Deadly Edge: A Parker Novel Page 4

  Parker looked to his left, down through one of the windows at the platform in the middle of the auditorium. The four musicians who had been there were gone. Bulky stagehands in T-shirts and work pants, looking like citizens of a different planet from everybody else in the auditorium, were spreading a bright red carpet in the middle of the platform, moving the microphones and amplifiers around, and wheeling out a small keyboard instrument like a midget piano. In the middle of the red carpet was the white outline of a triangle, with an eye in it.

  Keegan, beside Parker at the window, said, “They shouldn’t be able to get away with that.”

  Parker frowned at the platform, not knowing what Keegan was talking about, but didn’t ask.

  Keegan said, “That thing on the carpet there, that triangle. That’s off the dollar bill. That’s the kind of thing they do. Dress in the American flag, all that. None of them have any respect.”

  Parker walked on to stand beside Briley, and Keegan followed. Briley, nodding at the platform, said, “The headliners are coming.”

  According to Morris, the final group would play a minimum of twenty-five minutes. If they were feeling good, if they’d established an enjoyable rapport with the audience—Morris had said, “If the vibes are good”—they might extend that to an hour or more. But twenty-five minutes was the minimum, so that was the deadline.

  Parker looked at his watch: one twenty-five. He said, “We have to be out by ten to two.”

  Keegan said, “Then we better move.”

  “Let’s wait for more noise.”

  It was almost quiet out there now, the crowd expectant and waiting. The stagehands finished their adjustments and waddled off, going back to the cigar butts they’d left on table edges. The audience noise tapered off even more, till individual coughs could be heard, and suddenly the auditorium lights went out, and they were looking down into darkness.

  Keegan was the only one who moved, making an abrupt jump to the left, past the edge of the window, the toolkit bumping his knee and the wall. Parker and Briley continued to stand there, side by side, looking down; Briley in the guard uniform, Parker in his dark jacket and the hood over his face. The corridor lights above and behind them remained on.

  Keegan said, “For Christ’s sake, they can see you!”

  “A silhouette,” Parker said. “With the light behind me. Better they see a silhouette standing still than jumping away and trying to hide.”

  “I got out of the way before they could see me.”

  The darkness wasn’t total down there. A sparse pattern of dull red exit lights glowed. Tiny red and green dots of light from the platform showed that the amplifiers were working; those dots seemed to wink all at once, meaning that people were moving around on the platform.

  The sound, when it came, had been anticipated for so long that it seemed unexpected, a surprise and a shock. An electronic crash, a chord of aggressive, whining, insistent notes blended into one detonation, an announcement of entry like the crash of an iron door back against an iron wall. An instant later one bright white beam flooded the platform from the ceiling, and there were now five musicians out there, one at the keyboard instrument, two with electric guitars, one at a complex array of drums, and one standing in the middle of the carpet’s triangle, holding a hand microphone; this last one was dressed completely in red, and when the light came on he opened his mouth wide, held the microphone against his lower teeth, and shrieked loud enough to make distortions in the loudspeakers. The audience shrieked back, the four instrumentalists began a heavy background beat that was most like the sound of a highballing freight train—a sound out of context, since it was unlikely anyone in this audience had ever ridden a train of any kind—and the one in red began to sing/shout into the microphone: “The-mes-sen-ger-of-Death-will-bring-you-down…”

  Parker said, “It’s time.”

  He and Keegan turned away from the window. Parker counted doors and went to the one he wanted. He turned the knob and walked in, and the man at the desk dropped his pen and cried, “Good God!”

  “Take it easy,” Parker said. He took only one step into the room, then moved quickly to his left. Most of the left-hand wall was glass, and he didn’t want to be seen by anyone on the other side of it, not yet. For the same reason, Keegan stayed in the doorway.

