Slayground p-13

by Richard Stark

  The ticket booth and entrance were on this side, with the bulk of the Alcatraz mock-up between Parker and the fountain. He went out onto the wooden dock area and saw the boats tied up in a small service area to his left. He went over and released one of the boats.

  There were two streams meandering through Fun Island, both connected to the moat enclosing the park, one traveling through the back half of the park and the other through the front half. The water in this gunboat-ride area also flowed into Treasure Island, where it supported the pirate ship, into New York Island, where it became the Coney Island area’s Atlantic Ocean, and back the other way into Hawaii, where it served the submarine ride. Between these ride areas it was fairly narrow but not too winding, and where it crossed from one area into another, there was a wooden footbridge along the main radial path.

  There was increasing commotion back at the wax museum now. It would take them a while to work their way through that building and convince themselves he was none of the figures in there, but then they’d check out the rest of the Alcatraz area, working close and complete, so by then he’d better be somewhere else.

  There was a kind of picket fence arrangement across the stream where it came into the gunboat-ride area. Parker tried lifting this, but for some reason it was padlocked and he couldn’t get it up, so what he finally did was drag one of the boats up onto the wooden dock. It was heavy, too heavy to lift but not too heavy to pull. He dragged it around the picket fence and then shoved it into the water again on the other side, climbing in after it.

  The stream was about two feet below the general level of the land, so that one would have to be pretty close to it to see the boat in it. Parker crouched on the floor in the front of the boat, keeping his head below ground-level, and pushed off.

  He’d chosen the same direction as the slow natural movement of the stream, so that when the impetus of his first push was gone, the boat still kept moving very slowly along. The stream curved very gradually to the right, so he had to keep pushing away from the left bank, and slowly they left the gunboat ride behind and approached the curved wooden footbridge marking the border between Alcatraz and Hawaii. That was the path being watched by one of Lozini’s men. Once on the other side of it, he would be out of the territory where they expected to find him.

  The boat was just sliding under the bridge when he heard people coming, hurrying up from the area of the fountain. The boat was completely under the bridge now, and Parker reached up to one of the support beams and held himself where he was. Until they’d gone by, he couldn’t move any farther.

  But they didn’t go by. Footsteps thudded on the bridge, and stopped, and a voice said, “Right here. The bridge is raised up a little, you can see better.”

  “Yeah, and he can see me better, too.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Before he could get close enough to do you anything, you could see him. Look around. How could he get near you?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You got a better gig than the guys in the wax museum. You want to switch with one of them?”

  “Okay, I’m happy here.”

  “Good boy. See you later.”

  Footsteps went off the bridge. A receding voice said, “Remember. You see him, you fire once.”

  A voice right overhead said, “Right.”

  Parker listened. The guy was standing up there. He was moving back and forth a little, Parker could see him vaguely through the cracks between the boards. He heard him light a cigarette, using a lighter, heard the snap of the lighter shutting again.

  He couldn’t move. If he let the boat drift out from under the bridge, toward the Hawaiian submarine ride, the guy on the bridge would have to see him. If he killed the guy on the bridge, other people would see that. There was nothing to do but wait.

  It was about ten minutes. From time to time he heard orders shouted back and forth, far away, but nobody came close to the bridge. The guy up there, restless, kept walking back and forth and chain-smoking. He’d work on a cigarette for only a minute or two, then flip it into the water. Then right away Parker would hear the lighter grind again, and snap shut, and then more pacing, and then another long butt snapped into the water. All on the same side, the Alcatraz side, which was good. It wouldn’t be good to have him comparing the look of the stream on both sides of the bridge, because on the Alcatraz side most of the skim ice on the surface had been broken up by the passage of the boat, while on the Hawaii side the ice was still intact. A thoughtful man, looking at the stream on both sides, might figure it out that there had to be a boat underneath the bridge. But the guy up there” stayed mostly on the Alcatraz side. Besides, he acted more bored and sullen than thoughtful.

  Parker was just beginning to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t take some action after all — it might be possible to float out on the Hawaii side and shoot the lookout down, with no one else knowing exactly where the shot came from — when he heard the grinding of a small gasoline engine. It was the cart Lozini was riding around in, and it came roaring up and clattered onto the bridge and stopped. Parker heard Lozini shout over the engine sound, “What the hell are you doing over here?”

  “March told me to stay here on account of — “

  “March told you! What the hell does March know? I don’t want that son of a bitch goin through behind you when you’re lookin the other way. Get back down by the fountain and keep your eyes open.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Lozini.”

  “How do we know he didn’t get through down this side already?”

  “I been watching both ways, Mr. Lozini. I swear he didn’t get through.”

  Lozini’s answer was softer, and Parker couldn’t make out the words, but he was apparently mollified. Then the cart roared away again, headed toward the wax museum, and Parker heard footsteps go off the bridge toward the fountain.

