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  Reluctantly, Tucker leaned back in the stale-smelling couch. He did not want to stay here any longer than he had to, for the disorder and filth put him on edge. However, Meyers was beginning, just beginning, to sound like a careful man. Perhaps he was more and better than he appeared to be. There might be a safe profit in the job after all. "You ever hear about the armored car hit in Boston two years ago? Allied Transport truck was knocked over for six hundred thousand. Four men did the job."

  "I heard of it. That was yours?" Meyers leaned forward, shoulders hunched, interested.

  Tucker explained how it had been done, whom he had worked with. He did not try to make it sound better than it was. He did not need to gloss it over, for it had been a perfect caper, cleverly planned from the start. There was no way, in the telling, to improve upon it.

  "Now you," Tucker said when he finished talking about himself.

  Whether he had planned them or not, Frank Meyers had been in on some good bits of business over the years. And he had worked with many of the right people. He did not appear to be a sound, seasoned, successful operator, but apparently he was. In his retellings he was as straightforward and brief as Tucker had been. His record was not as flashy as the younger man's, but it was solid and impressive in its own way.

  "Anything else you want to know about me?" Meyers asked.

  "Yes. What's the job you've got now?"

  "You don't like the preliminaries, do you?" Meyers asked, smiling.

  "No."

  The big man drained the water from the melted ice cubes in his whiskey glass, shoved to his feet. "Come on out to the kitchen. It'll be easier to go over the plans."

  The kitchen was small and certainly as poorly kept as the living room had been. Dirty dishes filled the sink. The waste-basket was overflowing with used paper towels, empty cartons, and open cans that were crusted around the edges with the food that they had once contained. The cracked linoleum was stained in dozens of spots and was filmed overall with the grime of day-to-day city life.

  A cockroach was feasting on bread crumbs by the refrigerator. It sensed their footsteps and scuttled for cover under the oven.

  "We'll use the table here," Meyers said. He removed a dirty plate and a set of silverware left over from breakfast-or perhaps from the previous night's supper. He ran his big hands over the top of the dinette, satisfied himself that there was nothing sticky or wet to get in their way.

  "Clitus told me it was a bank job," Tucker said. He stood at one end of the table, preferring not to sit down.

  "That's right," Meyers rasped. "And a sweet one."

  "I don't like bank work," Tucker said. "There are too damned many risks. You've got to deal with fancy alarm systems, closed-circuit television, heroic tellers, panicky patrons, guards, limited getaway routes "

  "This is different," Meyers said, echoing Clitus Felton. He went to the bread box that sat on the counter by the sink and removed a large, folded paper from beneath a tin of store-bought sweet rolls. "When you see the setup, you'll love it."

  When he saw the setup, Tucker thought, he would more than likely laugh in Frank Meyers's face and then get the hell out of there.

  But there was nothing to be gained by leaving before Meyers said his piece. The big man might just have something after all. That distracted look had finally left his blue eyes. He seemed to be more alert, less pumped up with nervous energy, and more inclined to get down to the facts. He was still rumpled and somewhat sour smelling, but he no longer looked as if he belonged in this pigsty of an apartment. Obviously the thought of this bank job energized and lifted him. Which might mean something. Or nothing.

  Meyers unfolded the paper on top of the kitchen table and stepped back to give Tucker a good look at it.

  It was a carefully rendered diagram of a large building. The paper itself was a four-foot square, and the scale was twenty-five feet to the inch. It was well drawn, full of names and shorthand descriptions.

  "The bank?" Tucker asked, impressed by the detail. He bent closer, squinting at the writing.

  "No," Meyers said. "It's the full layout of a small shopping center near Santa Monica. Nineteen stores, all under one roof."

  "Nineteen stores," Tucker said, not believing it. "Nineteen stores-and one bank."

  "That's right."

  "You want to hit a bank that's situated in the center of a goddamned enclosed shopping mall," Tucker said, incredulous. "Is that it?" He half turned away from the diagram and stared hard at Meyers. The big man had to be joking.

