Plunder Squad (17 page)

Lou Sternberg met Parker at O’Hare International. He had a disgusted look on his face, but he gave the standard greeting: “Have a good flight?”

“Yes.” Parker meant nothing by the word; it was simply a sound that ended that topic.

They walked down ramshackle corridors forever, as though in somebody’s troubled dream, and came out at last to a rainy night, with small lights reflecting off the wet blacktop. Sternberg opened his black umbrella, and pointed: “I’m parked over that way.”

It was still a fairly long walk. In addition to his umbrella, and his usual raincoat and cap, Sternberg was wearing rubbers on his shoes and a gray scarf around his neck. It was impossible to tell if he was disgusted by the job going sour or by the rain.

The car was a rental Chevrolet. Sternberg unlocked it, and Parker got in. Sternberg backed in, closing the umbrella as he came, and maneuvered awkwardly to get the umbrella into the back seat without poking anybody’s eye out.

Neither of them spoke till Sternberg had the car moving cautiously toward the terminal exit. Then he said, “You see where Tommy got off?”

Parker looked at him. “When?”

“Heard it on the radio coming out.” Sternberg grinned and shook his head. “The advantage of being a hippie,” he said. “So many organizations came out on Tommy’s side, so much talk about police harassment, they had to let him go. If they’d had him in there for running a red light, they could have beat on him for a month. But a felony gets too much publicity.”

Parker frowned and said, “What about the troopers’ ID?”

“Who’s going to believe two cops against one long-hair kid? You look at Tommy, now; would
you
believe he was a heist-man?”

“The girl, too?”

Sternberg nodded. “Both of them, free as air.” Ahead of him, a taxi failed to yield the right of way; Sternberg had to hit the brakes hard, and the rear end would have skidded on the wet pavement if he hadn’t moved the wheel slightly. “They let any damn body drive,” he said.

Parker waited till they were clear of the terminal before saying, “Our situation is bad.”

“I got that idea from your call. Trouble with Griffith?”

“He’s dead. Killed himself when he thought we’d been caught.”

“Good Christ.” Sternberg frowned out at the traffic through the moving windshield wiper, as though the answer to some question might be found written on the side of a passing truck.

“We found one guy Griffith was dealing with, in New York. But he’s only interested in six paintings.”

“For how much?”

“Sixty thousand.”

“Twelve thousand apiece.” Sternberg shook his head, his expression bitter. “Well, it wasn’t worth the trip,” he said, “I can tell you that much.”

“It wasn’t for any of us.”

“I came farther.”

Parker shrugged.

Sternberg grumbled a minute, then turned and said, “What about the rest of them? Fifteen of the damn things.”

“We talked it over,” Parker said. “Mackey and Devers and me. We’ve got to give them up.”

Sternberg looked both shocked and disgusted. “Give them up? There’s ninety thousand riding there!”

“Nobody to collect from.”

“What about insurance companies?”

“You want to stick around and deal with them?”

“God damn it,” Sternberg said, and glowered out at the traffic.

“Neither do the rest of us,” Parker said.

“I hate insurance companies,” Sternberg said. “They’re goddam thieves.”

“I know.”

“We’d be lucky to get twenty cents on the dollar.”

“More likely to get picked up in a trap,” Parker said. “Besides, what do we do with the paintings while we dicker?”

“So we give them back.”

“And take our twelve thousand,” Parker said, “and go home.”

“Christ.” Sternberg shook his head. “This has not been a good year for me,” he said.

Parker said nothing.

Parker was on a deck chair by the lake, letting the sun dry his body. Summer was nearly here, and the empty houses around the lake were beginning to fill up; motorboats droned most of the time now, and curious faces were starting to be everywhere. Soon it would be time to take Claire and go somewhere else until the fall.

This was Claire’s house, but she’d picked it with Parker in mind. For most of the year, the area around the lake was as good as a ghost town, with the privacy that Parker preferred and had always found before this in resort hotels. Only in the summer did the place take on the look and feel of a normal community, surrounding him with the questions and prying that the straight world thought of as natural.

It was only too bad the art heist hadn’t worked out as well as it should. He and Claire would use up Renard’s twelve thousand and more during their two months away from the house.

Parker heard the sliding door open, and turned to watch Claire walk across the lawn from the house. He enjoyed watching her; she kept being new, and that was a rare thing in a woman.

