by Dean Koontz
"Forget it," Tucker said.
"We have to try."
"We'd get about two feet," Tucker said.
Edgar Bates was busy fixing the gate to its bolt holes along the baseboard. "We wouldn't even get through those doors," he called over his shoulder.
"He's right," Tucker told Meyers. "He did the right thing by sealing this off. We aren't going to get out this way. All we can do is make sure they can't come in, either."
"We can't hole up here," Meyers said.
"I know that." The specter of failure, linked arm in arm with the image of his father, rose in the back of his mind.
Meyers pointed to the gate. "Then what does this really buy us in the end?"
"Time," Tucker said.
"Time for more prowl cars to get here," Meyers said, making a sour face.
"We might come up with something," Tucker insisted as he watched the four cops outside move in toward the glass doors.
"Like what?"
"We might find another way out."
"How?"
"I don't know yet."
"If we can't leave by this door," Meyers said, "we can't leave by any of them. They'll have the other three covered, too."
"I know," Tucker said. "But all the entrances are shut tight from the inside. The loading bays in the warehouse are down and locked. That is everything, right? They can't get in at us."
"You keep on about that," Meyers said. "You make it sound like some fantastic advantage. But we can't just sit here and wait them out, for Christ's sake."
Two of the policemen tried the outer doors, held their hands over their eyebrows to shield out the glow from the parking-lot lights around them, and peered inside.
Still holding the woman where he hoped they could see her, Tucker poked the barrel of his Skorpion through one of the four-inch-square openings in the gate grid, pointed it right at the two cops.
Frank Meyers did the same thing.
"Move back!" Tucker shouted. "Stay far back!"
But they did not need to be told. The moment they saw the guns, they jerked out of the way like puppets pulled back on strings, and they ran to the squad cars where they could take shelter. They were excited, shouting back and forth at one another. Tucker could not quite make out what they were saying.
"They won't hold off for long," Meyers said. "You can bet on that. What we should do, we should-"
"Shut up," Tucker said.
The two words were delivered so sharply, with such anger, that Meyers was surprised into silence. He blinked stupidly, licked his thick lips, and wondered how to respond.
Tucker said, "We wouldn't be in this fix if you hadn't gone after Keski. Don't start bitching at me now. Accept the responsibility like a professional, it's your fault and yours alone. You have to face that, and shut the hell up."
Meyers cleared his throat, shook his head to express a mixture of dismay, anger, and respect. "You talk pretty damned freely."
Tucker glared at him. "That's right."
After a short staring match which Tucker won, Meyers said, "But you got to admit we're in a bad way."
"I never said differently."
"I don't see what you expect to do."
"Look," Edgar Bates said, "we have three hostages here. We can use them for a shield." His voice was thin, quivering.
"That's an idea," Meyers said.
Evelyn Ledderson went rigid, tried halfheartedly to pull away from Tucker. "You said you wouldn't hurt me. Now you want to hide behind me."
"She's right," Tucker said. "It's a bad idea. I've never heard of anyone making good an escape behind hostages. The cops might shoot at us, anyway. These days, they don't always seem to care much about the fate of innocent bystanders. And even if they let us get to the station wagon and leave, they'll just tag along until we let these people go. Then they'll blow the crap out of us."
"But what other chance do we have?" Bates asked.
"I've got a couple of ideas," Tucker said. "But before we start to talk about that, I want to get to a telephone and call the police. They've got to understand that we do have hostages."
"They saw the girl," Bates said.
"But maybe they think she's one of us."
Meyers wiped his face with the back of a seersucker sleeve. "They know we have the guards."
"And maybe they think we killed the guards," Tucker said. He looked at Bates. "Take Evelyn into the warehouse and tie her up with Chet and Artie."
Bates picked up his gun, which he had put on the floor by the gate, and he pointed at the woman. "Come along, please."
She looked at Tucker. Her face was puckered with doubt.
