Snowbound

by Bill Pronzini

  The guard shook his head, not speaking.

  A shabbily-dressed, frightened-looking woman came first into the office, clutching a handbag in both hands; behind her was another uniformed security officer, one of the two normally stationed on the floor below. He was saying, “Caught this lady here shoplifting in Household Goods. She had-”

  When he saw Kubion and Loxner and the guns they were holding, he frowned and stopped speaking. The guard who had opened the door said stupidly, “It’s a holdup, Ray,” and the floor cop reached automatically and just as stupidly for the gun holstered at his belt.

  “Don’t do it!” Kubion yelled at him, and Brodie came away from the wall, trying to get around the shabby woman, trying to keep the operation from blowing. But the guard had committed himself; he got the revolver clear and brought it up. The shabby woman began to scream. Brodie knocked her viciously out of the way, and the cop fired once at Loxner, hitting him in the left arm, making it jerk like a puppet’s; then he swung the gun toward Brodie.

  Kubion shot him in the throat.

  Blood gouted from the wound, and he made a liquid dying sound and went stumbling backward into the fronting window; the barrel of his back-flung gun and the rear of his head struck the glass, webbing it with hairline cracks. The shabby woman sprawled against one of the desks, screaming like a loon. The manager was on his hands and knees crawling behind another of the desks, and the other employees had thrown themselves to the floor, hands over their heads, the two women moaning in terror. Like ash-gray sculptures, the two office guards stood motionless. The shrieks of the shabby woman and the echoes of the shots and the sudden startled shouts filtering up from the floor below filled the office with nightmarish sound.

  There was no time for the money now, the whole thing was blown; they had no choice except to run. Brodie came over to the rear door immediately, went out onto the landing, but Loxner kept on standing by the cubicle with bright beads of sweat pimpling his face and his eyes glazed and staring at the dark-red stain spreading over his khaki uniform sleeve just below the elbow. Kubion shouted at him, “You stupid bastard, move it, move it!” Loxner’s head pulled around, and he made a face like a kid about to cry; but he came shambling forward then, cradling his left arm against his chest. Kubion caught his shoulder and shoved him through the door.

  “Stay the fuck in this office, all of you,” he yelled. “We’ll kill anybody that shows his face!” He backed out and slammed the door, turning, and Brodie and Loxner were already running on the stairs. Kubion pounded down after them. Brodie reached the lower door first and threw it open and the three of them burst outside. Two warehousemen and a truck driver were coming toward them from the loading dock. Brodie fired wide at them, and they reversed direction in a hurry, scattering. Loxner tried to drag open the armored car’s front passenger door with his right hand still holding his gun; Kubion elbowed him viciously out of the way, opened the door, pulled him back and crowded him inside while Brodie ran around to the driver’s side. There were half a dozen men in the vicinity of the dock now, but they hung back wisely, not attempting to interfere.

  The dummy armored car started instantly, and Brodie released the clutch; the tires bit screamingly into the pavement. He took the far corner of the building in a controlled power skid, went through the parking lot at fifty and climbing. At the nearest exit a new Ford had just begun to turn into the lot from the street. Brodie swung the wheel hard right and the armored car’s rear end slewed around and made contact with the Ford’s left front fender, punching the machine out of the way, spinning it in a half circle. Fighting the wheel, Brodie slid the heavy car sideways again as a Volkswagen swerved to avoid collision. The armored car straightened and began pulling away, made another power skid left at the first intersection, and all the while Kubion sat hunched forward on the seat, saying, “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch!” in a kind of savage litany.

  Three

  Smiling with his usual charismatic boyishness, Matt Hughes handed the Reverend Peter Keyes his mail through the gated window of the Post Office enclosure. “Yesterday’s attendance in church was very good, Reverend,” he said. “Your idea of moving the commencement time up to noon was a good one.”

