"My name is Kluger," the lieutenant said. "I'm in charge of the police out here."
"So?"
"So," Kluger said, trying to conceal his irritation, "I want to know what you're going to do next."
"That depends on you," the stranger said.
"Oh?"
"Yes. It depends on whether or not you act intelligently. If you pull any crazy heroics on us, try to force the issue-well, that wouldn't be at all intelligent."
The lieutenant frowned. His heavy rust-colored eyebrows came together, forming one dark bar across the base of his brow. He had expected to hear a well-struck note of desperation in the man's voice. After all, this stranger and his hoodlum friends were trapped in there like snakes in a bag. But this one sounded unfrightened, almost serene. "Sergeant Brice tells me you have hostages."
"Five of them," the man said.
"Then you're going to want to use them."
"I doubt it."
"As long as you have them, we'll have to let you go," Kluger said. "We won't have a choice. We don't want any innocent parties killed or hurt."
"Bullshit," the man on the phone said. "If we tried to use them as a shield, and if you thought you saw an opening, there would be gun play. You'd count on marksmanship and luck to miss the hostages. And if you killed any of them, you'd do your best to pin their deaths on us. We wouldn't be alive to argue."
That had been approximately what had been going through Kluger's mind for the last twenty minutes. He was unsettled by the stranger's perspicacity.
"All we want from you at the moment," the man inside the mall said, "is the same thing that I told Brice earlier: We want you to stay out of here. Back off and stay backed off. Don't try to come in after us."
"Oh?" Kluger said. "What are you going to do? How long will you last? Are you going to homestead in there?"
The stranger laughed. He had a smooth, mellow laugh, like an actor. Kluger distrusted people who laughed too easily or too well. "At least," the man said, "it's nice to be dealing with a cop who has a sense of humor."
Kluger scowled at his reflection in the Plexiglas before him. "I wasn't being funny, mister," he said sharply, the "mister" delivered in a most military fashion. "I asked you a serious question. How in the hell long do you jerks think you can hide in that place?"
The man was silent for a moment, readjusting himself to Kluger's mood. "We'll stay here until we can get safely away. Maybe a few hours-or maybe a few days."
"Days?" Kluger didn't think he could have heard him right.
"That's what I said."
"You're crazy."
The stranger said nothing.
"You're in a hopeless situation."
"Are we?"
"You know it," the lieutenant said.
"I don't know it," the stranger said. "Currently, it looks as if we can't get out of here without running headlong into you people."
"You got it."
"But," the stranger continued, "by the same token, you can't come inside without running headlong into us. We. may be under siege, but we also happen to be in a fortress. Fortresses are built to withstand sieges. You'd die like flies trying to get through those doors, Kluger. And by the way, you better not send those three men in by the storm drain. They'd just get their heads blown off before they could reach the warehouse."
Kluger felt a line of perspiration break out on his forehead. The conversation was not going anything like he had thought it would, was taking quirky turns that left him baffled. "How did you know about them?"
"We have a couple of our own men down in the drains," the stranger said. "They saw your fellows enter the gully a couple of minutes before you called."
Kluger wanted to strike the booth wall with his fist, but he restrained himself. "One thing I don't believe," he said, changing the subject as best as he could. "There aren't seven of you in there, like you said. No way."
"That so?"
"With all the lights on, we can look through the doors with binoculars and see pretty much what you're up to. We've only seen three of you. Three, not seven."
"And the two in the drain, remember."
"Maybe there aren't two in the drain," Kluger said angrily, his face flushed with blood.
"Maybe there aren't," the stranger agreed, again confusing and frustrating the lieutenant. "Just don't test us."
For a moment there was silence from both ends of the line. Then Kluger said, "I have an offer to make."
"Make it, then."
The lieutenant spoke evenly, slowly but tensely, straining his Ronald Reagan jaw to the breaking point. "I'll send in two of my men, two unarmed police officers. You'll send the innocent bystanders out and keep my officers as hostages."
"No chance."
"We aren't going to shoot at our own men!" Kluger insisted impatiently. Why wouldn't this stranger listen to reason? Why wouldn't he fall for anything? What made him so goddamned different from the hundreds of other hoodlums Kluger had handled so well in the past? "Two patrolmen would make a better shield than those five you have now, for God's sake."
"I've already said no. Anything else you want?"
Sweat was now streaming down Kluger's temples. The cords in his neck stood out like ropes. "Whatever you have in mind, it won't work. You're not up against a bunch of fools. I spent four years in Southeast Asia. Volunteered for it. You're dealing with a veteran, mister."
"So are you," the stranger said. Then he laughed and said, "Listen, what's your number there?"
"Why?"
"Well
I might want to ring you up and surrender," the stranger said.
Kluger did not answer at once, for he had to calm himself before he was able to speak. "You haven't got a chance now, smartass," he said at last.
The stranger laughed again. "Oh, come on, Lieutenant. Give me your number, anyway."
Kluger read it off to him. "It's a booth out here in the parking lot. I'll put a man beside it so I'll be sure to know when you call. If you have any brains at all-"
The stranger cut him off.
The line buzzed in his ear.
Kluger turned and slammed the receiver down hard, and the sound cracked like a gunshot in the tiny enclosure. As he turned again and pushed through the folding door, a mosquito bit him on the back of the neck. Cursing, he slapped at it, caught it on his palm, and brought it around to have a look at it. The mosquito was extraordinarily big, red with the lieutenant's blood which it had been drinking. Although it was already dead, he worked it fiercely between his hands-until there was nothing but a brown smear left of it.
In Oceanview Plaza's main lounge Michael Tucker pushed open his booth door and stepped out of the stench of French perfume. He went over to the fountain and dipped one hand into the pool, splashed his face with cool water. It felt good. It ran down his neck and soaked his shirt, and that felt good too. The water flushed away the clinging perfume and the bad odor that he imagined he had picked up from talking to Kluger.
