The Specialists (13 page)

“You want to come out?”

“No. He’s got the vault combination somewhere. I lifted his wallet and couldn’t find it there, but there’s a safe in his bedroom and I ought to be able to get to it.”

“We don’t need it.”

“Call it insurance. Anyway, I’m in like Flynn. He bought the whole story. He wanted to buy it, he’s excited about having a son. But we play it very cool. In introductions I’m Eddie No Last Name. I’m inside, it’s as easy to stay inside.”

Howard Simmons said, “The traffic pattern is fairly steady. No parking in front of the bank. I can pick them up in front and run two blocks without worrying about traffic lights. Then a right and a left. Say we stash the second car right about here. We’ll be on the highway before there’s any chance of a roadblock. We take Two-O-Two and cross the state line at Suffern, dropping some of the boys off on the way. We switch cars one more time right across the New York line, then take the Thruway north, cross the Hudson at Beacon, come back down on the Taconic.”

Ben Murdock said, “I got that old truck painted brown again and the right plates on her. Only hard part is the waiting. I feel ready to bust out. The guns check out good enough. This here throws a little high and this one, hell, you won’t hit anything with it unless it’s big and you’re close, but shouldn’t be much shooting.”

Colonel Roger Cross said, “Thursday. Thirteen hundred hours. You all have your assignments and battle stations. Now let us go over the entire operational plan one more time.”

Frank Dehn said, “I don’t like it and I’m damned if I know why. You know what it is? It’s too damned slick. It’s easy, and when it’s this easy, I sweat. It doesn’t make any sense and I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t like it.”

Everybody told him he was crazy.

EIGHTEEN

“You see, it’s so dreadfully dull here,” Marlene Platt said. “As cloistered as a convent, but no other nuns around for company. I hope you’ll liven things up, Eddie.”

“I don’t even know how long I’ll be here.”

“Oh, bullshit,” she said. She had a habit of peppering her cultured, slightly affected speech with vulgarisms. “The prodigal son has returned. He’ll live out his days with his handsome father and his wicked stepmother——”

“His beautiful stepmother.”

“Thank you.”

“And I’m not even sure Albert Platt is my father, Marlene. If it turns out that he is, well, we seem to hit it off pretty well, and I suppose he’ll be able to find some work I can do. And if it proves out the other way, I’ll get on my horse and ride off into the sunset. I used to love westerns when I was a kid. There were a couple of years when I don’t think I once missed a Saturday double feature. I must have seen, oh, I don’t know how many movies.”

“You wouldn’t do it,” she said.

“Do what? See a movie?”

She tilted her head back, lowered her eyes to look at him. Movies, he thought; God, the woman was a collection of learned lines and gestures, all of it wholly artificial and poorly integrated.

He was unable to figure her out. At first it had bothered him, but after a day or two he stopped caring and simply wanted her to leave him alone. He had toyed with the idea of throwing a pass her way. Not, certainly, because he wanted her to keep him company in the sack. She had the looks for it, but he had the feeling that underneath that fine skin she was all cotton candy and feathers. But it had seemed to him that a pass would win whether it won or lost. If she hopped into bed with him, then he had a friend in the enemy camp. If she reacted the other way entirely, at least she would avoid him, which would simplify his life considerably.

Somehow he had never quite brought himself to go through with it. There was just no margin for error; if she went screaming to Platt, it would tear everything to hell and gone. By now there was no longer any point to it. It was Tuesday evening. In the morning—

“Ride off into the sunset,” she said slowly. “You wouldn’t do it, not in a million years. Nobody does.”

“Well, I——”

“Nobody leaves this house, Eddie.”

The words were chilling, He remembered Platt showing him around the grounds.
You wouldn’t want to know for instance what’s under that bush or what’s next to that tree, kid. Buddy is over there. Just a couple of days and already you can hardly make out the seams in the grass. Go ahead, take a close look.

“Nobody ever leaves. The life’s too good. It’s very comfortable being Al Platt’s wife. I’m sure it’ll be just as comfortable being Al Platt’s son.”

