* * *
Conroy broke the grip of mental paralysis quickly and forcefully, the way a judoka will escape a choke hold. To Amanda he growled, “Stay where you are and shut up!” He handed the black guard over to Gitner, saying, “Get him trussed up and into the garage with the other one. Check the armored cars, find the one that’s got the money in it. I’ll be with you in a sec.” He pretended not to notice the way Gitner, who had his own shades on now, was staring at him.
He walked toward Amanda and gestured with the barrel of the Python. “Back where you came from, lady, let’s go,” he said harshly. “And keep your mouth shut.” He could see from Amanda’s face that she was frightened now, and trying hard not to let it show. But to Conroy, who knew her face well enough to dream about it, the terror was all too clear.
He followed her into the room she had just come from. It was some kind of office, with shelves full of manuals, charts and plaques and framed photos all over the walls, and a long, cheap-looking table with several metal folding chairs pulled up to it. On the table were computer printouts, a fancy-looking calculator, an Apple laptop, and a number of ledgers. Conroy remembered that Amanda had been preparing for the C.P.A. exam back when they’d been together.
Conroy used the pistol to gesture toward one of the chairs. “Sit down,” he said, more gently now. When she had complied, he stepped closer and said, “Now put your hands behind you.”
Instead of obeying, Amanda turned to look at him over her shoulder and said sharply, “Damn it, Roger, I want an explanation for this.”
Conroy bent forward, so that he could speak softly and not be heard outside the room. “Amanda, listen to me: we’ve got ourselves a serious situation here, more serious than you probably realize. So keep your voice down and play along with me, all right? I’ve got to tie your hands like we did with the guards, or those three guys with me are going to start wondering whose side I’m on. And we do not want that to happen. Now, put your hands back here.”
She did as he asked. As he tied her wrists with a flex-cord, he said softly, “We can talk if we do it quietly, but we haven’t got a lot of time. I’m a thief, Amanda. It’s what I do. I’ve been doing it for over six years.”
After a second or two she nodded slowly. “So that’s what you would never tell me, back when we were…. I knew you were lying about part of your life, that’s why I finally left. But I thought that it was another woman. I never imagined….”
“Better get used to it fast,” he said. “Now tell me what you’re doing here, and at three o’clock in the damn morning, besides.”
“I’m a CPA, I have my own business. Braxton’s management thinks someone’s been skimming from the cash that passes through this place, so they wanted a surprise audit. Using an outside firm is part of the ‘surprise.’ So is doing it at this ungodly hour.”
Conroy nodded glumly. “Yeah, it’s a surprise, all right. So, tonight’s the first time you’ve been in here?”
“That’s right. A vice president of the company hired me last week. He set everything up for me to come in this evening. Letter of authorization— everything.”
That was why none of Conroy’s crew had spotted her in the three nights that they’d kept the place under surveillance. She hadn’t been there— until tonight.
He was about to ask another question when his attention was caught by the sound of footsteps approaching. A moment later, Gitner was at the office door. He looked at Amanda, then at Conroy. His face behind the sunglasses was impassive. “We found the right truck,” he told Conroy. “We’re unloadin’ the money bags now. Looks to be as much as we figured, maybe more.”
Conroy nodded. “Okay, I’ll be right there.” This was meant as a dismissal, but Gitner stayed where he was. He continued looking at Conroy for another couple of seconds, then made a gesture with his head toward the corridor behind him. “Talk to you a minute?”
Conroy knew that refusal was not an option. “Yeah, all right,” he said, and walked toward the door. Gitner backed up four or five steps until they were both standing in the short hallway a few yards away from the door to the office. Gitner lifted his cap and scratched his blond head with two fingers of the same hand. The silenced automatic remained in his other hand, its barrel pointing at the floor.
“Bad break,” Gitner said softly. “I mean, runnin’ into somebody who knows you, an’ all.”
“Yeah,” Conroy said. “Bad break. Just one of those freaky things that happens.”
