around behind the building, snugging the vehicle back there. When he emerged, the driver was wearing a zippered navy blue jacket and tan pants and running shoes.
Funny thing was, though he was trying to stay careful, surreptitious even, he couldn’t get the swagger out of his stride. That same cock-of-the-block walk that old Bessie had recognized.
Bucky Mohler.
Changed but not changed — still a medium-sized, smirky round-faced guy with squinty eyes and brown hair, only thinning now, like lines drawn on a cue ball with a felt-tip pen.
He entered the building the same way I had, the time I’d gone in to poke around. And when that side door closed, I was off my lounger and heading out of the empty apartment to run down those old stairs.
Only I was halfway out the front door of the building, onto its stoop, when I had to duck right back. Then I settled into a position where I could peek around and not be seen even as I saw another vehicle pulling in at the Padrone building.
The van was black and unmarked — shiny and new, and when it backed in as near as possible to Big Zappo’s side door, the vehicle shuddered to a stop and somehow conveyed heaviness. The tires were oversize, too.
Was I reading in, or was that van designed to carry a large load for its size?
I felt a spike of excitement shoot up my spine. The kind of tingles I hadn’t felt since I’d been officially on the Job were like little needles jabbing my neck....
Four guys got out of the van — two from the front, two from doors opening at the rear. The two from in front wore black leather jackets, not the motorcycle variety, more like something out of a men’s fashion magazine. They looked much alike, dark-complected with devil’s mustaches and goatees, only one was much taller — a Middle Eastern Mutt and Jeff. Their pants were black, too — also leather? Shoes had a gleam.
The two from in back were brutes — one bald, one with a ponytail, both with well-trimmed full-face beards, also copper-complected. They wore black jumpsuits and heavy work boots. And heavy gloves.
The fashion plates in black leather went in first, the muscle following — management trailed by labor. No sign of Bucky. No way to know if he was expecting this company, or getting ambushed.
Either way, I was interested.
I stayed away from the sidewalk and the yellow pools of lamplight, and ran in back of the buildings that were the last two teeth in the street’s horrible smile. Keeping low, like I once did in a far eastern jungle, I felt ridiculous; no ferns or brush to aid me, just open devastation where the life along this street had been.
I was careful slipping into the building. It seemed possible, even probable, that one of the bruisers would be left to guard the door. Since nobody had been posted outside, that meant just inside the door was more likely.
Since I still had a key to the front, I went in that way, quietly, but with t... .45 in my fist. The building was already dark. With the electricity off, and the blue of dusk outside darkening every second, the going had to be slow and careful. When I made it down to the side door, however, where a burly sentry might have waited, nobody was on guard.
For a few moments I just stood there, wondering if they’d all slipped out while I was making my careful way here.
Then I heard the voices below.
The voices didn’t echo, but they rattled and shook the old rafters and planks and sound seeped up through a thousand nooks and crannies. The voices were not raised, and Bucky seemed to be dealing with expected guests, not a surprise party.
By the time I reached the landing onto those heavy, timber-backed stairs to the basement, I could see that an orange-tinged glow of light came from down there. And I could hear the conversation clearly.
“You have the combination, Mr. Mohler?”
“Yeah. Of course I do. Years ago, see, I hired a safe-cracker pal of mine to open this baby up. Found a lot of loot in there. Old, old loot, big oversized bills from way back when.”
“Most interesting.”
But the voice, which had a pronounced Middle Eastern accent, didn’t sound that interested.
And I was hearing more than conversation — somebody was digging down there. A couple of somebodies, probably the two jump-suited, bearded brutes, making use of the shovel and pickax I’d spotted on my previous trip here, tools that had been leaned against one carved-out dirt wall.
I risked moving down the first step. A good six steps could be mine before anybody spotted me, unless they looked up and in my direction. The stairs remained in the darkness, the central area of the cellar lighted by a couple of electric Coleman lanterns on either side on the dirt floor, like at a campsite.
So I risked another step. Like a damn ballet dancer, I placed my foot just right, and got no squeak or creak in return for my artistry.
By the time I got to the third step, I could hear a broom down there, sweeping away dirt.
If they’d turned around, they could have seen me — me and ... .45. But down there in the orange-ish glow of the Coleman lanterns, all of their backs were to me, except Bucky’s, and his attention, like theirs, was on the big old iron object that the digging and sweeping had uncovered in the dirt floor.
It was the face of a massive safe, maybe close to a hundred years old, with a combination dial and a big metal latch. The perfect place to hide a huge stash of cash.
The four men meeting with Bucky had to be Saudis tied to the group that had bought and killed this old street, and who were vying to kill a lot more streets, maybe in this very town. The thought flashed through my mind that these bastards might be planning to turn this building itself into a bomb, to assemble their weapon right in this basement in this forgotten stretch of urban landscape in the middle of everything.
Only, they had that specially rigged van out there. And the two muscle men with work boots and gloves on. So they were here to load up the atomic cube and make for points unknown — say, Florida....
Bucky was on his hands and knees in the dirt, leaning over the massive safe, which had so many years ago been buried on its back in the basement of a gangster’s lair. He was down in the dirt in more ways than one, selling his soul and his country out to a bunch of slobs who weren’t satisfied with all that oil money, no. They had to take out the infidels, too. Hell, weren’t we their best customers? Hadn’t we paid for those black leather jackets with the matching pants these clowns were modeling?
Of course, we couldn’t offer them seventy virgins in heaven or Valhalla or wherever the hell they thought they were headed. Scrounging up seventy virgins in the big city at this stage was a stretch....
After the twisting and clicking of the combination dial, Bucky worked the latch and, standing with one foot on the dirt and another on the lower edge of the iron safe, yanked and the door yawned open with a creak worthy of a haunted house.
And all four of Bucky’s houseguests leaned forward, throwing shadows in the Coleman light, agape with anticipation: now they could see down in, behold what the old safe held.
So could I, from my perch on the third step.
Nothing.
Bucky’s head whirled, his eyes wide with shock and fear, and the shorter black-leather Saudi slapped him with a nine millimeter that sent the traitor tumbling down into the open safe.
And Bucky was on his back like a bug.
“What happened to the item we purchased, Mr. Mohler?” This was the other Saudi, the taller one. No emotion on the surface of the bass voice but something constricted it down low. “Where has our purchase gone?”
“I don’t know, I tell you! I don’t
The gunshot sounded weird — like the voices, it didn’t as much echo as cause a minor tremor in the ancient rafters. Dust and grime drifted down like dirty snow. The big lead box Bucky was down in gave up a kind of metallic mini-echo, but that was mostly drowned out by Bucky screaming.
Getting shot in the knee will make a man do that.
Scream.
The smaller Saudi said calmly, “Who did you tell? You compromised this purchase, at the minimum. Who did you
