Stone 588

by Gerald A. Browne

  Audrey had brought along a large sketch pad and a fistful of felt-tipped pens. And Strand's pages of Townsend information.

  All morning and on into the early afternoon they went up against Townsend's many alarms and other security measures. And got nowhere. They became mired in complexities. Just when they thought they might have a way to beat one alarm, there was another to contend with. It was disheartening.

  They took a break.

  Audrey went into the house and made sandwiches, hunks of toasted peasant bread slathered with sweet butter and globs of a Fortnum & Mason jam called High Dumpsie Dearie. Springer would have preferred liverwurst and mustard on rye instead of this sweet plum, pear, and apple concoction. Strand, however, gobbled it up, and he and Audrey had a playful verbal battle over the extra sandwich, which they ended up dividing.

  Audrey got a big purplish High Dumpsie Dearie smudge on her sketch pad. There was nothing useful on that sheet anyway, just a lot of doodles such as her and Springer's names lettered various ways and combined by design into a corporatelike logo.

  Audrey tore off that page and began afresh.

  They went at it differently, tried a simpler approach with disregard for the alarms for the time being. They imagined their challenge as a mere box within a box: Townsend's building one box, Townsend's vault another. To be examined for a weakness from all sides and top and bottom, from outside and in.

  Springer suggested what might be a way into the building. Not easy but less difficult. They went to work on it: took turns playing devil's advocate, really kicked it around, were careful not to be misled by enthusiasm. By late afternoon they had settled on it. It felt good, right to them. The one box, the building, was possibly solved. Nearly as important, the spirit of collaboration had set in.

  The following day they returned to that same spot in the meadow grass. Because of the previous day's success they considered the place conducive, even providential. At noon they had more High Dumpsie Dearie jam sandwiches, not to change a thing.

  Springer skipped lunch. While everyone else was licking their sticky fingers, he stood up and stretched. Using his hand as a visor above his eyes he caught upon a high hawk doing aerobatics for the fun of it. It was then that the idea came to him, right out of the blue. The way perhaps into the other box, the vault. He tossed it out for consideration and everyone jumped on it. At first it seemed a bit too complicated, but then the more they thrashed it the simpler and more feasible it got.

  For having thought of it, Springer was rewarded with a sweet proud kiss from Audrey, a congratulatory and amiable remark from Strand, and a compliment from Scoot, who said he believed Springer had the sort of mind needed to be a really fucking-good swift.

  That settled, they were brought to face the most formidable problem of all, Townsend's alarms and surveillance system. It was agreed that it would be next to impossible to deal individually with all those sonar and contact devices, pressure-sensitive pads, and strategically placed television cameras. Perhaps, Audrey said, they could be lumped. Thinking in that direction, it took all day Wednesday and most of Thursday to arrive at what might be a solution. Something not all that tricky, as it turned out.

  Now it was a matter of going over everything, piecing the phases together sequentially, making sure no detail was overlooked, determining what would be needed. Audrey made a list on the sketch pad.

  Friday was errand day.

  Strand and Scoot went to New York City.

  Springer and Audrey went to a plumbing supply company in New Milford. For the quarter-inch pipe. Springer had it cut into foot-length sections, twelve altogether, threaded on both ends. He casually told the plumbing supply man that he was replacing some of the lines of a flower-bed sprinkler system. The man was all for it: He charged for each cut and threading.

  While at the plumbing supply place. Springer also purchased eleven straight connecting pipe joints, the ten that he had to have and a spare. And did the man have on hand a flexible joint, the kind that were used in conjunction with brackets of pipe that allowed awnings to be raised and lowered? Rather than describe, Springer sketched it: like an elbow, threaded so two pieces of pipe (an upper arm and forearm) could be attached to it.

  The man had exactly what he needed.

  From there Springer and Audrey went to a hardware store for the picture-hanging wire, fifty feet of it, more than enough, guaranteed to hold five hundred pounds. Also the six-volt lantern-type flashlights and the two-inch bolt.

