Plunder Squad

One

Stan Devers was walking. It was about eleven at night, traffic on the highway was light, and as he strode along the shoulder the crunching of gravel beneath his feet gave him a kind of company.

Lights up ahead—something useful? Yes. A motel. Devers smiled, but didn’t hurry, didn’t alter his pace. He had all the time in the world, unfortunately.

It took nearly ten minutes to get to the motel, a sprawled-out complex of buildings with a swimming pool, a restaurant, and a separate bar. Devers angled across the blacktop to the office and went inside.

There was a girl clerk on duty at the desk. Devers walked over to her, smiling his most easygoing smile. He was twenty-eight, tall, muscular in a beachboy way. with blond hair and a pleasant square-jawed face. He’d had a string of bad luck recently, but he still looked presentable in his sport jacket and slacks, and he only took it as his due when the girl returned his smile with warmth and some obvious interest.

Hustle the girl? No; better the original idea. He said, “Has Mr. Peabody checked in yet?”

The smile grew doubtful. “Peabody?”

“Henry Peabody. He might have been delayed.”

”I’ll just check,” she said, and took a minute to go through her cards. “Sorry,” she said. “Not here yet.”

Devers gestured toward the leatherette sofa on the opposite wall. “I’ll just stick around and wait.”

“Sure,” she said.

There were travel brochures in a metal stand near the sofa. Devers read about the Grand Canyon and other geographical celebrities, and from time to time a customer would arrive in the office and check in. Devers glanced up each time, then looked back at the photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge or whatever.

Once a drunk came in—somewhat heavy-set, fiftyish, well-dressed, florid, drunk but under control. His speech was too careful and his walk too careless, but he carried his alcohol with the assurance of long familiarity. Devers looked at him, put the brochure (”See Great Gorge!”) down on the sofa, got to his feet, and strolled over to the exit door. It was mostly glass, and he looked out at a bronze Toronado sitting out there with headlights and engine both on. But there was a woman in the passenger seat, a young redhead in a V-neck blouse, who gave him a look of flat disinterest and turned away. Devers shrugged and went back to the sofa and reached for another brochure.

The girl made a couple of efforts to strike up a conversation, during lulls between customers: “Looks like your man is really late,” that sort of thing. Devers replied with friendliness and smiles, but also with a remoteness that tended to stifle chit-chat; after a while the girl found paper work to busy herself with instead.

He’d been there almost an hour when the second drunk came in, a carbon copy of the first, except that he was carrying a somewhat heavier load. Once again Devers got to his feet and strolled over to the exit door, and this time it was a Mercedes-Benz sedan purring away out there. And no one in the passenger seat.

Devers stepped outside, looked both ways, opened the rear door of the Mercedes and slid inside. Sample cases, forms, all the paraphernalia of the traveling salesman were scattered around back here. Devers pulled a case up from the floor, put it on the seat, and got down on the floor himself. It was awkward and uncomfortable down there, but at the same time comforting, as though he were a kid again, playing a game. The engine throbbed throughout the car, and very little light came in and down to where Devers was hiding.

Three or four minutes later the drunk came back out, carrying his room key. He stuffed the key in his shirt pocket, got behind the wheel, and drove slowly around the main building and through the secondary buildings, tapping the brake from time to time, apparently while looking for room numbers on the doors going by. Devers stayed where he was, and waited.

At last the car made a slow tight turn and came to a slightly-too-abrupt stop. Devers raised himself from the floor as the drunk switched off the motor and lights. Devers’ left arm came around the drunk’s head, he caught the drunk’s throat in the crook of his elbow, and he used all his weight to pull backward and down, using the head support atop the seatback to hold the drunk’s head in position while his forearm cut off all air.

The struggle was a short silent flurry. The most dangerous thing was that it would occur to the drunk to lean on the horn, but surprise and fear and drink combined to keep that from happening. Instead, he lunged around as best he could, flailing his arms, kicking out with his feet, scratching with his fingers against the cloth of Devers’ sport-jacket sleeve. Devers kept the pressure steady, and the struggle tapered quickly away, alcohol cutting down the reserve oxygen in the body, bringing unconsciousness a little closer to begin with.

The drunk sagged, his chin against Devers’ elbow. He fluttered twice more, like a beached fish, and then he was still.

Devers cautiously released him, a bit at a time. No movement, though the drunk’s breath could still be heard—and smelled. Devers reached around him, found the room key in his shirt pocket, and got out of the car.

It was a ground-floor unit in a two-story section of the motel. Devers opened the door, then went back and got the drunk and carried him inside. Dumping him on the bed, he shut the room door, then went through his pockets. Eighty-seven dollars in the wallet, plus credit cards. Sixty-two cents in change. Nothing else of interest.

There were Venetian blinds over the window. Devers cut the pull cords loose and used them to tie the drunk’s hands and feet. A towel made a useful gag.

Next, the phone. Devers picked it up, and when the motel operator came on he said, “This is room three twenty-seven. I want to leave a call for eleven in the morning.”

“Eleven o’clock. Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.”

The Do Not Disturb card was in the writing-table drawer with the Gideon Bible and the postcards showing the main dining room. Devers went out, pulled the door shut and locked behind him, and hung the card over the knob. Then he went over and got behind the wheel of the Mercedes.

It was a diesel, the only diesel automobile sold in America. The fuel gauge was three-quarters full. Devers backed out of the slot, made a U-turn, and drove out of the motel to the highway. The city he’d left was to the east; he turned west.

A diesel accelerates slowly, but otherwise runs smoothly and quietly. Devers was impatient till he got the car up to sixty-five, but then he switched on the radio and listened to rock music while driving along.

Check-out time back at that motel was noon. When the eleven o’clock wake-up call wasn’t answered, the operator wouldn’t worry much; people do that sort of thing all the time. It would probably be shortly after twelve when the manager would finally decide to unlock the door and see what the story was. Meaning that Devers had a good eleven hours to be somewhere else. At sixty-five miles an hour, there were a lot of somewhere elses he could get to.

Four years ago Stan Devers had been an Air Force enlisted man, having been kicked out of ROTC in college because of a dislike for discipline combined with a contempt for one particular officer. He’d been a Finance Clerk, on a base where the payroll was still in cash—that kind of setup didn’t happen any more—and he’d worked out a way to take the payroll one month. He’d gotten involved with a few professional thieves, and they’d done the robbery, but things had gone wrong and Devers’ connection with it had become known. He’d had to leave, and had lived in various ways ever since. One of the other people in on the job, a guy named Parker, had sent him to a retired ex-thief named Handy McKay, now running a diner in Presque Isle, Maine, and McKay had gotten him in on a few jobs since. But some bad luck had happened over the last few weeks, and the end of it was Devers walking out of that city back there with nothing in his pockets but lint.

Well, now he had a car. and eighty-seven dollars and sixty-two cents, and a wallet full of identification in the name Matthew Dawson, and several credit cards in the same name, and a good eleven hours to go someplace where he could see about changing his luck around.

He drove west steadily until nine-thirty in the morning, and” then dropped in to a little town with a diner, where he had breakfast and phoned Handy McKay. When Handy came on, Devers identified himself and said, “I’m really ready for you to have something for me.”

“As a matter of fact,” Handy said, “I got a call about you just yesterday. Our mutual friend would like to see you.”

Devers smiled. He hadn’t seen Parker since the Air Force job. “That would be very nice,” he said.