"It's okay," he assured her. "This man won't make a mistake. He won't hurt you."
Reluctantly, warily, she preceded Edgar Bates into the warehouse. The jugger turned as he was about to follow her through the gray door, and he said, "Hey, I left my satchel back up there at the bank. It's got the wire in it. What do I use to tie her up?"
"There ought to be some wire on the workshop shelves," Tucker said. "Look around in there."
"Oh," Bates said distractedly, as if he were half in a trance. "Yeah. Sure. I should have realized " He went into the warehouse after the woman.
"He isn't going to be much good if the situation gets any worse than it is now," Meyers said, looking after the older man.
"I have stronger doubts about you," Tucker said pointedly, staring at the big man.
Meyers's face reddened. His blue eyes couldn't hold Tucker's darker ones. "Look, I admit I fouled up. I should have known as much about Keski's office as I knew about the rest of the mall. I should have known about that alarm pedal, and-"
"Save it for later," Tucker said shortly. "I've got to call the cops before they do anything stupid." He looked past Meyers, out at the two squad cars, the revolving red dome lights, and the very cautious movements of the four policemen hovering around the cars. "You keep a close watch on them. But don't start any shooting."
"Of course not."
"I mean it."
"You can count on me," Meyers said.
Tucker smiled ruefully. Sure I can, he thought. Oh, I can really trust old Frank Meyers. He wished he didn't have to turn his back on the big man in order to walk up to the mall lounge.
He closed the telephone-booth door, shutting out the worst of the fountain's roar. Though he was rewarded with relative quiet, he now had to endure the clinging odor of a strong perfume that permeated the booth, an almost tangible spirit shed by the last customer. Wrinkling his nose and trying to breathe shallowly, he put a dime in the box and dialed the operator.
"Operator," she said, as if he might not have remembered whom he was calling.
"I'm at the Oceanview Plaza shopping mall," Tucker said. "I need to contact the police. Do you know which station covers this area? Would you dial them for me, please? It's an emergency."
"You want Directory Assistance, sir," she said, sounding as if she had quite accidentally plugged one of her wires into her nostril.
"Forget Directory Assistance," he said.
"Sir, I cannot help-"
"I told you this was an emergency," Tucker said. "There is a robbery in progress here. Get me the police now."
She hesitated. "Just a moment, sir."
"I don't have a moment."
Several seconds passed. Relays clicked in his ear. He could hear a distant conversation between two old women on another crossing line. Relays clicked again. A phone rang at the other end.
"Police," a gruff male voice said.
"To whom am I speaking?"
"Sergeant Brice," the cop said, not pleased that any caller should want to know. People reporting crimes usually didn't want to know the deskman's name. It was the crackpots who liked that touch of familiarity.
Tucker took a deep breath. "Listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you, Sergeant. I won't go over it again. There is a robbery in progress at the Oceanview Plaza shopping mall. You've already got several patrol cars out he
re." He paused. Then: "I'm one of the thieves who's involved in this thing. I-"
"What is this?" Brice demanded.
"Are you listening to me?"
"What do you mean you're one of the thieves?"
"I'm calling you from a public telephone in the mall's lounge," Tucker said.
"In the mall?"
"That's it. You've got it," Tucker said sarcastically. "I want you to pass on some information to whoever is heading up the police detail out here."
"Wait a minute," Brice interrupted.
"I'm not going to wait at all," Tucker said. "I'm going to say this quickly, and then I'm going to hang up. If you don't act on it properly, a lot of people are going to die unnecessarily."
"You're inside the mall," Brice said. "You're a thief." He was talking mainly to himself, wonderingly.
Tucker said, "There are only six ways to get into this mall. We've got every one of them sealed up tight. We have a fortress here. Your people can't force their way in unless they're prepared to die in the process."
"You're in real trouble," Brice said threateningly. He was being theatrical now, just as Chet had been. But at least he had caught on and understood that this was no hoax.
