Breakout p-21

by Richard Stark

  Detective Rembek took notes. Goody; find this fellow Goody, squeeze him a little, see where he leads.

  And there was one other thing. Detective Rembek looked back through the transcript and found it:

  C: I’m gonna get money in a couple days, I’m okay.

  Going to get money in a couple days. Where?

  7

  It took Buck two days to figure it out. He’d known from the get-go there was something funny going on with that little scumbag Goody, to make him all of a sudden up and leave his sales post early on a Thursday, but he just couldn’t see in his mind what Goody was up to. A family emergency; shit. What would a piece of garbage like Goody be doing with a family?

  But if it was something else that took Goody away in the middle of the best sales period of the day, when the workingman wanted a little taste to bring home with him after another eight hours throwing his life away for pennies to the Man, what was it? I’m not stupid, Buck reminded himself. If there’s something there, and there’s got to be something there, what the hell is it?

  Of course he saw all the stuff on the television Thursday night about the three boys broke out of Stoneveldt prison, and he even noticed that one of them was a brother, but he never made the connection. And he didn’t make that connection because he didn’t think about the police scanner in brother Goody’s car until Goody forgot and left it on that Saturday evening when he swung by the Land Rover to turn in the day’s cash and stash. With both windows open, Buck’s Land Rover and Goody’s Mercury, all of a sudden there was that harsh cop-radio voice, jabber-jabber-jabber,until Goody quickly reached down and switched it off. And even then Buck didn’t put two and two together, because he was distracted by business, there being three more salesmen to report in, and it wasn’t until he was dealing with the second of those that he suddenly saw the light.

  The brother’s on the run. Big-time manhunt, all the cops excited because these three guys rubbed their nose in it, escaped from their im-preg-nableslammer, and Buck knew what that meant. And he knew that Goody would instantly know what that meant, too.

  Reward.

  He’s got a connection to the brother, Buck told himself. He’s looking to collect; turn the boy in and collect, without telling his best friend and employer, don’t forget Buck.

  ‘Leon,’ he said to the bodyguard in the passenger seat up front, ‘call my mama, tell her bring the Lincoln up, leave it out front. Raydiford,’ he said to the bodyguard at the wheel, ‘as soon as Hector check in, you drop Leon and me at the Lincoln, then take Rover and all this shit to the store.’

  Leon looked happy. ‘We goin somewhere?’

  ‘We’re goin callin,’ Buck told him.

  One thing you could say for Goody; he didn’t put all his profits in his nose. A lot of them, they could only function at all because they were too scared of Buck to allow themselves to fuck up totally, but Goody had a brain and knew how to stay on plan.

  Look at his house. An actual real house, not some rathole apartment in the very slums you’re dealing so you can get out of. Not as good a place, of course, as Buck’s horse ranch out in the country, but for a street dealer not bad; a big sprawling brick home with a wide porch on the front and sides, late nineteenth century, set on a wide lawn amid similar houses in a residential section that had been a suburb when the doctors and the college professors first built their places out here. That had been before cars, so some of these places still didn’t have garages, just driveways, including Goody’s, and there was his Mercury now, parked beside his house. Goody was home.

  A telephone company truck was in front of the house, a lineman in a cherry picker doing something at the top of the pole, so Leon had to drive beyond it and pull the Lincoln in at the curb in front of the house next door. Buck, spread out in back, waited while Leon came trotting around to open his door, and then the two of them went up to Goody’s house, stepped up onto the wide wood-floored porch, and Leon rang the doorbell.

  They had to wait a pretty long time, and Buck was just about to tell Leon to bust the door in, when it opened, and there stood a white girl, college girl, in blue jeans and white tank top, coked to the eyebrows. She frowned through her personal mist at Buck and Leon and said, ‘Yes? What can I do for you?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ Buck said, and brushed by her.

  She tottered, very shaky, but didn’t fall down because she still had a good hold of the doorknob. ‘Hey!’ she cried, but her outrage was unfocused, and she didn’t seem to notice when Leon copped a feel on the way by.

