Breakout p-21 Page 6

  Slow, ponderous, the gate began to slide open. Somebody behind them at the building began to yell. With the widening of the gate barely broad enough, the van nosed itself through, scraping against the fixed post on its left side.

  More shouting. The van was half in and half out, the gate jerking to a stop as the side door of the van slid open.

  ‘Now!’ Parker yelled, and the three ran for the van, hurling away the boxes, a flurry of firecrackers going off behind them, Mackey already backing out as they dove headfirst through the side opening on to the metal floor.

  Struggling upward as the van jounced and its side door slammed shut, Parker stared out the meshed rear window as Mackey backed them in a tight U-turn, then jammed them forward. The gate back there was closing again, just as slow, just as certain, but too late. It stopped. Before it could open once more, to permit pursuit, Mackey had taken a forested curve on two wheels and Stoneveldt was out of sight.

  TWO

  1

  When Williams got his rump under him and hands braced on the floor, the van was leaping down a road and sharply around a left turn. There were six of them in here, he the only black; not good. The three who’d come with the van wore dark shirts and jackets and military-style billed caps, to give them the look of Corrections personnel. One of them drove, a second beside him, and the third sat in back with the escapees; he was the one who’d opened and shut the side door.

  There were no seats back here, only thin gray carpet over the metal floor. Williams and Kasper and Marcantoni and the fourth man sat cross-legged on the floor, holding on to whatever they could find, and the driver worked to put a lot of distance between them and Stoneveldt.

  After a minute, Williams noticed that the new guy back here was frowning at him, as though not sure what to do about him. Thinking, let’s work this out right away, Williams gave Kasper a flat look and waited. Kasper looked back at him, then told the new one, ‘We’re all traveling together.’

  The new one switched his gaze to Kasper, thought a second, then nodded. ‘Fine with me,’ he said. ‘You’re Parker.’

  ‘And this is Williams.’

  ‘I’m Jack Angioni.’ He nodded, accepting them both, then pointed his jaw at the passenger up front. ‘And that’s Phil Kolaski.’

  ‘Hold tight,’ the driver said, and took them on a screaming right turn on to a twisty narrow blacktop road.

  Bracing himself against the driver’s seatback, Angioni said, ‘Most of the roads around here you can see from the prison. See for miles, with all these open plains. We had to do a tricky route, to keep in the cover of the trees.’

  ‘It’s all flat and open around here,’ the driver called from up front. ‘It’s disgusting, Parker, I don’t know why you ever came out here.’

  Kolaski, the heel of one hand pressed to the dashboard, half-turned to say, ‘We got one more turn for Mackey to try to kill us, and then we ditch this thing.’

  ‘Good,’ Marcantoni said. ‘My bones don’t like this seat.’

  Kasper or Parker, maybe said, ‘Mackey, what about clothes?’

  ‘In the next cars,’ the driver Mackey told him. ‘Hold on, here’s the turn Phil likes.’

  There was a tractor trailer coming the other way, that a lot of people would have waited for; in fact, the driver of the rig kept coming as though he thought Mackey would wait. But Mackey spun the wheel, accelerated hard, and shot leftward past the nose of the truck into another narrow road through forest. The driver of the truck bawled his airhorn at them, but the noise quickly fell away, and Kolaski half-turned again to say, ‘That was a little quicker than in the practice.’

  Mackey said, ‘I didn’t have that semi there in the practice.’

  Angioni said, ‘Ed, no stunts on the dirt road, okay? Dust, remember? You can see it rise up in the air, miles away.’

  ‘No dust,’ Mackey promised, and tapped the brake a few times, slowing them before they made a gentle right turn on to rutted one-lane dirt.

  They moved more slowly now, but the jouncing was worse. They did half a mile like that, surrounded by slender-trunked trees, and then on their left was a body of water instead, gleaming in late-afternoon sun, a few feet below the road. Williams looked past Mackey and out the windshield and saw it was a good-size lake, with some sort of structure far ahead, where the shore curved.

  Parker said, ‘What is this?’

