Plunder Squad p-15

by Richard Stark

  He caught up with the truck, doing about fifty, just before the town of Oconee, and stayed behind it the next few miles to the gas station south of Pana with the For Lease sign huge in its window.

  False dawn was a blurred gray line far to the east, but the land was still dark. When Parker stopped the Dodge and switched off its headlights, and when at the side of the station Tommy did the same with the truck, the blackness in contrast was at first almost total. Parker opened the car door and the interior light went on, but it showed almost nothing away from the car. He stepped out onto the tarmac, aware of Mackey and Devers doing the same, both of them now in their regular clothing, and when the doors were slammed the night was complete again.

  The bulk of the station itself was the only guide. Parker walked carefully around it, not wanting to trip over any unseen curbs, and came to the second bulk of the truck. He touched the metal side of the trailer, and he could amost feel the paintings inside it: canvas, wood, oils. Kirwan and the department store on Mother’s Day; Beaghler and the six statuettes from San Simeon; and the third try was beginning to work out.

  But just beginning. There was still a lot to do.

  Yellow lights came on—dim, but enough to see by. They were the parking lights of a dark green Reo truck cab with red lettering on the doors: Great Lakes Long Haul Moving, Kenosha, Wisconsin 552-6299. The Reo was tucked in close beside the station building, facing the road; Tommy had come to a stop with his own cab very close to it, so the Reo’s parking lights now shone on the length of the truck.

  Lou Sternberg climbed carefully down from the driver’s seat of the Reo. He was still dressed too warmly for the weather, including the same billed cap as before, but now instead of the raincoat he was wearing a short brown leather jacket with a zip-up front. The jacket and cap, with green work pants and heavy shoes, converted him from a short stout accountant to a short stout truck driver. He came around to meet the others at the front of the Reo and said, by way of greeting, “Damp tonight. Hell on the sinuses.”

  “Should remind you of home,” Tommy said.

  Sternberg gave him a look of disapproval. “Have you ever been in London?” He was taking a pack of sugarless gum from his jacket pocket.

  “Naw,” Tommy said. “Too damp for me.”

  “Don’t talk about what you don’t know about.” Sternberg unwrapped one piece of the gum.

  Parker said, “Let’s go.”

  Sternberg nodded. “Right.” He put the gum in his mouth, stuck the wrapper in his jacket pocket, and led the way around to the back of the Reo cab. Parker followed him, while the other three went off to do other things. They’d rehearsed all this, but never with this little light.

  At the rear of the cab, on the flat greasy surface where a trailer would be hitched, there were instead two ladders tied down with lengths of rope. Working silently, Parker and Sternberg untied them and tossed the ropes into the cab. Then they carried the ladders over to the stolen truck, one on each side.

  The others had gotten the rest of the equipment from the trunk of the Dodge: spray cans of red enamel and large cardboard stencils, each sheet two feet by three and containing just one letter.

  It was difficult working in the dark. Mackey and Devers on one side, Parker and Tommy on the other, they fixed the stencils high on the trailer sides with masking tape, while Lou Sternberg went about the process of unhitching the trailer from the Mack cab that had brought it here. He finished separating all hoses and wiring, and drove the Mack cab out of the way, just as the stencils were all put up; in the dim glow of the Reo’s parking lights, the cut-out letters could dimly be read: GREAT LAKES, stretching most of the length of each side of the trailer.

  Tommy and Devers, being the lightest, stayed up on the ladders and did the spraying, while Parker and Mackey dragged each ladder backward across the tarmac. At the same time, Sternberg was putting the Reo cab in position, though he didn’t try to connect it to the trailer while the spraying was still going on. Instead, he climbed down from the cab with a Wisconsin license plate and a screwdriver, and switched the rear plate on the trailer.

  The sky to the east was getting lighter. A car went by, southbound, without pausing, and a minute later a pickup truck went past heading north. The stencils were pulled down from the sides of the truck and packed away again with the empty spray cans in the trunk of the Dodge. Sternberg began attaching the Reo cab to the trailer while Mackey took a short crowbar and popped open the trailer’s rear doors.

  Immediately a siren sounded, loud and abrasive, a one-tone buzzing too loud to shout over. But they’d expected that, been planning for it. While Parker and Mackey put the ladders in the truck, stuffing them in among the tied-down crates, Devers traced the siren to its source and cut the wires. The silence after the noise seemed a kind of sound of its own, swelling and falling.

  Tommy had kept out one spray can of paint, and was now spraying the doors of the Mack cab, removing the company name. The red he was spraying on didn’t match the original red of the body exactly, but it didn’t matter; used trucks often enough have a former company name painted out in a sloppy way.

  Sternberg finished hitching cab and trailer together as Parker and Mackey reclosed the trailer doors. They wouldn’t shut as neatly as before, but by slamming them they could be made to stick.

  The Mack cab engine started with a roar, and then the headlights flashed on. Tommy backed it around in a tight U, and Parker studied the right side of the trailer as the headlights swept across it. There had been a very little running of paint, not much. Not enough to worry about. With a cab of a different make and a different color, with a different license plate on the back, and with a company name spread across both sides, it was no longer the same truck. Sternberg had registration papers for the cab that would hold up if necessary. There was no way to pass an inspection of the trailer except to avoid one, and the way to do that was to keep ahead of pursuit. Move fast, and keep moving.

