Scarlet Night (27 page)

Every step toward the wheel on the house side made breathing more difficult. One flat tire ought to be enough. But Michael had said two. Then, through the small window alongside the front door and through the glass of the vestibule door, she saw the two figures across the vast living room. The one with the limp was Michael. There was the glint of metal in his hand. The two figures disappeared from her sight on the far side of the open study door. They would be alongside the stairway.

The tire was never going to be flatter. A plane motor sounded overhead. But no sound from within the house. She waited in the shadows and watched through the window. She smothered the dog with affection. Time: the thump of her heart, the whoosh of the dog’s tail, the tick of her watch when she held it to her ear. Someone came into the vestibule. It was Rubinoff. He brought two suitcases. Julie fled to the shield of the nearest bushes, but he did not come out. She saw movement again there presently, but from that distance could only surmise that it was Rubinoff again with the other two suitcases. She had trouble now keeping the dog with her. He ran off finally and did not return at her whistle. He could well be going in the dog door unless Michael had blocked it from inside. She counted slowly to one hundred and then back down to one. Not a sound came to her from the house. She left the bushes and approached the car again, staying on the far side of it.

A bright light came on in the vestibule and she saw Alberto.

O’Grady tried to take his mind off the fact that he had to urinate. He knew the trouble was with his nerves, not his bladder. But the more he tried, the more painful the condition. The girl and the two of them had been gone twenty minutes. It seemed much longer. He was sure Michael had underestimated the time it would take them to get into the house. There was no telling how much longer it would take them. He had to take a chance and do it quickly.

He started the car motor, left it running, and left the car door open while he went to the edge of the woods. For all his urgency, he couldn’t get started, his mind and his eyes on the gate. He turned his back to it. In time to see two bicyclists come around the curve in the drive. Youngsters, their bikes pint-size. The devils kept coming and would not turn back. Boys. With the car door open and the light on, they would want a look inside. Let them. He’d go out and speak to them, and if they were like himself at their age, they’d know damn well what he’d been doing. Finished, he stepped out of the woods. But at that instant, the gate started to open and he had to make a run for the car to get it in the grounds before the gate closed on him again. Fifty seconds. He glanced back to see that the kids had abandoned their bikes and taken to their heels down the road.

Julie had watched Alberto open the cabinet and press the switch that opened the gate to O’Grady. He unbolted and opened the front door and came out to watch for the approaching car. Julie went to him. “Is it all right?”

His eyes were wild. He went back and pressed the gate signal again. Julie looked down the road. The car lights came on. Then she heard the motor. O’Grady was on his way in. The four suitcases stood where Rubinoff had left them. Without a word to Julie, Alberto returned to the study.

The dog came racing out of the semi-darkness and leaped over the suitcases into the house. There was no use pretending she was any less involved by staying outdoors. Julie went inside and, at the study door, saw Rubinoff and Campbell standing with hands to the wall alongside the open vault. Michael held a gun on them. The dog was leaping up on Campbell, trying to get attention. He tried Rubinoff, then noticed Michael.

Julie hardly knew what happened to her: a bolt of rage when she heard a click she knew to be Michael’s release of the safety catch on his gun. She felt the scream in her throat while she plunged in front of Michael and grabbed the dog. She got hold of his collar and dragged him away. The two men at the wall may have moved. Michael shouted at them. She didn’t know or care, only that she was pulling the dog to safety. She looped the strap of her bag into the collar. Alberto was with her. She hauled the dog outdoors where Alberto opened the door to Rubinoff’s car. The dog got in when she did. Julie managed to get out again and left him confined there. She was shaking badly.

Alberto put his arms around her awkwardly and held her for a moment. “I don’t think he’d have done it.”

Julie knew differently, but she got hold of herself.

O’Grady stood gaping at them. “What the hell’s happened?”

“It’s all right,” Julie said.

“The suitcases are in the hall,” Alberto told him. “Better load them quickly.”

They were all three on the steps when the sirens began to wail in the distance.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” O’Grady said and grabbed two of the suitcases.

Alberto returned to the study, Julie paused at the door.

