by Dean Koontz
Tucker smiled. "You watch a lot of television, don't you? You have your lines down just pat."
The watchman colored. He narrowed his eyes and made a tight, grim line of his mouth. "I've got your face filed away. I have absolutely every detail of it memorized. Hell, I have all of your faces memorized."
His Skorpion casually pointed at the man's face, Frank Meyers stepped forward, a singularly menacing presence with his horror-movie voice. "You're pretty damn dumb," he said nastily, meeting the guard's hostile stare.
"He'll be okay," Tucker said, quickly dismissing Meyers before the watchman could respond and exacerbate the situation. Tucker could sense an almost natural antagonism between these two men. They were the sort who seemed to react chemically from the moment of first contact, the sort who would be at one another's throats with little provocation. And that could not be allowed. He knelt down beside the guard and smiled at him. "Which one are you-Chet or Artie?"
Both of the watchmen were surprised. "How'd you know our names?" the mean one demanded.
Tucker sighed. "I stood at that door and listened to everyone in the mall say good night to you."
The ex-cop was disgusted with himself for not figuring it out right away.
"Which are you?" Tucker insisted quietly.
"Chet," the mean one said.
The important thing, Tucker knew, was to soothe Chet's battered pride, doctor his bruised machismo. The less like a fool that Chet felt, the more cooperative he would be. "Chet, I know you're not the kind of man who takes this sort of thing easily. You're not used to letting anyone get the jump on you. But now it's happened, and you have to make the best of it. My friend here," he said, pointing to Frank Meyers, "will be right out in the corridor watching over the east exit. Every once in a while he'll look in on you. He will not want to see you struggling to get loose. You don't want to make him nervous. There isn't any reason for anyone to get killed here tonight."
Chet glared at him but said nothing. His mouth just got tighter, his eyes narrower.
"No one's going to think less of you because you let us pull this thing off," Tucker said patiently. "You were completely surprised. Hell, anyone would have been surprised. You did everything right. But we had machine guns. And there were more of us than there were of you "
The watchman seemed to relax slightly. Some of the stiffness went out of him, and his lips took on color again. He stopped straining so steadily against his wire bonds.
Tucker looked at the second man. He was only fractionally less physically formidable than Chet, but he had none of the other man's inner fire. He was pale and obviously frightened. "You don't see any reason to get yourself killed, do you, Artie?" Tucker asked.
"No," Artie said.
"Good for you," Tucker said.
Chet gave the other man a cool look. Then he looked at Tucker again and said, "The way I have your faces memorized, the police will be able to work up a good composite drawing of you. Your faces will be plastered in every station house in the country. You'll never get away with this. Never."
"Maybe you're right," Tucker said, getting to his feet.
"I am. You'll see."
"We'll just have to take our chances."
"You got no chances," Chet said. But he was not genuinely belligerent now. He was merely playing out a role, winding up a performance.
"It's twenty minutes to eleven," Edgar Bates said. "Those bank people aren't going to work all night. We'd better get going."
Tucker saw the watchmen exchange a curious glance at the mention of "bank people," but he supposed they were so dull-witted that they were only now realizing what was to be robbed. "Come on," he said, leading Meyers and Bates out of the storage room.
Frank remained behind in the east corridor to watch over the doors through which they would shortly leave Oceanview Plaza and to see that the watchmen remained out of action.
Tucker and Bates hurried quietly up the hall, past Surf and Subsurface, past the Rolls Royce salesroom, the bar In the mall lounge the fountain was still splashing, dancing on the surface of the deep pool. Evidently the water was turned off by a set of controls in the warehouse-controls that Chet and Artie had not had the opportunity to use. That was good. The splashing water covered any unintentional noise they might make. Standing by the fountain, Tucker could look down each of the other three corridors, which were well lighted and deserted. At the end of each hall the glass doors were shut. Inside the mall, three feet behind each set of those glass doors, steel-bar gates had been rolled out of the ceiling and locked into baseboard bolt holes. No one could come in or go out of those three entrances.
