Butcher's Moon

One

Running toward the light, Parker fired twice over his left shoulder, not caring whether he hit anything or not. It was just to slow them down, keep the cops in the front of the store while he and the others got out.

It was a tall rectangle of dim light, a doorway to the basement stairs. Opening this door here when they’d come in must have triggered a silent alarm somewhere, probably with a private alarm systems company. An internal level of protection not mentioned in the plan they’d bought.

Hurley got through the doorway first. There was firing from the front of the store now, and voices yelling “Stop or I’ll shoot!” at the same time they were already shooting.

Parker went through the doorway, leaping out into space over the stairs, hearing Michaelson grunt behind him, and a thudding sound as though a sack of flour had been thrown at a wall. Parker’s feet hit the fourth step, the ninth step, and the dirt floor. Hurley was already halfway across to the tunnel entrance in the stone wall at the rear, running crouched under the low ceiling crisscrossed by black pipes. Two dim bulbs made black shadows and yellow light, and Briggs stood near the tunnel entrance blinking behind his glasses, clutching his tool kit in his hands. Briggs was a technician, he wasn’t used to excitement.

Hurley dove headfirst into the tunnel, disappearing to the knees, and went wriggling away, his shoes twisting and yanking with exertion. Parker stopped beside Briggs, grabbed his arm to get his attention, and pointed back at the stairs. “Knock it out.”

Staring, Briggs said, “Michaelson,” and bobbed his head toward the stairs.

Parker looked. Michaelson was sprawled across the sill up there, his head and arms hanging down the first few steps. He wasn’t moving. “He’s finished,” Parker said. “We’re not. Close it up.”

“Oh, damn,” Briggs said. He was petulant and pouting, ridiculous mannerisms, but he went down on one knee, opened his tool kit on the floor, took out a metal tube wrapped in black electric tape, twisted the top, stood, and tossed it in a gentle underhand at the stairs. Before it landed, Briggs was on one knee again, shutting the tool kit.

The tube sailed over Michaelson and hit the top step next to his rib cage. The doorway disappeared in a flash of light and sound and smoke and debris. Parker was shoved backward a step, and Briggs, halfway to his feet again, was knocked back to his knees.

Smoke rolled backward at them swiftly across the room. The explosion reverberated back and forth, enclosed in the stone walls. Parker yelled at Briggs, “Come on!” and couldn’t hear himself for the ringing in his ears.

But Briggs was moving anyway. Shaking his head in annoyance, he was on his feet again and hurrying to the tunnel. Fussily he pushed the tool kit ahead of himself, and followed it through.

Parker looked over where the stairs and doorway had been, but the smoke obscured everything. And he couldn’t hear anything outside his own body, no sounds other than the thud of his own heart and the rush of blood through his veins. Turning in the roaring silence, as the smoke puffed around him, he pushed through the tunnel, twice the length of his body, twelve feet through rock and damp hard earth, and came out in the other basement, where Briggs was fussing over his tool kit and Hurley was across the way at the foot of the stairs.

“Coveralls,” Parker said to Briggs, and started to unzip his own.

Hurley called, “Come on, come on, we got no time.” “Get the coveralls off,” Parker told him. “We’ve got time to look like straight citizens.”

Hurley frowned in urgency up at the door at the top of the stairs, but he unzipped the coveralls in one fast downward motion and shrugged out of the shoulders.

Parker, stepping out of the coveralls, flung them into a corner with a gesture of irritation. Briggs, sounding surprised, said, “Don’t we take them?”

“Why? We won’t come back here, and they don’t trace to us.”

“I suppose.” Doubtful, shaking his head, Briggs dropped the coveralls he’d been neatly folding and followed Parker across the basement to the stairs.

This was a newer basement in a newer building, with concrete floor and plaster walls and the big green power plant humming to itself away on the right. They’d been coming in here every night for a week, after the old man on guard duty upstairs fell asleep in his chair, the way he always did, and they’d dug the tunnel through to the jewelry store basement in the next block. A wooden crate had hidden the hole by day, and a stack of six cardboard cartons had taken the extra dirt.

