Surrounded (6 page)

    "Half a million in uncut stones tucked away in a little jewelry-store safe?" Bates asked, surprised.

    "It's a big, expensive safe," Tucker said, smiling. "I told you this was no ordinary shopping mall. This jewelry store makes rings and necklaces to order. It doesn't sell nineteen-dollar watches, Edgar."

    "Tell me more," Bates said.

    Tucker told him all of it, the whole layout and every step of the plan. He tried to make it sound especially sweet, for he wanted Edgar Bates more than he did any other jugger. Although he had a reputation as an extremely cool and calm operator, Tucker was routinely frightened and tightly wound when he was in the middle of a heist, regardless of whether the job was going well or disastrously. He always projected an aura of self-assurance, was always quick to lead, a sure commander-all the while seething inside. However, when he worked with men like Edgar Bates, he was considerably more relaxed than when he had to deal strictly with Frank Meyers's type. "If the jeweler's safe isn't too difficult for you, we should be able to pull off the entire operation in less than one hour." He looked sideways at Bates. "Sound reasonable to you?"

    "Sure," Bates said. He looked away from the Eskimo artwork. "But what about this Frank Meyers?"

    "What about him?" Tucker asked.

    "You trust him?"

    "Do you know him?" Tucker parried.

    "I've heard the name, I think. But I've never worked with the man. Do you think he noticed everything he should have noticed? No guards or alarms that he might have overlooked?"

    "He's got every detail," Tucker said, remembering the care put into the diagram of Oceanview Plaza. He did not mention his other reservations about Meyers. If Bates came in on this, the two of them could make up for any boner that Meyers might pull. "Are you with us?"

    "You the boss?" Bates asked.

    "I always am."

    "Just checking." He looked up and down the display room and saw that they were alone except for a thin, bearded young man who was studying a totem twenty yards away. He turned his gaze on the bird-god again, studied the splintered beak and the madly gleaming eyes. A group of thirty or forty screaming schoolchildren raced past one of the doors, filling the chamber with maniacal echoes, remnants of eerie high-pitched laughter. When silence returned like a fog drifting in, the jugger said, "I'm along for the ride, then."

    Tucker almost sighed aloud with relief.

    "When?" Bates asked.

    "Next Wednesday."

    "Suits me."

    "We'll stay in Los Angeles," Tucker said. "I have a hotel picked out. It has over four hundred rooms, so no one will notice us or remember us later. We'll check in separately and drive out to the mall for the job."

    "Will we have a chance to look this Oceanview over firsthand?" Bates asked.

    "Of course. We can explore it all afternoon before we hit it at closing time."

    "Three men," Bates mused, "doesn't seem like enough."

    "It is."

    They ironed out the minor details of time and rendezvous in Los Angeles, then left the display room by different exits. The leering, hawk-nosed, painted faces of the monstrous totems stared after them with fierce intent.

    

    

    "This is only a compromise, not a complete surrender," Albert Littlefield said as he settled into the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. "I want to be certain that you understand this straightaway, Michael. Your father is willing to be generous, but he is not willing to meet all of your demands." They made no small talk. The ice between them was much too thick to break. He sensed Tucker's attitude and knew the briefer the meeting the better for both of them.

    "Go on, then," Tucker said, knowing already that it was really useless for Littlefield to continue. A compromise was not going to be good enough.

    Littlefield's office seemed to be designed to match the chilly mood that separated the two men. The walls were white, unmarked, like partitions of snow. The ice-blue vinyl furniture looked cold and uncomfortable, all square and sharply angled, harsh and plain. The bindings of the hundreds of legal texts-green, brown, dull red-were matched and sterile, nearly hypnotizing the eye.

