WE didn't wait ten minutes as instructed. We got out of there in a hurry, Skip lugging the books in the laundry bag, me with the gun still clutched in one hand. Before we could cross the street to the Chevy, Kasabian had put his car in gear and roared down the block, pulling up next to us with a great screech of brakes. We piled into the backseat and told him to go around the block, but the car was already in motion before we got the words out.
We took a left and then another left. On Seventeenth Avenue, we found Bobby Ruslander hanging on to a tree with one hand, struggling to catch his breath. Across the street, Billie Keegan took a few slow steps toward us, then paused to cup his hands around a match and light a cigarette.
Bobby said, "Oh, Jesus, am I out of shape. They came tearin' out of that driveway, had to be them, they had the case with the money. I was four houses down, I saw 'em but I didn't want to run up on 'em right away, you know? I think one of 'em was carrying a gun."
"Didn't you hear the shots?"
He hadn't, nor had either of the others. I wasn't surprised. The dark-haired gunman had used a small-caliber pistol, and while the noise was loud enough in a closed room, it wouldn't have been likely to carry very far.
"They jumped into this car," Bobby said, pointing to where it had been parked, "and they got out in a hurry and left rubber. I started moving once they were in the car, figuring I could get a look at the plate number, and I chased 'em and the light was rotten and-" He shrugged. "Nothing," he said.
Skip said, "Least you tried."
"I'm so out of shape," Bobby said. He slapped himself across the belly. "No legs, no wind, and my eyes aren't so good, either. I couldn't referee a real basketball game, running up and down the court. I'd fuckin' die."
"You could have blown your whistle," Skip suggested.
"Jesus, if I'd had it with me I might have. You think they would have stopped and surrendered?"
"I think they'd probably have shot you," I said. "Forget the plate number."
"At least I tried," he said. He looked over at Billie. "Keegan there, he was closer to them and he didn't budge. Just sat under the tree like Ferdinand the bull, smelling the flowers."
"Smelling the dogshit," Keegan said. "We have to work with the materials at hand."
"Been working on those minibottles, Billie?"
"Just maintaining," Keegan said.
I asked Bobby if he got the make of the car. He pursed his lips, blew out, shook his head. "Dark late-model sedan," he said. "They all look alike these days anyway."
"That's the truth," Kasabian said, and Skip agreed with him. I started to form another question when Billie Keegan announced that the car was a Mercury Marquis, three or four years old, black or navy blue.
We all stopped and looked at him. His face carefully expressionless, he took a scrap of paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it. "LJK-914," he read. "Does that mean anything to any of you?" And while we went on staring at him, he said, "That's the license number. New York plates. I wrote down all the makes and plate numbers earlier to keep from dying of boredom. It seemed easier than chasing cars like a fucking cocker spaniel."
"Fucking Billie Keegan," Skip said with wonder, and went over and hugged him.
"You gentlemen will rush to judgment of the man who drinks a bit," Keegan said. He took a miniature bottle from a pocket, twisted the cap until the seal broke, tipped back his head and drank the whiskey down.
"Maintenance," he said. "That's all."
Chapter 17
Bobby couldn't get over it. He seemed almost hurt by Billie's ingenuity. "Why didn't you say something?" he demanded. "I could have been writing down numbers the same time, we could have covered more of them."
Keegan shrugged. "I figured I'd keep it to myself," he said. "So that when they ran past all these cars and caught a bus on Jerome Avenue I wouldn't look like an asshole."
" Jerome Avenue 's in the Bronx," somebody said. Billie said he knew where Jerome Avenue was, that he had an uncle used to live on Jerome Avenue. I asked if the pair had been wearing their disguises when they emerged from the driveway.
"I don't know," Bobby said. "What were they supposed to look like? They had little masks on." He made twin circles of his thumbs and forefingers, held them to his face in imitation of the masks.
"Were they wearing beards?"
"Of course they were wearing beards. What do you think, they stopped to shave?"
"The beards were fake," Skip said.
"Oh."
"They have the wigs on, too? One dark and one light?"
"I guess. I didn't know they were wigs. I- there wasn't a hell of a lot of light, Arthur. Streetlamps here and there, but they came out that driveway and ran to their car, and they didn't exactly pause and hold a press conference, pose for the photographers."
I said, "We'd better get out of here."
"Why's that? I like standing around in the middle of Brooklyn, it reminds me of hanging out on the corner when I was a boy. You're thinking cops?"
"Well, there were gunshots. No point being conspicuous."
"Makes sense."
We walked over to Kasabian's car, got in, and circled the block again. We caught a red light, and I gave Kasabian directions back to Manhattan. We had the books in hand, we'd paid the ransom, and we were all alive to tell or not tell the tale. Besides that, we had Keegan's drunken resourcefulness to celebrate. All of this changed our mood for the better, and I was now able to provide clear directions back to the city and Kasabian, for his part, was able to absorb them.
As we neared the church, we saw a handful of people in front of it, men in undershirts, teenagers, all of them standing around as if waiting for someone. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the undulating siren of a blue-and-white.