“When the watchman gets here,” Caliato said, “we take him. We don’t let him see our faces, and we don’t hurt him. We just tie him up and put him on ice someplace where he won’t see or hear anything that goes on. Then when our cops get here, we run it the way we planned, clean up afterwards, and let the watchman go again. He calls the cops, they look around, they don’t find anything, they never figure out what happened or why.”
“That sounds risky, Cal,” Lozini said carefully.
“I think it’s less risky than letting it go,” Caliato said. “But that’s up to you, of course. If you say pull out, I’ll pull out.”
There was silence on the line. The clear cold air outside was doing wonders for Caliato’s mouth and nose and stomach. That, and having a plan at last, a deadline at last. No more just waiting and waiting. If Lozini said yes, they would be waiting for a specific moment in time. Ten o’clock, no later.
Lozini sighed. “I suppose that’s best,” he said. “I can trust your discretion, Cal.”
“I hope so,” Caliato said.
“Call me when it’s over.”
“Yes, sir.”
Caliato hung up, shut the compartment, and got out of the car. He stretched, inhaled deeply, glanced over at the park, and went into the building to give the others the good news.
Eight
TEN O’CLOCK. Exactly on time, Donald Snyder turned his blue Volkswagen and drove up to the gates of Fun Island. He was always on time, whether there was a clock to punch or not, and he was proud of it.
Sixty-four years of age, Snyder had punched a clock at Westmount Foundry for thirty-eight years, until they’d retired him at sixty, and in all that time he had never once been late. He’d been absent entirely every once in a great while, brought down by flu or some such thing, but if he was going to be present at all, he would be on time.
He’d carried the same philosophy into retirement with him. He’d had a number of seasonal or part-time jobs since then, and his record of never being late was still unbroken. Even here at Fun Island, where there was neither a clock to be punched nor a boss to see what time he showed up, he was always on time. In at ten, do his rounds punctually, out at exactly six in the morning. A good job for an old man who couldn’t sleep much anyway. Gave him something to do with his time, gave him the exercise of walking around the park all night long, and gave him a little spending money to supplement his retirement income.
Now he got out of the Volkswagen, a stocky old man in a long overcoat and a nondescript hat, moving with a little winter stiffness in his joints. He went to the gates, gleaming in the Volkswagen’s headlights, pulled the key ring from his overcoat pocket, found the right key, and unlocked the gates. He swung two of them open, making a space big enough to drive the car through, then went back behind the wheel again, drove in, and stopped well clear of the gates. He switched off the engine, but left the lights on so he’d be able to see to close and lock the gates again. He got out of the car, and three men came through the gates with guns in their hands and handkerchiefs over the lower part of their faces.
Snyder stared at them, refusing to believe it. They said something to him, voices muffled by the cold and the handkerchiefs, but he didn’t understand the words. He just stared.
They made angry, threatening gestures with the guns, and he saw their eyes above the handkerchiefs, cold and impatient, and finally he understood what it was they wanted — though not why, that was incomprehensible — and slowly he raised his hands up over his head.
Two of them held the guns on him while the third came around behind him and patted him all over, finding his Colt .44 revolver in his right overcoat pocket. His own gun, had it for years, always carried it on this job, never used it once. Not for real. Used to do some target-shooting with it, some plinking, shot some rats back in the old days when he lived near the city dump where the new apartment houses were now, but he’d never fired that gun once at a human being. Never even pointed it at a human being. Hadn’t thought of it when he’d seen the masked men with guns coming at him. And now they’d taken it away from him.
He was old, but until just this moment he’d never felt old. Never felt feeble, or useless, or doomed. Not until now. “You people can’t do this,” he said, and hated to hear the new note in his voice. He’d never been querulous before either.
One of them said, “Let’s go into your office. Come on, move!”
He obeyed, his hands still up. He moved slowly, them behind him, prodding his shoulders to make him hurry. Two of them following him, the other staying back with his car and the gates. “There’s no money here this time of year,” he said, but they didn’t answer him.
The door to his office was broken into. It was closed most of the way, but the lock had been broken. “Look at that,” he said. “You fellows do that? What would you do a thing like that for?”
One of them had a flashlight, and shone it on the broken place on the door. The other one said, “Still in there, you think?”
“Only one way to find out,” the first one said, and pushed at Snyder with his gun barrel again. “Open the door, old man,” he said. “Go in there, turn on the light. Don’t do any sudden movements, and don’t turn around.”
Snyder obeyed orders. He stepped in and switched on the light, seeing at once that someone had been in here. Things disturbed, things moved around. A coffee cup on the floor, a map open on the desk, a chair moved over by the window.
They waited a few seconds, then came in after him. “Sit down,” one of them said, and he sat down. “Put your hands behind you,” and he put his hands behind himself.
They tied him to the chair, roughly and well. Then they took adhesive tape and taped shut his mouth. One of them went into the John and came back with two small wads of toilet paper and stuck them in Snyder’s ears, and the other one put adhesive tape over his ears to keep the paper in.
He submitted to it all, but when he saw they meant to tape his eyes, he tried to fight it, lunging backward, waving his head back and forth. Somehow that was a different kind of thing, much worse, much more frightening. He didn’t want his eyes taped.
