Police officers were still called patrolmen back then because there weren’t too many female uniforms on the force and there weren’t any real problems with gender identity. There weren’t many black patrolmen back then, either, but Oscar Jackson was indeed black, and he was just taking his wallet out of his pocket to remove the paycheck from it when these three guys wearing ski masks and carrying sawed-off shotguns came running down the bank steps. Nowadays, they’d be carrying Uzis or AK-47s, but this was back then, when you and I were young, Maggie.
Carella had just turned the corner when he saw Jackson—whom he’d noticed around the station house but whose name he didn’t yet know—look up and into the masked faces of the three armed men barreling down the wide front steps of the bank. Jackson didn’t need a program to tell him this was a robbery in progress. Neither did Carella. And neither did Patrolman Jimmy Ryan at the wheel of Charlie Two.
All three men unholstered their weapons, Jackson stepping to one side and immediately assuming a shooter’s crouch, Ryan coming out of the car and hunkering down behind the hood with his elbows on it and his gun in firing position, Carella fearlessly (but he was young) rushing toward the bank with his .38 in his right hand. All three fired in almost the same instant.
Only one of the robbers returned fire, and he directed his shotgun blast at the cop closest to him, who happened to be Oscar Jackson. Jackson fell to the pavement, bleeding from a devastating wound in his chest. The man who’d shot him dropped at the same moment, felled by three rounds from Ryan’s pistol. Carella had to empty his revolver before he dropped both of the other robbers. But the holdup attempt had been foiled and the only casualty was Oscar Jackson, who was dead even before Ryan and Carella knelt over him. His uncashed paycheck lay on the sidewalk beside him, in the widening pool of his own blood.
That day had been cops and robbers, all right, and maybe every day after that had been cops and robbers, too. But that day hadn’t been “one big game,” as Barney Loomis would have it, and neither was today a game, not when a twenty-year-old girl’s life was at stake. They’d been ready to proceed according to procedure, but Barney Loomis had called off the dogs. Carella just hoped nobody got hurt today.
“Exit 17 coming up,” Loomis said.
THEY HAD MOVED the girl into the smaller of the two bedrooms, where they’d fastened to the door a hasp and lock similar to the one on the closet door. There was a single window in that bedroom, but it opened onto the beach, and there was nobody on that beach but us seagulls, boss. Besides, the girl was handcuffed to the radiator and couldn’t get to the window even if she’d tried. Avery had warned her that there was no sense yelling for help because then they would have to kill her on the spot instead of delivering her to her benefactors at Bison this very night.
Avery had patiently explained to the girl everything they hoped to accomplish today, had laid it all out in detail, the way he had done so far with Barney Loomis and would continue to do throughout the day as events unfolded. This way, there’d be no surprises and no mistakes. After they picked up the cash, they’d deliver the girl tonight as promised, and waltz off with a bit more than $83,000 each, though Cal had already begun complaining that their share—Avery’s and Kellie’s, since they were a couple—would come to twice what he was getting for the same amount of work and risk.
Avery had explained to him, as patiently as he’d explained everything to the girl, that they’d have had to pay the same amount to whichever third party they’d engaged for the gig. So what difference did it make if Kellie was that person? Kellie knew how to handle a boat, and Avery had taught her how to use the assault rifle, more or less, though frankly she wasn’t too sure how she felt about maybe having to shoot the girl if she raised any kind of fuss while they were out there picking up the loot.
She was alone in the house with her now.
It was almost four-thirty. Kellie hadn’t heard a peep from the bedroom since the boys had left the house. She hoped the girl was okay, they were supposed to drop her off tonight in the same condition as when they’d snatched her. She went to the bedroom door, knocked on it, and yelled, “You okay, Tamar?” She felt sort of a thrill calling a rock star by her first name.
“I’m thirsty,” Tamar called from behind the locked door.
“Would you like some iced tea? There’s some iced tea in the fridge.”
“Please,” Tamar said.
“No funny stuff when I unlock the door, right?”
“What funny stuff did you have in mind?” Tamar asked.
Kellie smiled.
