The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 Page 15

  It was a brilliant plan, doubly so being conceived so quickly in the mind of an oaf like Lester. And it may well have worked had he and Billie Sue not been stopped trying to cross into Mexico in a car stolen, unknown to Lester, by his two now deceased cohorts the evening prior to the robbery. After Lester’s apprehension and subsequent conviction for grand theft auto, Billie Sue, who could not be charged with anything, moved to Sacramento to be near the prison where he was incarcerated and to live, as he sternly instructed, a very frugal, almost indigent low-profile life, so as not to suggest that she or Lester had any knowledge of the whereabouts of all that bank loot, which in fact had never left, and still remained within two miles of the bank from which it had been stolen.

  Billie kept the $20,000 from General Delivery hidden in a space under the bottom drawer of a shabby dresser in the dumpy motel in which Lester insisted she lived. Access to the money, from which she removed only a pittance at a time, was by removing the drawer completely, revealing a four-inch space between the dresser and the floor upon which it stood. Billie had no qualms about the possible theft of the money; only an imbecile would think of stealing anything from the premises of a Motel 7.

  Now, however, after her last visit with Lester, during which the plan for his escape had been finalized, he had given her specific instructions to take out all of the remaining money and to use part of it to buy him a handgun. He had explained exactly how she was to do it.

  The name of the establishment to which Billie had been directed, on information Lester had been given by a fellow convict, located on the fringe of what passed for Sacramento’s skid row, was the Three Balls Pawn Shop. It had, as was customary for such a business, an overhang above its entrance, with three shiny white balls, under which was a sign that read MONEY TO LOAN.

  When Billie Sue entered, she was greeted by a smallish, balding man wearing a hearing aid. “I’d like to buy a gun,” she said.

  “The ones I have are back here,” the pawnbroker said, with not a hint of surprise. He led her to the rear of the store. “These are the ones I have that are out of pawn and available for sale. Did you have anything particular in mind?”

  “A thirty-eight-caliber.”

  “I have two,” the pawnbroker said, opening the display case and taking out a revolver and an automatic. Billie frowned. Lester had not told her there would be a choice of models. “The Smith and Wesson revolver is seven hundred dollars,” she was told, “and the Colt automatic is eight hundred.”

  Beginning to feel nervous, and silently thinking what a complete ignorant asshole Lester was, Billie said, “I’ll take that one,” pointing to the Colt.

  “Of course. You realize that California has a three-day waiting period before you can actually take the weapon with you.”

  Now she recalled the rest of the ignorant asshole’s instructions. “Oh? I was told by a friend that the waiting period could be waived for a thousand-dollar fee.”

  The pawnbroker frowned. “Who, may I ask, is the friend who told you that?”

  “His name is Lester Dragg. He’s in Folsom.”

  “Ah, yes. I did receive a message about him. You are, ah, prepared to pay cash for the purchase and the waiver fee?”

  “Yes.” Billie looked down at the display again. “What’s that little one over there in the corner?”

  “Oh, that. That’s a Guardian twenty-five-caliber automatic. Not very powerful. Only holds six shots—”

  “I’ll take that also.”

  “It’s two-fifty. And you’ll have to pay for another waiting-period waiver, you know.”

  “That’s okay. I’d like bullets for both of them, too.”

  “Well, I’m not licensed to sell ammunition. I have some of my own, however, and I can load each piece for you for fifty dollars. Let’s see now, that comes to thirty-one hundred dollars even. You did say cash, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” Billie stepped over to another counter, turned her back on the pawnbroker, and counted the exact amount from her purse. Moments later she left the pawn shop with the two loaded pistols in a plain brown bag.

  The night of the escape was upon them.

  Cory packed a few belongings in a duffel bag and retrieved his service revolver, a .357 Ruger GP-100, which he was required to wear only when assigned to perimeter duty outside the walls of the prison or on tower duty inside.

  Out at his car, he put the pistol under the driver’s seat and spread a vinyl raincoat on the ground behind the car. With a pen light, he scooted under the car and located one of the tracking devices Hardesty had attached to the car’s muffler. Removing it, he scooted back out, tossed the device into some bushes, and drove off to pick up Billie Sue at the Motel 7.

  In her room at the motel, Billie had also packed a small overnight bag she had and put the little Guardian automatic in a pocket of her coat. She wrapped the larger pistol she had bought for Lester Dragg in a newspaper, which she put into a grocery bag that contained a six-pack of beer. Then she sat down to wait for Cory.

  Hardesty, wearing his usual service revolver as well as a .32-caliber backup pistol in an ankle holster, drove his own car onto the prison staff parking lot just as Deputy Warden Duffy exited the administration building and came onto the lot to join him. As Duffy got into Hardesty’s passenger seat, he unobtrusively adjusted himself to accommodate the pistol he had stuck in the waistband of his trousers.

  “Everything okay?” he asked nervously.