  ‘Swimming up there in the summer,’ Angioni told him. ‘Nothing, this time of year.’

  Mackey braked to a stop. ‘Right here,’ he said.

  They all climbed out of the van, stretching, everybody stiff. Williams saw that the road, which had been ten feet or so from the lake before this, had now curved closer, so the water was just there, below the side of the road.

  Mackey and Kolaski peeled off their hats and jackets, tossing them through open windows into the van. Then Mackey said, ‘Drop it any time. We’ll be back.’ And he and Kolaski walked away down the dirt road toward the swimming place.

  Angioni had also stripped off his hat and jacket. ‘The water’s deep here,’ he said. ‘A lot better than trying to clean this thing.’

  Williams and Marcantoni stripped off the upper parts of the uniforms, while Parker did the same with the lawyer’s jacket and tie and shirt, all the clothing tossed into the van. Then Angioni backed the van in a half-circle, drove it forward to the lakeside edge of the road, put it in Neutral, and climbed down.

  The four of them got behind the van and pushed, and lazily it rolled off the road, its rear end abruptly jumping upward, then sliding at an angle down and away. The van went into the water deliberately, almost reluctantly, air bubbling up from the open windows; then all at once it dropped below the level they could see, and there was only the water, still and black. Not even bubbles any more.

  Williams stepped back, behind the others watching the van sink, wondering if he was supposed to be next now. But they turned without menace, Parker looking away in the direction the other two had gone, while Marcantoni grinned and made a remark into the air about the parking of the van. So maybe it was going to be all right.

  Brandon Williams had grown used to this level of tension, never knowing exactly how to react to the people around him, who and what to watch for, where it was safe to put a foot. Part of it was skin color, but the rest was the life he’d lived, usually on the bent. He’d had square jobs, but they’d never lasted. He’d always known the jobs were beneath him, that he was the smartest man on the job site or the factory floor, but that it didn’t matter how smart he was, or how much he knew, or the different things he’d read. The knowledge would make him arrogant and angry, and sooner or later there’d be a fight, or he’d be fired.

  The people he mostly got along with were, like him, on the wrong side of the law. It wasn’t that they were smart, most of them, but that they kept to themselves. He got along with people who kept to themselves; that way, he could keep to himself, too.

  And to his own kind. The jobs he pulled, suburban banks, places like that, didn’t need a big gang; two or three men, usually. There’d been times when one of the crew was white, but not often.

  Twice in his life he’d taken falls, but both were minor, and he’d wound up spending a total of fifty-seven months inside. But this time was different.

  He’d known he was making a mistake when he’d agreed to team up with Eldon. The more you stayed away from junkies, the better off you’d be. But Maryenne had pleaded, had sworn Eldon was better now, just needed the kind of self-confidence he’d get if Williams agreed to work with him, and Williams had never been able to refuse his youngest sister, so when he went into that bank, Eldon was next to him. The third man, Haye, was in the car outside.

  Maryenne herself wasn’t a junkie, at least Williams hoped she wasn’t, but she sure hung out with the wrong people, and Eldon was still one of them. The kind of self-confidence he brought into the bank was not the kind he’d get from working with Williams but the kind he’d get from the stuff in his veins.
There was no reason to start shooting, and just bad luck the off-duty cop was in there looking for a car loan.

  The result was, a guard and Eldon both dead and Williams and Haye both facing murder one. Escape was the only Plan B, and this guy Parker the only one in Stoneveldt with the determination and the friends on the outside to make it happen.

  Williams had been happy to stick with Parker in Stoneveldt, though he would have been more comfortable if his partner had been of color. But nobody of color in that place looked to be making a key to get out of there, and Parker did. So when Parker asked him to come along, he rode with the idea, though at first with every caution. Does this guy really want a partner, or does he want somebody to throw off the sled when the chase starts?

  Throughout their time together inside, Williams had watched the man he’d known then as Kasper, waiting for him to give himself away, and it never happened. It looked as though Parker was just a guy determined to get out of that place, who’d known he couldn’t do it on his own but needed a couple more guys in it with him, and who’d decided Williams should be part of the crew. No more, no less.

