Plunder Squad p-15 Read online

  The room was, of course, a plastic replica of an Italian Line stateroom. Sternberg sighed, placed a folded dollar bill in the bellboy’s flaccid hand, and firmly closed the door behind him.

  Ghastly. Drinking glasses in the bathroom were encased in little white paper bags imprinted with a message including the word “sanitized.” A similar message was on the paper band bridging the toilet seat. It was like dating a sexual hysteric who can never stop talking about her virginity.

  Motel cleanliness is next to motel paranoia; in the closet the hangers were in two sections, separable, so that the part which could be removed from the closet was useless without the part attached to the crossbar. Thus the motel protected itself from those who would rent a room only as a ruse to enable them to steal hangers.

  The air conditioner had been on, but Sternberg switched it off first thing, turned the thermostat up to seventy-three, and opened the window slightly. By the time he’d unpacked and de-sanitized everything, the air in the room had a bit of life in it. Sternberg stripped to his boxer shorts, turned down the bed, settled himself comfortably with the pillows behind his back, and opened the Anthony Powell novel he’d started on the plane. It was Magnus Donners he wanted to identify with, but he kept finding his sympathies going to Widmerpool.

  Forty-five minutes later the phone rang. It was, as Sternberg had expected, Ed Mackey: “Hello, Lou?”

  “Speaking,” Sternberg said.

  “This is Ed.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I guess you want to rest up for a while.”

  “If possible.”

  “We’re gonna have a meeting tonight. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  “Fine,” Sternberg said. “Have a good trip?”

  “As good as could be expected,” Sternberg said. “I’ll see you at nine,” he said, to end the chit-chat. He hung up, and went immediately back to his book.

  Three

  Tommy Carpenter was dreaming. There were chains between the planets, great heavy chains holding them all together, and it was his idea to close the bottoms of the links with plastic and fill the links with dirt and fertilizer and make it all a farm, one huge long farm from planet to planet, with something different growing in every link of the chain: tomatoes, and then roses, and then watermelon, and then marijuana, and then tulips, and then corn, on and on across the universe. And it was such a magnificent idea, all he had to do was tell people and right away they all wanted to help him. A stone groove, everybody together, everybody working on the farm in the sky.

  He became aware it was a dream when he heard Noelle calling his name. He frowned and buried his face into the fur and tried to stay asleep; the dream was good, it was really good.

  But there was no holding onto it. There never was. Tommy rolled over and groaned and said, “Shit.”

  “You awake, baby?”

  He felt the road vibration under his back, through the mattress and the fur. He was lying in the back of the Volkswagen Microbus, and the windows showed nighttime outside. Noelle was driving, and had been since four o’clock in the afternoon when he’d decided to flake out for a few hours to be fresh for when they got there.

  “Tommy? You awake?”

  “Shit,” he said again. “What time is it?”

  “Twenty to nine. We’re almost there.”

  He sat up. Small and slender, with long wavy hair that made him look like Christ’s kid brother, Tommy Carpenter was twenty-four, looked sixteen, and felt eighty. “No rest, man,” he said. “I feel worse than I did before.”

  “It’s no good when we’re moving, baby,” Noelle said. “I told you that before. The body just doesn’t rest when the car’s in motion.”

  “Right, right.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Find a phone, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  His shoes were somewhere in the scramble in the back of the bus. He found one with no trouble, but then had to root around through clothing and food and all sorts of crap before he came up with the other. Shod, he crawled to the front and clambered his way into the passenger seat.

  They were traveling through the fringes of the city, residential sprawl all around them. Noelle said, “I think I got off the Interstate too soon.”

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “Pretty close. There’s something open.”

  It was a bar. Noelle stopped and Tommy went inside. He had to ignore the hostile stares of the customers, but he was used to that; the straights never did seem to get used to the existence of freaks. He went into the phone booth, got the motel’s number from Information, dialed, and was put through to Ed Mackey’s room, where the phone was answered by a female voice. Tommy asked her, “Is Ed there?”

