'It's safe here,' Deke said desperately. 'You're safer here until we get the money than being on the loose. Nobody knows about this hideout.'
The gunman on the couch spat. 'Cept Iris and the people who built it.'
'White men built it,' Deke said. He couldn't keep the smugness out of his voice. 'They didn't suspect a thing. They thought it was to be a crypt.'
'What's that?' asked the standing gunman.
'A vault, for dead saints maybe.'
The gunman looked at him, then looked around as though seeing the room for the first time. It was a small square room with soundproof walls, and access from above through the back of the church organ. There was a niche in one wall with a silver icon flanked by prints of Christ and the Virgin. Deke had furnished it with a couch, two tubular chairs, a small kitchen table and a refrigerator which he kept well stocked with prepared food, beer and whisky. Soiled dishes on the table attested to the fact they had eaten there at least once.
One entire wall was taken up by the electronics system with pickup and amplifier that recorded every sound made in the church above. When turned up full volume even the footsteps of a mouse could be heard. On the opposite wall was a gun rack containing two rifles, two sawed-off shotguns and a submachine gun. Deke was proud of the place. He had had it built when reconditioning the church. He felt completely safe there. But the gunman was unimpressed.
'Let's just hope them white men don't remember,' he said. 'Or that she don't bring a police tail back here. This place ain't no more safe than a coffin.'
'Believe me,' Deke said. 'I know it's safe.'
'We sprang you, baby, to get the money,' the sitting gunman said flatly. 'We figured we'd spring you and then sell your life to you for eighty-seven grand. You get the picture, baby. You going to buy it?'
'Freddy,' Deke appealed to the sitting gunman but got nothing from his eyes but a blank deadly stare. 'Four-Four,' he appealed to the oily-haired one standing with the Colt in his hand and drew another blank stare. 'You've got to trust me,' he pleaded. 'I've never let you down. You've got to give me time…'
'You got time,' Freddy said, standing up and going to the icebox for another can of beer. He spat on the floor, slammed shut the box. 'But not all of it.'
From atop the brick wall in back of the church, Coffin Ed got a glimpse of Iris's face peeping from behind the curtains of the back window of a first-floor apartment. It came more from a sixth sense than actual sight. There was only a dim light in back of her, outlining a mere shadow, and the light from outside was filtered from surrounding windows. And she was visible for only a moment. It was the timing more than anything which told him. Who else in the vicinity might be peering furtively from a back window at just that moment.
He knew automatically she had got through the wall. How, he didn't care. He knew she had not only recognized him then, but had made them both from the start. A smart bitch — too smart. He debated whether to burst in on her openly, or take cover and let her make her move. Then he decided to go back and confer with Grave Digger.
'Let her go,' Grave Digger said. 'She can't hide for ever, she ain't invisible. And she's made us now. So let her go, let her go. Maybe she'll contact us.'
They walked back to the truck and drove up to a bar, and Coffin Ed telephoned home. His wife Molly said Abigail hadn't called but Anderson was on duty now and he wanted them to call him.
'Call him,' Grave Digger said.
Anderson said, 'Bring in Iris while I'm on duty and I'll try to cover for you. Otherwise you're certain to be picked up by tomorrow and you'll be finished on the Force — probably face a rap. Captain Brice is furious.'
'He knows about it,' Coffin Ed said. 'He promised to lay off.'
'That's not the way he tells it. He's reported to the commissioner that you've abducted her and he's seeing red.'
'He's mad just because we tricked him; and he's covering himself at our expense.'
'Be that as it may, he's mad enough to break you.'
They sat silent for a moment, tense and worried.
'You figure she might try to take a powder?' Coffin Ed said.
'We got enough to worry about without that,' Grave Digger said. 'And we ain't got time for it.'
'Let's go to Billie's.'
'She's left there for good. Let's go back to the church.'
'That was just to shake us,' Coffin Ed argued. 'She's finished with the church.'
'Maybe, maybe not. Deke wouldn't put in an escape door for nothing. There must be something else there.'
Coffin Ed thought about it. 'Maybe you're right.'
They parked on 122nd Street and cased the back of the church. The backyard was separated by the high brick wall from the garbage-strewn backyards surrounding it. They scaled the wall and examined the back door. It had an ordinary Yale snap lock with an iron grille covering its dirty panes but they didn't touch it. They peered through a window into the vestry back of the choir but it was black dark inside.
Then they went down the narrow walk alongside the church. It was a brick structure and in good condition and on that side two arched stained-glass windows flanked a stained-glass oval high in the wall. The other side of the church was built flush with the apartment house.
'If they got a hideout in there they got some kind of hearing device for protection,' Grave Digger reasoned. 'They can't have a lookout hiding all the time.'
'What do you want to do, wait outside for her?'
'She'll return through the wall, or she might already be in there.'
They looked at one another thinking.
'Listen — ' Coffin Ed began and explained.
'Anyway, it beats a blank,' Grave Digger said, as he stopped in the darkness to take off his shoes.
They stood behind the gate and watched the street until it was momentarily empty. Then they scaled the iron gate and hurried up the stairs to the church door, and Coffin Ed began picking the lock. If anyone had passed they would have been taken for two drunks urinating against the church door. When it was open, Grave Digger sat astride Coffin Ed's shoulders and they went inside and closed the door behind them.
The tableau in the hideout was much the same. Deke was still tied to the chair and the oily-haired gunman, Four-Four, was letting him drink from a can of beer. Beer was spilling from his mouth onto his pants and Four-Four said irritably, 'Can't you swallow, goddammit?' slapping his own thigh with the barrel of the Colt. Freddy was lying on the couch again as though he were asleep.
Suddenly they froze at the sound of the front door lock being picked. Four-Four took the beer can from Deke's mouth and put it atop the table and changed the Colt to his left hand, flexing his right. Freddy swung his feet over to the floor and sat up, listening with his mouth open. They heard the door swing open and someone step inside and the door being closed.
'We got a visitor,' Freddy said.
They heard the footsteps come down the centre aisle.
'A dick,' Four-Four said, appraising the walk.
Freddy stepped over to the gun rack and casually took down a sawed-off shotgun. They listened to the steps move around the choir and the pulpit and approach the organ. Freddy looked at the access ladder as though in a trance.
'A big boy,' he said. 'Big as two men. Think I ought go up and cut him down to size?'
'Let him stick his head in, ha-ha,' Four-Four laughed.
'You're not going to leave me tied up!' Deke protested.
'Sure, baby, that or dead,' Freddy said.
The heavy man's footsteps passed the organ, paused for a moment as though he were looking around, then moved on slowly as though he were examining everything. Through the electronics pickup they could hear his heavy breathing.
'A fat baby with a heart,' Four-Four said.
'Guts too,' Deke said. 'Coming here alone.'
