Deadly Edge: A Parker Novel Page 5

  Keegan said, “Hand over!”

  “Get your hand off the mouthpiece, Beau! Don’t wake Hal up, you’ll just make trouble. Now turn your back to RG’s office. Keep the phone up to your face, and put your other hand on top of your head. Leave it there.”

  Keegan said, “He’s done it.”

  Keeping an eye on Garrison, who was prone with his head arched up so he could see what was going on, Parker got his feet under him and stood. “Move to the left, RG,” he said, and when Stevenson moved leftward, Parker had an unobstructed view of the room.

  Everybody in there knew by now that something was wrong. Pressbury—a man about Dockery’s age, but more gone to seed—was on his feet now and walking toward Lavenstein, a worried frown on his face. The three male clerks were all still at their desks, but none of them were working. All were looking at Lavenstein, who was facing them and not saying anything. The woman clerk—hers was the front desk, the one with the phone—was standing beside Lavenstein, looking this way. Parker saw her see him and clutch at Lavenstein’s side; in the earpiece of the phone he could faintly hear her saying something to Lavenstein and then Lavenstein’s irritable voice, loud and clear, saying, “I know, I know.”

  To Keegan, Parker said, “Take Dan.” Into the phone he said, “Beau, tell Hal to stand where he is. Go on, tell him.”

  “Stop there, Hal. They’ve got guns on us, stop there.”

  “Tell him to put his hands on his head.”

  “They say to put your hands on your head. Better do it, I guess.”

  “Tell him to turn left.”

  “They say turn left.”

  “Tell him to back up until he’s against the door.” Which would be the nearer door.

  “They say you should back up against the door.”

  “Tell the clerks to go over and sit on the sofa. The woman, too.”

  “They want you people to go sit on the sofa.” The woman’s voice yammered; her expression through the glass was outraged. “You, too, Mrs. Kimberly. Yeah, but you better do it. They’ve got the upper hand now.”

  Keegan said, “He’s de-fused.” He got to his feet with his own gun in his right hand and Garrison’s revolver in his left. “Only the one gun on him.”

  The male clerks were all moving toward the sofa, the woman last and with the most reluctance. At the sofa, one of the male clerks suddenly bolted for the other door. The people around him all looked startled. He yanked the door open and dashed outside.

  Keegan calmly opened the door between the rooms and headed down the window side of the room to cover everybody from the other end.

  The clerk who’d made a dash for it backed into the room, hands over his head. In response to an order, he lowered one hand and shut the door. Keegan said something to him, and he sat down on the sofa. The others all joined him.

  Parker said, “RG, go next door and stand against the wall between Hal and the others.” He waited till Stevenson was in position, then said, “Okay, Dan, you can get up now.”

  Garrison got to his feet. He looked grim and angry. He stared at Parker and seemed to consider saying something, but just shook his head.

  Parker said, “Go next door, Dan, and stand to this side of Hal.”

  Parker followed Garrison through and went over behind Lavenstein to take the revolver out of his holster and put it in his own hip pocket. Then he said, “Hang up the phone, Beau. Go over and stand with your back to the door your friend ran out of.”

  Keegan was down at the other end, back to the filing cabinets, automatic pointed in the general direction of the people along the side wall.

  Parker walked over to Hal Pressbury, who was looking cranky and crotchety, and who said, “You people can’t get away with this sort of thing. You think this is the Wild West?”

  “Turn around, Hal.”

  “So you can shoot me in the back? You’ll have to look me in the eye, you son of a bitch.”

  “Hal, you either turn around so I can disarm you, or I’ll have to knock you out.”

  “I’ll meet you face to face.”

  Parker put the automatic in his left hand, raised his right fist in front of his shoulder, and punched Pressbury between the eyes. Pressbury’s head snapped back, bouncing off the door, and his face went slack. With a hand to his chest, Parker kept him from falling forward and let him slide down the door to a sitting position. Then he took Pressbury’s revolver, patted him briefly to be sure he had no other weapons, and backed away from him.

