Firebreak

7

Parker, moving, said, "Bert, on your feet, into the hall. Roy, stay on the floor, down on your face. Bert, beside him. Hands behind your backs."

They both obeyed, though Moxon mildly said, "It's no good, you know. Another couple minutes, nobody's heard from us, nobody can get through, they'll be right up here. You don't have three hours."

'That's my problem," Parker told him. Holding the Remington one-handed, he pointed at Wiss: 'Tie them." Pointed at Elkins: "Get your friends and the car. Tell them what's going on."

Neither Wiss nor Elkins bothered to speak. Wiss went to one knee between the two prone men, drawing lengths of household electric cord from his pocket, tying wrists and then ankles. He started with Moxon, who lay silent, having already made the point he wanted to make. Hayes, when Wiss started, said, "Jesus, that's tight\"

"Has to be, to be any good," Wiss told him. "Everybody knows that."

As Wiss got to his feet, Parker gestured to him to move away down the hall. He left the Remington, leaning it against the wall, then said, as they walked, "How long to get into the gallery?"

Wiss looked very doubtful. "Oh, man, with this time pressure? We should've brought grenades."

"We're not leaving here empty-handed," Parker told him, "and we're not carrying out gold toilets."

"So we'll take a look at it."

As they hurried down the basement stairs, Wiss said, "Last time, once we found the door and busted into it, turned out, it had a kind of electric lock on it, you'd use a remote like for a garage door, but we didn't see any remote. Well, we didn't look that much, we were already in there by then."

They stood by the wall where the faint trail in the carpet ended. It was featureless, extending ten feet from a corner rightward to the entrance to the wine cellar, a deep narrow parquet-floored room with bottles in copper racks on the left side and a combination of racks and refrigerators on the right. Beyond the depth of a wine bottle, on the left, was the side wall to the gallery area.

Standing in the wine cellar doorway, Parker said, "It could be anything. It has to be near, but it could be anything. It could be one of those bottles, it could be you step on one special parquet tile. Or it could be something in one of these other storage rooms all around here."

'That's why we went in hard last time," Wiss said. Upstairs, a phone rang. "I was supposed to have an hour, two hours, this time around. This isn't breaking a window."

Parker moved slowly along the blank wall, sliding his hand along it. T can feel the seam," he said. "You can't see it, but you can feel it."

"A beautiful snug fit," Wiss said. "You gotta admire the workmanship."

"Can you make a hole in it?"

Wiss brought a small portable drill out of his orange coat, felt the wall, found the seam, and the drill started to whine. Ten seconds later Wiss stopped, shaking his head, stepping back. "No good," he said. Upstairs, the phone still rang. "Last time, the door was metal, but not like this. This, under the paint here, this is stainless steel."

'The wall beside it?"

The drill whined again, and again Wiss stepped back. "Concrete," he said. The phone had stopped ringing. "If I had half an hour," Wiss said, "I could make a hole. An hour to get in." He looked disgusted. "We came a long way, Parker," he said, "but we ain't getting in there."

The job was going to hell. Law coming, law in residence, Griffith the potential customer talking to the prosecutors, and a stainless-steel door. "Your firebreak works," Parker said.

Wiss said, "Larry?"

They listened to nothing. Parker said, "He's gone."

"Well," Wiss said, "he's right."

Parker said, "I know he is. Come on."

They turned toward the stairs, and Wiss said, 'There'll be some swag in the house, pay our expenses."

"Hold it right there."

They stopped, both looking up, and slowly down the stairs came Elkins, looking disgusted. Behind him, peering over his shoulder, was the guy who'd braced them up by the car. Bob. Up there, he'd been everybody's pal, just going to wait up there, not horn in on anybody's play, just wait for his former partners Wiss and Elkins to get into the lodge and back out. Now he was something else, tense and wary, crouched behind Elkins, left hand on Elkins' left shoulder, right hand showing a Colt automatic next to Elkins' right ear, the two of them stopped halfway down the stairs. 'Just hold it there," Bob repeated. "Ralph? You through that door?"

"Can't be done, Bob," Wiss said.

Parker took a step sideward, away from Wiss, but Bob reacted big to the movement, waggling the Colt, saying, "No no, pal, stay right there, I like you two together." To Wiss he said, "Whadaya mean, you can't? That's our money in there, too, you know. Or did you decide, it's easier, just get rid of Harry and me."

Not answering that, Wiss said, "It's stainless steel, Bob, in a concrete wall. We don't have the time. We got cops coming."

"Like I told him," Elkins said. He sounded as disgusted as he looked.

Bob said, "Not good enough, Ralph. Harry and me, we broke bail, we're hangin in space out here, we need that stake."

Parker said, "We'll leave it to you, it's all yours."

"Har, har," Bob said, not as though anything were funny. "Ralph's the lockman, aren't you, Ralph? Get through the fucking door!"

"I'll never do it before the cops get here," Wiss said.

"Then Harry and me, we're fucked anyway," Bob told him, "we're going down anyway, might as well have you guys for company." He gave Elkins a slight push, to encourage him to go down to the foot of the stairs. "Here's the situation," he said. "Harry's upstairs. He hears a shot, that means you birds probably outdrew me, so anybody goes up these stairs is dead. So you're here, until that door opens or the law walks in, so Ralph, you oughta quit wasting time."

Wiss gave Parker a helpless look. Parker, calm, said, "Go ahead, Ralph. Give it your best try. That's all right, just do it." Looking up at Bob, who had now seated himself on the sixth stair, he said, "Okay if I walk around? My rifle's upstairs, my pistol's in my coat pocket, I get the picture. It doesn't help me to shoot you."

The whine of Wiss's drill started again. Over it, Bob said to Parker, "I don't care what you do, just so Ralph's getting us in at those paintings."

"Fine."

Elkins hovered over Wiss, wanting to help. Parker walked around the large room, looking in the open doorways at the storage areas. At one point, when he got a little too close to the stairs, Bob reared back, lifting his Colt, saying, 'You don't have to come over here."

"Okay," Parker said, backing away. He'd seen to the top of the stairs, and the doorway was empty up there. Harry was hanging back, eyeballing the upper doorway without putting himself at risk from below.

Moving off from the staircase, Parker pointed at one of the open side doors. "Okay if I go in there? It's all sports gear, maybe they got a pair of gloves I can use."

Bob laughed. "Go ahead. You want gloves? Take 'em all." Nodding toward Wiss, where he labored at the door, he said, "I'm an art lover, myself."