Firebreak

by Richard Stark

  Wiss gave Parker a helpless look. Parker, calm, said, "Go ahead, Ralph. Give it your best try. That's all right, just do it." Looking up at Bob, who had now seated himself on the sixth stair, he said, "Okay if I walk around? My rifle's upstairs, my pistol's in my coat pocket, I get the picture. It doesn't help me to shoot you."

  The whine of Wiss's drill started again. Over it, Bob said to Parker, "I don't care what you do, just so Ralph's getting us in at those paintings."

  "Fine."

  Elkins hovered over Wiss, wanting to help. Parker walked around the large room, looking in the open doorways at the storage areas. At one point, when he got a little too close to the stairs, Bob reared back, lifting his Colt, saying, 'You don't have to come over here."

  "Okay," Parker said, backing away. He'd seen to the top of the stairs, and the doorway was empty up there. Harry was hanging back, eyeballing the upper doorway without putting himself at risk from below.

  Moving off from the staircase, Parker pointed at one of the open side doors. "Okay if I go in there? It's all sports gear, maybe they got a pair of gloves I can use."

  Bob laughed. "Go ahead. You want gloves? Take 'em all." Nodding toward Wiss, where he labored at the door, he said, "I'm an art lover, myself."

  8

  Parker walked into a large square room lined with deep tall shelves and with stacks of sports equipment in neat piles in the middle of the floor. What he'd seen in here that had drawn him in was a large round red-bull's-eye target, straw-stuffed, on a wooden easel, leaning against shelves at the back of the room. What did Marino and his friends use to shoot at that target?

  His first walk around the room, scanning the shelves, came up with nothing. Back in the doorway, he called to Wiss, "How's it coming?"

  "Slow," Wiss said. He sounded almost tearful with frustration.

  Bob, in good humor, looked over from watching the work to call, "You find your gloves?"

  "Not yet."

  Parker went back into the room, for another circuit, slower, looking deeper into all the shelves. There was almost no time left. If this didn't pan out, he'd just have to shoot the bastard, go up the stairs, and see what happened.

  There. Feathers. Neat feathers along a narrow wooden stick. Parker moved two sets of ski poles out of the way, and there was the quiver, tan, canvas, faked up with Indian motifs, containing half a dozen arrows. And next to it the bow.

  When he slid the bow out from the shelf, it was a very hard stiff wood, almost black, nearly four feet long, carved into a graceful complex shape that looked like an Arabic letter or a symbol on a sheet of music. The bowstring was only fastened at one end, and hung too short. It wasn't an ordinary cord but a kind of cable, many threads wound together to make something hard and strong.

  Parker glanced over at the door, but couldn't see the stairs from here. He put the end of the bow where the string was attached onto the floor, against his instep, and bent the wood down until he could put the loop at the top end of the string over the tip of the bow into the nock.

  Had he ever shot one of these things? If he had, he couldn't remember it, but it wasn't high technology. He selected one of the arrows, which also had a nock at the back end of the shaft, beyond the feathers, which the bowstring nestled into. He wrapped his left hand around the bow's grip, rested the arrow's shaft on top of his fist, and worked out how to hold the arrow with the fingers of his right hand. Something like a pool cue grip seemed right, between the feathers and the nock.

  When he tried drawing the bowstring back, it was surprisingly taut. If he managed to let the thing go in the proper way, it would move with a hell of a force, but he could see how easy it would be to flub it, and have the arrow dribble away across the floor, asking a bullet to come rushing back.

  There was no way to do practice shots. But there was nothing else to do either, except be gunned down either by Bob's friend Harry or by the law.

  Parker moved up to the wall just to the left of the doorway. If he moved forward, he would see Bob diagonally across the room, seated on the sixth step, leaning back against the seventh step and the side wall, half-turned toward Parker, Colt in lap, eyes on Wiss and Elkins.

  Parker inhaled, and held it. He drew the string back to his ear, left arm out straight as he held the bow. He stepped into the doorway, aimed down the shaft, opened his right hand. The arrow streaked across the space like an angry wasp and pinned Bob's chest to the wall.