  “Second.”

  The next voice was Mackey’s: cheerful, tough, open. “Yeah?”

  “This is Tommy.”

  ”Yeah. Where are you?”

  “Somewhere in town.”

  “Come on out. We’re gonna meet at nine.”

  “Be right there,” Tommy said, and hung up, and went back out to the bus, where Noelle had opened a can of tunafish and put together a sandwich of white bread and American cheese. Taking them, he said, “You eat already?”

  “Little while ago. We go straight on?”

  “Yeah, they’re meeting at nine.”

  Noelle kept driving while Tommy ate, and a few blocks later she found a small grocery store open and stopped to get a couple cold cans of Coke. Tommy washed down the tunafish and sandwich with Coke, and was finished eating by the time they got to the motel and drove in. Tommy said, “You remember his room number?”

  “You said one thirty-seven.”

  “Right.”

  There was a car already in the slot in front of that unit. Tommy said, “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “There’s a parking lot around front, by the restaurant. I’ll wait there.”

  “Fine.” He gave her a kiss and got out of the bus, and she drove it away. He paused to brush crumbs off himself and organize his clothes and general appearance a little bit—smoothing down his hair with his palms—and then went over and knocked on the door numbered 137.

  Ed Mackey himself opened the door. “Hey, man,” he said, grinning. “Come on in.”

  Tommy had worked with Ed twice before, but this was the first time Ed had been the one to bring him in on a job. It implied more trust, more liking, a whole different level in the interpersonal relationship. Tommy was very self-aware and self-conscious as he greeted Ed and walked into the room; he was interested in what this new kind of relationship was going to be.

  The woman who had answered the phone wasn’t in the room, but three other men were, none of whom Tommy had ever met before. All three gave him neutral expressions, and he liked that; people on this side of the law seemed more prepared to accept differences between individuals.

  Ed Mackey made the introductions; the new names were Parker and Stan Devers and Lou Sternberg. They all said hello back and forth and nodded, but nobody offered to shake hands.

  Of the three, Devers was the closest to Tommy in age, probably only two or three years older. But his appearance was much straighter, more like the young guys in television commercials. Sternberg was short and fat and sour-looking, as though he had stomach trouble. Parker was big and lean and tough-looking, as though he were brooding about somebody he was mad at who wasn’t at the moment in this room. Parker reminded Tommy of somebody, but he couldn’t quite remember who it was.

  After the introductions, Ed Mackey outlined the job. They were going to hijack a truckload of paintings. They already had a buyer, and the price had been fixed.

  Stan Devers asked the first question: “We’re going to take them while they’re in transit. Where are they now? Here?”

  “No,” Mackey said. “They were, and Parker and I looked them over while they were on display here. But they moved on to Indianapolis; that’s where they are now.”

  Sternberg said, “You studied their meth
od of shipment?”

  “Between here and Indianapolis,” Mackey said. “We figure they’ll use the same system every time.”

  Sternberg asked, “What was the system?”

  “One truck,” Mackey said. “Plus two cars with private guards, one in front and one in back. Plus a one-car State Police escort, with a new car taking over at each new jurisdiction.”

  Devers said, “Doesn’t sound easy.”

  Tommy had been thinking that it didn’t even sound possible. He tended not to say very much at meetings like this, but to think things over and ask his questions later. Also, he’d noticed that sooner or later other people almost always raised the points he would have raised himself if he’d felt like talking, just as Devers had done now.

  The one called Parker answered Devers, speaking for the first time. He said, “I’ve never found an easy one yet. But we think we’ve got a way that’ll work on this one.”