“But if it turns out I’m not his son——”

“Don’t be a schmuck. He’s very excited about the whole thing, as though you just came on the scene as living testimony to his manhood.” She put her hand to her forehead, rearranged a few strands of silky black hair. “Now, Eddie, you and I both know you’re a sharp boy looking for a soft touch, and it was a good idea you came up with, posing as Al’s son. He won’t even try to prove otherwise. You’re too good for his ego.”

“Marlene, you make it sound as though——”

“As though your story is a lot of crap? Well, isn’t it? You don’t have to answer.” She stubbed out a cigarette. “You think I care? He’ll go through the motions of checking the story, then he’ll say it won’t prove one way or the other but what the hell, you’re like a son to him, and you’ll stay with the easy living, Eddie, and you’ll be here a long time before you realize how much it’s costing you. You’re what? Twenty-eight?”

He nodded. He’d leave in the morning, he decided. Turn the car back to the rental agency, then up to Tarrytown and he’d be with the rest of them for twenty-four hours before they hit the bank. He’d tell Platt he had to go see a girl in Philly, something like that.

“I was twenty-seven when I married Al. Five years ago.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Wait until you see yourself five years from now, Eddie.”

He grinned. “Yes, Mother.”

“No jokes. It costs, all of this. Could you hear last night?”

“Hear?”

“He brought a girl home last night. One of his whores. He took us to bed. The three of us went to bed. A nice little family unit.”

Manso knew this. He had seen Platt with the girl, had heard the three of them together. Now he avoided Marlene’s eyes.

“Albert does like to prove his manhood. I’m surprised he didn’t ask you to join us. His son and his wife and his whore all together, and it would have been perfect wouldn’t it? Because I’m not his wife, not in my heart at least, and you’re not his son, and that blonde slut, for all I know she’s not his whore. You should have joined us, Eddie.”

He said nothing.

“I think I’d have liked that,” she said. Her eyes caught his. “I think I’d have liked it a lot. Myths are very compelling, aren’t they? Oedipus and all that, Eddie——”

“I guess I’ll go have a cup of coffee,” he said.

“Why don’t you,” she said. “A nice cup of coffee. Why were you trying to open the safe, Eddie?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, cut the shit, as Albert would say. The wall safe. I saw you.”

“Just testing my talents,” he managed.

“Come again?”

“A fellow once taught me how to knock off a combination lock by listening to the way the tumblers fall into place. I saw the safe, I thought I’d see if I could still do it.”

“You have interesting talents.”

“Well, you pick things up. Like another guy, an Army buddy of mine, taught me how to hypnotize people. Ever been hypnotized, Marlene?”

“Constantly. Does Al know about your talents?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Does he know you pinched his wallet the other day? You wouldn’t take money, you’re not that stupid, but you must have been looking for something.”

“His driver’s license. I expected him to be older than he said he was, and I wanted to check without being obvious about it.”

“You’d better go have that coffee now.”

“Sure,” he said.

When he was halfway to the door, she called his name and stopped him. He turned. She said, “He won’t be back for a couple of hours. He went to see the Greeks in Trenton. He never gets back from there before midnight. Take your choice.”

“My choice?”

“Choose coffee and I tell him. About the safe and the wallet. He might believe you.”

“And the other choice?”

“Me.”

He killed time lighting a cigarette. His mind flipped through alternatives. Easiest and safest was to knock her cold and just go out. Platt was away and he could come and go as he wished. Or did the guards have instructions to keep him on the premises? He didn’t really know, and it could be bad to commit oneself in advance.

Coffee or Marlene? He was almost certain that it would be at least as dangerous to accept her offer as to reject it. He had the feeling he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

“You can always have the coffee afterward, Eddie. Don’t take so long to make up your mind, dear. It’s not very flattering.”

NINETEEN

“Hit him.”

Manso tried to tense his stomach muscles, but he didn’t have anything left. He let his gut stay slack. The fist hammered into his midsection and he felt his gorge rising, tasted bile in the back of his throat. He was almost sick, but he managed to hold onto it.

“You bastard. I take you in my house and you go with my wife. Hit him again.”

