The Black Ice Score

by Richard Stark

  The toolkit came down next. Manado got it, set it on the bedspread, and then gathered in the rope as Formutesca dropped it to him. He rolled the rope into a ball while Formutesca slid down the other one. Light and shadows flickered crazily for a minute, since Formutesca was bringing the flashlight down with him, and when Manado looked up he felt one sudden instant of irrational and superstitious fear. Like himself, Formutesca was dressed entirely in black, shoes and trousers and mackinaw and gloves, and sliding down the rope there, the flashlight beam bouncing this way and that, he looked absolutely satanic, lithe and lean and dangerous.

  Manado felt the instant fear, and then he thought, That's what I look like too, and all at once he felt very good. Not afraid of anything.

  Standing beside him, Formutesca looked at his watch and whispered, “Ten after. Not bad.”

  Manado was grinning. “I'm ready to go right now,” he whispered.

  Formutesca grinned back at him. “I know what you mean. It's too bad we have to wait.” He looked around. “Well, we might as well get ourselves comfortable.”

  Manado's grin faded slowly. Comfortable. Wait. His good feeling evaporated as fast as it had come. He looked up, the top of the housing indistinct up there now that the light source was down here. All at once it seemed as though they were in a grave.

  “Sit down,” whispered Formutesca,. who had already done so. “I want to switch off this light.”

  Manado sat down, and Formutesca switched them into darkness. They had had to leave the housing open up there, and damp, cold air was settling in. Manado shivered.

  4

  Patrick Kasempa couldn't sleep. It was the usual thing. He sat in the small room at the rear of the top floor, what he called his insomnia room, and he played hand after hand of solitaire. He never cheated, he rarely won, and he kept track of his record on a notepad he kept just to his right on the tabletop.

  He never had insomnia at home in Tchidanga, never. It was the climate that did it; he'd known that for years—the clammy climate of Europe and North America affected him badly. He always had insomnia when he traveled north from Dhaba. Only in the soft nights of the tropics could he find normal sleep.

  Another two months of this. He didn't know if he could last; he wasn't sure how much longer he could take this. Joseph had made his move too early, that was obvious. He should have waited another three months before starting; he should have organized his timetable better. The result was, here they were, seven hundred thousand dollars' worth of diamonds in their possession, sitting here like monkeys in a treetop waiting for some hunter to notice them and shoot them out of the branches. It was enough to keep a man awake even if he didn't have insomnia to begin with.

  The answer was, Colonel Joseph Lubudi was a stupid man. And the Colonel's sister Lucille, whom Kasempa had married out of misplaced ambition, was as stupid as her brother or they wouldn't be here now. No, the two of them would be in Acapulco at this very minute with the diamonds, rich and anonymous and safe. And asleep.

  But no. They had to stay here in New York, this ugly city, this clammy graveyard, the whole city dank and gray. It's a wonder anyone could sleep in a place like this. They had to stay here another two months; they had to wait for Lucille's stupid brother to make his stupid move, to be caught, to be torn to pieces by an enraged mob and the pieces to be buried in some potter's field somewhere. Then they could go to Acapulco, not before.

  “Joseph will get away,” Lucille kept saying. “You'll see.”

  Bah.

  The fact was, Colonel Lubudi would not get away, and Kasempa knew it. The Colonel had handled this whole affair so sloppily it was a miracle they hadn't been found out yet. Would his enemies let him out of Dhaba without first counting the governmental knives and forks? Nonsense. Joseph was a dead man, and Patrick Kasempa knew it.

  But he couldn't tell that to Lucille. He could hint, he could talk around it, he could try to make her understand it herself, but if he were to directly advocate their disappearing with the diamonds, Lucille would be thrust into a dilemma of loyalties, husband versus brother, and Kasempa wasn't all that sure in his mind which way such a dilemma would be resolved.

  So there was nothing to do but wait. In New York City. Sleeplessly.

