Plunder Squad

by Richard Stark

  The address was in the middle of a poorish neighborhood in the process of being torn down. Across the street from the house he wanted there was a great open gouge out of the earth, where the houses had been stripped away and a deep pit dug in the ground. A sign half a block earlier had said this was something to do with the installation of a Bay Area Rapid Transit line. Down in the crater were stacks of steel reinforcing rod, coils of hose, stakes with yellow tags on them, and rows of parked trucks and bulldozers and earthmovers.

  The construction site was neater and cleaner than the house Parker stopped the LeMans in front of. A small L-shaped white plaster house, it was one story high with an asphalt shingle roof. The pale pink numbers 1-3-7-7 were set in descending order down one of the four-by-four porch posts. In the front yard, knee-deep in weeds, were two big recently rained-on cardboard boxes of trash. Untended shrubs and bushes grew wild across the front and down the side of the house toward an unattached garage.

  There was one car parked in the driveway up near this garage, and two more at the curb in front of the house. The one in the driveway was a dusty red Oldsmobile compact convertible with a white top. The lead car in front was a black Chevy Nova with overly wide tires and the look of being owned by somebody who cared more about function than beauty, and the other car was a dark green Plymouth Fury sedan that had about it—as did Parker’s—the look of a rented car.

  Parker left the LeMans behind the Plymouth, got out, and stood a minute looking up and down the street. This wasn’t a house taken just for a week or two so a meeting could be held here, the way Kirwan had done it. This was a lived-in house, the regular residence of the guy structuring this job. Beaghler, his name was. Ducasse had said of him, on the phone, “Beaghler’s never done anything but drive. But he’s worked with a lot of good people up and down the coast. Into Mexico, too.”

  “This is the first job he’s come up with himself?”

  “Yes. But he’s a pro, and I think it’s worth a look.”

  Parker too had thought it was worth a look. The Kirwan thing had fallen through. The armored-car thing he’d done before that had loused up and he’d had to stash the money; some day he’d go back for it, but not until that town had forgotten him completely. In the meantime, his operational funds were running low and pretty soon he’d have to go dig up one of his emergency stashes of money. He needed a job, so the Beaghler thing was worth a look.

  But the first look wasn’t encouraging. Beaghler might have done a lot of driving, but it either hadn’t made him much or he ran through it fast. This wasn’t a rich neighborhood. Beyond that, if he was having the meeting in his own home, he was operating practically on the cuff.

  There was also the red convertible. The black Nova would be Beaghler’s car, and a good sign, but the red convertible suggested trouble. Was it somebody else living in the house? A wife or a girl friend, maybe. The personality suggested by the car wasn’t the kind Parker liked around when things were serious.

  But he was here, and it was still worth a look.

  Parker stepped through the weedy lawn and went up on the porch. Broken toys were scattered over the porch floor. He rang the bell, and a minute later the door was opened by a short stocky guy in black trousers and too-tight T-shirt. He was a little overdeveloped in the chest and upper arms for the rest of his body, as though he worked out with weights from time to time. He had deep sideburns and long wavy black hair, was about thirty-five, and hadn’t changed his style an inch since high school. He’d been a hot-rodder then, and he was a hot-rodder now.

  “I’m Parker.”

  The tough aggrieved-looking face broke into a sudden smile. “Parker, yeah, Fred Ducasse told me about you. Come on in.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m Bob Beaghler.”

  As they shook hands, Parker looked past him at a living room cluttered with discarded baby clothes, a new couch, and what looked like a new television set. There was also a new round felt-topped table in the center of the room, flanked by half a dozen functional wood-and-canvas chairs, as though ready for a poker game.

  There were also two more people, one sitting at the round table and the other sprawled on the sofa. The one at the round table was male, very tall and thin, dressed in a suit and white shirt and narrow tie that all looked too big for him, and completely bald. He wore glasses and had a steady quiet competence in his face. He would be the driver of the other rental car.

