Tom Hurley held the flashlight, while Ed Mackey with his hood over his face climbed into the truck, disarmed the two men, and tied them together back to back with their belts and shoelaces. Hurley said, “Make sure that camera isn’t working.”
Mackey looked at the camera, then hit it three times with a gun butt. “It isn’t working,” he said, and he and Hurley left the truck and went over to the house.
Stan Devers had gone up a telephone pole half a block away shortly before the lights went out. He was equipped with insulated gloves and a pair of heavy wire cutters, and while there was still light to see by, he made sure he had the group of lines leading to the area of the Buenadella house. When the lights went out he worked by feel, scissoring through the lines, hearing the musical notes when they snapped. Finished, he dropped the wire cutters into the oceanic darkness below him, and went slowly backward down the pole, feeling for the metal rails. He had no sense of height in this blackness, and it soon seemed to him it was taking too long to get down the pole. Leg down, hand down, leg down, hand down; surely he should have reached the ground by now. A stupid panic tried to rise up in his chest, and he felt the idiotic urge to just jump out from the pole into the black, drop the rest of the distance, however long it was, get this damn thing over with. And still he kept inching and inching and inching his way down the rough wood surface; and when his foot did finally thud against the ground, it came as a surprise.
The three drivers, Mike Carlow and Philly Webb and Nick Dalesia, had been waiting in three cars parked a block away. When the darkness hit, they drove forward, using parking lights only. Ahead of them they saw the spot of light where Mackey and Hurley were dealing with the men in the TV repair truck. They drove on by that, and made the turn onto Buenadella’s property; as they turned, they switched on their headlights, high beams, four bright lights per car.
Men upstairs in the front windows had seen the faint outline of automobiles coming, defined by the yellow glow of parking lights, the dim red luster of taillights. They’d readied themselves to fire, but the sudden blinding glare of headlights left them with no targets to shoot at.
The three cars ignored the circular driveway. Spreading out across the lawn, evading the crooked sundial, they came to a stop about twenty feet from the house, in a widely separated row, all pointed directly at the front door. In all the surrounding blackness, the facade of the Buenadella house showed up like a painted bas-relief on a velvet wall.
The three drivers got out of their cars and moved quickly around behind them. They had pistols in their hands, and they used the cars as shields as they scanned the front windows of the house. Anyone intending to shoot out the headlights would have to show himself in a window; at the first sign of any movement in one of those windows, all three drivers would open fire. The headlights would stay on.
At the rear of the house, Parker and Handy McKay and Dan Wycza and Fred Ducasse had waited for the darkness, crouching in the shrubbery at the far end of the lawn. In the lighted windows inside the house they could see men moving back and forth, in conversation together or watching, and each of them chose an indoor target. Parker, on one knee with his gun hand supported on the other knee, sighted on the figure in the French doors in Buenadella’s den. That was Calesian there, and it was right to kill him this way, with their roles reversed.
When the lights went out, Parker squeezed off two shots. He heard the other three around him firing, and when they stopped, there was a ragged response of gunfire from the house. “Wait it out,” he said, speaking into the darkness.
Dan Wycza’s voice sounded from his left, saying, “I wonder did I get mine.”
That was all any of them said until they saw the sudden blare of headlights from the other side of the house. The house was silhouetted by the lights; it was like an eclipse of the moon.
Parker got to his feet. “All right,” he said, and he and the three others walked forward across the lawn to the house.
Fifty
When the lights went out, Buenadella knew he was a dead man. A small wailing cry came out of his mouth and he wasn’t even aware of it; his eyes were wide open, staring into the darkness, trying to see the thing that was coming to run him down.
He heard the shooting, and the sound of broken glass, and he heard somebody say, “Uhh.” Who was that? Calesian?
Ernie Dulare was cursing: quietly, methodically, in a cold rage, like a man counting to ten. Quittner, his voice soft but his words fast, said, “Stay down. They’re shooting through the windows.”
“Oh, God.” Buenadella felt trapped. He couldn’t be indoors now, he had to be outside. The darkness made the walls and ceiling close in on him, press against him. Moving with unconscious familiarity across the room, he headed toward the French doors, ignoring what Quittner had said about the men outside shooting through the windows. Behind him he could hear Dulare punching vainly at the telephone. “Hello. Hello,” Dulare said, angrily, then he was heard slamming the receiver down. “They’ve cut the line.”
Of course. Buenadella had already known that. He neared the French doors, and someone grasped his arm. Someone breathing noisily through his mouth, as though he had severe sinus trouble.
Buenadella could be no more afraid. He accepted this with the calm of paralysis, saying, “Yes? Yes?”
”Dutch.” It was Calesian, his voice sounding clogged “Dutch. It’s—” The hand tugged at his arm; Calesian wanted him closer, apparently wanted to whisper to him.
Buenadella leaned forward, dazzled by the darkness, having no idea what any of this was about. He felt Calesian’s warm breath on his cheek, and turned his head, and blood gushed warmly from Calesian’s mouth. It smelled acrid and stinking; Buenadella recoiled from it, his mind filled with confused images of vomiting and slaughterhouses, and his sudden movement destroyed Calesian’s balance. Calesian fell against Buenadella’s side, nearly knocking him over. Buenadella braced himself, flailing backward with one arm for a wall or the desk or anything, and Calesian slid down Buenadella’s body and fell away onto the floor.
Dulare was saying something. Buenadella knew he should be listening, but all his attention was centered on the fact that some soft part of Calesian was still pressed against his ankle and foot.
A hand—again—on his arm; this one rougher, more urgent, shaking him. Dulare’s loud voice: “Dutch? Goddammit, man, is that you?”
