Parker stepped around the corner, stood against the front of the building. He showed there as a dark man-shaped shadow against the stucco wall. His hood was on, the only pale thing about him were the rubber gloves on his hands. He moved these back and forth in front of himself, fingers splayed, until Devers saw the motion. Then he stopped marching, yawned, stretched, and walked over to the building entrance in the middle of the long front wall. He stood there and lit a cigarette, the signal that it was all right to come on.
Parker had Devers’ bootleg keys in his hand when he reached the door. He unlocked it and stepped through, stood just inside holding the door, and felt the other three slide in behind him. Devers, who had said nothing and who had looked ashen-faced beneath the helmet, field-stripped his cigarette and went back out to march up and down on the sidewalk some more.
Devers had given them complete maps of the building. Parker and the others moved without hesitation through the darkness to the stairs and up, their shoes silent on the metal stairs.
The door to the left at the head of the stairs had glass in the upper half. Through it, Parker could see two overhead globes lit, both down at the far end of the finance office; the one inside Major Creighton’s office and the first one on the right on this side of the Major’s office. The two APs on guard here were sitting at a desk under this second light, playing cards. They were about twenty-five feet from the door where Parker was standing, and the area between was lined with two rows of desks up to a chest-high counter which stretched across the room about six feet in from the door. To the left of the door was a bench for people who had to wait.
Parker used another key, opened the door with a faint click timed to happen when one of the APs was shuffling the cards, and, as down there under the light a new gin rummy hand was dealt out, Parker and the other three slid through the slightly open door and moved at a half-crouch to the counter. They straightened slowly and stood spread out there, Kengle and Stockton at the ends with the Sten guns resting on the countertop, Parker and Fusco in the middle with their revolvers in their hands. Ahead of them, the APs continued to be absorbed in their game.
A cord was hanging down over Parker’s head. He reached up with his free hand and pulled it, and the globe up there came on, flooding their end of the room with light.
The APs looked over, startled.
“Freeze,” Parker said.
One of them would have, but the other was a cowboy. He made a lunge for where his carbine was leaning against another desk, and Kengle’s Sten gun rattled briefly. The AP half-turned in midair, slid over the desk, and crumpled like used cardboard on the other side.
The shots shook the other one, who had frozen the way Parker told him to. He abruptly dropped out of sight behind the desk.
Parker said, “Don’t be stupid, son. You don’t want to die.” Nothing happened.
Parker nodded at Stockton, who was nearest the flap in the counter. He pushed it up, left it up, and went on through. Moving fast and silent, he went down along the rear wall, where he wouldn’t be seen by anybody passing in the street, and when he got to where the second AP had disappeared he waved to the others that it was all right.
When they walked down to him, they saw that AP number two hadn’t ducked, he’d fainted. AP number one wasn’t dead, but his breathing was shallow and his color bad. He had one hit in the left side, just above the waist, and one that had gone in his left shoulder and out his back above the shoulder blade. Fusco used some of the boy’s clothing to make simple bandages to stop the bleeding; they weren’t in a hurry for a murder rap. The law might think it looks as hard for every kind of felon, but it doesn’t. Just as the cop killer is tracked with more savagery and singlemindedness than is the ordinary killer, the ordinary killer in his turn is hunted more fiercely than is the robber.
Stockton used the rope and handkerchief he’d brought to tie AP number two, and even though AP number one looked to be out for it for the rest of the night, Fusco did the same for him. Meantime Parker helped Kengle out of the small knapsack he’d put on just before leaving the bus.
The knapsack contained tools: drill, various bits, screwdrivers, two hammers, a chisel, some other things. With it all, while Stockton kept an eye on Devers and the street and Fusco watched the two APs up here, Parker and Kengle went to work on the vault.
“Vault” was a little too grand a name for it, but on the other hand “safe” was too small a word. It was like a reinforced metal closet in one corner of the room, with a heavy rectangular vault door on it. There was no point trying to go through the wall, so Parker and Kengle concentrated on the door itself, on the combination lock and the hinges.
The hinges proved to be impossible to get at, no matter how they drilled. The weak spot was in the lock. With a combination of drilling and sawing they managed to remove it completely, leaving a hole they could reach into and get at the lock components on the inside. The whole job of opening the door took forty-five minutes.
When the door was open, they saw several metal shelves. The floor was higher than the office floor, because it was reinforced, and on it were two large metal cases, side by side, filling up the whole space. These were what the payroll had arrived in by air this morning. Parker and Kengle pulled them out and opened them.
Several of the shelves were lined with metal boxes, dark green, like long squared-off tool kits, and in each of these was the payroll for a different organization on the base. There was too much bulk and weight to carry all these separate boxes, so Kengle and Parker now went to work forcing each of them open and dumping the money into the larger crates. In each box, beside two or three stacks of bills with red rubber bands around them, there were always a few rolls of coins and a list from a computer giving each man’s name and how much money he was to receive. Only the bills went into the crates, the coins and lists being discarded with the boxes.
