Deadly Edge p-14

by Richard Stark

Sometimes jobs were done this way, from a map— a package, really, like a do-it-yourself radio kit—bought from a middleman who had bought it from someone on the inside, a non-professional who simply laid out the particulars of the case. Years before, most of John Dillinger’s jobs had been done that way, bought as a packet from a middleman, and it was still sometimes the best way to get set up.

  The office below was just as the map had described: medium size, two desks, four chairs, a short brown Naugahyde sofa, several gray-metal filing cabinets. One of the desks, empty except for a green blotter, black telephone and one wrinkled legal-sized envelope, was directly beneath the hole.

  “Hold this,” Briley said. Parker took the flashlight from him, and Briley put both hands on one of the lower-level joists and dropped down into the room. He swung forward once, backward once, and dropped two feet to the desk top. He grinned up toward the flashlight and dropped lithely down to the gray carpet.

  Behind each of the desks was a swivel chair; beside each desk was a straight armless wooden chair. Briley now picked up the nearest wooden chair and put it on top of the desk. “Join me.”

  Keegan went next, more awkwardly than Briley, having trouble at first finding his footing on the chair. Briley held the chair steady, but didn’t touch Keegan, who got his balance, released the joist over his head, held the chair back instead, and stepped down onto the desk. He sat down on the desk, put his feet over the side, and stood up on the floor, dusting white sheetrock powder from the seat of his pants.

  Parker called to Morris, “Going down now.”

  “Have a good time.”

  Parker dropped the flashlight to Briley, who lit his way. He dropped to the chair, jumped to the desk, then to the floor.

  “This is the worst time,” Keegan said. “Right now. What would we do if that door opened and a lot of cops came in?”

  Neither of the other two said anything. Keegan had lost over four hundred dollars he didn’t have yet in the blackjack game: two hundred fifty to Briley, the rest to Morris. It had made him more pessimistic and irritable than usual.

  This room had a window, but it opened on a narrow airshaft that came up the middle of the building. The top of the airshaft had been their landmark on the roof. Since the door was solid wood, there was no reason not to turn the light on. Briley went over and flicked the wall switch by the door, and put away the flashlight. He said, “Now we make our stairway. To paradise, huh?”

  “Listen to that music,” Keegan said peevishly. “What the hell ever happened to jazz?”

  “It’s still there,” Briley said, going over to the filing cabinets, “in the same gin mills it always was. When did jazz ever play a joint like this?”

  “Jazz at the Phil,” Keegan said. “I used to have all those records, before that time I got sent up.”

  “Jazz at the Phil,” Briley said scornfully. “Fake.”

  He opened a file drawer. “Empty! There’s a break.”

  “What do you mean, fake? All the greats were on Jazz at the Phil.”

  “Okay,” Briley said. “Give us a hand here, will you?”

  Keegan went over to help him move the filing cabinet. “I don’t know how you can call them a fake. My God! Lester Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Hodges—”

  “I guess you’re right,” Briley said, grinning. “I must of been thinking of something else.”

  Parker had taken the chair down off the desk, and now stood at one end of it. Briley and Keegan put the filing cabinet down, picked up the other end of the desk, and the three of them moved it over till it was no longer directly beneath the hole. Then Briley and Keegan moved the filing cabinet to abut against the edge of the desk closest to the hole, while Parker put the chair back up on top of the desk again. They kept moving furniture, and when they were done they had a complicated stairway leading up toward the hole, and facing the doorway. A man coming in the doorway would have two or three strides into the room, then a foot-high step to an upended metal wastebasket, then a step a foot and a half high to the desk, another foot and a half up to the wooden chair, a foot to the top of three filing cabinets lined up in a row, and finally a foot and a half to the second wooden chair, on top of the filing cabinets. This put one six and a half feet above the floor, where the top of the roof came to about waist-level; an easy climb. This kind of stairway was better in two ways than any kind of rope ladder or anything of that sort they might have brought with them; first, because it meant one less thing they had to carry to the job, and second, because it could be gone up faster than any kind of portable ladder.

