Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 (28 page)

 
          
Vigano
sat in an office on Madison Avenue with an absolutely clean phone; guaranteed.
He had an open line to a pay phone on the comer of
86th Street
and Central Park West, across the street
from the park. He had a man in the booth, pumping change in, keeping the line
open. A second man, outside the booth with a small walkie-talkie no bigger than
a pack of cigarettes, was the relay between Vigano and the one hundred and
eleven men he had scattered in and around the park. From the phone to the
walkie-talkie, he could get an order to any man in the park in less than half a
minute.

 
          
Aside
from the transverse roads, the ones that simply cross the park and don’t
connect with the interior road, there are twenty-six entrances to and exits
from the Drive. Every one of them was covered, with either one or two cars, and
a minimum of three men; including the one-way entrances that no vehicle was
supposed to use in leaving the park, such as the one at Sixth Avenue and 59th
Street and the one at Seventh Avenue and West 110th. His people with the two
million dollars in the picnic basket were completely surrounded by Vigano’s men,
and six others roamed the general vicinity on bicycles. If the two amateurs
with the bearer bonds tried to get away by bicycle they’d be stopped at a park
exit. If they tried to cut across the park on foot they wouldn’t get twenty
yards.

 
          
Vigano
had the interior people all in position before the basket was delivered, but he
held off blocking the park exits until after contact was made with the
amateurs; no point scaring them off. He had a conference call hook-up on the
phone, so that it broadcast into the room and he could reply without holding
the speaker to his mouth, and he sat back in the desk chair, his hands up
behind his head, and smiled at the thought that he was the spider, and his web
was out, and the flies were on their way.

 
          
“One
man,” the speaker-phone said.

 
          
Vigano
frowned and sat forward in the chair, bringing his hands down to rest on the
empty desk. Over on the sofa, Andy and Mike looked alert. Vigano said, “What’s
that?”

 
          
“One
man, civilian clothing, has approached our people.”

 
          
Just one?
Move the cars into position now, or wait for the
other one? “What’s happening?”

 
          
Silence
for nearly a minute. Vigano frowned at the phone, feeling tense even though he
knew everything had to be all right. But he didn’t want anything unexpected
now; if he lost that two million, it would be his head.

 
          
He
wouldn’t lose it “Mr. Vigano?”

 
          
Vigano
gave the phone an angry look. Who else would it be? He said, “What’s going on?”

 
          
“It’s
one of them all right. He’s taken some of the money out of the—Hold on a
second.”

 
          
‘Took
some money? What the hell are you talking about?”

 
          
Nothing.
Andy and Mike were both looking as though they
wanted to find something cheerful to say, but they’d damn well better keep
their mouths shut “Mr. Vigano?”

 
          
“Just
talk, I’m not going anywhere.”

 
          
"Yes, sir.
The other one showed up, in a police car.”

 
          
“A what?
In the park?”

 
          
“Yes, sir.
In uniform, in a police car.”

 
          
“Son
of a bitch,” Vigano said. Now that he knew what was going on, he felt better.
Giving Andy and Mike a tight grin, he said, “I told you they were cute.” He
turned back to the phone: “Move the cars in. Don’t change anything, do it all
like we figured.”

 
          
“Yes, sir.”

 
          
Andy
got to his feet in a sudden motion, betraying the nervousness he’d been
covering up. He said, “They must really be cops.”

 
          
“Probably.”
Vigano felt grim, but confident.

 
          
“How
do we stop cops?” Andy spread his hands, looking bewildered. “What if they just
drive out of the park, order our people to move over?”

           
Mike said, “We can follow them, take
care of them some place quieter.”

 
          
“No,”
Vigano said. “There’s too many ways to lose them outside. We finish it in the
park.”

 
          
Mike
said, “Against cops?”

 
          
“They’re
just men,” Vigano said. “They wipe themselves like anybody else. And they can’t
call their brother cops to come help them, not with two million bucks in the
car.”

 
          
“So
what do we do?” Mike sr>id, and at the same instant the phone said,
“Everybody’s set, Mr. Vigano.”