  9

  Bob was trying to move, trying to breathe, trying to live. Wiss stopped the drill to gape at the arrow Bob was feebly fumbling at. Parker, dropping the bow and crossing the main room in long' strides, pointed at Wiss, at the drill, made spinning motions with that hand. Wiss blinked, and pulled the trigger, and drilled air.

  Parker reached Bob, looked up at the empty doorway at the top of the stairs, and still looking there closed his left hand on Bob's windpipe, squeezing in from both sides. Bob, in shock, bleeding inside, tried to fight away from him, but Parker leaned his weight on that hand, pressing the throat and head harder against the side wall, until the struggle lessened, then stopped.

  Parker held for another long minute, then reached down to take the Colt out of Bob's lap. The blood that had started to seep from his mouth had stopped now, because the heart wasn't beating.

  While the drill whirred in Wiss's hand behind him, Parker went slowly up the stairs. At the top, he waited, chest down on the stair edges, listening. What he could see was a trapezoid of hallway, pale green wall, part of a hunting scene genre painting, part of a many-bulbed golden chandelier.

  Which way was the other one? If he committed to look to the left, and Harry was to the right, he'd be rewarded with a bullet in the head. He listened, the drill-whine only a faint burr behind him now, hoping to hear Harry breathe, or move, or yawn.

  Nothing. How far away was he?

  Fifty-fifty odds were not acceptable. Holding the Colt in his right hand, he reached into his left pants pocket. The only coin he ever carried while working was one quarter, in case he found himself in a place where he needed a phone. Now he took the quarter out and flipped it high and arcing across the hallway to flash glittering in the chandelier light, clink against the far wall, bounce silently on the carpeted floor.

  A quick rustle; to the right; Parker launched himself out of the stairwell, diving as though into a swimming pool, right arm extended to the right, firing the Colt before he could see, landing flat on his chest, head to the right, sighting along his extended arm now at the bulky figure shooting, the gnats whizzing just above his head, firing the Colt, squeezing it off, squeezing it off, the figure bouncing back, half-turning, suddenly running away down the hall, Parker sending the rest of the Colt's clip after him, but the stance too awkward down here, no good at the increasing distance, Harry to the end of the hallway and through the door there and out of sight.

  Feet under him, Colt tossed away, Parker called down, "Come up!" and ran down the hall as he pulled his own .38 revolver out of his coat pocket.

  He could hear Wiss and Elkins behind him, but couldn't see Harry ahead. He had to slow at the doorway, hesitate, come in fast and low, see no one in the long dining room, the table like a bowling alley lane, the high-backed wooden chairs, the wall of mirrors under the chandeliers reflecting him back as he pursued down the long room and out the far end.

  Every doorway was a delay, but every room he went into was empty, and at the end the rear door was open, the door he and the others had first come in. Parker raced through that doorway, out to the cold bright sunless northern day, and the bulky figure was getting into the Cherokee, their car that they'd left up above, that Elkins and the other two had driven down.

  They needed that car. Parker fired, shattering the driver's window as Harry ducked, starting the engine, the Jeep jerking forward.

  Parker fired again, but there was too little to shoot at. He didn't want to put out tires, hit the gas tank. The only target he was interested in was the man, but the man was too encased in
the thick frame of the

  Cherokee, and now it was moving away, cutting across the frozen lawn to turn back north.

  Wiss and Elkins came panting out of the house, both with their guns in their hands. Wiss said, "What do we—" and they all heard the siren.

  Sirens. They all faded back into the house, and two state police cars, red lights whirling on their roofs, ran upward from the side of the house, sirens screaming as they chased the Cherokee.

  The three in the entry room looked at one another. Elkins said, "I'd say, we lost our ride."

  10

  "Downhill," Parker said. "And time to switch."

  The orange coats were reversible, muddy brown waterproofs on the other side. As they trotted through the house, headed now for the front entrance, they shook off the coats, pulled the sleeves through, shrugged into the coats again, switched their guns from the inner pockets to the out.

