They got out of the car. They both carried handguns in their jacket pockets; Parker a Colt Detective Special in .32 caliber and Grofield an old Beretta Cougar in .380 caliber. They walked down the ramp with their hands in their jacket pockets, and saw the boy nodding in the booth again, facing the other way. The squawk of his radio covered all other sound.
There was no activity out in the street. They reached the brown-metal door to the office, and while Grofield tried the knob Parker watched the boy in the booth; he was more asleep than awake, and completely unaware of their presence.
“Locked,” Grofield said.
Parker took two paces forward and looked through the window next to the door. From the car, all he’d been able to see was the yellow far wall, but now he could see the two desks, the filing cabinet, the free-standing wooden closet, and the man in green work shirt and pants sitting at one of the desks, feet up, reading Playboy. He was short and heavy-set, Italian-looking, with thick dry black hair and stubby-fingered hands. He had a garage- mechanic look about him, and was about forty years old.
Good. Old enough to be sensible, to neither panic nor be a hero.
To the right, behind the guy at the desk, was a second window, fronting on the street. Parker looked at that, stepped back next to Grofield without having been seen by the man in the office, and said, “Take the sidewalk window. Show him your gun at my signal.”
“Right.”
“And let me know if anybody’s around.”
Grofield walked briskly out to the street and around the corner, and Parker stood next to the window again, where he could look through at the man inside and the other window. He glanced over at the boy in the booth, who continued to nod to the echoing blary music, unaware of the world around himself.
Grofield appeared outside that other window. Parker watched him look both ways, then nodded as Grofield gestured to him that they had privacy. He made one last check of the sleeping boy, then took the Colt from his pocket, stepped to the middle of the window, and tapped the gun barrel against the glass.
He had to do it twice before the man inside looked up, and then his reaction was so huge it seemed he might be having a heart attack. His ankles had been crossed on the desk top, showing worn work boots; now his feet flew into the air, his arms shot out, the magazine went sailing across the room, and his chair teetered back and forth on the edge of falling over before finally thudding forward to land on all four legs.
The gun was in Parker’s right hand. He pointed toward Grofield with his left, both to signal Grofield to make his own move and to attract the attention of the man in the office, who was now leaning forward in his chair, feet flat on the floor and arms out at his sides as he gaped open-mouthed at the gun in Parker’s fist.
For a long moment nothing happened. Grofield had taken out the Beretta and was holding it close to his belt buckle, shielding it from the street as he pointed it in the direction of the man in the office. Parker remained where he was, gun aimed and pointing finger indicating Grofield. And the man inside went on being stunned into immobility, sitting like a drugged ape in the zoo, staring at the black circle of gun barrel.
Then Grofield tapped on the glass with his own pistol. The man’s head turned, as though some invisible hand had reached down and forced it to swivel on the neck, and when he saw Grofield and the second gun he slowly lifted his arms straight over his head.
Parker tapped again. The man, arms still up, turned and stared at him. He seemed more dazed than frightened, as though the display of guns had robbed him of the power of thought. With his free hand Parker pointed to the locked door. The man continued to sit there, blinking. Parker pointed again and made a move-along gesture with the pistol, and abruptly the man got to his feet and hurried forward on wobbly legs, moving to the door.
Parker waited till he’d reached it, hand on knob; then he moved to the left, so that when the door pushed open outward he was in position to step inside and pull the door instantly closed behind him again. “Take it easy,” he said.
“Okay,” the man said. It was as though Parker had made some insanely controversial remark, but the man was determined to agree with him anyway. “Okay okay,” he said. His arms were still straight up, but he nevertheless patted the air with his palms, as though to pacify an angry opponent.
“Put your arms down,” Parker told him. “You don’t have heat.”
“That’s right,” the man said, fervently agreeing with everything. His arms stayed up in the air. “I just work here, that’s all,” he said.
“Put them down.”
The man looked startled, then sneaked a look up at his left wrist. It was like a comedy routine, except that the guy was serious. “Oh, yeah,” he said, and snapped his arms down to his sides. “I got, uh—I got flustered.”
“Today’s receipts,” Parker said. “Go get them and bring them to me.”
“Well, sure,” the man said. “Naturally.” Backing away, moving at a half-turn, unwilling to look away from Parker and the gun, he kept talking, maniacally cheerful and agreeable. “I fluster easy,” he said. “I’ve always been like that, I get flustered, I— With my wife, like. She’s very volatile, you know, and then I get flustered.”
He’d reached the filing cabinet. Now he had to turn his attention away from Parker while he searched his pockets for keys, and it was clearly not an easy thing for him to do. He kept reaching in the same pocket, over and over.
“Relax,” Parker said. “Nobody’s going to get hurt.”
“Well, yeah,” the man said. “That makes sense. I mean, you’re, uh—you’re here for money, right?” He finally reached into another pocket and found his keys.
“That’s right,” Parker said. He glanced over at Grofield, who was looking left and right at the street. Their eyes met, and Grofield nodded; everything still all right.
The garage man was still being flustered. Keys rattled together while he tried to remember which was the right one. Then he got it, couldn’t make it work, nearly dropped the whole chain of ten or so keys on the floor, recovered, and unlocked the filing cabinet. Then he stooped to open the bottom drawer and take out two green-metal money boxes, both about the size and shape of small tool kits. Putting them on the floor, he pushed the file drawer closed again, then picked up both boxes and walked toward Parker, waddling slightly from the awkward weight. An
