Surrounded (2 page)

    "No, thanks," Tucker said.

    "A beer? I've got Scotch, vodka, rum… How about a rum and Coke?" He rubbed his hands together incessantly. They were calloused and made a soft hissing noise.

    He could see that Meyers was nervous-rather, curiously agitated. Though he did not want a drink at eleven-thirty in the morning, he was willing to take one if it would help to relax the other man. "Vodka and ice. But a small one."

    "Sure," Meyers said. "Back in a second." He went out to the kitchen, where he started rattling bottles and glasses.

    Tucker studied the room more closely than he had been able to do when Meyers was there. He saw that the place was not only overcrowded with furniture but cluttered as well with dirty whiskey glasses, week-old newspapers, empty and crumpled cigarette packages… The worn maroon carpet had not been swept for weeks, perhaps not for months. The end tables, television, and coffee tables were sheathed in jackets of gray dust.

    Could Frank Meyers possibly be an idea man, a group leader? The concept was ludicrous as far as Tucker was concerned. How could Meyers conceive, plan, and execute an intricate crime when he could not even manage to keep his own living room clean? What was wrong with Clitus Felton? Why would he work with a man like this? Or was it possible that the old man had known Meyers years ago when he was something better than he seemed to be now?

    Meyers, returned from the kitchen and gave Tucker his drink. He took his own whiskey over to one of the easy chairs and, holding the small glass in both hands, sat down.

    For the first time Tucker saw that the man reflected his sloppily kept apartment. His trousers were unpressed, his white shirt a rumpled mess. He had not shaved in a couple of days, and his yellow whiskers were beginning to cast soft shadows over his face.

    "You aren't what I expected," Meyers said.

    "Oh?"

    "I thought you'd be older."

    "I'm twenty-nine," Tucker said.

    "That's awfully young." Meyers sipped his whiskey and watched Tucker over the rim of the glass. His eyes were wide and slightly bloodshot.

    "You?" Tucker asked.

    "Forty-one."

    "You aren't that far ahead of me."

    "How long you been in the business?"

    "About three and a half years," Tucker said.

    "Pulled my first job more than twenty years ago." He sounded faintly nostalgic, like a high school jock recalling his biggest game, as if he longed to relive those early years.

    That was a bad sign. When a man began to yearn for the past, he was not doing very well in the present. And when a thief longed for the past, it also meant that he expected to get nailed by the cops in the near future. It meant he was losing faith in himself and that he could not be fully trusted.

    Tucker knew he should stand up and get out of there. He could see that Meyers was trouble.

    But he did need the money… His share from the hijacking of a Mafia cash collection, split only three months ago, had run out even though it had been a substantial sum. He lived extremely well, and he wanted to keep living extremely well, wanted to keep the Park Avenue apartment, the art work, all of it…

    He had been offered two other jobs recently, but he had turned them both down when they failed to meet one or the other of the three criteria he had set for a robbery. First of all he never robbed individuals, but hit institutions like insurance companies, banks, department stores-and the Mafia, once. Second, he would work only when he was the undisputed boss, when the plans for the operation were marked with his personal and careful attention to detail. Finally, the job had to feel good to him, had to appeal to some internal gauge that, as indescribable and indefinable as it was, had never yet failed him. He rejected a great many deals that ultimately worked out for other people. He passed up potentially rewarding opportunities. However, his caution and his three criteria had thus far kept him out of jail.

    "Something else about you," Meyers said, still looking at him over the whiskey glass.

    Tucker waited.

    "You don't look like what you are."

    Tucker still said nothing.

    "What do I look like?" Meyers asked. Then he answered his own question: "Muscle. I look like a cheap hood. That's how I got started, and I'll never shake the image." He finished his drink and put the glass on the water-ringed coffee table. "Everyone I ever worked with… You could tell they were in the business. It was stamped on them. But you look like some hot-shot young executive."

    "Thanks," Tucker said.

    "No offense meant."