It took another half hour to unload all the boxes, and when they were unloaded the two crates were both about three-quarters full. It was now two-fifteen; they’d been at work an hour and a quarter. In that time, Devers had not had cause at all to high-sign Stockton. This part of the base was strictly offices, and deserted at night. And tonight, just before payday besides being a week night, there weren’t very many men with the money or inclination to be out for any reason. They had the area to themselves.
The crates had been pretty heavy to start with, being made of steel, and now that they were full of money they were a full two-man job each. Parker and Fusco took one, Kengle and Stockton took the other, and they moved out of the office and down through the blackness to the first floor.
Parker lit a match in the doorway, and when Devers saw it he stopped and shifted his carbine to port arms. He stood there, his back to the building as he watched in both directions, and Parker and the others carried the two crates out, hurried along the front of the building with them and around the corner into the deeper darkness between the buildings. Here they put them down to rest for a minute, and out front Devers went back to his marching.
From the side of the building to the bus was fast and easy, in solid darkness. Webb opened the door for them and they piled the cases aboard, then carried the two APs out and put them under some bushes at the side of a building across the street, where it was unlikely they’d be found before morning.
When they got back to the bus Webb had put the rear banner on again. They quickly put the side banners on and climbed aboard. Webb had discarded his fatigue jacket and cap and switched to his gold tunic. Now, as the bus started forward, the others got out of their hoods and black sweaters and put their own tunics back on.
Webb turned the corner, stopped for a second, and Devers swung on, grinning from ear to ear, “Beautiful,” he said.
“Get changed,” Fusco told him. It wasn’t over yet.
Devers quit grinning. He shucked out of the borrowed uniform, put his tunic on, and rolled the uniform and carbine and helmet and Webb’s fatigue cap and jacket into a ball. Webb sto
pped on one dark street and Devers went out to stow these things in a litter basket. Then they drove on.
By the time they reached the South Gate the money crates were stowed way in back, hidden by the musical instruments. The machine guns were back there, too, but the four revolvers were still in pockets, close to hand, when Webb pulled to a stop beside the AP shack.
The guard who came out was young and heavy-lidded. Webb handed the pass to him and the guard looked at it with sleepy suspicion. “You guys are leaving awful late,” he said.
“We were a smash, pal,” Webb told him. “They wouldn’t let us go.”
“Sure.” He waved them through, saying, “Okay, go ahead.”
“Right, pal.”
Out on Hilker Road they turned left and accelerated. There was no traffic anywhere. The speedometer touched ninety, and in under three minutes Webb slowed for the dirt road. This time he went up as fast as the road and bus would take it, not caring how much he jounced the contents or the passengers. Parker and the others clung to seat backs and got bounced around.
At the top, Webb stopped in front of the garages. Stockton ducked out to open one of the doors and Parker and Fusco and Devers and Kengle carried the two crates out and put them in the garage. While they were doing that, Webb turned the bus around and Stockton opened the other garage doors.
Devers said, “See you next week.” The plan was that he was to meet Fusco in New York in ten days to get his piece of the pie.
“See you, Stan,” Fusco said.
Devers got into his Pontiac while Parker slid behind the wheel of Webb’s station wagon. Webb had already started back down the slope.
Parker went second down the dirt road in the Buick, with Devers behind him. At the bottom, Devers blinked his lights in farewell and headed south while Parker turned north after the disappearing taillights of the bus.
They took it up to within two miles of the border, where Webb ran it deep off the road into a stand of trees where it couldn’t be seen from the road. But the tracks would be seen. The law would find the bus early tomorrow, probably within an hour of the alert going out. They would believe the bandits had gone over the border into Canada.
Parker turned the wagon round and slid over to the passenger side. Webb opened the door, got in behind the wheel, and headed them south again. “Worked out nice,” he said.
“It did,” Parker said.
Neither of them was much of a talker, so they were quiet after that. Parker liked that about Webb, his close-mouthedness. They’d worked together a couple of times several years ago, and all Parker knew about Webb was that he was a good hard driver, that he had a passion for playing with cars, and that he was solid in a pinch. It was all he needed to know.
After they made the turn now they stopped and, in the red glow of the taillights, smeared away the tracks their tires had made. They didn’t want anybody coming up here for any reason in the next few days. For the same reason, they stopped again partway up, spent a while brushing away more tracks, and dragged a heavy branch back across the road where it had been before Parker and Fusco had removed it the other day. Then they drove the rest of the way up.
The darkness at the top was complete, broken only by their headlights. All the garage doors were shut.
Webb and Parker got out and opened a set of garage doors and there wasn’t anybody there. Kengle and Stockton and Fusco, all gone. And the money gone too.
Part Four
1
Parker found them both in the bedroom. Up until one second ago they’d been having sex, and when Parker hit the light switch Devers came up off the bed, looking as foolish as a naked man can look. Ellen blinked in terror at the light.
Parker looked at Ellen and said, “She still here.”
Devers said, “Parker?” He was still too shocked to be able to think. “What’s going on?”
Parker ignored him. He went over to the foot of the bed and said to Ellen, “Didn’t you think I’d tip?”