  He was serious. His broad face was creased by a silly but sincere grin. "I want that bank. That's mainly what we're after, naturally. But I also want two or three of the very best stores in the place."

  Tucker just stared at him.

  "Stores," Meyers repeated. "Jewelry, furs, antiques "

  "I understood you the first time."

  "Do the logistics bother you?" Meyers asked.

  "They don't bother you?"

  "No."

  "They should."

  "If you'll look more closely at the drawing," Meyers said, "you'll see that there are only four entrances to the mall." He held up four thick fingers, as if he thought Tucker might need some learning reinforcement. "We can gain control of all the doors and then clean out everything worth taking." He laughed at Tucker's expression. "Sounds crazy, doesn't it?"

  "Absolutely," Tucker said. He turned completely away from the table. "And you can count me out."

  Meyers stopped grinning. "Wait a minute." He laid one heavy hand on Tucker's shoulder. "It really is possible. It's safe. It's the sweetest thing I've ever come across."

  Tucker grimaced, shrugged.

  Meyers took the hint. He moved his hand.

  "Look," Tucker said, "even if you had control of the four mall doors, what would you do with all of the customers? That place will be full of them any day of the week. Shoppers coming and going, in and out "

  "I'm aware of that."

  "Glad to hear it."

  Meyers's hoarse voice was touched by anxiety. "Believe me, I've got it all figured out. I'm no amateur. Those people won't bother us."

  Tucker ignored him, because he was pretty much convinced that whatever Meyers had "figured out" would be full of holes. "And what are you going to do about the telephones?"

  "Telephones?"

  "There, must be a hundred or more public and private phones in a shopping mall that size. Are you going to be able to put them all out of use before anyone in there can call the cops?"

  "We won't have to worry about the telephones," Meyers said. He was grinning again, though only tentatively. He resembled a big clumsy hound that wanted approval, affection, congratulations. But there was a decidedly human desperation in his eyes.

  "Furthermore," Tucker continued, "you'd need an army to hold the mall, once you'd taken it."

  "Just four or five men," Meyers said hastily.

  "Is that right?" Tucker turned, started for the kitchen door.

  "Wait a minute," Meyers said. "I'm not stupid. I know what the hell I'm doing." His anger was feigned. It was only meant to arrest Tucker, to make him listen for another moment. In the middle of the cluttered living room he caught Tucker by the arm and stopped him. "We wouldn't hit the damned place during shopping hours. I never said that."

  Tucker sighed, pulled loose of the big man's hand. He worked his shoulders to straighten his coat. "It's still no good. This would be twice as difficult as any normal after-hours bank job. You'd have two sets of alarms to deal with-the mall's and the bank's systems."

  Meyers shook his burly head. His close-cropped hair glinted like metal bristles. "No alarms."

  "A bank without alarms?"

  "Come back to the kitchen with me," Meyers said. He was almost pleading now. His desperation, whatever the source of it, was growing sharper by the minute. "Look at the diagram and listen to me. Hear me out. I won't keep you long. But Right now you don't have any idea what's up my sleeve."

  "And I don't think I
want to know," Tucker said.

  "Felton deals with me!" Meyers said. His whispery voice now contained a note of pride, a curious dignity that was at odds with his slovenly appearance. "I'm not a loser. I've been in this business all my life. I've been successful at it, too."

  Tucker looked around at the dirty walls, the unswept carpet, the tattered furniture. "If you've been so terribly successful what are you doing in a place like this?"

  Following the younger man's gaze, Meyers seemed to see the apartment for the first time. He coughed, wiped his face with both hands, a man trying to slough off the insubstantial but disconcerting residue of a nightmare. "I have one weakness."

  "Is that right?"

  "Women."

  "That's no weakness."

  "It is with me." Meyers's right hand went to his throat. His blunt fingers traced a series of vague, pale scars that Tucker now saw for the first time. Someone had stomped on his throat, or had opened it with a quick knife. Right now Meyers looked as if he could still feel the flesh parting under the blade. "I get ahead, pull a few good jobs, build up a cushion, figure I don't have any worries Then I hook up with a woman. And she takes it all away from me. You know how it is. Women are parasites."

