Now they needed the flashlights again. Marcantoni still had his, and Mackey now had the other. They shone the lights ahead, and the air floated with dust, like mist over a swamp.
‘Now what?’ Marcantoni said.
They walked forward into the tunnel, smelling the dry chalky dust, feeling the grit of it in their noses and mouths. Ahead, the mountain of rubble was back.
They stopped to look at it. Maybe the vibration of their passage had done it, or just the new movement of air from both doors being open at the ends of the tunnel, but something had caused a further fall from above the ceiling. Some bricks had come down, but mostly it was dirt and stone, loose but compacting. It covered the tables, except for a narrow bit at this end. Above, it sloped up and away to where the ceiling used to be and farther.
‘All I hope,’ Mackey said, ‘is we don’t wind up with some delivery truck down here with us. This is under the street.’
‘We’re too far down,’ Marcantoni told him. ‘Besides, we’re not gonna stay.’ He was on one knee again, bending down, shining the flashlight under the end of table that jutted out from the fresh fall of debris. ‘I can see all the way through,’ he said. ‘These things did their job.’
‘They damn well better,’ Angioni said. ‘We got no other way outa here.’
‘I’ll go first with the light,’ Marcantoni said, and on elbows and knees started through the tunnel-within-a-tunnel created by the tables.
‘I’m with you,’ Angioni said, and went down on all fours to crawl after him.
Marcantoni was the biggest of the six, and he found the space cramped under the tables, particularly with the two thick plastic bags of loot hanging from his waist. Loose rubble kept falling in from the sides, roughing up the floor, piling a few inches high here and there to make the clearance even narrower. Marcantoni went through slowly, flashlight stuck out ahead of him, his eyes on that distant area beyond the last table, where it was still clear. He passed under the second table as Kolaski followed Angioni and then Williams followed Kolaski.
It was still falling, slight but relentless, the dry crap was still coming down, shifting this way and that. As Marcantoni reached the far end of the, second table, a sudden cascade of dirt and dust streamed down in a curtain line from the narrow space between the tables, falling on his head and neck, blinding him. He jerked away, his shoulder hitting a table leg and jostling the table an inch to the left, as Mackey started to crawl after Williams, carrying the second flashlight.
More dirt fell. Marcantoni, unable to see anything, dropped the flashlight while trying to hold his hands over his face, keep the dirt out of his eyes. But the dirt was tumbling faster now down through the hole he’d widened, and more was sliding in from the sides. He kicked out, the plastic bag on his left side struck against something, and he hit the middle table. Now all three tables were awry, and the dirt thudded down into all that newly available space.
Parker was about to crawl after Mackey when Mackey abruptly backed out, one forearm over his eyes. A dust cloud followed him. Mackey veered rightward out of its way, held the light aimed into the darkness under the table, and said, ‘Something’s wrong. Something’s gone wrong.’
Parker crouched, looking where Mackey aimed the light down the line beneath the tables, and they both saw nothing but the dust in there, and a spreading fall of dirt, and Williams’ legs writhing, as he struggled for purchase, as he tried to pull back from the dirt that was burying him.
‘Hold the light on me,’ Parker said, and slid in under the first table, crawling forward till he could reach Williams’ thrashing ankles. He grabbed the ankles, pulled, pulled harder, and finally Williams’ body began to slide along the brick floor.
Parker kept pulling, until Williams was back far enough that he could help with his own arms. Parker backed out of the narrow space, holding his breath against the dust cloud Williams caused by his movements, and Williams backed out after him, covered with dirt. ‘My God,’ he said, and coughed. ‘I was a dead man.’ Mackey said, ‘The others?’
‘It was Tom got in trouble first,’ Williams said, ‘and then everybody else. I don’t think anybody got out, man.’
Bricks fell near them. They backed away, Mackey shining the light at the rupture in the ceiling, which was larger now, more dirt falling down. ‘We’re not gonna get to those guys,’ he said.
Williams said, ‘I don’t know how you even got to me, but I’m grateful. I owe you my life.’
