Swag (20 page)

Stick didn't like relying on other people he didn't even know.

He didn't like Arlene knowing about them—Christ, just to add a little more to it—and not knowing where Arlene was and what she was thinking. She hadn't been home all week and he hadn't told Frank about her yet.

He told himself he was dumb. He should've stayed out of this, not learned anything about it. If he wasn't afraid of Frank and he didn't owe him anything, then why was he doing it?

Maybe he felt he did owe him something. Frank could've put him in jail, but he didn't. Shit no, Frank needed him.

He should've left for Florida. Right after shooting the two black guys, the next morning, he should've left and not said a word to Frank.

Now he was into something with three more black guys. Christ, everybody on the street, half the people anyway, seemed to be black. He wondered where everybody was going—if they had someplace to go. Or if they were out of work and just walking around downtown. It was a nice day, mid-seventies, the sky fairly clear. Maybe because some auto plants were shut down. What do you want, a job or a clear sky? He looked across at Hudson's—old, dark-red building filling the block and rising up fifteen floors, then narrowing into a tower that went up another five stories. He wondered where they kept the flag they displayed across the front of the building on some of the U.S. holidays, the biggest American flag ever made.

The Brink's truck was coming south on Farmer, the way Sportree had said it would. Stick went inside the bar on the corner. Nobody was using the phone. He stepped into the booth and made the call.

When the phone rang, Frank turned from the wall, ripped off the sheet of paper that said
OUT OF ORDER
, and picked up the receiver.

“Toy department.”

That was all he said. A moment later he hung up and nodded as he turned.

Leon Woody was playing with a game called Mousetrap, watching the little metal ball rolling through a Rube Goldberg contraption that set off a chain reaction of things hitting things that finally dropped a plastic net over the mouse. Leon Woody left the counter, carrying a big greenish Hudson's shopping bag with a doll box inside, and walked down the main aisle to the men's room.

Frank watched him go inside. He started down the aisle.

Leon Woody came out of the men's, followed by Carmen Billy Ruiz in the Air Force blue bus driver's suit and peaked cap. Frank was ten feet behind them when they went through the door beneath the exit sign.

The stairway took one turn to the fifteenth floor. None of them said anything; the sound of their steps filled the stairwell. Leon Woody opened the door and stepped back to let Billy Ruiz go ahead of him. Billy hesitated.

Leon Woody said, “Take out the piece, hold it flat against your leg, you dig? Go past the elevators, down on the right side. That's this hand here. You see the door, credit department. Don't say nothing. Nod your head, they say anything to you.”

Frank, waiting on the stairs, watched Billy Ruiz take out the gun he had given him, Stick's .38 Chief's Special. He could feel his own, the big Python, in the pocket of his safari jacket. The store was air-conditioned, but it was hot in the stairwell. Leon Woody glanced back at him and went through the door.

Frank hurried to catch it before it closed—like he didn't want to be left behind. He went out on the fifteenth floor, cutting diagonally across the main aisle, past the bank of elevators. Billy Ruiz was thirty feet ahead, taking his time. Leon Woody paused by the optical department to look at glasses frames. Frank came up next to him.

“What's he doing?”

“He's all right,” Leon Woody said. “Be cool.”

They moved on, past theatrical display boards and ticket windows, past the travel service and portrait studio. There were no customers anywhere. Billy Ruiz turned into the credit department. They were fifteen feet behind him now. A face appeared at a teller's window. The door next to the window opened. Billy Ruiz went through. Leon Woody sprinted the last few yards and caught the door. Frank went in behind him, pulling the Colt Python.

He heard Billy Ruiz say, “Turn around, everybody. I mean
every
body, get down on the floor.”

Frank saw their faces briefly, their eyes with the startled expressions, two older women and a young man. Marlys wasn't in the room. They got down on their hands and knees, the women awkwardly, and lowered themselves to the carpeting. Billy Ruiz covered them, holding the .38 straight out and down. Leon opened the doll box without taking it out of the shopping bag and set it on a table against the wall where five gray-canvas sacks were waiting. Leon looked at them a moment, then walked over to a door with a frosted-glass window and opened it a little at a time, looking in.