Refreshed, he started across the lounge again, toward the entrance to the east corridor, and was brought up short by a sudden, incredible idea. Somewhat numbed by the daring of the plan that had just occurred to him, he walked unhurriedly back to the fountain and sat down on the fake lavaform rocks at the edge of the pool. For some long minutes he stared into the falling water, thinking furiously. When he got up, he was grinning like a fool, though he knew he was most certainly not one. It just might work
Meyers and Bates were waiting for him by the gate at the end of the east corridor.
"What was the call about?" Meyers asked.
Bates said nothing. He was pale and even shakier than he had been earlier.
"Wait here a minute," Tucker said. He stepped into the warehouse, smiled at Chet, Artie, and Evelyn Ledderson.
"What's going on out there?" Chet demanded.
"We're about to rob the bank," Tucker said. "Then we'll make our escape."
"Not damned likely," Chet said.
Artie said nothing, but the woman disagreed with Chet. She looked at Tucker and said, "He'll do it. He'll get away."
Tucker winked at her.
Although she met his gaze frankly and studied him with icy interest, she made no response.
He searched for and found the panel of switches that controlled the mall lights. He was able to decipher the abbreviations beneath the toggles in fairly short order, and he doused two of the three overhead fluorescent strips in each of the mall's four main corridors. When he went back out and pulled the warehouse door shut behind him, he told Meyers and Bates why they were going to have to make do with minimal illumination. "This Kluger is too damned clever. And if he's able to keep watch on us, he'll soon decide there are only three of us. When he's sure of that, he might try to force his way through one of the entrances."
"But we have hostages!" Bates said.
"Kluger is the hard-nosed type," Tucker said, remembering the humorless man to whom he had spoken, the low voice like flint striking sparks on flint. "He doesn't give a damn who stands in his way."
"Surely he wouldn't kill hostages," Bates said. "And one of them a woman!"
"He'd try not to," Tucker said. "And if he accidentally did kill them, he'd still come out of it with another promotion. He's that type."
"If he comes in here, he loses a lot of men," Meyers said, brandishing his Skorpion.
"If he comes in here," Tucker corrected, "it won't matter. Because, my friends, we won't be here."
Bates and Meyers stared at him uncomprehendingly, like a couple of straightmen who had been set up for the punch line.
Then the jugger blinked and cleared his throat and said, "You've come up with something, haven't you?" He was still pale and shaky, but now he was smiling.
"You found a way out?" Meyers asked.
"A way out," Tucker said, not without some theatricality. "But not exactly a way out."
Meyers and Bates glanced at each other.
"Yes," Tucker said, "that's the best way to describe it- just like a line from Alice in Wonderland. It's a way out, to be sure-but not exactly a way out."
"What is this?" Meyers asked. "Riddle time?" He half believed that Tucker was on to something, but he also half believed that Tucker was out of his mind.
"Best of all," Tucker said, "we can go ahead and knock over the bank and the jewelry store."
"We can?" Edgar asked.
In the darker hall the red lights from the police cars that were parked outside shone brighter than they had when all three of the fluorescent strips had been turned on, and they gave everything an eerie, bloody hue
"We can take the money and the stones," Tucker said.
"You're serious," Meyers said, moving up close to Tucker and staring into his eyes.
"Sure."
Meyers grinned hesitantly, then more surely, then as broadly as he could. "You sonofabitch, you really mean it!" Meyers laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.
Bates laughed, too, but more nervously. "Tell us about it, for God's sake."
Tucker told them.
The door of the Countryside Savings and Loan Company's main vault measured eight-feet-four by six-feet-two and was, -in Edgar Bates's professional judgment, at least nine but no more than twelve inches thick. It was constructed of from twenty-eight to fifty-four layers of highly shock- and heat-resistant steel alloy, set as flush with the wall as could be done, and it had beveled seams that were half an inch deep and an inch wide where it was joined to its steel frame. On the top, bottom, and right-hand side these seams had been filled tightly with a contiguous charge of gelignite, a grayish plastic explosive that resembled carpenter's putty, although it was a good deal more rubbery and more cohesive than putty. On the right-hand side, where the door and the frame joined, there were three massive hinges as large as automobile shock absorbers, each twelve inches long and four inches in diameter. These were protected from assault by heavy blue steel casings that had been shaped to the hinge cylinders and then riveted shut when the door was hung in place. Edgar Bates had carefully molded six ounces of gelignite to each of these hinge casings.
"One of the finest vaults made," Edgar said as he worked. He was flushed and happy. "Pekins and Boulder Company of Ashland, Ohio. They're always a challenge."
Tucker was kneeling on the floor on the other side of Bates's open satchel, in front of the vault door. "Has one of their safes ever stumped you?" he asked the older man.
Bates was disgruntled by the question, and he made no effort to conceal his irritation. "Hell, no. Of course not. You know how good I am."
Tucker smiled. "Sorry I asked."
"I've knocked down and split open maybe thirty of them over the years. Not a bit of trouble any time. They're always a lot of fun, though."
The safe's hatchlike opening handle, a wheel with a two-foot diameter, the design for which had been borrowed straight from the watertight doors in submarines, was also packed with gelignite at every jointure. It was most likely affixed too smoothly and too seamlessly to the main body of the door to be easily blown loose. However, there was no harm in trying.
Bates had chiseled away the manual combination dial above the wheel, had removed the guardian plate that was soldered beneath it, and had squeezed several ounces of gelignite into the vault door's primary mechanisms. This lump of explosives had been tied to that around the wheel and to that which was molded in the door's seams by a thick gray thread of itself.