Parker shook his head. ‘I didn’t do it for you,’ he said. ‘Forget all that. I’ll give you the truth here. What I need is a crew, the more the better. I wish I could have those three back.’ Looking around at the useless tunnel, he said, ‘Because we’re going to have to cut that armory back there a new asshole. We have to find a new way out of there.’
THREE
1
Parker, disgusted, removed his belt so he could let the full plastic bags fall to the brick floor of the useless tunnel. Mackey watched him, frowning, then said, ‘You’re leaving the swag?’
Sliding the belt back through the loops, Parker said, ‘What do we do with it? The people who knew who to call in New Orleans are down in there, under the dirt.’
‘God damn it,’ Williams said, ‘we don’t have the customer.’
‘We don’t have anything,’ Parker told him.
He hadn’t liked this thing from the beginning. Mostly, it had been the simple matter that he hadn’t wanted to stay in this part of the world after getting out of their prison, but he also didn’t like to be pressured into doing something he felt wrong about.
And it had felt wrong to him, all the way. He hadn’t known why, or what to look out for, but from the minute Marcantoni introduced the idea, back in Stoneveldt, when it was clear to Parker that he had to agree to be part of this thing or lose Marcantoni and he’d needed Marcantoni even more then than he needed him now Parker believed it was all going to turn sour, one way or another, before he could get clear of this place. He’d never thought Marcantoni or the others would try to keep it all for themselves, when the time came to split up the proceeds; they were more professional and sensible than that. But he could feel it, out there, hovering. Something.
And here it was. A building that was famous for having only one way out, and now they had to find another way.
Williams was looking up at that long ragged split in the ceiling. ‘The street’s up there,’ he said. ‘Suppose we could get up and out that way?’
Mackey said, ‘Dig a hole upwards,over my head? Into a street full of traffic? I’ll stand over here and watch.’
Parker said to Williams, ‘That doesn’t work. Even if it doesn’t cave in, and it probably wouldn’t, you’ve got a hundred fifty years of paving up there, layer over layer of blacktop.’
Mackey said, ‘That’s why, when they want to get through it, they use a jackhammer.’
Williams stopped looking up. With a shrug, he said, ‘That’s the only idea I had.’
Parker said, ‘We’ll go back the way we came, see what we find.’
The other two got rid of their plastic bags of jewelry, and they left the tunnel, went back through the mostly abandoned storage room, and into the green-tinged parking area, where Mackey said, ‘Maybe it would be easier to get out down here. There’s more garage space past this, for people who live in this place.’
They walked over to the exit, which was covered by a heavy metal mesh gate that lowered from a drum overhead. Through the mesh, they could see the ramp extend upward toward the street, and a bit of the dark night up there.
But there was no way through or under or around the mesh. The barrier was seriously alarmed, firmly seated into deep metal tracks on both sides, and flanked by concrete block walls two layers thick. Above, the walls met a massive ceiling that was part of the original parade field inside the Armory, capable of bearing the weight of a company of horses, or tanks.
‘We don’t get out down here,’ Parker decided, and they went back upstairs,
through the door Marcantoni had opened and Kolaski had unalarmed. Just inside that door, they stopped to look around. Halls extended away ahead of them, toward the display area where they’d been, and to both left and right.
Mackey said, ‘I think we gotta explore all these doors along here.’
Williams said, ‘They won’t lead out.’
‘Maybe we’ll find something we can use,’ Mackey told him, and gestured to the hall on the right. ‘I’ll take a look down there.’
Williams said, ‘Parker?’ Pointing at the two halls, he said, ‘You want this one, or that one?’
‘I’ll do the one straight ahead.’
They separated, and Parker went forward to the first door on the right, which was closed. Opening it, he felt a wave of warm air come out, and when he found the light switch beside the door he saw that this was where the company’s on-line operation was kept. The room was mostly empty, with free-standing metal shelves along both side walls like the ones fronting the tunnel door back in the library. On the shelves were bulky dark metal boxes that ran the wholesaler’s Web site, displaying the wares and making the deals with customers anywhere in the world.