Marlys's eyes rose from her typewriter, but her fingers continued to move over the keys for another few moments. The door beyond her desk was open to an office where a man sat half turned from his desk, talking on a phone and gesturing with his free hand. They couldn't hear his voice. Leon Woody stepped away from the frosted-glass door. Marlys came out, closing it behind her, and Leon nodded toward the sacks.

Frank watched her walk over to the table. She paused, then touched three of the sacks and looked up at Leon Woody. When Leon nodded, she walked back to her office, went in, and closed the door. Like that, not a word.

Leon dropped two of the sacks into the doll box, then the three Marlys had indicated. Frank watched him, not understanding. What difference did it make which ones went in first? He wanted to touch Leon's arm, get his attention, frown at him or something.

He heard Billy Ruiz say, “Jesus!” Like he was sucking in his breath.

Frank looked over and saw him raising the .38-it didn't make sense—raising it up to an angle above his head.

Leon Woody yelled at him, “Hold it!”

And Frank didn't know what was going on, until he looked up, in the direction the .38 was pointing, and saw the window above the row of file cabinets and the guy outside, strapped in a safety harness with a cloth over his shoulder and a squeegee in his hand, standing on the window ledge.

The guy had been there all the time and they hadn't seen him, concentrating on the three people getting down on the floor. The guy standing there, leaning out away from the window, trying to get away from it, fifteen floors up and no place to hide.

Frank wanted to run—seeing the guy staring at them scared to death—get the hell out of here and keep running, forget it, call it off, the whole thing, like it hadn't happened.

Leon Woody said, very quietly, “Shit . . . man seen the whole show. I don't know where my head's at.” And he shook it from side to side, almost as if to make sure he was awake. He said then, “Billy—”

Billy Ruiz shot the guy twice, through the glass, shattering the pane, and they saw the red spots blossom on his white T-shirt and his head snap back, maybe screaming—there was a sound, a woman screaming—the guy straining against the harness before his feet slipped from the ledge and his legs and hips dropped away and they could see only the top half of him in the shattered window, his head hanging forward, motionless. The woman inside the room was still screaming.

Billy Ruiz went for the door and Leon said, “Walk, man, don't run. Same way we came.” Frank was right behind him, then stopped as Leon shoved the Hudson's shopping bag into his arms and took the Python in both hands.

“Let me have it.”

“What for?”

“I'll get rid of it.”

“Where you going?”

“Hey, be cool, we all going together.”

Frank didn't understand, but he couldn't argue. He let go of the gun and held the Hudson's bag in front of him, his arms around it. It wasn't as heavy as he had thought it would be.

There were a few shoppers down toward the end of the aisle, by display cases. None of them seemed to be looking this way. The rest of the aisle was empty.

The three of them were close together going through the exit door to the stairway. Then Frank had to stop. Holding the box in front of him, he almost piled into Leon Woody standing at the top of the stairs looking down, waiting. Past him, Frank could see Billy Ruiz reaching the landing where the stair made its turn.

“Go on, for Christ sake.”

Leon Woody didn't move or say anything. He raised the Colt Python, aiming it down, and shot Billy Ruiz between the shoulder blades, the explosion filling the stairwell as Billy Ruiz was slammed against the wall and slid partway down the rest of the stairway.

Leon Woody moved now. Frank watched him, his profile, bending over Billy Ruiz. He told himself to drop the box or throw it at him and get out, back through the door. He knew he wouldn't make it, though. Leon Woody was looking up, the Python in his hand pointing at him but not aimed at him.

“Come on, man,” Leon Woody said, “what you waiting for? You know where to put it, back behind. It's already marked. Then go down the fourth floor, get the escalator. Maybe I see you outside.”

Frank watched him go through the door to the toy department. By the time Frank got there, stepping over Billy Ruiz, not looking at him, Leon wasn't anywhere around.

The voice inside Frank Ryan wasn't in condition; it had gone to fat and was pretty weak when it told him he had fucked up and the whole thing was an awful mistake. The voice did get through, and in those words, but Frank barely heard it and it didn't take much to smother the voice completely. A couple of Scotches-on-the-rocks.