 
          
“Listen,”
Vigrno told Mike. He said to the phone, “Spread the word. They stay in the
park. If they try to get out, we can force them to stop at our cars. When they
do, kill them, take our goods, clear out.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir
.“

 
          
“Hold
on, there’s more. If they don’t try to leave the park, we just keep them
bottled up until the park is opened to cars. Then we drive in, surround them,
finish
it the same way.”

 
          
“Yes, sir.”

 
          
“The
main point is
,
they don’t leave the park.”

 
          
“Yes, sir.”

 
          
Vigano
leaned back again, smiled at Andy and Mike, and said, “See? They’re cute, but
we’ve got everything covered.”

 
          
Andy
and Mike both grinned, and Andy said, “They’ve got a surprise coming.”

 
          
“That’s
just what they have,” Vigano said.

 
          
Nobody
said anything after that for a minute or two, until the phone suddenly said, in
an excited voice, “Mr. Vigano!”

 
          
“What?”

 
          
“They’re
crossing us! They took off with our goods and didn’t leave anything! And
they’ve got
Bristol
with them in the car.”

 
          
“He’s
gone over to them?” That didn’t sound right; the people to carry the money had
been very carefully selected.

 
          
“No, sir.
They must have pulled a gun on him.”

 
          
“They’re
headed south?”

 
          
“Yes, sir.”

 
          
Vigano
squinted, visualizing the park. If they’d come in to try a double cross, they
had to have some method for getting away again. Where would it be? Vigano said,

           
“Cover the transverse roads. They
might decide to cut across the grass and out that way.”

 
          
“Yes, sir.”

 
          
“Pass
that one on.”

 
          
While
the man was gone from the phone, Vigano kept thinking. How fast would a car
move, surrounded by bicycles? It was no good settling for holding them in the
park now; they had to be stopped, as
quick
as
possible.

 
          
“Mr.
Vigano?”

 
          
“All
spare men,” Vigano said, “get over to the section of the Drive on the east
side, just south of the bridge over the first transverse road. Block the road
there. Don’t let them through, finish them off.”

 
          
“Yes, sir.”

 
          
“Move!”

 
          
Andy
and Mike were both leaning on the desk, giving him worried looks. Andy said,
“What’s going on?”

 
          
“They’re
starting from
85th Street
,” Vigano said, “going south. The Drive takes them down to 59th, and
then across the bottom of the park. They can’t move fast, not with all those
bikes. Our people get over to the east side of the park first, block the road
there. If they try to get out before then, they’re stopped. If they last that
long, they’re stopped.”

 
          
“Good,”
Andy said. “That’s good.”

 
          
“They’ve
been cute for the last time,” Vigano said.

 
          
They
were in motion. Joe faced front, steering the patrol car southward along the
Drive, while Tom faced the rear, holding the .32 aimed at the guy in the back
seat.

 
          
Joe
tapped over and over on the horn, and ahead of him the bicyclists reluctantly
got out of the way, their front wheels waggling back and forth as they glared
at the automobile immorally in here during their special time.

 
          
From
left and right, as they started away, they could see men running after them.
There weren’t any guns in plain sight yet, but there might be any second. The
other male picnicker was running along in their wake, leaving the two women
sitting on the grass behind him, looking stunned.

 
          
They’d
only been moving ten seconds or so. To both of them, every instant now seemed a
distinct and separate thing, as though they were working in slow motion.

 
          
Tom
said to the guy in the back seat, “You’ve got a gun under there. Take it out
slowly, by the butt, with your thumb and first finger, and hold it up in the
air in front of you.”

 
          
The
guy said, “What’s the point in all this? We’re making the payoff.”

 
          
“That’s
right,” Tom said. “And all your friends were here because they like fresh air.
Take the gun out the way I said and hold it up in the air.”

 
          
The
guy shrugged. “You’re making a big thing over nothing,” he said. But he pulled
a Firearms International .38 automatic from under his jacket and held it up in
front of himself like a dead fish.

 
          
Tom
switched his own pistol to his left hand, and took the automatic away with his
right. He dropped that on the seat, switched the pistol back to his right hand
again and, still watching his prisoner, said to Joe, “How we doing?”

