at someplace like the Park Regal, Mackey and Brenda would be long gone from here.
Out of the shower, Mackey dressed in dark, loose comfortable clothes, with a Beretta Jaguar .22 automatic in a deerskin holster at the small of his back, under his shirt, upside down with the butt to the right, ready to his hand if he had to reach back there. He’d gotten similar gear for Parker and Williams. Rubber gloves and a small tube of talcum powder were in his jacket pocket. He packed a small canvas bag with a few of his things, because he’d be staying with the rest of them at the former beer distributor’s place between the job and the arrival of the fence from New Orleans. Then he’d phone Brenda, she’d pick him up, and they’d be off. With Parker, if he wanted a ride, or on their own.
He kissed her at the door, and she said, ‘Try to stay out of trouble.’
‘What you should do,’ he told her, ‘is stay away from that armory. Don’t call attention.’ Because he knew she liked to be nearby when he was at work, in case he needed her. He’d needed her in the past, but not this time. ‘Just stay away, Brenda,’ he said. ‘Okay?’
‘I’ll go over there tomorrow,’ she told him, ‘for one more class at the dance studio. I like that workout. I won’t go today, there’s nobody there today, everything’s closed on Sunday.’
‘We know,’ Mackey said, and grinned, kissed her again, and left.
Downstairs, Phil Kolaski was supposed to be waiting for him in the Honda, down the block from the hotel entrance, and there he was. Mackey tossed his bag in back, got into the passenger seat in front, and said, ‘Everything still on?’
‘Don’t see why not,’ Phil said, and drove them away from there.
It was Phil Kolaski that Mackey had gotten in touch with, when he was the outside man to help Parker put together a string on the inside. They had studied each other very closely, looking for danger signs, and had both decided they could take a chance.
It was like a marriage, that, or more exactly like an engagement. The two people start off strangers to each other, have to find reasons to trust each other, have to learn each other well enough to feel they aren’t likely to be betrayed, and then have to pop the question:
‘Tom’s got a job lined up for when he gets out. He’ll want you and your friend in on it, to take the place of the guys got nabbed with him.’
Mackey had been comfortable with that idea if he was in this part of the world anyway, he might as well make a profit on it but knew that Parker would want, once out, to keep moving. He’d told Phil that, and Phil had said, ‘Tom will talk to him, before they come out,’ so it seemed to be all right.
Two blocks from the Park Regal they went through the intersection with the Armory on the left and the library, another heavy brick pile from the nineteenth century, on the right. Mackey laughed: ‘We’re gonna be underthis street!’
‘With our hands,’ Phil said, ‘full of jewels.’
9
The Margaret H. Moran Memorial Library was theoretically closed as of five P.M. on Sundays, but by the time the last patron and the last book/tape/DVD were checked out it was usually closer to five-thirty. Then whichever staff was on duty had to go through the public parts of the building for strays, occasionally finding one (usually in a lavatory), so that they were lucky if they were out of there, front door locked behind them and alarms switched on, by quarter to six.
This evening, late October twilight coming on fast, the library was dark and empty at six P.M., when a black Honda and a green Taurus drove slowly by. The two cars traveled on another block to a parking garage where they entered, took checks from the automatic machine at the entrance, left the cars, walked back down the concrete stairwell to the street, and separated. Parker and Mackey turned left, away from the library and Armory, while Williams crossed Indiana Avenue and Marcantoni and Kolaski and Angioni walked back to the library.
At the library, Marcantoni hunkered in front of the door while the other two stood on the sidewalk in front of him, chatting together, blocking the view of Marcantoni at work from passing cars. There was little traffic and no pedestrians in this downtown area at six on a Sunday.
Marcantoni opened a flat soft leather pouch on his knee; inside, in a row of narrow pockets, were his picks. Patiently he went to work on the locks, not wanting to disturb them so much as to set off the building’s alarms.
The fire law required the door to open outward. Marcantoni pulled it ajar just enough so he could put a small matchbox in the opening, to keep the spring lock from shutting it again. Then he put his picks neatly away, and was straightening when Parker and Mackey approached, with Williams behind them, just coming around the corner.
The six men went into the building, closing the relocked door behind them. Marcantoni said, ‘There’s wastebaskets behind the main counter there, we’re gonna need them. There’s a lot of trash to move.’
Parker said, ‘Then you need shovels.’
‘Right,’ Marcantoni said. ‘I’ve got that figured out, too.’
There were three large metal wastebaskets, gray, square, behind the long main counter, all having been emptied by the staff before they left. Kolaski stacked the three and carried them, and Marcantoni, the only one who knew the route, led the way down the center aisle, book stacks on both sides. He carried a small flashlight, with electric tape blocking part of the lens, and Angioni carried a similar one, coming last. They picked up two more wastebaskets from desks along the way, these carried by Williams.
Toward the rear of the main section Marcantoni turned left to go down a broad flight of stairs that doubled back at a landing. This led them down to the periodicals section, with its own stacks full of bound magazines and its own reading room lined with long oak tables. ‘We’ll come back for a couple of those,’ Marcantoni said, waving the flashlight beam over the tables as they walked toward the rear of the section.
Back here was another counter, for checking out magazines and microfilm. They picked up two more wastebaskets there, plus something else. ‘Look at this,’ Marcantoni said.
On a separate wheeled metal table behind the counter were stacked several rows of small metal file drawers. Marcantoni opened one, pulled the full drawer out completely, and dumped the cards onto the floor. Shining the flashlight into the empty drawer, sixteen inches long, six inches wide, four inches deep, he said, ‘A shovel. Everybody grab one.’
