“Did the fine tuning with jeweler’s instruments,” Cabbie said, twisting his fingers as if he were using a tiny screwdriver.
“Got it,” Hellman said, snapping the last of the big padlocks into place.
“Let’s go,” Plissken said, and waited while the others started down, so he could follow behind them just to be on the safe side.
“You work for this Duke?” he asked the Brain.
The man answered without turning to him. “Make gas for him,” he said, and every sentence came out sounding like it had been rehearsed. Hellman was still hedging his bets. “Figure out things for him.”
“Like what?”
This time the man did turn around. Plissken smiled. He wasn’t going to let the son of a bitch off that easily.
“Like how to get across the Fifty Ninth Street Bridge,” he returned finally, and he acted as if the words were being forced from his mouth with a crowbar. “It’s mined, but I think I know where they’re planted.”
Maggie spoke up, willing to talk as long as Hellman was. “We got a diagram from a guy who got all the way across before they shot the poor bastard.”
Hellman gave her a dirty look at first, but then just sighed, giving in. “They’re working up there now,” he said. “Clearing away the first barricade.”
“What a sight, Snake!” Cabbie yelled, coming out of his car fantasy. He started moving his arms out in front of him, rolling them like the ocean waves. “The whole place rolling right across the bridge. Mister President right up front.” He let his arms drop to his sides. “It would have been so fine.”
“Would have been?” Maggie said.
Cabbie shot her a fierce look, then said indignantly. “We’re goin’ with Snake now.”
“Wait a minute,” Plissken said, cocking his head. “Listen.”
They all stopped, and the sound was discernible to everyone. Engines. Closing in.
“It’s the Duke!” Cabbie yelled. “I know the sound of his machines.”
“The alley,” Plissken ordered, and they hurried down the remaining steps and around the corner of the building. They got quickly around, hugging the wall with their backs. Plissken turned his head. The cab sat about fifty paces farther down.
He turned back, and risked a look around the corner of the building. A convoy was coming up on them, consisting of ancient cars and trucks, sputtering and fuming through snorting clouds of gray and black smoke. The machines shuddered, backfiring white sparks, wobbling from side to side. There were between ten and twenty in all, and every one of them looked as if it was on its way to the automobile graveyard. None of them had mufflers, and their ripping sounds tore the night.
The lead car passed the mouth of the alley, an old Cadillac with the top cut off. A man sat in the passenger side of the front seat. He was large and bald-headed, with three scars, like claw marks, running down the side of his cheek.
“The Duke,” Maggie whispered.
He had a cigar in his mouth and a pair of sunglasses to cover his eyes. The glasses were taped together at the hinges with white surgical tape. A lavender, almost purple, snap-brim fedora sat stiffly on his cue-ball head. He had it turned down stylishly over one eye.
The others in the car were obviously bodyguards. They were dark, like the Duke, and had droopy moustaches. Brightly colored bandannas wound around their heads, and their earrings were large and gold. They wore dark suits with dark shirts. Their faces were lined with cruelty. Gypsies.
The lead car passed and others went by, filled with Gypsies. Their exhaust smoke stuffed the alley with dirty fog and Plissken, by habit, covered his mouth and nose with his hand.
They grumbled along slowly, like a funeral procession,
“Don’t cross the Duke,” the cabbie kept saying, shaking his head. “Everybody knows that”
“Button it,” Plissken rasped. He grabbed Hellman by the shoulder, forcing the man to get eye to eye with him. “Is the President with them?” he asked.
“No,” the man answered, and the Snake couldn’t read through the granite of his eyes. “He’s stashed away at the Duke’s place.”
The caravan stopped in front of the library, but didn’t shut down their engines, probably with good reason. Plissken watched as a man with a deathshead face and chiseled teeth jumped out of the Duke’s car and took the steps up to the library two at a time.
“He’s looking for you, Brain,” Maggie said, as the man began pounding on the door the same way Cabbie had done.
“What does he want?” Plissken asked,
“My diagram to the bridge,” Hellman answered. “When he finds out I’m with you, he’ll kill me. Shit, Snake, I knew I shouldn’t have.. ”
“We gotta get the President now,” Plissken snapped, “while the Duke’s busy.”
Hellman shook his head with resignation. “Forget it,” he returned. “He’s on the other side of town and we got no wheels.”
“Sure we do,” Maggie said. “Cabbie,”
They turned to the cabbie, but he was gone, his cab, too distant for them to catch, was backing down the alley, its sounds muffled by the incredible timbre of the convoy. The cab reached the other end of the alley and backed quickly onto the main street, a tiny squealing sound drifting back to Plissken’s ears.
“Slime,” the woman muttered, and for the second time that night Plissken got to see the range of extreme emotions that could mold her face.
“That’s it,” Hellman said, and breathed deeply. “Deal’s off. Snake.”
“Just calm down,” Plissken told him, and held up the rifle just to let Hellman know that this wasn’t going to be a replay of Kansas City.
The last car in the caravan stopped right in front of the alley. It was an old station wagon, with bars welded on the window like the cab’s. It sat there, quivering like it had caught a chill. One of its headlights had come out of its socket and was dangling, waving at the ground. The man in the passenger side got out, cursed and moved to the front to fix it.
“Wait here,” Plissken said, and his tone told them that he really meant it.
He walked up the alley, staying in the shadows. Getting close to the car, he casually sauntered up to the driver’s window. The man turned to look at him, but all he really got to see was a close look at the tempered steel, combat-gouged butt of the Snake’s automatic. And he didn’t get to see that except for a second.
The butt of Plissken’s gun connected solidly, cracking, across the man’s nose and cheekbone. He went over on the seat without a sound, as if he had just decided to take a little nap.
Plissken opened the door, shoved the unconscious man over and got behind the wheel. The other Gypsy was squatting down in front of the car, still fiddling with the headlight. Plissken slammed the door and hunched down in the seat.
He heard sounds from the front of the car, heard the other man calling a name. Then he saw the man’s shadow drift lazily across the windshield.
The man was at the door, bending down to look through the bars. The Snake came up sideways with the gun butt, slipping it vertically through the bars. He caught the man’s mouth and chin.
The Gypsy gurgled, hands to face, backpeddling toward the alley. Maggie ran out from the darkness, shoved the man back even more and cracked his head on the side of the building. He fell, splashing into a puddle. Maggie and Brain dragged him into the alley.
Laying his gun on top of the unconscious man, Plissken jammed the car into reverse and backed up enough to nose the thing into the alley.
He jerked to a stop in front of Hellman and Maggie. The Brain opened up the door and pulled the Gypsy onto the ground beside his buddy. Plissken grabbed his gun away just as the man was sliding out. Hellman climbed in front, Maggie in back and Snake Plissken screeched away down the alley.
“Oh shit,” Hellman said.
“What?”
“I just sat in something… wet.” He was raising himself up to look at his pants. The seat was soaked in blood.
