Blue Murder

CHAPTER 11

“Cut me loose,” Shayne whispered.

Shayne, as usual, had been carrying a Swiss knife. She snapped out one of the blades and sawed the strips of linen binding his wrists. He took the knife and freed his ankles. They had made the bandage too tight, and he winced as he stood up.

“Who are they?” he said in the same soft whisper.

“Trouble. From the coast.”

He slid his hand inside her robe. Her heart was working hard, so her alarm was probably real. She put her hand on his and pulled it hard against her, then gave him a wry look, partly a smile.

“Money, who needs it?”

With a metallic clatter, the door to the next room slammed open.

“Maureen, goddamn it,” a voice said.

Shayne and the girl, touching, listened at the door. One of the things she had brought with her from the other room was a.38 revolver. She let him take it. He broke it open. There were two rounds, one under the hammer.

One of the men in the next room came back after checking the balcony. “Nobody.” He had a high-pitched, nervous voice, a faintly Germanic accent. “What happened with the bitch? Her car is downstairs.”

The other’s answer came slowly. “She was hot to do it. It was her idea. I came three thousand goddamn miles.”

“Somebody was smoking a butt in here, and it’s recent.” A moment later: “Pussy. Look at this here. Blood.”

On the other side of the door, the girl looked at Shayne’s forehead, where she had slugged him with a bottle. The same voice said, “Let’s get out of here. It’s off, isn’t it? We can’t do it without her.”

“Let me think for a minute. When did you talk to her?”

“Not since six thirty. Look at the bed, somebody’s been rolling on it. Do you think Frankie or them—”

“Will you wait a minute! Frankie’s been getting this short fuse, and if he found out she’s been jiving him…”

A pause.

“Cocaine. She said she’d stay straight. I don’t know, Pussy, I don’t like the looks.”

“I said to shut up, will you?”

The other, more nervous, was able to contain himself for less than two beats. “What makes anybody think they can trust this Congressman Pomeroy? I’ve seen sneakier faces, but I can’t remember where. There’s a time to be sensible!”

“Three feature films at fifty thousand apiece. Then a quarter of a million for the big one. Add it up, a total of three seventy-five in one small, easy burglary. Will you let me think?”

“I doubt it would run that high. O.K., O.K., think. But you know what? They’ll be out there at the Warehouse waiting for us.”

“There’s a way we could find out.”

“I know it, I’ve been to war movies. Somebody sticks his head out, and they shoot it off for him. And I know who’s going to be picked. Peace-loving Swenson, the boxman, who’s allergic to gunshots, who all he wants is to be left alone to practice his specialty.”

“They aren’t looking to murder anybody.”

“We need the girl, Pussy. That’s the version you sold me.”

“Right, with Maureen it would be easier. Because they know her, they’d think she was showing up for retakes. But it would be bad too, because they’d know who to look for, after. We could go back to the first idea.”

“You mean the fire.”

“To cover the bang, yeah. We had it worked out. You didn’t see the diagram we made. Sit down and I’ll draw it for you. We’ve got time.”

They had found the Scotch. One of the men drank from the bottle.

On the locked side of the connecting door, Shayne gave the girl a questioning look. She made a gun out of her thumb and index finger, pointed it at her temple and pulled the trigger. Then she shook her head, probably meaning that she had pulled out of the plan because she hadn’t wanted to be on the scene when guns started going off.

Pussy Rizzo’s voice: “Like this. There’s a separate entrance. They keep one guy there all the time, I mean all day and all night. Inside, there’s a hall and one of those big doors. Another guy there, outside the door. I was going to send Angel in with Maureen. Angel’s her boyfriend — no problem. He’d pull out his Saturday-night special and tie up the guy, then go back and jump the guy on the outside. Quietly. And you’d waltz in with your equipment.”

“And how many people are out there prowling around in the parking lot?”

“After three o’clock, a maximum of four. Maybe less. I won’t kid you. I’d rather do it that way. But there’s a back window and it’s not tied in to the alarm. They’ve got an old hoist back there, behind the screen, for deliveries. We tested it out, and it works. It’s on counterweights, you pull a rope and it goes up. Swenson. I went to the trouble to make this drawing. You aren’t looking.”

“Yes, I am. Where’s the vault?”

“Right here. The phone line’s cut by now, that’s the first thing I do when I get there. You set your charge and give me a wave out the window. I knock out the power. All right, I’ve got a Ford parked in back, and by this time it’s soused with kerosene. I ram it into the building. The minute you hear the crash, blow. We want to try and time it so everything goes up at once. You know there’s going to be a hell of a lot of confusion. Those security guys are going to be charging around on their goddamn scooters, wondering who and what. Angel and Pepe are covering you. I don’t see any reason on God’s earth why you shouldn’t go back down the hoist, out the window and get in the bus with nobody bothering you. I told you about the side gate. I cut the chain. We’re a hundred miles away by the time they know they’ve been taken.”

“Nice. And ordinarily, without this Maureen complication—”

“There are ways you can figure that. All I’m saying, let’s see how it looks, all right? I’ve laid out plenty, and I don’t feel like writing it off unless I have to. Maybe she just got nervous and got on a plane.”

Shayne and the girl had monitored this exchange with equal interest. She laughed silently. Holding out her hand, she made it shake like a poplar leaf.

Swenson said reluctantly, “Well. I’ve got debts to pay. I owe everybody. But I want a veto. If I don’t like it, I still may pull out. You’re at liberty to borrow my equipment if you want to.”

“Christ, no! I’d blow my ass off.”

“Are you sure Angel can find those doors and windows?”

“He went over the whole place. He’s a good, careful boy, a little faggy, is all.”

“The hell of it is,” Swenson said, “the reason I came in in the first place, I hear Maureen will open up for anybody, she likes it so much.”

“That’s my girlfriend,” Rizzo said philosophically.

They were leaving. Shayne went to the window and bent up one of the slats. He saw the backs of the two men go down the gallery. He recognized Rizzo from Tim Rourke’s description: dark sideburns, curly graying hair, pockmarks, a thin moustache. Swenson was shorter and broader, with a pink face. They came out from beneath the overhang and went to a Volkswagen bus, disfigured with stickers and signs. Conspicuous here, it would seem part of the landscape at the Warehouse. A third person was at the wheel. Shayne had a glimpse of blonde hair long enough to be a girl’s.

The bus moved off.

“Did you follow that?” the girl asked.

“Some of it. You and Pussy were going to score on Baruch, and you backed out. What kind of deal did you have?”

“Not good enough, I decided. Pussy’s a runner-up.”

She had been forced to stand still while they listened, but now she was moving quickly around the room, shaking herself like a wet dog or a swimmer before a race. She seemed peculiarly excited.

“Let’s do it on my bed, Mike. I feel—”

She tried to pull him through the door into the other room. He shook her off.

“I don’t want to miss this at the Warehouse.”

“A quick one.”

“Maybe later, but don’t count on it. Does this change anything for you?”

She forced herself to listen to the question. “No. I’m getting out of here in the morning back to LA, as planned.”

“Without trying to make any more money?”

“I’ll try and be satisfied with nothing. Because this is pretty heavy, right? I’ll gobble a couple of downers and go to sleep. Outclassed! Keep telling me. Because I know what’s going to happen.”

“What?”

“Somebody’s going to get killed. I won’t tell you who because I don’t want to spoil it.”

“Just be careful it’s not you.”

“Me? I’m fine. Oh, my. What’s happening?” She put her hand flat on the top of her head. “I had everything fastened down tight, and now all of a sudden I’m as high as a balloon.”