    The man suited his office, Tucker thought. Littlefield was tall, slender, composed of sharp angles. His face was long and thin, with a fresh but slightly milky complexion. Arrow-straight, his nose was slightly flared around the nostrils, as if he were constantly sniffing some odor that offended him. His colorless lips were taut bow lines. He was clearly well bred, from a background of wealth and position, although he had none of the charm and personal easiness that most often accompanied the strong self-confidence of the aristocrat. Indeed, he was quite reserved and prim enough to fit comfortably the part of an eighteenth-century schoolmaster.

    Littlefield folded his hands on the desk, his sticklike fingers pressed together at the tips. "As you know, Michael, your father has established for you a ten-thousand-dollar monthly allowance drawn from the earnings of your trust fund. Thus far, forty-two of these checks have been issued. Since you have consistently refused to accept them, they have been deposited in a special account in your name."

    Tucker did not bother to explain why he had summarily rejected this apparent windfall. They both knew that by signing the waiver to be eligible for the dole, he would be endorsing his father's control of his mother's estate even before he spent the first penny. He would be signing away his right to file any further suits in federal court and would be limiting himself to the role of a minor for the remainder of his father's life if not his own.

    Besides, ten thousand dollars a month was not enough, not when a single Edo spear went for sixty-five thousand dollars…

    "In the past," Littlefield continued, "you have said that the wording of the waiver was unacceptable, the conditions much too stringent."

    "I'm sure I reacted much more strongly than that," Tucker said. "I probably indicated that it was not only unacceptable but immoral and almost criminal as well."

    The lawyer's smile was brittle. "Well… Your father has now drafted a new waiver which should be more to your liking and which should not stand between you and your allowance." He opened a manila folder that lay atop his desk, took out a single sheet of yellow paper, leaned across the desk and tried to hand it to Tucker. "If you'll take a moment to read this, you'll see how generous the offer really is."

    "Why don't you read it to me?" Tucker asked, not bothering to rise out of his chair to accept the paper.

    Littlefield colored slightly, then settled back. "Rather than bore you with the legalese, why don't I summarize the main points?"

    "Fine," Tucker said.

    Littlefield put the paper down and peered at his buffed and manicured nails for a moment. "First of all, your monthly allowance is being raised to fifteen thousand dollars so that it will be more in line with what you have often said you require. This takes quite a toll of the trust earnings, but it is a compromise your father is willing to make."

    Tucker waited.

    Discreetly clearing his throat behind one hand, Littlefield looked down at the legal document again. "Second, all of the money thus far paid to you in uncashed allowance checks will be made available in one lump sum." He raised his eyes from the paper, stared at Tucker, sighed when he received no encouragement. He shook his head, leaned back in his chair. "Furthermore, your father no longer requires that you come to work for him as soon as you accept the allowance. In fact, he does not require that you work for him full time at all."

    "But part time?" Tucker asked sourly.

    Littlefield nodded. "Just two days a week."

    "I see."

    "Even on that sort of schedule, you should gradually be able to learn the workings of your father's companies and get a grasp of the management of the family fortune."

    Tucker held up one open palm, silencing the lawyer. "I don't want to get a grasp of the management of the family fortune," he said wearily. "I thought that was clear by now. As you must know, the last thing I want to become is a money manager like the old man. I want to enjoy life. "I don't want to spend all my time in banks and board rooms, working up ulcers. That attitude may frighten my father. It does frighten him. That's why he wrangled that signature from my mother when she was dying. But there is no way he can manipulate me to get me into his world."

    "You're turning down this offer?" Littlefield asked.

    "Precisely."

    "I wish you would reconsider-"

    "No chance," Tucker said, getting to his feet.

    "You've judged your father too harshly."

    "You think so?" Tucker asked, looking down at the lawyer, trying to control his anger. "He was so damned wrapped up in his schemes for making more and more money that he. lost all touch with his family. And out of touch, he eventually lost the ability to love us. We were a family of strangers. He sent me to boarding schools, saw me on holidays, never wrote me letters… If my mother had not been gentle and weak, she'd have divorced him, because she had become as much of a stranger to him as I had. They hardly ever talked. They went days without seeing each other. He kept a string of mistresses, so that he didn't even need her to sleep with him. Hell, he flaunted those women as if he not only didn't love her but also wanted to hurt her." If his mother had been more like Elise, Tucker thought, she would have freed herself of the old man. Why couldn't she have been stronger? "You think I've judged him too harshly? Christ, I've been easy on him."