The blow was the same as the last. All of them had been the same, delivered to Manso’s gut with monotonous regularity by one of the nightshift guards. Platt and two of the guards had dragged him out of his bed and down the basement stairs, and now he was tied to a pillar in a small empty windowless room. The guard was giving him a beating and Manso was taking it.

“My son. If you ain’t my son, you’re dead. You hear?”

He heard. His stomach was on fire, his legs rubber, his head pounding. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t which was what he had suspected all along, because she was a crazy bitch who didn’t know what the hell she wanted, and there was just no right way to play it.

“And if you are my son, then what? The son comes and screws the father’s wife. What kind of son is that?”

The hell of it was that he hadn’t. He had passed her up and picked the coffee.
I
couldn’t do it, not my father’s wife
—it had sounded phony even as he said it but at the time it seemed safer than throwing it to her.

“Al, Mr. Platt, Dad——”

“Listen to him, he don’t even know what to call me.”

“It never happened. What she said, it never happened.”

“So why does she lie? Why say she screwed you if she didn’t?”

“Your money.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Your will,” he said, desperate. “She wants me dead, don’t you see? She wants you to kill me. She’s afraid otherwise you’ll split up your estate instead of leaving it all to her.”

The guard braced himself for another blow. Platt laid a hand on his arm. “Hold it,” he said. “You go on back upstairs, kid. We don’t want to take it too far too fast, you know?”

“Sure, Mr. Platt.”

After the guard left, Platt went a long time without saying anything. Finally he said, “Both ways it’s solid enough. She could be telling the truth, and then you’re a wise ass working an angle who hustled her into the hay.”

“Why would I take the chance?”

“Because men think with their cocks instead of their heads. Especially at your age. But don’t interrupt. She could be telling it straight. Or she could be lying for the reason you said, the money, and then you’re telling it straight.” He paused. Then, “You know something? Only one thing matters.”

Manso waited.

“And that’s if you’re my son or not. If you’re my son, hell, blood’s blood. If there was a misunderstanding, we just call it a misunderstanding and the hell with it. If you’re not my son, if it’s either a story of yours or else your mother was off her nut, then you get planted in the backyard next to Buddy. Because if you’re not my kid, what the hell do I care who screwed who or who didn’t screw who and who’s lying and the rest of it. You follow me?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow and the next day I’ll talk to some people and see what I can find out. I’ll tell them to fix it so you’re more comfortable, but you better figure on making do with this room for a couple of days. It used to be the coal cellar. When I bought the place, I put in a gas furnace right away. There was a chute behind you where the coal came in, I had them brick that up. I figured it would be handy, a nice solid room with no windows.” He laughed, then broke it off short. “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“A couple of days and we’ll know, see? We can forget about all of this and the whole subject never comes up again. The hell, the door locks, you’re not going any place. I’ll cut you loose.”

Manso steadied himself. Platt cut the ropes around his ankles and wrists. He was ready to spring at the man as soon as he was free, but he didn’t even get to try. As soon as the bonds were loose, his feet went out from under him and he slid down the length of the pillar and sprawled on the floor. He couldn’t move. He just didn’t have it.

“Yeah. You rest and take it easy.”

“I got a date.”

“What’s that?”

“A date,” Manso said. “This girl I’ve been trying to get to. I got a date with her for tomorrow night.”

“We won’t have anything that quick.”

“Call her for me? Just that Eddie can’t make it, so she doesn’t think I stood her up. Would you do that?”

“I guess.”

“I’ll give you the number,” he said. “Her name’s Helen Tremont.”

TWENTY

The colonel sat in his wheelchair and massaged the stumps of his legs. Both of them had ached ever since the phone call. It had come at eight o’clock. It was nine now, and they were all gathered in the library waiting for the colonel to speak, and all he could think was that his legs hurt. It was psychosomatic, and he knew it was psychosomatic, but somehow the knowledge did nothing whatsoever to alleviate the pain.

He said, “It’s obvious that Eddie is in very serious trouble.”

He circled the table with his eyes and studied the four faces. They gave back virtually nothing. He thought at first that they were impassive, stoic. Then he realized that it was something else. They were merely waiting for orders.