  Well, that was then, this was now. They were out, though still not many miles from Stoneveldt. But guards and gates and prison walls didn’t hold them apart any more. Williams watched Parker, thinking, I done my part, I been straight with you. I know you got me out of there, but I got you out of there, too, so what does that mean? Is this crew still together?

  He was dependent on Parker, whichever way he went. It wasn’t possible to ask anything, so all he could do was stand there and watch and wait, and know that, sooner or later, they would both be going to ground, but in very different places.

  While they all stood there, looking at the water where the van had been, nobody with anything else to say right now, here came two cars, both anonymous, a green Ford Taurus and a black Honda Accord. Mackey was first, at the wheel of the Taurus. Both cars stopped, and Angioni said, ‘You two ride with Ed, he knows where we’re going. See you there.’

  Parker slid into the front passenger seat, Williams into the back. On the seat was a little bundle of clothing. As Mackey drove them forward, Williams slipped out of his shoes and the prison guard’s pants, and put on instead gray chinos and a green patterned shirt. In front, Parker made a similar changeover.

  As they headed on down the dirt road, back the way they’d come in, the Honda following, Williams moved forward to put his forearms on the seatback behind the other two, and watch the road. No one said anything until after they’d reached the blacktop and turned right, and then Parker said, ‘Did Tom tell you about this new job?’

  Mackey grinned. ‘My guess was,’ he said, ‘you weren’t gonna like it, not at first. You and Brenda and me, we want to be in some other part of the world.’

  ‘That’s what makes sense,’ Parker agreed.

  Williams supposed that was what made sense for him, too, the way things were. He was a local boy, who had made a little too good. As soon as possible, he should ease out to some other part of the country. It’s a big country, and a black boy can make himself hard to see.

  Mackey was saying, ‘It isn’t a bad job. We should be able to work it without problems, and at least we’ll get off this tabletop with a little cash profit.’

  Williams said, ‘This is a cash job? It’s tough to find real cash, I mean, enough to make it worthwhile.’

  ‘No, it’s jewelry,’ Mackey told him. ‘But they’ve got a buyer, in New Orleans, he’ll drive up as soon as we do the job, we’ll have cash a day later.’

  Parker said, ‘From a jewelry store?’

  ‘It’s not a jewelry store,’ Mackey said, ‘it’s a wholesaler. He’s the one sells to the jewelry stores, all around this flat part of the world here.’

  They were coming into the city now, with more traffic, with stop signs and traffic lights. Parker said, ‘This is going to be right in the middle of town.’

  ‘You know it,’ Mackey said.

  ‘Will we go past it now?’

  ‘No, it’s more downtown. Where we’re headed now used to be a beer distributor. Just a few blocks up here.’

  This neighborhood was old commercial, little office buildings and manufacturing places and delivery outfits, mostly brick, all seedy. Evening was coming on, traffic moderate, mostly small trucks and vans. The Honda kept a steady distance behind them.

  After another block, Parker said, ‘The reason they put us in front, it’s in case we change our mind.’

  Mackey laughed. ‘What would they do, do you think,’ he asked, ‘if I suddenly hit a turn, took off?’

  ‘We’re not going to,’ Parker said.

  Mackey was making Williams nervous. People who didn’t take serious things seriously always made him nervous. Junkies were like that. Mackey wasn’t a junkie, but he had the style. Williams, forearms on the seatback, looked at Mackey in the interior mirror. ‘I don’t think this is the time to do jokes,’ he said.

  Mackey grinned in the mirror. ‘You tell me when,’ he said.

  2

  Tom Marcantoni was pleased with the place Jack and Phil had found. In a low-rent neighborhood of factories and warehouses, no private homes, this two-story brick building was one huge open space inside, concrete-floored, big enough for three delivery trucks and who knew how many cases and barrels of beer. The company had been absorbed by a bigger distributor, making this building redundant, and no one had another use for it yet. Electric and water were still on, Jack and Phil had put cots in the offices upstairs, and so long as they were reasonably cautious they shouldn’t attract attention.