  "Maybe yours are," Tucker said. "Mine isn't."

  "Then you're damned lucky," Meyers said. "Mine are always parasites." But there was a false note in his voice, a lack of conviction. He did not sound like a woman hater-or like a man who would let anyone, man or woman, take money away from him. "Look, we aren't here to talk about women. Come back to the kitchen. Give me ten minutes to explain everything. I know you'll want in on this as soon as you understand what it is."

  "I already know what it is," Tucker said sourly. "It's a bank job with especially high risks. I'm not that desperate for money."

  "Sure you are," Meyers said. He chuckled. "If you weren't desperate, you'd be long gone by now. You're small, but you wouldn't let me stop you so easily unless you wanted to be stopped. You'd flip me on my ass and walk out that door. No You want to hear the whole scheme, but right now you're playing little games so that you can learn more about me."

  Tucker smiled. Meyers was entirely correct, and it was to his credit that he had perceived the situation so clearly. Maybe he was a better man than he appeared to be.

  "Ten minutes?"

  "Okay," Tucker agreed.

  "Let's go out to the kitchen and look at the diagram again." The big man led the way.

  Fifteen minutes later Meyers thumped the top of the kitchen table with one clenched fist. "That's the whole plan, every last detail. Smooth as silk. What do you think?"

  "It's extremely clever," Tucker admitted, still studying the whiteprint of Oceanview Plaza, the shopping mall. "But there are a few problems."

  The anxiety returned to Meyers's voice. "Problems?"

  "You don't seem to have given any thought to weapons," Tucker said. "Have you?"

  "We don't need anything fancy." Meyers rubbed his hands together as if he were soaping them under a hot-water spigot. "Each man can supply his own piece."

  "I disagree," Tucker said. "In the first stages of this job you're going to have two professional guards, probably ex-cops, and you're going to have to subdue them quickly. One of them is bound to be a hero type. But he's less likely to become a real threat if he's faced with a gun that intimidates him. The bigger and uglier the guns, the less trouble you'll have with the people on the other end of them. It's just good psychology."

  Meyers continued to lather his hands with invisible soap. "We can't conceal machine guns under our coats."

  "They don't have to be machine guns."

  "What else?"

  "Let me worry about that. I have a good contact. He'll find something suitable."

  Meyers licked his heavy lips. "I didn't expect to have to finance this operation."

  "I'll put up for the guns," Tucker said.

  "Then you're in?"

  Tucker looked at the diagram for a long while, admired the work Meyers had put into it. Then he let his eyes move around the kitchen, from the filthy dishes in the sink to the pair of cockroaches that had come out in the far corner in bold defiance of the human presence. "I'm in-but only if this is my job."

  "It's your job," Meyers said.

  "I don't know if you fully understand me." Tucker began to fold up the diagram of the shopping mall. "I make all the decisions, right down the line."

  Meyers nodded rapidly. He walked quickly to the sink, turned on his heel, leaned against the drainboard, then came away almost at once, paced nervously back to the table as Tucker finished folding the whiteprint. He started lathering his hands again. "Clitus explained how you work. You always have to be in charge of the operation. I accept that."

  "Just so we're straight with each other from the start."

  "I don't mind," Meyers said. "You've got a good reputation, so I trust you. The only thing that really matters is getting a team together, getting the job done." He was growing increasingly agitated, as on edge as he had been when Tucker had first come into the apartment. He wanted badly to get on with the job, wanted to set it up and knock it off as fast as possible. Apparently he needed money even worse than Tucker did. However, he looked as if he required it for something more essential than food, a new apartment, and a new woman. "What kind of split would you want?"

  "A third," Tucker said.

  Meyers winced, turned away, wheeled back again, rubbing his hands together incessantly. "Hey, that's steep."

  "It's the same thing that you'll be getting." Tucker gave him the folded diagram, chiefly to keep him from lathering his hands. "We'll need only one more man for this, and we'll divide the take three ways, even shares for everybody."

  "One more man?"