Hurley was the first one up the stairs, with Parker behind him and Briggs trailing. At the top, Hurley waited till Parker and Briggs stopped clattering on the metal stairs, then pushed the chrome door open enough to look out at the lobby. “Crap,” he said.

“What?”

“The old man’s up.”

Parker moved up to the top step, to look past Hurley’s shoulder. Behind him, Briggs whispered, “The explosion must have woke him.”

The guard in his gray uniform was down by the glass doors, peering through them, looking this way and that. Parker looked at him, and saw he was wide awake, and said, “Just cover your faces. Come on.”

They pushed through the doorway, Parker in the lead now, and kept one hand up, obscuring their faces. Parker took the two-inch Smith & Wesson revolver from his pocket and held it at his side.

They were almost to the old man before he heard them, and turned around, his eyes startled and blinking. “Who— Who—”

”Stay very tight,” Parker said. He showed the gun. “You don’t have any part in this,” he said. “No reason to get dead.”

“Holy Jesus,” the old man said. “Holy sweet Jesus.”

Hurley had the key. He went down on one knee, because the glass doors had their locks down at the base, and quickly unlocked the nearest door. He pushed it open and rose in the same movement, heading outside and across the sidewalk to Dalesia waiting in the Chrysler.

Briggs followed, holding his tool kit tight to his chest, and Parker said to the guard, “Walk over to your chair. Take your time and don’t look back.”

“Oh, I won’t,” the guard said. He carried a gun, but he knew he hadn’t been hired to do anything with it. “Now?” he said.

“Now. I’ll be watching through the glass.”

The guard walked off, staring at the building directory on the rear lobby wall. Parker shoved the pistol back in his pocket, moved quickly across the sidewalk, slid into the back seat beside Briggs. Hurley was up front, next to Dalesia. The engine was running.

“Go,” Parker said.

They rolled, and Dalesia said, “Michaelson?”

Hurley said, “He won’t be coming.”

“He got shot,” Briggs said.

Dalesia nodded. He’d been coasting a bit, waiting for the light at the corner to change to green, and now he gunned across the intersection. Moving briskly down the next block—but not fast enough to attract attention—he said, “Wounded? Will he be able to talk?”

Parker said, “He’s gone.”

“What I want to know,” Hurley said, “what went wrong? How come we suddenly got all those cops?”

“There had to be another alarm,” Parker said. “An internal alarm on that cellar door.”

“We were supposed to buy a clean plan,” Hurley said. He was angry, but it was mostly relief. “Morse guaranteed us a clean plan.”

“These things happen,” Parker said. “That could be a new system, since he knew the place.”

“They don’t happen to me,” Hurley said. “We paid Morse good money for a good plan, and we got our heads on a plate.”

Parker shrugged. They were away, it was over, mistakes happen. They had bought a plan, and a map, and an outline of the alarm protection, and a key to that building in the next block. As to guarantees, nobody could guarantee a thing like this, that was just Hurley spouting off his nervousness through anger.

The fact was, Parker wouldn’t have come into this at all if he hadn’t been strapped for cash. It was a small score, which somebody unknown to him had set up, and he wasn’t in charge of it. This was Hurley’s baby. Hurley and his friend Morse.

They rode a couple of blocks in silence, and then Hurley said, “I’m gonna go see Morse. You want to come? Dee?”

Dalesia said, “Sure. I got nothing else to do.” He spoke casually, not angry, not caring one way or the other.

Hurley twisted around in the seat to look at the two in back. “What about you? Parker?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Parker said.

“Briggs?”

“I guess not,” Briggs said. “I guess I’ll go back to Florida.”

“Well, I’m gonna see Morse.” Hurley faced front again, and sat nodding his head, apparently thinking about his anger.

Briggs said quietly to Parker, “Do you have any idea what you’ll do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m running a streak,” Briggs said. “A very bad streak. I believe I’ll just retire for a while, and wait for it to go away.”

“This is my fourth in a row,” Parker said. “I’ve got a streak of my own running.”

“Anything else on tap?”

“No.” Parker frowned and looked out the side window at the dark storefronts going by. “One thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Couple years ago I left some money behind after a job. I think I’ll go back and get it.”

“You want company?”

“I did the job with a guy,” Parker said. “I guess I’ll get in touch with him again.”