Breakout

by Richard Stark

  Out of the shower, Mackey dressed in dark, loose comfortable clothes, with a Beretta Jaguar .22 automatic in a deerskin holster at the small of his back, under his shirt, upside down with the butt to the right, ready to his hand if he had to reach back there. He’d gotten similar gear for Parker and Williams. Rubber gloves and a small tube of talcum powder were in his jacket pocket. He packed a small canvas bag with a few of his things, because he’d be staying with the rest of them at the former beer distributor’s place between the job and the arrival of the fence from New Orleans. Then he’d phone Brenda, she’d pick him up, and they’d be off. With Parker, if he wanted a ride, or on their own.

  He kissed her at the door, and she said, “Try to stay out of trouble.”

  “What you should do,” he told her, “is stay away from that armory. Don’t call attention.” Because he knew she liked to be nearby when he was at work, in case he needed her. He’d needed her in the past, but not this time. ’Just stay away, Brenda,” he said. “Okay?”

  “I’ll go over there tomorrow,” she told him, “for one more class at the dance studio. I like that workout. I won’t go today, there’s nobody there today, everything’s closed on Sunday.”

  “We know,” Mackey said, and grinned, kissed her again, and left.

  Downstairs, Phil Kolaski was supposed to be waiting for him in the Honda, down the block from the hotel entrance, and there he was. Mackey tossed his bag in back, got into the passenger seat in front, and said, “Everything still on?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Phil said, and drove them away from there.

  It was Phil Kolaski that Mackey had gotten in touch with, when he was the outside man to help Parker put together a string on the inside. They had studied each other very closely, looking for danger signs, and had both decided they could take a chance.

  It was like a marriage, that, or more exactly like an engagement. The two people start off strangers to each other, have to find reasons to trust each other, have to learn each other well enough to feel they aren’t likely to be betrayed, and then have to pop the question:

  “Tom’s got a job lined up for when he gets out. He’ll want you and your friend in on it, to take the place of the guys got nabbed with him.”

  Mackey had been comfortable with that idea—if he was in this part of the world anyway, he might as well make a profit on it—but knew that Parker would want, once out, to keep moving. He’d told Phil that, and Phil had said, “Tom will talk to him, before they come out,” so it seemed to be all right.

  Two blocks from the Park Regal they went through the intersection with the Armory on the left and the library, another heavy brick pile from the nineteenth century, on the right. Mackey laughed: “We’re gonna be under this street!”

  “With our hands,” Phil said, “full of jewels.”

  9

  The Margaret H. Moran Memorial Library was theoretically closed as of five P.M. on Sundays, but by the time the last patron and the last book/tape/DVD were checked out it was usually closer to five-thirty. Then whichever staff was on duty had to go through the public parts of the building for strays, occasionally finding one (usually in a lavatory), so that they were lucky if they were out of there, front door locked behind them and alarms switched on, by quarter to six.

  This evening, late October twilight coming on fast, the library was dark and empty at six P.M., when a black Honda and a green Taurus drove slowly by. The two cars traveled on another block to a parking garage where they entered, took checks from the automatic machine at the entrance, left the cars, walked back down the concrete stairwell to the street, and separated. Parker and Mackey turned left, away from the library and Armory, while Williams crossed Indiana Avenue and Marcantoni and Kolaski and Angioni walked back to the library.

  At the library, Marcantoni hunkered in front of the door while the other two stood on the sidewalk in front of him, chatting together, blocking the view of Marcantoni at work from passing cars. There was little traffic and no pedestrians in this downtown area at six on a Sunday.

  Marcantoni opened a flat soft leather pouch on his knee; inside, in a row of narrow pockets, were his picks. Patiently he went to work on the locks, not wanting to disturb them so much as to set off the building’s alarms.

  The fire law required the door to open outward. Marcantoni pulled it ajar just enough so he could put a small matchbox in the opening, to keep the spring lock from shutting it again. Then he put his picks neatly away, and was straightening when Parker and Mackey approached, with Williams behind them, just coming around the corner.

  The six men went into the building, closing the re-locked door behind them. Marcantoni said, “There’s wastebaskets behind the main counter there, we’re gonna need them. There’s a lot of trash to move.”

  Parker said, “Then you need shovels.”

  “Right,” Marcantoni said. “I’ve got that figured out, too.”

  There were three large metal wastebaskets, gray, square, behind the long main counter, all having been emptied by the staff before they left. Kolaski stacked the three and carried them, and Marcantoni, the only one who knew the route, led the way down the center aisle, book stacks on both sides. He carried a small flashlight, with electric tape blocking part of the lens, and Angioni carried a similar one, coming last. They picked up two more wastebaskets from desks along the way, these carried by Williams.

  Toward the rear of the main section Marcantoni turned left to go down a broad flight of stairs that doubled back at a landing. This led them down to the periodicals section, with its own stacks full of bound magazines and its own reading room lined with long oak tables. “We’ll come back for a couple of those,” Marcantoni said, waving the flashlight beam over the tables as they walked toward the rear of the section.

  Back here was another counter, for checking out magazines and microfilm. They picked up two more wastebaskets there, plus something else. “Look at this,” Marcantoni said.

