Firebreak

Parker wanted to get this thing moving. He said, 'What's your point?'

'You'll lock us in a room or tie us up or whatever,' Moxon said. 'I don't think you'll kill a peace officer if you don't have to, and you won't have to, and you figure those moustaches and glasses can confuse identification just enough, so we'll cooperate. If we see a chance in our favor, naturally, we'll take it.'

'Fucking A,' Hayes said.

Wiss said, 'That's all we'd expect. You take care of yourselves, we take care of ourselves, nobody gets hurt.'

'All I ask,' Moxon said, 'is to know where the hidey-hole is.'

Elkins laughed. 'It really got to you,' he said.

Wiss said, 'That's okay. Somewhere down there is where we'd stash you anyway.' Looking at Parker, seeing his impatience, he said, 'It's okay. It keeps everybody calm, and it moves us along. We're going down there anyway.'

'Then let's go.'

Moxon and Hayes looked at Elkins, who said, 'We come in last time from the other side. There's a hall off a big dining room, with a flight of stairs down to the basement.'

'We've been down there a lot,' Moxon said.

Elkins said, 'Well, we'll go again. You first, then me, then Bert, then my friends.'

Moxon nodded, and they trooped through the house, all white and pale green and gold, more Versailles than hunting lodge, and down the broad wood stairs to the carpeted main room of the basement, where the empty wooden cartons to transport the paintings leaned in a row against the wall. Open doorways to left and right showed storage rooms full of magpie keepings. Soft fluorescent ceiling lights gave an even greenish gold illumination.

When they were all down the stairs, Elkins said to Moxon, 'Come on over here. Stand right there. Look at the carpet. Along there.'

Moxon, not knowing what he was supposed to be looking at, stood where Elkins had put him and frowned at the floor. He switched his frown to Elkins, who only grinned at him and raised an eyebrow, and then he frowned at the floor again, until all at once his eyes widened and he said, 'Son of a bitch!'

'Roy?' Hayes said. 'What is it?'

Moxon said to Elkins, 'Can he have a look?'

'Sure,' Elkins said. 'It's a bonus prize.'

Parker wanted to get moving here, but he knew what Elkins was doing, and why. Keep the customer calm, keep him from feeling desperate, from feeling he has to find a way out of this. It would pay off later, but it was an irritation now.

Hayes moved over to stand where Moxon had been, with Moxon now just to his left, but no matter how long Hayes glared at the floor he didn't see what the others were talking about until Moxon gently said, 'Bert, look at the nap of the carpet. Look at the line.'

'Well, Jesus Christ,' Hayes said, seeing it at last. 'It's a goddam Indian trail!' He looked at the blank wall where the trail stopped. 'That's supposed to be mountain back there,' he said. 'Solid rock.'

'It's solid, all right,' Elkins said, and in Parker's ear Lloyd's tinny voice said, 'We got trouble.'

Parker and Elkins and Wiss all got very alert. Parker said, 'What trouble?'

Moxon and Hayes looked at him, not getting it, while Lloyd said, 'There's an FBI man in Dallas has to talk to Hayes.'

'Dallas,' Elkins said. 'Griffith.'

The lawmen turned now to look at Elkins.

Lloyd said, 'I've been deflecting him, trouble on the line, but it won't work much longer. Anything else I can deal with, but not a phone call.'

Parker said to Elkins, 'Speakerphone.'

Elkins shrugged. 'I wouldn't know.'

Parker turned to Moxon and Hayes. 'You'll know,' he said. 'And this is your chance to keep yourself alive.'

'There's an office by the front door,' Moxon said, 'has a speakerphone.'

'I remember that room,' Wiss said.

Parker said, 'That's where we go.'

The five trooped upstairs, in the same order as before, and turned toward the front of the house, as Lloyd's voice sounded in Parker's ear, now with a trace of panic: 'This guy's talking about sending state troopers from Havre. I've really got to let him through.'

'Two minutes,' Parker told him. 'Can you change your voice? Be your own supervisor.'

'Oh, God, I don't know,' Lloyd said. 'Let me see what I can do.'

The five walked through the ground floor of the sprawling house, coming at last to a good-sized office with copier and computer and wall maps of the area and a large partner's desk with a green felt inlaid top and antique swivel chairs on both sides, and the phone. They all crowded in, and Parker said to Elkins, 'Take Roy into the hall, sit him on the floor where we can see him. If you hear one wrong word from Bert, shoot off

his basket' Turning, he said, 'Bert, move that chair back from the desk, middle of the room. When the phone rings, answer it, put it on speaker then, come sit down in the chair.'