  And the one sprawled on the sofa would be the owner of the red convertible. Parker took one look at her and almost turned around and walked away from it right then. It was only that he was overdue for a job that he decided to stick around and see what the relationships were and how effectively Beaghler had her under control.

  She was almost a parody of a suburban slut. Slender to the point of skinniness except for oversized breasts, she had the small narrow foxlike face of a tenement upbringing. Her hair was a well-tended gleaming brown, her face was carefully made up, and she had painted the nails of both fingers and toes. She was in the uniform of the type: halter and shorts.

  The only good thing about her was that she didn’t seem to be in active agitation. There was no aura of tension from the man sitting at the table, as there would have been if he’d found himself unexpectedly in some kind of sexual arena, and when the woman met Parker’s eye, there was no invitation in her glance, nothing but a bored and muted curiosity. The machinery was all there, but it wasn’t turned on; which probably meant she’d married a man stronger than herself. Away from him, things might be different, but there’d be no reason for Parker or the others in the string to ever have to find that out.

  Beaghler made the introductions, and in introducing the man at the table first he gave further demonstration of the relationship he’d established with his wife. “Parker, this is George Walheim. And that’s my wife, Sharon.”

  Parker and Sharon nodded at one another, and Parker turned his attention to Walheim, who was getting to his feet to shake hands, saying, “Good to know you. You’re from the East, aren’t you?”

  “Mostly. You do locks?”

  Walheim grinned. “I can’t get away from it, people can always tell.”

  “You look the part, George,” Beaghler said. “You look like nothing on God’s green earth but a lockman. Just like I look like a grease monkey.” And he did a simian pose, arms hanging curved at his sides. With his chest and upper arm development, he did look something like an ape. Then he straightened and said to Parker, “Beer?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Coke, then.”

  Apparently Beaghler felt the need to behave like a host. “Fine,” Parker said.

  Beaghler turned to call to his wife, “Sharon, a Coke for Mr. Parker.”

  A very small trace of resentment showed in the woman’s eyes and in the lines at the corners of her mouth, but there was no hesitation; she got to her feet and left the living room.

  Beaghler gestured to the round table. “Come on and sit down. You have a good flight?”

  The next twenty minutes were filled with small-talk. Beaghler was sensible not to outline his story until everybody was present, but Parker had never been any good at small-talk, preferring silence when there wasn’t anything meaningful to say. Still, half of the success or failure of any job lay in the personalities of the people involved, and in this one Ducasse was the only other guy in the string that he knew at all, so it was good to get a chance to watch these two and listen to them while they were relaxed and easy.

  The impression he built up was mostly good. George Walheim looked to be as steady and calm as a rock beside the road. At work, he would be smooth and methodical, he would get his job done, he wouldn’t let the tension of the situation work on his nerves. Bob Beaghler was less controlled, but he had a fighting-cock kind of approach to the world, tough but with good humor; he looked to be the kind of guy who was in love with his own virility. Very often, good drivers had this style, it made them both skillful and competitive. He would be faster and tougher th
an Walheim, but not quite as steady and reliable.

  The woman, Sharon, was a disaster area with a lid on it. She was the kind of woman a Bob Beaghler would be attracted to, simply so he could prove himself capable of domesticating her; like the kind of man who seeks work breaking horses. And he had obviously succeeded, at least while she was under his eye. The slight mulishness she showed whenever he gave her an order hinted at undercover revolution when his back was turned, but she’d obviously learned not to cross him directly.

  In the course of the talk, it came out that the Beaghlers had three children; the baby was now asleep, and the two older ones were having dinner at a friend’s house. And Bob Beaghler was an auto customizer and drag racer: “That’s where my money goes,” he said, at one point. “Smeared against the wall out at Altamont.”