  Phil steered the Honda into the building, behind the Taurus, and both cars stopped. Jack jumped out to close the big overhead door, all the others climbed out and stretched, and Marcantoni got out at a more leisurely pace, grinning.

  He couldn’t help it. It was all back on track. To think, just a few days ago, he’d thought he was screwed forever, put away like a goldfish in a bowl.

  From the minute he’d gone inside, he’d been hoping and looking and waiting for a way to break that bowl, but Parker had been right: You couldn’t do it alone. So now he had these new partners, solid guys he could count on, and he still had the old score, waiting for him, downtown.

  It had taken a while to be sure Williams and Kasper or Parker now, or whoever he was would stand up. Williams had been easier for Angioni and Kolaski to check up on, being a local boy, and the word had come back that he was sound; for a nigger, very good. For anybody, in fact, very good; cool in the action and never too greedy.

  As for Parker, it had been easier for Kolaski to get a handle on his pal, Ed Mackey. Mackey had a good reputation back east, a lot like Williams, but Parker was a more shadowy figure, showing up here and there, solid but dangerous. The word was, after a while, that you could count on him but you had to be wary of him, too. If he got the idea you planned to cross him, he didn’t take prisoners.

  Well, that was all right. Marcantoni was also not too greedy, and smart enough not to make trouble inside his own crew. There was plenty in this job for everybody. He wouldn’t cross Parker, and Parker wouldn’t cross him, so neither of them had anything to worry about. And finally, the best recommendation for Parker was that Mackey would go out of his way for him, be the outside man when it came time to break out of Stoneveldt. Marcantoni would do that for Angioni and Kolaski, and they would for him they’d just done it so that was all the guarantee you needed.

  There was still a little of the old furniture in the building, including a long table and some folding chairs next to one of the long brick walls. Apparently, this was where the drivers would fill out their forms, get their requisitions and their routes. Now, the six of them crossed to this table, Jack Angioni leading the way for the new guys and Marcantoni just naturally taking his place at the head.

  When everybody was seated, he grinned around at them all and said, ‘I waited six years for this job, and it was beginning to look as though I was gonna have to wait sixty,
but here we are. Ed, did these two fill you in?’

  ‘Halfway,’ Ed Mackey said.

  ‘Okay, then, I’ll do it from the top.’ Talking mostly to Parker and Williams, he said, ‘Six seven years ago, I was on parole, I had to have a day job, I worked construction here in town. Downtown there’s this big old armory building, brick, from Civil War days. The army still used it for like National Guard and shit until the sixties. Then it just sat there. Every once in a while, the city would borrow it and use the parade field in there indoor, hardwood floor, you know what I mean for a charity ball, something like that.’

  Ed Mackey said, ‘There’s old armories like that all over the country.’

  Marcantoni nodded. ‘And we got this one. And finally the government decided to turn a dollar on the thing, and they sold it to some local developers. It’s a big building, it’s a city block square. They put some high-ticket apartments on the upper floors, with views out over the city and the plains and all, but it was tough to know what to do with the main floor, where the parade field was. The outside walls were four feet thick, with little narrow deep windows, ready to repel an attack like if the Indians had tanks. You couldn’t put street-level shops in there, nobody wanted an apartment down in there, and even for a bank it was too grim.’

  Williams said, ‘I was in there sometimes when I was a kid. They used it for track and field. I remember, it was like a fort.’

  ‘It isa fort,’ Marcantoni told him. ‘That’s the point. One of the developers was a guy named Henry Freedman, got his money from his father’s wholesale jewelry business, which was on two floors of an office building downtown, upper floors for the security but a pain in the ass for the salesmen and the deliveries. So they worked it out, they’d lease part of the main floor of the armory to Freedman’s father, he’d move his wholesale business in there; on the street, but even more secure than the office building. The rest of the space they leased to some dance studio.’