sky seemed to be growing lighter, the blackness seeping away behind the clouds.

    He walked across the macadam to his unmarked Ford, opened the door and got in behind the wheel. The radio fizzed and sputtered at him, and the dispatcher's voice faded in and out on other channels. He started the engine and drove out of the lot, turned north on the main highway. He drove half a mile, made a wide U-turn, came back and parked on the shoulder of the road just two hundred yards from Ocean view Plaza, facing south.

    "Okay," he said.

    He thought of the smartass to whom he had talked on the telephone, thought of the ruptured bank vault and the stolen gems and the two dead men, thought of the way that Evelyn Ledderson had treated him and of the look of pity he had received from that potbellied night watchman. All of these things ran together in his mind and were inseparable, as if they were a single insult. They made a rich broth of humiliation, peppered with the realization that he had taken a setback on his march toward the chief's chair.

    "Okay."

    He took his revolver from the leather holster under his left armpit, checked to be sure it was fully loaded.

    "They'll have to come out on foot since we hauled the

    stolen station wagon out of there," Kluger said, though there was no one to hear him.

    He put the revolver on the seat beside him. "Okay," he repeated. "Okay, let's go. Just come right on out. Just waltz right on out of there. Come on, you bastards."

    

    

    When Tucker looked up toward the surface of the pool, he could see nothing except milky angles, whirlpools of foam, and streams of silvered bubbles. It was like a sheet of opaque white glass barring sight of what lay beyond, but it was even more fragile than glass and might vanish in an instant. Throughout the more than three hours in which they had to hide from the police, Tucker's greatest fear was that someone would turn off the mall's display fountain. Without that artificial rain rising up and cascading down from two hundred jets on all sides, the surface would grow clear. Anyone could walk to the edge and look down and see three men sitting on the bottom of the pool, eight feet below. Or someone could be attracted by the sound of three noisy bubble trails rising from three separate scuba units no longer masked by the more furious sounds of the fountain itself. If the fountain were switched off and the pool's surface permitted to resolve itself, they would be caught.

    However, while that was his greatest worry, it was not Tucker's only concern. He worried that their air supply- three hours which might be stretched to three hours and ten minutes by their relative inactivity-might not be sufficient to last them through the search of the mall. They might be forced to go up before the police had left; and their cleverness and planning would not count for anything.

    He was also worried that some lucky cop, in searching Surf and Subsurface, would accidentally discover the empty containers that had once held the scuba suits and aqualungs that he, Meyers, and Bates were now using. Meyers had said that after removing the gear, he had placed the boxes back on the shelves where he had found them, leaving no traces. He had done the same with the boxes that had contained the bright-yellow waterproof sacks in which they now stored the money, jewels, and clothing; and he had made certain that the pressurizing equipment that had charged the scuba tanks was turned off and left just as he had come across it. Nevertheless…

    Tucker worried. He wondered if he should have removed the sign board that had stood beside the fountain and had carried a notice of the following week's novelty diving act. If Kluger saw the sign and took the time to read it, would he then realize that the pool, being deep enough to accommodate a diving act, was deep enough to conceal three desperate men?

    When the three of them had slipped into the pool with the two plastic-encased bank bags and the waterproof sacks full of clothing, had they appreciably raised the water level? Would that be noticed by anyone up there who was familiar with the mall? Had they raised the water level so far that tens of gallons had poured over the rim and onto the lounge floor?

    Were the rising bubbles from their aqualungs really concealed in the surface turmoil caused by the fountain? Or were they quite evident, awaiting a keen eye and quick mind to be properly interpreted?

    He worried.

