Breakout (12 page)

Pool table in the next room, what would have been the dining room, with two scruffy backless couches along one wall. And here
came Goody, out of what must be the kitchen, a beer bottle in one hand, cigar in the other.

He came out of there full of swagger, a tough guy, wanting to know what the commotion was at his front door, but when he saw
Buck he stumbled, next to the pool table, and got scared. He didn’t know yet what the problem was, but if Buck himself was
all of a sudden in Goody’s house, Goody knew it was time to get scared.

“Hey, Buck,” he said. “You didn’t tell me you were comin over, man.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Buck told him, but he didn’t bother to smile. He said, “You been in touch with Brandon Williams
yet?”

Surprise, and being scared, made Goody stupid. He said, “Who?”

Now Buck did smile, in a not-friendly way. “Think of that, Leon,” he said. “This fool here’s the only man, woman, or child
in this city never heard of Brandon Williams.”

“Oh, Brandon
Williams!
” Goody cried, acting out all kinds of sudden recognition. “I didn’t connect the name, you know, all of a sudden like that.”

“Leon,” Buck said, “go hit that fool, like he was a TV wouldn’t come into focus.”

“No, wait, Buck—Aa!”

Buck looked at him, leaning against the wall. In the front room, the college girl had sat in one of the peacock wicker chairs
and was gazing at the television set, which was turned off. Buck said, “You in focus now, fool?”

“Just tell me, Buck,” Goody begged him. The beer bottle and cigar were both at his feet, but he paid them no attention. “All
you gotta do is tell me,” he said. “You know I come through for you.”

Buck said, “Tell me about your family emergency, Thursday.”

A whole lot of lies hovered just inside Goody’s trembling lips, Buck could see their meaty wings in there, but finally Goody
wasn’t that big a fool, and what he said was, “The police scanner. I heard it on the scanner.”

“Brandon Williams is outa the box.”

“His sister, his little sister, Maryenne, she’s an old friend of mine, Buck. A
good
girl, I like her, not like this white trash here, I thought, I gotta go be there when she finds out, I gotta tell her myself,
so it won’t be that big of a, you know, a shock.”

“Reward money,” Buck said.

“Aw, no, Buck,” Goody said, because he was still to some extent a fool, “I wanna help that girl, old-friend like—”

“Leon,” Buck said, “He’s losin his focus.”

“No, Buck, I—Aaoww! Listen, don’t—Ohh!
Owww!
”

“Okay, Leon,” Buck said, “let’s see is he tuned in.”

“Jesus, Buck, he’s gonna break somethin on me, don’t do this, man.”

“Tell me your story, Goody.”

Goody looked at the beer bottle at his feet. Most of the beer had spilled onto the floor, but a little was left in the bottle,
visible through the green glass. Goody licked his lips. “Uhh,” he said. He met Buck’s eyes, wincing, and nodded, and said,
“I called her, on the cell. Her cell, from my cell. When I heard on the scanner. I went over there, you know, her place, told
her, she can’t help her brother, cops be all over her, watchin, see what she—”

“Move it along, Goody,” Buck said.

Goody nodded, quickly. “She says okay,” he said. “We both know he’s gonna call her, she’s gonna tell him, call good old Goody,
he’ll help out, get you airplane tickets, whatever.”

Buck said, “When did he call?”

“He didn’t yet,” Goody said, then looked wide-eyed at Leon, then back at Buck: “Honest to God! I figured, tomorrow morning,
I’d go over there, see Maryenne again, after her and her family get outa church.”

“Churchgoing people,” Buck said.

“I told you,” Goody said, “she’s a good girl, she’s okay, I wanna help out, I really do, Buck.”

“You want that reward,” Buck said.

Goody spread his hands. “What reward? I didn’t see nothing about no reward. If you know about—”

“Leon.”

“Buck, no! Aii! Ow! Oh,
no!
All right, Buck, I—Ow!
Gee
-ziz! I
said
right! Ow! Stop! Ow!”

“All right, Leon,” Buck said. To Goody he said, “It’s when I say all right that Leon hears it.”

“Ohhh. I can’t stand up no more, Buck.”

“We could nail you to the wall, you like.”

“Buck, please.”

“This Brandon Williams,” Buck said, “he’s gonna call his sister. Then he’s gonna call you. Right?”

