CAPTAIN AMERICA IS DEAD!
The underground explosion shook the old building’s very foundations. Starling listened for another moment to the dead phone, then replaced it. Damn that man! He had cut short what might have been the greatest criminal coup in the history of the United States! They’d managed to get out only one load of gold; less than a million dollars’ worth—a drop in the bucket. And now the scheme was smashed, the entire plan, the underground tunnels, approaches, all shot.
His fingers shook as he dialed another number and misdialed the last digit, forcing him to hang up and dial over. Then he had an open line.
“Yes?”
“This is Starling.”
“What? Not now, not here!”
“I had to. I…”
“I know, you fool. I know. Captain America has discovered the tunnels.”
“Yes. Yes, I…”
“Did you manage to take care of him? I realize that the operation has been blown, but…”
“Yes, I think so. I mean, I don’t know. But he must be dead. I had the circuit open. I’d left Bruno in charge, as you’d said. I heard everything that happened. Bruno couldn’t stop him. He must’ve noticed the phone. He picked it up. I exchanged a few words with him to hold him there while I threw the switch. I know the stuff went off. I could feel it up here.”
“We’ll have to scrub operations there. Don’t call me at this number again. I’ll get in touch with you through Raven.”
“Yes. Okay, Boss.”
Starling hung up slowly. He moved with equal slowness across the dim-lit room. From the cot in the corner he picked up his topcoat, his hat. He put them on almost abstractedly. Captain America was almost certainly dead. But so was their plan to loot the greatest stockpile of gold in the United States. It was bitterly galling. If there had been another way… But there could have been no other way. He’d had to let the men out for a little air and recreation. He’d done that even before the boss’ call, earlier that morning. Only Bruno had been there. And Bruno had been an inadequate defense.
If he could have stopped Captain America without destroying the tunnel network…
But it would have been no good. Too many others knew by now. In a sense, the explosion of dynamite had been a pointless, almost petty thing—a futile revenge, nothing more. No, it had been good for more than that; it guaranteed confusion, and escape. He slammed the door to the room without locking it, and hurried down the stairs.
Ray Thompson was a hardworking, underpaid (in his wife’s opinion) bank guard. Until today, his life had been a dull one. It had been one free of taint, his record clean. There had been no trouble with his application to be bonded when he was accepted as a guard.
The sight of the gold bars it was his duty, in part, to guard, didn’t affect him particularly. He couldn’t connect those dull-yellow leaden bars with money; not with his monthly paycheck, with bills, with a Friday night beer at the bar on the corner, with infrequent movies with his wife (when a babysitter could be found). Money was an official light-green IBM card with his name typed on it, and the respective holes punched, that came every fifteenth of the month, was deposited in his checking account, and went out again in the form of rent, utility bills, and time-payments on his TV set, his wife’s washing machine and dryer (a necessity since the kids), the new living room set, his car.
Sometimes his palms itched when it was his duty to carry or guard bags of bundled bills, or boxes of rolled coins. Then he felt himself to be in the presence of money, real and palpable money. Sometimes he thought, in a wistful, daydreaming sort of way, of helping himself to a stray bundle of bills—tens or twenties, say—not enough to be missed; just enough to get a few of those monthly payments out of the way, and maybe make his ownership of just one appliance free and clear.
But he had never given way to such an impulse, and he never would. Ray Thompson was that rarity—an honest man, even in the face of temptation.
The thought of anyone stealing those heavy gold ingots, stacked so evenly, row upon row, in the subterranean vaults of the Reserve Bank, came almost as a surprise to him. An equal surprise had been the sight of the almost-mythical uniformed figure of Captain America, as he had led them down into the clandestine tunnels beneath the vaults. He had wondered, briefly, if a man like Captain America ever knew the pinch of too many bills, had ever felt desperate over the arrival of yet another mouth to feed. But, of course, Captain America had no family, and would hardly concern himself with such matters. It didn’t occur to Thompson to wonder if this in itself might not be something for which to pity Captain America.
He had been standing in the darkened cellar above the linked tunnels, the concealed shelf-door closed, when the explosion came. It came through two closed doors, and up a long shaft. It flung the heavy shelves over on him, knocking him to the floor.
The thunderclap had been muffled but, as he pulled himself out from under the collapsed shelves, he coughed rackingly. The cellar was chokingly full of dust. It tickled his nose and throat, turning his coughs into painful sneezes.
