What she saw instead was the first football player and Wilson wrestling on the floor. The player must not have been hit the first time. The Sten gun erupted again, the barrel still pointed upward and past the bigger man, the shots doing as little harm as was probably possible. Harper had told her before that such guns were not terribly accurate, especially at any distance and particularly in the hands of someone who didn’t know what they were doing.
“Island Security,” came a shout from the same direction as the single gunshot a moment earlier. “Drop your weapons now! Everyone else, stay down.”
Connie rolled over and now she could see the football player on top of Wilson. Goggans lay on his face a short distance away, not moving. There was blood. A man in a dark suit and tie was working his way toward them, a pistol out and ready in his right hand. He was being hampered by all of the guests and staff members still scrambling in every direction.
Connie considered the situation for a couple of seconds and realized how very bad this was. Their robbery diversion was over. Between the two football players and this security man,
Goggans was very possibly dead. Wilson would be dead or a prisoner in just a few moments. Dead was bad enough, Connie thought, but alive might mean he started talking. And then…
Wilson’s Sten gun sprayed one more volley, again failing to do any damage whatsoever. It did, however, cause the security man to dive to the side. Connie used this opportunity to scramble out of his line of sight and then run for the stairs leading down to the basement.
There was another shot behind her—a single one—and another. No more machine gun fire, though. Then she was running down the stairway.
24
Harper was prying another row of gray-painted gold bricks out of the wall when the sounds of gunfire erupted from upstairs.
A moment earlier, which felt now like sometime back in the Middle Ages, he’d paused in his work to retrieve a brick that had tumbled off to one side. Picking it up, he’d held it before his eyes and noted how whoever had hidden it—and all the others like it—away down here had gone to the trouble of painting all sides of the bricks, not just the surface that faced outward. When he thought about it, it made sense: it was the only way to keep any bit of the shiny gold from showing if the bricks got jostled in the wall even the slightest bit. And now it was working out very well for him, because every single one of them was completely camouflaged. Just in case.
The sound of the Sten gun rattling away up above brought him out of his thoughts and back to reality in a big way. Instantly he understood it. Things were going sour—as he had somehow known all along was inevitably going to happen. All those red flags. So many red flags.
He spun around and looked to see if someone was coming up behind him, but found he was still alone in the basement. Salsa and the other two guys were still out on the route to the houseboat, carrying little stacks of those heavy bricks out there and coming back for more.
He abandoned any further thoughts of prying more of them out of the wall. Whatever they had now would have to do. He spared one quick glance at his handiwork and saw that he had pulled quite a few out—more than he’d thought while he was doing it—though he wasn’t sure of the exact number. But it had to be at least a hundred.
Yes. It would have to do.
More gunfire, and he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He reached for his gun, but then Connie emerged into view, alone, clearly in a panic. Well, that was it for sure, then. He grabbed the last few gray-painted bars he’d already pried loose, tossed them into one of the canvas bags, and moved towards her.
As they met in the center of the basement, she started to say something, surely to try to tell him what was going on, but she was too flustered and out of breath. That was okay; he didn’t necessarily need all the details at that moment. He could guess easily enough, based on the gunfire. He motioned her back the way she had just come.
Up the stairs they went, and now Connie was able to say with urgency, “Wait! There’s a security guy running around on the main floor. He shot one of them. Goggans, I think. Maybe the other one, too.”
Harper nodded at this, not surprised either or both of those idiots had maybe gotten themselves killed.
“The two football players jumped them,” Connie went on, “and then the security guy appeared out of nowhere and started shooting.”
Harper shook his head at that. He’d warned Bigelow that two men up there weren’t enough. Especially since they had been stupid enough to start the robbery too early.
Concerned about the wild card that the security man represented, Harper slowed before they reached the top and brought out his Colt. Holding it at the ready, he crept slowly the rest of the way up, until he could see over the edge of the stairwell and out into the back rooms. The coast was clear, at least for now.
“Go,” he whispered to Connie.
She ran past him up the steps and dashed across the open area, heading for the back doors. The path was easy enough to follow now. Salsa and the others had been making repeated trips to the houseboat and back, in and out of the storm, leaving a wide and slimy brown trail of mud across the rich carpeting from the doors to the basement stairs. Lansdale was going to have to have his rugs cleaned, and he was going to have a harder time affording it.
As Connie was passing through the doors leading onto the enclosed deck, a figure in a dark suit, pistol in his hand, emerged from the doorway in the direction of the main hall and spotted her. Harper saw him out of the corner of his eye. He looked rough and rugged, ruddy-faced, with hair was so blond as to appear almost white. Surely this was the security man Connie had mentioned.
“Hey!” the guy yelled at her. “Stop!”
Connie spun around, feigning terror, holding his attention. “No! You’re one of them!”
The security man must have realized his quarry was just an innocent young woman, surely one of the guests there to play bridge. He lowered his gun and started towards her. “Island Security, ma’am,” he said. “I’m looking for—”
By that point Harper had already slipped up out of the stairwell and hidden himself behind a huge, red, velvet-covered chair. As the man with the gun strode past him, Harper exploded upward with all his might and pasted the guy on the jaw with his fist.