  He waited another couple of minutes, to be sure everybody was far enough away, and then pushed off again. The boat drifted out into the Hawaii section, and now the stream ran straight at first and then curved to the left, and came to the submarine ride.

  This one was easier to get through, the boat gliding past the submarines to another of those picket fences. But this time the fence wasn’t locked, and when Parker pulled on the rope hanging beside it, the fence lifted out of the way and he floated on through and lowered the fence again behind him.

  Now the stream was barely wider than the boat, but it was a short distance to the moat running along just inside the fence. Parker turned the boat to the right when he reached the moat, but there was no movement to the water here and he had to pull the boat along, crouching on the bottom and reaching out to the right-hand bank and hauling it through the water.

  He moved slowly, but finally he got to the other stream, the one crossing the front half of the park, and turned into it. The movement of the water was against him now, so he had to pull harder, dragging the boat along, its momentum ending quickly after each heave.

  He was now in Pleasure island, and the stream opened into a large concrete-sided pool. Heavy mesh screens guarded both ends of the pool, but they were raised now. In the summer the pool was full of porpoises, but now it was empty.

  It was easier going through the pool, the current against him was less strong there, but on the other side it got tough again. He pulled, and the stream angled to the left, and up ahead was another footbridge, this one showing the line between Pleasure Island and Island Earth.

  Parker got past this bridge without any trouble, went on a few yards farther, and then in the shadow of the Voyage Through the Galaxy black-light-ride building he got out of the boat and pulled it up out of the water after him. He turned it over and left if facedown by the rear wall of the building, where it might not cause anybody to wonder how come it was there. If he’d just let it float away again it might have tipped Lozini and his people to what had happened.

  There was a smaller footbridge here, not on a line of sight from the fountain. Parker took it, going over to the oth
er main building in the Island Earth section, a round concrete structure with a huge dome. This was the Trip to the Moon, and when Parker went inside now he found it all lit up. He walked up the ramp that circled inside the building and went through one of the double doors into the theater.

  He was now in a round room almost the same circumference as the building, with the inside of the domed roof for its ceiling. Theater seats ran all the way around, facing complicated projection machinery in the middle. The seats had half-reclining backs, because in the summer movies were shown on the domed ceiling, a trip to the moon, with the idea being that the people in the theater were all in a spaceship of the future heading up from earth to the moon.

  Parker went across the theater to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He went through there and into a small office with two curving walls, one the theater wall and the other the outer wall of the building. There was a long window in the outer wall. Parker went over to it, and down to his right were the gates. There was no one in sight, but he knew they were well guarded. But maybe that didn’t matter.

  He leaned against the wall beside the window and watched the gates. Very soon now, the hunted was going to become the hunter.

  Six

  THE COPS walked in, and Parker moved.

  They didn’t drive in, they left their car outside. He would have preferred it the other way, but it didn’t matter, things could still work out.

  He hurried, out of the office and across the theater and down the long ramp to the outside. The cops had still been waiting at the gates for somebody to come unlock and let them in, so Parker had time, but he wanted to be sure. He left the Trip to the Moon building, went across the little bridge, went around to the rear of the Voyage Through the Galaxy black-light-ride building, and went inside.

  This was where he’d strung the wires and he moved now with caution across the brightly lighted floor, the rails of the ride curving and winding above him like a mammoth modern sculpture, the suns and moons hanging from the ceiling and looking shabby and dirty and old in the bright light. Parker made his way to the front entrance, and looked out, and the cops were coming this way, walking up the main path from the gates toward the fountain.

  He was counting on the cops not knowing all of Lozini’s men, and he was counting on their not ever having had a close look at him. He waited till they were almost opposite him now, and then he stepped outside, being careful to stay close to the front of the building, out of sight of the watcher up by the fountain. “Hey,” he called.

  The cops glanced over at him.

  Parker said, “Mr. Lozini wants to see you. In here.” And he stepped back again, pushing the door open and standing to one side of it for the cops to go in first.

  They didn’t hesitate. There was no reason for them to be suspicious, Lozini had to be somewhere, probably inside a building, and why not this one. They came across, the heavier cop first, saying, “He’s still loose, huh? I hoped you’d have him by now.”

  “They’ve got him trapped up in Alcatraz,” Parker said.

  The other cop, Dunstan, said, “That’s what they told us at the gate.”

  The two cops went on into the building and Parker went in after them, shutting the door and taking out the automatic. “I’m him,” he said.

  They didn’t get it at first, they were looking around the room — the galaxy inside a barn — and the older cop said, “Where’s Lozini?” He turned to look at Parker, and then he saw the gun.

  Parker saw his face change. “Don’t reach for anything,” he said.

  The younger cop now saw what was happening, and his face went white. He froze, staring at the gun in Parker’s hand.

  The other cop wasn’t going to be that easy. His hand was poised near the gun on his right hip, and he said, “You can’t shoot. You’d bring them all down here on your neck.”