  At a break in the conversation, Parker asked if either of them had ever heard of George Uhl, but they hadn’t. He didn’t bother to explain, and they didn’t ask anything. In the two weeks since Uhl had loused up the Mother’s Day robbery, Parker had dropped a few lines into the stream, hoping to get word of his potential whereabouts, but so far nothing had happened. Once before he’d tracked Uhl down, but that trail was dead now, and in any case he had neither the patience nor the resources right now to try it again. The first thing was to put a job together and get the finances back where they belonged; after that he could spend some time looking for Uhl if he wanted.

  When the doorbell finally sounded again, Beaghler said, “That’ll be Ducasse,” and got to his feet.

  Parker turned to Walheim, saying, “He’s the last one?”

  “I guess so. Bob said it was a four-man job.”

  “Good.” The smaller the string, the better.

  It was Ducasse. He came in, looking pleased, and Beaghler introduced him to Walheim and Sharon. Then they all sat down at the round table again, and Ducasse said to Parker, “I checked back a few days ago. Ashby died.”

  “That’s tough,” Parker said.

  Beaghler gave them both a bright look: “Something?”

  “Nothing important,” Parker said. “We all here now?”

  “Right.” Beaghler grinned, looking over at Walheim as though to say you’ll-appreciate-this, and said, “Have you all heard of San Simeon?”

  Walheim had, and seemed puzzled by the reference. Parker knew the name slightly, but couldn’t remember what it signified. Ducasse said, “Wasn’t that Hearst’s place?”

  “Right. A big mansion he built for himself down the coast. About halfway to L.A. Filled it full of art goods, millions of dollars’ worth of art goods.”

  Walheim said, “You aren’t going to break into San Simeon.”

  “Shit, I know that.” Beaghler grinned. “There’s a cousin of mine,” he said, “he’s one of the guides there, for the tours they have, the public tours. He told me there’s some stuff going out on loan, in about a month from now. Coming up here to the university, over at Berkeley.”

  Ducasse said, “You want to make the hit at the college?”

  “No, on the way up.”

  Parker said, “How much stuff?”

  “Three statues,” Beaghler said. “They’re some kind of famous old statues from Europe, from a long time ago. There was ten of them done, and three of them are down in San Simeon. They’re going to have maybe seven of them brought together at Berkeley, and pictures of the rest.”

  Ducasse said, “How much are they worth?”

  “My cousin says they’re two hundred grand apiece.”

  Walheim whistled, and Ducasse said, “Six hundred thousand. That’s a lot.”

  Parker said, “Who’s your buyer?”

  Grinning, Beaghler shook his head and said, “I don’t have one. You know my story, I’m a driver, I never been anything but. I don’t have any contacts like that.”

  Parker said, “You want one of us to come up with a buyer.”

  “Right.”

  “For three of a thing that there’s only ten of in the world.”

  Beaghler’s smile slipped a little. “You don’t think it can be done?”

  “I’m not sure,” Parker said. “But it doesn’t sound easy. What are these statues made of?”

  “Gold. Solid gold, all the way through.”

  Walheim said, “What would they be worth melted down?”

  Parker shook his head. “Nothing, in comparison. The best bet would be the insurance company.”

  Beaghler frowned. “We’d be lucky to get a quarter from the insurance company.”

  “You’ll be lucky to find a buyer,” Parker told him.

  Beaghler said, “All right, let’s wait a while on the buyer. Let me tell you my idea for the caper.”

  Parker shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  “My cousin told me they’re going to crate them up in three separate wooden boxes, packed really safe and secure. Then they’re going to travel up the coast road in an armored car. No escort, just the armored car.”

  Ducasse said, “An armored car doesn’t need an escort.”

  Beaghler looked around at the three faces. “Do all of you know the coast road, up through Big Sur?”

  They all nodded. Parker remembered having driven it two or three times in the past, a curving two-lane road between the ocean and the mountains of the Santa Lucia Range, twenty-eight miles of rugged scenery, cliffs and boulders and mountains and no cities or towns. There were campsites and forest ranger stations off in the mountains, but that was all.

