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 bags hung from the central pipe.
He looked from McQuade to Michele, his eyes jumping like furtive animals. He whirled the rack around and thrust it at McQuade.
The Negro landed on the worn carpet with a crash that must have startled the termites in the old beams. McQuade batted at the dresses with both hands. He tried to sidestep, but the smaller man kept pushing the rack at him, keeping him off balance.
Michele cried, “Ziggy, that is truly enough!”
McQuade took a backward step and finally got a grip on one of the uprights. He braced himself. The rack reversed and the smaller man began to retreat. On the floor, the Negro shook his head and gathered himself. Michele stooped beside him and said something urgently, in her agitation speaking in French. He brushed her aside and began to get to his feet, trouble written all over his black face.
“Brownie, you fool, stand still and listen!”
Billy, the boy who had met them at the gate, hurled himself on McQuade from behind. McQuade twitched violently and brought his elbow back into the boy’s midsection. Billy went flying, an anguished look on his face.
The Negro, coming up, dealt McQuade a powerful blow in the kidneys. McQuade spun around and the dress rack went careening away, carrying its manipulator ahead of it. In front of the fireplace, he tripped on a low table and went down. The rack came down on top of him.
The girl, a skinny thing under her wild crown of black hair, grabbed McQuade’s waist and hung on grimly. McQuade chopped at the Negro’s head, and caught him on the ear with a swinging right that took him out of contention again. McQuade turned to meet Billy as he came at him swinging a poker. He went in underneath the poker and caught it as it came down. He twisted, yanking hard. The poker whirled away.
The dress-rack man had untangled himself, but he kept clear of McQuade until the Negro recovered and could come at him again. Then he darted in with a karate chop which McQuade caught on the side of his head. A swinging backhand blow sent Dress Rack reeling. A fat Tiffany glass lamp with a beaded shade fell to the floor.
The skinny girl finally succeeded in working one leg between McQuade’s. The Negro grabbed from one side while Billy leaped on him from the other, and they all four went down, in a flailing, churning knot. Dress Rack moved around the little group with the marble lamp base, waiting to get a shot at the big man’s head.
Michele continued to scream at these impossible Americans to act like civilized people. But suddenly the whole thing struck her as less awful than funny. She collapsed laughing into a tall chair. It was wild, high laughter, and after an instant it reached the struggling group on the floor. Dress Rack peered around in alarm, and lowered the lamp base. The Negro looked up, and McQuade hung a solid right high on his cheekbone.
That was the last blow struck by either side. No one could go on battling in the same room with that cascade of laughter. The skinny girl freed herself, smiling, and came to her feet. Her blouse was in tatters and one strap of her bra had torn loose, but the bra didn’t have much to keep under restraint. Billy, sitting back on his heels, began to grin. In a moment he was hooting as hysterically as Michele.
The Negro, dazed, was flickering in and out of consciousness, but his lips, too, began to move. Only Dress Rack still looked mad.
“Put it down, Ziggy,” Michele sputtered. “I told you. Did I not tell you? Do you remember? I told you it had to work. And the dress rack. You see what a weapon? What you can do with it?”
“I never said you couldn’t,” Dress Rack said stiffly.
McQuade came heavily to his feet. “What are we doing, playing games?” he said, massaging his knuckles.
Michele’s laughter was nearly under control. Catching Billy’s eyes as she started to speak, she was off again.
“Oh!” she gasped finally. “My poor ribs. Brownie, are you all right?”
The Negro waggled his jaw. “If someone will pass me the bottle of Scotch. Who is this gentleman?”
“His name is Frank. He is taking Tug’s place. And this is Brownie.” She pointed. “And Irene. And Szigetti, sometimes called Spaghetti. I spoke of a small disturbance we mean to create on Sixth Avenue.” She spread her hands. “Viola! This is it!”
McQuade touched the side of his face and looked at his hand. There was blood on it. Szigetti, smoothing his mustache with quick flicks of his thumbnail, studied McQuade closely.
“I’ve run into you somewhere,” he said.
“Have you?” McQuade said.
“In Florida or someplace?”