  Briley now went up their staircase and out onto the roof, and Parker went part way up after him. Briley handed down the toolkits one at a time to Parker, who handed them down to Keegan. Briley said something to Morris, waved, and came back down into the room.

  Keegan had already opened the other toolkit. The three masks he removed from it were made of black cotton and covered the entire head, with openings for eyes and mouth. The three handguns were all Smith & Wesson Model .39’s, a 9mm Luger automatic with an eight-shot clip. There were also three small blue packets: blue plastic laundry bags, costing a nickel each from a laundromat vending machine.

  They put on the masks and checked their guns and stowed the little laundry-bag packages in their pockets. Then Parker nodded to Briley, who flicked off the light switch and in darkness opened the door.

  There was some light in the hall outside, not much. But much more noise. Whenever the music ended, the crowd noise increased to a kind of ecstatic scream, fading as the music started up again, but gradually building through the next number till music and crowd seemed about equally matched by the end of the tune, when there would be another concerted scream.

  It was five past one; they’d been working fifty-five minutes since Parker first swung the ax into the roof.

  Parker was the first into the hall, looking to the right and left. Doors on both sides of the hall in both directions, mostly closed, a few standing open. No lights burning up at this level at all. Far down to the right a stairwell, with light shining up, reflecting off the pale green corridor walls, giving light to see by down here.

  Parker turned right, and the other two followed, Briley turning the doorknob to be sure the lock wasn’t on, then shutting the door behind them. Keegan carried the one toolkit they still needed.

  The flooring was some sort of composition, similar to linoleum; the sneakers they wore made no sounds against it. They walked slowly, leaning slightly forward, their right hands holding the automatics ahead of them and out away from their bodies.

  If Morris saw trouble coming now, they were past the point where they could retrace their steps. Morris’s job would be to come in after them and let them know their primary exit was blocked; they had a second exit route planned for, and a third.

  The noise was coming up the stairwell almost un diluted by distance. Standing at the top, looking over the rail and down at six flights of brightly lit empty silent metal stairs, hearing the rush of sound coming up there and yet not seeing any living person, you could begin to stop hearing the music as music, but simply as noise. Then it became the workings of some gigantic machine in a pit in the earth, and men who went down into it were chewed and ground and mangled.

  “Jesus,” Keegan said. Looking out the eyeholes of the mask, his eyes looked frightened; not by the job they were here to do, but by the noise that was supposed to cover them while they did it.

  Parker started down the stairs. Briley came second, and Keegan third.

  The walls were plaster, and painted pale green. The stairs had a landing and a U-turn halfway down every flight. At the top floor the stairs had been open, but at the next level down there was a wall, with a green metal fire door. A darker green than the walls. The door was closed.

  Parker put his hand on the knob and waited for the other two to come down to him. Then, quickly, he opened the door and stepped through.

  One of the notes with the map had said: “One private g
uard in the hall—armed—always watches show.” He was there, he was watching the show, he never saw Parker and the other two come in at all.

  On this floor, there were offices along one side of the corridor only, opposite the stairwell entrance. The other side of the corridor had sections of plate glass at intervals, through which could be seen the main soup bowl of the auditorium. The ceiling of the auditorium, barnacled with lighting equipment, was just above these plate-glass windows, giving the impression that one was viewing from above the auditorium rather than from within it—for the Caesar effect.

  It was at one of these windows that the guard was standing. A thin and potbellied man in his fifties, wearing a gray uniform with a gold circular patch on the sleeve, a wood-handled revolver in a holster high up toward the waist on his right side, he was standing there with his hands clasped behind him, head bent forward and down, face in a relaxed expression of blank attention, as though he were daydreaming under cover of the noise. With only space and the one sheet of glass in the way, the sound volume here was very loud, much louder even than in the stairwell.

