Primed for Murder (32 page)

French’s walkie-talkie crackled. “Team leader. We’ll need something besides explosives to get past the vault. The shaft will fall down before that door comes off. Send down a torch.” He sent the elevator up so it could be loaded with the required gear.

Tanks and cutting equipment were brought and delivered below. After a bit, the team leader reported they were making headway but that it was slow work. It took more than two hours to breach the outer door, during which time Toby watched an old black-and-white Robert Mitchum suspense movie on Giambi’s big-screen television.

“More blood here,” the team leader reported once they’d bored through solid steel. “Somebody’s hurt bad.”

The SWAT team used an intercom at the control panel between vault doors to try to raise the men inside and persuade them to surrender. They got no reply. So they fiddled with other controls. They turned off lights, raised humidity to rainforest damp and dropped the temperature below freezing inside the treasure room in an attempt to drive the fugitives out through discomfort, without further risk to the invaders.

The team leader reported conditions periodically via walkie-talkie: “It’s down to forty now…we’ve hit twenty Fahrenheit…humidity’s at ninety percent and the temp’s minus fifteen. If they’re in there, they must be getting damn cold.”

There was still no reaction from inside the room. Many wondered aloud: Were they alive? Were they even in there? Or had they made good their escape and was this an expensive exercise in futility?

Hours passed while everyone waited for something to happen. The SWAT team changed shifts. Outside, the sun peeped over the horizon. Toby watched the morning news—nothing yet about the raid, the deaths or the standoff—and dozed during a game show. Somebody rustled up coffee. Somebody else ran to a 24-hour bakery and brought back dozens of assorted doughnuts and pastries. Policeman came and went. Some stood around by twos or threes, talking in low voices. A few napped. Others played cards.

Finally, in the afternoon, things started to happen. After phoning for an okay from his boss, French, who was in charge of the field operation, told the men below to cut through the inner door. More waiting ensued, but now there was an edge to it.

Fifty-one anxious minutes later, the team leader called up: “We’re inside. The vault is secure. Come on down. You got to see this.”

French and a couple policemen got into the elevator. The detective looked out at Toby. “Want to come along for the ride, Rew? You deserve to be in at the end.”

With mixed feelings, he climbed aboard. The elevator control panel had been unscrewed and wires inside had been tampered with to make it run. French pushed “1” and the little room began to descend. It took only seconds to reach the bottom but it seemed longer. The outer vault door stood open, a roughly circular, yard-wide hole burned through its lower corner. Petrified slag stood in little piles and dribbles on the floor. A thick chunk of metal, its edges scorched, leaned against the wall. The inner door was punched where the keyhole had been.

A black-clad man between the two doors stood at the room controls, making adjustments. “I’ve raised the temp,” he said over a shoulder, “but it’ll take time before you feel it getting warmer. It’s a big area.”

The SWAT team leader, a hard-faced, no-nonsense man, met them at the entrance to the inner chamber, spoiling the surprise. “They’re in there, all three of them. All dead.”

They filed into the room. It was like stepping into a commercial meat locker and heated breath generated clouds of short-lived smoke. Toby started to shiver when he saw the still figures sprawled about the room. As they neared each body, it became obvious what had happened, though it was difficult to tell in what sequence events had unfolded.

When their plan to escape undetected fell through, the three men had decided to try waiting it out instead of surrendering and putting their lawyers to work. But with falling temperature, they couldn’t hold out too long.

Somebody had warmed things up. The glass fronts of most display cases had been battered in with an armchair and their contents removed. Ashes were mounded on the dark marble floor where precious papers had been dragged out and set afire to provide a few moments of heat. Millions of dollars worth of ancient and irreplaceable documents had gone up in smoke.

At some point, the men had turned on one another.

Artie was draped over the platform in the center of the room, his pistol empty in limp fingers. A thin coating of frost rimed his face, made his thick eyebrows seem carved from ice. It looked like he’d caught a couple rounds during the gunfight upstairs, in arm and shoulder, and his shirt was stained red. But it was a switchblade that had caused his death—there were defense wounds on Artie’s hands and arms—and the slender knife was still stuck between his ribs where his heart would be.

