Plunder Squad (18 page)

Directly ahead of him through the windshield was the bench saw, and to the left of it three cardboard boxes full of the bits and pieces of wood left over from sawing. Parker put his gun away under his jacket, opened the truck’s glove compartment, and found four pieces of paper in it: the vehicle registration, a Master Charge receipt for a gas purchase, and two rental forms on flimsy pink onionskin. He rolled the papers into a tube, lit one end, bent it down to get the flame going good, and then rolled the left window down and tossed the burning paper into the nearest cardboard box.

“Hey, you!”

A voice from the front end of the room. Al. Parker glanced back and saw no one; they were keeping under cover. He called, “What?”

“We don’t care about you. It’s just the paintings we want.”

Even if that had been true in the beginning, it wouldn’t be true now. But Parker needed time, and the way to fill it was with talk. He called, “Prove it, then.”

“Sure, Mac. What do you want us to do?”

“Open the garage door.” Parker looked at the cardboard box. It was only half full, and he couldn’t see the paper inside it. There’d been a wisp of dark smoke at first, but nothing now.

“What do you think, we’re crazy? What if a cop car goes by, sees all this shit all over the floor?”

Another voice yelled, “You couldn’t back that truck out anyway.”

Had the paper gone out? Maybe he should rip off some of the lining of his jacket, use that. He called, “What do you want me to do?”

“Just walk out,” Al yelled, with elaborate innocence. “We don’t care about you, like I said. Just the paintings.”

“How can I believe you?” Was that smoke? White smoke this time.

“Why should we care about you? We never saw you before. We’re not killers, pal, we’re just here for the paintings.”

The second voice called, “Yeah, we’re art lovers.”

Smoke was coming from the cardboard box, but it was too slow to build. Parker opened his jacket, ripped a panel of lining out of the left side, while he called back, “Come out and put your guns down. Then I’ll walk out.”

“Oh, no, Mac. Now you want
us
to trust
you
, and we don’t have to. All we have to do is wait you out.”

The cloth didn’t want to burn. Was it some goddam fiberglass or something?

The second voice yelled, “Or starve you out. We got all the time in the world.”

The lining caught all at once, and Parker was holding a handful of flame. He leaned way out of the window, and tossed it into a second of the cardboard boxes.

“What the hell!”

“What’s he doing?”

Shots were fired; Parker pulled his arm back inside. They were yelling at one another back there, and a few more bullets hit the truck.

Smoke puffed up from the second box, and then a fist of orange flame.

Parker shifted into reverse, angled back to the left, shifted into drive, moved up till the truck body covered the burning boxes from the three guys at the other end of the room. Parker slid out on the right side, grabbed a couple of one-by-twelves leaning against the wall beside the bench saw, laid them flat over the second box, with a space between. The flames shifted at once to smoke, but with smaller flames still working underneath. The fire wouldn’t go out, but now it would give plenty of smoke.

They were still yelling back there, and still firing an occasional shot, but they couldn’t seem to find anything coherent for them all to do. Smoke billowed up toward the ceiling, spread out through the air, and now the first cardboard box was also flaming up.

Parker kept most of his body covered by the front of the truck, and reached in through the driver’s window to push the
gear lever one notch from park to reverse. The truck at once began to roll backward, at about five miles an hour, and Parker walked along with it.

The place was filling with smoke. Already his eyes were burning, it was hard to keep from blinking, hard to make out details in what he was seeing. He moved to his left, to the right side of the truck, and saw one of them hurrying forward from cover, assuming Parker to be at the wheel, and that therefore it was safe to come up on the right side of the truck.

Parker dropped him with one shot, moved out to his left, crouched, and made a run straight for the office door. Behind him, the van bumped into one of the crates, pushed it sluggishly a few feet, and stopped.

Al appeared in the office doorway, blinking in the smoky air, pushing his gun out ahead of himself. He and Parker both fired, both missed, and then Parker ran into him in the doorway and Al went crashing back into the customers’ counter. Parker shot him, turned around, and fired twice at the last one, running this way from cover on the opposite side of the garage door. The guy dropped behind a crate and fired back, but there was no reason to worry about him now; the street door was to Parker’s back, with nothing between him and it except Al, sitting dazed on the floor, clutching his stomach and looking at nothing at all.

The entire rear wall of the building was aflame, writhing orange ribbons up the face of the concrete block, fire leaping from bin to bin. There was a growing crackling roar, and a quickly building heat. Parker stared at the six crates in the firelight; the other fifteen had been given back with an anonymous tip, and now these six were gone for good. Forever.

Parker turned away. When he opened the street door a wind shoved it open the rest of the way, pushed against his body, rushed past him to feed the fire. He went out, looked both ways, turned right, started walking.

Two blocks later he heard the sirens, but they came to the fire from a different direction, and didn’t pass him. A block after that he found an empty cab to take him to where he’d parked his car.