The gun was tucked into the waistband of my slacks, the butt protruding, the whole thing positioned for a draw across the front of my body. I'd have preferred to have it riding in a holster on my hip but I didn't have the choice. It got in the way as I walked, and when I was in the shadows at the side of the church I drew the gun and walked along holding it, but I didn't like that either, and I put it back where I'd had it.
The flight of stairs was steep. Concrete steps with a rusted iron railing that was loosely mounted into the surrounding brick. A bolt or two had evidently worked loose. I walked down the steps and felt myself disappearing into the darkness. There was a door at the bottom. I groped until I found the knob and I hesitated with my hand on it, listening carefully, trying to hear something within.
Nothing.
I turned the knob, eased the door inward just far enough to be sure that it was unlocked. Then I drew it shut and knocked on it.
Nothing.
I knocked again. This time I heard movement inside, and a voice called out something unintelligible. I turned the knob again and stepped through the doorway.
The time I'd spent in the pitch-dark stairwell had worked to my advantage. A little light filtered into the basement through the windows at the front, and my pupils had dilated enough to make use of it. I was standing in a room that must have measured about thirty by fifty feet. There were chairs and tables scattered around the floor. I pulled the door closed after me and moved into the shadows against one wall.
A voice said, "Devoe?"
"Scudder," I said.
"Where's Devoe?"
"In the car."
"It doesn't matter," another voice said. I couldn't recognize either of them as the one I'd heard over the phone, but it had been disguised, and for all I knew these voices were disguised, too. They didn't sound like New York but they didn't sound like anyplace else in particular, either.
The first speaker said, "You bring the money, Scudder?"
"It's in the car."
"With Devoe."
"With Devoe," I agreed.
Still just the two speakers. One was at the far end of the room, the other to his right. I could place them by their voices but the darkness shrouded them, and one of them sounded as if he might be speaking from behind something, some upended table or something of the sort. If they came out where I could see them, I could draw the gun and throw down on them, shoot them if I had to. On the other hand, it was more than possible that they already had guns trained on me and could drop me where I stood before I got the gun out of my pants. And even if I shot first and got them both, there could be another couple of armed men standing in the shadows, and they could shoot me full of holes before I even knew they existed.
Besides, I didn't want to shoot anybody. I just wanted to trade the money for the books and get the hell out of there.
"Tell your friend to bring the money," one of them said. I decided he might have been the voice on the phone, if he were to let his speech soften into a southern accent. "Unless he wants the books sent to the IRS."
"He doesn't want that," I said. "But he's not going to walk into a blind alley, either."
"Keep talking."
"First of all, put a light on. We don't want to do business in the dark."
There was a whispered conference, then a fair amount of moving around. One of them flicked a wall switch and a fluorescent fixture in the center of the ceiling came on one tube at a time. There was a flickering quality to its light, the way fluorescents get when they're starting to go.
I blinked, as much at what I saw as at the flickering light. For a moment I thought they were hippies or mountain men, some curious breed. Then I realized they were disguised.
There were two of them, shorter than I, slender in build. Both wore full beards and fright wigs that started low on their foreheads and concealed not only their hair but the whole shapes of their heads. Between the low hairline and the beginning of the beard, each wore an oval mask over the eyes and the top half of the nose. The taller of the two, the one who'd turned on the light, had a chrome-yellow wig and a black face mask. The other, half concealed by a table with chairs stacked on it, sported dark brown hair and a white mask. Both had black beards, and the short one had a gun in his hand.
With the light on, I think we all three felt vulnerable, almost naked. I know I did, and there was a tension in their stance that indicated the same feeling. The one with the gun was not exactly training it on me, but neither was he pointing it in another direction altogether. Darkness had protected all three of us, and now we'd flicked it aside.
"The trouble is we're afraid of each other," I told him. "You're afraid we'll try to get the books without paying for them. We're afraid you'll rip us off for the money and give us nothing in return, hold us up again with the books or peddle them to somebody else."
The tall one shook his head. "This is a one-time deal."
"For both of us. We pay once and that's all. If you made a copy of the books, get rid of it."
"No copies."
"Good," I said. "You have the books here?" The short one with the dark wig shoved a navy-blue laundry bag across the room with his foot. His partner hefted it, put it back on the floor. I said it could be anything, it could be laundry, and would they show me what was in the bag.
"When we see money," the tall one said, "you get to see the books."
"I don't want to examine them. Just take them out of the sack before I tell my friend to bring the money."
They looked at each other. The one with the gun shrugged. He moved the pistol to cover me while the other one worked the drawstring on the laundry bag and withdrew a hinged-post bound ledger similar to the set of fake books I'd seen on Skip's desk.
"All right," I said. "Flick the light on and off three times."