The Handle

by Donald E. Westlake

  Parker looked away toward the casino. “The place is burning. Salsa's working.”

  “What time is it?”

  Parker checked his watch. “Twenty after.”

  “He should be down here by now with the first load.”

  That was the way it was supposed to work. Salsa would fire the main buildings, then in the confusion break into the cashier's cage in the casino, grab as much cash as he could carry, and come down to meet the rest at the boat. Then all of them but Ross would go back to finish cleaning the place out. By twenty after Salsa should already be here.

  Parker said, “We better go look for him.”

  Grofield was looking toward the boat. “Where's Ross?”

  “Dead.” Parker nodded toward the three Grofield had taken care of. “They opened up too early, before we docked. They got Ross right away, because he was up at the wheel.”

  “It's a lemon, Parker, a big fat lemon.”

  “Let's go look.”

  They each picked up one of the plastic suitcases, empty now and ready to carry money. Grofield replaced his guns with two more fully loaded ones from the beach defenders, and then he and Parker walked up the path toward the main building.

  Now it did look like the last days of Pompeii. The main building and the dormitory and the cockpit were all ablaze. Men and women were running around in circles, shouting and screaming; there was a crush of them down on the piers, trying to get off the island. Just beyond the piers, two yachts, trying to get away, had rammed into one another and stuck together, and now wallowed in a death-grip, both of them burning. Firelight bloodied the dark water around the island and the boats, picking out the bobbing heads of people swimming. An overturned dinghy floated like a comic afterthought, with several people in the water clinging to it.

  Because it had so few windows, the casino was burning less furiously than the other two buildings. The cockpit was one yellow-red flame, and the dormitory looked unreal: a hollow black hulk with flames shooting from every window.

  No one paid any attention to Grofield and Parker. A musician ran by, wild-eyed, his violin tucked up under his arm like a precious message. A guy Grofield recognized as the stickman from the roulette table rushed past in the opposite direction, still toting his rake.

  Behind the main building the flames had leaped from the cockpit to the jungle itself. Crackling louder, the fire swept up the hill toward the two storage sheds, engulfing them, and then on toward the power plant.

  Parker went into the casino first, and Grofield followed him. The main hallway was not yet burning, but flames were gobbling up the innards of the dining room, tables and chairs and draperies and carpeting and all; the dining room doorway glared like the gateway to Hell. To the right, fire flickered uncertainly in the casino. With no windows, brick and plaster walls, widely spaced furniture, the flames had trouble in here making headway.

  Still, the casino was deserted, and the gate in the cashier's cage gaped open. Parker and Grofield hurried in there and Parker began to yank open drawers. “It's here,” he said.

  There were a few bills scattered on the floor, and the main drawers were not entirely full, so at least one other person had done a little looting on the way out. But he'd left more than he'd taken, so it was all right. Parker and Grofield opened their suitcases on the counter and began transferring the money.

  The lights flickered, and then flickered again. Parker took a flashlight from his pocket, and the lights went out for good. Parker switched the light on, and they went on filling the suitcases. Between the flashlight and the firelight they could see well enough.

  When the hidden panel in the far wall opened and the bulky guy came running into the room, came catapulting in as though he'd just raced down a long steep hill, Grofield looked up and at first saw that the form looked familiar and second realized who it was. Softly, he said, “Parker,” and when he felt Parker look over, he nodded toward the guy, now coming to a stop in the middle of the room, looking around crazily, a gun waving in his right fist.

  Parker looked, and called, “Heenan!”

  Heenan hadn't seen them till then. Now he did see them, and recognized them. “It wasn't me!” he shouted, and started pulling the trigger, bullets spraying into the wall high above Grofield's head.

  Grofield rested his right elbow on the suitcase and emptied a borrowed gun into the leaping silhouette in front of the flames. Besides him, he could see Parker doing the same. Between them they must have fired ten times.

  In the sudden silence after all the shooting, Parker said, “I say we find Salsa upstairs.”

  They had all the cash from down here anyway. Grofield shut the suitcases, leaving the full one on the floor and carrying the other one. Ahead of him, Parker stooped and took the automatic from Heenan's fist, and then the two of them went through the open panel and up the stairs to the lightless second floor.

  6

  Baron crouched in the darkness under his desk, in the kneehole, waiting for whatever would happen next. He knew now that this stage of his life was done, no matter what. The gambling island of Cockaigne was destroyed. Even if he should manage to rebuild, from where would the customers come, now that this debacle had occurred? Beyond that, the Russians and the Cubans, as single-minded and dull-witted as the majority of men everywhere, unable to think about anything but their own petty global concerns, would be convinced, unshakably convinced, that this holocaust was the work of American counterespionage, that his “cover” (their word) had been broken, and that he was no longer of any use to them.

  So Cockaigne was finished. But was Baron?