"Furthermore," Tucker said, "we have hostages. We are holding two night watchmen. We've also got Mr. Rudolph Keski, who apparently owns a piece of this joint. Mr. Keski has asked me to tell you that he hopes you'll deal most diplomatically with this situation." He knew it would be a mistake to tell Brice that Keski was dead. If the police knew that murder had already been done, they wouldn't give the hostages very high odds. They might even try to break in and rescue them. Therefore, Tucker tried to sound like a desperate man-but not like a man without anything to lose. "We have Keski's bodyguard and his very lovely secretary, Evelyn Ledderson. Four men and one woman, Sergeant Brice. If anyone tries to come in here after us, we'll kill all five of them."
"You're nuts," Brice said. "You'll never-"
Tucker talked right over him. "We're armed with submachine guns, and we can do a great deal of damage if we want to. There are seven of us." The exaggeration could not hurt. It might make the police think twice before they tried anything too daring. A band of three thieves was just a few punks-while seven of them was a small army to be respected.
"You're going to be sorry you got mixed up in this damned thing," Brice said sternly, like a father admonishing a child. "The best thing for you to do is walk out of there right now before the charges against you get a whole lot worse. Give yourselves up." He seemed to realize the uselessness of continuing along those lines. "What do you want from us?"
"Right now," Tucker said, "I'm only asking that your people stay out, leave us alone."
"For how long?"
"As long as I say."
"You'll want safe passage out of there in return for those people you're holding."
"Not just yet. But that's an option that I want to keep open. For the next couple of hours, though, let's consider this a stalemate."
"You can't last forever."
"Long enough."
"What in the hell did you want in there? Why get into something as crazy as this?"
"We wanted the bank, for one thing," Tucker said. "Maybe we'll still get it."
"Wait," Brice said, sensing that Tucker was about to hang up on him. "What's the number of that phone you're using?"
"Why?"
"We might want to get in touch with you again. Something might come up."
In a crisis, Tucker decided, it would be a good idea to have a line open to the other side. He gave Brice the number and hung up before the sergeant could say anything more.
When he stepped out of the booth, he heard more sirens approaching over the noise of the fountain.
While Bates stood guard in the east corridor, Tucker led Frank Meyers into the warehouse, past the three hostages, back among the cartons and crates where they could hold a private conversation. Random patches of bright fluorescent light alternated with pools of deep blue shadows. The air was stale and moist here.
"I don't see why you need to know everything," Meyers said when Tucker stopped and leaned against a ten-foot-high partition of solid cardboard boxes.
"I want to understand exactly what you've dragged me into," Tucker said.
"I haven't dragged you into anything."
"Murder."
"I killed him," Meyers said, trying to dismiss Tucker's apprehension with a rapid back-and-forth movement of his burly head. "You can't be had on that rap."
"I can be nailed as an accessory."
Meyers did not have an answer for that one.
"Now, who was this Rudolph Keski?"
"Look, Tucker-"
"Who was he?"
Meyers was much larger and stronger than Tucker, but Tucker was not the least bit afraid of him. He was so accustomed to dealing with his father and his father's henchmen that he could never be frightened of a man who had nothing more than a simple physical advantage. Tucker's father had always been capable of hurting him emotionally and financially as well as physically. Compared to the old man and the old man's high-powered lawyers, bankers, and bought politicians, Frank Meyers was no real threat at all. He was minor league in the extreme. He might be dangerous, violent, and cunning, but he could be handled easily enough.
Meyers stared at the floor, reluctantly cowed by the strength in Tucker's voice. He made a circle on the concrete with the point of his right shoe, looking pretty much like a sullen child. "Keski was a runner in the New York City rackets about twenty-five years ago," he said, still staring at the floor, unable to face Tucker. "Then he came West and set up something for himself. Started with a bar out here in Santa Monica. There was gambling in the back room. Then he moved into prostitution, set up a stable of girls. From there he went to dope-peddling-grass, hash, pills, even heroin. He wasn't above bank jobs, a payroll hijacking now and then, protection rackets "
"How'd you get to know him?"