  You can take the boy out of the pisshole, but you can’t take the pisshole out of the boy. There was barely any furniture at all in these big echoing rooms with the good old wood floors. In the front room, a television set with its other machines sat on an assemble-it-yourself bookcase from the home center, full of tapes and DVDs. Two big white wicker chairs with peacock-tail backs stood across the room, facing the TV, with a couple of mismatched shitty little tables, table lamps standing on the floor, telephone on the floor.

  Pool table in the next room, what would have been the dining room, with two scruffy backless couches along one wall. And here came Goody, out of what must be the kitchen, a beer bottle in one hand, cigar in the other.

  He came out of there full of swagger, a tough guy, wanting to know what the commotion was at his front door, but when he saw Buck he stumbled, next to the pool table, and got scared. He didn’t know yet what the problem was, but if Buck himself was all of a sudden in Goody’s house, Goody knew it was time to get scared.

  ‘Hey, Buck,’ he said. ‘You didn’t tell me you were comin over, man.’

  ‘I was in the neighborhood,’ Buck told him, but he didn’t bother to smile. He said, ‘You been in touch with Brandon Williams yet?’

  Surprise, and being scared, made Goody stupid. He said, ‘Who?’

  Now Buck did smile, in a not-friendly way. ‘Think of that, Leon,’ he said. ‘This fool here’s the only man, woman, or child in this city never heard of Brandon Williams.’

  ‘Oh, Brandon Williams!’ Goody cried, acting out all kinds of sudden recognition. ‘I didn’t connect the name, you know, all of a sudden like that.’

  ‘Leon,’ Buck said, ‘go hit that fool, like he was a TV wouldn’t come into focus.’

  ‘No, wait, Buck Aa!’

  Buck looked at him, leaning against the wall. In the front room, the college girl had sat in one of the peacock wicker chairs and was gazing at the television set, which was turned off. Buck said, ‘You in focus now, fool?’

  ‘Just tell me, Buck,’ Goody begged him. The beer bottle and cigar were both at his feet, but he paid them no attention. ‘All you gotta do is tell me,’ he said. ‘You know I come through for you.’

  Buck said, ‘Tell me about your family emergency, Thursday.’

  A whole lot of lies hovered just inside Goody’s trembling lips, Buck could see their meaty wings in there, but finally Goody wasn’t that big a fool, and what he said was, ‘The police scanner. I heard it on the scanner.’

  ‘Brandon Williams is outa the box.’

  ‘His sister, his little sister, Maryenne, she’s an old friend of mine, Buck. A goodgirl, I like her, not like this white trash here, I thought, I gotta go be there when she finds out, I gotta tell her myself, so it won’t be that big of a, you know, a shock.’

  ‘Reward money,’ Buck said.

  ‘Aw, no, Buck,’ Goody said, because he was still to some extent a fool, ‘I wanna help that girl, old-friend like’

  ‘Leon,’ Buck said, ‘He’s losin his focus.’

  ‘No, Buck, I Aaoww! Listen, don’t Ohh! Owww!’

  ‘Okay, Leon,’ Buck said, ‘let’s see is he tuned in.’

  ‘Jesus, Buck, he’s gonna break somethin on me, don’t do this, man.’

  ‘Tell me your story, Goody.’

  Goody looked at the beer bottle at his feet. Most of the beer had spilled onto the floor, but a little was left in the bottle, visible through the green glass. Goody
licked his lips. ‘Uhh,’ he said. He met Buck’s eyes, wincing, and nodded, and said, ‘I called her, on the cell. Her cell, from my cell. When I heard on the scanner. I went over there, you know, her place, told her, she can’t help her brother, cops be all over her, watchin, see what she’

  ‘Move it along, Goody,’ Buck said.

  Goody nodded, quickly. ‘She says okay,’ he said. ‘We both know he’s gonna call her, she’s gonna tell him, call good old Goody, he’ll help out, get you airplane tickets, whatever.’

  Buck said, ‘When did he call?’

  ‘He didn’t yet,’ Goody said, then looked wide-eyed at Leon, then back at Buck: ‘Honest to God! I figured, tomorrow morning, I’d go over there, see Maryenne again, after her and her family get outa church.’

  ‘Churchgoing people,’ Buck said.

  ‘I told you,’ Goody said, ‘she’s a good girl, she’s okay, I wanna help out, I really do, Buck.’