  “I expect the fact that this is the Christmas season had more to do with the rise in attendance than the new hour,” the Reverend Mr. Keyes said. He was a short, round, benign-featured man, reminiscent of a somewhat scaled-down and clean-shaven Santa Claus: an accurate physical reflection of the inner man and of his spiritual leanings. Hughes thought of him fondly as the antithesis of the fire-and-brimstone mountain preacher of legend and fact. “But in any event, it was gratifying. One can only hope this coming Sunday’s attendance will be larger still, though I suppose one hundred percent of the able-bodied is too much to hope for.”

  “Maybe not, Reverend. I’ll make a point to remind the good people of the valley as I see each of them this week.”

  “Thank you, Matthew,” the Reverend Mr. Keyes said gravely. He was the only resident of Hidden Valley who called Hughes by his full given name. “Well, I’ve several things to attend to. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

  When the Reverend Mr. Keyes had gone, Hughes left the Post Office enclosure and came around the long counter set parallel to the Mercantile’s rear wall. The store was empty now, except for his single full-time employee, matronly and white-haired Maude Fredericks, who was stacking canned goods in the grocery section which comprised the northern third of the wide, deep room. The old-fashioned potbellied stove set to the right of the counter glowed dull-red warmth through its isinglass door-window-putting that stove in three years ago had been a very wise idea, he thought; it gave the place a kind of country-general-store flavor that appealed to locals and tourists alike-and the Christmas music added a different but no less pleasant warmth to the surroundings.

  Hughes smiled complacently and went to stand by the cardboard Santa Claus in one of the front windows. Outside the snow swirled and danced in gusts of wind like shifting patterns in a monochromatic kaleidoscope. Mountain winters had always fascinated him-the soft, fat, intricately shaped snowflakes; the trees bending under their heavy white coats, some whiskered with stalactitic icicles like strong old men braced against the winter wind; snow eddies such as those he was watching now, so capricious you felt like laughing in the same way you would at the antics of kittens. As a child, he had used to sit for hours, face pressed to window glass, absorbed in the white splendor without, and when his mother would come in and ask him what he found so intriguing, he would answer her the same way each time, a kind of game they had played: “Snow magic, Mom; snow magic.”

  At the age of thirty-two, he still retained the aura of that same perpetually enthusiastic little boy. The slope-cornered tan mustache he had worn for two years added a certain maturity to his features-as did the vertical humor lines which extended downward from a Romanesque nose and, like a pair of calipers, partially encircled a wide, mobile mouth; but his bright blue eyes and the supple slimness of his body and the demonstrative way he used his hands when he talked were prominently indicative of bubbling and guileless youth.

  Nonetheless, he was unquestionably Hidden Valley’s wealthiest and most respected citizen. In addition to owning the Mercantile, which he had inherited from an uncle ten years before, and in addition to having served two successive terms as mayor, he owned a thousand acres of mountain land lucratively leased to a private hunting club, a portfolio of blue-chip stocks, and a high five-figure bank account. He was married to a woman considered by most everyone both intelligent and enviably attractive: an equally substantial form of wealth. If he had been an ambitious man, he might have left Hidden Valley for less secluded surroundings-might have entered successfully into the larger business world or perhaps even into politics. But he was not ambitious, and he derived a great deal of contentment from his position of importance in the valley. To enhance it, he offered unlimited credit to regular customers, maintained a “banking�
� service for the cashing of personal and business checks, could be counted upon for a loan in any emergency, and regularly contributed money to the All Faiths Church and to civic betterment projects. It was, he sometimes thought, a little like being the benevolent young monarch of a very small, very scenic, and very agreeable kingdom.

  Behind him, now, the telephone began ringing distantly in his private office. Without turning from the window, he called, “Maude, would you get that, please?”

  “I’m on my way, Matt,” she answered. Her footsteps sounded on the wooden flooring, and after a moment the ringing ceased. The loudspeakers began to give out with “Deck the Halls.” Maude’s voice called above the music, “It’s your wife.”

  Hughes sighed. “Okay, thanks.”