  Garrison said tightly, “That’s something else you’ll pay for.”

  “We may pay later,” Parker said, turning his head back and forth so they’d know he was talking to all of them, “but any one of you people who disobeys us will pay now.” He walked over to the sofa, keeping the automatic in his left hand, and stood in front of the clerk who’d tried ducking out the door. “Stand up,” he said.

  The clerk was afraid now. “What do you want from me?”

  “You’ve disobeyed once. Don’t make it twice. Stand up.”

  The woman, sitting beside him, said, “You’d better do what he says, George.”

  George, blinking, trying to fit an expression of bravado onto his face, leaned forward to get up and Parker hit him on the nose. George bounced back into the sofa, and Parker waited to see if his nose would start bleeding. The woman said something shocked and angry, everybody stirred, and George put his hand to his face. When he took it away to look at it, his fingertips were red; a drop of blood hit his shirt.

  The woman said, “Oh, you’re bleeding!” and started busily to reach into her sleeve.

  Parker said, “Nobody touches him. He doesn’t use a handkerchief or a tissue or any cloth. George? You can put your head back, but keep your hands away from your face.”

  The woman said, “You people are inhuman!”

  “Then you should be very cautious with us,” Parker said. He turned his back on them all and went over to the nearest desk, where he put down the automatic and took the two guards’ guns from his hip pockets. Behind him, he knew they were all watching George, who was in a position none of them would want to be in for himself; not dangerous, but uncomfortable and humiliating. Head back, blood dribbling from his nose, having to gulp and gasp when he breathed. Nobody else would want to wind up like that, so the others would be less likely now to try something stupid.

  Keegan kept them all covered. Originally, of course, Berridge would have been the man outside, and Keegan and Briley would both have watched the prisoners, one at either end of the room. There was more menace implicit in being unable to look at all the guns facing you at the same time. But Parker had been making up for that in other ways.

  Now he took the blue laundry bag from his pocket, ripped open the outer plastic—it was the toughest thing to do so far, with the work gloves on—and then shook open the bag. He swept all the loose unbanded bills from the desk into the bag, and next emptied the banded stacks of bills from the trays beside the desk. The second desk filled the bag, and he took a rubber band from his side trouser pocket and closed the neck of the bag. Then he carried the bag, which was pretty heavy now, into Stevenson’s office and left it beside the hall door. He picked up the toolkit, carried it into the room, and put it on the first desk, beside the phone. This one was hung up, but the one on Stevenson’s desk was still off the hook, so a call to either of these numbers would produce a busy signal.

  Keegan had the second blue bag. He tossed it to Parker, who opened it and filled it with the bills at the third and fourth desks.

  Now there was a minor error in the routine, the result of the last-minute change from Berridge. Briley had the third laundry bag, and was in the hall; when they’d made the switch of assignments, nobody’d thought to change that one detail. Which was why normally Parker preferred to let a job go rather than make late changes in the pattern. This time the problems hadn’t seemed very large, and the job itself was tempting, so he’d relaxed a rule for himself. With any luck, this business with th
e laundry bag was the only place a seam would show.

  Parker closed the top of the second bag with another rubber band and carried it in to put it beside the first. Then he opened the hall door, and Briley spun at once and showed him Dockery’s revolver; then he grinned and put the revolver away again.

  The music noise was louder out here. Parker called, “The laundry bag.”

  “By God, you’re right. It’s in my jacket, in the john.”

  “Get it. There’s room for your clothes in it.”

  “Good,” Briley said, and hurried off toward the men’s room.

  Parker stayed in the doorway, watching both ways. This was where a small seam could become a big tear that would rip the whole job open. If someone came up here while Briley was around, Briley could act officious and send him on his way. If someone came up now, it would be a complication. They were dependent on luck, for good or ill, and that was no way to set things up.