  Tommy suddenly remembered who it was that Parker reminded him of. Four years ago Tommy had been living at a commune that had later fallen apart because of sexual jealousies, but which had been going pretty good when he was there, except for some trouble from rednecks in a nearby town. The commune leaders had gone to a couple of lawyers, since the local cops had been on the side of the rednecks, but nobody’d been able to do much of anything. Then one time two of the commune girls had been beaten up and raped on their way back from town, and it turned out one of them had a father in the construction business in Chicago, and the father had sent a man down to straighten things out. The man had been named Tooker, and he’d talked very quietly with a slightly hoarse voice. He never threatened anybody, but there was a general feeling in his neighborhood that somebody was going to suddenly get killed sometime in the next ten seconds. He almost never blinked, and he looked directly at whoever he was talking to, and he didn’t have a heck of a lot to say. But he went into town and talked with some people there, and all of a sudden nobody was bothering the commune any more. Tooker came back to the commune and said, “You’ll be okay now,” and left, and there was no more trouble after that.

  Parker was that same kind. Looking at him, Tommy felt the sudden stupid urge to ask him if he knew a man named Tooker, but of course he wouldn’t.

  Meanwhile, Lou Sternberg was saying, “What about money?”

  “We’re being paid a hundred sixty thousand,” Mackey said.

  “When?”

  “I’m getting ten grand tomorrow, for financing. Our buyer is getting up the cash, and by the beginning of next week he’ll put the other hundred fifty thousand in three savings accounts in three different banks. I’ll hold the passbooks. When we do the job, we trade the paintings for the cash, and split it five ways. Thirty thousand each, plus whatever we have left from the first ten thousand.”

  Thirty thousand dollars. Tommy grinned, thinking about that number. It meant two years, that’s what it meant, two years of doing nothing, worrying about nothing, rolling around the country with Noelle and just taking every day as it came.

  If it worked. If it was workable. Tommy leaned forward, listening very carefully to what everybody had to say.

  Four

  “Hold on, Brenda,” Mackey said, grunting, gasping for breath. His hands clutched her waist, his bare feet were planted flat on the cold floor, his shins were braced against the side of the bed. “Hold on, baby.”

  She was talking into the pillow again. That was her big thing, talking gibberish into the pillow, voice muffled, words making no sense; then the speech getting faster, the voice higher, building up to something that sounded goddam Japanese by the finish.

  “Hold on,” Mackey said. Which was what he always did. He had no idea what he meant, but he always said that. Perspiration streamed down his body in the chill air-conditioned air, his muscles worked, he said it twice more, and then he was very silent for a while. Her Japanese soundtrack ran on for a few seconds without him, like a soloist after a passage by the full orchestra, and then that was silent, too.

  The next time Mackey breathed, it was long and slow, like an inverted sigh. He grinned at the back of Brenda’s head, and said, “Honey, it is goddam cold in here.”

  She said something into the pillow.

  “Absolutely,” Mackey said. Grinning, he went on standing there a couple more minutes before going in to take his shower.

  When he came out, toweling himself, Brenda was under the covers but still half-awake. “I’ll be back in no time,” he said.

  “Mm,” she said. She gave him a lazy smile and closed her eyes.

  Mackey dressed, bent over the bed to kiss her, and went out to damp twilight. It had rained on and off all day. The clouds seemed to have moved on by now, but the dampness was still in the air.

  Mackey got into his car and drove diagonally through town to Griffith’s place. Along the way, he thought about the team that had been put together for this job, and he could find no fault with it. Parker was as good as ever, from holding Griffith up for the extra thirty grand to figuring the State Police substitution gimmick. Lou Sternberg was a damned old woman about a lot of things, but he was solid and reliable, and if he agreed to take on a job, it pretty well meant the job was solid and reliable, too. Mackey considered himself lucky that this was one of the times when Sternberg was in the States looking for work.

  Tommy Carpenter was also good. A complete maniac in his own quiet way, but dependable on the job, and absolutely without fear or inhibitions or anything else. Mackey grinned at the thought of Tommy’s role in the caper they’d partially worked out.

