Plunder Squad

Seven

Parker sat in the passenger seat and watched the dark side streets go by. Mackey was driving the small truck, a red Ford Econoline van, with the six paintings stacked in the back, still in their protective crates, and covered by a tarp.

It was a little before midnight, and they were following Second Avenue south through Manhattan. Until 34th Street they’d been in pretty heavy traffic, but then most of it had peeled off for the Midtown Tunnel to Queens and Long Island, and the rest had dropped off one by one until now, south of 14th Street, they were just about alone. Two cruising taxis, dome lights lit, and one slow-moving police car were quickly left behind.

Parker said, “This is a beautiful setup for a hijack.”

Mackey grinned at him in the dark. “From Renard? You kidding?”

“This isn’t his kind of neighborhood.”

“He needed a place we could drive the truck into.” Mackey raised his right hand to make a limp wrist, and spoke in an exaggerated falsetto. “This place is owned by a friend of his.”

Parker glanced over his shoulder. There was no partition between him and the cargo area. He said, “I’m going to get in back.”

Mackey looked thoughtful. “You really think Renard might pull something?”

“No. But I’m running a string of bad luck.”

Mackey shrugged. “Go ahead, then.”

Parker slid out of the seat and worked his way back past the paintings to the rear doors. They had small square panes of glass in them, he could see the two empty cabs jockeying for position a block back. Turning the other way, he could look over the tops of the painting crates and past Mackey’s shoulder at the street in front. He had to stand crouched, bracing his back against the side wall. In that position, he took his revolver from under his jacket and held it loosely in his right hand—a .38 Special Colt Agent with a hammer shroud, a new gun that had only been fired five times, for sighting-in.

When Mackey made the right turn onto the side street, Parker kept turning his head back and forth, watching front and rear, waiting for movement from anywhere. It was a narrow street, reduced to one traffic lane by the solid row of cars parked on each side. Midway down the block the unlit lumberyard sign could be seen, but not clearly read; the streetlights were widely separated, and little light reached the street from the tenement windows.

It was a block of mixed residences and businesses. Besides the lumberyard, contained in a fairly narrow five- story building, there was a liquor store, a Spanish grocery, a dry cleaner’s and a children’s-wear store scattered amid the brick and stone tenements, all of them closed.

There were no pedestrians moving, and no other cars in motion. Mackey reached the lumberyard, turned, and came to a stop facing the closed corrugated garage-type door. He honked once, according to the agreed instructions, and immediately Renard himself appeared in the headlight glow from the office door just to the right. He was squinting and blinking in the light, and looked very nervous. He gave a jerky wave of the hand, went back inside, and a few seconds later the electrically controlled garage door began to slide up.

Parker, resting his gun hand on top of the crates, peered forward into the lumberyard building. An empty concrete floor extended well back, flanked on both sides by deep bins full of wood. Toward the back were stacks of sheetrock and building materials, and along the rear wall was the bench saw. No one was in sight.

Parker turned around to watch the street again. Still nothing. The truck moved completely into the building and stopped, and the garage door could be heard coming down again.

“Looks okay,” Mackey said.

Parker looked to his left, through the glass toward the office. The three men who came running out of there were all carrying handguns, and none of them was Renard.

“Reverse! Get us out of here!”

But it was too late; the door was sliding down over the exit. Mackey shifted into reverse and tromped on the accelerator, and the truck squealed backward and slammed into the bottom of the door, which had come down just far enough to cover the truck’s rear windows. The door stopped moving, and the truck engine stalled when Mackey’s foot was knocked off the accelerator by the jolt.

Parker had been knocked off his feet. He got up quickly behind the crates again, and Mackey was staring out the front of the van, clawing for his own gun and shouting, “Which way are they coming?”

“On the right.”

Mackey shoved open the door beside him on his left, looked to his right, and three or four shots smashed the right side window, punched into Mackey, and drove him backwards out the door he’d opened and onto the concrete.

Parker waited. They’d been driving with the windows shut, but now with one window smashed and the opposite door open he could hear voices from outside:

“You get him?”

“We all got him.”

“See is he dead. Harry, get that faggot out here.”Someone ran across the front of the van. Parker saw his head through the windshield, but did nothing. “He’s dead!”

“There was supposed to be two of them. Where the hell’s the other one?”

Parker waited, the revolver atop the crates, pointing toward the front of the van.

“He come in alone.”

“Renard? Where the hell is—? Get him over here, will you?”

“I don’t—I don’t want to be—” That was Renard’s voice, terrified out of its wits.