The security man went down in a heap and lay still. Harper stood over him, making sure he was out. Then he looked for the guy’s gun, but apparently it had tumbled out of his hand and bounced away somewhere. He didn’t have time to search for it. He turned to Connie.
“Let’s go.”
25
Salsa sat on the houseboat, just under the canopy, taking a momentary break from the relentless rainfall.
It had been miserable work. His arms were aching from so many trips carrying stacks of heavy gold bricks, and his shoes were waterlogged and heavy. At least the downpour had eased a bit, but the wind was picking up. He assumed it was only going to get worse as Hurricane Inez swirled by, just south of Miami.
In addition to all that, he was still brooding over what could have become of Lois. It was not like her to miss a rendezvous—especially one as important as this. But—who could have done something to her? Bigelow’s crowd? Weren’t they all there on the island with them now? Would they have taken time out before the robbery to track her down and kidnap her—or worse? And if so, why? To hold her hostage for a bigger share of the gold?
The more he thought along those lines, the less he liked where it led him. So he forced himself to stop thinking about it and brought himself back to the present.
He’d originally stopped in his back-and-forth trips to the mansion in order to try to lend some order to the pile of gray-painted bricks accumulating on the floor of the houseboat. Bigelow and Diaz had been just dumping them over the side and going back, and the resulting uneven pile of heavy metal would make for all sorts of handling problems for the boat if it wasn’t corrected. Salsa had taken the time to stack them evenly on both sides of the boat, as best
as he could. Then, exhausted, he’d taken a little break.
He was just getting back up and starting to climb over the side when he heard a shout from the direction of the path leading up to the mansion: “Time to go! Cut us loose!”
Someone was running down the slope. Salsa blinked away the water running over his face and squinted into the darkness, trying to see who it was. He realized it was actually at least four people, though they were only vague shapes moving through the rain. But the voice had sounded like Harper’s, and the message had been clear enough: they were leaving.
He cast a quick glance at the disguised bricks he’d just finished stacking, pursed his lips and shrugged. Maybe they could’ve gotten more—quite a few still remained in the wall when he’d looked during his last trip to the basement—but a quick estimate told him they’d grabbed at least a hundred. It would have to do.
Now he could see the people that were coming his way, with Harper leading the procession. One of the others looked to be Connie, which hadn’t been in the plans. She was supposed to be posing as an innocent bystander, leaving the island later, along with the other guests. If she was coming with them now, and they’d had to cut things short… Well, that did not bode well for how events had played out in the few minutes since his last trip to the mansion. Time to go, indeed.
“Cast off the rope,” he shouted at Harper, before turning to the controls and firing up the engine. He looked back and saw his partner doing just that, while a bigger shape—it looked to be Big Bob—was pushing the boat off the sand and into the water.
A moment later, all four had climbed aboard: Harper, Connie, Bigelow and Diaz. Harper dumped out one last sackful of bricks before dropping into a swivel chair, clearly as exhausted as Salsa felt.
“What happened?” Salsa asked as soon as the houseboat had pulled completely clear of the shore and was lumbering its way out into the choppy waters of Biscayne Bay. The wind had definitely picked up and he was having to wrestle the rudder more than he would have liked. “Where are the other guys?”
Harper just shook his head.
“Apparently, some security guy got involved,” Bigelow said.
Salsa looked at him, noting offhandedly that the big man was covered from stem to stern in a layer of fresh mud.
“Took out Mike and Danny,” Bigelow went on. He shrugged, as if he wasn’t entirely sure that he believed it. “I got this second-hand, of course, from Harper, just now. I was on my way back up to the house when I ran into him and his woman coming the other way. In a damn big hurry. No sign of the others.” He looked at Harper. “Really, anything coulda happened to them.”
Harper frowned at that, meeting Bigelow’s eyes.
“It wasn’t just the security guard,” Connie said, anger flashing on her face. “There were two big football players in with the guests, and they made a run at your guys. They got impatient because it was taking so long,” she added pointedly. “While that was happening, the security guy came out of nowhere and started shooting.”
Bigelow looked at her dubiously. “Of course, I’d expect you to back his story,” he said.
From the rear of the boat, Diaz spoke up. “I was just coming back into the house when the shooting started,” he said. “I saw some of it. Her story matches.”
Bigelow glowered at him. “Well, why didn’t you do something about it, then?”
“I would’ve tried,” Diaz said, “but, by that time, it was just chaos in there. Everyone was running around and screaming. Mike and Danny were both down. Maybe dead—I don’t know. What could I have done?” He shrugged. “Then I saw Harper and his woman running out of the basement, in a big damn hurry. Harper knocked out a guy on the way, and they took off, so I followed them out. Seemed the smart thing to do.”
Bigelow took this in, made a sour face, and cursed. Then he looked at Harper. “I don’t want to hear any told-ya-so’s from you,” he said.
“But he did tell you so,” Connie said. “Several times, in fact.”
Bigelow reddened.