    Every ten minutes he raised his wrist to his face, put the dial of his watch against the view plate of his snugly fitted diving mask, and checked the time. With as much humor as he was capable of at the moment, he thought that this would all make an excellent television commercial for the watch company, a convincing demonstration of the durability of their fine product. The slender, luminous hands crawled slowly but inexorably around the glowing green numerals, while the equally phosphorescent sweep second hand just whirled and whirled and whirled…

    

    

    The rubber mouthpiece that fitted past his teeth and fed air to him had a foul taste. His tongue seemed to be coated with a bitter fluid, and his saliva grew thick and rank. It was gradually making him sick to his stomach. The tanked air itself was stale, flat, unpleasant, and yet too oxygen-rich. He worked his lips around the device in his mouth, trying to make it fit more comfortably than it did, and he saw that both Frank Meyers and Edgar Bates were similarly occupied.

    

    

    He had the curious sensation of being both hot and cold at the same time. Inside the tight rubber scuba suit he was slick with nervous perspiration, yet was simultaneously aware of the unrelenting cold that seeped through to him from the water.

    

    

    He leaned back against the wall of the pool and tried to think about Elise and about all they had done and would do together. Staring at the shimmering green-blue water in front of him, he attempted to picture the Edo shield and spear, several other more minor treasures that he possessed… But he could not make himself feel better. His eyes continually drifted to the trails of fat bubbles rising from Meyers and Bates, then followed the bubbles to the shimmering, foaming surface…

    

    

    

    

    He worried.

    There was really nothing else to do.

    And his anxiety seemed justified when, at 4:40, the fountain was shut off. The surface of the pool stopped shimmering. The milkiness gave way to light. The film of spume fizzed and dissolved. In two minutes the surface was fully transparent. Tucker could look up and see the peaked ceiling, the fake rocks at the edge of the water… He figured it was only a matter of seconds before uniformed police appeared on all sides, staring down at him.

    However, five minutes passed without incident. And then another five…

    At 4:50, with only three or four minutes of air remaining in his tank, he pushed up and, hugging the pool wall, ascended to the surface as slowly and cautiously as he could manage in this unfamiliar element. Sheltered against the low fake rocks, he lifted his head until he could look down the east corridor. He would not have been surprised if he had collected a bullet in the face, but nothing like that happened. The hall was deserted, and most of the ceiling lights had been turned off. The same was true of the other three corridors. The silence was almost unnatural, gravelike. He waited, watching the recessed store entrances for movement, but he saw nothing. Evidently the police had packed up and gone home not long ago-probably just before the fountain had been shut off.

    He sank back down to the bottom and gave Bates and Meyers the thumbs-up sign. With a minimum of thrashing about, mindful of the continuing need for silence, they rose until their heads were out of the water.

    Tucker pulled away his mouthpiece and lifted his mask to his forehead. "They're gone," he whispered. "But the watchmen will still be here."

    Without removing their masks or mouthpieces, Meyers and Bates nodded to let him know they understood. Bates wiped beads of water from his pale cheeks.

    "We've got to be absolutely quiet," Tucker whispered. "We aren't out of this yet."

    They nodded again.

    He worked his mask down over his eyes, made sure that the seal was firm all the way around the faceplate, then slipped the rubber air feed into his mouth and clamped it tightly between his teeth once more. The foul taste filled his mouth again, but he tried to ignore it. He went to the bottom with Bates and Meyers to gather up their clothes, the Skorpions, and the loot.

    

    Ten minutes later they had left the pool and had carried all of their belongings to the shadows in the recessed entrance to Shen Yang's Orient. They had shed their cumbersome aqualungs and masks but not their wetsuits, which were rapidly dripping dry.

    "The guns," Meyers whispered.

    Tucker knelt and opened a yellow waterproof bag in which, they had stashed the Skorpions, and he passed the pistols around. They were bone dry.

    They dressed, pulling their clothes on over the black rubber scuba gear. Without anyone having to say as much, each of them knew that there was not nearly enough time for them to strip out of these clinging suits.

    "Now what?" Meyers asked when he was dressed.

    Tucker finished tying his shoes and stood up. "We wait."

    "For the watchmen?"

    Tucker nodded: Yes.

    "How long?" Meyers whispered.

    "Until they come."

    Meyers raised one eybrow. "You think they'll make their regular rounds tonight?"

    Tucker nodded.

    "After what's happened?"