McQuade looked at him with more interest. “I’ve been in Florida.”
“Yeah,” Szigetti said, studying the bigger man specula-lively. He turned to Michele. “We were counting on taking Tug’s split and divvying it up. We were working on the new timing when you came in. My principle is, the fewer the better.”
There was no sign of merriment in her face now. He said quickly, “I’m not griping! I’m no complainer, anybody can tell you that. I thought we could see how it shaped up with just the four of us. And if you still thought you needed the extra man, I had somebody to suggest. A kid I can vouch for over the years, and you could get him for a fraction of what Tug was getting.”
“Did you approach him?” she said sharply.
“No, no, not without getting a go-ahead from you. But I happen to know he’s available.”
“You can forget it, Ziggy. Frank, that blood on your face, do something about it. We don’t want to call attention to you with a bandage.”
“It’s not my blood,” he said.
Brown had picked himself up and was pouring himself a slug of good Scotch. “You’re welcome to it, baby,” he said softly. “For now.”
“Now will everybody please stop this?” Michele said. “It was a stupid mix-up, and all my fault. We are going to be friends for thirty-six hours, because we can do this only if we work together. After that you may fight with knives or guns or anything you please.”
“Blade work?” Brown said blandly. “Not for me. I’m a nonviolent cat. First thing I’m going to do is buy a red Thunderbird and some new threads. Then I’ll accept bids from the chicks.”
“Where’s the bathroom?” McQuade said.
Michele said, “Show him, Billy.”
Billy took him out through a large dining room. The table was littered with aluminum trays, the remains of four TV dinners. He opened the door of a washroom off the kitchen.
“There’s a tub upstairs,” Billy said, “and it’s about three and a half feet long. You couldn’t get in without a shoehorn, Frank.”
“Yeah?”
The boy looked down diffidently, then up into McQuade’s eyes. “That was some fight,” he said, and added, “Paper towels is all there is.”
McQuade grunted. Inside the washroom, he closed and locked the door.
Instantly his manner changed. He listened. When he heard Billy’s retreating footsteps he turned on the hot-water faucet. The water was rusty. Leaving the water running, he raised the lower half of a narrow frosted window and looked out. Then he eased his big frame through the opening and dropped to the ground.
He moved cautiously around the house. The living-room windows were open. He dropped to his heels to listen to Szigetti’s overly emphatic voice.
“All I’m saying is I saw him somewhere. And he’s got the wrong smell. I just want to make sure you know for a fact he’s OK.”
“I do know that for a fact,” Michele said coldly. “He has the wrong smell because you want another one-fifth added to your price.”
“No! I was just checking up. If you say he’s OK, he’s OK. In this kind of situation, I like to trust the guy on the right of me as well as, the guy on my left, and the way this Frank McQuade strikes me, he strikes me as being maybe a little too independent.”
“He is independent,” she conceded, “but I have a lever to use on him. He will give us no trouble.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Szigetti said, too heartily. “One other thing. There can’t only be one guy in charge. Tug-he was a natural, we’re all his boys. Now I know the setup, the kids have confidence in me. I’m the logical man. I’m not bucking for anything, understand, but if everybody feels-”
McQuade’s lips shaped a savage smile. He slipped away without waiting to hear more.
He had already spotted the telephone wire. He dropped to his hands and found the lead-in box, just above the masonry of the foundation. He pried the box open with a small screwdriver, working by feel. He struck a light, snapping the lighter shut again almost at once. He did something inside the box, closed it carefully and backed away, paying out a thin copper wire. At intervals, he pulled it taut and tacked it against the underside of a clapboard.
He swung back into the washroom, bringing the wire with him. He took out his hearing-aid battery case and opened it. Where the batteries should have been there was a neat arrangement of printed circuits and transistors. He loosened a terminal and tied in the wire. After checking the button in his ear, he closed a gap in one of the printed circuits with the point of his screwdriver. He turned on both faucets in the wash basin and sloshed the water around with one hand. In a low voice, speaking directly into the battery case, he gave a Manhattan number.
He waited impatiently. Then, in the same low urgent tone, he said, “Power? This is Michael Shayne. I’m in.”