Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

“Why do you have to go to Coldville?”

“Neal Walker called and asked me to come. He wants to discuss some civic problem or other he’s having.”

“Mayor to mayor, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“I see. And wives aren’t allowed?”

“You’d be bored, dear, you know that.”

“I suppose I would.”

“I’ll probably be late. Don’t wait up.”

“No, I won’t,” she said, and broke the connection.

Hughes replaced the receiver, sighed again, and then went around the desk and sat down in his leather armchair. He pyramided his fingers under his chin and sat that way for several minutes, lost in thought. Then, abruptly, he straightened, picked up the telephone again, and dialed a Soda Grove number.

A woman’s soft young voice said, “Grange Electric, good afternoon.”

“Hello, Peggy. Can you talk?”

“Yes. Is something the matter?”

“No, not a thing. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Well, you’ll be seeing me in another three hours.”

“I know that. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

She laughed softly. “What were you thinking?”

“You know what I was thinking.”

“Yes, but tell me anyway.”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll show you.”

“Oh, yes, I can imagine you will.”

Hughes moistened his lips, and his breathing was thick and rapid. “You know something?” he said. “This conversation is giving me an erection. I never thought a man could get an erection talking to a woman over the telephone.”

The girl named Peggy laughed again. “Well, don’t lose it, okay? I’ll see both of you at six or a little after.”

“At six,” Hughes said. He waited until she had rung off and then reached out almost reluctantly to recradle the receiver for the second time. Using a handkerchief from the pocket of his gray wool slacks, he wiped away a thin sheen of perspiration which had formed on his forehead; then he stood up and went out again into the front of the store.

Over the loudspeakers, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was singing about love and faith and the spirit of Christmas.

Sacramento

When they were two blocks from Greenfront and he was certain they had no immediate pursuit, Brodie slowed the armored car to the legal speed limit. Time was a precious commodity, but they couldn’t buy any of it if they drew attention to themselves getting the dummy back to the rented garage.

The alley off which the garage was located had both its entrances on parallel industrial streets crowded with trucks and vans. Brodie made the turn onto the nearest of them without seeing any sign of a police car and drove a block and a half to where the alley mouth bisected the block to the left. Kubion, watching the street in a flatly unblinking stare, said, “It looks okay; nobody paying any attention”-and Brodie nodded and made the swing into the narrow opening between two high, blank warehouse walls.

Midway through the block, the alley widened to the right to form a small parking area; it fronted a weathered brick structure which had been independently erected between the rear walls of two warehouses. One-half of the building had a sign on it that said BENSON SOLENOID, MANUFACTURER’ S REP. The other half was the garage.

They had left the doors open, and the area was deserted; Brodie drove the armored car inside without slowing. Kubion was out of the passenger side before the car had come to a full stop, closing the two wooden halves of the doors, barring them with a two-by-four set into iron brackets. Turning, he began to strip off his guard uniform, the false mustache and sideburns and bulbous putty nose he had been wearing. Brodie and Loxner, out of the car now, were also shedding their uniforms and disguises-Loxner one-handed, his left arm hanging useless at his side and ribboned with blood. His eyes still had a glazed look, etched with pain, and they wouldn’t meet either Kubion’s or Brodie’s; but he’d kept his mouth shut, and he was functioning all right.

Their regular clothing was in a locked storage box at the upper end of the garage, along with the suitcases in which they had planned to carry the money. Kubion unlocked the box and took out one of the cases. Into it they put the disguises, because they didn’t want the cops discovering they had worn them, and the. 38 automatic Kubion had had tucked into his belt under the uniform jacket; the uniforms, which were untraceable, were allowed to remain discarded on the oil-splattered floor.

Brodie and Kubion got immediately into slacks, shirts, winter coats; then they transferred the New Police Colts into their coat pockets. Loxner took off his undershirt and tore it into strips with his teeth and his right hand and bound the wound in his arm. He had difficulty getting into his own clothing, but neither Kubion nor Brodie went to help him. With Kubion carrying the suitcase, the two of them moved past the dummy car-it, too, was untraceable, and they had worn gloves from the moment it was delivered to make sure it stayed clean of prints-and crossed to the double doors.

Loxner joined them, struggling into his coat, as Brodie took the bar away and cracked one of the halves. The area was still deserted. Hands resting on their pocketed guns, Kubion and Brodie led the way out and over to where they could look both ways along the alley. Clear. In the distance there was the fluctuating wail of sirens, but the sounds were muted, growing fainter, moving elsewhere.

Slightly more than six minutes had passed since their arrival at the garage.

They went to the right, straight through the block to the next street over. Kubion’s car was where he had parked it that morning, a hundred feet from the alley mouth. When they reached the car, Kubion unlocked the doors and put the suitcase on the floor in back; then he went to the trunk, opened it, removed a folded blanket, closed it again. He gave the blanket to Loxner.

“Lie down on the rear seat with this over you,” he said. “Cops will be looking for a car with three men in it, not two.”

Loxner still wouldn’t meet his eyes. He said, “Right,” and stretched out on the seat under the blanket, holding his wounded arm like a woman holding a baby. Brodie took the wheel. Sitting beside him, Kubion opened the glove box and took out the California road map and Sacramento city street map stored within. He folded them open on his lap.

If the job had gone off as planned, they would have taken Interstate Highway 80 straight through to Truckee and then swung north on State Highway 89-the quickest approach to Hidden Valley. But because they were professionals, covering against just such a blown operation as this, they’d also worked out a more circuitous route to minimize the danger of spot checks by the Highway Patrol. There was an entrance to Interstate 80 not far from where they were now, and they could still use that all right; it was only twenty-five minutes since the abortive ripoff, and the cops would need more time than that to organize and set up effective roadblocks. As soon as they reached the Roseville turnoff, eight miles distant, they would cut north on State 65 to Marysville, pick up State 20 to Grass Valley, and then take State 49 through Downieville and Whitewater and, finally, Soda Grove. It would double their time on the road, making the trip to Hidden Valley a minimum of four hours, but it would also put them well clear of the police search and surveillance area.

It took Brodie seven minutes to get them out of the warehouse district, swinging wide of Greenfront, and onto the cloverleaf that fed Interstate 80 eastbound. They saw no police cars until they came out of the cloverleaf and merged with the flow of traffic, and then it was a highway patrol unit traveling westbound with red light and siren, exiting the freeway on the same cloverleaf-alerted but no longer an immediate threat. Kubion had had his gun out and hidden beneath the bottom folds of his coat, but now he slid it back into the pocket. He lit a cigarette and made sucking sounds on the filter, pulling smoke into his lungs.