Backflash. Part 13

He was certainly taking his time about it, this a.s.semblyman. George found it hard to concentrate on the task at hand, the numbers coming in, the numbers going out, with those three silent men moving around and around the room, slowly pacing, stopping from time to time to watch a particular operation. They didn't ask any questions at all, which was a relief. But their presence was distracting and made the room feel uncomfortable.

Now the a.s.semblyman was standing beside George, just to his right, watching George twist open a canister, make his entries into the computer terminal in front of him, slide the greenbacks into their bins in their drawer, put the transit slip in its bin, scoop out the right denomination of chips He was on the floor. He had no idea what happened, he just had a moment of disorientation and panic. Why am I on the floor? Heart attack?

He was on his right side on the floor, and the left side of his head felt a sharp stinging pain. He blinked, thinking he'd fallen, blacked out, and the pain spread across his head from that electric grinding point just above his left ear, and when he looked up, the bigger of the two state troopers was standing over him, but not looking at him, looking across him at the other people in the room, pointing at them, saying- A gun. Pointing a gun. A pistol, a gun. Pointing a gun at the people in the room, saying, "Hands on your desks. Helen, Ruth. Come on, Sam, you don't want to die."

And another voice the other trooper, it must be was saying, "Pete, hands on your head. Susan, if you reach for that beeper, you're dead."

He hit me, George thought, and felt more astonishment at that than even at the fact of the gun and the things they were saying. We aren't children in a schoolyard, we don't hit each other, we don't- It's a robbery.

The shock of it, being hit, being all at once on the floor, feeling such pain, seeing the astonishing sight of that gun in that man's hand, had befuddled George for so long that only now thirty seconds? forty? did he realize what this meant. These people were robbing the ship!

The big one, who'd hit him with the side of that gun, it must be now looked down at George. He didn't point the gun at him, but he didn't have to, not with those cold eyes. He said, "George, you can sit up, cross your knees, put your hands on your knees. Don't reach a foot toward that b.u.t.ton, George."

He knows! They know everything, they know my name!

A sudden spasm of guilt washed through George, and he twisted around to stare toward Pete and Susan Cahill. They'll think it's me! They'll think I'm the one told these people everything, and I'll lose my job, and I'll go to jail!

The a.s.semblyman no, he can't be an a.s.semblyman, it's all a fake he was frisking Pete, while the other non-trooper, also now holding a gun, was taking the beeper off Susan Cahill's belt. Pete looked frightened, but Susan Cahill was looking outraged. Both were too involved in what was happening to see George stare at them, so George quickly shifted to look at something else. Don't act guilty, he told himself. Don't make them suspect you.

Susan Cahill, her voice trembling with fury, suddenly spoke: "This is outrageous! How dare you men, how dare you behave like this! The police will get you, the police will get you, and Avenue Resorts will be very tough, you can count on that!"

The non-trooper who'd taken her beeper ignored her, turning away to look at the non-trooper standing over George. "Tape," he said, and pocketed his gun.

"Sure."

This one reached inside his jacket and took out a compact roll of duct tape. He tossed it across to the other one, then looked down and said, "George, I told you to sit up."

"Yes. Yes. All right." He didn't want to be hit again, or whatever worse might happen. He scrambled into a seated position, making a point of moving away from that b.u.t.ton, that he could see just over there, under the counter. But no power on Earth would make him move toward that b.u.t.ton, not even to save his job.

The non-trooper with Susan Cahill peeled off some tape and said to her, "Hands behind your back."

"I certainly will not!" She folded her arms under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and glared. "If you think you'll get away with-"

He slapped her, left-handed, open-handed, but hard, the sound almost like a baseball being hit by a bat. All of them in the room jumped at the sound, George and Pete and Helen and Ruth and Sam. The three robbers didn't jump.

Susan Cahill staggered from the slap, and stared at the non-trooper, who stepped closer to her and said, as though he really wanted to know the answer, "Are those your teeth?"

She gaped at him. "What?"

"Are those your teeth?"

She didn't know the reason for the question, but she was suddenly afraid not to answer. "Yes."

"Do you want to keep them?"

This answer was smaller, more defeated. "Yes."

"Hands behind your back."

She put her hands behind her back, quivering now with fear, but George could tell that the outrage and the fury were still there inside her, merely prudently banked for the moment. The non-trooper duct-taped her wrists, then started to put another piece of duct tape over her mouth, but she pulled her head away. He stopped, and looked at her, and the next time he moved the duct tape she didn't resist. As he put it over her mouth, he said, "If I was a bad guy, or if you irritated me, I'd put this over your nose, too. You're going to sit down now." He took her arm to help her, and she sat on the floor, and he duct-taped her ankles together.