Michael ordered: “You, fat boy, put your hands behind your back. Do it slow.”

Poor, quivering Rubinoff took his hands from the wall, clasped them over his head like a clown in a ballet, and brought them down as far as he could behind his neck.

“For Christ sake, put your hands on your rump,” Michael shouted at him. He handed Alberto a set of handcuffs.

The sirens persisted.

The phone on the desk started to ring as Alberto put the cuffs on Rubinoff. It kept ringing, four, five, six, seven…

“Where’s O’Grady?” Michael wanted to know.

“Loading the car,” Julie said.

“You get out of here, miss,” Michael said. “Get in the car and stay there.” To Alberto he said, “What’s the sirens about?”

Campbell answered him. “They’re coming for you, man. You’ll never make it.”

“Shut up, you.” To Alberto, about to give him the other set of handcuffs, Michael said: “Answer that phone like you were a servant or something.”

Alberto picked up the phone: “Mr. Campbell’s residence.”

The message was cryptic. No questions. Alberto said, “Yes, sir,” a couple of times.

O’Grady came up to where Julie lingered in the doorway.

Alberto hung up the phone and said, “The police want the grounds evacuated. They suggest by boat instead of using cars. They want to keep the road open for emergency equipment. There may be more dynamite.”

Silence.

Then O’Grady said, “Oh, Jesus Christ.” In his mind’s eye he saw the two youngsters running, as for their lives, past the spot of the previous demolition. “It’d be a false alarm, I think,” he said, his voice a croak. “I was taking a pee and some kids saw me run for the car when the gate opened. I scared the hell out of them.”

Campbell’s hands slipped on the wall as his shoulders heaved. The man was laughing.

“I wouldn’t laugh, mister. Get in the vault,” Michael said. “O’Grady, get him in there. See if you can do
that
right.”

Alberto got out of the way, coming out to Julie. “Nobody’s going to get hurt,” he said.

Julie shook her head. What in hell had she expected?

There were other sirens now, coming closer. But anyone trying to get through the main gate would have trouble until someone opened it from within the grounds.

O’Grady and Michael came out of the study. “You’re supposed to take orders, Miss Julie.”

Julie glanced into the study. The room was empty, the vault closed. She said, “Michael, where’s the painting?”

The scar all but disappeared when his face went white.

Julie said, “You and O’Grady go. We can make it by the river. Please, Michael. I know what I’m doing. We’ll meet at the penthouse.”

Michael offered his revolver to Alberto. “Do you want this?”

Julie answered for him. “No.”

Michael limped out after O’Grady and a few seconds later the Pontiac took off for the park.

Alberto found the vault combination in the desk drawer.

“I hope it works,” Julie said, but she had more in mind what she intended to say to Campbell.

Alberto repeated the combination aloud as he twisted the dials with trembling fingers. He pulled the great door open. The light inside lit automatically when the door opened. Campbell came out blinking, Rubinoff after him, his hands still cuffed behind him.

“Please stand where you are and listen to me,” Julie said. “We want to take
Scarlet Night
and the drawing with us. If we can do that, Mr. Campbell, and borrow your boat to get away in, nobody will ever know that G. T. Campbell intended to pay six hundred thousand dollars for a stolen Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing will go back where it came from in Italy.”

Campbell pulled at an ear while he thought about it. He glanced at Rubinoff, hunched beside him. The sweat had plastered his hair down, exposing the bald spot. To Julie he looked like a tonsured monk. Campbell said, “What do I get for my six hundred thousand?”

“A live dog.”

M
ICHAEL DROVE AS THOUGH
the woods would explode behind him.

“I keep telling you it’s a false alarm,” O’Grady shouted. The car would collapse beneath them if he kept it up. “And they’ll be stopping back by the stone gates maybe, waiting for the explosives experts. It’s a terrible thing I’ve put them through for nothing.”

Michael said, “You want to stop by police headquarters and tell them all about it?”

O’Grady looked at him by the light of the dashboard. ”You don’t have to be so damned sarcastic. If the girl and him don’t get the picture, where’ll we be then?”

“Costa Rica,” Michael said, slowing down a bit. “The boss won’t monkey around.”