  Bert Hayes, crawling on his stomach, had made it halfway through the doorway, heading back into the office, probably hoping to knock the phone off the desk. Moxon, lying where they'd left him, looked up, startled, as they jumped over Hayes's legs and stopped for one second at the front door. Parker pulled the door open just far enough to see out, to be sure there were no vehicles and no people out there, only the two-lane concrete road angling away downhill.

  "Good," he said, and they went out, and straight down the hill.

  Panting as he ran, trying to talk, Wiss said, "There'll be more coming up. They'll call for backup."

  "We go as far as we can," Parker said, "then get off the road, work downhill."

  "Lights!" Elkins called, and all three veered away from the road, running full tilt in among the evergreens, as the flashing red lights came thrusting up the hill. They dropped to the ground, saw and heard the three state police cars go by, and waited until the sirens were only echoes from up the mountain. Then they got to their feet, and Parker said, "We can do the road again for a while. They're all up there, they've got Harry to think about, they won't start back down—"

  "Until Moxon and Hayes start talking," Elkins said.

  "We've got a few minutes, anyway," Parker told him, "and the road's faster."

  They loped downhill for less than a minute when Elkins yelled, "Another one!" and again they hurried away from the road. But this time Parker went only as far as the cover of the first tree, because there was something wrong with it, whatever that was coming up the road.

  A big vehicle, boxy, almost completely white. But no whirling red lights, not even headlights, and no siren. Just—

  Wiss, peering from nearby, said, "An ambulance? So soon?"

  "Hold on," Parker said, and got to his feet, and trotted toward the road as the ambulance went by, moving slow, without extra light or sound. "Lloyd!" he yelled, and the driver turned his white face, saw Parker waving his arms, and the brake lights flashed on.

  "My God," Wiss yelled, "it's Larry!"

  They ran toward the ambulance, as Lloyd rolled down his window to shout, "One in front, two in back!" He was dressed in a white coat but no hat, like a medic.

  Wiss climbed in front with Lloyd, the other two in back, where there was a narrow long space between two made-up stretchers. Parker sat on the right, Elkins on the left.

  Wiss slammed his door and then, astonished, said, "Larry? What the hell are you doing?"

  "I figured," Lloyd said, "I'd see how you guys were, if everything was okay we could carry the paintings in the back." Looking in his interior mirror, he said, "You two set back there?"

  "Turn it around," Parker told him. "Get us out of here."

  Lloyd's jaw dropped. "What? We need those paintings!"

  Wiss said, "Larry, there's law all over that place up there."

  "No," Lloyd said. The muscles of his jaw were bunched. 'That's the only score I've got. I need to do my face, I need to set myself up."

  "Larry," Elkins said, "let's discuss this a hundred miles from here."

  "I can't leave this mountain without the paintings," Lloyd insisted. He sat hunched over the steering wheel, glaring sidelong at Wiss.

  Mildly, Parker said to Wiss, "Ralph, he's beginning to sound like those other friends of yours."

  "Wait, wait a minute," Wiss said. "Let's talk this over."

  "Not here," Parker said.

  "I tell you what," Wiss said. 'The sentry house, just down the road. There's nobody in there now, no reason for anybody to go there. We can move ourselves in just long enough to talk."

  Parker said, 'Just so we're moving away from the lodge."

  "Exactly." Wiss said to Lloyd, "Do it, Larry."

  Lloyd unclenched. "Fine," he said.

  As Lloyd K-turned the blocky ambulance, Elkins said, "Going down, Larry, use your flasher and siren. There's gonna be more cops coming up."

  "I'm not sure where those controls are," Lloyd said.

  Wiss told him, 'You drive, I'll find them," and leaned close to the dashboard.

  As they started down the slope, Elkins said, "How do you manage to promote yourself an ambulance?"

  'The hospital was only a few blocks from the motel," Lloyd explained, "and this was parked by itself."

  Ahead, two more state cars were coming up. Wiss

  ducked low, and the state cars pulled to the side to let the ambulance roar on by.