  “You reach,” Parker told him, “and I don’t have anything to lose.”

  Nothing is more effective than the truth. The cop’s arm gradually lost its tension, the bunched muscles around his mouth began to ease, and his eyes shifted around as his mind went from attack to figuring. He said, “What does this gain you? You’re going to take everybody prisoner?”

  “Just you two,” Parker told him. “Get out of your uniform.”

  The cop frowned. “What?”

  “I don’t want to have to get blood on it,” Parker told him. “Just get out of the uniform, don’t delay things, don’t argue with me, and you’ll be all right.”

  “You son of a bitch, I’m not taking anything off, What the hell do you think this is?”

  “Take off the hat,” Parker said, and to the other one he said “When he falls, turn him over quick on his back. Remember, I don’t want any blood on the uniform.” He held the automatic up at arm’s length, aimed at the older cop’s forehead.

  The cop blinked. He said, “What are you doing?” and he sounded less sure of himself all of a sudden.

  “If I shoot you in the head,” Parker told him, “there probably won’t be that much blood. You,” he said to the other one, “after you get him on his back, go over to the doorway. Anybody that comes, tell him your partner was shooting at a rat, it didn’t mean anything.”

  The young cop said, “Joe, he means it, he really means it.”

  The other one said, “What the hell good does it do you? What are you trying for?”

  “I’m getting out of here,” Parker told him. “Start undressing now, or I do it for you when you’re down.”

  The cop licked his lips, and threw a glance at his partner. That was where the problem was, he didn’t want to be humiliated in front of the younger man. But there was no soft quick way to handle it, and to run things with the cops’ roles reversed wouldn’t be any good.

  The cop was going to do it, he wouldn’t get himself shot, so Parker didn’t do any more talking. He just stood there with the gun aimed, and after a few more seconds of looking around and trying to think of something to say, the cop finally gave an angry shrug and said, “All right. For right now, you’re running the show.” He unzipped his jacket. “I’ll see you again,” he said. “And then I’ll be running the show.”

  Parker knew it was easier for the cop to strip in front of his partner if he could talk tough at the same time, so he didn’t answer him, he just stood there and waited. The cop kept making tough promises all the time, but he got the uniform off and draped over a wooden railing to the left, and when he was down to underwear and socks and shoes, Parker said, “Down on the floor. Facedown.”

  The cop did it, grunting, and looked like somebody about to do his morning calisthenics.

  Parker said to the other one, Dunstan, “There’s some wires tied across over there. Go get one and untie it and bring it over here.”

  Dunstan was in a hurry to do anything Parker wanted, but while his nervousness made him eager to please, it also made him stupid, and he had to trip over a wire before he could find one. But then he untied the ends and brought the wire over, looking as though he were doing a pantomime, making believe to carry something.

  Parker said, “Tie his wrists behind his back. And his ankles. And do a good job.”

  “All right.”

  It took too long, because Dunstan was fumbling so much, but when he finally said he was done Parker checked and it was a good job. The wire wasn’t cutting into the cop’s skin, but it was tight enough to hold.

  He did the gag himself, taking off one of the summer shirts he was wearing and ripping it into lengths. One piece he stuffed into the cop’s mouth, the other one he tied around his mouth and head to keep him from spitting the first one out.

  Next he had Dunstan stand in the frisk position, facing a wall, feet well back, leaning forward with arms outstretched and hands supporting his weight against the wall; not to search him, simply to put him out of the play. Dunstan now would first have to get his balance before he could do anything else, so in the unlikely event he was thinking of trying anything, Parker
now had him safely defused.

  It didn’t take long to switch clothing, shucking out of his jacket and all the summer clothing he’d picked up from the men’s shop in New York Island, then putting on the police uniform. The cop was a little shorter than he was, but also stockier, which helped to equalize things. The sleeves of the Ike jacket were noticeably short, but other than that, everything gave the appearance of a pretty good fit.

  Once he had the uniform on, he said to Dunstan, “Okay, stand up again.” When Dunstan turned to face him he said, “This is what’s going to happen. We’re going outside together, the two of us. We’re going down to the gates, and wait for somebody to unlock them, and then we’re going out to your car, and we’re going to take a little ride. You behave yourself and nothing will happen to you, and after you drop me you’ll be able to come back here and take care of your friend. But I’m going to have a gun on you all the time, and if you try anything when we go outside you’re going to be the first casualty. I may be the second, but you’ll be the first. You follow that?”

  “You won’t have any trouble from me,” Dunstan said. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with this from the beginning, it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, whether you get caught or you get away or what. I won’t try to stop you or make any trouble — “

  “All right,” Parker said, and Dunstan’s mouth snapped shut. He looked very helpful, eager, wanting to know what he should do. Parker told him, “What we’re going to do, because the guys on the gate would see I’m the wrong guy, I’m going to be wounded and you’re going to have to do the talking. And your job is to get the two of us out of this place.”