"It's just like Frank described it, down to every detail," Bates said. "I'm feeling better by the minute."
Tucker thought of the plain dark wood door and the mall's business office that lay behind it, thought of that single detail that had not been on Meyers's diagram Then he shrugged off the unwarranted feeling that something was not altogether right. It was useless to worry until something went wrong. And nothing was going to go wrong. The whole operation was going to tick along like a clockwork mechanism.
They turned left from the lounge and the fountain and entered the south corridor of the mall. On their right was the House of Books and Sasbury's, one of the building's two largest clothing stores. On the left was Young Maiden, Harold Leonardo Furriers, Accent Jewelry, and finally the Countryside Savings and Loan Company where most of the stores deposited their daily cash intake and where shoppers kept personal checking accounts against the times when they had overcharged their store credits.
Having learned from experience that the bold approach was almost always the best, Tucker and Bates intended to walk right up to the bank and take it over, subdue the late-working manager and his assistant without any skulking around. But it was not going to be that easy. The sliding glass panels that fronted the bank were closed and locked. Inside, the darkness was relieved only by two blue night lamps above the vault door and immediately behind the short row of tellers' cages. No manager or assistant manager was diligently toiling away after hours. The bank was deserted.
"Christ," Bates said miserably. "They probably work late every Wednesday night, month in and month out-until tonight."
Tucker pressed his face to the glass and carefully examined the unlighted room beyond. There was definitely not anyone in there. Meyers had said that the front doors would be open and that maybe even the vault itself would be standing wide. He had said there would be only two meek bank officers to be dealt with. And here it was, empty, closed up tight. "You'll have to do it the hard way, Edgar."
"Blow this safe as well as the one at the jewelry store."
"And circumvent two sets of alarms."
"I thought this might be, for once, an easy job," the old jugger said, obviously delighted that the challenge was greater than he had anticipated. He was in his element. He was no longer nervous. Putting down his satchel, slipping on the pair of thin cotton gloves, he peered at the glass panels where they joined, studied this transparent barrier that separated them from the bank. "I'll bet there's an alarm in these, too."
"You shouldn't have to worry about that," Tucker said.
"Oh?"
"Either Chet or Artie will have the keys."
"To the bank?"
"They'd have to have keys in case a fire started in one of the stores." Tucker grinned at the jugger's sudden frown. "Don't worry, Edgar. They won't have the vault combination. You'll still have plenty of work to do."
Bates blushed. "Well, I was merely-"
Off in another part of the mall five shots were fired in rapid succession.
When Tucker ran out of the south corridor and into the public lounge under the peaked ceiling, he saw that Frank Meyers was not down at the east exit where he was supposed to be. The hall was empty. Tucker knew at once where to look: at the opposite end of the building from the warehouse and the two disabled watchmen-at that one room Meyers had left out of the diagram. He ran past the fo
untain into the west corridor. He passed Henry's Gaslight Restaurant, the House of Books, a clothing store for teen-agers, a shoe importer, a florist, Craftwell Gifts Breathing hard, his heart pounding like a sledge on an anvil, he slid to a stop outside of the half-open door of the mall's business office.
"Frank?" He stood warily out of the line of fire but covered the doorway with his Skorpion.
"In here," the familiar hoarse voice answered.
"What's wrong?"
"It's over."
"You okay?"
"Yeah." Meyers sounded in the best of spirits as he approached the door on the other side and pulled it open. "It's finished. Come in."
"You bastard," Tucker said. "This was planned, wasn't it? You were after someone, weren't you?"
Meyers grinned. "And I got him."
Confused and angry, Tucker pushed past him into the room. This was the outer office, a reception area. The walls were cream-colored, the carpet a deep forest green, the furniture all dark and heavy and vaguely Mediterranean. Three good oil paintings caught his eye, held it for a moment.