"We were friends in New York. When he started setting up bank jobs out here, he asked me to come in with him. We did four jobs together over the years."
"And the last time you worked with him was two and a half years ago," Tucker said.
Meyers frowned. "How'd you know that?"
"Felton told me."
"He had no business-"
"I had my doubts about you," Tucker said. "I wanted a lot of answers from Clitus. If he hadn't given me a few of them, I never would have thrown in with you."
Wiping his sweat-glazed face with a dirty handkerchief, Meyers said, "The last time Keski used me, it wasn't a robbery. It was murder."
Tucker waited. He knew that the big man was going to tell all of it now, but at his own speed. There was no way to hurry him along.
"For most of the last twenty-five years," Meyers said, "Keski had a partner, a man named Teevers. They split everything down the middle, and they took equal risks. They weren't close, but they didn't hate each other either. About four years ago Keski decided that it was time to put their money into straight, legal businesses. He wanted to drop the more dangerous stuff like drug-dealing, gambling, and the protection rackets. Teever was old-fashioned. He couldn't see it at all. He was dumb enough to think there was more money in crime than in legit business."
"And Keski figured the best way to handle the disagreement was to have Teevers killed."
"Yeah," Meyers said. "Keski called me. Just the two of us were involved. We planned it, set it up. It looked like an accident, even to the police and insurance people. It was perfect."
"Keski and you were the only ones who knew the truth," Tucker said. "Beautiful."
"Yeah."
"You really didn't see what was coming next?" Tucker asked, incredulous.
Meyers looked up sheepishly. "I honestly didn't."
"Keski tried to kill you."
"Almost succeeded." Meyers tried a lopsided grin. It didn't work.
"But how?" Tucker asked. "You're so much bigger than he was."
"He paid me half in advance," Meyers said, "and was supposed to give me the rest after the job was done. He met me in my hotel room here in L.A. to give me the rest of the money Look, I'd worked with him before. He'd always been square with me. I turned my back on him, never thinking he might He came in behind me like a cat Reached around and slit my throat " Meyers's whispery voice grew shallower, haunted. "When someone cuts you like that, you're too busy trying to hold the edges of the tear together to protect yourself from anything else. When I fell, he stomped once on my neck. Nearly crushed my windpipe. Then he walked out and left me for dead."
"That was a mistake."
"You know it. He hadn't hit my jugular. He'd done badly enough otherwise. But he missed the jugular." He grinned, an expression that worked this time.
"Still, you must have bled. You must have-"
"I was saved by my weakness," Meyers said.
"Weakness?"
"I had a woman with me," Meyers said. "I stashed her in the bathroom when Keski knocked on the door. I didn't want her to be a witness to the payoff. The moment Keski left, she came out and saw what he'd done to me, and she called down to the desk for an ambulance. I still might have died. But it turned out that three floors below an ambulance team was picking up an old man who'd had a fatal stroke in another room. They rushed upstairs for me. The old man died, but I pulled through."
"And ever since you've wanted Keski."
"You know it," Meyers said, petting his Skorpion with one hand as if it were alive. "A year after it happened, I came back out here and rented an apartment. Then I started hunting Keski. I found out that he'd gone straight, just like he'd wanted to do. He'd bought the majority stock in this mall, owned motels and restaurants up and down the coast, a dozen other things. I followed him to his office here in the mall every day for two months, looking for an opening. But he was packing two bodyguards then."
"He never saw you?" Tucker asked.
"If he did, he wouldn't have recognized me," Meyers said. "I used to be more of a dresser. And I didn't have a crew cut. I even had a mustache. But that got shaved off in the hospital, and I never felt like growing it back."
"So while you followed Keski around, you learned the layout of the mall."