  On a separate wheeled metal table behind the counter were stacked several rows of small metal file drawers. Marcantoni opened one, pulled the full drawer out completely, and dumped the cards onto the floor. Shining the flashlight into the empty drawer, sixteen inches long, six inches wide, four inches deep, he said, “A shovel. Everybody grab one.”

  They did, and moved on. In the rear wall, next to a coin-slot copying machine, was a broad wooden door marked NO ADMITTANCE. Marcantoni handed his flashlight to Williams, then got down to one knee and brought out his picks. “This one’s nothing,” he said.

  Angioni and Williams shone light on the lock, Marcantoni worked with smooth speed, and he pushed the door open in just under a minute. The others waited while he put his picks away and stood, then Williams gave him back the flashlight. Carrying the wastebaskets and file drawers, they entered a storage area lined with rows of metal shelving.

  “There’s no windows down here,” Marcantoni said. He closed the door they’d just come through, then hit the switch beside it. Fluorescent ceiling fixtures lit up to show a deep but narrow room with the metal shelves on both sides and across the back. “It’s down there,” Marcantoni said, and led the way to the rear, where the shelves were stacked with copier supplies.

  Even with all the light on it, the door was hard to see, through the shelves stacked with boxes and rolls. It was painted the same neutral gray as the wall and the metal shelving.

  Marcantoni said, “These shelves aren’t fixed to the wall. I just pulled one end out, the other time.”

  There was not much clearance between the rear and side shelving. Williams tugged on the shelving’s left end and its legs made a shrieking noise on the floor, so he lifted the end instead. Mackey went over to help, and they wheeled the shelving out till it faced up against the right-side shelves.

  Angioni was studying the door, featureless metal with barely visible hinges on the right side. In its middle, at about waist height, was a round hole less than an inch in diameter. Angioni said, “That’s the keyhole?” />
  “That’s it,” Marcantoni said. Walking over to the door, he took from his pockets a small socket wrench and a star-shaped bit. As he fitted them together at right angles, he said, “The last time, I didn’t want to mess up this door so somebody might notice something. I looked at the lock on the door at the other end, and I figured this one would be the same. It’s a double bar that extends beyond the door to both sides, hinged in the middle so it’ll pivot to unlock it. This works.”

  Bending to the door, he inserted the bit into the hole, with the wrench extended to the right. With both hands on the wrench, he lifted. The wrench barely moved upward, and from beyond the door they could hear the scrape of metal on metal. “It’s goddam stiff,” Marcantoni said, “but I got it last—Here it comes.”

  Slowly he pulled the wrench upward until it was vertical above the hole. “That should do it.”

  He pulled the bit out, separated the wrench into its two components, and put them away in his pocket, bringing out a short flat-head screwdriver instead. Going down to one knee, he said, “Here’s where I pulled it out before. I figured nobody’d notice.”

  Down close to the floor, where the bottom shelf would have covered it, the edge of the door and its wooden frame showed scratches. Marcantoni forced the screwdriver in there, levered it, and all at once the door popped an inch inward. He got to his feet, putting the screwdriver away. “There,” he said. “From now on, it’s easy.”

  To show that, he put the fingers of both hands onto the protruding edge of the door and tugged. More metal-on-metal complaint, and then the door grudgingly came open. The old hinges didn’t want to move, but Marcantoni insisted, and at last the door was wide open, angled back away from the entrance.

  Now they could look through into the tunnel, illuminated for the first several feet by the fluorescents in the storage room. It was narrow, about the width of an automobile, with brick floor and brick walls up to an arched brick ceiling. Angioni shone his flashlight, but it didn’t show much more than the fluorescents did. “It’s angled down,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Marcantoni agreed, “it slopes down, not steep, then levels out, then slopes up again on the other side.”

  “Well,” Angioni said, “shall we go?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Mackey pointed out.

  Marcantoni said, “Let me get the tape off this flash.” He and Angioni peeled the electric tape from the flashlight lenses, and then they started into the tunnel, moving in loose single file, carrying the wastebaskets and the file drawers.

  Had the tunnel ever been used? If so, the people who’d been in here left no marks. At the time this had been built, gaslight was common in this part of the world, but it hadn’t been installed in here. If someone had been in the tunnel, using some kind of torch for light, there might be smoke smudges on the curved ceiling, but none appeared. It looked as though the tunnel had been built simply because that was the way the plans had been laid out, then it was locked and forgotten.

  They walked down the easy slope, the tunnel absolutely straight, then headed along the level section. There was no sound but the brush of their feet. The air was cool and dry, with a faint mustiness. Every twenty feet or so there was a large iron ring jutting from the right side wall at about shoulder level. For sconces? For a guide rope, to be followed in the dark? There was no way to tell.

  “There it is,” Marcantoni said, and they all came up to cluster at the beginning of the collapse. Just ahead of them, the ceiling had started to fall, three bricks wide at the peak to begin with, then wider. On the floor were the bricks, some broken, and a little debris. Farther on, the two flashlights showed that the collapse had become wider, with a combination of dirt and stone fallen from the hole. By twenty feet from the beginning of the rupture, the debris made a steep mountain slope that completely blocked the tunnel, top to bottom and side to side.