 
          
“Beautiful,”
Joe said grimly. By keeping up almost a steady honking, he was managing to get
bicycles and baby carriages out of his path without running over anybody, and
was up to maybe twenty miles an hour; twice as fast as the general flow of
bicycle traffic, and four times as fast as the men chasing them on foot.

 
          
The
77th
Street
exit was a little ways ahead. They couldn’t afford to stop and unload
their passenger until they got out and away from the park, but that shouldn’t
be long now.

 
          
Joe
started the turn, seeing the sawhorses down at the other end of the feeder
road, and just in the nick of time he saw the green Chewy and the pale blue
Pontiac
across the road, just beyond the sawhorses.
Three men were standing in front of the Chewy, looking this way.

 
          
Joe
hit the brakes.
Tom,
startled but not looking away
from the guy in the back seat, said, “What’s the matter?”

 
          
“They
got us blocked.”

 
          
Tom
snapped his head forward and back, taking a quick look out the windshield. The
patrol car was
stopped,
cyclists were streaming by on
both sides of it. They couldn’t stay here. “Try another one,” Tom said. “We
can’t get through there.”

 
          
“I
know, I know.” Joe was twisting the wheel, tapping the accelerator, leaning on
the horn. They slid away from that exit and headed south again, hurrying
through the cyclists.

 
          
Both
of them—Tom by looking out the back window and Joe by looking at the rear-view
mirror—saw the three men who’d been standing by the Chewy suddenly run around
the end of the sawhorses and come trotting after the patrol car. They couldn’t
catch up, obviously, but that didn’t mean much; they acted as though they knew
what they were doing. Tom remembered the walkie-talkie one of them had carried
back by the picnickers, and the army imagery seemed stronger than ever all of a
sudden; they must have a central-command post somewhere, with men reporting in
from all around the park.

 
          
If
there’d been a way to call the whole thing off, Tom would have done it right then
and there. Just give it up, forget it,
make
believe
none of it had ever happened. As far as he was concerned, they’d had it, they
were defeated already, and only going on because there wasn’t anything else to
do.

 
          
But not Joe.
His sense of combat had been aroused, he was
feeling nothing but the warring instinct As a little kid, his comic-book hero
had been Captain America; shield and fist against entire swarming armies of the
enemy, and he won out every time. Joe hunched over the steering wheel, weaving
the car through all the people with small taps on the accelerator, tiny shifts
of the wheel, steady pushing at the horn, feeling
himself
the master of his machine in a slow-motion Indy 500.

 
          
It
was almost no time at all to the next exit at
72nd Street
, even at these slow speeds. Joe felt no
surprise, only a sense of grim determination, when he saw the two cars parked
broadside beyond the sawhorses. “That one, too,” he said, and swung away, still
heading south.

 
          
Tom
tinned his head to the left and saw the blocked exit. Grimacing, staring at the
guy in the back seat again, he said to Joe, “Then they’re all blocked.”

 
          
“I
know,” Joe said.

 
          
The
guy in the back seat grinned a little, nodding. “That’s right,” he said. “Give
it up. What’s the point?”

 
          
Tom’s
mind was scrambling. He was sure they were going down in defeat, but he’d keep
bobbing and weaving all the way to the bottom. “We can’t just drive around,” he
said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

 
          
Frustration
was making Joe angry; things were supposed to work differently from this.
Thumping a fist against the steering wheel, he said, “What the hell do we do
now?”

 
          
The
guy in the back seat finally reached into the other basket, and pulled out a
handful of phony stock certificates and pieces of newspaper. He looked
surprised for just a second, then held the papers up, gave Tom a pitying grin,
and said, “You two are really stupid. I just can’t believe how stupid you are.”

 
          
“You
shut your face,” Tom said.

 
          
Joe
abruptly slammed on the brakes. “Get him out,” he said. “Get him out or shoot
him.”

 
          
Tom
gestured with the gun.
“Out.”