Meantime, the fake a.s.semblyman had been ordering the others around, telling Helen and Ruth and Sam by name to keep doing what they were doing, handling the money and the chips, and not to vary the routine in any way. For instance, not to send anything more or less than normal up to the cashier's cage in each vacuum canister.

"I'll tell you why," he said. "It isn't your money, and it would be stupid to die for it. The line's insured, you'll still get your salary. If there's trouble, we may get caught but you will absolutely certainly get dead. So cooperate, and this little unpleasantness will soon be over. Pete?"

Pete jumped again, as when Susan Cahill was slapped. "Yes? What?"

"Easy, Pete, gentle down, there's a love. And here's a plastic bag. I want you to fill it with the cash from George's station, since he won't be working any more tonight."

"All right."

As Pete came over with the white plastic bag kitchen can size the one non-trooper finished with Susan Cahill and tossed the duct tape back to the one by George, who said, "Okay, George, your turn. Hands behind your back." And, as he put his gun in his pocket, the other one across the room took his out again.

George said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but I-"

"Come on, George."

No long explanations, not with these people; only short explanations. George blurted out, "I have asthma!"

The big man looked at him. He seemed really interested. "Yeah? Had it long?"

George hadn't expected that question. He said, "Fifteen years. And I can't always breathe through my nose, I'm afraid, if you put that tape on-"

"I get it, George," the big man said. "If you got asthma real bad like that, you probably carry some kind of medicine for it, am I right? An inhaler, something like that?"

"Yes."

"How slow can you take it out of your pocket, George?"

"Very slow."

"Go ahead."

George kept his inhaler in his inside jacket pocket, and now realized that was exactly where a tough guy or a bad guy would keep a gun. Hand trembling, sweat starting to trickle down his face, breath becoming raspy already, he reached into his pocket, grasped the inhaler, lost it through his trembling fingers, grasped it again, jerked his hand back, shuddered the motion to a stop, and slowly and shakily brought the little tube into sight.

The big man seemed pleased. "Good, George," he said. "Now, if you gave yourself a spray or two with that, you'd be okay for a while, wouldn't you?"

"I think so," George said.

"We both think so, George," the big man said. "Go ahead, take a shot."

George did. He had so much trouble keeping his right hand steady that he held it with the left hand so he could fit the inhaler into his mouth, lips closed over it, and direct the spray at the back of his throat. He did this twice, and while he did the big man said to the other one, "There's a lot of asthma around these days, you know? Worse than ever. It comes from mold, a lot of times, and I read someplace, you can get it from c.o.c.kroach dander. Can you believe it? You try to keep yourself in shape and some f.u.c.king c.o.c.kroach is out to bring you down. You set, George?" George put the inhaler back in his pocket. "Yes." Hunkered beside him, applying the duct tape, the big man in a friendly manner said, "What I think you should do, now that the working day is done, you got time on your hands, I think you should spend it working on what you're gonna say to the TV news reporters."

"And now, in sports-"

Hilliard Cathman sighed in exasperation; mostly with himself. He knew he should turn off this "news-radio" station, which was in truth mostly a sports-score-and-advertising radio station, and go to sleep, but lately he was having even more trouble than usual dropping off, and he had this need to know, to know when they did it. He had to know.

It would be a weekend, that much was certain, when the ship would be the most full of gamblers, when the most money would be lost. A Friday or a Sat.u.r.day night, and soon. Possibly even tonight.

Wouldn't that be wonderful? Tonight. Get it over with, get this tension behind him at last.

He knew the risk he was taking, the danger he was in. Sitting up in bed past midnight, lights on in half the house, the nightstand radio eagerly rattling off the endless results of games he cared nothing about, Cathman reminded himself he'd known from the beginning the perils in this idea, but had decided the goal was worth it. And it was, and it still was, though these days all Cathman could really see was the expression in that man Parker's eyes. Which was no expression at all.

Marshall Howell had been different, easier to work with, easier to believe one could win out against. He'd been a tough man, and a criminal, but with some humanity in him. This one, Parker...

It will happen, that's all, and I don't need to know about it the instant it does. When it happens, I'll know soon enough, and then one of three things will happen. Parker will come bring me my ten percent, which is the least likely, and I'll deal with him in the way I'm ready to deal with him. Or he and the rest of them will fade away, and I have his telephone number, and from that I have found his house, and I have seen his wife, none of which he knows, and I can finish it the other way. Or they will get caught, which would be the best thing, and I will be ready for that as well.