He moved stumblingly for the stairs, and fresher air—what there was to be had of it. Then duty overtook him again, and he moved back, into the cellar.
The lights, when he switched them on, still worked. They received their power from above, not below.
The light that spilled from the landing beyond the collapsed wall of shelves was foggy, and his moving shadow cut thick holes in it. He tugged at the shelves, groping at them to pull them aside. His gun was under them and, without thinking beyond that, he knew he needed his gun.
He didn’t think about the explosion below, and what must have happened to the men down there. Instead he searched methodically for his gun and, finding it, holstered it and moved into the landing area, to the ladder.
The lights showed only halfway down the shaft. But he climbed carefully down the unsteady ladder until he reached that point. He could go no further. It was caved in below.
He poked with one foot, halfheartedly, as though poking might unstop the shaft like a momentarily plugged drain, and free the way. But he was rewarded only by a quiver from the ladder, and it was with the haste born of caution that he reascended it.
There was nothing to be gained by remaining in the cellar now. It no longer connected with the tunnel network below; there was nothing to guard against. Leaving the lights untouched, he trudged up the stairs to the grimy hallway that led to the street.
The clatter of running feet on the stairs above stopped him. It was probably only someone alerted by the subterranean explosion, a curiosity seeker, but it paid to be on one’s guard. The building itself had not yet been explored.
He had his gun drawn when Starling turned the corner of the last flight of stairs.
When Starling saw the man in the dark-blue uniform, standing there with a drawn gun and covered with dust, he had no doubts in his mind. He plunged his hand under his coat, drew his slim 25 caliber automatic, and squeezed off three fast shots. The sound was like that of three sharp slaps in the dim hallway. The uniformed man fell.
He hadn’t been able to make out the man’s features, and had only begun to be surprised at the sight of a man so elegantly dressed in these shoddy surroundings, when the man’s arm had made a quick motion, and something was flashing at him.
From a vast distance he heard the shots, and understood their meaning. He had never been fired upon before. He had never fought in a war. There was nothing real about this situation. It was barefaced melodrama.
And grossly unfair. He felt the shock of the bullets’ impact. One of them hit his chest, striking bone. The second collapsed his left leg under him. Such tiny things, bullets. The third lodged in his brain as he was folding.
Starling stared down at the dead man. His thoughts raced close to panic. He’d killed a man. Had anyone heard the shots? Were there more people about? Where had the man come from? He forced himself into a calmer deliberation.
The cellar lights were off. Yet if the dust on his clothes was any indication, the man had come from there.
Okay, he’d been in the cellar, above the explosion when it had come. He’d come up. Alone. No one else had responded to the shots.
It was safe.
He slipped the gun into an outer pocket, where he could touch it, feel its reassuring grip easily, without appearing suspicious. Then he stepped over the body, and walked quickly to the door.
He pulled the door open, and eased his way out. There was no sign of police. In measured strides, he walked down the block to Maiden Lane. He glanced to the right. The forbidding bulk of the Federal Reserve Bank seemed to glower back at him from a block away. He turned left instead, and headed west. At least he’d got out free.
When Captain America awoke, there was a loud ringing in his ears, and his body was racked with pain. He wondered at first if he was also blind, but when he moved his head he caught a glimmering of light.
Where was he? What had happened to him?
The only thing he could remember was that voice on the phone—that slightly oily voice. It had threatened him; he remembered that. The voice had seemed too certain of itself, too undisappointed. That had warned him. But what then?
His head ached. Something pounded at it, rhythmically, in cadence with the ululations in his ears. He tried to shift to a more comfortable position.
Something pinned down his legs. There was no distinct pressure at any one spot; he couldn’t sort out any special sensations in his legs beyond that ache that seemed to permeate his body. He felt as though he’d been worked over by a meat grinder. He let himself relax again. He had detected the warning. After that?
He fought to reconstruct it in his mind. It was important. Perhaps he’d understand where he was if he could remember what had happened.
He’d dropped the phone—there was something odd about the phone. Yes, he remembered now. It was a lineman’s phone. That meant…
He began rebuilding his memory forward and backward. He’d been in an underground room, a room he’d reached through—through tunnels! Tunnels—from the vault, the bank vault, the gold depository.
The voice on the phone had held a note of triumph, as though another card was yet to be played. He’d felt the warning, the urgency. He’d dropped the phone, sprinted for the tunnel. The guard, the captured thug? He couldn’t remember. The last thing he remembered was a blow, a jarring concussion. After that, darkness.