In the center of the room an extremely pretty young woman sat behind an enormous desk. She was in her late twenties, with a dusky Italian complexion and thick black hair that fell to her shoulders. She was terrified. Her brown eyes were open wide. She was sitting as stiff as a statue. Her hands were on the blotter in front of her where Meyers had probably told her to keep them, and the long fingers were knotted like trysting worms, the knuckles white.
"Who's she?" Tucker asked.
"His secretary," Meyers said.
"Whose secretary?"
Meyers pointed at the open door to the inner office.
Tucker went in and looked at the dead men. One of them was on the floor to the right of the desk, the focal point of a widening pool of blood. In his hand he had a gun he had not used, and he looked like the bodyguard type. Another dead man was sitting in a swivel chair behind the desk. He was about fifty years old, thickset and ugly. He had two holes in his chest and one in his neck, and he was grinning at Tucker.
Tucker felt sick. He wanted to turn and cut Meyers down as the big man had done with these two. But he was incapable of that, just as he would have been incapable of the senseless murders Meyers had just committed.
He turned away from the carnage, for he could not look at a dead man without suffering intimations of his own mortality. Facing Meyers, struggling to keep his anger and disgust in check, he said, "Who was he?"
"Rudolph Keski," Meyers said. "The other one was his protection. Some protection." He laughed. Tucker winced.
"Why did you want him?" Tucker's voice was low and cold. No one should have had to die.
"Keski gave me this voice," Meyers said. "He put me in the hospital for months." For the first time he realized that Tucker didn't take killing quite so lightly as he did. Now Meyers was trying to justify himself.
"Mafia?" Tucker asked.
Meyers was amused by that. "Hell, no."
"Our friend in Harrisburg said you got mixed up with Sicilians."
"That's just a rumor, then," Meyers said. "Keski headed the local organization. But he was Polish, not Mafia. There's no connection between him and any national group. He wasn't exactly small time, but he wasn't big, either."
"Why didn't you tell me about him?" Tucker asked.
"You wouldn't have thrown in with me," Meyers said. He was smiling jauntily. The personality change that had occurred between New York and Los Angeles was now firmly established. "No one would have come in on the job So I said it was just robbery-which it still is, by the way."
"I'll want to hear the whole story. Later." He looked at the woman, tried to smile even though he was frightened and sickened by the slaughter. "You okay?"
"I didn't touch her," Meyers said.
"You okay?" Tucker asked again, ignoring Meyers.
She nodded, tried to speak, could not. She made a little croaking noise and twisted her fingers together even tighter than they had been.
"Don't worry," Tucker assured her, striving for a calm and gentle voice. "You won't be hurt."
She looked at him as if she were deaf and dumb.
"You really won't," he said. "You'll have to come with us to the storage room and let us tie you up. But we won't hurt you."
"He killed Mr. Keski," she said. Her voice was low, sultry, delightful. It was out of place in this morgue.
"I know he did," Tucker said, going over to her and prying her hands apart. He held her right hand as tenderly as if they were lovers. "But that was something between him and Keski. It had nothing to do with you. Right now, all he cares about, all I care about, is taking some money out of the bank safe up the hall. We'll have to tie you up while we do that. You understand?"
Her hand was cold and motionless in his.
"You understand?"
"Yes."
"Good," Tucker said. He let go of her hand and walked around behind her and pulled back her chair as she got up. "Don't try to run. There's nowhere to go. Just cooperate and you won't get hurt. Under-" He stopped talking when she stepped away from the big desk, and he moved in closer to it, bending down to look into the cavity beneath the work surface. What he thought he had seen turned out to be no illusion, no trick of shadows, no stain on the carpet. It was there. "Christ!"
"What?" Meyers asked.