    "Isn't it an expression of love for your father to want you to eventually take over the family businesses?" Littlefield asked. "Don't you think that-"

    "No love involved," Tucker said. "It's simply a matter of his pride. He's determined to dominate me. He won't rest until he has forced me to do what he wants. Littlefield, my father lost touch with me so long ago that he doesn't even realize yet that I'm a man with a mind of my own. He insists on thinking of me as a bad little boy who must be punished, threatened, and cajoled into doing as he's told." He turned away and walked across the ice-blue carpet to the door.

    "Michael," the lawyer called when Tucker twisted the knob. "One more thing."

    He turned around. "What is it?"

    Littlefield had gotten out of his chair, was standing very stiff and straight. "However you may be earning a living-it's far less admirable than the way your father makes his."

    Feeling his heartbeat suddenly increase, Tucker released the doorknob and said, "What on earth is so despicable about dealing in primitive art?"

    Littlefield smirked. "We both know that you can't be making so terribly much from that."

    "Do we?" Tucker asked, both frightened and amused by the turn that the conversation had taken.

    "Sooner or later we'll discover where all your money comes from," Littlefield said, his reedy voice taking on a nasty undertone. "And then you may have to compromise."

    "Are you insinuating that I'm involved in something illegal?" Tucker hoped his voice conveyed genuine surprise.

    Littlefield said nothing, just stood there with that maddeningly superior smile on his face. He would have made a good head waiter or doorman for a fancy restaurant, Tucker thought.

    "Why don't you put the cops onto me? Or even the Internal Revenue Service?"

    "We don't want you in jail," Littlefield said. "We just want you where you belong-in the family again."

    "You people think you can conduct human relationships like you would a business merger," Tucker said. "You're all barbarians." He opened the door and slammed it when he went out. He would have to start watching for tails again. It sounded as though his father were ready to hire another batch of private investigators to get to the truth about his son's life.

    

    

    From a public telephone booth on the edge of Central Park, Tucker called Frank Meyers to tell him that everything was on for the next Wednesday in California, and then he went home. Because the usual gray-green polluted overcast was gone and the autumn sun was streaming down like golden curtains between the buildings, he decided to walk. He kept looking behind for one of his father's private detectives, but he could not spot anyone who might have been tailing him. The early Friday afternoon rush had begun, the sidewalks crowded with people who were in a hurry to get nowhere, but he was still reasonably certain that he was not being followed.

    Back at the apartment, he mixed himself a drink and sat in the den thinking about Meyers and Edgar Bates and the new job. He turned the Oceanview Plaza operation over and over in his mind, worrying it like a cat with a large ball of string. There were a few loose ends. However, he was happily unable to tie them in. The plan was good.

    Elise arrived home just before five o'clock, came into the den and perched on the arm of his easy chair. "How did it go with Littlefield?"

    "Terribly."

    "I thought they wanted to compromise."

    "That was the problem," Tucker said.

    They went out to the Spanish Pavilion for dinner, drank" a great deal of sangria, and went home for a sound night's sleep. That set the tone for the remainder of the weekend. They went to a couple of good films, did some light reading, watched an old horror movie on television, made love more than once, and generally lazed around.

    The only bad moment in this brief idyll was a vivid nightmare from which Tucker woke early on Sunday morning. He had dreamed, once again, about the shopping mall they were going to hit and about his father and about dozens of policemen who pursued him down endless glass-walled corridors and around counters heaped high with jewelry and other merchandise. This time there was a great deal of gun play and blood. He could not easily get back to sleep. Lingering impressions of the nightmare haunted him. The following day, Elise and life seemed twice as precious as they ever had before.