At least he had some idea of where he was now. He was in one of the tunnels.
Carefully, he raised his right arm. He felt as weak as a baby. Sweat broke out on his forehead under his cowl mask, trickling an itchy path down his face. His fingers touched something that crumbled.
Dirt.
He was buried under a pile of dirt. He felt a smothering wave of claustrophobia sweep over him.
Buried, yes. But his exploring fingers found the dirt covered him only midway up his chest. His upper chest and shoulders, his head, were free.
He craned his head, and again caught the far-off glimmer of a light. It didn’t move, but it was reassuring. A way was open—that far, at least.
He wished he could hear. Or, rather, hear more than the nerve-jangling ringing that pervaded his ears.
Raising his arms, he dug down with his hands, and tried to sit up.
Nausea hit him like a club to the side of his head, knocking him flat. He passed out.
The big black Continental took the 39th Street ramp off the Brooklyn Belt Parkway elevated expressway, coasting down to the stop sign at Second Avenue. Straight ahead lay a freight yard, a few rusting freight cars surrounded by tall grass. Beyond, the squat building of the 39th Street Pier, and the oily water of the bay. If you squinted closely, you could separate the haze from the water, and make out between them, across the bay, the equally squalid New Jersey shoreline, with its own rundown industrial area.
Diagonally across the intersection was a yellowed concrete building, from which came the staccato chatter of many small machines. In the center of Second Avenue were two pairs of railroad tracks, recessed like old trolley-car tracks. Every few yards, a pair of tracks would split off into the yards and warehouses. On a gray day like this, Starling found it particularly depressing.
Ignoring the Right-Turn-Only sign, he swung the car left, onto the jouncing cobblestones, and south, down the avenue. A city bus, lumbering into the intersection, honked its impotent horn at him. He replied by goosing the gas, his tires chirping on the uneven surface of the street.
As he drove down the narrow avenue, past trucks angled out into the street, cars double-parked, and darting oncoming cabs that swung into his lane, and then ducked back into their own, he watched the street signs closely. On his right were warehouses, industrial lofts, trucks backed against their loading bins. On his left, going up the hill away from the water, rows of narrow tenements, paint peeling, dirty children in inadequate clothing swarming in the streets, playing their arcane games.
When he reached the fifties he slowed, and paid closer attention to street signs and addresses. He had been here only twice before, both times at night, when things were quiet. He chuckled as he remembered the first time, when he’d come down off the expressway to be confronted by a freight train in the center of the avenue, its big single light gleaming like Cyclops’ eye, an incongruously tinny bell jingling. This wasn’t his New York. This was Brooklyn.
Up ahead, on his right, was a tin-sided two-storied building, flush against a taller, concrete building. The gray paint was peeling from its corrugated sides, leaving blood-brown patches of rust. He angled his car into the curb, and tapped his horn lightly. One of the huge twin doors that covered the face of the building swung inward, and he drove up, over the sunken curb, and into the building.
A man in shirtsleeves, heavy blond hair a crop over his face and down the back of his neck, his belly joggling, pushed the door shut and ambled over. “Staying long?”
“What do you mean by that?” Starling snapped.
“Nothing much. Just, if you intend to make a day of it, I’ll put the car on the elevator. Otherwise it can stay.”
Starling shrugged. “The operation is blown. I’ll be here till the boss calls. Better put it on the elevator.” He slid the door open and climbed out, leaving the engine running.
The other took his place and, revving the engine, backed and angled it over onto an elevator.
“Watch it, Raven,” Starling said nervously. “You’re no parking-lot attendant.” The floor of the building was littered with odd pieces of heavy machinery. In the back stood an old van.
Raven slid the car onto two parallel skids. Then he leaned across the seat to the nearby wall, and punched a switch.
Immediately, the elevator began to rise, the thick column pushing the skids, lifting the Continental ponderously into the air.
Above, a section of the flooring overhead swung open and up.
The elevator didn’t pause at six feet, nor at nine. It didn’t stop until the skids were even with the floor above, and the car had all but vanished. Raven engaged the transmission and slowly backed the Continental out of sight. There was a pause, then the elevator mechanism began to sigh, and the skids started dropping.
Soon the ceiling was solid again, and the elevator was on the floor. There was no sign of a car in the dimly lit building. Raven came whistling down some side stairs, his feet heavy on the squeaking steps.
“Okay,” he said, fixing Starling with a sudden stare.
“Tell me about it.”
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