  Parker walked down the corridor toward the guard, Keegan to his left and Briley to his right, forming a triangle shape that filled the width of the hall. They were halfway from the stairwell entrance before their movement attracted the guard’s attention; then he made a startled automatic move toward his revolver. But it was too high on his waist—he’d put it there for the comfort of his potbelly, no doubt—and a leather strap was snapped in place over the top of the holster to keep the revolver from falling out, and the three faceless men walking toward him all had guns already in their hands. And there was no furniture, no handy open doorway, no place to run, no cover to hide behind; nothing but the empty hallway. The guard, looking bitter and angry and disgusted, straightened from the half-crouch he’d naturally moved into, and slowly lifted his hands over his head.

  “Put them down,” Parker said. The guard didn’t make out the words through the noise, so Parker went closer and said again, “Put your hands down. Leave them at your sides. Now walk toward us.” When the guard was no longer in front of the glass, Parker said, “Now stop. Turn left. Put your hands on the wall in front of you at head-height. Lean forward. Touch your forehead to the wall.”

  The guard managed as far as touching his hatbrim to the wall. Briley came forward and took the revolver out of the holster, having to use two hands to unsnap the leather strap. He put the revolver away in his hip pocket, and took his own automatic out again, then stepped back a pace.

  Parker said, “All right. Straighten up. Turn around. Good.”

  Briley took the two-way radio from the guard’s left shirt pocket and backed up next to Parker again. The guard was looking more disgusted by the second.

  Parker said, “What’s your name?”

  The guard frowned at him, not understanding the reason for the question, but he answered it: “Dockery.”

  “First name.”

  “Patrick.”

  “Do they call you Patrick or Pat?”

  “When it’s bums like you,” the guard said bitterly, “they call me Mr. Dockery.”

  Briley, grinning, said, “Ah, Paddy Dockery, you talk mighty big when it’s three against one. You know you’re safe from us. I’d like to see you in a fair fight.”

  Dockery gave him a brooding look. “You’ll laugh out of the other side of your face,” he said.

  “All right, Dockery,” Parker said. “Turn around. . Walk slowly to the men’s room.”

  The four of them made a small silent procession, out of phase with the beat of the music surrounding them. Dockery passed four doors on his left side, and turned toward the fifth, reaching his hand out to the knob.

  Parker said, “If you open that door, I’ll kill you and everybody the other side of it. I said the men’s room.”

  Dockery’s hand hesitated, an inch from the knob. His shoulders were tensed to reject the bullet, but in the end he leaned back from the door and his hand dropped to his side. Not turning to look at Parker, he said, “It’s not my own life I was thinking of.”

  “I know that,” Parker said. This was one of his specialties, as electricity was one of Keegan’s specialties and driving was one of Morris’s. Rare is the high-number robbery that isn’t cluttered up with people—bank customers or armored-car guards or store clerks or whatever. One of Parker’s specialties was handling the people, which meant keeping them quiet, making sure none of them got killed, making sure none of them loused up the routine. The last was the most important, and the others would be sacrificed to it, if necessary, though a neat job was always better.

  Parker was now handling the person called Patrick Dockery. Dockery was a proud and prickly man, and what he would be feeling now was mostly humiliation. He was the kind who would take almost any sort of damn-fool risk, would even throw his life away, to erase humiliation. He would open the wrong door, he might even turn and attack three armed men. He had to be handled until he’d been successfully maneuvered into the privacy of the men’s room, where he could be physically restrained. Out here in the hall, it meant giving him his respect back, easing his sense of humiliation. By letting him wise off, and by acknowledging that it really had been other people’s lives he’d been thinking of when he’d moved his hand back from that doorknob. Parker was treating his foolhardiness as though it were worthy of respect; if he had judged his man right, Dockery would respond by being good and doing what he was told.

  As he did. He led them now to the right room, and all four trooped inside, around the green metal wall divider just inside the door and into the main open green-tiled square of the room itself, where Parker said, “Take off the uniform.”

  There was no way around this. The humiliation was harsh and blatant, but it was necessary.