"The time is twelve fifty-two. In tomorrow's weather-"

Oh, enough. Cathman reached out and switched off the radio, but left the lights on. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, and for a long time he didn't sleep.

Only Ruth was still at her station at the counter, dealing with vacuum canisters as they came down from the cashier's cage upstairs. George could see the others, Pete and Helen and Sam and Susan Cahill, all seated like him on the floor, backs against the wall, duct-taped into silence and immobility. A degree of background panic gave his own breathing a level of fibrillation that scared him some, but he knew it was under control, that unless something else happened he'd be able to go on breathing through to the end of this.

What was coming down now, from the cashier's cage, at nearly one o'clock in the morning, was mostly chips being cashed in, and very rarely a purchase of more chips by some diehard loser up above. There wasn't much activity at all at this point, and it really would be sensible for the robbers to get out of here now, before they lost part of their loot to customers upstairs cashing in, which they seemed to realize. George watched them give one another little looks and nods and hand signals, and then the one who'd slapped Susan Cahill went over and opened the door, the door they'd come through that was never opened and how much better if it never had been opened and headed up the stairs.

George knew there was a guard on duty up there, though he'd never seen him, seated at a desk on the landing in front of the door at the top of the stairs. That guard would have seen this robber with Susan Cahill when they came down, he wouldn't suspect a thing, somebody coming up the stairs like that, he'd been hired to keep people from going down those stairs.

Yes. Here he came, a beefy young man in a tan uniform, looking bewildered and angry and scared, hands knitted on top of his uniform hat on his head, holster at his right side hanging empty, the robber now holding two guns, one in each hand, shutting the door with his heel as he came in.

The big one, the one who'd taped George, went smiling over to the guard, saying "Welcome aboard, Jack. You are Jack, aren't you?"

The guard stared at all the trussed people. He stared at the big man. He burst out, 'Jesus, you're not supposed to do this!"

The big man laughed. "Oh, I know," he said. "We're just regular scamps. Put your hands behind your back, Jack." Then he laughed again and said to the one with the two guns in his hands, "Back Jack; how do you like that?" To the guard he said, "I'm so glad your name isn't Tim I'm not even gonna punch you in the belly for not having your hands behind your back. Not yet, I'm not."

The guard quickly moved his arms, like a panicky drowner lunging toward the surface, and when his hands were behind his back the big man duct-taped them, then his mouth, then helped him sit, then did his ankles.

During which George watched the man who'd claimed to be an a.s.semblyman, but who now seemed much more believable as an armed robber, take a small screwdriver from his pocket and use it to open the control box next to the outer door, the door in the hull through which George and the others would exit at the end of their shift, through which the money would be carried into the armored car, and George saw that what he was doing was dismantling the alarm system in there. Supposedly, if this door were to be opened while the ship was in motion, an alarm would ring up on the bridge; but not now.

Surprised, George thought, why, they've planned it all out.

Carlow pushed Noelle's wheelchair into the elevator. The four other people in the car smiled at her, and she smiled wanly back, and the tiredness she showed was probably real. Carlow felt the same way; this was the longest night of all.

When the elevator doors opened, one level down, the other four people dispersed themselves into the restrooms, the couple who'd been waiting here boarded the elevator after a smile at wan Noelle and Carlow pushed the wheelchair over to the door that led to the stairs down to the money room. It was a discreet door, painted to blend with the wall around it. Carlow turned the wheelchair around to face out, then rapped the door once with his heel.

The door opened inward. Carlow heard the click, and immediately went down to one knee. He grasped the handle of the box beneath the seat and pulled out a very different box from the one in the other wheelchair. This one was deeper and wider and much longer, and contained no bowl, empty or full. Carlow slid the box backward, looking down, and saw Parker's hand grab it. Carlow stood, and the door behind him clicked shut.

They stood there for three minutes. A few people pa.s.sed, and all smiled at Noelle, but all kept going. Everybody was tired, and they knew she must be tired, too, so they left her alone.

A knock sounded on the door behind him. Two couples, yawning together, waited for the elevator. He watched them, and then the elevator came, empty this time, and they boarded, and its doors shut.

Then Carlow rapped the door with his heel again, and went to one knee, and the box was slid out to him. It was much heavier now, filled with white plastic bags. Carlow slid it into place, stood, pushed the wheelchair over to the elevator, boarded it the next time it arrived.

The money usually went into heavy canvas sacks to be carried off the ship, and the robbers had thoughtfully cut air holes into these sacks before putting them over everybody's head, but had then made sure the airholes weren't placed so the people could see through them.