  He crossed the store and stepped behind the counter again. Small and neat, his office was nestled in the far right-hand corner adjoining the storeroom; it contained a pair of file cabinets, a glass-topped oak desk, and an old-fashioned, black-painted Wells-Fargo safe, bolted to the floor and wall, in which he kept his cash on hand. Entering, closing the door behind him, he cocked a hip against the edge of the desk and picked up the phone receiver and said, “Yes, Rebecca?”

  “I just called to tell you we’re out of coffee,” his wife’s voice said. “Would you bring a pound of drip grind home with you tonight?”

  “I think you’d better come down and pick it up, dear. I won’t be home after closing.”

  There was a brief silence; then Rebecca said, “Oh?”

  “I have to go over to Coldville,” he told her. “I was going to call you a little later to let you know.”

  “Why do you have to go to Coldville?”

  “Neal Walker called and asked me to come. He wants to discuss some civic problem or other he’s having.”

  “Mayor to mayor, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. And wives aren’t allowed?”

  “You’d be bored, dear, you know that.”

  “I suppose I would.”

  “I’ll probably be late. Don’t wait up.”

  “No, I won’t,” she said, and broke the connection.

  Hughes replaced the receiver, sighed again, and then went around the desk and sat down in his leather armchair. He pyramided his fingers under his chin and sat that way for several minutes, lost in thought. Then, abruptly, he straightened, picked up the telephone again, and dialed a Soda Grove number.

  A woman’s soft young voice said, “Grange Electric, good afternoon.”

  “Hello, Peggy. Can you talk?”

  “Yes. Is something the matter?”

  “No, not a thing. I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “Well, you’ll be seeing me in another three hours.”

  “I know that. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

  She laughed softly. “What were you thinking?”

  “You know what I was thinking.”

  “Yes, but tell me anyway.”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll show you.”

  “Oh, yes, I can imagine you will.”

  Hughes moistened his lips, and his breathing was thick and rapid. “You know something?” he said. “This conversation is giving me an erection. I never thought a man could get an erection talking to a woman over the telephone.”

  The girl named Peggy laughed again. “Well, don’t lose it, okay? I’ll see both of you at six or a little after.”

  “At six,” Hughes said. He waited until she had rung off and then reached out almost reluctantly to recradle the receiver for the second time. Using a handkerchief from the pocket of his gray wool slacks, he wiped away a thin sheen of perspiration which had formed on his forehead; then he stood up and went out again into the front of the store.

  Over the loudspeakers, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was singing about love and faith and the spirit of Christmas.

  Sacramento

  When they were two blocks from Greenfront and he was certain they had no immediate pursuit, Brodie slowed the armored car to the legal speed limit. Time was a precious commodity, but they couldn’t buy any of it if they drew attention to themselves getting the dummy back to the rented garage.

  The alley off which the garage was located had both its entrances on parallel industrial streets crowded with trucks and vans. Brodie made the turn onto the nearest of them without seeing any sign of a police car and drove a block and a half to where the alley mouth bisected the block to the left. Kubion, watching the street in a flatly unblinking stare, said, “It looks okay; nobody paying any attention”-and Brodie nodded and made the swing into the narrow opening between two high, blank warehouse walls.

  Midway through the block, the alley widened to the right to form a small parking area; it fronted a weathered brick structure which had been independently erected between the rear walls of two warehouses. One-half of the building had a sign on it that said BENSON SOLENOID, MANUFACTURER’ S REP. The other half was the garage.

  They had left the doors open, and the area was deserted; Brodie drove the armored car inside without slowing. Kubion was out of the passenger side before the car had come to a full stop, closing the two wooden halves of the doors, barring them with a two-by-four set into iron brackets. Turning, he began to strip off his guard uniform, the false mustache and sideburns and bulbous putty nose he had been wearing. Brodie and Loxner, out of the car now, were also shedding their uniforms and disguises-Loxner one-handed, his left arm hanging useless at his side and ribboned with blood. His eyes still had a glazed look, etched with pain, and they wouldn’t meet either Kubion’s or Brodie’s; but he’d kept his mouth shut, and he was functioning all right.