  On Route 7 at a sporting goods store they found the woven climbing rope and snaps and the new folding-type grappling hook. It was there that they were also able to get the fisherman vests with numerous zippered pockets of various sizes, including a large ample compartment in the back like a built-in pack.

  The blasting cord.

  They had to go all the way to Litchfield to locate that. Farmers around there still used it to blast apart the immovable rocks they hit upon when they cleared a field. So it was not extraordinary for Springer to be buying some. With typical twang and irritation, he cursed the rocks, calling them goddamn Connecticut potatoes, as he paid cash and waited for his receipt.

  The stereo speaker was next. For that they drove all the way down to Westport. Couldn't buy just the one speaker they needed, had to buy a pair. And they were very expensive. What's more, they had to endure the effete salesman's gibberish of how these speakers were state of the art (what else?) with a woofer system rated at 1.5 kilowatts achieved by use of a military grade accelerometer, and how they incorporated high pass filters, passive and selectable, for the input impedance of a high-frequency amplifier. What blessed relief for Springer and Audrey to step on the gas and be out of range.

  Final stop was the Caldor's off Federal Road in Danbury. Springer waited in the car. Audrey went in and pushed a shopping cart around. Bought taupe-colored work trousers and shirts, beige high-traction sneakers, leather work gloves. Two yards of red cotton flannel. A roll of extra-wide sealing tape. She thought it indicative of the sorry state of things when a salesperson informed her that heavy duty work boots were not made for women. A contre-coeur, she bought herself a man's pair.

  It was so good to get home.

  What an excruciating thing it would be to have to shop for a living, Audrey remarked as she collapsed into a chair.

  Springer said he didn't know how those stick-legged Park Avenue widows did it. He had newly realized admiration for their stamina.

  Strand and Scoot got back from the city about eleven. They'd managed to get everything they'd gone for. Strand had met with Danny, and that end of it was set. All Danny needed to know was when, a few hours' notice would be enough. Strand had told Danny it would be sometime during the next week. They had also taken another look at 55th Street and, from what they'd seen, there was no reason why that shouldn't work.

  Audrey was anxious to know if they'd picked up the parcel from the doorman at her apartment as she'd requested.

  It was in the back seat of the car.

  She hurried out and got it.

  Before calling it a night Audrey insisted they try on their outfits, the trousers and shirts, sneakers and fishing vests. Everything fit well enough, but the vests were a dark green and that would never do.

  Saturday morning Audrey was up earlier than anyone else. She found an old twenty-gallon metal washtub out in the barn. She held it up to the sun and saw that it was rusted through in a few places but the holes in it were small. She filled the tub with water from the outside spigot on the side of the house. Added a whole gallon of Clorox and threw in the fishing vests. The vests insisted on floating. Audrey poked at them with a broom handle. Finally she had to use rocks to weight them down and make them stay entirely under.

  She sat on the nearby steps and thought.

  Thought this might be a good quiet time to ask her pendulum a few things.

  Thought she ought to wash her hair and even put on a little makeup, tweeze her brows.

  Thought maybe she'd go in and
cook a batch of pancakes for everyone, although whenever she'd attempted pancakes they'd turned out either too thick and gooey inside or too thin and burned. Only real, pure maple syrup had somewhat saved them. She'd give anything to just suddenly have the ability to one-two-three knock out perfectly light, precisely browned pancakes or, even better, crepes. Wouldn't that be something? She doubted she'd ever conquer the recipes she'd been reading in that cookbook by Escoffier. She was ready to admit, with no reluctance or guilt, that she just didn't have the talent for it. Springer wouldn't give a damn. Theirs would never be a split-level something's-in-the-oven life. Springer might pretend it mattered to save masculine face but it really wouldn't ever be crucial. Besides, there were so many other things she had to offer.

  Thought about . . . going to the crypt in Greenwich to make sure the Johnny-jump-ups she'd planted in the spring hadn't gotten too out of hand.

  Thought about how happy Springer was going to be when this burglary was over and Jake was well.