“What—what—”
“Parker,” Devers said. “For Christ’s sake—”
“It’s gone,” Parker told him. “Webb and I ditched the bus, went back to the lodge, and the cash was gone.”
Webb, still in the doorway, said quietly, “Three dead, pal.”
Devers just blinked. “Dead?”
“Fusco,” Parker said. “And Stockton. And Kengle.”
Webb said, “We found them over by the work-shed. They’d been lined up and shot down.”
Devers and Ellen were both beginning to unscramble their brains now. Ellen reached for a blanket to cover herself, and Devers said, “We were hijacked? It’s gone?”
“Somebody hit us for the bundle,” Parker said. “They had to be waiting up there for us.”
“In the work-shed,” Webb said.
“Wherever it was,” Parker said, not caring. “They waited for us to show up, they waited for you to go and me and Webb to go. They waited till the one time when there’d be only three men on the stash.”
Webb said, “You know what that means, buddy?”
“They had to know,” Devers said. His face was bloodless there was no strength in his voice. “They had to know the whole caper,”
Webb said. “In advance,” Parker said.
“Right,” Webb said. “They had to know not only we were scoring tonight, they had to know where the hideout was and when we were due to get there and how we were going to split up then, with Parker and me off to get rid of the bus and you coming back here.”
Devers said, “It had to be somebody on the inside.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, dropping there as though his legs wouldn’t hold him any more. “You think it’s me,” he said. He looked hopeless, as though it didn’t seem to him there was any way to keep them from thinking it was him and acting on that assumption.
Parker said, “I don’t think you’re that stupid, Devers. You don’t want to be hunted, not by the cops and not by us. If you work a cross on us, you can’t hang around, you’ve got to clear out. If you clear out, you’re a deserter from the Air Force. If you desert the day after the heist, they know you were in on it. That isn’t what you want.”
Webb said, “I’ll tell you the truth, Devers, I’m not as sold as Parker. I think you’re young and cocky, I think you just might try it, figure you could stick around and look innocent and bewildered when we show up.”
“Sixty-five thousand is enough,” Devers said to him. “That’s the only point, sixty-five thousand is plenty. If I’ve got sixty-five thousand dollars I’m not hungry enough to go up against you five guys.”
“That’s a point in your favor,” Webb said. “And I don’t think you could have taken those three out at the lodge by yourself. But why bump them unless it was somebody they knew and could remember? You see the kind of question I ask myself. Maybe you had a couple buddies from the air base stashed up there, helping you out.”
“So I split with them? What difference does it make who split with if all I get is a piece anyway?”
Webb moved the hand that didn’t have a gun in it. “You’re probably clean,” he said. “All I’m saying, I’m not as one hundred per cent sold as Parker.”
“Sure,” Devers said. He was getting his wits about him more and more now. “If it isn’t me,” he said, “you’re stuck. There’s nobody left.”
Parker gestured his revolver at Ellen. “Was she here when you came back?”
Ellen had been staring at Parker wide-eyed all the time, clutching the blanket around herself. She was huddled up against the headboard of the bed, her mouth was slack with terror, and there was no way to tell whether she’d heard or understood a word that had been said, except that she flinched now when Parker moved the gun and referred to her.
Devers looked at Parker in astonishment, then at Ellen, then back at Parker. “Sure she was. Ellen? You don’t think she—”
“She’s the one,” Parker said.
“She was here. And she wouldn’t set up something like
that, for God’s sake. Kill Marty? Why?”
Ellen said something, muffled and jumbled. They all looked at her and she said it again: “Marty isn’t dead.”
Parker said to Devers, “She set it up. I don’t know why, maybe not for the money, maybe just to keep you from getting into another of these things, maybe she’s not taking a piece at all. But she turned somebody loose on us, gave them the whole thing. She almost told me about it this afternoon, she was nervous, acting weird, afraid to go through with it.”
Devers was steadily shaking his head, and now he said, “Parker, Ellen wouldn’t do a thing like that. She isn’t that kind of woman, she’d never fink on anybody like that.”
Webb said, “That’s why I’m not a hundred per cent solid on you, pal. Because I don’t think she’s right to play finger either.”
Parker said to her. “Where are they? Tell us where they are, I won’t touch you. I’ll leave Devers to figure out what to do with you. That won’t be much trouble, he loves you. Where are they?”
“Marty isn’t dead,” she said.
Parker said, “Devers, slap her face. I want her awake.”
But then Ellen shrieked, “Why would he do a thing like that?” Face contorted with rage, she leaped off the bed and tried to run out of the room. Parker grabbed her and she twisted and squirmed, trying to get away, shouting, “I’ve got to talk to him, I’ve got to find out! I’ve got to know why he did it, why he’d do something like that!”
Parker slapped her with his free hand, open palm across the face, and she sagged against him, her body abruptly boneless. Holding her up, Parker said, “Who? Who did it?”
“I was supposed to be able to trust him,” she said, her eyes closed, her body slack with defeat.
Parker shook her. “Who?”
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