The machines also gave off heat, which was drawn away by a fan inside a metal grid high on the opposite wall. Mackey still had the flashlight, so Parker went down the hall until he found an open door with an ordinary office inside, took a gooseneck lamp from there, and carried it back to the Web site room. The outlet he found in there gave him just enough cord so he could aim the lamp through the grid to see what was inside.
A powerful-looking fan, attached to a solid iron A-frame, was mounted in the middle of a rectangular galvanized duct, about thirty inches wide and fifteen inches high. Using the lamp, he couldn’t see very far into the duct, but it did go upward at a fairly steep angle, straight back from the grid.
It had to exit the building. It would angle up until it got above the ceiling of the other rooms back here, then run straight to an outer wall. Some sort of screen would have to be set up at that far end. With bars on the outside? Some sort of protection, anyway.
It would be a very tight fit, and it might have some impossible corners in it, and it could end at an opening it would be impossible to get through. There had to be something better than this.
Parker left the lamp on the floor in there and tried the door across the hall. The mail room, plus copier and fax. Nothing of interest.
The other four rooms along this hall also offered nothing of use. One near the front was where the staff took its breaks, with a refrigerator, coffeemaker, sofas, and chairs. The refrigerator contained some snack foods, which they might get to later on.
But not much later on; they couldn’t afford to stay in this building a whole lot longer. They’d started this operation a little after six, and it was nearly eleven now. If they were still in this place after five in the morning they were in deep trouble.
The other three rooms were offices of various kinds; accountant, manager, and personnel, it looked like. Parker went through all the desks, but found nothing that looked like a control to open the garage exit downstairs, which would have been a simple way out. But nothing.
He was coming out of the last room, the manager’s office, when Mackey came down the hall, saying, ‘You know what you’ve got down there to the right, you’ve got an apartment.’
Parker said, ‘Somebody lives here?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Mackey said. ‘Not usually. It looks like the owner, a guy named Jerome Freedman from what it said in there, things I looked at, he keeps the place for any time he might want to stay over in town, or maybe when they do inventory here, or whatever. But it’s a complete one-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen. Looks as though nobody’s used it for a while.’
Parker said, ‘Anything useful in it?’
Mackey grinned. ‘You mean, like a buzzer to open the garage gate? I looked, believe me.’
‘And I looked around here,’ Parker said, as Williams came down the hall.
Mackey turned to him, saying, ‘I’ve got the owners’ apartment, what’ve you got?’
‘Storage rooms,’ Williams said, ‘and down at the end, a gym, with exercise machines. Nothing to give us a damn bit of help.’
Parker told them about the duct in the Web site room, but neither of them wanted to explore that route. ‘It’s the big room we want,’ Mackey said.
So they went back to the room with the display cases, many of them now with shattered glass, making jagged reflections in the small lights. Without discussion, they moved out into the dim room, each studying the place on his own, seeing it in a different way from the first time they’d come in here.
Parker moved to the right, to the exterior side wall of the building. This room was thirty-six feet long, with four windows spaced evenly along this wall. The windows were a foot wide and four feet high, with arched tops, and started at chest height. They were inset into the middle of a wall four feet thick, with decorative wrought-iron bars on the outside. Parker looked out at nighttime traffic, silent from in here, and the street seemed very far away. The deep-set narrow windows were like looking through the wrong end of binoculars.
So the windows were too narrow, too deep, and too barred to be of any use. Parker moved around to the front, with three more windows exactly like the others, and came to Williams looking at the closed front door. Through the glass they could see a brushed-steel articulated panel closed down over the entryway, the same as the one they’d seen earlier downstairs at the garage entrance.
Parker said, ‘We can’t do anything in this direction.’
‘I know,’ Williams said. ‘But I’m beginning to think we can’t do anything in any direction. If we could break through that, we don’t care if it sets off alarms, or if the doorman out there hears us. If we get through, we take off.’