  Thought, after a judgmental squint at the sun, that it was time anyway for the others to be getting up. She went into the house and tore the covers from four Town and Country magazines. Opened the parcel Strand had brought from the city for her. Went out to the far side of the bam.

  Socialite Palm Beacher, Santa Barbara heiress, scioness of Houston, Viscountess somebody.

  Audrey push-pinned the Town and Country covers to the old red paint-peeling barn. In a horizontal row. As though some transgression was about to be committed, a breeze came up suddenly, causing the covers to flop every which way. Audrey considered letting them do that, letting them dodge, but then she decided there was no reason to handicap herself. She wanted to do well right off.

  She walked off twenty-five paces, bullying down the goldenrod that was tall enough to get in her way.

  She assumed a solid stance, a comfortable one-third crouch, and cocked the hammer of the Detonic .451 magnum automatic. Firmed up her right arm and grasped it at the wrist for steadiness. She got the face of the Palm Beacher in the sights, but knew as soon as she'd fired that she'd been tentative, a bit shy of the imminent explosion and the leap of the pistol. After all, it had been how many years? At least five since she'd had any sort of gun in hand.

  She walked to the barn and, as she expected, the Palm Beacher was unscathed. Six inches off to the left was a splintery hole in the bam siding. No matter, Audrey told herself, a hit would have been only luck anyway. She went back to the spot from where she'd fired.

  Again in her shooter's stance she got the Palm Beacher in the wide combat-type sights of the .451 magnum. This time she didn't hurry, knew how crisp the trigger was, squeezed it as though she had a baby by the finger. The .451 went off. While the air was still percussive, Audrey returned it to point of aim and fired again. And four times more.

  All six shots were hits of a sort.

  Two in the hair, two in a cheek, one nicked an ear, the other got the

  comer of the mouth and altered the Palm Beacher's smile. Nevertheless she was still smiling.

  Sorry, sweetie, Audrey said sardonically and almost aloud. She wasn't satisfied with the grouping of her shots: all over the map when they were supposed to be literally on the nose. She liked very much, however, the feel of the .451. Its wraparound rubber grip was short and suited her hand, enabled her to keep a good tight hold. The feeling she got from this more powerful gun was also something that appealed to her, having that much force on the end of her arm, the hard, serious heft.

  Why was it, Audrey had once wondered, women of wealth usually had fewer compunctions about guns than women of poorer circumstances? A housemaid seeing a gun left on a bed wouldn't dare touch it, while her mistress would just snatch it up as though it were as benign as a hairbrush and toss it in a drawer.

  Audrey had never been squeamish about guns. Even before her Foxcroft years, when horses were prerequisite and shooting a personal elective, there had been guns.

  In her nine-year-old hand there had been Libby's little nickel-plated .25 caliber automatic with Libby showing her how to be careful with it and how to load it and come close to hitting an empty Piper-Heidsieck bottle from across the bedroom. There had been skeet shooting from the fantail of Libby's yacht, with a custom sized-down pump gun. Audrey's exceptional young reflexes were seldom fooled by the clay targets, no matter how rapidly or unexpectedly they were thrown. She had embarrassed numerous experienced skeet-shooter guests and Libby had won wagers on her. Only three times that she could recall had Libby told her to let her opponent outshoot her. She assumed Libby still won, though in a different way, on those occasions.

  A sixteenth-birthday present from Libby had been a .32 caliber automatic, as sweet as a gun could be, silvery with a mother-of-pearl inset grip and her initials engraved on the housing in Spencerian script. Along with it, a carte blanche to carry it anywhere in the world. "If ever a situation gets down to a dreadful bind," Libby told her, "don't blabber threats as they do in movies, just pull the goddamn trigger and we'll clean up the mess later."

  Fortunately it had never gotten to that. Although once on a dove hunt in Spain she'd come as close as another thought to blowing the balls off an excessively macho marquis who had her cornered.

  The sixteenth-birthday automatic had been stolen from beneath her mattress during her first year at Wellesley. She neither told Libby nor replaced it.

