CHAPTER 4
From the basement corridor, they went up a short ramp to the delivery entrance. Even after several hours together, he still trusted her exactly as much as before, which was to say, not at all. The back door was unguarded. Keeping a firm grip on her arm, he took her to her parked convertible. There was no activity anywhere in the parking area. He wedged his big frame into the cramped space behind the front seat. He had his gun out, and he made sure that she saw him press the muzzle against the back of the driver’s seat. She nodded. To signal a policeman and try to jump from a moving automobile was hardly her type of thing, gun or no gun.
She covered him with a robe. After turning on the lights and starting the motor, she reported in a conversational tone, “No sign of anybody.”
She cramped her wheels and eased out of the parking slot. A police car was parked outside on Central Park West. She kept her eyes straight ahead as she passed, and then watched the mirror. The police car stayed where it was.
“I think we are OK,” she said after several blocks. “In a moment I start into the park.”
A red light stopped her at Eighty-sixth Street. When the light changed, she blinked for a left turn and plunged into Central Park. There was no one behind her.
“Now come up to breathe, darling.”
McQuade emerged. Putting his gun away, he swung over into the front seat, where he forced a pocket comb through his rough black hair.
“Would you like to drive?” she asked innocently. “No, you wish to watch me, not the road. I think you still do not altogether trust me.”
“No, I do not altogether trust you,” he said in a parody of her accent.
She continued east. After leaving Central Park she headed for the entrance to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive. This took them downtown. They crossed the river on the Manhattan Bridge. From there it was all expressways. After crossing the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge to Staten Island she left the Staten Island Expressway at the third interchange and headed north toward St. George. McQuade, she noticed, was watching the turns closely. To prove to herself that she was no longer worried about his gun, she made several unnecessary twisting detours.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he said suspiciously.
“Certainly. I have been congratulated on my exquisite sense of direction. Here we are, then, in the wilds of Staten Island, and I think it is safe to tell you something more about what is to happen. It is to take place in Manhattan, the day after tomorrow. On Sixth Avenue, at the corner of Twenty-seventh Street. A boy named Billy, who is clever with machines, will change the stoplight at that corner so it can be worked by a small button. Very well. The truck approaches. The light turns. We then create a small disturbance, a diversion, so two of you, you and Billy, will have no difficulty getting into the truck to drive it away. The traffic goes in one direction only on the cross streets. You will go the wrong way. We will arrange matters so the street will be clear. Then a warehouse, where the truck is unloaded. You drive a few more blocks, leave the motor running and walk away. After that, Portugal.”
“You’re leaving some big gaps.”
“But naturally. Before it happens in real life, we go over it many, many times.”
“What kind of truck, or is that one of the things you want to keep from me?”
“A sanitation truck, my dear. I have a uniform which I hope will fit you. And I think we must borrow one of those trucks tomorrow so you will know exactly what to push and what to pull.”
“No problem,” McQuade growled. “I was driving heavy equipment before you started going out with boys.”
“This is better and better. One of my people says he has experience driving trucks, but I have been doubtful. He is something of a boaster.”
“Fine. Just what we need.”
“He was hired to use a gun. Actually he shoots well. This I have seen.”
“That’s the ticket-shoot a few more cops, make ourselves popular.”
She glanced at him. “It may be necessary, you know. But only if you must.”
“Jesus! For a garbage truck!”
She gave a mocking laugh. “Later I will tell you what kind of garbage. On the plane, perhaps-yes, on the plane. We turn in ahead here. Someone should be watching the driveway.”
A stone wall, six feet high, topped with splinters of glass in cement, ran along one side of the road. Presently Michele turned through a gap where there had once been a gate; only the hinges remained. As she came to a halt, the beam of a three-cell flashlight darted out of the underbrush and hit her in the eyes.
“Hi,” a voice said after a moment.
A boy of eighteen or nineteen, in a short-sleeved sports shirt and tight white levis, came out near the front fender. He was carrying a shotgun as well as the flashlight.
“We thought you’d be here earlier, Michele. I’ll call the house and tell them it’s you.”
“Billy, here is a new man. His name is Frank. He knows how to drive a truck, among other things.”
“Hey!” the boy said. “That takes a weight off. My opinion of Spaghetti, he’s ninety percent mouth. If he can get into one of those trucks, sight unseen, and not do something wrong, so can my aged grandmother.”
He pointed the long flashlight past Michele. McQuade stared back into the beam, his eyes slitted. “Well, hi,” Billy said approvingly.
After the flashlight turned away McQuade said, “Now let’s see you, kid.”
The boy turned the light on himself, holding it directly beneath his chin. This threw grotesque shadows across the upper part of his face. To distort his appearance further, he goggled his eyes and grinned idiotically.
“What, me worry?”
Michele laughed. “Ring them up, Billy, and come with us. We can show Frank the plan quicker than tell him.”
“I want to see Spaghetti’s face when you say he’s not driving. He’s been going around like a four-star general.”
Billy crouched beside an Army field telephone and cranked it twice. When he had an answer he said simply, “Michele.”
After ringing off, he rigged an electric eye to point across the gap at knee level. He came around to the door on McQuade’s side.
“If there’s room.”
McQuade moved. The driveway was lined on both sides with fine maples, the space between them choked with underbrush. The roadbed needed maintenance, and the Chevy scraped its oil pan once or twice, though Michele drove slowly. The house was a quarter of a mile away, a great rambling structure, topped with gables and cupolas and ornamented with scrollwork, in the style of the 1890’s.
Michele parked at the foot of the front steps. As they crossed the wide porch, a girl inside began to scream.
Michele had been under tension for the last few hours, and her heart gave a sudden jump. Now what? Couldn’t she leave these miserable creatures alone for two minutes?
“Think you can tease me, you white bitch?” a man shouted hoarsely.
“Don’t! You can’t make me!”
“Oh, yes, I can make you. Yes, indeed. What I’m going to do to you, honey, I’m going to lay you six different ways and you’re going to love every minute!”
“Get it through your head!” the man inside shouted. “You’re going to-”
McQuade saw a heavy-set, burly Negro mauling a young white girl with a dense mop of black hair. He pulled the Negro into a right-handed punch that traveled less than a foot and lifted him clear off the floor. The little splat as fist and jaw collided sounded like an egg being dropped.
“Stop it, both of you!” Michele cried.
Her cry went unnoticed. A second man appeared in the archway at the end of the living room. He was smaller than McQuade, with snapping black eyes, a thin two-part mustache and slicked-back hair. He was wheeling a dress rack, a simple contraption of iron pipes running on rubber-tired wheels. A dozen or so identical dresses in plastic