    "Or taken."

    "I just meant that you don't look like a hood. And that's just great. That's a plus in this business."

    "I'm not a hood," Tucker said. "I'm a thief."

    "Same thing," Meyers said, though it was not the same thing at all to Tucker. "As clean cut as you look, you'd make a good front man in an operation."

    Tucker had been holding his vodka, but he had not drunk much of it. The day was too new to support liquor. Besides, after studying Frank Meyers and the man's apartment, Tucker wondered how well the glass had been washed. He finally put it down. "Speaking of operations, what about this one of yours?"

    "I still don't know much about you," the big man said, shifting uncomfortably in the easy chair.

    "What do you need to know?"

    "Clitus recommended you. I guess that ought to be enough… But what are some things you've done? Who have you worked with?"

    Reluctantly, Tucker leaned back in the stale-smelling couch. He did not want to stay here any longer than he had to, for the disorder and filth put him on edge. However, Meyers was beginning, just beginning, to sound like a careful man. Perhaps he was more and better than he appeared to be. There might be a safe profit in the job after all. "You ever hear about the armored car hit in Boston two years ago? Allied Transport truck was knocked over for six hundred thousand. Four men did the job."

    "I heard of it. That was yours?" Meyers leaned forward, shoulders hunched, interested.

    Tucker explained how it had been done, whom he had worked with. He did not try to make it sound better than it was. He did not need to gloss it over, for it had been a perfect caper, cleverly planned from the start. There was no way, in the telling, to improve upon it.

    "Now you," Tucker said when he finished talking about himself.

    Whether he had planned them or not, Frank Meyers had been in on some good bits of business over the years. And he had worked with many of the right people. He did not appear to be a sound, seasoned, successful operator, but apparently he was. In his retellings he was as straightforward and brief as Tucker had been. His record was not as flashy as the younger man's, but it was solid and impressive in its own way.

    "Anything else you want to know about me?" Meyers asked.

    "Yes. What's the job you've got now?"

    "You don't like the preliminaries, do you?" Meyers asked, smiling.

    "No."

    The big man drained the water from the melted ice cubes in his whiskey glass, shoved to his feet. "Come on out to the kitchen. It'll be easier to go over the plans."

    The kitchen was small and certainly as poorly kept as the living room had been. Dirty dishes filled the sink. The waste-basket was overflowing with used paper towels, empty cartons, and open cans that were crusted around the edges with the food that they had once contained. The cracked linoleum was stained in dozens of spots and was filmed overall with the grime of day-to-day city life.

    A cockroach was feasting on bread crumbs by the refrigerator. It sensed their footsteps and scuttled for cover under the oven.

    "We'll use the table here," Meyers said. He removed a dirty plate and a set of silverware left over from breakfast- or perhaps from the previous night's supper. He ran his big hands over the top of the dinette, satisfied himself that there was nothing sticky or wet to get in their way.

    "Clitus told me it was a bank job," Tucker said. He stood at one end of the table, preferring not to sit down.

    "That's right," Meyers rasped. "And a sweet one."

    "I don't like bank work," Tucker said. "There are too damned many risks. You've got to deal with fancy alarm systems, closed-circuit television, heroic tellers, panicky patrons, guards, limited getaway routes…"

    "This is different," Meyers said, echoing Clitus Felton. He went to the bread box that sat on the counter by the sink and removed a large, folded paper from beneath a tin of store-bought sweet rolls. "When you see the setup, you'll love it."

    When he saw the setup, Tucker thought, he would more than likely laugh in Frank Meyers's face and then get the hell out of there.

    But there was nothing to be gained by leaving before Meyers said his piece. The big man might just have something after all. That distracted look had finally left his blue eyes. He seemed to be more alert, less pumped up with nervous energy, and more inclined to get down to the facts. He was still rumpled and somewhat sour smelling, but he no longer looked as if he belonged in this pigsty of an apartment. Obviously the thought of this bank job energized and lifted him. Which might mean something. Or nothing.

