The Rare Coin Score p-9

by Richard Stark

  Because this was much worse than the other times, the two or three times when money had been short and he had helped professional criminals to rob coin dealers. Well, not helped exactly. He’d merely pointed out in each case a good subject, and told the robbers what they needed to know about their victim’s movements, and then afterward he’d brought the stolen coins for something less than half of their retail value.

  Of course, no matter how you looked at it, those times had been just the same as this one, just as bad, just as crooked. But this one felt worse. Mostly, probably, it was because those other times the victims had been individual dealers he hadn’t really known all that well, men he’d only met a few times around the convention circuit, and this time the primary victims were going to be the members of the Indianapolis Coin Association, the host club for this convention. And they were people Billy had known for years, people who had befriended him, had invited him to their homes, had accepted him and welcomed him and thought of him as their friend.

  Billy Lebatard well knew the value of friendship. He’d been a shy and lonely child, and at times it had seemed as though his entire life would be lonely, and numismatics had saved him. Fellow hobbyists share something important to them which the outside world considers unimportant and frivolous, so that in a small way all hobbyists are social outcasts; a true social outcast can become less noticeable in their midst.

  Billy was the younger of two boys, his father being a druggist with his own small store down in Beach Grove. The older boy, Dick, had gone off to be a Greenwich Village beatnik at an early age, but Billy had been more the stay-at-home type. The family had assumed that he would be going to college, but when two months after high-school graduation his mother and father both died in a bus accident on their way home from a druggists’ convention in Columbus, Ohio, Billy suddenly discovered he had no true desire to go to college, nor to do much of anything else. He had inherited the house in Mars Hill and the drugstore and about twenty-two thousand dollars; he was eighteen years old; and he had no ambition. He sold the drugstore, split the inheritance with Dick, continued to live at home, and devoted more and more of his time to his hobby of coin collecting.

  The transition from hobbyist to dealer had been gradual, and he’d already been a dealer in a small way months before he first took a table at a coin convention. His business had expanded until he could usually make a living from it, with only those few slumps when he’d taken to fencing stolen goods. Until Claire had come into his life he’d had neither desire nor need for a great deal of money.

  Claire showed up because Dick had a wife out there in New York, and the wife had an airline pilot brother, who a couple of years ago had chosen to live in the Indianapolis area. For some reason Dick had suggested that the pilot look Billy up, which he did, bringing his good-looking wife Claire along, but Billy and the pilot hadn’t hit it off together at all, and Billy saw neither of them again until over a year later, when Claire called to ask if he could recommend a local undertaker.

  When he heard that the pilot was dead, something stirred in Billy’s mind, and the most violent physical lust he’d ever experienced shook him like a fox shaking a rabbit. He craved Claire, craved her beyond rationality. For as long as possible he hid this craving behind a facade of helpfulness, and when at last he did make his shaky, clumsy, terrified proposition she had cut him dead with such cold viciousness that he retreated at once to helpfulness again, trying to make believe that nothing had ever been said on either side.

  It was a while after that that Claire had come to him and told him she needed seventy thousand dollars. She wouldn’t tell him why, and she wouldn’t make any real promises, but the implication was very clear that if Billy could come up with the needed money his earlier proposition would be reconsidered in a much kindlier light.

  And now here he was, stealing other people’s coins, surrounded by hard, violent, self-assured men, betraying all the people who had ever befriended him. At the other end of the room was Claire, who had never even allowed him to kiss her, and moving back and forth was the man named Parker, who Billy was sure had actually been to bed with Claire.

  But he didn’t care. He told himself he didn’t care, not about that, nor about the betrayal of his friends, nor about anything else. Soon this would all be over, the robbery finished. Parker gone, the money coming in, and then everything would be all right. Claire wasn’t going to get a penny until after she’d been in Billy’s bed, he’d promised himself that, and he was going to stick to it.

  In the meantime, the work was almost finished. Billy was hot inside his coat, perspiring, but he didn’t dare take it off because he’d disobeyed Parker’s orders. His gun, a chrome-handled Colt Commander .38 automatic, was in its holster under his left arm. He’d bought it before attending his second convention as a dealer, he’d worn it almost constantly for a while, he still wore it at every possible excuse, and it seemed to him that tonight’s work required its presence more than any other time before this. So he had it on, Parker or no Parker, and he also had his coat on, and inside it he was perspiring.

  But it was all almost over. Parker himself came over and said, “It’s ten to three. When you’re done with that case, carry it down to the truck. We’re clearing out.”

  “Good,” Billy said, and meant it. He’d been more nervous than he liked to admit, and he was glad it was coming to an end.

  It only took him a minute more to finish packing this case, so he would be leaving before any of the others, Parker or Lempke or Claire. He picked up the case, which seemed to weigh a ton, L and carried it over to the hole in the wall, where he had to put it down, go backwards through the hole, and then pull the case through after himself.

  The tour office was very dark, after the brightly lit bourse room. Billy stood there a few seconds, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and then he saw Jack French standing over by the door, wearing hat and topcoat.