“That’s the plan. That’s the plan, Buck.”

“
When
he calls you,” Buck said, “the second thing you’re gonna do is call the police, start the negotiation. What’s the first
thing you’re gonna do, Goody?”

“I’m gonna call you,” Goody said. He was very subdued now. He didn’t like the situation, but he knew he was defeated. He was
also in pain.

“That’s right,” Buck said. ’You call me first, then you can go on and do the negotiation with the law, same as you planned.
You’ll collect the reward, same as you already figured.”

Trying to look hopeful, Goody said, “And we split it, right?”

“We’ll work that out, Goody,” Buck said. “Okay, Leon, we’re done here.”

They left Goody huddled against the wall. Going through the front room, Buck nodded at the college girl and said, “You oughta
wring that out before you put it back where you found it.”

“That’s what I planned on, Buck,” Goody said. His voice was high, with a new tremble in it. “But now,” he said, “I think I
just gotta rest awhile.”

Outside, the telephone company truck was gone. Some other emergency taken care of, working this late on a Saturday night.

H
old on, Brenda,” Ed Mackey said. He held tight to her hips, felt her knees press to both sides of his rib cage, and looked
up at her grinning grimace as she concentrated on that inner rhythm, bore down, eyes staring at some point inside her own
head. “Hold on, Brenda, hold on.”

“You know,” she muttered, “you know, you know, come
along
with me, you know, you know—”

“Hold on—”

“Come
along
with me!”

“Hold oonnn!”

He thrust endlessly upward, back arched, and she shivered all over like a bead curtain. “Oh!” she cried. “You know!”

The shower stall, when they got to it five minutes later, was big enough for them both. This was one of the most expensive
top-floor rooms in one of the most expensive hotels in the city, and Brenda had been checked in here for five days now, ever
since Parker had told Mackey when he and the other two would be coming out of Stoneveldt. Mackey had kept the old motel room
for himself until Thursday, and was not registered in this hotel, was merely a visitor, because he’d known, once Parker was
out, the law would want to have a word or two with the guy who’d been coming to see Parker inside.

So Brenda was here to give him somewhere else to wait out the jewelry job, and she was here because Mackey believed, when
the cops were looking for somebody, they looked first in places at the same economic level where they’d known the guy to live
before. So let them spend a week on cut-rate motels; by the time they thought to look at someplace like the Park Regal, Mackey
and Brenda would be long gone from here.

Out of the shower, Mackey dressed in dark, loose comfortable clothes, with a Beretta Jaguar .22 automatic in a deerskin holster
at the small of his back, under his shirt, upside down with the butt to the right, ready to his hand if he had to reach back
there. He’d gotten similar gear for Parker and Williams. Rubber gloves and a small tube of talcum powder were in his jacket
pocket. He packed a small canvas bag with a few of his things, because he’d be staying with the rest of them at the former
beer distributor’s place between the job and the arrival of the fence from New Orleans. Then he’d phone Brenda, she’d pick
him up, and they’d be off. With Parker, if he wanted a ride, or on their own.

He kissed her at the door, and she said, “Try to stay out of trouble.”

“What you should do,” he told her, “is stay away from that armory. Don’t call attention.” Because he knew she liked to be
nearby when he was at work, in case he needed her. He’d needed her in the past, but not this time. ’Just stay away, Brenda,”
he said. “Okay?”

“I’ll go over there tomorrow,” she told him, “for one more class at the dance studio. I like that workout. I won’t go today,
there’s nobody there today, everything’s closed on Sunday.”

“We know,” Mackey said, and grinned, kissed her again, and left.

Downstairs, Phil Kolaski was supposed to be waiting for him in the Honda, down the block from the hotel entrance, and there
he was. Mackey tossed his bag in back, got into the passenger seat in front, and said, “Everything still on?”

“Don’t see why not,” Phil said, and drove them away from there.

It was Phil Kolaski that Mackey had gotten in touch with, when he was the outside man to help Parker put together a string
on the inside. They had studied each other very closely, looking for danger signs, and had both decided they could take a
chance.

It was like a marriage, that, or more exactly like an engagement. The two people start off strangers to each other, have to
find reasons to trust each other, have to learn each other well enough to feel they aren’t likely to be betrayed, and then
have to pop the question:

“Tom’s got a job lined up for when he gets out. He’ll want you and your friend in on it, to take the place of the guys got
nabbed with him.”