Harper raised his hand and made a settling-down gesture to her. “What’s done is done,” he said. “And it’s my fault. I saw all the red flags. I should’ve shut it down before it came to this.”
Salsa took all this in while piloting the boat. The first thing he’d done was put his blue sport coat and white captain’s hat on, but his mood now did not match their cheerfulness. He looked back at the others over his shoulder and said, “Well, with all due respect to our fallen comrades—and assuming they have passed into the Great Beyond and won’t be around to tell any tales or name any names—we are free and clear now, and we did well enough, I think.”
Bigelow clearly wasn’t persuaded. “All the cash and jewelry Mike and Danny took—that’s gone,” he grumbled. Then he gestured at the two stacks of bricks Salsa had carefully arranged on opposite sides of the boat’s deck. “And we only got part of the gold.”
“We also don’t know what’s become of Lois,” Connie noted.
“That’s the next order of business,” Salsa said. He couldn’t help but glance at Bigelow.
Big Bob caught the look and raised both hands. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
Salsa met his eyes, hesitated, then nodded once and turned back to the controls. He directed the big, lumbering vessel along the coast on a course south and west. Virginia Key was a phantom, hidden by the rains, somewhere off to their left.
A little over halfway across the water, lights suddenly flared in front of the houseboat, and there was a whoop from a siren up ahead.
Everyone tensed.
Salsa could see a police boat emerging from the sheets of rain, just to starboard, a set of red and blue lights flashing atop the main cabin.
“Why not?” Bigelow muttered aloud, reaching for his Colt. “Everything else has gone sour.” Harper put out a hand, motioning for him to wait on that.
Salsa turned back to his passengers. “Everyone stay calm,” he said. “They can’t possibly know about it yet.”
Easing back on the throttle, Salsa allowed the police boat to cruise up alongside the houseboat. A flashlight beam stabbed out, illuminating him, and he responded with a broad smile and a wave of both hands. “Evening, fellas,” he called out.
“Sir,” came a man’s voice from behind the light, amplified by a megaphone, “are you aware of Inez?”
Salsa blinked. “You mean my ex-wife? What’s she done now?”
“Sir, Hurricane Inez is bearing down on this area.”
“A hurricane?” Salsa replied with mock surprise. “Good heavens! Well, that would explain why it’s gotten so hard to steer this thing!”
A pause, then, “Sir, you need to take that boat to shore immediately!”
Salsa nodded, still smiling into the light. “That’s just what I was doing,” he said.
“Do you need us to escort you?”
Salsa’s eyes widened a tad at that, but he shook his head. “Oh! Oh, no, that’s fine—I can handle it. No problem. I’m sure you’re needed out here. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people out and about who had no idea what they were doing.”
Another pause, during which Salsa began to sweat and everyone in the boat behind him held their collective breath. Then, “Very well, sir. Please head to shore immediately. It’s getting very dangerous.”
“I’ll do that!” he called back. “And—you be careful too, officer. I hear there’s a hurricane out here!”
The light remained on him for another couple of seconds, then switched off. With a rumble, the police boat pulled away. Everyone let out their collective breath. Salsa wiped his forehead, which was wet now not just from the rain. Then he pushed the throttle forward again and the houseboat shuddered back up to speed.
They all sat in silence as the boat made its steady way through the storm. Finally, Salsa looked back again. “Land ho,” he called, though without much enthusiasm. He throttled the engine back and aimed for the shore.
The b
oat glided to a stop on the shores south of Miami.
26
Bigelow could see the big Army surplus truck through the sheets of rain, still resting a few dozen yards away up the slope, right where Harper had left it the day before. Big Bob was quite pleased with himself for having gone and checked it out later that same evening, just to be sure he knew where it was and how to drive it—it was one of those big, olive drab jobs with the canvas canopy over the back. He’d also used that opportunity to plan out what he intended to do next. And, of course, to hide a backup gun, just in case anything went wonky.
They’d crossed the water from Ruby Island without further incident; hardly any boats were out, thanks to the hurricane, but the storm wasn’t bad enough—at least, not yet—to give Salsa too much trouble in getting them safely to shore. Nobody was looking for them. With the phone lines cut and the ferry blown up, nobody outside of the island should have even known anything was happening there.
Bigelow had sat quietly, suppressing his own anger at how things had gone. Telling himself to wait, to be calm; that a two-person split was better than a four-way, once Harper and his people were all taken care of. That was a two-way split, of course, if he magnanimously decided to let Diaz live. Finally, he told himself to just relax, because he would be sorting everything out to his general satisfaction soon enough.
The boat grounded on the shore and Harper jumped overboard with the rope in hand. He located a short post embedded in the ground and tied the boat to it.
Not wasting any time, Bigelow climbed over the side and turned back to receive a stack of bricks from Salsa. Then he started to make his way up the slope toward the truck, intending to be the first one there.
But Salsa came down the ladder quickly, another stack in hand, and caught up to him before he could get there. The guy was nimble and could move a lot faster than Bigelow, even when carrying a load of bricks—though Bob noted that Salsa’s stack was considerably smaller than his.
Miami Heist Page 11