  It was bad now. The men named Grofield and Parker were surely together on the island somewhere, and wouldn't they be seeking their comrade? Salsa lay inert on the floor a little way away, near the dead Steuber, whom Heenan had shot.…

  That had been stupidity, stupidity compounded. Steuber had unlocked the cabinet where the handguns were kept, had swung wide the door, and suddenly Heenan was there, raging, terrified, clawing past Steuber, his hand closing on a Luger, an old gun, one from an earlier life. Steuber, rather than keep hold of the Irishman and wrest the gun away from him, had flung the stocky man away, with a grunt of impatience. The Irishman had landed heavily, and rolled, and had come up apoplectic. He was still close to Steuber, and Steuber took a step that brought him even closer, and he fired twice and Steuber fell over on his back.

  That moronic Irishman. He had swiveled then, seeking out Baron, and had found him just as the lights flickered and went out. But he fired anyway, just once, as Baron leaped sideways in the sudden dark, and perhaps the sound of Baron hitting the floor had deceived him. In any case, he had done no more shooting, but had groped his way toward the stairs, Baron clearly hearing his progression across the room.

  Baron himself was all turned around, and didn't dare move to find a familiar piece of furniture and orient himself, not till the Irishman's blundering footsteps had clattered away down the stairs. Then he had moved, and had just crawled into the side of the desk when he heard the firing begin downstairs.

  He would not have heard any firing if the soundproofed door were shut, so Heenan must have left it open. Heenan himself necessarily was part of the gunplay down there, and the only ones Baron could think of who would be shooting at Heenan were Grofield and Parker, so those two were surely down there and would surely be coming up here. Baron crawled at once to the kneehole under the desk, crouched there in a ball, and waited to see what would happen.

  He didn't have long to wait. An uncertain light edged nervously along the walls, telling him someone was coming up with a flashlight. The he heard their footfalls on the carpet in the room, and the beam of the light sprayed around once, and one of them said, “Here's Salsa.”

  “How is he?”

  They all waited, Baron too, until the other voice said, “Dead. They beat his head in.”

  Baron frowned. Had he done that? He'd let himself get too overwrought, too hysterical.

  Abo
ve him, around him, they were prowling through the room, the flashlight stabbing this way and that. The sessions of his life had made him a man who did not easily get attached to a place, a landscape or a room or a piece of furniture, but the time spent on Cockaigne and specifically in this room had been among the most pleasant days of his life and so he had not been able to avoid developing a certain sense of proprietorship, a sense that now was violated by these strangers come to rob him of his money, his business, his safe harbor, and perhaps even his life. They prowled the room, hulking figures in the darkness behind their light's stabbing beam, and from his crevice in the furnishings Baron watched them with eyes that hated and feared.

  For a few moments the legs of one of them were thick prison bars just inches from his face; over his head the interloper was poking about the desk, riffling the papers and going through the drawers. He found the cashbox in the bottom righthand drawer, and said with muffled eagerness, “Parker!” But he did not find Baron.

  The cashbox didn't satisfy them. They went through the filing cabinet, hurling papers about in their haste, and ultimately they found the wallsafe behind Shakespeare in the bookcase.

  These were crude men, unskilled brutes. They hacked at the safe and finally shot its face off, and pulled from its depths Baron's store of forged papers, his final private cash reserves, and the little flannel sacks of diamonds. Diamonds were sounder than any currency in the world, instantly convertible to cash in any civilized nation, readily transported and easily hidden. And, as he now watched, swiftly stolen.

  They had brought a suitcase with them, and now it bulged with cash and diamonds. They closed it, and one of them said, “We'd better get out fast. The fire's worse down there.”

  The other one said, “Where's Baron, I wonder?”

  “What do we care?”

  Baron smiled a bitter smile, and the pale light receded, closed in at the far end of the room, confined itself in the stairwell.

  Once they were gone, surely gone, Baron crawled out from beneath the desk. All was dark save the one window in this room, overlooking the front of the casino and the piers, and this window now showed a rectangle of dusky red. Baron hurried toward it, and looked out.

  Was the whole island in flames? To his right the staffs sleeping quarters was a torch, a hollow shell sinking in on itself. To his left the jungle underbrush was burning, even down to the water's edge. And out in the water two yachts, crammed together in a letter Y, slowly circling like the center of a lazy whirlpool, burned like a campfire on the sea.

  He pressed his forehead against the glass — the glass was warm, the carpet beneath his feet was warm, the wall against which he pressed his hand was very warm — and below him he could see the two figures emerge from the building, each carrying a suitcase, and hurry off through the flickering red in the direction of the boathouses.

  Oh, would they! Baron turned, his eyes more accustomed to the darkness now, and found his way to the gun cabinet, still hanging open. He selected a Colt. 45, the United States Army model, checked to be sure the clip was full, and then made his way across the room and down the stairs to where the casino at last had grown hot enough for the flames to begin to make headway. He crossed his arms in front of his face and ran from the building, the hair on his forearms singeing with an audible sound and a disgusting smell.

  Outside, the holocaust stunned him for a second. People, the fainted or the trampled, lay like unwanted rag dolls amid the rock gardens, sprawled on their faces. Others still ran this way and that, some calling out names, looking for the lost or looking to be found. More were milling about on the piers, from which the last boat had already left.

  The whole island was a torch, lighting the sea around itself. The power plant at the peak of the island burned with a particular brilliance, the bright flames releasing from the tonguelike tips great billows of black smoke, which were swept away westward on the prevailing winds, blending with the black sky, putting out the brilliant white dots of the stars.

