Surrounded

Meyers was much larger and stronger than Tucker, but Tucker was not the least bit afraid of him. He was so accustomed to dealing with his father and his father's henchmen that he could never be frightened of a man who had nothing more than a simple physical advantage. Tucker's father had always been capable of hurting him emotionally and financially as well as physically. Compared to the old man and the old man's high-powered lawyers, bankers, and bought politicians, Frank Meyers was no real threat at all. He was minor league in the extreme. He might be dangerous, violent, and cunning, but he could be handled easily enough.

Meyers stared at the floor, reluctantly cowed by the strength in Tucker's voice. He made a circle on the concrete with the point of his right shoe, looking pretty much like a sullen child. 'Keski was a runner in the New York City rackets about twenty-five years ago,' he said, still staring at the floor, unable to face Tucker. 'Then he came West and set up something for himself. Started with a bar out here in Santa Monica. There was gambling in the back room. Then he moved into prostitution, set up a stable of girls. From there he went to dope-peddling- grass, hash, pills, even heroin. He wasn't above bank jobs, a payroll hijacking now and then, protection rackets?'

'How'd you get to know him?'

'We were friends in New York. When he started setting up bank jobs out here, he asked me to come in with him. We did four jobs together over the years.'

'And the last time you worked with him was two and a half years ago,' Tucker said.

Meyers frowned. 'How'd you know that?'

'Felton told me.'

'He had no business-'

'I had my doubts about you,' Tucker said. 'I wanted a lot of answers from Clitus. If he hadn't given me a few of them, I never would have thrown in with you.'

Wiping his sweat-glazed face with a dirty handkerchief, Meyers said, 'The last time Keski used me, it wasn't a robbery. It was murder.'

Tucker waited. He knew that the big man was going to tell all of it now, but at his own speed. There was no way to hurry him along.

'For most of the last twenty-five years,' Meyers said, 'Keski had a partner, a man named Teevers. They split everything down the middle, and they took equal risks. They weren't close, but they didn't hate each other either. About four years ago Keski decided that it was time to put their money into straight, legal businesses. He wanted to drop the more dangerous stuff like drug-dealing, gambling, and the protection rackets. Teever was old-fashioned. He couldn't see it at all. He was dumb enough to think there was more money in crime than in legit business.'

'And Keski figured the best way to handle the disagreement was to have Teevers killed.'

'Yeah,' Meyers said. 'Keski called me. Just the two of us were involved. We planned it, set it up. It looked like an accident, even to the police and insurance people. It was perfect.'

'Keski and you were the only ones who knew the truth,' Tucker said. 'Beautiful.'

'Yeah.'

'You really didn't see what was coming next?' Tucker asked, incredulous.

Meyers looked up sheepishly. 'I honestly didn't.'

'Keski tried to kill you.'

'Almost succeeded.' Meyers tried a lopsided grin. It didn't work.

'But how?' Tucker asked. 'You're so much bigger than he was.'

'He paid me half in advance,' Meyers said, 'and was supposed to give me the rest after the job was done. He met me in my hotel room here in L.A. to give me the rest of the money? Look, I'd worked with him before. He'd always been square with me. I turned my back on him, never thinking he might? He came in behind me like a cat? Reached around and slit my throat?' Meyers's whispery voice grew shallower, haunted. 'When someone cuts you like that, you're too busy trying to hold the edges of the tear together to protect yourself from anything else. When I fell, he stomped once on my neck. Nearly crushed my windpipe. Then he walked out and left me for dead.'

'That was a mistake.'

'You know it. He hadn't hit my jugular. He'd done badly enough otherwise. But he missed the jugular.' He grinned, an expression that worked this time.

'Still, you must have bled. You must have-'

'I was saved by my weakness,' Meyers said.

'Weakness?'

'I had a woman with me,' Meyers said. 'I stashed her in the bathroom when Keski knocked on the door. I didn't want her to be a witness to the payoff. The moment Keski left, she came out and saw what he'd done to me, and she called down to the desk for an ambulance. I still might have died. But it turned out that three floors below an ambulance team was picking up an old man who'd had a fatal stroke in another room. They rushed upstairs for me. The old man died, but I pulled through.'

'And ever since you've wanted Keski.'

'You know it,' Meyers said, petting his Skorpion with one hand as if it were alive. 'A year after it happened, I came back out here and rented an apartment. Then I started hunting Keski. I found out that he'd gone straight, just like he'd wanted to do. He'd bought the majority stock in this mall, owned motels and restaurants up and down the coast, a dozen other things. I followed him to his office here in the mall every day for two months, looking for an opening. But he was packing two bodyguards then.'

'He never saw you?' Tucker asked.

'If he did, he wouldn't have recognized me,' Meyers said. 'I used to be more of a dresser. And I didn't have a crew cut. I even had a mustache. But that got shaved off in the hospital, and I never felt like growing it back.'

'So while you followed Keski around, you learned the layout of the mall.'

'I started to see what a beautiful job it was,' Meyers said, nodding his bristled head. 'I figured I could combine the job with getting Keski. I knew the bastard would be surprised when I walked into his office an hour after closing time and pointed a gun at him. Then, ripping off his mall after I'd fingered him seemed like a real nice touch.'

'It was Keski who stayed late every Wednesday,' Tucker said, 'not the bank manager.'

'Sure.'

'You lied.'

'I didn't have a choice.'

'That doesn't make any difference,' Tucker said. 'You lied to Felton. You lied to me. If you get out of this, you're finished in the business.'

'I had to lie to make it sound sweet enough to get you into it,' Meyers said earnestly. He saw the anger in Tucker's eyes, a subdued but steady flame. 'I was a man on the ropes, Tucker. I could still get up for a job, but between jobs I was a mess. I just sat in that apartment in New York letting myself go to hell thinking about it. I had to get Keski before the whole thing ate me up.' He cleared his throat and looked nervously at the smaller man. 'You understand that, don't you?'

'No.'

'He nearly killed me. He-'

'He was your problem,' Tucker said. 'Not mine or Edgar's.'

'Hey, look,' Meyers said. 'Whether or not the manager is here, that bank can be knocked over.'

'Could have been,' Tucker said, stressing each word. 'But you overlooked that alarm pedal beneath Ledderson's desk?'

'Christ, what a mess!' Meyers said, as if he had, for most of their conversation, forgotten that they were in a bind, that carloads of police now surrounded Oceanview Plaza. Gaining his revenge, killing Rudolph Keski, Frank Meyers had not regained his old common sense and self-control. His wit and his nerves would never be what they had been before Keski had slit his throat. He was still a ruined man, operating on the remembrance of courage. 'We should have shot our way out while we had the chance.'

'It's too late for that now,' Tucker said.

'I know. If you'd let me-'

'And I think I may have come up with something better,' Tucker said, stepping away from the wall of boxes, straightening his coat with a quick shrug of his shoulders. 'You see what's right there beside you?'

Meyers turned right and left, perplexed.