    Meyers unfolded the paper on top of the kitchen table and stepped back to give Tucker a good look at it.

    It was a carefully rendered diagram of a large building. The paper itself was a four-foot square, and the scale was twenty-five feet to the inch. It was well drawn, full of names and shorthand descriptions.

    "The bank?" Tucker asked, impressed by the detail. He bent closer, squinting at the writing.

    "No," Meyers said. "It's the full layout of a small shopping center near Santa Monica. Nineteen stores, all under one roof."

    "Nineteen stores," Tucker said, not believing it. "Nineteen stores-and one bank."

    "That's right."

    "You want to hit a bank that's situated in the center of a goddamned enclosed shopping mall," Tucker said, incredulous. "Is that it?" He half turned away from the diagram and stared hard at Meyers. The big man had to be joking.

    He was serious. His broad face was creased by a silly but sincere grin. "I want that bank. That's mainly what we're after, naturally. But I also want two or three of the very best stores in the place."

    Tucker just stared at him.

    "Stores," Meyers repeated. "Jewelry, furs, antiques…"

    "I understood you the first time."

    "Do the logistics bother you?" Meyers asked.

    "They don't bother you?"

    "No."

    "They should."

    "If you'll look more closely at the drawing," Meyers said, "you'll see that there are only four entrances to the mall." He held up four thick fingers, as if he thought Tucker might need some learning reinforcement. "We can gain control of all the doors and then clean out everything worth taking." He laughed at Tucker's expression. "Sounds crazy, doesn't it?"

    "Absolutely," Tucker said. He turned completely away from the table. "And you can count me out."

    Meyers stopped grinning. "Wait a minute." He laid one heavy hand on Tucker's shoulder. "It really is possible. It's safe. It's the sweetest thing I've ever come across."

    Tucker grimaced, shrugged.

    Meyers took the hint. He moved his hand.

    "Look," Tucker said, "even if you had control of the four mall doors, what would you do with all of the customers? That place will be full of them any day of the week. Shoppers coming and going, in and out…"

    "I'm aware of that."

    "Glad to hear it."

    Meyers's hoarse voice was touched by anxiety. "Believe me, I've got it all figured out. I'm no amateur. Those people won't bother us."

    Tucker ignored him, because he was pretty much convinced that whatever Meyers had "figured out" would be full of holes. "And what are you going to do about the telephones?"

    "Telephones?"

    "There, must be a hundred or more public and private phones in a shopping mall that size. Are you going to be able to put them all out of use before anyone in there can call the cops?"

    "We won't have to worry about the telephones," Meyers said. He was grinning again, though only tentatively. He resembled a big clumsy hound that wanted approval, affection, congratulations. But there was a decidedly human desperation in his eyes.

    "Furthermore," Tucker continued, "you'd need an army to hold the mall, once you'd taken it."

    "Just four or five men," Meyers said hastily.

    "Is that right?" Tucker turned, started for the kitchen door.

    "Wait a minute," Meyers said. "I'm not stupid. I know what the hell I'm doing." His anger was feigned. It was only meant to arrest Tucker, to make him listen for another moment. In the middle of the cluttered living room he caught Tucker by the arm and stopped him. "We wouldn't hit the damned place during shopping hours. I never said that."

    Tucker sighed, pulled loose of the big man's hand. He worked his shoulders to straighten his coat. "It's still no good. This would be twice as difficult as any normal after-hours bank job. You'd have two sets of alarms to deal with-the mall's and the bank's systems."

    Meyers shook his burly head. His close-cropped hair glinted like metal bristles. "No alarms."

    "A bank without alarms?"

    "Come back to the kitchen with me," Meyers said. He was almost pleading now. His desperation, whatever the source of it, was growing sharper by the minute. "Look at the diagram and listen to me. Hear me out. I won't keep you long. But… Right now you don't have any idea what's up my sleeve."