  The man at the desk was about forty, very stocky in a soft-looking way. He wore horn-rim glasses, a dark gray suit, narrow tie, white shirt with button-down collar. He came from the same planet as the stagehands. He said, “I don’t have any money in here.” His voice was high-pitched and frightened; he might do something fatal simply out of nervousness.

  Parker said, his voice as low and calm as possible with the competition of the music, “We know that. We’re not after you, we’re not going to cause you any trouble.”

  The man at the desk licked his lips, looking nervously at Keegan and then past Keegan toward the hall. “What did you do with the…what did you do with the man out there?”

  “Mr. Dockery is perfectly all right. You’ll be all right, too. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Keegan came one step into the room, moved leftward to Parker’s side, put the toolkit down, shut the door. The man at the desk began to look more frightened again.

  Parker said, “You’d be Mr. Stevenson, wouldn’t you?”

  “What? I—that’s right. Who are you people?”

  “Ronald Stevenson?”

  “I haven’t done anything to anybody. Why do you want—?”

  “I told you we’re not after you. What do your friends call you? Ron? Ronnie?”

  “My—I’m, uh—Most people call me RG.”

  “RG. Well, this is a robbery, RG. We’re not here to hurt anybody or scare anybody. We’re just going to take the money. The management is insured against this kind of thing, so it’s nothing for anybody to get killed over. We’d prefer a nice quiet operation, and so would you. So up to a point our interests are the same.”

  “But I don’t have any money.”

  Keegan said, “Next door they have money.”

  Stevenson looked at the glass wall facing his desk. The glass started at waist-height and continued up to within a foot of the ceiling. A three-foot width of ordinary wall was at this end, and a door with a glass panel in it was at the far end.

  Parker said, “Anybody looking at you, RG?”

  “What?” Stevenson suddenly looked frightened again, and then guilty. “No, not at all.”

  “Look down at the paper on your desk, RG. Good. Pick up your pen. Start to write.”

  Looking down at his desk top, Stevenson said, “Write what?”

  “Anything you want, RG. Just so the people next door see you looking normal.”

  “Oh, I see.” Stevenson began to write. He didn’t really look normal, his shoulders were too hunched, the position of his head too tense, but a casual glance from the next room wouldn’t pick up that sort of detail.

  Parker gave him half a minute to calm himself, and then said, “Okay, RG, keep writing while I talk to you. There’s three guards next door. What’s the name of the one in charge?”

  Still writing, looking down, Stevenson said, “That would be Lieutenant Garrison.”

  “First name?”

  “I believe—It’s Daniel, I believe.”

  “Is he called Dan?”

  Stevenson nodded at what he was writing. “I’ve heard him called Dan, yes.” He was a precise man by nature, and now he was using that precision as a means of self-defense, as though to say, If I am very accurate and very proper, nothing bad will happen to me.

  It was an idea Parker wanted to encourage. “Good,” he said. “And the other two? What names?”

  Stevenson glanced up, looking through the glass into the other room again, as though to refresh his memory, then quickly looked back down at the paper, went on writing, and said, “The younger one is Lavenstein, Edward Lavenstein. He’s called Beau. And the other one is Hal Pressbury.”

  “Dan
Garrison, Beau Lavenstein, Hal Pressbury.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Good. Keep writing, RG, this’ll take a minute.”

