Consulting his wristwatch, Tucker said, "It's five minutes of one. You about finished?"
"Done," Bates said, getting to his feet and quickly massaging his tension-knotted thighs. Again, he might have been a Russian peasant working out the kinks in his muscles after a long day in the fields. "Except for the detonator."
Tucker rummaged in the satchel, came up with a blasting cap about half as large as a breakfast muffin. He passed this on to Bates, closed the jugger's neatly packed black bag, hefted it, and stood up.
After he had examined the cap's battery and timer to be sure they were operable, Bates set the device for a two-minute fuse. The moment he had plugged its two base prongs into the gelignite on one of the hinge casings, he said, "Let's get out of here."
They hurried around the desks behind the tellers' cages and went through a half gate into the bank's lobby. Out in the south corridor they ran sixty or seventy feet to a stone planter and stooped beside it, waiting for the explosion.
Tucker handed Bates the set of master keys he had taken from Chet, the night watchman. "As soon as it's clear that the safe is finished, you can go for the jewelry store. I'll clean out the cash in the bank and join you later. We don't have any time to lose."
"We're doing okay," Bates said. "We-"
The blast was like a muffled crack of thunder. The glass front of the bank shattered and was pushed out across the corridor in a wave of sparkling fragments. Smoke, like sea foam, rushed out behind the glass, roiled up.
An alarm began banging away inside the bank. At police headquarters another alarm would also be sounding.
"Let's go," Tucker said.
Glass crunching under their feet, they pushed into the savings and loan company's lobby, fanned away the acrid smoke with their arms. The vault door had been ripped from its two highest hinges and was hanging loosely from the third. The wheel was smashed, and the lock mechanism was a mass of jagged metal splinters. The plaster around the vault entrance was broken and charred, but no fire had been started.
"Beautiful," Bates said with more than a little pride.
Tucker choked on the foul air, wiped at his teary eyes. "It looks good," he agreed.
"It looks perfect."
"You go hit the jewelry store."
Whistling despite the corditelike stench in the air, Bates turned and disappeared down the corridor.
Tucker went back behind the tellers' cages to the breached vault, wishing he could somehow silence the strident alarm bells. But that would take time. And right now they needed every minute they could get if they were to bring off what they had planned before Kluger came charging in and stopped them.
He stepped into the vault, past the multilayered door that the gelignite had begun to peel apart like the many crusts of a good Danish pastry. Inside he found an accordion gate separating him from the money. He raised his Skorpion, put the muzzle close to the gate lock, and shot away the heavy latch. The barrier slid back easily after that. In the corner stood a mahogany rack that held canvas money sacks labeled contryside savings. Tucker took two of these and began to fill them with the well-bundled stacks of bills that blossomed everywhere on the shelves and on the counters and in the drawers of the inner vault.
Ten minutes later, when he joined Edgar Bates at the rear of the jewelry store next door, he found that the older man was still whistling merrily. "How's it going here?"
Bates smiled broadly, whistled the last bars of the tune he was on, and said, "After the Pekins and Boulder beauty, this one is a cinch."
"You're a marvel."
"I know."
"How long?"
"Another couple of minutes."
Accent Jewelry's safe was not so large as the bank's vault had been, but it was a walk-in model and appeared to be quite formidable. For nearly anyone else but Edgar Bates, Tucker supposed, it would have been a major job.
"You got the money?" Bates asked as he examined and primed the electric fuse.
"All but the change."
"How much?"
"I didn't take time to count it."
"Make a guess."
Tucker indicated the two gray canvas sacks. "Well, it seems to be more than I first thought."
Bates raised his white eyebrows. "Really? Better than a hundred thousand?"
"Maybe twice that."
"Ahhh," Bates said, finishing with the cap and plugging it into the gelignite.
They went out into the corridor again and waited for the explosion, which, when it came, was only half as violent as the first one had been. The store windows shattered outward across the hall. Another alarm began to go bong bong bong, and smoke rolled out of the broken shop front,
"Wonderful," Bates said.
They went inside to get the stones.
On three walls the jewelry store vault was lined with row after row of metal drawers, hundreds of them from the floor to within a foot of the ceiling. Each drawer pulled out about twenty inches, but each was only three inches deep. In every drawer there was a single layer of gems neatly arranged on sheets of dark blue velvet, ranked according to quality, size, and color.
"There must be a couple of thousand stones here," Bates said. "It looks like we hit the jackpot again."
They began pulling drawers out of the wall and emptying them into the two bags that already contained the cash. They did not bother to keep the diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other gems separated. They had no time for that.
Twenty minutes later, while they were dumping the jewels from the last drawers, Frank Meyers came into the vault. "Everything's ready," he told Tucker. Then he walked over and looked into the open sacks at the green bills and the gleaming stones. "Tell me I'm not dreaming."
"You're not dreaming," Tucker said.
Tucker and Meyers each took a sack and dragged it out of the vault, through the jewelry store, and into the south corridor. Edgar, humming delightedly under his breath, followed with his Skorpion and his satchel full of tools.
"Okay
As soon as we move Chet, Artie, and Evelyn-" Tucker began, breathing hard between the words.
"I already moved them," Meyers interrupted.
"You did? How?"
"On one of those electric cargo carts in the warehouse," Meyers said. "You saw them."
They were walking toward the lounge, and Tucker slowed as they reached it. "You mean you lifted each one onto the cart-"
"Then drove the cart across the warehouse, unloaded him near that damned dog, and went back for another one," Meyers finished.
"You're even stronger than you look," Tucker said.
Meyers laughed. "It wasn't hard. The woman didn't weigh much at all. Artie was cooperative. Chet didn't like the idea, so he got dropped and bruised a few times."
Tucker laughed. "Well
Then we're just about ready to go."