She said, “There’s someone on the phone for you.”

That would be Mackey. “Thanks.”

As Parker got to his feet and draped the towel over his shoulders, she said, “I took it on the bedroom phone.”

“Right.” He padded barefoot across the lawn to the house, and went through the sliding doors into the bedroom, where the telephone receiver was lying on the bed. He picked it up: “Hello?”

“I’m here.” Mackey’s voice.

“Fine.”

“I called our friend, and he wanted to meet tonight.”

Mackey was in New York with the six paintings for Renard in the back of a stolen pickup truck. The rest of the group had separated, Sternberg to Boston and Devers to Los Angeles and Tommy and Noelle to Cleveland, leaving Parker and Mackey to finish the deal with Renard and send them their cash.

And Renard apparently wanted to make the switch right away, tonight. “That’s good,” Parker said.

“How long will it take you to get here?”

“An hour and a half,” Parker said. Looking through the glass doors toward the lake, he saw Claire walking this way. “Make it two and a half,” he said.

Parker sat in the passenger seat and watched the dark side streets go by. Mackey was driving the small truck, a red Ford Econoline van, with the six paintings stacked in the back, still in their protective crates, and covered by a tarp.

It was a little before midnight, and they were following Second Avenue south through Manhattan. Until 34th Street they’d been in pretty heavy traffic, but then most of it had peeled off for the Midtown Tunnel to Queens and Long Island, and the rest had dropped off one by one until now, south of 14th Street, they were just about alone. Two cruising taxis, dome lights lit, and one slow-moving police car were quickly left behind.

Parker said, “This is a beautiful setup for a hijack.”

Mackey grinned at him in the dark. “From Renard? You kidding?”

“This isn’t his kind of neighborhood.”

“He needed a place we could drive the truck into.” Mackey raised his right hand to make a limp wrist, and spoke in an exaggerated falsetto. “This place is owned by a
friend
of his.”

Parker glanced over his shoulder. There was no partition between him and the cargo area. He said, “I’m going to get in back.”

Mackey looked thoughtful. “You really think Renard might pull something?”

“No. But I’m running a string of bad luck.”

Mackey shrugged. “Go ahead, then.”

Parker slid out of the seat and worked his way back past the paintings to the rear doors. They had small square panes of glass in them, he could see the two empty cabs jockeying for position a block back. Turning the other way, he could look over the tops of the painting crates and past Mackey’s shoulder at the street in front. He had to stand crouched, bracing his back against the side wall. In that position, he took his revolver from under his jacket and held it loosely in his right hand—a .38 Special Colt Agent with a hammer shroud, a new gun that had only been fired five times, for sighting-in.

When Mackey made the right turn onto the side street, Parker kept turning his head back and forth, watching front and rear, waiting for movement from anywhere. It was a narrow street, reduced to one traffic lane by the solid row of cars parked on each side. Midway down the block the unlit lumberyard sign could be seen, but not clearly read; the streetlights were widely separated, and little light reached the street from the tenement windows.

It was a block of mixed residences and businesses. Besides the lumberyard, contained in a fairly narrow five-story building, there was a liquor store, a Spanish grocery, a dry cleaner’s and a children’s-wear store scattered amid the brick and stone tenements, all of them closed.

There were no pedestrians moving, and no other cars in motion. Mackey reached the lumberyard, turned, and came to a stop facing the closed corrugated garage-type door. He honked once, according to the agreed instructions, and immediately Renard himself appeared in the headlight glow from the office door just to the right. He was squinting and blinking in the light, and looked very nervous. He gave a jerky wave of the hand, went back inside, and a few seconds later the electrically controlled garage door began to slide up.

Parker, resting his gun hand on top of the crates, peered forward into the lumberyard building. An empty concrete floor extended well back, flanked on both sides by deep bins full of wood. Toward the back were stacks of sheetrock and building materials, and along the rear wall was the bench saw. No one was in sight.

Parker turned around to watch the street again. Still nothing. The truck moved completely into the building and stopped, and the garage door could be heard coming down again.

“Looks okay,” Mackey said.

Parker looked to his left, through the glass toward the office. The three men who came running out of there were all carrying handguns, and none of them was Renard.

“Reverse! Get us out of here!”

But it was too late; the door was sliding down over the exit. Mackey shifted into reverse and tromped on the accelerator, and the truck squealed backward and slammed into the bottom of the door, which had come down just far enough to cover the truck’s rear windows. The door stopped moving, and the truck engine stalled when Mackey’s foot was knocked off the accelerator by the jolt.