  The only one Mackey didn’t already know from the past was Stan Devers, the young guy Parker had brought in. Devers was a little flashy, and Mackey hadn’t entirely liked the way the guy had come on with Brenda when they’d first met one another yesterday, but when the job was being discussed he seemed serious and smart, and that was the important thing. Also, Parker recommended him, and Parker was very cautious who he worked with.

  So now the string was together, and the next thing was to get the front money and start assembling the necessary materials. Which is what Mackey was up to now.

  Night had fallen by the time he reached Griffith’s place. There were no cars filling the curved driveway this time, no sound of rock music from behind the house. The house itself was mostly dark, with only a few faint lights showing from deep within, and Mackey had to ring the bell three times before at last a nearer light flicked on and through the glass pane in the front door he could see Griffith coming this way along the hallway.

  Griffith was irritable but subdued. He’d been in a bad temper ever since his run-in with Parker, but Mackey didn’t mind. Griffith’s snappish mood made it easier for Mackey to deal with him, made him no longer feel at a disadvantage in Griffith’s presence.

  Which had helped in the dickering over payment. Mackey had handled that himself, partly because to use Parker on Griffith twice in a row could maybe cause the whole deal to fall through, and partly because Mackey wanted to show Parker that he too could handle Griffith if he put his mind to it. Griffith had started by brushing the whole problem away, insisting that of course he would pay up when the time came, but Mackey had kept at him, and Griffith’s irritation had grown, and finally Mackey had worked out the bank-account method with him, plus the agreement to pay the first ten thousand before the job was done. Griffith had stalled on that last part, but Mackey had driven him to name a specific date when the ten thousand would be paid over, and in a final frustrated fury Griffith had roared out a date, and it was today. So Mackey was here.

  Griffith gave him a sour look and said, “I suppose you’re here for the money.”

  “I suppose you’ve got it,” Mackey said, and wondered what he’d do if Griffith didn’t have it after all.

  But Griffith said, “Yes, of course I have it. Come in.”

  Mackey shut the door behind himself, and then followed Griffith through the house to his small office, where Griffith sat himself behind the desk, opene
d a drawer, took out a fat nine-by-twelve manila envelope, and thudded it down on the desktop. He shut the drawer emphatically, gave Mackey a mistrustful look, and said, “You realize what occurs to me.”

  Mackey said, “We had our first meeting last night, at the motel. There’s five of us. We didn’t come together for two grand apiece.”

  ”What about you leaving everybody, for ten thousand? Me and your friends.”

  “You I don’t worry about,” Mackey said. “My friends would probably come after me and kill me. Besides, I don’t work that way and everybody who knows me knows I don’t.”

  Through the bad temper, Griffith’s nervousness was beginning to show. He laid his palm atop the manila envelope, and brooded at the back of his hand. “Once I give this to you,” he said, as though to himself, “it becomes real. I’m committed to it.”

  “You’re committed already,” Mackey said. “Neither one of us wants to tell my four partners they came all this way for nothing.”

  Griffith closed his eyes. His color was bad. He was really very nervous. His lips moved, as though he were lip-reading his thoughts behind his closed eyelids.

  Mackey felt sorry for the poor bastard; he wasn’t used to this kind of life. “Come on,” he said gently. “Take it easy.”

  Griffith’s eyes blinked open all at once. He looked haggard; his physical condition was deteriorating by the second. Staring at Mackey, he said, “What if you get caught?”

  “Then we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble.”

  “What about me?”

  “Your name won’t come into it,” Mackey told him. “And even if it did, there’s no proof against you. All you have to do is deny it.”

  “No, no,” Griffith said, shaking his head, as though to say that wasn’t what he’d meant at all. But then he didn’t say anything else.

  Mackey frowned at him, not getting it. “What else?” he said.

  Griffith’s head twitched back and forth. “Nothing. Nothing.” He pushed the manila envelope suddenly across the desk; a pen rolled off onto the floor. “Here, take it.”