  All the lights of the truck switched on, and Sternberg climbed down from the cab to walk around and make a quick inspection. It would be stupid to get stopped for a missing light, and then be arrested for grand larceny.

  The Mack cab had finished making its turn, and now bounced out from the gas station tarmac to the road, and headed north. It was about forty-five miles to Springfield. Tommy would leave the Mack cab there, near the railroad station, and then connect up with Noelle and the Volkswagen Microbus. The two of them would head straight west into Missouri, crossing the Mississippi at Hannibal, and then turning north into Iowa. They planned to spend tomorrow night in Davenport, and then take Interstate 80 east the next day. They had friends in Cleveland, and would get there sometime Thursday night. Mackey would phone them there before Sunday.

  Sternberg finished walking around the truck and climbed back up into the cab. He started the engine and made a sweeping turn to take him out onto the highway just a minute behind Tommy, though he wouldn’t be able to travel as fast. He too went north, but it would only be for a few miles; at Pana he’d turn east on State Highway 16, take that over to Interstate 57, and head straight north to Chicago. He’d put the truck in a safe place there and wait for Mackey to call him with the arrangements for turning everything over to Griffith.

  Parker and Mackey and Devers stood and watched the truck move away. After it left, there was still enough light to see by, with the eastern horizon graying almost to blue.

  Mackey nodded in satisfaction. “We did it,” he said.

  Parker said nothing. He turned away and walked over to the Dodge, and a second later the other two followed him.

  Two

  Mackey came in with a newspaper. “It says here they’ve got us,” he said.

  Parker was lying on top of the made bed, dressed except for shirt and shoes. He sat up and said, “Let’s see that.”

  “I don’t feel like I’m got,” Mackey said, grinning, and handed over the newspaper. “I’m going to go wake up Stan.”

  Parker nodded,
and looked at the paper as Mackey went out again. The robbery was the number two story on the front page, top left, with something at the UN on the right and a shipping strike in the middle. The headline was, MILLION DOLLAR ART TREASURES HIJACKED, which was already inaccurate. The story was a breathless and slightly garbled account of the robbery, padded with descriptions of some of the stolen paintings. The main story was continued on an inner page, but at the bottom of the front-page column was a separate box with its own headline: THIEVES CAPTURED. “Illinois State Police,” the item read, “announced this afternoon the capture of a part of the gang of art thieves near Galesburg. Also found was one of the vehicles used to transport the stolen paintings. Police anticipate a speedy round-up of the rest of the gang.”

  Parker looked at his watch: five to six. He got off the bed and went over to switch on the television set, and stood there waiting for the six o’clock news to come on.

  When Parker and Mackey and Devers had driven away from the gas station early this morning, they’d headed due south, winding up here in Nashville around noon. They’d taken three rooms at this motel and settled in to catch up a little on their sleep. Six hours wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. They’d left the Dodge back in Illinois, and the car they were driving now was clean, but it was still better to keep moving, get where they were going, finish the job as soon as possible.

  If things weren’t already loused up.

  A war movie was coming to an end on television; the bomber crippled, everybody wounded, all sagging across the French sky toward the Channel, with inter-cut shots of the nurse and the old man staring upward.

  Mackey came back in, with Devers trailing after him, yawning and stretching and rubbing his eyes. Grinning, Mackey said, “What do you think of that paper? Show it to Stan.”

  “I don’t like it,” Parker said, and told Devers, “It’s on the bed.”

  Mackey’s grin turned puzzled. “What’s the matter? They grabbed the wrong people, that’s all. There’s none of us going to Galesburg.”

  Parker said. “Galesburg is about twenty-five miles from Davenport. I figure they got Tommy and the girl.”

  Devers, standing over by the bed with the paper in his hand, said, “I think you’re right. And the vehicle they got was the Volkswagen.”

  Mackey said, “Then why do they say Galesburg? Tommy was getting out of Illinois, going up on the Iowa side.”

  Devers said, “We pulled the job in Illinois. It’s the Illinois State Police making the announcement.” He patted the paper “They got a lot of things almost right here, so maybe they got the town almost right, too. Galesburg could be where the announcement came from.”

  “We’ll see what the news says,” Parker said. On the set, the bomber had landed and the commercials were on.

  Devers came over, carrying the newspaper, and all three stood there watching the set. It was a long three minutes of commercials and station identification before the news came on, and then the first two items were international and the next one a local thing concerning Nashville. But the fourth was the robbery and the capture. “The two suspects,” the announcer said, “in last night’s daring art robbery in downstate Illinois, captured early this afternoon in Davenport, Iowa—”

  “Damn,” Devers said.

  “—have been transferred to the Illinois state capital at Springfield.”