  “All right,” Beaghler said. “They’re coming up that road. We ambush the armored car on one of the curves there, I’ve got one all picked out, a beautiful hairpin where they’re gonna have to come to practically a full stop anyway.”

  Ducasse said, “How do you ambush it?”

  “With grenades,” Beaghler said. “Smoke, and then percussion. We hit them with a smoke grenade so they can’t see and they have to stop. Then we roll a percussion grenade under the car to keep them stopped. Then we come down and George opens the rear door and we take the statues out and go on our merry way, safe and sound.”

  Parker said, “On our way where? In the first place, armored cars keep in radio contact with their headquarters, and in the second place, there’s no way off that road. All they have to do is block both ends and wait for us.”

  Beaghler’s broad grin showed he’d been waiting for that objection. “Not so,” he said. “I’ve got an ATV.”

  “A what?”

  “An all-terrain vehicle,” Beaghler said. “They make them for people who want to camp out. They’re like a jeep, only they’ll go places even a jeep won’t go. I’ve got one that’ll go places you’d think twice about going with a horse. It’s fantastic.”

  Walheim said, “Where do you figure to go with it, Bob?”

  “Over the mountains,” Beaghler said. “Over to King City. We’ll have another car stashed there, and we can just take the main road back up through Salinas.”

  Walheim shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t get through there. You’ll never make it to King City.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Beaghler said. “Because I’ve done it. Artie Danforth and me, we did it together about a month ago.”

  Walheim squinted at Beaghler as though he was hard to see. “Are you putting me on? You really went through that country?”

  “Man, we averaged six miles an hour. But we got through.”

  Parker said, “How many miles?”

  “Just under sixty.”

  “You’re talking about ten hours.”

  “Probably longer than that. We’ll probably have to camp out overnight. See, the timing is, we’ll probably hit the armored car around noon. Say one o’clock. Then we’ve got only five or six hours before—”

  “Somebody outside,” Sharon said. She was standing by the living-room window looking out. “Looking at the cars,” she said.

  All four got to their feet and went over to look out
the window. Out there, giving the three rental cars a once-over, was a stocky compact guy with a flattened nose, thinning curly hair, and a heavy slightly-blued jaw. He was glancing in the windows of each car, strolling along past them, taking his time but not making a major production out of it.

  Parker frowned, trying to see the guy’s face more clearly. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but he couldn’t really be sure.

  Beaghler, sounding very worried, said, “Fuzz, do you think?”

  “No,” Ducasse said. “Private maybe, but not law.”

  Beaghler said, “Sharon?”

  “I never saw him before.” The sudden frightened defensiveness told Parker just how tight a rein Beaghler kept on his wife, and suggested also how necessary it was. Which was confirmed when she added, “If I knew the guy, would I have said anything?”

  Parker said, “Nobody knows him?”

  Outside, the guy had turned toward the house, was coming up through the bedraggled lawn.

  Ducasse said, “Not me.”

  Frowning, Parker said, “There’s something—Let me take it.”

  “Sure,” said Beaghler. “I don’t want him.”

  Parker kept watching as the guy came up on the porch. Was it a familiar face, or just a familiar type? He said to Beaghler, “Are you into anything else right now? Anything I should worry about?”

  “Not a thing,” Beaghler said. “I’ve been quiet for a year, that’s why I’m so broke.”

  The doorbell rang. Parker walked around the others and over to the front door. When he opened it, the guy was standing slightly turned away, pretending to be bored and looking out toward the street, as though he were a house-to-house salesman or something. Which he wasn’t.

  Parker had opened the door only wide enough for him to step outside onto the porch, and then closed it again. If this was somebody he had known in the past, he might not want to advertise it to the people in the house.

  The guy had turned his head this way when Parker opened the door, and Parker watched the quick assessment in his eyes, and the recognition that neither of them was playing in his true role. But there was no other recognition there, not the kind Parker had been waiting for; and he himself still couldn’t be sure.