Each face of the Oceanview Plaza building contained an entrance precisely midway in its length. Each set of these heavy glass doors opened onto a wide terrazo-floored corridor where there were shops on both sides. Decorated with rectangular stone planters full of miniature palms and ferns and other tropical plants, the public corridors all converged under the peaked ceiling of the mall's lounge.
The core of the building was this circular lobby of slightly more than a hundred-foot diameter, with its dark wood paneling and its sloped ceiling coming to a dramatic point fifty feet overhead. There were padded benches here where weary shoppers could pause and regain their strength. Full-length mirrors were set at regular intervals in the walls, a convenient place to check, surreptitiously as one walked past them, that one's appearance was, indeed, impeccable. The lounge contained more planters and plants than did the corridors, providing a fresh, natural, relaxing atmosphere. In the very center of the lounge there was a deep pool, another circle, this one about forty feet in diameter. It was sided with lavalike stone and low green ferns. Hundreds of jets of water fountained out of hidden nozzles in those stones, made patterns in the air, rained down on the surface of the pool with a soft shushing sound. A colorful free-standing signboard nearby informed the casual shopper that a world-famous novelty diving act would perform in the mall daily during the following week. Apparently, even exclusive shopping centers full of the most expensive shops needed to run an occasional promotional stunt.
Tucker sat on one of the benches, hands folded on his lap to make sure his coat didn't stretch tight across the outlines of the Skorpion. When they had first come into the building through the east doors, the three men had split up for tactical reasons. Now, as he waited for the proper moment to rejoin Meyers and Bates at their prearranged rendezvous point, he watched the flow of commerce around him.
Only four places of business were situated so that their fronts faced out on the lounge and the fountain. On the northeast quarter of the circular chamber stood Shen Yang's Orient, an import shop with windows full of handsome ivory and jade art, hand-woven carpets, and hand-carved screens. Nothing in Shen Yang's Orient bore a price tag, which meant it was all very dignified and priced at three times its real retail value. Only a few shoppers were poking around in the oriental shop, and the Japanese proprietor was already beginning to close up for the day. On the northwest side of the lounge Henry's Gaslight Restaurant, a favorite place for luncheons and early dinners in Santa Monica, had served its last desserts and was politely but firmly saying good-by to its customers. On the southwest side the House of Books was still fairly busy, even though the manager had begun to turn out a few of the lights at the back of the store. This was, as far as Tucker had ever seen, the only large bookstore outside of New York that handled no paperbacks, that dealt solely in the more expensive hard covers and higher-priced gift books.
Behind him, on the southeast corner of the lounge, Young Maiden, a clothing store for the tradition-bound girl, had closed its doors after its last customer.
Those four stores were indicative of the state of the remaining fifteen. Only a handful of shoppers yet prowled the mall. Shortly, there would be none. The clerks and managers would leave, too. And the job could begin at last.
It was going to work. The operation had sounded like the ravings of a madman when Frank Meyers first began to talk about it. It was too risky, too dangerous. But it was going to work.
It had to work.
Aside from the fact he needed the money, Tucker could not endure failure. He was neurotic about success. He took a job only when he felt he could pull it off. If he failed, even once, he would play into his father's hands, which bothered him more than the idea of spending ten years in federal prison.
Only one thing marred his cultured optimism. He had seen a room that was not on Meyers's diagram. In the west corridor at the front of the mall there was a dark wood door labeled: oceanview plaza business office. He knew the existence of this office in no way affected their plans, yet he was bothered by Meyers's omission of it on the master whiteprint. Why overlook this one detail?
He looked at his wristwatch, decided it was time to move. Rising, adjusting his jacket to be sure that it continued to conceal the Skorpion, he walked back the eastern corridor down which he had come when they had first entered the mall. On the left was a Rolls-Citroen-Maserati-Jaguar dealership, a gleaming showroom full of elegant automobiles. Beyond that was Surf and Subsurface, a tasteful and richly appointed sporting-goods store- surfboards and aqualungs on lush Freeport carpet, shotguns displayed in a blue-velvet-lined case-which made Abercrombie amp; Fitch appear positively plebeian by comparison. On his right was the Toolbox Lounge, where the help was even now gently but insistently saying good-by to its last high-society drunkard. Beyond the bar was the entrance to the mall warehouse and maintenance center. It was here that Tucker opened a gray door marked employees only and stepped out of the corridor.
Meyers and Bates were waiting with drawn Skorpions. Tucker said, 'Don't shoot.'
'What's it like out there?' Meyers asked, lowering the gun.
'They're closing up.'
The big man smiled. 'Right on schedule.'
'Frank, I looked the place over, and I've been wondering why you didn't include the mall office on your diagram.' He watched Meyers closely.
'Didn't I?' Meyers asked. 'Just an oversight.'
Intuitively, Tucker knew that it was more than that, but he saw no way or no real reason to pursue the issue. He liked Meyers's new personality, this more competent version. He didn't want to do anything that would bring back the New York City slob.
'We only have to wait,' Bates said, wiping perspiration from his wide forehead. He was never comfortable on a job until he was working on a safe, applying his skill. Then he was steady, self-assured, altogether at ease. 'Just wait,' he repeated.
'I hope that's all,' Tucker said.
The warehouse was as large as any store in the mall, larger than most of them. It was fully four hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, with a twenty-foot-high ceiling. Just inside the door stood a scarred workbench, a heavy-duty vise, a jigsaw, and all the other tools the maintenance men would need to keep the building in good repair. The remainder of the room was given over to storage. The floor was marked off into nineteen sections of varying size, one for each of the retail outlets in the mall, and every section was stacked with cartons, crates, and drums of goods that would eventually be taken via electric-powered carts and fork lifts to the many stores under this one roof. Those electric vehicles were parked in a row beside barrels of cleaning compounds and floor waxes. Two corrugated steel garage doors, each as high as the room and wide enough to admit the back end of a large truck, were set in the east wall. The warehouse had no windows. With the garage doors closed and dogged down tight, as they were now, all light came from fluorescent tubes framed in sheet-metal reflectors twenty feet overhead. This cold, blue-white glare, combined with the cinder-block walls and plain cement floor, too closely resembled the decor of hospitals and prisons. It made Tucker decidedly ill at ease.
Tucker looked at his watch.
'Ten o'clock on the nose,' said Bates, who had looked at his own watch in chorus with Tucker. 'Fifteen or twenty minutes and we should be able to move.' He looked at Meyers. 'Are you certain there aren't maintenance men on duty now?'
Meyers laughed softly and slapped the smaller man on the back. The sound of that gentle blow whispered back from the ceiling and the cold cement walls. 'Have I been wrong about anything else? Look, the maintenance men work a regular nine-to-five shift. They're long gone. No one's going to walk in on us unexpectedly.'
Bates ran one strong, stubby-fingered hand through his white hair and tried to smile. But he could not manage anything more than a pained grimace. 'Don't mind me,' he said. 'I've never been much good at waiting around.'
Taking the Skorpion from his waistband and tightening his belt, Tucker said, 'What about the guard dog?'
'He's just where I told you he'd be,' Meyers said, pointing over his shoulder.
'Big brute,' Edgar said.
Tucker walked past the other two men, down a narrow aisle between ten-foot stacks of merchandise, all the way to the far end of the room. The dog, a healthy young German shepherd with a beautiful coat, was there and waiting at attention, alerted by Tucker's footsteps. It was chained to a thick iron ring that was set firmly in a cement-block wall. Ears flattened along its lupine skull, wicked teeth bared, it strained forward until the chain was taut, focusing its fierce black eyes on Tucker. It growled quietly in the back of its throat, but it did not bark or
