Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

Cain fell silent but continued to stare unseeingly at the wall. Tribucci moved his head slightly and once more looked at Coopersmith.

Do you believe him? Coopersmith’s eyes asked.

I believe him, Tribucci’s eyes answered, and Coopersmith dipped his head almost imperceptibly. They had just witnessed the laying bare of a man’s heart and soul, and the sincerity of his confession was to both of them unquestionable.

Turning, Cain met their gazes again. “I’ve been in the Army,” he said, “so I know the principles of seek-and-destroy and I know how to use a handgun. I’m not in the best of shape, but I think I can climb down a rope all right. I’m also afraid, I can’t lie to you about that, but I’m as sure now as any man can be without having been tested that when the time comes, I’ll be able to stand my ground and pull the trigger on any of those three men.”

Tribucci believed him about that, too. All doubt had vanished now; his instincts told him what type of man Cain was, and he had always implicitly trusted his instincts. The two of them, he thought insightfully, were of the same basic nature: they felt things deeply, they loved and hated deeply, and when a crisis arose they could not be passive or indecisive, they were compelled to act. And these character traits, for better or worse, were of course the reason why (he understood this for the first time) he had taken on the two cyclists thirteen years ago. If Cain had been with Charlene that night on the beach, he might have done the same thing; and if Tribucci had lost his family as Cain had lost his, he might have reacted in much the same fashion as Cain-when it happened and right now.

“Do I go with you?” Cain asked him.

Tribucci had made his decision. “Yes,” he said simply. And then pivoted to Coopersmith.

Eyes steady and penetrating, features set in hard, perceptive lines, the old man was not old at all; except for the flesh-and-bone shell in which the essence of him was trapped, he was young and strong and sagacious. But it was that shell which meant so much now, that shell which prevented him from leading the kind of assault he had been trained for, that shell which had forced him into an admission a few minutes ago that his pride and his spirit had never previously allowed. But he was not old; he had never been old, and he would never be old.

“All right,” he said, as Tribucci had known he would, “I’m in it anyway, so I might as well be in it all the way. With both of you.”

Cain said, “When do we go?”

“As soon as possible. But there’s some talking out to be done first. You don’t rush into a situation like this without planning strategy; too many things can go wrong as it is. First consideration is the two of you getting out of the belfry and away without being spotted.”

“Well if there’s still a guard,” Tribucci said, “it figures he’ll be in front in one of the cars. With the storm that’s up and howling out there, he’s not going to be walking around. And the storm itself is all in our favor; it’ll cover any noise we make breaking out the belfry window, fill in our tracks before too long, keep visibility down to a minimum.”

“It’s not going to cover the sound of breaking glass here in the church.”

“There’s the organ,” Cain said. “If you could get somebody to play a few hymns, the music should be loud enough to drown splintering glass.”

“Okay-good. I’ll talk to Maude, and if she won’t do it, Ellen will. I’ll try to get as many people singing as I can, too; that’ll keep them all together out front, so no one wanders in here at the wrong time.”

Tribucci said, “Second consideration is weapons. We can’t take the chance of going to the Sport Shop, but we can circle through the trees on the west slope, to the houses along Shasta. Joe Garvey’s got a Walther automatic that he brought back from Europe a few years ago and uses for hunting small game. And Vince keeps a pair of target revolvers.”

“That leaves the big question,” Cain said. “How do we deploy once we’re armed?”

“Only one way to handle it,” Coopersmith told them. “Come back here, so you’re in a position to protect the church; don’t try to do any stalking, that’d be like playing Russian roulette. If there’s a guard, take him first-as quietly as possible, maybe with a knife if you can get close enough to do it that way.” He studied the impassive faces of the two younger men. “Shooting a man is one thing, stabbing him with a knife is another-you know that, don’t you?”

“We know it,” Tribucci said thinly.

“All right. Next thing you do is set up in ambush and wait, and keep on waiting no matter how long it takes. But not both of you in the same place, and I don’t have to tell you the reason for that. You’ll have to figure your exact positions once you get to that point.”

Cain nodded, and Tribucci said, “Agreed on all of it. Anything else?”

“One thought,” Cain said. “If we’re going to be waiting in that snowstorm, we’d better put on hats and mufflers and as much extra clothing as we can handle while we’re at Garvey’s place.”

“Right.” Tribucci’s mouth quirked. “Lew-Ann and Vince are going to miss me pretty fast, even if nobody else does. I’d tell them beforehand, but I’m afraid there’d be a scene…”

“There’s liable to be a scene anyway, sooner or later, but that’s my problem; I’ll tell them once you’re gone. You just leave this end of things to me; you’re going to have enough to worry about outside.”

Tribucci exhaled heavily through his nostrils, looked down at his watch. “Five oh five. It’s dark now, but it’ll be darker still in another half hour. Go at five thirty-five?”

“Five thirty-five,” Cain said.

Coopersmith said, “That covers just about everything, then. We’d all better wait out front until it’s time; leave now one by one. The two of you come back in here, separately, between half past and twenty-five to. I’ll have Maude or Ellen playing the organ as soon afterward as I can manage it.”

The three men stood for several silent pulsebeats. Tribucci wanted to say something to Cain, to tell him he was sorry about the tragic loss of his family, to thank him for the choice he had made; but he had no words, it was not the time for words like that. Later, he thought, when it’s over. Later…

He moved first to the closed vestry door.

There was $3,247 in the Mercantile’s safe.

Brodie had taken too much time getting the box open, and Kubion’s patience had ebbed away finally and he’d told him to quit diddling around, quit diddling around you queer bastard, and Brodie said he was doing it as fast as he could, and Kubion just looked at him over the raised muzzle of the automatic. Six minutes later Brodie had the combination dial punched out with hammer and chisel and the safe door open wide. Inside were sheafs of papers and some ledger books and a key-type strongbox. With Kubion watching him closely, Brodie snapped the lock on the strongbox and counted out the money it contained onto the desk’s glass top.

$3,247.

Kubion stared at the thin piles of currency. Three thousand lousy goddamn lousy dollars! He had figured ten grand at least, maybe fifteen or twenty, some banker Hughes had been some hick banker son of a bitch. If he wasn’t dead already he’d be dead right now, just like all the hicks were going to be dead pretty soon, pretty soon.

He centered his gaze on Brodie standing by the desk in a litter of tools and bits and pieces of safe metal. Brodie’s face was stoic, but those purple eyes of his were like windows and you could see what he was thinking, you could hear we-told-you-so-didn’t-we running around inside his head as plainly as if he were saying it aloud. Kubion shouted, “Shut up, shut the fucking hell up!”