  "Someone to break the safe, two safes if necessary," Tucker said.

  "But we can't pull this off with less than four or five men," Meyers insisted.

  Tucker smiled. "Just watch us."

  Imrie's place did not look like an illicit gun shop. It was a three-story brick building on a quiet lower-middle-class street in Queens. Weathered and somewhat soiled, it was also solid and dignified, a respectable neo-Colonial structure from the turn of the century. It shared the block with a neighborhood grocery, a pharmacy, a dry cleaner's, and many narrow well-kept apartment buildings. To add to the image of serenity there were even a few large battered elms shadowing pieces of the street and sidewalks. On the glass door to Imrie's first-floor showroom, gilt lettering read: antiques and used furniture. The antique dealership was mostly a front for the more lucrative gun business.

  Tucker pulled open the heavy door and went inside. A loud buzzer, like the shrill call of a jungle bird, sounded at the rear of the store, softened a bit by the intervening forest of old cane-back chairs, tables, table lamps, sideboards, gramophones, dry sinks, and teetering stacks of other valuable and worthless paraphernalia that Imrie had accumulated.

  Sudden shadows, dark corners, dust, and bare lightbulbs contributed to the decor. Imrie was sitting in an ancient maroon brocade chair in one of the few patches of light, just inside the door.

  "Sorry I took so long," Tucker said. "I had trouble catching a cab, and then the traffic was terrible."

  "It's always terrible," Imrie said, struggling to his feet with a deep groan of real physical distress. He was only five feet six, but he weighed more than two hundred pounds. His physique, his baby-smooth but sly and knowing face, and the crinkly fringe of gray hair that ringed his bald head all made him look like a philandering, vow-breaking medieval friar. He put down a pornographic novel that he had been reading and hitched up his baggy trousers, which tended to settle too far down over his gut. He had been eating cookies, and now he had crumbs on his shirt. Sighing with distaste at his own slovenliness, he brushed away the tiny bits. "Be with you in a minute, Tucker."

  He locked the door and put up the closed sign.

  "How you been?" Tucker asked.

  "Not too good." Imrie drew the blind do
wn behind the front door. "I've got stomach problems." He turned around and slapped his ample belly. "It's this business. Anybody'd get ulcers from it. Too damned many worries." He put his hands on his stomach as if to reassure himself that it was still there. "There was a time not very long ago," he said wistfully, "when a man in my line could go about his work unhampered, when he could be certain of his place in things." This was Imrie's favorite topic for conversation, or rather for monologue. "These days, you have to worry about the anti-gun nuts, the bleeding-heart liberals, the peace fanatics, these mixed-up pacifist kids They make me feel like a criminal, for Christ's sake."

  If you wanted to do business with Imrie, you were obliged to spend some time listening to his complaints. Trying to sound sympathetic, Tucker said, "I can see where it would ruin your digestion."

  "To say the least." Imrie rubbed his stomach, consoling it. "Thank God the majority of decent Americans understand that we have to have guns to keep this country free. If we didn't have guns, how would we keep the Communists out?" He burped on his cookies, excused himself. "Most people realize that there's nothing foul and fiendish about a man who deals in guns. Look, I'm no degenerate. Most people know that a gun dealer is no more a villain than your local Ford salesman or the friendly neighborhood Good Humor man." He burped again, patted his lips. "Now, Tucker, what can I do for you?"

  "I want three guns. Something ugly enough to terrorize the average citizen. Something that would intimidate a man and keep him from behaving foolishly."

  "Sure," Imrie said, smiling. "I know just what you mean. I can fix you up."

  "I thought you could," Tucker said.

  They walked to the rear of the store along a tight aisle of cupboards, corner desks, bookcases, china closets, and other furniture, all stacked on top of one another, all graced with nearly perfectly preserved isinglass doors. At the back of the room, they went through a tattered yellow curtain, up dimly lighted stairs past the second floor where Imrie lived, and on up to the third level where the fat man kept his guns.

  "I couldn't deliver these today, if that's what you have in mind," Imrie said as they came off the stairs. "They need work done on them."