  Billy was surprised and confused, but not frightened. “French!” he said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Come over here,” French said, and motioned, and Billy saw he was holding a gun in his hand. Billy, without thinking, dropped the case and reached for his gun.

  He died astonished.

  Seven

  UNTIL SHE heard the sound of the shot Claire had thought there was nothing left for her to find out. But then she heard it, muffled and indistinct but unmistakable, and she thought, “Somebody just died.” And her knees gave way. She slid down sideways through the air, glancing off the edge of the table she’d been clearing, hitting the floor hard on her left shoulder, rolling onto her back and then just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.

  She never actually lost consciousness. But she had no strength in her body, no will in her mind, no control over her emotions. Inside, she was gibbering with terror and guilt. Reality had just hit her a paralyzing blow.

  Because it wasn’t a game, this venture she was on. Nothing in life was a game, nothing, and she hadn’t known that until this second.

  It had seemed a game when she was growing up, and the name of the game was let-‘em-have-less-than-they-want, and if she lost that game sometimes what did it matter? And later on the name of the game was glamorous-life, and even when Ed died it didn’t really change things, because he had died hundreds of miles away on some mountainside, his death as glamorous as his life, his death merely another way of playing the game.

  And when the clod Billy came snuffling around, just at the time she learned how little Ed had left her, that she wasn’t merely broke but actually in debt, the name of the game became confidence, and that was just another way to have the glamorous life and to give them less than they wanted. Claire the con woman, romantic and elusive.

  The number seventy thousand had come out of the air. Actually she owed about eighteen hundred dollars and was prepared to skip out on that, but Billy had done some boasting about how much he had salted away and it had seemed to Claire she’d do better at the game of life with a heal
thy stake, so she’d given him a mysterious song and dance, a couple of half-promises, and it turned out Billy didn’t have that sort of cash on hand.

  But Claire could already taste the money. With a lot of money she could leave Indianapolis, travel, see a lot more of the good life that Ed had been her entree to, while without the money she was stuck in this town, she’d have to hunt around in too much of a hurry for a second husband, the game would turn sour.

  The transition from Billy’s called bluff to this bourse room on this Saturday night had been gradual, with the game slowly becoming one that was played for keeps, but still being a game, always a game. So she’d given Parker the same seventy-thousand story as Billy, but something about the remote strength and cold self-assurance of Parker had gotten through to her and she’d given him other things, too, that Billy had never gotten. Which simply made the game more interesting.

  Until the shot.

  It was as though a layer of mud had been abruptly washed away from the inscription on a tomb, so that she could suddenly see words she had never suspected the existence of before, telling her a truth too unbearable to support. So she had fallen, and was lying here, and in all the jumble that her mind had turned into only one picture kept returning and returning: Ed, broken open like a sausage, smeared across that rocky mountainside. Inside, in a quiet corner away from the panic and the guilt and the chaos, she began for the first time to mourn her husband.

  Parker came into her line of vision, a gun in his hand, but he was only a black shape between her and the white ceiling. He spoke, harsh and quick, and the words might as well have been Swahili. She wanted to say to him, “Help me escape the responsibility. Don’t let them make me pay. I didn’t know how it was.” But she couldn’t organize words, couldn’t find the strength or the method.

  Parker leaned down and slapped her face, very hard, so that her head rocked, and afterward the whole side of her face began to sting and burn, the feeling getting worse and worse. She closed her eyes, knowing she deserved it but wishing it wouldn’t happen.

  This time when he spoke she understood the words. “On your feet,” he said. “Now. On your feet.”

  She didn’t move, and he slapped her again, on the other side of the face, even harder, and she burst violently into tears, as though she’d been weeping for an hour already. As though someone would turn on a television set and the picture would show someone who has been crying for a long while without letup.

  But Parker wouldn’t change. His voice cut through her own sounds, telling her again to get on her feet, and only the new fear of his hand made it possible for her to nod her head and move her arms and actually start to get up.

  He didn’t help. She pulled herself up with the table beside her, and when she was vertical he said, “We’re getting out of here. Stay with me.”

  “Don’t show me any pictures,” she said, because it seemed to her that Parker was some kind of judge, and he had pictures of who had been killed when the shot was fired, and he was going to show them to her, and she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  “Stay with me,” he said, ignoring her, and started away.

  She moved after him, hurrying on shaky legs, her mind still a jumble, and ahead of her Lempke came backing out of the wall and turned around and his head was all bloody. “French,” he said, wide-eyed, and fell down.

  Claire began to scream.

  PART FOUR

  One

  THE SCREAM tore it.

  Parker looked around, and the job was sour, it was dead, it was in pieces around him. Billy Lebatard had to be dead. Lempke was maybe dead, maybe dying, maybe just unconscious. Carlow and Mainzer had to be already taken out of the play. French had come back in to hijack the operation, and was blocking the exit through the tour office.