Leo was sprawled face-up on the floor, his head and chest blackened and charred by fire. He held a book of matches in a bloodstained hand now curled into a claw. The other hand sprawled loosely just inches from a small black automatic with an empty clip. The filigreed silver lighter and a heavy crystal decanter, chipped and stained with blood and drained of liquid, rested beside his slender body. A dull film surrounding Leo took the shine off the floor. The odor of heated liquor and burnt flesh was strong in his vicinity.

Old man Giambi slumped in an armchair. By marks on his face, he’d been slugged. His lips were blue, fixed in a grimace that showed stained teeth. He appeared to have suffered a fatal heart attack: one gnarled hand still bunched the shirt fabric at his chest.

Toby felt woozy and sat on the edge of the platform, facing away while policemen pawed at the crumpled corpses. The many voices of the living men around him dissolved into a drone. He could see how events transpired as clearly as if he’d been in here with the dead men and had witnessed everything.

When the temperature in the vault dropped, it would have been Leo, the crafty independent thinker, who’d wanted to burn the manuscripts to make heat and stave off frostbite. The normal hierarchy of the mob had broken down. It was the law of the jungle, every man for himself and survival of the fittest now.

Giambi, naturally, would have been horrified at Leo’s suggestion—he’d rather freeze to death than see his precious reading material destroyed.

Artie, the slow-witted company man, still trying to get back in his father-in-law’s good graces, had tried to stop Leo from destroying his boss’s expensive possessions. But Artie had been wounded in the firefight. His superior strength and an empty gun were no match for a blade in the hands of somebody who knew how to use it. The two men had struggled and Leo had killed Artie, losing his weapon in the process. The muscle-bound hit man just wasn’t lucky with knives.

The old man had pitched in at some point but Leo had cuffed him around and burned the papers. Giambi had managed to gather enough strength to take the liquor bottle from the compartment in his chair and conk Leo with it. He’d doused Tombs with the alcohol, set him ablaze in reprisal for his lost prizes. Then he’d collapsed, spent, and died.

Toby’s head swam with a badly edited newsreel of all those who had lost their lives in connection with that old bad-luck codex—Revuelto, Bart, the Puterbaughs, Dixon, Gino and his tough colleagues, now these three—a dozen people in all. He’d damn near bought it himself a couple times. And all for nothing: the Mayan book and the other rare paper items Giambi had carefully collected over the years were now all reduced to ash. It was so senseless, such a waste.

French was talking, bending over him, gripping his shoulder and looking concerned. Toby staggered to his feet, hearing the noise but not making out the other man’s words. “I just want to go home.”

They rode upstairs in silence. The detective collared a uniformed officer to drive Toby to the Buckley Road house. Now the danger was past, permanently, no reason existed not to return there at least temporarily, until he was capable of thinking about what to do with the rest of his life. French accompanied Toby to the cruiser, holding onto his elbow to assist him, as if Toby were old or crippled.

The sun was low in a cloudy sky. The big stone house, neatly clipped lawn and many assembled vehicles were touched with gold. Faces took on an Oriental cast.

Toby got to sit in the front seat of the police car this time. “It didn’t turn out as I’d hoped,” French said, leaning in the open window to impart a goodbye sniff, a farewell whiff of bad breath. “I really wanted to bring in Giambi and the others alive.” The young detective’s eyes looked wet. “Frank, too.”

Toby felt like he could sleep for a year. He hoped he wouldn’t have nightmares.

“But at least some bad people are off the streets,” French said. And some not so bad people, too, Toby thought. He felt somehow responsible for the mayhem. “You’re in the clear. No charges.”

What was done was done. Toby would have to live with it.

French patted his shoulder, handed him a wallet and a cluster of keys that Toby recognized as his own. The detective had retrieved them from Giambi’s body and realized to whom they belonged; both were smeared with Toby’s fingerprints in dried paint.

“Go home,” the detective said. “Get some sleep and forget about all this. If we happen to need you for anything, I’ll call.”

He slapped the roof as a signal to the driver and the car accelerated away. The driver, a handsome young Italian policeman with swarthy skin, black hair and large dark eyes wanted to talk about the day’s excitement. He fell silent when he got no response from his passenger.