  Stevenson kept writing, though his shoulders hunched again. Parker touched Keegan’s elbow, and Keegan nodded and went down on one knee beside the toolkit. Putting his automatic on the floor, he opened the toolkit and took out an automobile rear-view mirror; just the rectangular piece of silvered glass, without the metal housing or the mounting arm. Carrying the mirror, he traveled on all fours diagonally past Parker to the glass wall, staying under the bottom edge of the glass. When he got to the wall he switched to a sitting position, legs crossed tailor-fashion and head stooped somewhat, and slowly raised the mirror up in front of him. He was sitting sideways to the wall, and had the mirror turned at an angle; when it was a little above his head, he said, “Got’em.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Double room. Double length, I mean.” The mirror moved slightly. “Two doors to the hall, one near, one far. Sofa in between, one guard sitting at it. Table against the wall beyond the far door, one guard sitting in a chair at the table, facing the wall, playing solitaire.” The mirror moved. “Four desks down the middle of the room, with adding machines. Three men, one woman. Cash on all four desks. They’re counting it, banding it, dropping the stacks into metal trays on the floor. Back wall all filing cabinets, no door.” The mirror moved. “Right wall, four windows. Table between windows two and three, with canvas sacks on it, most of them empty. Here comes the woman.” Silence for ten seconds; the mirror moved. “The dough must have come upstairs in the sacks. She just took one of the full ones, carried it to the desk, emptied the bills out, put the empty sack back on the table. Now she’s gone back to work.”

  “Where’s the third guard?”

  “On the right.” The mirror moved. “Leaning against the wall beside the money table. Kind of looking around at everything.”

  “That’ll be Garrison. RG, don’t look up. Keep writing. Is Garrison the one beside the money?”

  “He was, yes, the last I looked.”

  “The young one, Beau Lavenstein, is he the one playing solitaire?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  Parker nodded. That made Hal Pressbury the one on the sofa. Parker said to Keegan, “How many phones?”

  The mirror moved. “One, on the first desk.”

  “RG, if you were going to call that number, what would you dial?”

  “That’s extension twenty-three.”

  “Is that all you dial? Two three?”

  “No. For an inside call, you dial nine first.”

  “Nine two three, and that phone will ring?”

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “Good. Now, RG, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to get up and go to the filing cabinet behind you. Open the top drawer and act as though you’re looking for something. Good. Just like that. Stay there.”

  Parker got down on hands and knees and crawled across the carpet and around behind the desk. Keegan kept watching the other room in the mirror, and Stevenson stood at the filing cabinet, his back to everything that was happening.

  Parker raised himself cautiously behind the desk till he could look over the top. His first sight of the room beyond showed him everything as Keegan had described it. No one was looking in this direction. The four clerks were working, Dan Garrison was looking at the money, Beau Lavenstein was looking at his card game, and Hal Pressbury was looking off into space and seemed to be mostly asleep.

  Parker lifted his right arm and slid it across the desk top to the phone, then pulled the phone toward him. The cord ran off and down the side of the desk, so there was no problem about length. Parker took the phone off the desk top, put it on the floor, sat in front of it, and dialed 9 2 3. Faintly, through the glass and the distant sound of crowd-and-music in the auditorium, he heard the phone ring in the next room.

  “It’s a clerk,” Keegan said, and the receiver in Parker’s hand clicked. A voice said, “Hello?”

  “A message for Edward Lavenstein,” Parker said.

  “One moment, please.”

  Parker waited. Keegan said, “Here he comes. Garrison’s watching, but he isn’t moving.”

  “Hello?”

  “Beau?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Hold on a second, will you? There’s a message.”

  Parker lowered the phone and put his hand over the mouthpiece. Now, if there was trouble, no one from the next room would be using the phone; the line was tied up till Parker broke the connection at this end.

  He said, “RG, don’t turn around. I’ve got more instructions for you. When I say to, you go over to the door, open it, and tell Garrison you want to see him. Get him to come in here. Stand to the left of the doorway when he comes in, so he doesn’t see my partner. Talk to him as he’s coming in, keep him distracted, say anything you want. When he’s in, shut the door and say, ‘There are men pointing guns at you. I don’t want anybody killed. I assured them we’d cooperate.’ You got that?”

  “I think so.” Nervousness trembled in Stevenson’s voice like a wind riffling curtains.

  “Tell me what you’re going to say after you shut the door.”

  “There are men here with guns. I don’t want anybody killed. I said we’d cooperate.”

  “Fine. Go ahead now.”