Stick said, “Well?”

Frank stood at the bar, between two of the bamboo stools, holding onto the drink. He heard the faint sound of a girl laughing, coming from the patio below, then silence again.

“Well what? It's done.”

“I never saw so many police cars,” Stick said. “I would say within ten minutes of the time I called, no more than that, they're all over the place, completely around the store, and these guys are running in with their riot guns.”

“Don't tell me,” Frank said. “They're waiting at the bottom of the escalator, four of them with their guns out. Anybody looks suspicious, ‘Would you mind stepping over here?' They're going through packages, searching people, even women.”

“How'd you get out?”

“How'd I get out? I walked out. What're they going to find on me? ‘Hey, what's going on, Officer?' And they give you something about a routine investigation—five hundred cops in the place, shotguns, riot outfits, everything, it's a routine investigation.”

“You ditched your gun all right?”

“Leon took care of it.”

“How come Leon?”

Stick was sitting forward in his chair, holding a can of beer between his hands. He watched Frank go over to the coffee table to get a cigarette.

“Weren't you carrying it?”

“I carried the doll box,” Frank said. Lighting the cigarette gave him a little time. He walked back to the bar and took a drink of Scotch.

“Yeah? So you gave him your gun?”

“We had a little problem.” The whole thing would be in the evening paper—Frank realized that—still, he wanted to tell it the right way, like there was really nothing to it, or Stick was liable to go through the ceiling.

“What kind of problem?”

“Billy shot a guy.”

“Jesus—I
told
you.”

“Wait a minute, a witness,” Frank said. “A guy washing the window.”

“Christ Almighty—”

“We look up, the guy saw the whole thing, sees Marlys, so Billy had to shoot him.”

“I told you. Christ, didn't I tell you? That guy's going to fuck the whole thing up, not even trying?”

“Will you wait a minute?” Frank said. “Take it easy, okay? and listen.” He paused to make sure his voice would sound calm. “Billy pulled something else.”

Stick was staring at him, waiting.

“He tried—we're going down the stairs—he tried to grab the box from me. See, he wants the whole thing, probably had it planned all the time and that's why he was going to settle for five. He shoots a couple times and misses, luckily, Christ, and Leon, he's got the Python, he shot him and that was it.”

“You left him there?”

“He was dead, for Christ sake.”

Stick shook his head slowly and let his breath out and shook his head again. He said, “Oh, boy—well, how do you like the big leagues?”

“We still did it,” Frank said. He was being earnest now. “We got the money, five sacks, waiting there in the stockroom.”

“Hey, Frank, come on—”

“I'm not shitting you, we got it, it's there. Everything went according to the book except the thing with Billy Ruiz. Okay, Billy's out of it, put his five K back in the pot, you never liked the guy, anyway.”

“Frank, you got two dead men—you want to go back in there for the walkie dolly box?”

“I look at it this way,” Frank said, getting into it and feeling more at ease, in control. “Whether two guys are dead or not, the money's sitting there waiting. The two guys don't change anything—you think Sportree, Leon Woody's going to say, Yeah, well let's leave it, then? Bullshit. This is armed robbery, man, and you know what I'm talking about, you go in with a gun and sometimes you have to use it or else you'd carry a fucking water pistol, right? When it's you or him, buddy, you know who comes first or you're in the wrong business. Listen, I saw you blow away two guys in that parking lot. You ought to know what I'm talking about better than I do.”

“It's different now,” Stick said. “We're not talking about armed robbery, ten to a quarter, we're talking about murder, maybe life.”

“I can't argue with you,” Frank said, “or quibble about the degree. Yeah, it's different now. But the odds, the odds are the same. You go in, look around, take your time. You don't like the feel, you smell something isn't right, you walk out. Nobody's going to blame you for being careful. You don't like it, get out. If it looks okay, pick up the box. Anywhere along the line something doesn't look right, dump the box, get the fuck out. But remember one thing, my friend, Ernest Stickley, Junior, there's over a hundred grand in the box and it's no heavier than you're carrying the doll in it, a present for your little girl.”