"You stupid ox," Tucker said. In the knee hole underneath the desk the green carpet had been cut away in a neat circle and molded down with metal tacking strips. In the center of that cleared space there was a small rectangular foot pedal, like a miniaturized automobile accelerator. "It's a pump-action alarm pedal," Tucker said. He stood up and looked at the woman. He felt like a wire being drawn tighter and tighter between two winches. "Did you use it?"
She backed away from him and came up against the wall, bumping her head on an oil painting in a rococo frame.
"Did you use it?" he repeated.
"Don't kill me."
"We aren't going to kill you," Tucker said.
"Please " Her eyes were wide again. All the blood had drained out of her lovely face. Beneath that natural olive complexion she was pale.
Tucker went over to her and took her hand again, held it to his lips, kissed her fingers. She looked at him as if he were mad. "I know how scared you are. I'm extremely sorry that this had to happen."
She blinked at him, and he thought there was a growing blank spot behind her eyes. Shock was catching up with her fast.
"What's your name?" he asked, quickly trying to establish some rapport with her.
"What?"
"Your name. What is your name?" Seconds might be precious if the cops were on the way, but patience was the only way to get through to her right now. She was stunned half out of her senses. If he had been in her shoes when Meyers opened up on Keski, Tucker knew he would be no better.
"I'm Evelyn Ledderson," she replied, as if her own name were entirely foreign to her, as if those few syllables made no sense whatsoever.
"Evelyn," Tucker said, his voice so soft that Meyers had trouble hearing him clearly, "do you understand that we don't want to hurt you? We have nothing to gain by hurting you. Just tell me That alarm pedal under your desk must connect to a light board in a police station somewhere nearby." He was amazed at the reasonable, calm tone of his own voice. Inside, he was screaming and running around in circles. "We have to know, Evelyn Did you use that pedal?"
She looked into his eyes and seemed suddenly calmed by them, as if she read his sincerity like a large-type message on his retina. The fear was still in her, but it was under control now. It did not paralyze her anymore. "Yes," she said. "You bet I used it. I pumped the hell out of it."
Tucker looked at Meyers.
"Let's get out of here," the big man said, his good mood shattered.
Tucker grabbed the woman's arm. "You'll have to come along with us," he said, forcing her out of the office behind Meyers.
She did not want to go, but she knew th
at she would only make things worse for herself if she resisted. Kicking off her shoes to keep from stumbling in the built-up heels, she ran along beside him.
In the distance there were sirens.
When they entered the east corridor, they saw Edgar Bates down at the far end standing on the left just beyond Surf and Subsurface, across from the warehouse entrance. He had gotten a set of keys from one of the night watchmen, had inserted a key into a slot on the wall, and had activated the steel-bar gate that was recessed in the ceiling. An electric motor hummed loudly. The gate made a lot of noise itself, clattering like tank tread as it descended to block the entire width of the hall.
"What are you doing?" Meyers shouted, his ruined voice cracking.
Bates turned and looked at them. His face was drawn, his eyes as wide as Evelyn Ledderson's eyes had been when Tucker had first seen her. When they reached him, just as the gate clanked against the terrazzo floor, Bates said, "There's cops in the parking lot."
Meyers pushed past him and grabbed hold of the gate, shook it, tried to heave it up out of the way. "You dumb bastard! You'll trap us all in here."
Bates laughed without humor, his eyes flat and glassy. "Who's the dumb bastard? Don't you see, Frank? We already are trapped in here."
Tucker moved to the gate, pulling the woman along with him. He stared out through the grid of thin steel rods, past the glass outer doors that were only three feet away. One prowl car, made colorless by the ranks of mercury vapor lights out there, was already stopped about five short yards from the mall entrance. What Tucker had told Evelyn Ledderson a few minutes ago now held true for all of them-there was nowhere to run. Abruptly, a second squad car wheeled in beside the first, nearly scraping paint with it, braking so hard that tires squealed and the big Detroit frame rocked back and forth on its springs.
"We could shoot our way out," Meyers said.