  Another hand was stuck. Kasempa sighed and gathered the cards together and shuffled them. His wristwatch said the time was two forty-five. The way he was feeling, with luck he might be able to get to bed and to sleep by four. He shook his head and dealt out a new hand.

  There was an explosion.

  Kasempa looked up, the cards in his left hand. The blackness outside the window was unchanged.

  It had been near, very near. In the building?

  The alarm hadn't sounded, so it couldn't be either the front or back door. When the building had been converted to a museum and this apartment put in for the full-time curator the place had never needed, an alarm system had been built in to help protect the place from burglaries at night. When switched on, the alarm rang a bell in the master bedroom if either door was tampered with or opened. They kept the alarm switched on at all times, and the only instances when it had rung were the two times Gonor had brought visitors to the museum, once a few weeks ago and then again just this afternoon. If the explosion had meant someone trying to break in through one of the doors, the alarm would have sounded. So if it was in the building it had to be something else.

  What?

  Kasempa put the cards down, and got to his feet. He went to the door, opened it, and stood in the hallway listening.

  Nothing.

  A door along the hall opened, and Kasempa's brother Albert appeared, sleepy-eyed but with a pistol in his hand. “What was it?”

  “I don't know. Listen.”

  The two brothers stood facing one another listening. All the brothers were physically alike, short and bull-like and broad, but faster-moving than they looked.

  Another. A sudden loud blast, an explosion. Like a hand grenade going off, or something larger.

  In the building.

  Albert said, “What the hell? It's downstairs!”

  “Come on!”

  Another door opened as they hurried toward the elevator, and their brother Ralph called, “What's going on?”

  “Stay here,” Kasempa shouted back. “We'll take a look downstairs.”

  The elevator was already on this floor, and the door slid back when Kasempa pressed the button. They went in together and Albert said, “All the way down?”

  “Of course!”

  Albert pushed the button for the first floor, the door slid shut, and they started down.

  Kasempa heard the slight sound above him. He looked up, and a rectangular opening was spreading in the ceiling. He saw eyes, hands in darkness, and something was flung in.

  A grenade!

  “No!” he shouted, recoiling. The elevator was suddenly too small. He and Albert were cramped together; neither could move.

  But the thing hit the floor without exploding. It seemed to fall apart, to break open in two halves. A faint yellowish mist rose up.

  Albert was shouting, Kasempa couldn't tell what. But he knew what that was; he knew it was gas; he knew he'd been mousetrapped and he was a dead man. He knew it, but he refused to let it be so. He pushed savagely past his brother, reaching for the buttons. He wouldn't breathe; he refused to breathe, though he had already inhaled some of it in the first few seconds after it broke open. Albert was falling over, falling into his path, his weight leaning on Kasempa's chest. Kasempa gritted his teeth, pushed the heavy weight away, and got his fingers on the buttons.

  If he could stop the elevator. If he could get the doors open. If he could get out of here.

  He could feel the nausea welling up, feel the darkness behind it. He could feel his strength draining away. He leaned on his fingers, pressing all the buttons.

  The elevator was stopping. Green kaleidoscopes were irising in around the edges of his vision. Albert had slid to the floor, his weight now leanin
g against Kasempa's legs, and the strength was rushing like blood out of his legs.

  The door slid open. He saw it sliding, as slow as eternity, with the last of his vision, saw the second-floor displays in semidarkness, saw the green kaleidoscope iris close over his eyes, felt his hands sliding down the smooth wall of the elevator. He tried to take a step, out and away, but all that happened was that his knee bent. It kept bending.

  5

  Formutesca continued to sit on the trapdoor after the elevator had stopped. He could hear the door slide open. He sat there listening, controlling himself, feeling the excitement and nevousness in him like low-voltage electricity pouring through his body. Across the way, Manado sat and stared at him. But Formutesca had no time now to think about Manado or to worry about whether or not Manado would carry his weight when the time came. He had no time now to think about what was or was not happening in the elevator, no time to think about the fact that no attempt at all had been made to push the trapdoor up. All he could think about was what was happening inside himself.