  “Everything’s fine,” Hardesty replied quietly. He drove off the lot and turned onto the highway toward Sacramento.

  As they drove, Duffy looked off in the distance at the night lights just coming on at the prison dairy farm where Lester Dragg had started work that day and from where, with Duffy’s help, he was probably blithely escaping at that very moment. Duffy’s mouth went dry. From an inside coat pocket he took a flask and drank from it.

  “What the hell’s that?” Hardesty asked gruffly.

  “Scotch,” Duffy said. “Want some?”

  “No thanks,” Hardesty said. “But you go ahead.” Let the fool get smashed, he thought. Be easier to handle him that way.

  Reaching to the dashboard, Hardesty turned on the tracking monitor and watched its small screen fade from black to blue. Adjusting a dial, he watched a blip materialize on the location of the apartment building where Cory Evans lived. The blip settled and remained steady. Hardesty frowned. Cory’s car was not moving yet.

  Cory drove up to the door of Billie’s room at the motel. Watching for him out the window, she came out at once and he opened the trunk to put her bag in with his duffel.

  “What’s that?” he asked, bobbing his chin at the grocery bag she carried.

  “Six-pack of Budweiser,” she said. “I figured we could drink one each and give the rest to Lester.”

  They got in the car. Billie took two bottles of beer into the front seat and set the grocery bag on the back seat. Cory started the car and pulled away from the motel. “Can’t say I’m going to miss that dump,” Billie muttered to herself.

  Twilight had settled and low clouds were hanging in the sky like gauze. The first light raindrops hit the windshield and Cory turned the wipers on low. “Looks like Lester might get a little wet walking to the highway,” he said.

  Billie Sue glanced at him but said nothing.

  Hardesty was watching the blip on the monitor. It was still not moving. Glancing down at the car’s digital clock, he wet his lips. Something was wrong. He began turning the monitor’s frequency dial.

  “What’s the matter with that thing?” Duffy asked testily. “Isn’t it working?”

  “It’s working fine,” Hardesty snapped. “Have another drink.”

  Still north of Sacramento, they now passed the rest stop where Cory and the woman were to pick up Lester Dragg. Hardesty drove another mile, then turned into a truck stop and parked.

  Leaning forward, he manipulated the frequency dial more slowly and a few seconds later was able to pick up a new blip,
this one moving away from Sacramento toward them. It was a signal from the second tracking device Hardesty had placed on Cory’s car.

  That son of a bitch, he thought. He crossed me. Hardesty’s jaw tightened. Okay. Fine. Now there wouldn’t be a split of any kind.

  He would leave four people locked in that storage garage.

  At the rest stop up the highway, Cory pulled his Buick into a spot next to several cement picnic benches and turned off the headlights.

  “How will he know we’re here?” he asked Billie.

  “He’ll know.”

  “How do we find him?”

  “He’ll find us.”

  At that moment a knuckle rapped on the passenger-side window. Billie unlocked the door and got out. In the subdued light of the rest stop, Cory saw her embrace a slim figure with a head of thick black hair combed straight back. “Hey, baby,” he heard a male voice say.

  “Hey, sugar,” Billie answered. “Get in the back seat; there’s a little surprise for you.”

  As Lester got in the back seat, Billie slid back in front next to Cory. “Okay, let’s go,” she said. “Cut over to Route 99 and head south.”

  Hardesty watched the blip of Cory’s car as it drove away from the rest stop and swung left onto the state highway going south. Calculating that he was about six miles behind Cory, he pulled back onto the highway and eased down on the accelerator to catch up.

  “That gadget working all right now?” Duffy asked edgily from the passenger seat.

  “Working just fine.” Hardesty threw the deputy warden a disgusted look. Couldn’t depend on anybody anymore, he thought. “Have another drink, why don’t you? Help you to relax.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Duffy said, retrieving the flask from his inside coat pocket again. As he drank, he felt the reassuring grip of the pistol sticking out of his waistband. Nobody was going to put anything over on him, he thought a little woozily. No, sir.

  Outside, the pesky rain increased to a steadier downpour. Hardesty turned the car’s windshield wipers on to high. The slap-slap-slap of the rubber blades made Duffy feel a bit drowsy. His eyelids lowered a little.

  In Cory’s car, the modicum of tension that had risen when Lester Dragg first got in had dissipated after they reached Highway 99 and turned south. Lester was drinking his second beer, and having found the gun Billie Sue had bought for him, had it tucked securely under his left thigh.

  Billie had turned on the radio, found a country-and-western station, and was humming along to a Freddy Fender song about wasted days and wasted nights.

  “How far are we going?” Cory asked Billie Sue after a bit, as if he did not already know. Lester answered for her.

  “Don’t you worry about how far we’re going, Mr. Screw,” he said with a loud belch. “Jus’ keep on driving.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Damn straight on that. You ain’t the boss out here.”

