Surrounded

Meyers stopped grinning. 'Wait a minute.' He laid one heavy hand on Tucker's shoulder. 'It really is possible. It's safe. It's the sweetest thing I've ever come across.'

Tucker grimaced, shrugged.

Meyers took the hint. He moved his hand.

'Look,' Tucker said, 'even if you had control of the four mall doors, what would you do with all of the customers? That place will be full of them any day of the week. Shoppers coming and going, in and out?'

'I'm aware of that.'

'Glad to hear it.'

Meyers's hoarse voice was touched by anxiety. 'Believe me, I've got it all figured out. I'm no amateur. Those people won't bother us.'

Tucker ignored him, because he was pretty much convinced that whatever Meyers had 'figured out' would be full of holes. 'And what are you going to do about the telephones?'

'Telephones?'

'There, must be a hundred or more public and private phones in a shopping mall that size. Are you going to be able to put them all out of use before anyone in there can call the cops?'

'We won't have to worry about the telephones,' Meyers said. He was grinning again, though only tentatively. He resembled a big clumsy hound that wanted approval, affection, congratulations. But there was a decidedly human desperation in his eyes.

'Furthermore,' Tucker continued, 'you'd need an army to hold the mall, once you'd taken it.'

'Just four or five men,' Meyers said hastily.

'Is that right?' Tucker turned, started for the kitchen door.

'Wait a minute,' Meyers said. 'I'm not stupid. I know what the hell I'm doing.' His anger was feigned. It was only meant to arrest Tucker, to make him listen for another moment. In the middle of the cluttered living room he caught Tucker by the arm and stopped him. 'We wouldn't hit the damned place during shopping hours. I never said that.'

Tucker sighed, pulled loose of the big man's hand. He worked his shoulders to straighten his coat. 'It's still no good. This would be twice as difficult as any normal after-hours bank job. You'd have two sets of alarms to deal with-the mall's and the bank's systems.'

Meyers shook his burly head. His close-cropped hair glinted like metal bristles. 'No alarms.'

'A bank without alarms?'

'Come back to the kitchen with me,' Meyers said. He was almost pleading now. His desperation, whatever the source of it, was growing sharper by the minute. 'Look at the diagram and listen to me. Hear me out. I won't keep you long. But? Right now you don't have any idea what's up my sleeve.'

'And I don't think I want to know,' Tucker said.

'Felton deals with me!' Meyers said. His whispery voice now contained a note of pride, a curious dignity that was at odds with his slovenly appearance. 'I'm not a loser. I've been in this business all my life. I've been successful at it, too.'

Tucker looked around at the dirty walls, the unswept carpet, the tattered furniture. 'If you've been so terribly successful what are you doing in a place like this?'

Following the younger man's gaze, Meyers seemed to see the apartment for the first time. He coughed, wiped his face with both hands, a man trying to slough off the insubstantial but disconcerting residue of a nightmare. 'I have one weakness.'

'Is that right?'

'Women.'

'That's no weakness.'

'It is with me.' Meyers's right hand went to his throat. His blunt fingers traced a series of vague, pale scars that Tucker now saw for the first time. Someone had stomped on his throat, or had opened it with a quick knife. Right now Meyers looked as if he could still feel the flesh parting under the blade. 'I get ahead, pull a few good jobs, build up a cushion, figure I don't have any worries? Then I hook up with a woman. And she takes it all away from me. You know how it is. Women are parasites.'

'Maybe yours are,' Tucker said. 'Mine isn't.'

'Then you're damned lucky,' Meyers said. 'Mine are always parasites.' But there was a false note in his voice, a lack of conviction. He did not sound like a woman hater-or like a man who would let anyone, man or woman, take money away from him. 'Look, we aren't here to talk about women. Come back to the kitchen. Give me ten minutes to explain everything. I know you'll want in on this as soon as you understand what it is.'

'I already know what it is,' Tucker said sourly. 'It's a bank job with especially high risks. I'm not that desperate for money.'

'Sure you are,' Meyers said. He chuckled. 'If you weren't desperate, you'd be long gone by now. You're small, but you wouldn't let me stop you so easily unless you wanted to be stopped. You'd flip me on my ass and walk out that door. No? You want to hear the whole scheme, but right now you're playing little games so that you can learn more about me.'

Tucker smiled. Meyers was entirely correct, and it was to his credit that he had perceived the situation so clearly. Maybe he was a better man than he appeared to be.

'Ten minutes?'

'Okay,' Tucker agreed.

'Let's go out to the kitchen and look at the diagram again.' The big man led the way.

Fifteen minutes later Meyers thumped the top of the kitchen table with one clenched fist. 'That's the whole plan, every last detail. Smooth as silk. What do you think?'

'It's extremely clever,' Tucker admitted, still studying the whiteprint of Oceanview Plaza, the shopping mall. 'But there are a few problems.'

The anxiety returned to Meyers's voice. 'Problems?'

'You don't seem to have given any thought to weapons,' Tucker said. 'Have you?'

'We don't need anything fancy.' Meyers rubbed his hands together as if he were soaping them under a hot- water spigot. 'Each man can supply his own piece.'

'I disagree,' Tucker said. 'In the first stages of this job you're going to have two professional guards, probably ex-cops, and you're going to have to subdue them quickly. One of them is bound to be a hero type. But he's less likely to become a real threat if he's faced with a gun that intimidates him. The bigger and uglier the guns, the less trouble you'll have with the people on the other end of them. It's just good psychology.'

Meyers continued to lather his hands with invisible soap. 'We can't conceal machine guns under our coats.'

'They don't have to be machine guns.'

'What else?'

'Let me worry about that. I have a good contact. He'll find something suitable.'

Meyers licked his heavy lips. 'I didn't expect to have to finance this operation.'

'I'll put up for the guns,' Tucker said.

'Then you're in?'

Tucker looked at the diagram for a long while, admired the work Meyers had put into it. Then he let his eyes move around the kitchen, from the filthy dishes in the sink to the pair of cockroaches that had come out in the far corner in bold defiance of the human presence. 'I'm in-but only if this is my job.'

'It's your job,' Meyers said.

'I don't know if you fully understand me.' Tucker began to fold up the diagram of the shopping mall. 'I make all the decisions, right down the line.'

Meyers nodded rapidly. He walked quickly to the sink, turned on his heel, leaned against the drainboard, then came away almost at once, paced nervously back to the table as Tucker finished folding the whiteprint. He started lathering his hands again. 'Clitus explained how you work. You always have to be in charge of the operation. I accept that.'

'Just so we're straight with each other from the start.'

'I don't mind,' Meyers said. 'You've got a good reputation, so I trust you. The only thing that really matters is getting a team together, getting the job done.' He was growing increasingly agitated, as on edge as he had been