Mackey had been comfortable with that idea—if he was in this part of the world anyway, he might as well make a profit on it—but
knew that Parker would want, once out, to keep moving. He’d told Phil that, and Phil had said, “Tom will talk to him, before
they come out,” so it seemed to be all right.

Two blocks from the Park Regal they went through the intersection with the Armory on the left and the library, another heavy
brick pile from the nineteenth century, on the right. Mackey laughed: “We’re gonna be
under
this street!”

“With our hands,” Phil said, “full of jewels.”

T
he Margaret H. Moran Memorial Library was theoretically closed as of five
P.M.
on Sundays, but by the time the last patron
and the last book/tape/DVD were checked out it was usually closer to five-thirty. Then whichever staff was on duty had to
go through the public parts of the building for strays, occasionally finding one (usually in a lavatory), so that they were
lucky if they were out of there, front door locked behind them and alarms switched on, by quarter to six.

This evening, late October twilight coming on fast, the library was dark and empty at six
P.M.
, when a black Honda and a green
Taurus drove slowly by. The two cars traveled on another block to a parking garage where they entered, took checks from the
automatic machine at the entrance, left the cars, walked back down the concrete stairwell to the street, and separated. Parker
and Mackey turned left, away from the library and Armory, while Williams crossed Indiana Avenue and Marcantoni and Kolaski
and Angioni walked back to the library.

At the library, Marcantoni hunkered in front of the door while the other two stood on the sidewalk in front of him, chatting
together, blocking the view of Marcantoni at work from passing cars. There was little traffic and no pedestrians in this downtown
area at six on a Sunday.

Marcantoni opened a flat soft leather pouch on his knee; inside, in a row of narrow pockets, were his picks. Patiently he
went to work on the locks, not wanting to disturb them so much as to set off the building’s alarms.

The fire law required the door to open outward. Marcantoni pulled it ajar just enough so he could put a small matchbox in
the opening, to keep the spring lock from shutting it again. Then he put his picks neatly away, and was straightening when
Parker and Mackey approached, with Williams behind them, just coming around the corner.

The six men went into the building, closing the re-locked door behind them. Marcantoni said, “There’s wastebaskets behind
the main counter there, we’re gonna need them. There’s a lot of trash to move.”

Parker said, “Then you need shovels.”

“Right,” Marcantoni said. “I’ve got that figured out, too.”

There were three large metal wastebaskets, gray, square, behind the long main counter, all having been emptied by the staff
before they left. Kolaski stacked the three and carried them, and Marcantoni, the only one who knew the route, led the way
down the center aisle, book stacks on both sides. He carried a small flashlight, with electric tape blocking part of the lens,
and Angioni carried a similar one, coming last. They picked up two more wastebaskets from desks along the way, these carried
by Williams.

Toward the rear of the main section Marcantoni turned left to go down a broad flight of stairs that doubled back at a landing.
This led them down to the periodicals section, with its own stacks full of bound magazines and its own reading room lined
with long oak tables. “We’ll come back for a couple of those,” Marcantoni said, waving the flashlight beam over the tables
as they walked toward the rear of the section.

Back here was another counter, for checking out magazines and microfilm. They picked up two more wastebaskets there, plus
something else. “Look at this,” Marcantoni said.

On a separate wheeled metal table behind the counter were stacked several rows of small metal file drawers. Marcantoni opened
one, pulled the full drawer out completely, and dumped the cards onto the floor. Shining the flashlight into the empty drawer,
sixteen inches long, six inches wide, four inches deep, he said, “A shovel. Everybody grab one.”

They did, and moved on. In the rear wall, next to a coin-slot copying machine, was a broad wooden door marked NO ADMITTANCE.
Marcantoni handed his flashlight to Williams, then got down to one knee and brought out his picks. “This one’s nothing,” he
said.

Angioni and Williams shone light on the lock, Marcantoni worked with smooth speed, and he pushed the door open in just under
a minute. The others waited while he put his picks away and stood, then Williams gave him back the flashlight. Carrying the
wastebaskets and file drawers, they entered a storage area lined with rows of metal shelving.