  Through the heat and the light Baron ran, cursing in four languages, the automatic hanging like a club from the end of his right arm. He hurried past the collapsing hulk of the staffs quarters, down the path to the boathouses, and saw the two of them ahead of him, striding toward the boat, the suitcases swinging at their sides. He closed the distance between them, and just as they reached the boat and tossed the suitcases aboard he stopped, and leveled his arm out straight, and twice he fired.

  One of them fell on the dock, one into the boat. In the uncertain light, in his excited frame of mind, he had no idea whether the shots had been fatal or not, but he didn't care. A .45 automatic hits hard, no matter where it hits, hard enough at the very least to knock them out. The one on the dock was either dead now or would burn to death later. The one in the boat was either dead now or would drown later. In any case, there was no time to spare on them now.

  He ran to the boat and climbed aboard it, and instantly realized this was the boat the boys had intercepted and sent on its way one noontime a couple of weeks ago. The boat had clearly not contained customers, the way it was behaving, so he had ordered some staffmen out to question its occupants, and after circling the island once it had gone away. So it had been a reconnaisance after all, a first trip by these idiots now dead and dying.

  Baron knew boats. He got this one started right away, and headed straight out to sea. He fled half an hour on a line due south before moving away from the wheel and then the first thing he did was go back to the body on the deck.

  It was not Grofield, not any face Baron had ever seen before. He had never seen Parker, so this must be he. He looked different from what Baron had anticipated. No matter; he was dead and finished. Baron threw the body overboard.

  He set his course for Mexico.

  7

  Grofield lay in darkness, his mind uncertain, wavering between lucidity and delirium. He only kept control of one idea: if Baron found him he would die. He couldn't defend himself against Baron now, and Baron would surely want to kill him, so the answer was he would die. To keep it from happening, he must keep tight his grip on the springs.

  In and out of consciousness, in and out of pain, Grofield kept his grip on the springs.

  For the fifth time tonight, for the fifth time in his life, Grofield had been shot. This one, he was afraid, this one was much worse than the other four. The pain was too diffuse, too changing and echoing, for him to be certain exactly where the bullet had entered him, but he believed it was in the back just below the left shoulder. He also believed the bullet was still in him, since he felt no equivalent pain at the top left side of his chest.

  The hit had knocked him out for a while, he wasn't sure how long. He'd come to slowly, being first aware that he was in a vehicle of some kind, in something that moved and rocked, and then coming to understand that he was in a boat. Because he was lying on something soft, he'd assumed at first he was in a bed or bunk and that Parker was operating the boat. But then he came closer to the surface of the world and realized he was lying on something too lumpy and oddly shaped to be a bed, and when at last he opened his eyes he found himself staring into the dead eyes of Ross, an inch away.

  That shocked him the rest of the way to consciousness. He was on deck, in against the side wall, lying atop dead Ross. And the man at the wheel was not Parker, definitely not Parker.

  He remained conscious that time long enough to think and long enough to act. He knew he was no match for Baron now, and that meant he had to hide, and the only place to hide on board a boat was somewhere below.

  It was possible to get below without passing Baron at the wheel. Grofield crawled, pulling himself along with his left arm dragging, and when he got to the ladder he crawled backward to it, doing most of the work with his legs, and he was still so weak he fell part of the way, landing hard on the carpet down below, knocking the wind out of himself, and some of the clarity, for a few minutes.

  When he was aware of himself again, he lay on his back in th
e middle of the main cabin, looking around, trying to find a hiding place. But everything was so compact on a boat like this, so small and so open, no wasted space or hidden corners anywhere.

  Compact. Wasn't there a fold-up bed concealed in one wall? There was, he knew there was. This boat was supposed to sleep eight, and that was accomplished with the help of a sofa that converted into a bed and another bed that folded conveniently away into the wall.

  He had to fight great dizziness and weakness and a wandering mind, but he managed to rise, and to find the way to open the bed, and to lower it to the floor. But there was no excess space behind it, no place for him to hide.

  His exertions were making the wound bleed more; the back of his coat and his sleeve were heavy and sopping and gluelike with blood. There were stains on the carpet, but that couldn't be helped.

  And there was more to be done, if he wasn't to die here, as helpless as a kitten. He wrestled the mattress off the bed and onto the floor. Sometimes lying down, sometimes kneeling, he tugged and pushed and mangled the mattress through the doorway into the forward cabin and, folded lengthwise in half, under one of the beds there. Baron, when he looked, could simply believe the owners had for some reason of their own brought an extra mattress aboard, unless Baron was familiar with this sort of boat, and knew about hideaway beds, in which case all this struggle was for nothing, and he would die cowering in a hole in the wall behind a bed, like a silent movie lover discovered by an irate cross-eyed husband. In any case, Baron would be looking for him, that much was certain.

  But there was nothing a man could do other than his best. Grofield made his way back to the center cabin, up onto the twanging springs of the bed, and finally half-erect in the rectangular hole behind it, looking like a three-dimensional painting of despair.