Parker had been knocked off his feet. He got up quickly behind the crates again, and Mackey was staring out the front of the van, clawing for his own gun and shouting, “Which way are they coming?”

“On the right.”

Mackey shoved open the door beside him on his left, looked to his right, and three or four shots smashed the right side window, punched into Mackey, and drove him backwards out the door he’d opened and onto the concrete.

Parker waited. They’d been driving with the windows shut, but now with one window smashed and the opposite door open he could hear voices from outside:

“You get him?”

“We all got him.”

“See is he dead. Harry, get that faggot out here.”

Someone ran across the front of the van. Parker saw his head through the windshield, but did nothing.

“He’s dead!”

“There was supposed to be two of them. Where the hell’s the other one?”

Parker waited, the revolver atop the crates, pointing toward the front of the van.

“He come in alone.”

“Renard? Where the hell is—? Get him over here, will you?”

“I don’t—I don’t want to be—” That was Renard’s voice, terrified out of its wits.

“Shut up. There was supposed to be two of them, right?”

“They said—he said—”

“Well, only one showed up. Harry, George, go on outside, keep an eye open. They might have had an idea about this.”

“Right.”

“Can I go now?” Renard again.

“Let’s just see about the merchandise first. Maybe they were cute, maybe the second man has the stuff.”

“What am
I
supposed to—”

“Get in there. Take a look, see is it all there.”

“I don’t want—”

“Get
in
there.”

Parker crouched behind the crates. He felt the van rock slightly on its springs, metal scraping against metal up behind his head where door and truck were jammed together, and then Renard, twitching and terrified, was making his way around the passenger seat and into the cargo area.

Parker let him get all the way in, let him start to lift the tarpaulin; then he stood up and leaned forward, pushing the revolver into Renard’s face, whispering, “You scream and we’re both dead. But you first.”

Renard went white, and began to slump toward the floor. Parker reached his other hand over, grabbed Renard by the hair, yanked upward hard. The pain cut through Renard’s need to faint, and his eyes got their focus back again. He stared at Parker like a bird staring at a snake.

A voice from outside: “Is it all there?”

Parker whispered, “Tell him it’ll take a minute.” When Renard did nothing, Parker shook his head by the hair to attract his attention. “Tell him! It’ll take a minute.”

Still staring at Parker, Renard called over his shoulder, “It’ll take, uh—It’ll take a minute.”

“Why?”

“You have to check inside one crate.”

“I have to check inside one crate,” Renard called.

“Well, snap it up.”

With the hand holding his hair, Parker pressed Renard down till he was kneeling beside the crates. Parker crouched facing him, let go of his hair, and whispered, “What is this? This isn’t your idea.”

“I didn’t want to have anything—”

“Keep it down. And forget that other stuff; just tell me what’s going on.”

Renard licked his lips, and gave the crates a frightened, resentful look. “This is all Leon’s fault,” he whispered. He was being petulant through the fear.

“Griffith? He’s dead.”

“He needed money.” Now the resentful look was turned toward Parker. “For you people.”

“And?”

“He wanted to borrow from me. I couldn’t do it, I, uh . . . My own financial situation wasn’t—”

Parker shook his head in impatience. “What happened?”

“I sent him to some people I knew. To loan him the money.”

“Mob money.”

“I don’t know, I—” Renard glanced over his shoulder toward the front of the truck. “I suppose so.”

“After Griffith killed himself,” Parker said, “they came to you to get the money back.”

Renard nodded.

“And you gave them us instead.”

“They wanted you. They wanted the paintings.”

From outside, the leader’s voice called, “Renard, what the hell are you doing?”

“Tell him you need help.”

Renard’s eyes widened. Shrilly, he whispered, “I don’t want to die!”

“Nobody does. Tell him you need help.”

The van rocked on its springs again. Somebody was leaning his elbows in on the passenger seat, looking around the edge of the seat toward the darkness at the rear of the truck. The only light source was still the van headlights, illuminating the interior of the lumberyard but leaving the cargo area of the truck almost totally dark.

“Renard? What’s going on?”

Parker pressed the revolver barrel into Renard’s side.

“I—I need some help here. With the, uh, with the crates.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

From the voice, it was the leader himself climbing in over the passenger seat, coming this way. Parker waited, his left hand on Renard’s right arm, his right hand holding the gun.