  ‘You want that reward,’ Buck said.

  Goody spread his hands. ‘What reward? I didn’t see nothing about no reward. If you know about’

  ‘Leon.’

  ‘Buck, no! Aii! Ow! Oh, no! All right, Buck, I Ow! Gee-ziz! I saidall right! Ow! Stop! Ow!’

  ‘All right, Leon,’ Buck said. To Goody he said, ‘It’s when Isay all right that Leon hears it.’

  ‘Ohhh. I can’t stand up no more, Buck.’

  ‘We could nail you to the wall, you like.’

  ‘Buck, please.’

  ‘This Brandon Williams,’ Buck said, ‘he’s gonna call his sister. Then he’s gonna call you. Right?’

  ‘That’s the plan. That’s the plan, Buck.’

  ‘Whenhe calls you,’ Buck said, ‘the second thing you’re gonna do is call the police, start the negotiation. What’s the first thing you’re gonna do, Goody?’

  ‘I’m gonna call you,’ Goody said. He was very subdued now. He didn’t like the situation, but he knew he was defeated. He was also in pain.

  ‘That’s right,’ Buck said. ‘You call me first, then you can go on and do the negotiation with the law, same as you planned. You’ll collect the reward, same as you already figured.’

  Trying to look hopeful, Goody said, ‘And we split it, right?’

  ‘We’ll work that out, Goody,’ Buck said. ‘Okay, Leon, we’re done here.’

  They left Goody huddled against the wall. Going through the front room, Buck nodded at the college girl and said, ‘You oughta wring that out before you put it back where you found it.’

  ‘That’s what I planned on, Buck,’ Goody said. His voice was high, with a new tremble in it. ‘But now,’ he said, ‘I think I just gotta rest awhile.’

  Outside, the telephone company truck was gone. Some other emergency taken care of, working this late on a Saturday night.

  8

  ‘Hold on, Brenda,’ Ed Mackey said. He held tight to her hips, felt her knees press to both sides of his rib cage, and looked up at her grinning grimace as she concentrated on that inner rhythm, bore down, eyes staring at some point inside her own head. ‘Hold on, Brenda, hold on.’

  ‘You know,’ she muttered, ‘you know, you know, come alongwith me, you know, you know’

  ‘Hold on’

  ‘Come alongwith me!’

  ‘Hold oonnn!’

  He thrust endlessly upward, back arched, and she shivered all over like a bead curtain. ‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Youknow!’

  The shower stall, when they got to it five minutes later, was big enough for them both. This was one of the most expensive top-floor rooms in one of the most expensive hotels in the city, and Brenda had been checked in here for five days now, ever since Parker had told Mackey when he and the other two would be coming out of Stoneveldt. Mackey had kept the old motel room for himself until Thursday, and was not registered in this hotel, was merely a visitor, because he’d known, once Parker was out, the law would want to have a word or two with the guy who’d been coming to see Parker inside.

  So Brenda was here to give him somewhere else to wait out the jewelry job, and she was herebecause Mackey believed, when the cops were looking for somebody, they looked first in places at the same economic level where they’d known the guy to live before. So let them spend a week on cut-rate motels; by the time they thought to look at someplace like the Park Regal, Mackey and Brenda would be long gone from here.

  Out of the shower, Mackey dressed in dark, loose comfortable clothes, with a Beretta Jaguar .22 automatic in a deerskin holster at the small of his back, under his shirt, upside down with the butt to the right, ready to his hand if he had to reach back there. He’d gotten similar gear for Parker and Williams. Rubber gloves and a small tube of talcum powder were in his jacket pocket. He packed a small canvas bag with a few of his things, because he’d be staying with the rest of them at the former beer distributor’s place between the job and the arrival of the fence from New Orleans. Then he’d phone Brenda, she’d pick him up, and they’d be off. With Parker, if he wanted a ride, or on their own.

  He kissed her at the door, and she said, ‘Try to stay out of trouble.’

  ‘What you should do,’ he told her, ‘is stay away from that armory. Don’t call attention.’ Because he knew she liked to be nearby when he was at work, in case he needed her. He’d needed her in the past, but not this time. ‘Just stay away, Brenda,’ he said. ‘Okay?’

