Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 (20 page)

 
          
Tom
gathered up the last few pieces left on the desk, hurried to the window, and
tossed them out. Joe walked slowly around the desk, searching the floor, and
found half a dozen pieces that had fallen in their hurry to be done. Tom spent
time looking at the floor around the window, and found three more pieces that
he picked up.

 
          
When
Joe came over to the window with the few scraps he’d just gathered up from the
floor, Tom said, “We can’t leave any.”

 
          
“We
won’t,” Joe said. He tossed the last scraps out. “Let’s go,” he said. “It’s
time to get out of here.”

 
          
But
Tom kept prowling around, frowning down at the floor. “If we leave even one
little piece for them to find,” he said, “
it
blows the
whole thing. They’ll know what we’ve done, and that kills it.”

 
          
“We’ve
got them all,” Joe insisted. “Come on, let’s go.”

 
          
“Hah!”
Tom pounced on one last bit of paper midway between desk and window. He hurried
to the window, where the snowfall of paper was starting to thin, and tossed the
final piece out. “Now,” he said.

 
          
Joe
was already opening desk drawers. He found a stack of typewriter paper in one
and pulled out a handful. Tom joined him at the desk, opened the blue laundry
bag, and Joe dumped the paper into it. Then they both took a quick last look
around.

 
          
“Okay,”
Tom said.

 
          
Joe
was looking at the television screens. All quiet. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”

 
          
They
walked out of Eastpoole’s office together, through the secretary’s office, and
down the corridor toward the reception area and the elevators. Tom carried the
laundry bag over his shoulder. It was very obvious there, but that was the
point; they had to be seen carrying the loot out with them.

 
          
Walking
along, Tom said, “I wish we knew a way out that wouldn’t take us past any of
those damn cameras.”

 
          
Joe
nodded. “I know. It’d be better if the guards didn’t know we were coming.”

 
          
‘‘We
could try,” Tom said. They’d come to an office entrance now, but Tom stopped
and said, “There’s a camera in there. Why don’t we go down this other way
instead? Maybe we can go around, come at it from the other side.”

 
          
“Get
lost in here? Wander around until we get picked up?”

 
          
“It
isn’t that big,” Tom said. “And if we get lost, we just stop somebody and ask.”

 
          
Joe
grinned at him. “You get funny ideas,” he said. “Okay, let’s try it, what the
hell.”

 
          
So
they went off into new territory. They both had a pretty good sense of
direction, and they had a general idea of the way things were set up around
here. If they kept to the right for a while, then made a left farther on, they
should come at the reception area from the opposite side.

 
          
It
worked, all right, insofar as getting them to the reception area along a
different route was concerned. But it didn’t do any good when it came to
avoiding television cameras. There had been two along the old route, which left
a third, and they found that halfway to the reception area.

 
          
They
didn’t notice it until they were already in the room with it, with the damn
thing pointing at them. Then Joe said under his breath, “You see what I see?”

 
          
“I
see it,” Tom said.

 
          
They
walked through that office, casual and unconcerned,
then
began to move faster once they were away from the camera. They already knew
there was a rule around here that visitors didn’t travel unescorted, even if
the visitors were policemen in uniform. They were traveling unescorted, from
Eastpoole’s office; the guards on duty in the reception area might not leap to
the conclusion they were thieves, but they’d suspect something was wrong, and
they’d start right away to look into it.

 
          
First
they’d try phoning the boss. They wouldn’t get any answer, either from
Eastpoole or his secretary, and that would upset them even more. But making the
phone call would take time, maybe all the time needed for Tom and Joe to cover
the rest of the ground and get them under control.

 
          
If
not, if they didn’t get there in time, what would the guards do next? Would
they put in an alarm right away?
since
the visitors
were supposed to be cops, they might be a little more careful, a little more
cautious. They might get in touch with the guard in the vault anteroom. They
might send somebody to alert the other three cops up here, the ones assigned to
the security detail for the astronauts. They might get in touch with somebody
Tom and Joe didn’t know about, down at the street level. There were a thousand
different things they might do, and Tom and Joe could be pretty sure they
wouldn’t like any of them.

 
          
They
hurried, but it still took a while to travel the rest of the way to the
reception area, and when they got there only one guard was behind the counter.
It was the same one who’d been here when they’d first come up. He looked at
them now, and he was very nervous and trying not to show it. They angled toward
the elevators, and he called over, “Where’s Mr. Eastpoole?”

 
          
Tom
gave him a smile and wave of the hand. “In his office,” he said. “Everything’s
okay.”

 
          
Joe
pressed the down button for the elevator.

 
          
The
guard couldn’t keep the nervousness from affecting his voice. He pointed at the
laundry bag Tom was carrying and said, “I’ll have to inspect that bag.”

 
          
Tom
smiled at him and said, “Sure.
Why not?”