“Mr. Romano?”

“Yeah, Sweets Romano. Did you never hear of Sweets Romano?”

“Holy God. Is that who he is?” You couldn’t grow up on the west side of New York without having heard the name. He might even own the building O’Grady lived in.

At a curve in the road they came in sight of the highway. It was jammed, cars bumper to bumper, with the whirligig lights of police cars flashing over their roofs. Michael stopped and put out the car lights while he thought for a moment. “What we’ve got to do, Johnny, is cooperate with the police. Tell them Campbell opened the back gate for their emergency vehicles. Tell them they can get through that way. You can say we work for him. Isn’t that what you went to them for in the first place?”

“Don’t rush me, Michael. I’m a slow learner, but I keep what I know. What about the girl and him back there?”

“It’s better them than us—with what we got in the back seat.”

And him with a gun, O’Grady thought. “What’ll we say’s in the suitcases if the police look in and ask?”

“Papers! Important papers Campbell doesn’t want around with this dynamite business again. You’re an Irishman. The cops’ll believe you.”

“Drive on,” O’Grady said. “I’ll be better able to talk to them than to you, sure.”

They pulled up to the pole at the park entrance. Dead ahead, on the other side of the barrier, an officer was standing outside his patrol car.

“Get the gate open,” Michael said to O’Grady. He beeped his horn at the cop, motioning him to move the car.

O’Grady hopped out, turned his back on the officer, and with one hard twist of the cutter nipped the hasp through which the padlock hung. He pocketed the cutters and hauled the pole out of the way.

The cop moved his car and Michael drove out. A fire truck, crawling along the shoulder on the wrong side of the road, pulled alongside the Pontiac. O’Grady spoke to the cop and the fireman who jumped off the truck. “You can go back rough the park there and get in by the Campbell gate. He’s ordered the place opened up to you.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” the fireman said, “as long as we can get through there.” He ran back and instructed his engineer.

“You work for Campbell?” the cop wanted to know.

“Aye. We’re taking out some papers he wants safe in New York.”

“You’re better off using the Tappan Zee bridge than trying to get through this way.”

“Why are all the cars backed up?” O’Grady said.

“There’s a jam at the traffic light. We’re trying to pull everybody out of Maiden’s End till the Ordnance boys go through the woods back there.”

“What if it’s a hoax?”

“Better safe than sorry, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, I agree. Much better.” O’Grady got into the car and Michael drove north, the road wide open in that direction. O’Grady remembered the Mustang they had left in the driving-range lot. “What about the other car, Michael?”

“You got a key for it?”

“I don’t. Alberto would have it.”

“I’ll tell you what I got the key for,” Michael said. “The handcuffs on that Rubinoff fella.”

C
AMPBELL DID NOT LOAN
them the cruiser. He took them downriver himself and put them ashore at the Seventy-ninth Street marina. Julie stepped onto the dock first. They had reassembled
Scarlet Night
in the cabin. Alberto handed it up to her.

It was more of a problem landing Rubinoff, his hands still cuffed behind his back, but hidden beneath a raincoat of Campbell’s. The coat was buttoned at his throat and, on him, ankle length. “I wouldn’t care if you dropped him overboard,” Campbell said, “if it wasn’t for the publicity.”

Before casting off, Campbell spoke to Julie. “You know, little lady, I got to hand it to you. I’m just a country boy from Texas and you slickered me proper.”

While Alberto watched for a cab, Julie called Romano.

He had just heard from Michael. They had made it across the Tappan Zee bridge.

“You do have
Scarlet Night?”
Romano said.

“You bet.”

“You had better bring Rubinoff along. Michael will be able to liberate him.”

“Mr. Romano, we had to leave the Mustang at the driving range.”

“So Michael said. You do seem to have come home in bits and pieces. I shall arrange for the rental company to pick it up. Good-bye, Miss Julie.”

In the cab, riding the jump seat, Rubinoff whimpered all the way across town, “Ruined, ruined, ruined.”

I
T WAS A QUARTER
to ten when O’Grady went up the stairs to his apartment, where Ginni greeted him a little less than tenderly.