Toby stared out the side window at the scenery, not seeing it. His thoughts were occupied with plans for the future.

He’d definitely worn out his welcome in Syracuse. It was time to pack the truck and move on. Maybe his mom could take him in while he made up his mind where to go next—weren’t mothers supposed to look out for their kids? Sure, he’d visit her. They’d talked by phone but hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years. He wouldn’t even call first, just show up on her doorstep: “Surprise, Mom! Can you put me up?” How could she refuse her only child?

What was Missouri like this time of year? Was the weather there as tough on house paint as upstate New York?

He’d get started tomorrow. First, he’d withdraw his savings, pay off debts and convert the rest to traveler’s checks. He’d pawn the junk he’d got from Mrs. Cratty to add to his bankroll for the trip to Mom’s. That might take a couple days of schlepping around. It could take a week to unload his supplies.

Mrs. Colangelo wouldn’t need his services any more—she’d have bigger things on her mind. Toby knew a couple small-timers in the business that probably would be happy to take paint, brushes and other gear off his hands, especially his professional-quality, custom-made thirty-six-foot extension ladder, if they were offered a good bargain. He’d buy new when he got wherever he settled. Meanwhile, he’d need all the cash he could lay hands on, because the pickings might be slim until he could get established in an unfamiliar locale.

Luckily, there was no need for haste now with Giambi and the other bad guys out of the picture. The house was his for a month and the refrigerator was full of food. No sense wasting it. That comfy bed was going to feel great tonight.

In less than an hour, Toby was home again. The familiar shape of the Buckley Road house loomed, tinted pale lavender in twilight, windows now dark purple rectangles. His pickup truck was right where he’d left it, wearing a film of dust.

Bone-weary, Toby climbed out, mumbled a thank-you as the polite young officer backed out and took off at speed. He stumbled towards the front door, fumbling for the keys. Before he crashed, he’d have to call Mac and Marta in Mexico and catch them up on the news. He had a lot to tell. “Your historic old house in Morrisville is gone, up in smoke. Giambi’s dead and his mob are finished. The Puterbaughs are dead, too. I had to kill a detective who was trying to murder me.”

He wondered idly if the authorities would bother dragging for bodies in the lake or just let them lie quietly in the depths. Not his problem—he didn’t want to know.

Something moved in slanting shadows by a corner of the house, something human sized and shaped. Had a mobster escaped and come seeking retribution? Toby stopped in his tracks and stole a glance down the road. The cop car was already out of sight.

Fight or flight? Neither offered hope, if the man hiding had death on his mind.

The figure stepped from the shadows. Not a man, but a woman, by those smooth, shapely bare legs, a person with a nice figure. Her face came into view. It was one of the women from his burned-out apartment, who’d deserted him at the motel. Jean? Sylvia? His mouth hung open but he was powerless to close it.

“You’re a hard man to track down, Toby Rew,” Jean or Sylvia said. “But I managed to worm your address out of Detective French.” She advanced, in open-toed clogs, cutoffs that showed most of her hips, and a T-shirt missing its bottom half so the undersides of bare breasts peeked from beneath the cloth like a pair of waning moons.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. She was close now and he could smell her, a dizzying scent of orange blossoms dipped in honey.

“Don’t you remember? I owe you money.” She reached into her abbreviated jeans, pulled out a folded bill and tucked it deep into Toby’s front pocket. She kept her hand there. “I brought you a hundred-dollar down payment.”

“Me, too,” said a soft voice from the opposite corner of the house.

It was the other one. Sylvia. Or Jean. She had on a skimpy bikini top, skintight jeans, high-heeled sandals. A sweat-beaded bottle of champagne hung from one hand and she extended a bill with the other. “We like to pay our debts.” She smelled of roses.

The women linked arms around Toby’s waist as he unlocked the door and maneuvered him inside without relinquishing their hold.

“Nice house you found for us, Toby,” the one on the left said cheerfully, her gaze traveling the interior, “just what we’re looking for!”

“When can we move in?” asked the one on the right.