  Stevenson turned and walked toward the door. He moved unsteadily, as though he were very tired or a little drunk. Parker, keeping one hand folded over the mouthpiece of the phone, stretched out on his stomach behind the desk, so that his head and shoulders emerged past the desk’s right side and he could see the door Stevenson was walking toward. His left hand, holding the phone receiver, was down at his side. His right hand was out in front of his face, resting the butt of the automatic on the carpet.

  Stevenson reached the door, and grabbed for the knob as though he needed it to go on standing. He rested his other palm, shoulder-height, against the door frame, then opened the door and called, “Lieutenant Garrison? Could you come here for a moment?”

  Down by Parker’s left hand, a tinny voice said, “Hello? Hello?” A deeper echo sounded through the open door.

  Keegan, his voice low, said, “Here he comes. Easy as pie.”

  Parker saw the feet first, saw Stevenson moving awkwardly to his left—the door opened to the right, making the move slightly cumbersome—heard Stevenson say, “Well, there certainly is a lot of money tonight. A full house, eh? A fitting close for the old building. The new one just won’t seem like home, will it? Here, let me—”

  Garrison had seen neither Keegan nor Parker yet, and was standing in the doorway, waiting for Stevenson to tell him what he wanted. He was about Stevenson’s age, forty-something, but was leaner and harder, with a deeply lined face. Stevenson was trying to reach behind him to shut the door.

  Garrison moved reluctantly, saying, “What is it, Mr. Stevenson?” The voice was carefully neutral, but in its very neutrality, betrayed the contempt Garrison felt. So he was going to be another Dockery, and potentially more trouble.

  Stevenson, in shutting the door, started to lose his balance because of his nervousness, and had to cling to Garrison’s right arm; that was perfect, and an unexpected bonus. Stevenson said, gasping suddenly, “There are men with guns—Don’t do anything, for the love of God!”

  “What?” Garrison backed into the closed door, trying to push Stevenson away.

  “Lieutenant Garrison, don’t!”

  Parker called, “It’s okay, Dan!”

  Garrison, confused for a second by the sound of his own first name, stopped struggling with Stevenson and looked around, still seeing no one. “What the hell is this?”

  Parker had the automatic pointed at Garrison’s chest. He called, “RG, back up! Back up to your left.”

  Stevenson hurriedly backed away, babbling as he went: “I don’t want anybody killed! I promised there’d be full cooperation! We’re insured, it’s
all right, they’re only after the money—”

  Garrison came a quick step in from the door. His hand was near his holstered revolver, but not quite touching it. He saw Keegan suddenly, and tensed, frowning. Parker said, “Over here, Dan, here’s where the gun is.” Garrison looked quickly toward the voice, and now he saw Parker and the gun. He made no move, but his expression got more grim.

  Keegan, still watching through the mirror, said, “They’re getting interested.” Meaning one or more of the people in the other room had seen Stevenson’s odd moves and were beginning to wonder.

  Parker said, “Dan, lie down on your face. Don’t make me shoot your kneecap. I could set off a bomb in here tonight, nobody’d hear it anywhere outside. Get down.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  “We don’t have time, Dan. Down or I shoot, and I mean now.”

  Stevenson, backed up against the front of the desk and leaning backward against it for support, cried, “For God’s sake, do it! It isn’t worth getting killed over!”

  “You’ll pay,” Garrison said grimly, and got slowly down onto the floor.

  Parker lifted the phone up to his ear again. “Beau?”

  “Who is this, dammit?”

  Keegan said, “The woman’s talking to him. About the scene in here.”

  Parker said, “Beau, I want to tell you Dan Garrison is lying on his face in RG Stevenson’s office, and two men have guns pointed at him. If you do anything hasty or stupid, they’ll kill Dan and then rise up and kill you through the glass. You look at RG now, and he’ll nod to tell you what I’m saying is true. Nod, RG.”

  Parker looked up, and saw Stevenson’s head lower and raise; a mechanical move, as though he were a newly completed robot trying the motion for the first time.