Gitner nodded, replaced the cap, then slowly removed his sunglasses. His gaze never left Conroy’s face, but he didn’t look especially agitated. Gitner had been in the business for a while, himself. His face seemed calm, and the gray eyes were devoid of any emotion. After a moment, he said to Conroy, “Is it true what I hear, that you never done time? Never even took a bust?”
Conroy shrugged. “I was busted once, when I was just out of my teens. Nothing serious, though. I ripped off some typewriters from a college, and got caught when I tried to sell ‘em. They kicked me out of the school, but dropped the charges. It was a long time ago.”
“Yeah, okay, that’s good,” Gitner said. “I guess that means them two guards can live, then.”
Conroy narrowed his eyes.
“They heard her call you ‘Roger,’ remember?” Gitner spoke as if explaining things to a child. “The computers they got these days, it won’t be hard for the cops to bring up mug shots of all the guys named ‘Roger’ who are known for doin’ this kind of work. Can’t be a whole lot of guys, right? So maybe your picture would be in there, if you’d been busted before for taking down a score someplace, and maybe one of them jerks we got tied up points to your picture, even with the shades and the hat you got on. And could be you get pulled in for questioning, and maybe one of the guards picks you out of a lineup, and then, maybe, just maybe, you decide to deal yourself a reduced sentence by giving them some names. Know what I mean?”
Conroy said, evenly “Some people might call that pretty paranoid, man.”
Gitner shrugged. “Don’t matter what you call it, since it don’t apply here, looks like. If you never been picked up for this kind of thing, then you ain’t in the big FBI computer. So it makes no difference, them two Braxton guys hearing her call you by your first name, and all.” Gitner nodded a couple of times. “That’s good, ‘cause I pretty much agree with what you been sayin’ all week, about how dead bodies mean more heat from the law. So, all right, the guards can keep breathin’. No point making this fucked-up mess any worse than we got to.”
Gitner replaced his sunglasses, the pistol in his right hand still pointing downward, but Conroy noticed that the silenced barrel was gently tapping Gitner’s leg, like a dog’s tail wagging in anticipation of a treat. “But that don’t apply to the bitch, though— she’s got to go. You know that, right?”
What Conroy knew was that it was absolutely essential to maintain his credibility as a professional. If he failed at that, then either he or Gitner was going to die in the next few seconds. “Yeah, I know that,” he said solemnly. “I was just trying to find out what she was doing here, and how we could’ve missed seeing her the last three nights.”
“I been wonderin’ on that myself. How did we miss her?”
“Tonight’s her first night here. Some kind of surprise audit. She’s an accountant, brought in from outside. The company thinks somebody’s skimming.”
Gitner shook his head. “Shit, don’t that beat all? Just one of them weird things that happens, like you said.” The pistol barrel was tapping, tapping.
“Listen, man,” Gitner said, “I don’t know how well you and this lady know each other, but you and her must’ve been pretty tight, the way she recognized you so quick.” Gitner looked away for an instant, as if suddenly embarrassed, like a man about to confess to a leather fetish. “What I mean is, if you don’t want to do it yourself, it’s okay, you know? I’l
l take care of it, no problem. All you got to do is say so.” Conroy could not see Gitner’s eyes through the sunglasses, but he could hear the eagerness in his voice. And the silencer on Gitner’s automatic continued to tap his leg, the rhythm a little faster now.
“I appreciate that, man, I really do.” Conroy sounded sincere. “But it’s okay— I’ll take her out myself.” He made a nasty smirk appear on his face, and said, “It’ll give me some payback for the way she dumped me four years ago, the cunt.”
Gitner grinned at that. “Payback is a bitch, like the man says.” Then he was serious again. “Don’t be too long, huh? We got to get moving on out of here.”
“I know,” Conroy replied. “I’ll catch up with you in the garage.”
“All right, then,” Gitner said, and turned away.