What don't they want us to see, George wondered. There was a faint smell inside the money sack, not of money, but of something like a cabin in the woods or a thatched hut. The smell made George fearful again of his ability to breathe, but he kept himself from giving way to panic, and he breathed slowly and steadily through his nose, and he told himself he was going to survive, he was going to survive.

It wasn't the TV news reporters' questions he was thinking about now, it was the questions the police would ask. He'd be able to give full descriptions of the robbers, and he'd be able to describe just about everything they did and said.

And now there was the question of what the robbers didn't want them to see. All he had left now was his ears, and he listened as hard as he could. He heard shuffling noises, and then he heard a click of some kind, and wondered what that was. There was something familiar about that click, and yet there wasn't. Inside the canvas sack, George frowned deeply, breathing automatically, not even thinking about his breath now, and tried to think what that click could be, what it reminded him of, where he'd heard it before.

He almost got it, he was seconds from understanding, when another sound distracted him. A whoosh and a foamy rush, and a sudden sense of cool damp air, a breeze wafting over him.

They'd opened the outer door. That must be what they didn't want him and the others to see; what sort of transportation awaited them outside.

George strained to hear, leaning forward, staring at the canvas a half inch from his eyes. He heard murmuring, vague movement, and then not even that. And then a slam, as the outer door was shut again.

They've gone, he thought, and never did remember that click any more, and so didn't come to the memory that would have told him that the click was the sound of the inner door closing. And so he never did get to tell the police the one thing they would have been interested to hear: that before the robbers left, one of them went upstairs.

Greg Hanzen trailed the big gleaming ship for several miles, and at every second he wanted to veer off, run for his life. But he was afraid to leave them stranded there, afraid they'd escape anyway somehow and come after him. They would surely come after him.

They might anyway.

The door in the side of the ship, up ahead of him, opened inward, showing a vertical oval of light. Immediately, not permitting himself to think, Hanzen drove forward, in close to the ship's flank, up along the side of that open doorway, where Parker stood in the light, empty-handed.

Hanzen tossed him the line, and Parker handed it on to a much bigger man, who stood grinning down at Hanzen as he held Hanzen's little boat firm against the Spirit of the Hudson while Parker and a third man jumped in. Then the big man grabbed the outer handle of the door and jumped across into the boat, slamming the door behind him. That would be, Hanzen guessed, so that there wouldn't be an unexpected light in the hull of the boat for the next hour, to maybe draw attention from sh.o.r.e.

"Okay," Parker said.

But something was wrong. Hanzen looked at the three of them. "Where's the money?"

Parker said, "That's going a different way."

Oh, Christ. Oh, what a f.u.c.kup. Hanzen had an instant of even worse despair than usual, and then, afraid Parker might see something on his face, he turned away to the wheel and said, "Well, let's get us out of here."

He put on speed and veered away from the ship into the darkness, as they opened the duffel bag Parker had given him earlier to bring along on the boat. Here were the clothes they would change into, to become fishermen out at night, while the suits and ties and white shirts, into the duffel bag with a rock, would soon be resting on the river bottom.

Hanzen gritted his teeth and chewed his lower lip. Had he given himself away? He snuck a look at Parker, and the man was frowning at him, thinking it over.

Oh, Jesus, I did! He saw it! He knows already. Oh, Christ, everybody's got a reason to be down on poor Greg Hanzen, and I never wanted any of it. Low man on the totem pole again. Why didn't I cut and run when I could?

Whoever survives this night, Hanzen told himself, if anybody does, it won't be me.

9.

One-fifteen. It wasn't necessary for Noelle to pitch her faint for another fifteen or twenty minutes, but she was ready to do it now. She really did feel queasy as h.e.l.l, and it wasn't because she was on a ship; the motion of the Spirit of the Hudson as it coursed upstream was barely noticeable.

No, and it wasn't the money under her that had her queasy, either. She understood about that, and agreed with the thinking behind it, and had no trouble with it. She'd been the girl distraction more than once in her life, either carrying the dangerous stuff herself or fronting for the one who did, though she'd never done it as an invalid before. But the idea here was a good one; she was an established presence on the ship. The robbers would have left through the door in the hull, and why wouldn't they have taken the money with them?

Of course, the reason they hadn't taken the money with them was because they would be half an hour or more in that small boat on the river before they reached the safety of the cabin. n.o.body knew how soon the alarm would be raised, but when it was, there would be police boats out. They might be suspicious of four night fishermen, but on that boat they wouldn't find any guns, any dress clothes, and most importantly, no money.

Would the police have any reason to think the money was still on the ship? None. Why would they believe that three men would go through such an elaborate con job and robbery and then not take the money with them?