  There’d only been the one shot. Lebatard must have brought his goddam gun after all, that’s why he kept his coat on. French was a pro, he wouldn’t be in a hurry to do any shooting, so Lebatard must have forced his hand. Then he’d slugged Lempke when Lempke poked his head through the hole in the wall, but French was a little shaky himself now and he didn’t manage to get Lempke right. He had got him enough to put him out, but not before showing himself to Claire and setting her off like a siren.

  Would French clear out, or would he stay a few minutes in the tour office? It depended how rattled Lebatard had made him, and Parker didn’t want to take the chance. There was no safe way to go through the wall.

  Which left the other route, through the hotel. They were alerted out there now anyway, because of Claire’s scream, so they’d have to be contended with no matter which way Parker went out, but it was still a bad alternative. Out, and down the stairs, and through the lobby, and onto the street.

  Parker wasted no time thinking about it. He looked around, saw the situation, and moved. He grabbed Claire by the arm and said, “Come on. You brought me in, you can bring me out.”

  She came along as docile as a zombie. After the one scream she’d gone silent, her face chalk-white, and Parker doubted there was any comprehension at all behind those eyes right now.

  Not that he cared. To do her part she wouldn’t have to think.

  There was already pounding at the double doors, and a voice calling. Parker dragged Claire along behind him into the security room, shut the intervening door, and went over to the hall door. “When I open this,” he said, “you walk out there. Move when I push, stop when I pull.”

  She didn’t respond, but he thought she probably had the idea. He opened the door, stepped behind Claire, grabbed a handful of her sweater at the small of her back, and pushed slightly. She walked.

  Two Pinkerton men were to the left, hammering on the ballroom doors. Another Pink was at the far end of the mezzanine, having come out of the display room down there to see what was going on.

  Parker shouted, “Everybody keep cool!” He started backing away toward the stairs, keeping Claire in front of him. She moved with him, doll-like and obedient.

  One of the Pinks at the door started a dive to the right, going for his holstered-gun at the same time. Parker fired, and he ended the dive in a heap and didn’t move. Claire froze for just a second at the sound of the shot, but when Parker tugged at her she began to move again.

  The other two guards put their hands up over their heads and left them there. Their faces looked cold and white, and Parker could feel the heat of their frustration, but they both had sense enough not to make him kill them.

  Parker reached the stairs, and backed down slowly until both guards were just barely still in sight. Then he grabbed Claire by the wrist and went down the rest of the way at a dead run, she teetering and flailing along behind him.

  In the lobby there was no one but the night clerk, standing behind his desk with his hands high in the air. But now both guards were at the railing up above, and as Parker angled away from the stairs and headed toward the doors they both opened up. But Claire was too close to him, they were both firing out in front or over his head, trying to rattle him and make him break free of Claire so they could have a good shot at him. He kept her close in, moved fast, went through the doors, and hit the street. To his right Jack French was in the cab of the fake power-and-light company truck grinding the starter.

  Parker kept running, straight at the truck. French was too hurried and too harried to see him until he was right there, at the cab. The engine was just kicking over when Parker yanked open the passenger door and shoved Claire ahead of him up into the seat.

  French turned his head and went reaching inside his coat, but Parker showed him his own gun and said, “Later. Get us out of here.”

  French put his hands back on wheel and stick shift, and the truck moved cumbersomely forward. French said, “Where?”

  “Left at the corner.”

  That was no direction at all, except away from downtown, but Parker needed a second or two to think, and French might as well keep them moving along in the meantime.

  The trouble was they
had nothing set up for a situation like this. They were supposed to have leisure to take the truck to Lebatard’s house, more leisure to unload it, more leisure to drive it away someplace else and abandon it and go back to Lebatard’s house to arrange the divvy.

  This way they were in every kind of trouble. The cops would have been called already, would be getting to the hotel in two or three minutes. Somebody would have to have seen them taking off in this orange truck. They couldn’t make any time in it, they couldn’t stay on the street with it, they didn’t have any place to stash it.

  French had made the left. Parker looked ahead, and down the empty bright avenue he saw a neon sign saying PARK. “Head for that,” he said. “The parking garage.”

  “Billy went for his hardware,” French said, as though apologizing.

  “I figured.”

  “It was supposed to be quiet.”

  “I know.”

  French looked at him past Claire. “I didn’t know till today you were back in,” he said. “Then it was too late. I promised 1 ‘ I’d,Ť delivery on this stuff.”

  French had to be really rattled to do so much talking. Parker said, “Later. When we’re clear.”

  French nodded. “Right,” he said, and faced front again.

  Claire was still being a zombie, sitting there between them, unblinking, gazing out the windshield.

  The parking garage was three stories high. French drove the truck inside and stopped and Parker said, “I’ll cool the attendant. Put it out of sight upstairs, leave Claire in it, come down empty-handed.”

  French said, “We can work something out.”

  Parker got out of the cab and walked around the back of the truck. The attendant was coming out of his office, looking puzzled, and when he saw the gun in Parker’s hand he stopped where he was, snapped to attention like an Army private, looked straight ahead, and said, “Take it all. I only work here, I ain’t involved.” He was about twenty, thin and sandy-haired, with a huge Adam’s apple that kept bobbing as he stood there staring forward.