  A minute later they saw the sentry house down below them, to the left of the road, with the driveway angling in toward the wide three-car attached garage. As Wiss cut the siren and lights and Lloyd slowed for the turn, Parker said, "Cut over the lawn, take it around back, where they won't see it from the road."

  Lloyd said, "What about the garage?"

  "Later, if we have to. Now, we'd have to bust in, and we can't bust into this building."

  As Lloyd steered the ambulance around the sentry house, Wiss said, "That's right, this place is still wired, we could set off alarms down in the police station in Havre."

  "We'll ease in," Elkins said. "The house won't even know we're there."

  Lloyd stopped the ambulance close to the rear of the house. He reached for his door, but stopped when Parker said, "Lloyd."

  Lloyd looked around at him. He looked apprehensive, but determined. 'Yes?"

  Parker said, "I don't like to leave empty-handed either, but it would be worse to leave in a prison bus. If we work something out* good. If not, I don't mind leaving you right here."

  Lloyd slowly nodded. "I understand," he said.

  11

  Wiss did the easing, through the back door. He took nearly ten minutes at it, and during that time more cars ran up the road, invisible from here, and two ran down it. Then finally Wiss said, "There you are, you son of a bitch," and the door swung open.

  Not yet noon on a bright but sunless day; they didn't need a light to find their way around the rooms. This was a much more utilitarian structure, with a simple kitchen and dining room, a combination living room and recreation room with sofas and a Ping-Pong table and television set and bookshelves, plus the security room, all downstairs. They didn't bother to go upstairs, which was presumably all bedrooms, but clustered into the security room.

  The alarm systems were all still functioning. Eighteen monitors showed the inside and outside of the lodge, and another cluster of twelve monitors showed the views from the perimeter cameras. They stood and looked at the different pictures of the lodge, and every one of them was crawling with police.

  "Bad guys go in," Elkins commented, "but bad guys don't come out."

  'There's no cameras in the basement," Wiss said. "We don't know if they got in the gallery or not."

  A small black delivery van appeared on the downhill perimeter monitors, then the exterior house monitors as it drove on by, then the uphill monitors. "So Harry didn't make it," Elkins said.

  Lloyd was confused. "Why? What was that?"

  "Morgue car," Wiss told him, and a black body bag appeared on the house monitors, carried to the front door by four state troopers. "And that," Wiss said, "is Bob
, to go with him."

  Parker turned away from the screens. 'Time to talk this out."

  They moved to the living room, sat on the sofas and chairs, and Lloyd said, 'The great advantage is, we can watch what they're doing, and they have no idea we're here."

  Parker said, 'There's at least thirty cops in that place, with more coming. A painting in a crate is too big and heavy to sneak out. It doesn't matter if you can watch them, and we don't know when somebody's gonna decide to make this place their headquarters."

  Elkins said, 'That won't happen, Parker, the action's up there."

  "I'll watch the monitors," Lloyd offered. "If it looks like they're coming down here, I'll warn you, and I'll let you know if anything useful happens."

  Parker looked over at the window. "It gets dark here around five," he said. 'That's when we leave."

  Lloyd was unhappy with that, but all he said was, "We'll work it out before then, I know we will." Rising, he said, "I'll go watch," and left the room.

  The other three were silent for a couple of minutes, and then Wiss said, "I know Larry's pressing a little hard, Parker, but he's not like Bob and Harry."

  "Fine," Parker said.

  "When the time comes," Wiss said, "he'll be okay, I'll vouch for him."

  Parker looked at Wiss. "Don't vouch for him," he said.

  "Wrong word, Ralph," Elkins said.

  Wiss looked uncomfortable. "I'm just saying he'll be okay."

  "But don't tie yourself to him," Parker said. "If he's gonna be unhappy, I'm not gonna leave him behind me."

  "I understand," Wiss said. "If it comes to that, believe me, he's on his own."

  12

  A little after three o'clock, Lloyd came into the living room. He was wearing a brown uniform from one of the security people here, and he carried a liquor carton half-filled with a jumble of electronic gear, like a failed high school science project. He put the box on the Ping-Pong table and said, I've got it figured out."