Conway went back into the office, knelt next to Amanda’s chair, and took a small leather case from an inside pocket of his jacket. His hands were trembling a little.
“W-what was that about?” Amanda asked. Conroy knew she was trying to sound calm, but her control was starting to break up, like ice on a pond cracks if you put enough weight on it.
“My associate there was offering to kill you, just in case I lacked the guts to do it myself.”
“Roger, listen to me, you don’t have to do this,” Amanda said, a thin note of hysteria rising in her voice. “I won’t turn you in, why would I? It would just cast suspicion on me, make it look like an inside job, or something. I swear to you, Roger, on my mother’s grave, I would never—”
“Save it, Amanda,” he said quietly, removing a hypodermic needle from the case, along with a small plastic ampoule of a yellowish fluid.
“No, listen, I’ve been sitting here thinking— there’s no reason why we can’t get back together again, I’ve never really stopped thinking about you, wishing I knew where you were, how to get in touch with you, I mean it, Roger, we had something special between us, and we could make it work this time, if only—”
Conway realized that any resentment he felt toward Amanda, any desire to punish, was not standing up very well in the face of her growing desperation. He placed his index finger across her lips, a gesture he had used in the old days to help her calm down. “I said ‘save it,’ because I’m not going to kill you, or let anybody else do it, either. So try to relax a little, and listen, all right?”
She looked at him, some of the apprehension fading from her face, and nodded.
“The thing is, we have to make the other guys think I killed you. And we have to make it work, Amanda. We have to pull off a trick that would make Houdini proud, otherwise they’ll probably kill us both. Understand?”
She nodded again, eagerly. “Tell me what you want me to do,” she whispered. “Whatever it takes, anything you say.”
“Your part of it doesn’t really involve a lot,” Conroy said, “except lying on the floor and being unconscious for a while.” He lifted the hypo and showed it to her. “I carry this when I need to put somebody to sleep, like those two rent-a-cops in the other room. Each one of these capsules holds 120 ccs of liquid phenylbarbitol— a guaranteed three-hour nap, and it’s safer than hitting people on the head. Skulls fracture easier than you’d think.”
She was staring at the hypo. “So you want to inject me with that, and knock me unconscious?”
“That’s the idea. Then I’ll lay you out on the floor in a way that’ll seem convincing, mess up your hair and clothes to make it look like you struggled, and tell the others that I killed you with my hands.” His hand touched the Colt Python, which was resting on the table. “I’ve got no silencer for this thing, and you can’t silence a revolver, anyway.” He smiled at her from one side of his mouth. “Just as well, huh? It’d be pretty hard to fake gunshot wounds.”
She nodded, but there were frown lines between her eyes. “If that’s the best way to do this, then okay. But, Roger, if I’m unconscious, I won’t be able to hold my breath if one of them comes in and looks closely to see if I’m dead.”
“Yeah, but you won’t be breathing very deeply with this stuff, anyway, and I’ll lay you out so that some of the furniture is between you and the doorway. Good thing is, the four of us have got to book out of here pretty soon. Nobody’s gonna take time for a real close inspection of your ‘corpse’.” He did not end that sentence with I hope— but he sure as hell thought it.
Amanda Westlake looked at Conroy for what seemed a long time, but was only six or seven seconds. “All right, then,” she said quietly. “Let’s do it.”
A few moments later, she watched, wincing, as Conroy slid the needle into her arm and depressed the plunger. As he withdrew the hypo, she asked, “How long will it take?”
“You’ll probably start to feel woozy in a minute or so, and you’ll be out cold in three or four minutes.”
“Roger?”
“What?”
“I meant what I said, before. There’s going to be a big fuss over this robbery, but after the dust settles, I think we ought to consider a reunion.” She attempted a smile. “A better one than this, I mean.”
Conroy was fussing with the hypo case and did not look at her. “You think so? Really?”
“Yes, I do— really. Look, my briefcase is on that chair over there. There are business cards in the lid. Why don’t you take one, and get in touch when it’s safe? Six weeks, six months, whatever you think best.”