  Film showed of the Volkswagen Microbus, with troopers and men in civilian clothes all over it. The announcer’s voice said, “The suspect’s vehicle, believed to have been used in removing at least some of the twenty-one paintings valued at nearly three quarters of a million dollars, is being gone over carefully for evidence which could lead to the capture of the rest of the gang and recovery of the stolen artworks. Police say the suspects, twenty-four-year-old Thomas Clark Carpenter and twenty-one-year-old Noelle Kay Brassell, deny any connection with the robbery, but that a positive identification has been made by Illinois State Troopers Robert Jarvis and Floyd MacAndrews, who were briefly held prisoner by the gang in the course of last night’s robbery.”

  Mackey said, “I bet Tommy’s regretting that boot in the ass about now.”

  The announcer was finished with the robbery news. As he went on to something else, Devers said to Mackey, “How much can we count on them?”

  “Tommy?” Mackey looked surprised at the question. “One hundred percent.” he said. “Tommy won’t admit anything, and he won’t talk about us.”

  Parker switched off the television set. “What about the girl?” he said.

  Mackey shrugged. “I don’t know her. But Tommy trusts her, so what the hell?”

  Devers said, “I’ve seen men trust women before.”

  Mackey looked worried, but seemed to be trying not to show it. He said, “What does she know anyway?”

  “Anything that Tommy knows,” Devers said.

  Parker said, “She knows our names and faces, but she doesn’t know where to find us. She knows what city we met in, she knows we were getting paid by an art dealer.”

  Devers said, “Does she know Griffith’s name?”

  Mackey frowned. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Nobody ever said it in front of her, but Tommy knows it. Would he mention the name to her? What for? And would she remember it?”

  Parker said, “We leave here now. We get to Griffith tomorrow morning, we make the arrangements for the switch, we get our money out of the banks. She’s a strong girl, if she does break down, it won’t be for a day or two. We’ll have time to get out from under if we keep moving.”

  “God damn it,” Mackey said. “I counted on Tommy. How’d he manage to get himself picked up?”

  Parker had stepped into his shoes, and now he shrugged on his shirt. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Three

  The smell of dew was crisp and clean in the morning air. The sun was an orange circle just above the treetops, and small birds hopped on the wet lawn stretching away from the patio toward the bamboo hedge. The smashing of the windowpane made a quick sharp noise in the silence, and was gone without an echo.

  Parker tossed the rock away toward the grass and reached through the hole in the window to unlock the French doors on the inside. Behind him, Mackey and Devers were looking carefully to left and right, but there were no neighbors close enough to have heard, and at seven-thirty in the morning no mailman or delivery boy likely to be arriving around at the front of the house.

  They’d phoned Griffith nearly an hour ago, from the edge of town, and had gotten no answer. They had come here and found his car in the garage, but no one had come to the door in response to their ringing of the bell or knocking on the windows. So now they were going in, to find out what the story was. Had Griffith left for some reason, or was he hiding?

  Glass shards crackled under Parker’s feet as he stepped into the dim room. No light showed anywhere in the house, and there was no sound other than that made by Parker and Mackey and Devers.

  Mackey, standing beside Parker just inside the doorway, said softly, “If that son of a bitch skipped out on us—”

  “We’re screwed,” Devers said.

  Parker said, “He’s got no reason to run out. Not without the paintings.”

  “But what if he did?” Mackey’s voice was low, but angry. “We don’t have any buyer lined up, except Griffith.”

  “We’ll worry about that if we have to,” Parker said. He walked across the room and through the doorway on the other side, Mackey and Devers following him.

  They found Griffith upstairs, in the tub, in the bathroom connecting with the master bedroom. The water was cold, and a dusky rose in color. The lower half of Griffith’s face was underwater, but the top half was as white as plaster. His eyes were closed, and his hair looked as though it had been glued to his scalp in handfuls.

  The three of them crowded into the small room to look at him. Mackey said, irritably, “God damn it. God damn it to hell.”

  Devers reached down into the water and took one of Griffith’
s thumbs, and lifted his forearm up into the air. The ragged gash in his wrist, flanked by the shallower hesitation cuts, flowed coral-colored water, but no blood. Devers sounded more dismayed than angry when he said, “What did he do this for? What the hell got into him?”

  “That,” Parker said, and pointed at the folded newspaper on the closed toilet lid.

  Mackey picked up the paper. “Right,” he said. “Here it is.” He handed it to Parker.

  This was a different newspaper, but the wording in the separate box was just about the same: part of the gang caught, with a vehicle that had carried at least a part of the stolen paintings. Galesburg was mentioned. It was the same garbled story as in the paper in Nashville, it apparently having been released just barely in time to make most afternoon papers, but not in time to do full coverage on it or check the details.

  Devers and Parker looked at the paper together, and Devers said, “He thought it fell through.”

  ”Why the hell didn’t he wait?” Mackey was getting angrier by the second, glaring at the body as though he might push its head the rest of the way under.

  Devers said, “He must have been tight for cash. We really must have strapped him when we made him put the money in savings accounts.”

  “No reason to kill himself.” Mackey was sulky.

  Parker said, “We search.”

  Mackey raised an eyebrow at him. “For what?”

  “A lot of things. For a note, in case he left a note with our names in it. For something to tell us the name of his buyer.”