  Now, with the .451 magnum in her grasp, she wondered how and why she'd done without it. The .451, in its own way, was as capable as life or death as her heart.

  She reached down into the parcel that lay at her feet and brought out a silencer, a newly developed, snubbier kind, only about an inch long but with the same silencing compression as the fatter, longer sort. Its compactness allowed it to be kept on even when a pistol was in its holster. She'd never shot with a silencer but had thought, considering the stealth that would surely be required for this thing, it would be best. There had been some question about being able to legally obtain one; however, Wintersgill, as usual, had managed.

  Audrey screwed the silencer onto the muzzle of the .451. She was shoving a new full clip into the magazine well when Strand and Scoot came hurrying around the comer of the bam. And then Springer. Awakened by the shots, Springer was barefoot and bare from the waist up. The fly of his jeans was unbuttoned. He stopped short and stood well back off to the side, as did Strand and Scoot.

  Audrey, with not so much as a good morning, continued with the .451. Now that she had an audience, and two thirds of it professional, she was even more set upon shooting her best. She chose a fresh target, fired off the entire clip in rapid succession. The empty casings flew hot from the .451 and the odor of gunpowder spoiled the air. Audrey sauntered nonchalantly to the bamside. Springer, Strand and Scoot followed behind her.

  They saw that the nose of the Santa Barbara heiress was blown away. All six shots had hit within a two-and-a-half-inch radius. The men didn't say anything, were that impressed. Audrey acted as though what she'd done was commonplace. All business, she went back to the parcel, ejected the spent clip, inserted another full one.

  "What kind of gun's that?" Scoot asked.

  Audrey told him.

  "Never heard of a four fifty-one mag," he said.

  "With hundred-and-eighty-five-grain bullets like these I'm using, it puts out a muzzle velocity of thirteen hundred feet per second," she said, remembering what she'd read in the manual that had come in the parcel.

  Scoot did a bullshitting nod, as though he understood.

  "That's as much stopping power as a forty-five," Audrey added. She offered the .451 to Scoot. "Squeeze off a few."

  Scoot took a couple of steps back, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  "Don't worry," Audrey quipped, "you can wipe off your fingerprints."

  Scoot and Strand just looked at her.

  Audrey thought perhaps they were feeling what so many men do when it comes to a woman with a gun: that instinctive, nervous bristling that
the combination caused. A woman psychiatrist Audrey had chanced to meet socially in Gstaad had referred to it as the Macomber reaction.

  Audrey asked Scoot and Strand, "What kind of pieces do you carry?"

  "We don't," Strand said.

  "What do you mean you don't? Never?"

  Scoot indicated the .451 Audrey was casually holding pointed groundward. "What you've got there is four years," he said. "Four of your best fucking years."

  Strand explained. "This Townsend thing is a burglary, that's all, just a burglary. If we get nailed you'll be able to negotiate and do one to three years at the most. But if we get nailed and even one of us is carrying a piece it's armed robbery. You and Springer will each do five to seven."

  "Strand and me, we got priors. We'll do twenty-five." Scoot told her.

  Audrey dropped her gaze. She felt foolish for having made such an amateurish assumption. It also wasn't good to have the atmosphere filled with such negative possibilities as Strand and Scoot had just expressed. Best to get off the subject. "I just think," she said, "we're going to be in a hell of a helpless fix if somebody starts shooting at us. "

  No argument on that point from either Strand or Scoot. They just left her standing there, went into the house for coffee.

  Springer remained. He'd been transfixed by the sight of Audrey and her easy way with that gun, astounded by the demonstration of how good a shot she was. He'd had no idea. There she was now, his sensitive, softhearted love, with lethalness in her hand. His concept of her had shifted.

  "I had Wintersgill also get one for you," she said, taking another identical .451 from the parcel. She tossed the pistol to Springer. He caught it gingerly.

  His and hers, he thought, like coffee mugs and bath towels. "You heard what Strand and Scoot said. We won't be carrying guns." Springer was firm about it. "None of us."

  "I quite agree. However, I think when this is over with, you and I should always have guns on us."