"It's going to work," Bates said. He was floating along now, elated with his successes, as high as if he had taken drugs. Nothing could depress him for the next few hours.
"I hope you're right," Tucker said.
They walked down to the end of the east corridor, the alarms ringing wildly behind them and the red glow of police lights pulsing ahead. By the warehouse door they dropped the sacks and the Skorpions.
"I'll switch off the rest of the lights and make my telephone call," Tucker said. "You two start getting ready."
He opened the warehouse door and stepped inside as they went in the opposite direction. At the light-control panel he flicked four switches and turned out the last fluorescent strips in the corridor ceilings. Out there the mall would now be completely darkened. Kluger would be unable to see anything. And that was essential.
Lieutenant Norman Kluger was crouching behind an open squad car door twenty feet from the mall's east entrance when the last of the corridor lights went out inside. That didn't surprise him. When he had heard them blow the bank safe and had gotten confirmation from the alarm center at headquarters, he had known they would do something crazy. If they would still try to rob the bank when they had no hope of escaping, they would try anything. Turning out all the lights was only a first step in some cockeyed plan of theirs. Even though the lighting had been previously reduced, Kluger's men had been able to see shadows moving about in there. Now they could see nothing. With a bit of calculated bravery he knew would not go unnoticed by the other men, he stood up to his full six-feet-three and rubbed the back of his head in consternation. "Now what's that bastard up to?"
"They're doing something they don't want us to see," said the young, pudgy patrolman beside him.
"You think so?" Kluger asked sarcastically.
The rookie, a kid named Muni, blinked and nodded. "Well
What else, sir?" he asked, utterly missing the sarcasm.
For a while Kluger stood, intently watching the mall entrance. But nothing was happening there. And he was convinced that nothing would happen there until he made it happen. Before long, he and his men would have to move. Putting it short and sweet, as he had learned to do when he commanded men in Nam, they were going to have to storm the building and take it.
He was considering all the ways it could be done, was trying to decide which was the best method of operation, when Patrolman Hawbaker-another rookie who was as gangly and clumsy as Muni was pudgy and paradoxically graceful-ran down from the telephone booth to tell him that a call had come through. "It's that guy inside," Hawbaker said, pointing to the mall. His prominent Adam's apple worked rapidly up and down. "He wants to talk to you right away, sir."
Kluger followed Hawbaker across the parking lot, through deep shadows and pools of purple light to the automated post office. He pushed into the first telephone booth in a row of three and drew the door shut.
Hawbaker looked in at him like a spectator at a zoo watching a caged animal.
Opening the door, Kluger said, "Hawbaker, go away."
"Sir?"
"I said, go away."
"Oh," Hawbaker said. He turned and walked a dozen steps and stood facing the mall, his back to Kluger.
Shutting the booth door again, Kluger picked up the receiver and said, "Hello?"
"Kluger?"
"What do you want?"
"How are you?"
"What?"
"Are you feeling okay?" the stranger asked.
"What is this?"
"I just want to be sure you're not getting jumpy," the man in the mall said. "I'll bet you're under a great deal of pressure to get us out of here."
"What of it?" Kluger asked.
In point of fact, though, he was under almost no pressure at all except that which he manufactured for himself, that inner pressure that always helped him to excel in police work. Right now, only two newspapers had learned of the situation, and only three reporters and two photographers were on hand. None of them had filed anything with their offices. Very few people knew what was happening. Most of the politicians and other publicity seekers were home in bed. Indeed, even the chief of the department had probably not yet been informed. The chief was a wounded bear when awakened because of a crisis, and he was usually not disturbed until someone had been killed. Therefore, Kluger had another hour and perhaps even a bit longer to get this thing settled his own way, on his own terms, without everyone interfering with his methods.
"I just called to tell you to relax," the stranger said. "It's just about all over."
"What?"
"You can come inside," the stranger said.
"Are you serious?"
"Wait fifteen minutes," the stranger said. "Then you can come in, and we won't resist you."
"You're surrendering?" Kluger asked. It sounded too good to be true, yet he was strangely disappointed to realize that there was not going to be a fight.
"Surrendering? Not at all," the man said. "You can come in because we won't be here to stop you."
"What?"
"We're leaving."
"You're what?" Kluger asked, feeling like a broken record but unable to speak intelligently. His mind was racing, trying to find something about the mall that he had overlooked.
"We've found a way out, Lieutenant."
"Like hell you have."
"If you don't believe me," the stranger said, "you will when you come inside fifteen minutes from now."
"We have everything covered!"
"You missed one thing."
"I did not!" Kluger said. His face was a furious shade of red, the blood pounding visibly in his temples and in his neck. He was straining his jaw muscles so hard that they ached.
"Sorry, but you did."
"Look, you-"
"Remember," the stranger went on, "fifteen minutes. If you come inside one minute sooner, we'll have to kill the hostages."
"I don't know what you're up to-"
"We're up to escape," the stranger said, laughing. Then he put down his receiver and cut Kluger short just as he had before.
The lieutenant slammed open the booth door, nearly breaking it, and went outside.
"Sir?" Hawbaker asked, turning toward him.
"Shut up!" the lieutenant ordered. "Let me think."
Kluger stood by the automated post office, his hands fisted on his hips, and he gave the mall building a thorough going-over. He let his eyes travel along at ground level around the two faces-north and east-that he could see from this vantage point. Two public entrances. Both locked. Two men on the east doors. Three on the north entrance. There were no windows. The only other potential trouble spots were the two big bay doors on the east wall, the truck entrances to the warehouse. But they were also locked; his men had checked them out at the start of this. To leave the mall that way, the men inside would have to make a lot of noise. And Kluger's men would see the doors going up long before anyone could come through them. Kluger had six men covering the bay doors, and he knew there was not going to be trouble there.