  Should he have let it go with just the two bags’ worth? They had the money from all the desks, but not the unsorted money in the canvas bags still on the table. To leave that behind would be a failure in a different direction; the job had a seam in it, that was all.

  Briley came back with the third bag, open and already with contents. It had been planned all along to include the substitute guard’s clothing in one of the bags with the money, if there was room. If not, the guard would either have made a quick change on the roof, having carried his own clothing that far, or waited till they were back in the theater.

  Briley handed over the bag and said, “You should have seen that boy when he came out the door and I throwed down on him. I wish I’d had a camera.”

  “We’ll be out in five minutes,” Parker said.

  “Take your time. I’m getting so I like this music.”

  Parker shut the door and went back to finish stacking the money. The third bag wasn’t quite as full as the other two, even with Briley’s clothes in the bottom. Parker put it with the others, went back to the main room, and said, “You people on the sofa, get up.” Pressbury was standing again now, and looking mulish but not dangerous. Parker said, to the four clerks, “Turn around and face the sofa. Beau, come over and stand at the end of the line. Hal, come up to the other end. RG, stand beside Hal. Dan, you stand beside RG.”

  The eight people stood in a row, facing the wall. Parker took the sets of handcuffs from the toolkit, started with Garrison, and handcuffed them all together, finished with Beau Lavenstein at the other end, and had one set of cuffs left. He said, “Everybody turn right. We’re going into the corner over there.”

  It was the far corner of the exterior wall, between the windows and the filing cabinets. One of the marks of this building’s age was the heat pipes that ran up beside the walls in the corners of all the rooms. Parker now arranged the eight people so that Lavenstein was just to the left of this pipe, facing the filing cabinet, the others made a circle, all facing outward, and Garrison, the other end of the line, was just to the right of the pipe, facing toward the windows. Parker cuffed Garrison’s and Lavenstein’s free hands together, with the cuff chain running behind the pipe. Now they were all limited to the corner of the room, where they couldn’t reach the phone or a door or a window, and were in a circle facing outward so that even communication with one another would be difficult.

  Parker and Keegan put all the guns in the toolkit, and Keegan carried it when they went into Stevenson’s office. Parker left Stevenson’s phone off the hook—it was still better for a caller to get a busy signal than no answer—and opened the door to put all three laundry bags outside. Keegan went out, carrying the toolkit, and Parker followed him and shut the door. Now Parker carried two of the laundry bags, and Keegan one laundry bag and the toolkit, and they followed Briley down the hall and up the stairwell, Briley checking things out at every stage of the trip.

  It went without trouble. The music still pounded away down there, the audience was even louder than before, and it was likely the show would run over the minimum length. Still it was not quite ten minutes to two, their deadline, and they were well on their way.

  The upstairs office was as they’d left it. Briley ran up the furniture staircase, and Keegan and Parker handed up the three laundry bags and two toolkits. They’d turned the light on when entering the room, and Parker turned it out again after Keegan and Briley were both out and up on the roof. Then he followed them.

  Morris had come over from the fire escape. “Not a bit of trouble,” he said.

  “Nor us,” Briley said.

  “Here’s something,” Keegan said. He was still finding things to be disgusted about. “That lousy Berridge has us loused up. We’ve got five things to carry and now there’s only four of us.”

  Morris said, “I’ll carry two. I’ve had a nice long rest. I’ll carry the money.”

  Morris went first, carrying two of the laundry bags. Briley followed, with the bag containing his own clothes, followed by Keegan and Parker, each with a toolkit, Parker carrying the kit that had been left upstairs, the one with the snaps on the outside for carrying the ax.

  It was strange not to hear the music. Going down the fire escape, they heard the sounds of the city instead; few sounds at this hour, mostly traffic.

  The Strand Theater’s fire door looked the same as usual, but was different in that it had been unlocked from the inside. Grasping the lip overhang at the bottom, it was possible to pull the door open.