‘But we won’t get through,’ Parker said. ‘Not here. It would take too long and it would make too much noise. The doorman could have the law here before we had the thing opened up.’
From above, Mackey’s voice called, ‘You can forget the ceiling.’
Parker looked up, and Mackey had climbed ladder rungs mounted into the front wall. He was standing on the metal gridwork up there, holding a vertical support and looking down. He shook his head, and called to them, ‘Standing here, the ceiling’s still too far away to touch. I don’t know if there’s anything up there might help us, but there’s no place to get a whack at it.’
Parker said, ‘Then it has to be something down here.’
As Mackey came back down the ladder, Williams said, ‘What about a fire?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Parker said.
Jumping the last few feet, Mackey said, ‘You don’t think what?’
Parker said, ‘Williams thought, maybe start a fire, we go out when the firemen come in.’
Williams said, ‘If nothing else works.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mackey said. Looking around, he said, ‘It’ll take them a while to get in, won’t it? We’re down with smoke inhalation, they’re still banging away with axes.’
Parker said, ‘That’s the problem, we’d have to make it a big enough fire to get noticed, but not big enough to knock us down.’
Pointing at the left side wall, Mackey said, ‘If there’s a way, it’s there. The other side of that is the dance studio.’
Williams said, ‘That’s the new wall they put in when they converted. It won’t be as tough as these outside walls.’
‘The only thing,’ Mackey said, ‘is mirrors. Brenda told me, they’ve got the big workout room where she was, it’s got a whole mirrored wall. If we hit a mirror ten feet by twenty, it’ll make a sound when it comes down, and somebody’sgonna hear it.’
Parker said, ‘What else did Brenda tell you about the dance studio?’
‘Not much,’ Mackey said. ‘You know, she wasn’t casing it, she was just going there. Lemme see, there’s an office up front, and one time she said, when she’s looking
at the mirror in the room where she was taking the classes, she was thinking, all that jewelry’s just the other side of that mirror.’
Williams said, ‘Do we want to go up front, then, so we don’t hit the mirror?’
Mackey shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s gonna be too close to the lobby and the doorman, we don’t want him to hear demolition.’
Parker said, ‘Is it all studios along here?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Mackey frowned, trying to remember. ‘I think the big room where she was, it was maybe third back. First the front office, then a locker room where they changed, and then the big room with the mirror. And beyond that I think there’s smaller rooms, but I don’t know. And I don’t know about any more mirrors.’
Parker said, ‘What about all the way back? Williams, what’s at that end of the hall?’
‘The gym,’ Williams said. ‘The end door opens into it, and it’s across that whole space.’
‘Same kind of wall as this?’
‘Painted Sheetrock, yeah. There’s mirrors, but they’re on the back wall.’
‘If we go through at the rear corner back there,’ Parker said, ‘we might be able to figure out what the wall’s made of before we go too far in.’
Williams said, ‘There’s tools in the janitor’s closet along that hall.’
‘Good,’ Parker said. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
The three left the main room and went back down the hall to the door they’d come in from the stairs, then turned right and Williams led them to the janitor’s closet, with brooms and mops and an electric floor polisher on one side, shelves piled with cleaning supplies on the other. Part of one shelf was tools; two hammers, a pliers, half a dozen screwdrivers. They took everything and went to the end of the hall, where Williams opened the door and they went on into the gym, which was dark.
‘We need light,’ Parker said. ‘No matter what happens.’ He found the switch beside the door, and fluorescents in the ceiling flicked on, showing a broad white room with black composition flooring. One of the tall narrow windows was in the wall to the left, with a long mirror fastened beside it. Exercise equipment stood on the floor or was fixed to the walls. To the right were a bathroom and a storage closet. Attached to the wall that interested them were weights with pulleys. Mackey went over to look at how they were held in place, and said to Parker, ‘This has got to be a pretty good wall, if it takes this. Just screws into studs, with all this weight and people pulling on it, somebody’d yank it right out.’
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