ceiling. Some bricks had come down, but mostly it was dirt and stone, loose but compacting. It covered the tables, except for a narrow bit at this end. Above, it sloped up and away to where the ceiling used to be and farther.
‘All I hope,’ Mackey said, ‘is we don’t wind up with some delivery truck down here with us. This is under the street.’
‘We’re too far down,’ Marcantoni told him. ‘Besides, we’re not gonna stay.’ He was on one knee again, bending down, shining the flashlight under the end of table that jutted out from the fresh fall of debris. ‘I can see all the way through,’ he said. ‘These things did their job.’
‘They damn well better,’ Angioni said. ‘We got no other way outa here.’
‘I’ll go first with the light,’ Marcantoni said, and on elbows and knees started through the tunnel-within-a-tunnel created by the tables.
‘I’m with you,’ Angioni said, and went down on all fours to crawl after him.
Marcantoni was the biggest of the six, and he found the space cramped under the tables, particularly with the two thick plastic bags of loot hanging from his waist. Loose rubble kept falling in from the sides, roughing up the floor, piling a few inches high here and there to make the clearance even narrower. Marcantoni went through slowly, flashlight stuck out ahead of him, his eyes on that distant area beyond the last table, where it was still clear. He passed under the second table as Kolaski followed Angioni and then Williams followed Kolaski.
It was still falling, slight but relentless, the dry crap was still coming down, shifting this way and that. As Marcantoni reached the far end of the, second table, a sudden cascade of dirt and dust streamed down in a curtain line from the narrow space between the tables, falling on his head and neck, blinding him. He jerked away, his shoulder hitting a table leg and jostling the table an inch to the left, as Mackey started to crawl after Williams, carrying the second flashlight.
More dirt fell. Marcantoni, unable to see anything, dropped the flashlight while trying to hold his hands over his face, keep the dirt out of his eyes. But the dirt was tumbling faster now down through the hole he’d widened, and more was sliding in from the sides. He kicked out, the plastic bag on his left side struck against something, and he hit the middle table. Now all three tables were awry, and the dirt thudded down into all that newly available space.
Parker was about to crawl after Mackey when Mackey abruptly backed out, one forearm over his eyes. A dust cloud followed him. Mackey veered rightward out of its way, held the light aimed into the darkness under the table, and said, ‘Something’s wrong. Something’s gone wrong.’
Parker crouched, looking where Mackey aimed the light down the line beneath the tables, and they both saw nothing but the dust in there, and a spreading fall of dirt, and Williams’ legs writhing, as he struggled for purchase, as he tried to pull back from the dirt that was burying him.
‘Hold the light on me,’ Parker said, and slid in under the first table, crawling forward till he could reach Williams’ thrashing ankles. He grabbed the ankles, pulled, pulled harder, and finally Williams’ body began to slide along the brick floor.
Parker kept pulling, until Williams was back far enough that he could help with his own arms. Parker backed out of the narrow space, holding his breath against the dust cloud Williams caused by his movements, and Williams backed out after him, covered with dirt. ‘My God,’ he said, and coughed. ‘I was a dead man.’ Mackey said, ‘The others?’
‘It was Tom got in trouble first,’ Williams said, ‘and then everybody else. I don’t think anybody got out, man.’
Bricks fell near them. They backed away, Mackey shining the light at the rupture in the ceiling, which was larger now, more dirt falling down. ‘We’re not gonna get to those guys,’ he said.
Williams said, ‘I don’t know how you even got to me, but I’m grateful. I owe you my life.’
Parker shook his head. ‘I didn’t do it for you,’ he said. ‘Forget all that. I’ll give you the truth here. What I need is a crew, the more the better. I wish I could have those three back.’ Looking around at the useless tunnel, he said, ‘Because we’re going to have to cut that armory back there a new asshole. We have to find a new way out of there.’
THREE
1
Parker, disgusted, removed his belt so he could let the full plastic bags fall to the brick floor of the useless tunnel. Mackey watched him, frowning, then said, ‘You’re leaving the swag?’
Sliding the belt back through the loops, Parker said, ‘What do we do with it? The people who knew who to call in New Orleans are down in there, under the dirt.’
‘God damn it,’ Williams said, ‘we don’t have the customer.’
‘We don’t have anything,’ Parker told him.
He hadn’t liked this thing from the beginning. Mostly, it had been the simple matter that he hadn’t wanted to stay in this part of the world after getting out of their prison, but he also didn’t like to be pressured into doing something he felt wrong about.
And it had felt wrong to him, all the way. He hadn’t known why, or what to look out for, but from the minute Marcantoni introduced the idea, back in Stoneveldt, when it was clear to Parker that he had to agree to be part of this thing or lose Marcantoni and he’d needed Marcantoni even more then than he needed him now Parker believed it was all going to turn sour, one way or another, before he could get clear of this place. He’d never thought Marcantoni or the others would try to keep it all for themselves, when the time came to split up the proceeds; they were more professional and sensible than that. But he could feel it, out there, hovering. Something.
And here it was. A building that was famous for having only one way out, and now they had to find another way.
Williams was looking up at that long ragged split in the ceiling. ‘The street’s up there,’ he said. ‘Suppose we could get up and out that way?’
Mackey said, ‘Dig a hole upwards,over my head? Into a street full of traffic? I’ll stand over here and watch.’
Parker said to Williams, ‘That doesn’t work. Even if it doesn’t cave in, and it probably wouldn’t, you’ve got a hundred fifty years of paving up there, layer over layer of blacktop.’