  Keegan had the flashlight, and didn’t turn it on until they were all in the theater and Parker had closed and relocked the door. Then the light shone out across the cluttered empty stage—this had been a vaudeville theater long ago, when it was first built and movies weren’t important yet—and they picked their way slowly through the rubble; the screen, sound system, and some other things had already been stripped out of this building.

  The third toolkit and the Union Electric Co. coveralls were where they’d left them, in seats near the back of the theater. Briley scaled the guard’s hat through the darkness toward the stage, and they all took off their masks and put on the coveralls. Keegan had put the flashlight on an armrest at the end of an aisle, pointing its light toward the stage, and their movements in front of it as they put on the coveralls made bat-shadows fly all over the high empty interior of the building.

  Morris went first, carrying a toolkit out to the truck, waiting for them in front of the marquee. They heard him start the truck engine, and then the rest of them came out, carrying things, Parker and Keegan making two trips. The street was almost deserted, only two cars going by in the time it took them to load the truck. Parker sat up front beside Morris, Keegan and Briley sat in back on the bags of money, and Morris drove them away from there.

  The first time they were stopped at a traffic light, Morris said, “Any trouble in there?”

  “No. It went the way it was supposed to.” He thought about the laundry bag in the wrong place, and being short one man to carry things away from there, but they were points too minor to mention.

  “Sounded like nice music.”

  Parker had nothing to say to that. The light turned green, and they drove on.

  The house they were heading for, Keegan had rented two weeks ago, though none of them had been there since, until they’d left their cars in the neighborhood and suitcases in the house earlier today. It had taken Keegan four full days to find a house that suited their needs, and this one had checked out right down the list. In the first place, it was owned by a realty corporation rather than an individual, which meant that so long as the rent was paid, no one would be dropping by to chat with the tenant. Second, its neighbors on both sides were commercial concerns that closed in the evening—a supermarket on one side, a hobby shop on the other. It had a garage and a good-sized backyard, all enclosed by a high board fence. It had come furnished, including a phone, so no one would be wondering why the house was standing empty, particularly since Keegan, the day he took the place, had set time switches that tur
ned lamps on at six P.M. every day in the living room and one of the upstairs bedrooms, and switched them off again a little past midnight.

  It was called Dornwell Street, and the house number was 426. When Morris drove the Union Electric Co. truck down Dornwell Street now, it was silent and dark and empty, the buildings black on both sides, the only illumination coming from wide-spaced streetlights. Morris turned into the driveway at 426, cut the headlights, and came to a stop. Keegan climbed out of the back of the truck and trotted up to open the garage door, a segmented aluminum door that slid upward. Morris drove the truck into the garage, and then all four of them carried everything into the house, turning on a small worklight over the stove in the kitchen, until they had themselves and everything else inside. Then they switched on the round fluorescent light in the middle of the ceiling.

  Keegan had stocked the place with food this morning, and now he and Morris stayed in the kitchen to broil some steaks while Briley and Parker carried the blue plastic laundry bags into the dining room.

  The dining room had no windows, and the wide entryway to the living room could be closed by sliding doors recessed into the walls. They closed these doors now, and then switched on the overhead light fixture and emptied the first of the laundry bags onto the dining-room table. They’d chosen the bag with Briley’s clothes in it first, and Briley went away to change while Parker sat at the table and began the split.

  They would stay here two or three days, depending on what the radio told them about the local law activity. The cars they had parked around the neighborhood were all clean, and shouldn’t attract any attention.

  Briley came to the side doorway, which they’d left open because it didn’t expose them to any windows. He said, “Parker.”

  “What is it?”

  “You better come take a look.”

  Parker got up from the table and went with him. The hall led to the front door at one end and the kitchen at the other, with the living and dining rooms opening off it along the way. The staircase was across the hall from the living room, with the bathroom between it and the kitchen. Briley, still in his coveralls, his clothes still over his arm, led the way to the bathroom and stood aside for Parker to go in. He’d already turned the light on.