Conroy’s voice was patient but a little sad. “Amanda, it might not be too cool if your business card falls out of my pocket right after I finish telling those guys how I’ve killed you. Know what I mean?”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Listen, you live in this town now, right?”
“Well, in the suburbs.”
“And you’re in the phone book?”
“Sure— there’s a listing for both the business and my home.”
“I’ll call you, Amanda. When it’s safe.”
“All right, I’ll be— oh, wow, this drug of yours works fast.”
“It’s meant to. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe.”
“I’m not worried. Not now.”
“Amanda?”
“Ummm?”
“I never stopped loving you. Did you know that? Amanda?”
She started to slide out of the chair, but Conroy caught her and eased her limp form to the floor. He thumbed one of her eyelids open— she was out.
Conroy moved quickly to finish the rest of it.
* * *
Six minutes later, Conroy slipped behind the wheel of the stolen van and started the engine by touching together the ends of two ignition wires he’d torn loose earlier. Paglia got in next to him while Everhart was slamming the van’s rear door on the last of the money bags. As Everhart climbed into the rear seat, Conroy said, “Where the hell is Gitner?” His hand was reaching for the door handle when Paglia said, “Here he comes.”
As Gitner took his place, Conroy said, “All right, last check before we go. Let’s be sure we’ve got everything we went in there with.” He went through his checklist out loud, and if any of the men thought it was a waste of time, he didn’t say so. They all knew that the prisons are full of guys who left something behind that ended up as People’s Exhibit A. Half a minute later, they were done. Conroy said, “Okay, we’re out of here,” and put the van in gear.
As they made the turn into the street, Conroy said over his shoulder to Gitner, “What were you doing in there, man? I thought you were in a big sweat to get going.”
Gitner said, a little too casually, “I just wanted to be sure them Braxton Security clowns were really out from that happy juice you shot ‘em up with. Don’t want one of ‘em getting at a phone for a while.”
Conroy was looking hard in the mirror now. “Gitner.”
The blond man stifled a post-tension yawn with his hand. “What?”
&
nbsp; “You didn’t snuff those two guards, did you?”
“No, man, I already told you we didn’t need to do that. No way they can give the cops anything to ID any of us. What am I, some kind of psycho?”
Conroy was glad Gitner wasn’t expecting an answer to that question.
After a moment, Paglia said to Conroy, “Too bad about that chick, man. She looked pretty hot. Was she really your girlfriend or something, once?”
Conroy nodded a single time. “Or something,” he said quietly. “It was a long time ago.”
Everhart leaned forward from his seat right behind Conroy. “I didn’t hear any shots from that artillery piece you’re carrying, so how’d you do her?”
“Why— you fixing to write an article for True Detective, or something?” The snarl in Conroy’s voice surprised all of them, Conroy included.
Everhart sat back quickly. “Just wonderin’, all right? I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
There was silence in the van for several seconds. Finally, Conroy said “Look, she meant something to me once, okay? So I led her down the garden path a little.” The snarl was gone now; Conroy’s voice just sounded tired. “I said that I couldn’t stand to kill her, blah, blah, but that one of you guys would do it for sure— unless it looked like she was already dead. So I told her that I was going to give her a shot of the phenylbarb, then lay her out in a way that would make her seem dead to somebody who didn’t look close. I mean, once she figured out what blabbing my name meant, she was terrified. But she was doing a lot better by the time I put that needle in her arm.”
There was a red light ahead. Conroy slowed the van, then began to speed up again as the red changed to green. “So I gave her the shot, and it went pretty much the way you saw with those two guards. She was in dreamland in about three minutes.”
A big dog was sniffing its way across the street ahead of them, and Conroy swerved deftly to avoid hitting it. He was fond of dogs.
“Then,” he said, “once I was sure she was out all the way, I strangled her.”
The Devil Will Come Page 11