  Marcantoni said, “My idea is, the bricks we can push against the side walls, and the rest of it we scoop into the wastebaskets, carry it back a ways, dump it out, leave room to get by.”

  Williams said, “What if more comes down, when we start moving this shit?”

  “It’s an old fall,” Marcantoni said. “Whatever happened was a long time ago. It’s stable now.”

  Parker said, “When we start to move it, it won’t be stable any more.”

  “Well,” Marcantoni said, “this is the route. This is the only way in. And we’re here.”

  They took turns with the flashlights, looking up at the early part of the rupture. The remaining bricks to both sides were solid, hadn’t been loosened at all by whatever had happened to the part that fell. Here in its narrowest section, there was shallow emptiness just above where the bricks had been, and then compacted earth. Farther on, more dirt and stone had fallen from above the displaced bricks, so maybe Marcantoni’s idea was right, that this was an accident done by the crew removing trolley tracks half a century ago, who never knew they’d done it.

  Finally, Mackey said, “I think we can try it, anyway. If more of it starts to fall in, though, I’ve got to tell you, I’m going back to the library, and anyone who wants my share can have it.”

  “Listen, we can do it,” Angioni said. “Come on, Tom. A couple you guys go get tables.”

  Williams and Mackey went away, pleased to go, taking one of the flashlights. Parker held the other, and the remaining three moved slowly forward, at first kicking bricks and debris to the side, and then, when it got to be more than that, scooping the file drawers into the slope of the debris mountain, dumping dirt and stones into the wastebaskets. They stacked bricks to the sides, and carried heavy baskets back along the tunnel to empty into little pyramids of trash. From time to time, the slope ahead of them made small shifts, and they could hear stones pattering down its side, but then it would be silent again.

  By the time Mackey and Williams had made three round-trips, bringing one of the eight-foot-long tables back with them each time, lining the tables up in a long row, the other four had progressed into the trash mountain, which was loose and easily disassembled. Parker had spelled Kiloski, and then Kiloski had given the flashlight to Angioni, and now Marcantoni had it.

  Above them, they were now at the serious part of the rupture, where the tear in the ceiling was a dozen bricks wide and where, when the flashlight beam was aimed up there, it was all a dark emptiness, like a vertical cavern. But nothing else seemed to want to come down out of there, so they kept working, and now Mackey and Williams joined them, and from that point on three cleared debris while two carried the full wastebaskets back to empty, and one held both flashlights.

  They worked for more than three hours, from time to time sliding the tables forward. They didn’t try to clear all the trash out of the way, just enough so they could keep moving forward and bringing the tables along after them.

  Finally, Marcantoni said, “Listen!”

  They all listened, and heard the faint sound, the rustle of dirt sliding down a slope, and Angioni said, “Is that the other side?”

  “You know it is,” Marcantoni told him. “We’re almost through.”

  Still it took another half hour to finish this part of it. When they moved the tables forward now, the easiest way was to go on all fours underneath and juke them along that way. Soon they could start emptying the wastebaskets into the cleared area ahead, which made things go faster.

  And it looked as though Marcantoni’s estimate of the length of the collapse was right. The length of the three tables would total just a little longer distance than the rupture above them. Nothing additional fell while they worked, but the tables gave them a sense there’d still be a way out if things went bad.

  Williams had the flashlights when they first broke through. “Hey, wait,” he said. “I can see it. Tom, there’s your damn door.”

  They were looking through an ellipsis, less than a foot wide, brick and rupture above, rubble below, at a dark continuation of the tunnel. At the far end, just picking up the gleam fr
om the flashlights, was the black iron door.

  At this end, the rupture in the ceiling had narrowed again, with less debris having fallen down. They moved more quickly, wanting to get this part over with, and then Marcantoni strode on ahead, not bothering about a flashlight. When he reached the door, he had his wrench-and-bit assembled, and with one move he had the door unlocked; one kick, and it was open.

  A dry breeze whispered through the tunnel, maybe for the first time. A few pebbles rattled onto the tables.

  On the far side, the iron door led to a nearly empty storage room, thick with dust. A few old glass display cases had been shoved haphazardly against the side wall, along with an upright metal locker with a broken hinge, a jeweler’s suitcase with a broken wheel, and other things that should have been thrown away. Whatever the army had used this space for, if anything, Freedman Wholesale Jewel used it, when they remembered it at all, as a garbage dump.

  Crossing this room to the door in the opposite wall, Marcantoni said, “I was only here during the rehab, so I don’t know the layout now. I only know the plans didn’t have a lot of interior alarms, because they counted on the building to take care of that.” He tried the knob and cursed. “What the hell’d they lock it for?”

  Kolaski said, “That’s a rare antique suitcase.”

  “Shit,” Marcantoni said. “Gimme a minute.”

  It didn’t take much more, and then they moved on into a broad dimly lit area; the employees’ parking lot under the main store, empty on a Sunday night. Exit lights and a few fire-code lights led them diagonally across the big concrete-floored room with its white lines defining parking spaces to where an illuminated sign, white letters on green, read STAIRS.