“What’s the problem?”

Parker raised himself, extending the revolver out at arm’s length across the top of the crates to be sure the other guy saw it in the poor light in here. Barely above a whisper, he said, “The problem is, you’re dead if you open your mouth.”

The guy was a professional: heavy-set, medium height, wearing a dark zippered jacket and dark shirt. He was about forty, with a heavy jawline and eyes that didn’t waste time with surprise. He looked at Parker and said, “So there you are. You come along after all.”

Parker said, “Call to someone to come drive the truck forward. Say it’s so you can open the rear doors.”

“And if I tell you to go to hell?”

“You’ll go there first. Call to Harry.”

The guy looked puzzled. “Harry? Why?”

“Because it’s a name I know.”

The puzzlement lasted a few more seconds, and then he
nodded and said, “Yeah, I see. I call a name that doesn’t match anybody out there, then they know there’s something up. I didn’t think of that, but it’s a good one.” He turned his head away and yelled, “Harry!” The sound was huge in the confined space back here, and Renard winced from it as though he’d been slapped on the forehead.

From outside a muffled voice called back, “What?”

“Come drive this truck forward a little, so we can open these doors!”

“Right!”

Parker whispered, “Don’t get yourself killed.”

The guy gave him a flat look. “Not me,” he said. “You.”

His voice trembling, Renard said, “I’m in the middle. I don’t want any of this.”

They both ignored him. They kept watching one another’s eyes, and a minute later Harry climbed into the driver’s seat and called back, “You need any help back there, Al?”

Al was facing the rear of the truck. Without turning, without moving his eyes from Parker’s, he called, “No, everything’s fine. Just move the truck.”

They all waited, Renard trembling, crouched back against the side wall like a reluctant referee between the other two. Harry started the engine, and the truck lunged forward, then moved more slowly, then stopped. “That okay?”

Parker could hear a whirring sound. The garage door. Going up or down?

Al called, “Yeah, that’s fine. Go on back out front.” He was still watching Parker, and he seemed to be smiling a little.

Parker fumbled behind himself for the inside latch, found it, pressed down, shoved backward. With a grinding sound, both doors popped open, and Parker jumped backward to the concrete, as Al ducked behind the crates, shouting, “He’s going out the back! Get him!”

The bottom of the garage door was a foot from the floor, and still going down. Parker fired at a moving figure to his right, wasted a shot at the interior of the truck, and leaped to his left. Coming around the corner of the truck, he found an open-
mouthed Harry just climbing out. Parker fired, Harry fell on the body of Ed Mackey, and Parker jumped over the both of them, ran around the front of the truck, and found Al and two others blocking the only exit, through the office. Renard wasn’t in sight, but he didn’t matter anyway.

Two shots were fired at him, but Parker had ducked back against the front of the truck again. He spun back, swung around the open driver’s side door, put a foot in the middle of Harry’s back, and stepped into the seat behind the wheel. Harry had left the engine running; Parker shifted into drive, accelerated to the far end of the long room, slammed on the brakes to stop just before running into the bench saw, shifted into reverse, put the accelerator on the floor, and twisted around in the seat to watch the garage door rushing this way, seen through the open rear doors. Renard, still in the back of the van, was screaming and waving his arms the other side of the crates, but Parker ignored him.

Parker was braced, one arm around the seat, the other hand on the steering wheel for guidance, both feet pressed flat on the floor, but it was still a jolt when the van crashed into the metal door. Renard was flung off his feet into the door, and the six crates slid rasping after him, thumping indiscriminately into Renard and the door.

The corrugated metal had bent, but it hadn’t broken. Parker shifted into drive again, and the van spurted forward, the crates and Renard spilling out onto the concrete in its wake.

The garage door wasn’t going to give. And now that the crates were all over the place back there it was impossible to get another clear run at it anyway. And the open floor area was too narrow to turn the truck around in. Parker reached the far end, skidded to a stop an inch from the bench saw again, shifted into park, and looked back through the truck to see the three men running this way. He fired twice, hit nobody, and they all scattered.

They had the front, with the only way out. This was a solid concrete block wall back here, extending twenty-five feet up to the ceiling. There were lumber bins all the way up on both sides,
with ladders and walkways. But he wasn’t going up; he wasn’t about to tree himself.