 
          
The
guy pushed open the door, making a passing cyclist wobble onto the grass to
avoid an accident. “You’re all through,” the guy told them, and slid out of the
car, and Joe hit the accelerator while he was still departing. The door,
snapping shut, nicked him on the left elbow, and Tom saw him wince and grab the
elbow and trot away toward Central Park West

 
          
Tom
faced front
Fifty-ninth
Street
was just ahead of them, with the spur road
angling off toward
Columbus Circle
.
Cars there, too.

 
          
“There’s
got to be a way out,” Joe said. He was clutching the steering wheel hard enough
to bend it. He was enraged and bewildered because he was the hero of his life,
and the hero always has a way out

 
          
“Keep
rolling,” Tom said. He expected nothing any more, but as long as they were
moving it hadn’t ended yet
They
swept around the curve
at the southern tip of the park, the car moving through the cyclists like a
whale through trout. They passed the
Seventh Avenue
turnoff and there were cars out there, too, but they expected that by
now.

 
          
The
Sixth
Avenue
entrance was ahead of them, on the right.
Sixth Avenue
is one-way, leading uptown toward the park,
so there’s no automobile exit there, just an entrance. It was blocked
anyway,
with two cars parked across it The Drive was curving
again, leftward, starting up the other side of the park. The
Sixth Avenue
entrance angled in ahead of them on the
right. Farther along, up by the bridge, they both suddenly saw maybe fifteen or
twenty men, standing around in the roadway.

 
          
Just standing around.
Some with bicycles,
some not.
Talking together, in little groups.
Leaving enough room between them for bicycles to get through, but
not enough for a car.

 
          
“God
damn it,” Joe said.

 
          
“They
blocked—” Tom stopped, and just stared.

 
          
It
wasn’t any good. Run those people down and it wouldn’t be the mob they had to
worry about any more, it would be their own kind that would get them. The park
would fill up with law in nothing flat.

 
          
But
they couldn’t stop.

 
          
Joe
hunched lower over the wheel. “Hold tight,” he said.

 
          
Tom
stared at him. He wasn’t going to plow through those guys anyway, was he? “What
are you going to do?”

 
          
“Just
hold tight.”

 
          
The
Sixth
Avenue
entrance was right there, the long approach road curving back southward
to the edge of the park. Suddenly Joe yanked the wheel hard right; they climbed
a curb, cut across grass, bounced down over another curb, and were headed
toward Sixth Avenue, due south, with Joe’s foot flat on the accelerator.

 
          
Tom
yelled, “Jesus Christ!”

 
          
“Siren,”
Joe shouted.
“Siren and light.”

 
          
Pop-eyed,
staring out the windshield, Tom felt on the dashboard for the familiar
switches, hit them, and heard the growl of the siren start to build.

 
          
The
patrol car lunged at the sawhorses, and at the two cars parked sideways beyond
them. They blocked the road from curb to curb.

 
          
But
they didn’t block the sidewalk. Siren howling, red light flashing, the car
raced at the roadblock, and at the last second Joe spun the wheel leftward and
they vaulted over the curb, slicing through between the blockage and the stone
park wall.

 
          
“Move!”
Joe yelled at the people running every which way on
the sidewalk. Even Tom couldn’t hear him, with the siren screaming, but the
people moved, diving left and right, yanking themselves out of the way by their
own shirt collars. Traffic going east and west on 59th Street abruptly jammed
up as though they’d hit a wall, opening a line across like the path through the
Red Sea. The hoods at the roadblock were clambering into their cars to give
chase, and the patrol car wasn’t even past them yet.

 
          
Lamp post.
They shot across the sidewalk, Joe nudged the
wheel a bit to the right, and they flicked by between the post and one of the
parked cars. They both felt the jolt when the right rear of their car kissed
off the bumper of the other; and then they were through.

 
          
And
Joe headed straight south. Tom threw his hands up in the air and screamed at
the top of his voice,
“Holy jumping Jesus
!”

 
          
Sixth Avenue
is one-way north, and five lanes wide. The
patrol car was heading south, and three blocks ahead was a phalanx of traffic
spread completely across the avenue, coming this way, moving along at about
twenty-five miles an hour, following the sequence of the staggered green
lights. They covered the road from left to right, they were coming in a tight
mass like a cattle drive, and Tom and Joe were tearing toward them at about
sixty, and accelerating every second.