 
          
Joe
stayed behind, by the elevator doors, while Tom walked over to the counter and
set the laundry bag atop it. The guard, losing some of his nervousness because
they were acting as though nothing was wrong, came down the counter to look
into the bag. As he was reaching for it, Tom nodded toward the screens down on
the far wall. He said, “The guy in the vault anteroom. Does he have a set of
screens like that?”

 
          
The
guard looked over at the screens. “Sure,” he said.

 
          
“He
can see us?”

 
          
The
guard gave Tom a warning look. “Yes, he can,” he said.

 
          
Joe,
back by the elevators, was watching the screens very carefully; all of them.
The guard in the anteroom was still reading his
Daily News.
On one of the office screens, the other guard from out
here suddenly appeared, moving fast. He wasn’t quite running, and he was
apparently headed for Eastpoole’s office.

 
          
Tom,
still talking in a conversational tone of voice, said, “Well, if he can see us,
I guess you don’t want me to show a gun.”

 
          
The
guard stared. “What?”

 
          
‘‘If
I show a gun,” Tom told him, “he’ll know something’s wrong. Then I’ll have to
kill you so we can take off out of here.”

 
          
From
his position by the elevators, Joe called to the guard, “Take it easy,
pal
. Don’t get anybody upset.”

 
          
The
guard was scared, but he was a professional. He didn’t make any large moves
that the anteroom guard might see on his screen. Holding himself in tight
control, he said, “You’ll never get out of the building. You’ll never make it”

 
          
Joe
said, casually, “It isn’t your money, pal, but it is your life.”

 
          
“Come
around the counter,” Tom said. “You’re going out with us.”

 
          
The
guard didn’t move. He licked his lips and blinked, but he had guts. He said,
“Give it up. Just leave that bag on the counter and take off. Nobody’ll chase
you if you don’t have the goods on you.”

 
          
An
elevator arrived. Its door sliding open prompted Joe’s next remark. “Come on,
pal,” he said. “Don’t waste time. We’d rather do it the easy way, but we don’t
have to.”

 
          
Reluctantly,
the guard moved, going down to the flap at the end of the counter, lifting it,
stepping through. On the anteroom screen, the guard could be seen still reading
his paper. He hadn’t noticed yet that the reception area was about to be left
undefended. When he did, he’d know something was wrong, but it would still take
him a minute or two to figure out the right procedure to deal with the
situation. He’d try to call
Eastpoole,
he’d try to call
the reception area. He wouldn’t want to leave the vault, just in case the whole
thing was a stunt to lure him out His indecision would give them time.

 
          
The
elevator was empty. Joe was holding the door open and watching the television
screens. Tom was carrying the laundry bag again, and watching the guard.

 
          
“If
you take a hostage,” the guard said, coming out from behind the counter, “you
run the risk you’ll have to shoot somebody.”

           
He meant himself, and all things
considered he delivered the sentence very calmly. Joe said to him, “Just get in
the elevator.”

 
          
The
three of them stepped into the elevator, and Joe pushed the button for the
first floor. The door closed, they started down, and the guard said, “You can
still get out of this. Go down to one, leave the bag with me, take off; by the
time I get back upstairs you’ll be gone. And you won’t have taken anything, so
who’ll be looking for you?”

 
          
They
already knew the answer to that, far more than he could guess, but neither of
them said anything. Tom was watching the guard, and Joe was watching the
numbers showing which floor they were passing.

 
          
You
couldn’t hear the parade in the elevator at all. It had Muzak in it, playing
some melody they both recognized but neither of them knew the name of.

 
          
The
guard said, “Listen. With a hostage, you’re risking a shoot-out. Plus
kidnapping, it’s technically kidnapping.”

 
          
The
elevator was passing the fourth floor. Joe reached out and pressed the button
marked 2. The guard looked at that and frowned. He didn’t know what they were
doing, and his bewilderment shut him up. He didn’t have anything else to say at
all.

 
          
The
elevator stopped on the second floor. Joe reached over, plucked the guard’s
pistol out of his holster, and said, “Move.”

 
          
“You
aren’t going to-—”

 
          
“No,
we’re not,” Joe said. He was snappish and in a hurry. “Just move.”

 
          
The
guard stepped out. They made as if to follow him, but when the door started to
slide shut they stepped back again. The guard was turning, open-mouthed, as the
door finished closing and the elevator descended to the first floor.

 
          
“Christ,”
Joe said. He took off his hat, showing big beads of perspiration high on his
forehead. He used the hat to smear his prints from the guard’s pistol,
then
put the pistol on the floor in the rear comer of the
elevator. As he straightened, the elevator stopped, the door opened, and the
lobby floor was in front of them.

 
          
Clear.
They were ahead of pursuit, and if they just kept moving briskly along they’d
stay ahead of it.

 
          
They
walked out across the lobby, Tom carrying the laundry bag. They pushed through
the doors and went out to the street, and the parade crowd was beginning to break
up. Some paper was still floating down from windows in the upper stories, but
not much.