  Bara Formutesca was African middle class, and he himself wasn't entirely sure what that meant. His father was a British-trained doctor, his mother a German-trained schoolteacher, and their son was an American-trained diplomat. But what did that mean, or matter?

  When he was very young, six or seven, Formutesca first learned about the two words white men in his country used when referring to black men. One was a word that meant monkey, and that referred to the tribesmen outside the cities and the workers on the big estates and the urban poor. And the other was a word that meant something like civilized and something like evolved, and that referred to the white-collar workers and the professional men, all the Africans who had received training in European skills and who conducted their lives by European standards. In the way it was used, this second word seemed to imply also a further level of meaning, something slyly contemptible, something like castrated or tamed. It had seemed to Formutesca, as a very young child hearing those words, that between the two it was better to be a monkey than a eunuch, and ever since then he had watched himself for traces of that wildness and that brash humor that he thought of as being the essence of monkeyness.

  But his parentage, his background and his training all made him tend in the other direction toward the tamed. He was too intelligent to throw all that over—the average “monkey” in Dhaba had an annual income of one hundred forty-seven dollars and would die of one of several possible dreadful diseases before his fortieth birthday. But when he saw the bland, emasculated Africans in their blue-gray suits gliding along the halls at the UN as though on muffled roller-skates, he determined over and over again never to let that—depersonalization was what it was—happen to him.

  Could one of them possibly be here now in his place? One of those smooth-faced amiable pets? Never.

  In the dim light he saw Manado's eyes gleaming, and he suddenly smiled because it occurred to him that he and Manado were both exceptions to the rule, and for opposite reasons. Manado was a monkey trying to be a mannequin, and Formutesca was a mannequin trying to be a monkey.

  Manado whispered, “What's that sound?”

  Formutesca had heard it too. A click, and then a thudding sound, and then more clicks, and then silence. He held up his hand for Manado to be quiet and listened. Nothing happened for half a minute and then the sequence started again: the click, the thud, more clicks, silence.

  “The elevator,” Formutesca said, he didn't bother to whisper, and his words had a slight echo up and down the elevator shaft. He made hand motions, bringing the sides of his hands together to illustrate what he meant. “The doors are trying to close.”

  Manado said, “What's the matter with them?” There was something trembling in his voice.

  There was very little light here. Formutesca switched on the flashlight and shone it on Manado's face. Manado's eyes were wide with barely controlled panic, his mouth hung open, and his whole manner was startled, on the verge of flight. He seemed to be wearing hysteria like a plastic raincoat; he could be seen through it, but dimly.

  It would be no good if Manado fell apart. It would be very dangerous for Formutesca if he couldn't rely on his second man. Quietly he said, “There's something in their way. They can't close because something is blocking them.”

  “What?”

  Carefully, Formutesca said, “Probably a body.”

  Manado blinked, then shut his eyes entirely and held up a hand. “The light,” he said.

  “Sorry.” Formutesca switched it off. “Shall we go see?”

  Manado didn't answer. Formutesca, peering at him, said, “Are you ready?”

  “Yes. I nodded.”

  “I didn't see you.”

  “I'm sorry, I should have, I didn't realize.”

  Formutesca reached out and grabbed Manado's wrist. “Don't fall apart, William,” he said. “We need each other.”

  “I won't. I just don't want to be up here any more.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Formutesca lifted the trapdoor, keeping his head to one side of the opening. He wanted to be sure they were both unconscious before he showed himself, and he also didn't want to be in the line of any updraft in case some of the gas was still active. He knew it was supposed to be inert by now, but he felt a kind of vague awe toward gas and didn't trust it.

  Light columned upward from the opening, but that was all. Formutesca counted to three and then looked over the edge and down into the elevator.