  Dockery turned around, and there were pale circles of strain around his eyes. “You go to hell,” he said.

  “You aren’t going to stop us,” Parker told him. “Don’t make things tougher for yourself.”

  Dockery glared a second longer, and then suddenly ran backward away from them, his head back and mouth open, shoving the first two fingers of his right hand down his throat.

  “Damn it!” Briley jumped forward like a steeplechaser, swinging hard and fast with the automatic, the way he’d swung the ax earlier up on the roof. The barrel clipped Dockery on the forearm, near the wrist, and Dockery instinctively moved the arm, his hand no longer near his mouth. His hat had fallen off, and Briley kicked it to the side, then lunged forward, punching his shoulder into Dockery’s chest and running him backward the rest of the way into the wall, where he hit the side edge of a urinal, half-turned, and hit his left shoulder and the side of his head against the tile wall. Briley held him pinned there at arm’s length, his hand flat with splayed fingers on Dockery’s chest, as with the toe of his right shoe he started angrily kicking Dockery’s shins. “Son of a bitch,” he said, kicking at Dockery’s legs. “Stupid-ass son of a bitch.”

  Parker came up beside them and said, “Stop that.” The music was down to a usable level again in here; he could talk in a normal tone of voice.

  Briley stopped the kicking, but kept holding Dockery jammed against the wall. Turning his head, he complained, “He was gonna throw up on his uniform! I got to wear that uniform!”

  “That was his idea,” Parker said.

  “He thinks he’s smart.” Briley was panting and enraged. Glaring at Dockery through the eyeholes of his mask, he said, “Gonna screw up our plan, not let me wear the uniform. You know what kind of smart that is? That’s stupid smart!”

  Parker leaned close to look at Dockery, who seemed dazed and winded and in pain. Parker said, “If you cause us any more trouble, I don’t answer for what he’ll do to you.”

  Dockery blinked at him, still mutinous. “I’ll remember you people.”

  “That you will,” Briley said. He abruptly pulled his hand away from Dockery’s chest and stepped back a pace, and Dockery almost
fell, but grabbed the urinal and held himself up till he got his balance back.

  “Take off your tie,” Parker said, and when Dockery didn’t move at once, Briley yelled, “Damn it, I’ll kick you into hamburger, I swear to God I will!”

  Parker, still looking at Dockery, said to Briley, “That’s enough. He’ll do it. He wants to be in shape to identify us at the line-up.”

  It was the right approach, at last. Dockery almost smiled, and there was less mutiny and more strength in his voice when he said, “And you’ll be there, don’t you worry. And I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” With a sudden angry gesture, as though it were an act of defiance, he reached up and yanked down on the knot of his tie, pulling the tie loose and flinging it with a contemptuous underhand flip toward Briley, who caught it in midair and said, “Do me a favor. Hang by your thumbs till we show up.”

  Keegan, who had stayed over by the door in case anyone else should come in, the toolkit at the floor by his feet, now called, “What’s taking so long? We don’t have all night.”

  “We’re ahead of schedule,” Parker called to him. They didn’t have that specific a schedule, but he didn’t want Dockery to get the idea he could fight them some more by moving very slowly.

  As it was, Dockery was slow enough. Briley took each piece of clothing as it was tossed at him, and stood there with the parts of uniform over one arm. He wasn’t naturally a cruel man, and by the time Dockery got to his trousers Briley had cooled off and was no longer angry. Dockery had fresh jagged cuts on both shins, the skin around the cuts ragged like wrinkled onion-skin paper, droplets of blood oozing to the surface of the cuts. The trousers were the last, and when Briley had them he stood there a couple of seconds looking at Dockery’s legs, and then said, in a muted voice, “I’m sorry I did that.”

  “You will be,” Dockery said. His face was tight and unforgiving.

  “I got mad, is all,” Briley explained, apologizing again.

  Dockery didn’t bother to answer that. He turned his head to look at Parker, accepting him as the leader and waiting to be told what to do next.