But they did it. One of them held his head, and the other one put the tape on, and then he was in darkness and silence. He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t hear them. He was helpless, his brain straining inside its prison of bone to know what they were doing.
His feet. Through his feet pressed against the floor he could hear the vibrations. They were walking around, doing things around him in the office. Not touching him, but moving around. Faintly he thought he could hear them talking. Through his closed eyelids and the thickness of tape he could sense a dark reddish orange, meaning the light was still on.
Fire? He suddenly thought of fire, was suddenly terrified that they meant to burn the place down and him in it. He didn’t know why anybody would do a thing like that, he had no rational reason for thinking of it, but once the thought hit him he became convinced, and his heart pounded in terror, and he reared around in the chair, struggling to escape.
A hand closed on his shoulder, and just stayed there. Not squeezing hard, not hurting. Just staying there, a steady pressure, somehow reassuring. Snyder calmed down, and the hand patted his shoulder and went away. But he was less frightened after that.
A minute later the vibrations stopped, the reddish orange went to black, he had the sensation that the door had been closed. He was alone. He knew he was alone.
Nine
CALIATO STOOD looking out the window at Fun Island. He watched Chaka and Abadandi and Pulsone cross the street, watched them gather in the old man. One of them waved the all-clear, and Caliato said, “Okay. Let’s go over there.”
“Right,” Benniggio said. He opened the door and stepped back for Caliato to go first.
Caliato was glad to be getting out of this room at last. Six hours he’d been in here, doing nothing, and that was too long. He stepped outside, inhaled the cold night air, and waited for Benniggio to carefully close the door again and lock it behind them.
“Tomorrow,” Caliato said, “we’ll have to send somebody to clean up our mess in there.”
“Okay, Cal,” Benniggio said. “I’ll remember.”
“Good.”
They started across the road, and behind them the phone rang. “Hell,” Caliato said under his breath. Would it be Lozini, changing his mind? More probably O’Hara, getting ever more frantic. Caliato said, “Go on over there, see they don’t scare the old man too much. See they do things right.”
“Okay, Cal.”
“Shut those gates, but don’t lock them. I’ll be right there.”
“Right.”
Caliato went back to the Lincoln, got into the back seat, opened the phone compartment, put the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”
O’Hara. “We’re still stuck here. What are we gonna do about the night watchman?”
“We’ve already done it,” Caliato said, and told him the new plan.
O’Hara said, “You mean you’re going into the park?”
“That’s right. So don’t call here any more, there won’t be anybody to answer the phone.”
“But you’re not going to do anything, are you? You’ll just stay in by the gate till we get there.”
“I’ve told you that. How much longer you going to be?”
“Christ, it ought to be soon, Caliato, I swear it ought to be soon. We’re not the only ones bitching, everybody here is teed off. No roadblocks are going to catch anybody by this time.”
“Even if there was anybody to catch.”
“Even if,” O’Hara agreed. “There’s talk about keeping them up till midnight, but that’s just stupid.”
Two more hours. “See if you can cut it shorter than that,” Caliato said.
“You know I’ll do my best.”
“Right. Flash your headlights at the gates when you get here, so we’ll know it’s you.”
“Will do.”
Caliato hung up and went across the street, to where Pulsone was on guard at the gates. Caliato went in and Pulsone pointed to the lit doorway where the others were. Caliato went down there and found the watchman trussed up right, except he was jerking around like a fish on a line. Caliato looked at him, looked at Benniggio, said, “I told you to see he didn’t get scared too much.”
“Nobody did nothing to him, Cal,” Benniggio said. “He was quiet, and then he started jumping around like that.”
“We don’t want him kicking off with a heart attack,” Caliato said, and went over and put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. He stood there, feeling the old muscles bunching under his hand, and gradually the old man calmed down.
Benniggio said, “He was in here, our bird was. Busted the door in.”
“You search the place?”
Tony Chaka said, “Nothing here, Mr. Caliato. He didn’t leave no marks.” He held up an old long-barreled Colt .44 revolver. “This was on the old guy,” he said. “You want it?”
Caliato was about to say no, but then he stopped to think that he was the only one here who wasn’t armed.
