Nick was fifty-two years old now, a cheerful heavy-set guy who enjoyed playing bartender, living in a kind of semi-retirement. A reliable soldier with the local organization since he was in his teens, he had stood still for a vehicular homicide rap one time that had really belonged to a very important local guy; he’d served five years and three months, and when he’d gotten out his reward had been Nick’s Place. Downstairs the bar, upstairs the apartment and the unofficial loan operation. He got slices in both places, did very well, had some fun, and enjoyed life.
The loan operation was quiet and simple, and most of the borrowers were people from the straight world: businessmen in a bind, operators who needed some quick short-term cash, people whose square-world credit rating was maybe bad, or credit all used up, or something like that. They could borrow big amounts from Nick, amazingly big amounts, and it didn’t matter much to Nick or the people behind him if the debts were ever paid off. All you had to keep current with was the interest: two percent a month, every month. Miss a month and some guys come to visit and talk. Miss two months and the same guys come back, but not to talk.
With loans going out and interest coming in, there was always quite a bit of cash moving through Nick’s Place, but there wasn’t much to worry about. Nick subscribed to the Vigilant Protective Service, and the local police patrol car knew to keep a special eye on Nick’s Place; and anyway, who would be dumb enough to go after money that belonged to men like Ernie Dulare and Adolf Lozini?
Somebody. The bedroom light went on and Nick opened his eyes and two guys were standing there with hoods and guns. “Holy Jesus,” Nick said, and struggled to sit up. His wife Angela’s heavy arm was across his chest, pinning him to the bed, but he finally managed to shove the arm away and hunch up to a sitting position, blinking in the glare of the overhead light.
“Get up, Nick,” one of the hooded men said. “Get up and open the closet.”
“You’re out of your minds,” Nick said. Squinting, rubbing his eyes, trying to wake up enough to think, he said, “You got to be crazy. You know whose money that is?”
“Ours. Come on, Nick, we’re in a hurry.”
Angela groaned, bubbled, snored, and rolled heavily over onto her other side. One thing you could say for Angela: when she was asleep, she was asleep. Nick, with one tiny corner of his mind grateful that she wasn’t awake to yap and complain and carry on, slowly kicked his legs out from under the covers and over the side of the bed. “Christ on a crutch,” he complained. “What the hell time is it?”
“Move it, Nick.”
The floor was cold. The air-conditioner hummed in the window, making cold air move like invisible fog along the floor. Nick, sitting there in white T-shirt and blue boxer shorts, frowned at the one who was doing the talking, trying to see his face through the hood, trying to recognize the voice that was calling him by first name. He said, “Do I know you?” And then, in the process of asking the question, he suddenly came fully awake and realized he didn’t want to know the answer to it. If a guy has a hood and a gun, then neither one of you wants you to see his face.
Besides, Vigilant had to be on the way. These guys must have busted in here, so that meant Vigilant would be coming, and so would the cops. So all Nick had to do in the meantime was obey orders and be ready to drop to the floor.
Right. He got to his feet, saying, “Forget it. I don’t want to know if I know you.”
“That’s smart. Open the closet, Nick.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He wished he had his slippers. “And the safe,” he said.
“That’s right,” the gunman said.
These people knew a lot. They knew the money was in a safe, and they knew the safe was in the bedroom closet. Thinking about that, wondering how much else they knew and what was letting them be so calm about heisting mob money, Nick opened the closet door and went down on one creaking knee to slowly work the combination dial on the safe. While behind him the two guys stood waiting, guns in their hands. And Angela snored. And Nick wondered how long it would take the Vigilant people to get here.
When the buzzer and light went off in the Vigilant ready room, showing that a break-in had just occurred at Nick’s Place, Fred Ducasse switched it off and went back to the magazine article he was reading on the latest concepts of crowd control, in a trade journal called
* * *
The problem was, there was only so much you could do with a pinochle deck. So long as Philly Webb had been here they could use the deck for its original purpose—pinochle—and play three-handed, Ducasse and Handy McKay and Webb. But Webb had left half an hour ago to drive for Wiss and Elkins, who were running the job with the stockbroker, Leffler, and that had been the end of it for cards. Ducasse and Handy had tried gin rummy, war, blackjack, ah hell and casino, and not a one of them was worth a damn with a pinochle deck.
So they’d finally hunted around for something to read instead, and in an inner office with a cluttered desk and paneled walls they’d found a shelf full of magazines, all of them specialized law-enforcement or security-agency trade journals. With nothing else to do, and time hanging heavy on their hands. Ducasse was reading about crowd control and Handy was reading about closed-circuit-television security systems.
About five minutes after the Nick’s Place buzzer had sounded, the phone all at once rang. Ducasse and Handy looked at one another, and Ducasse said, “Parker?”
“Maybe not. We better put our boy to work.”
The guard they’d kept out was tied and blindfolded in a chair by a desk with a phone on it. Handy went over there and rested his hand on the guard’s shoulder. “Time for you to go to work,” he said.
The guard licked his lips, but didn’t say anything. Handy could feel the muscles tensed in the man’s shoulder. Rapping the shoulder with his knuckles, gently but firmly, he said, “Remember what we talked about. You bring trouble here, you’ll get unhappy.”
“I remember.” The guard’s voice sounded rusty, like someone locked in solitary for a week. “Clear your throat.”
“I’m all right.”
The phone had rung three times by now; that was enough. “Here we go,” Handy said. He picked up the receiver and held it to the guard’s head, holding it at a slight angle so the guard could feel it against his skin yet Handy
