himself. With any luck, this business with the laundry bag was the only place a seam would show.
Parker closed the top of the second bag with another rubber band and carried it in to put it beside the first. Then he opened the hall door, and Briley spun at once and showed him Dockery’s revolver; then he grinned and put the revolver away again.
The music noise was louder out here. Parker called, “The laundry bag.”
“By God, you’re right. It’s in my jacket, in the John.”
“Get it. There’s room for your clothes in it.”
“Good,” Briley said, and hurried off toward the men’s room.
Parker stayed in the doorway, watching both ways. This was where a small seam could become a big tear that would rip the whole job open. If someone came up here while Briley was around, Briley could act officious and send him on his way. If someone came up now, it would be a complication. They were dependent on luck, for good or ill, and that was no way to set things up.
Should he have let it go with just the two bags’ worth? They had the money from all the desks, but not the unsorted money in the canvas bags still on the table. To leave that behind would be a failure in a different direction; the job had a seam in it, that was all.
Briley came back with the third bag, open and already with contents. It had been planned all along to include the substitute guard’s clothing in one of the bags with the money, if there was”room. If not, the guard would either have made a quick change on the roof, having carried his own clothing that far, or waited till they were back in the theater.
Briley handed over the bag and said, “You should have seen that boy when he came out the door and I throwed down on him. I wish I’d had a camera.”
“We’ll be out in five minutes,” Parker said.
“Take your time. I’m getting so I like this music.”
Parker shut the door and went back to finish stacking the money. The third bag wasn’t quite as full as the other two, even with Briley’s clothes in the bottom. Parker put it with the others, went back to the main room, and said, “You people on the sofa, get up.” Pressbury was standing again now, and looking mulish but not dangerous. Parker said, to the four clerks, “Turn around and face the sofa. Beau, come over and stand at the end of the line. Hal, come up to the other end. RG, stand beside Hal. Dan, you stand beside RG.”
The eight people stood in a row, facing the wall. Parker took the sets of handcuffs from the toolkit, started with Garrison, and handcuffed them all together, finished with Beau Lavenstein at the other end, and had one set of cuffs left. He said, “Everybody turn right. We’re going into the corner over there.”
It was the far corner of the exterior wall, between the windows and the filing cabinets. One of the marks of this building’s age was the heat pipes that ran up beside the walls in the corners of all the rooms. Parker now arranged the eight people so that Lavenstein was just to the left of this pipe, facing the filing cabinet, the others made a circle, all facing outward, and Garrison, the other end of the line, was just to the right of the pipe, facing toward the windows. Parker cuffed Garrison’s and Lavenstein’s free hands together, with the cuff chain running behind the pipe. Now they were all limited to the corner of the room, where they couldn’t reach the phone or a door or a window, and were in a circle facing outward so that even communication with one another would be difficult.
Parker and Keegan put all the guns in the toolkit, and Keegan carried it when they went into Stevenson’s office. Parker left Stevenson’s phone off the hook—it was still better for a caller to get a busy signal than no answer —and opened the door to put all three laundry bags outside. Keegan went out, carrying the toolkit, and Parker followed him and shut the door. Now Parker carried two of the laundry bags, and Keegan one laundry bag and the toolkit, and they followed Briley down the hall and up the stairwell, Briley checking things out at every stage of the trip.
It went without trouble. The music still pounded away down there, the audience was even louder than before, and it was likely the show would run over the minimum length. Still it was not quite ten minutes to two, their deadline, and they were well on their way.
The upstairs office was as they’d left it. Briley ran up the furniture staircase, and Keegan and Parker handed up the three laundry bags and two toolkits. They’d turned the light on when entering the room, and Parker turned it out again after Keegan and Briley were both out and up on the roof. Then he followed them.
Morris had come over from the fire escape. “Not a bit of trouble,” he said.
“Nor us,” Briley said.
“Here’s something,” Keegan said. He was still finding things to be disgusted about. “That lousy Berridge has us loused up. We’ve got five things to carry and now there’s only four of us.”
Morris said, “I’ll carry two. I’ve had a nice long rest. I’ll carry the money.”
Morris went first, carrying two of the laundry bags. Briley followed, with the bag containing his own clothes, followed by Keegan and Parker, each with a toolkit, Parker carrying the kit that had been left upstairs, the one with the snaps on the outside for carrying the ax.
It was strange not to hear the music. Going down the fire escape, they heard the sounds of the city instead; few sounds at this hour, mostly traffic.
The Strand Theater’s fire door looked the same as usual, but was different in that it had been unlocked from the inside. Grasping the lip overhang at the bottom, it was possible to pull the door open.
Keegan had the flashlight, and didn’t turn it on until they were all in the theater and Parker had closed and relocked the door. Then the light shone out across the cluttered empty stage—this had been a vaudeville theater long ago, when it was first built and movies weren’t important yet—and they picked their>way slowly through the rubble; the screen, sound system, and some other things had already been stripped out of this building.
The third toolkit and the Union Electric Co. coveralls were where they’d left them, in seats near the back of the theater. Briley scaled the guard’s hat through the darkness toward the stage, and they all took off their masks and put on the coveralls. Keegan had put the flashlight on an armrest at the end of an aisle, pointing its light toward the stage, and their movements in front of it as they put on the coveralls made bat-shadows fly all over the high empty interior of the building.
Morris went first, carrying a toolkit out to the truck, waiting for them in front of the marquee. They heard him
