He left the bridge, went down the stairs and across the deck and down the gangplank off the pirate ship. He walked up to the long low building with the huge name out front: BUCCANEER! Again he had to break through a side door to get inside.
This was another black-light ride, like Marooned! and Voyage Through the Galaxy. The customers rode in small pirate ships this time, through a channel of water like the one in Marooned! and past many similar displays and effects.
This time Parker stopped his vessel halfway through, and stepped out into a miniature representation of New Orleans under pirate attack. Various colored lights flickered and gleamed on the mechanical movements of the dolls. Parker used one of the ornamental lines from his small boat to tie it to a building in the display, and then began to follow the wiring from the lights.
They came together in a small box with an On-Off switch. Parker turned it off, and the display abruptly went dark. The rest of the displays along the route were still working, only this one had stopped.
He had to work by flashlight, removing the wiring from several of the lights and fastening it carefully elsewhere. When he was done, he didn’t turn the display back on. He untied his boat, got back into it, and rode it the rest of the way through the ride. Since in stopping the boat he’d stripped it of its connection to the track, he was borne along by the water flowing through its winding metal trough inside the building, down to the end of the ride.
Ten minutes after six. Parker took the hunting knife from a fake-leather sheath that read Souvenir of Fun Island and balanced it along one finger. The center of gravity was where it should be, where blade met handle. He held it at the point between thumb and finger and flicked it with a snap of the wrist the room. The point thudded into the gift-shop wall, the quivered there.
It was pretty good, better than he’d expected. There was a small cardboard carton containing a dozen of the knives under a counter in the gift shop, the only useful items there. He put the carton under one arm, retrieved the first knife from the wall; and went outside to one of the narrow streets of New York Island, a sentimentalized version of New York City in the gay nineties. He’d been through the other shops, glanced into the camera store and restaurant and nickelodeon, but none of them seemed to contain anything he could use.
It was getting darker. And colder. The gloves he’d found in the watchman’s office were coming in handy, though later on he wouldn’t be able to wear one on his right hand.
At the end of the last street in New York Island he paused to look down toward the gate, but it was all silent and unmoving down there. He walked on to begin sowing his knives.
Twenty minutes to seven. Parker walked into the theater in Voodoo Island. It was a small place, with hard wooden seats, but the stage was surprisingly well furnished. It even had a fly loft, a space above the stage where backdrops and flats could be lifted when they weren’t needed onstage. The ropes ran up from the pipes on which the backdrops were hung, went over pulleys just under the roof, and came down to one side of the stage, where a complicated series of counterweights kept the backdrops well enough balanced to be raised or lowered by one man.
Parker went up the metal ladder to the catwalk, where the ropes and counterweights were. Nine backdrops and canvas flats were suspended above the stage now, each of them weighing two or three hundred pounds. Parker tied the ropes with slipknots to the railing waist-high beside the catwalk, then removed the metal weights from their wooden racks tied to the ropes. Each weight was about twenty pounds, a piece of iron shaped somewhat like a gold ingot. He lined them all along the edge of the catwalk, then climbed back down the ladder to the stage and went over to the main control board. He tried all the switches, and discovered two trap doors in the stage floor. He’d expected there might be one or two, having seen magic acts advertised out front.
The theater had nothing else to offer him, so he went back outside. It was almost fully night now, the buildings all merely black hulks against the pale snow. He was turning on the lights in each building when going in, and turning them off again on the way out, leaving the entire park in darkness. They’d see the intervals of light outside, if they were looking through the entrance, but it wouldn’t tell them anything.
To his left was the snake house. He’d already been in there, and it was empty, the cages standing open. The cages might prove handy eventually, but so far he didn’t see how.
Ahead was the band shell, even more useless than the snake house. Back behind the theater was the entrance to the outdoor jungle ride. There might be useful things there, but it was too dark now to look for them. That left the only other thing in the Voodoo Island section, another black-light ride, this one called Land of Voodoo. Parker walked across the crunching snow and kicked in the door to the Land of Voodoo.
Seven o’clock. Parker stepped into the watchman’s office and turned on the radio. He was just in time to hear the news announcer describe the seven-state manhunt being undertaken in the search for the lone bandit who escaped from today’s daring daylight robbery of a Merchant Bank’s armored car on Abelard Road near the ball park. All city police were working extra shifts, roadblocks were being set up all over the damn place, there was even a special phone number citizens could call if they wanted to confuse the issue. The two captured robbers, neither as yet identified, were unconscious still in Schumann Memorial Hospital, where they were both under tight police guard. “If their buddy tries to get them away from us again,” the chief of police was quoted as saying, “we’ll be ready for him.”
Parker shook his head and switched off the radio. The rest of the world had some strange Robin Hood ideas sometimes. He wouldn’t risk his neck to drag Grofield and Laufman out of the hospital now even if he could, and neither of them would expect him to. They were on their own now, to work things out the best way they could.
And so was Parker. He wouldn’t expect Grofield or Laufman or anybody else to come in here now and give him a hand. He’d walked into this himself, it was up to him to walk back out again himself. He understood that, and he didn’t worry about it. There was a telephone on the desk, but he hadn’t even bothered to check and see if it was working. There was no one to call.
It didn’t occur to him to call Claire. There was no point telling her he was in the middle of a mess, because there was nothing she’d be able to do about it. He would either get back to her or he wouldn’t. In the meantime, he had no space in his mind for anything but what was taking place right here.
He sat at the desk and studied the park map again. Had he covered everything, seen everything, considered every possibility?
The Land of Voodoo and Marooned! black-light rides both used boats traveling through channels of water, so he’d made electrical preparations with them just like the one in the Buccaneer! ride. He’d seeded the knives around in all eight sections of the park, retaining only two, their sheaths now attached to his belt and tucked partway down into his hip pockets. He’d checked out all the buildings and several of the outdoor attractions. There was nothing left to do now but wait.
He’d turned on the gooseneck lamp on the desk, but now he folded the map again and switched it off. There