  Both. One face up along the back, the other face down across the entrance, his upper half out on to the floor, his body keeping the door from shutting again.

  Formutesca turned and nodded at Manado. “Perfect,” he whispered, and was pleased to see Manado manage a smile.

  Formutesca went first, dropping lithely down into the elevator and stepping over the body in the doorway. Ahead of him was a largish room full of display cases with wooden masks lined along the far wall. Monkey faces looking at him. He felt like an initiate.

  He heard Manado land behind him. Not looking back, he moved farther into the semidarkness.

  Manado called softly, “Just a minute.”

  Formutesca turned back just in time to see Manado slit the throat of the one in the elevator. The blood looked like red paint, too sudden and thin to be real.

  Formutesca went blank. All he could do was stand there in shock and amazement. It was true they'd talked this over beforehand, he and Manado and Gonor, and decided the Kasempas couldn't be allowed to live. They would have to be killed, all five people in the building, and their bodies buried in the basement. They'd argued that out more than a week ago knowing it would be too dangerous to everybody concerned to leave the Kasempas alive.

  Still, to have it happen so fast, so casually, just a few seconds ago he'd been worrying that Manado would panic, and now, with a calm that even Parker might envy, Manado had dropped into the elevator and methodically slit a Kasempa's throat.

  In his shock and confusion Formutesca remembered when they'd found out that Balando was the one betraying them to Goma and his white mercenaries. He remembered that it was Gonor who had finally killed Balando and it was he himself who had done most of the questioning, but it was Manado who had suggested the tortures. They hadn't had to use them; the suggestions had been enough. Manado, serious-looking, studious, studying Balando with efficient earnestness, suggesting horrors he'd heard of when he was a child.

  Suddenly Formutesca knew just how many light-years he was from monkeydom. However much he might play at savagery he was a tame lamb, nothing but a tame lamb.

  Cast adrift, he invoked Parker. How would Parker act now? How would that man think? What would he be? Neither monkey nor lamb, but something better than both. It seemed to Formutesca that Parker would remain cold, aloof, emotionless, that he would be like a computer, quickly but methodically solving the problem of this robbery, moving through it like a pre-programmed robot. That's how he must be himself if he was going to survive.
This was not a joke.

  Manado was saying something. Formutesca looked at him, trying to understand, and saw Manado gesture with the streaked knife at the other unconscious man, the one across the doorway.

  Formutesca shook his head, forcing himself to move. “No,” he said. “He's mine. Get the guns.”

  Manado nodded and stooped to wipe the knife blade on the dead man's shirt.

  Formutesca's own knife was in a sheath attached to his belt and tucked into his right hip pocket He had felt good putting it on, felt like a commando.

  He'd never killed anyone in his life.

  The knife handle felt bulky and awkward in his hand. He went to one knee beside the Kasempa and then he saw he would have to turn the man over first. He put the knife on the floor, grabbed the unconscious man's shoulder and belt, and heaved him over. He was heavy and he would go only halfway, his hips then resting against the edge of the elevator doorway where the doors were recessed. Every thirty seconds the doors tried to close, recoiling when the rubber leading edge struck the body.

  Formutesca left the body lying on its side. He picked up his knife again, and with his other hand pushed back on the Kasempa's forehead exposing his throat. He kept thinking, I can't make a botch of this; I have to do it right the first time; I won't be able to do it twice.

  He held the knife against the throat. He could hear the man's breathing; it sounded as though he had sinus trouble. He knew Manado was back up on top of the elevator again waiting to hand down the machine guns.

  If only they could have gotten lethal gas. Gas murdered so much more cleanly.

  Formutesca dragged the knife across the throat. It was very sharp, but in his desperation not to have to do it more than once he pressed as though it were dull. Blood spurted out as though he'd discovered oil, and he jumped back. It was on his trouser leg, his sleeve, his hand.