  Their regular clothing was in a locked storage box at the upper end of the garage, along with the suitcases in which they had planned to carry the money. Kubion unlocked the box and took out one of the cases. Into it they put the disguises, because they didn’t want the cops discovering they had worn them, and the. 38 automatic Kubion had had tucked into his belt under the uniform jacket; the uniforms, which were untraceable, were allowed to remain discarded on the oil-splattered floor.

  Brodie and Kubion got immediately into slacks, shirts, winter coats; then they transferred the New Police Colts into their coat pockets. Loxner took off his undershirt and tore it into strips with his teeth and his right hand and bound the wound in his arm. He had difficulty getting into his own clothing, but neither Kubion nor Brodie went to help him. With Kubion carrying the suitcase, the two of them moved past the dummy car-it, too, was untraceable, and they had worn gloves from the moment it was delivered to make sure it stayed clean of prints-and crossed to the double doors.

  Loxner joined them, struggling into his coat, as Brodie took the bar away and cracked one of the halves. The area was still deserted. Hands resting on their pocketed guns, Kubion and Brodie led the way out and over to where they could look both ways along the alley. Clear. In the distance there was the fluctuating wail of sirens, but the sounds were muted, growing fainter, moving elsewhere.

  Slightly more than six minutes had passed since their arrival at the garage.

  They went to the right, straight through the block to the next street over. Kubion’s car was where he had parked it that morning, a hundred feet from the alley mouth. When they reached the car, Kubion unlocked the doors and put the suitcase on the floor in back; then he went to the trunk, opened it, removed a folded blanket, closed it again. He gave the blanket to Loxner.

  “Lie down on the rear seat with this over you,” he said. “Cops will be looking for a car with three men in it, not two.”

  Loxner still wouldn’t meet his eyes. He said, “Right,” and stretched out on the seat under the blanket, holding his wounded arm like a woman holding a baby. Brodie took the wheel. Sitting beside him, Kubion opened the glove box and took out the California road map and Sacramento city street map stored within. He folded them open on his lap.

  If the job had gone off as planned, they would have taken Interstate Hig
hway 80 straight through to Truckee and then swung north on State Highway 89-the quickest approach to Hidden Valley. But because they were professionals, covering against just such a blown operation as this, they’d also worked out a more circuitous route to minimize the danger of spot checks by the Highway Patrol. There was an entrance to Interstate 80 not far from where they were now, and they could still use that all right; it was only twenty-five minutes since the abortive ripoff, and the cops would need more time than that to organize and set up effective roadblocks. As soon as they reached the Roseville turnoff, eight miles distant, they would cut north on State 65 to Marysville, pick up State 20 to Grass Valley, and then take State 49 through Downieville and Whitewater and, finally, Soda Grove. It would double their time on the road, making the trip to Hidden Valley a minimum of four hours, but it would also put them well clear of the police search and surveillance area.

  It took Brodie seven minutes to get them out of the warehouse district, swinging wide of Greenfront, and onto the cloverleaf that fed Interstate 80 eastbound. They saw no police cars until they came out of the cloverleaf and merged with the flow of traffic, and then it was a highway patrol unit traveling westbound with red light and siren, exiting the freeway on the same cloverleaf-alerted but no longer an immediate threat. Kubion had had his gun out and hidden beneath the bottom folds of his coat, but now he slid it back into the pocket. He lit a cigarette and made sucking sounds on the filter, pulling smoke into his lungs.

  Brodie accelerated to pass a slow-moving truck. “So far so good,” he said, to break the tense silence.

  “We’re not out of it yet,” Kubion said thinly.

  “Don’t I know it?”

  “Hold your speed down, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Take it easy, Earl. You don’t have to tell me how to drive.”

  From the back seat Loxner said, “You got anything in the glove box for this arm? It hurts like hell, and it’s still bleeding.”