  ‘I’ll go over there tomorrow,’ she told him, ‘for one more class at the dance studio. I like that workout. I won’t go today, there’s nobody there today, everything’s closed on Sunday.’

  ‘We know,’ Mackey said, and grinned, kissed her again, and left.

  Downstairs, Phil Kolaski was supposed to be waiting for him in the Honda, down the block from the hotel entrance, and there he was. Mackey tossed his bag in back, got into the passenger seat in front, and said, ‘Everything still on?’

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ Phil said, and drove them away from there.

  It was Phil Kolaski that Mackey had gotten in touch with, when he was the outside man to help Parker put together a string on the inside. They had studied each other very closely, looking for danger signs, and had both decided they could take a chance.

  It was like a marriage, that, or more exactly like an engagement. The two people start off strangers to each other, have to find reasons to trust each other, have to learn each other well enough to feel they aren’t likely to be betrayed, and then have to pop the question:

  ‘Tom’s got a job lined up for when he gets out. He’ll want you and your friend in on it, to take the place of the guys got nabbed with him.’

  Mackey had been comfortable with that idea if he was in this part of the world anyway, he might as well make a profit on it but knew that Parker would want, once out, to keep moving. He’d told Phil that, and Phil had said, ‘Tom will talk to him, before they come out,’ so it seemed to be all right.

  Two blocks from the Park Regal they went through the intersection with the Armory on the left and the library, another heavy brick pile from the nineteenth century, on the right. Mackey laughed: ‘We’re gonna be underthis street!’

  ‘With our hands,’ Phil said, ‘full of jewels.’

  9

  The Margaret H. Moran Memorial Library was theoretically closed as of five P.M. on Sundays, but by the time the last patron and the last book/tape/DVD were checked out it was usually closer to five-thirty. Then whichever staff was on duty had to go through the public parts of the building for strays, occasionally finding one (usually in a lavatory), so that they were lucky if they were out of there, front door locked behind them and alarms switched on, by quarter to six.

  This evening, late October twilight coming on fast, the library was dark and empty at six P.M., when a black Honda and a green Taurus drove slowly by. The two cars traveled on another block to a parking garage where they entered, took checks from the automatic machine at the entrance, left the cars, walked back down the concrete stairwell to the street, and separated. Parker and Mackey turne
d left, away from the library and Armory, while Williams crossed Indiana Avenue and Marcantoni and Kolaski and Angioni walked back to the library.

  At the library, Marcantoni hunkered in front of the door while the other two stood on the sidewalk in front of him, chatting together, blocking the view of Marcantoni at work from passing cars. There was little traffic and no pedestrians in this downtown area at six on a Sunday.

  Marcantoni opened a flat soft leather pouch on his knee; inside, in a row of narrow pockets, were his picks. Patiently he went to work on the locks, not wanting to disturb them so much as to set off the building’s alarms.

  The fire law required the door to open outward. Marcantoni pulled it ajar just enough so he could put a small matchbox in the opening, to keep the spring lock from shutting it again. Then he put his picks neatly away, and was straightening when Parker and Mackey approached, with Williams behind them, just coming around the corner.

  The six men went into the building, closing the relocked door behind them. Marcantoni said, ‘There’s wastebaskets behind the main counter there, we’re gonna need them. There’s a lot of trash to move.’

  Parker said, ‘Then you need shovels.’

  ‘Right,’ Marcantoni said. ‘I’ve got that figured out, too.’

  There were three large metal wastebaskets, gray, square, behind the long main counter, all having been emptied by the staff before they left. Kolaski stacked the three and carried them, and Marcantoni, the only one who knew the route, led the way down the center aisle, book stacks on both sides. He carried a small flashlight, with electric tape blocking part of the lens, and Angioni carried a similar one, coming last. They picked up two more wastebaskets from desks along the way, these carried by Williams.

  Toward the rear of the main section Marcantoni turned left to go down a broad flight of stairs that doubled back at a landing. This led them down to the periodicals section, with its own stacks full of bound magazines and its own reading room lined with long oak tables. ‘We’ll come back for a couple of those,’ Marcantoni said, waving the flashlight beam over the tables as they walked toward the rear of the section.