  The rain had increased by now to a heavy downpour, and Cory kept his speed at 55 as they kept driving, monotonously, past the next off-ramp, past the next lights up ahead in the California rural darkness, and then through stretches of nothing but the wet night.

  Cory had checked his odometer at the rest stop where they picked up Lester, so he knew when they passed the off-ramp for Stockton that they were within a half-hour or so of their destination. That was confirmed by a highway sign just outside Stockton that read MODESTO 25.

  Inside the car, the windshield began to steam up from the body heat of the occupants.

  Hardesty by now had come up to within a dozen car lengths of Cory’s Buick and was following in a trained law enforcement pattern of nondetection observance: a frequent change of lanes in the flow of traffic, occasionally exiting the highway at an off-ramp, then crossing the underpass street and reentering via an on-ramp, where he accelerated just enough to again come within range of Cory’s blip on the monitor.

  Next to him, Duffy’s head was leaning against the passenger window and he was not quite snoring but breathing heavily. Drunken fool, Hardesty thought. He began to contemplate pulling over, putting a round into Duffy’s temple, and dumping him on the side of the road. He even considered killing them all: four bodies in that storage garage, locked in with a bicycle lock he had purchased that morning—hell, it might be weeks before anybody noticed the stench and found them. By then he would be living easy down in Argentina, where there was no extradition treaty with the U.S.—assuming that he was ever even connected with the bodies.

  Suddenly, as he was considering his options, Hardesty saw Cory’s blip leave the highway at an off-ramp next to a sign that read MODESTO NEXT RIGHT.

  I’ll be damned, he thought, as he approached the same off-ramp. That was the town where the bank heist went down. Could it be that the money never left town?

  Hardesty shook his head in disbelief.

  Lester Dragg directed Cory along the outer limits of Modesto to a small industrial district of modest factories and warehouses until they came to a cul-de-sac, where he had Cory turn in.

  A block down, at the dead end, was a high cyclone fence with a slider gate in its center. Above the gate was a sign: SECURITY STORAGE RENTALS. Just below the sign and to the left was a solid concrete post housing an infrared, touch-sensitive digital keypad under a two-inch-thick Plexiglas cover. All of it was brightly lit by an overhang of sulfur lights.

  “Pull up to the gate, screw,” Lester Dragg ordered Cory. “Keep the motor running.” Stepping out of the car, he showed Cory the .38 automatic he now held in one hand. “Don’t try anything funny, see? I mean business.”

  “I’m cool,” Cory replied. “All I want is my hundred grand.”

  As Lester walked over to the entry post, Cory eased his left hand down to the Ruger pistol under the seat.

  Billie noticed his movement but said nothing. She rested one hand on her purse, where she had the .25-caliber Guardian.

  When Hardesty saw that Cory had pulled into a cul-de-sac, he immediately turned off his headlights and parked. Scoping out the situation in front of him, he made a quick, trained assessment that he had to act quickly or chance losing Cory’s car inside the security fence, which might or might not have an exit gate at the rear.

  Next to him, Duffy was in what looked to Hardesty to be a drunken stupor; he was slouched down in the passenger seat, wheezing quietly through his nose. Take care of him later, Hardesty decided, and got out of the car, not closing the door all the way to avoid noise.

  Stealthily, in the cover of shadows, he moved in a low crouch toward the security fence, service revolver in hand.

  At the gatepost Lester touched a series of imprinted squares on the Plexiglas that were directly over the infrared keyboard numbers below it. With each touch, a soft beep sounded. After selecting eight numbers, Lester touched a side key marked ENTER. As soon as he did, a buzzer sounded and the gate began to slide open.

  Lester hurried back to get in the car.

  Hardesty by now had moved as close to Cory’s car as he could get without exposing himself to the gate’s sulfur lights. The air around him was humid and he was sweating.

  Taking a chance that the three people in Cory’s car were all watching the sliding gate and none of the car’s rearview or side-view mirrors, and crouching as low as he could, he crossed the deserted street and dashed into shadows on the opposite side. Remaining totally still, watching the car until he was certain his movement had not been detected, he took a deep breath, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his face clean of perspiration.

  Calculating the distance to the gate, wondering how long it remained open after each code entry, he moved forward inch by inch toward the edge of the sulfur lights’ reach.

  When the gate was all the way open, Lester Dragg ordered, “Go! Inside, make a right turn!”

  Cory shifted gears and eased the Buick over a speed bump on the entry drive. Once inside, as ordered, he turned right.

  “Go down to Section D and turn left,” Leste
r said. “You’ll see the signs.”

  Cory handled the steering wheel with one hand as he slipped the Ruger up with his other and rested it against his left thigh.

  Hardesty saw Cory’s car make its right turn inside the fence, and seconds later he heard a buzzer again and the gate began to slide closed.

  Straightening from his crouch, he broke into a run, pistol at the ready in case he was seen, and sprinted toward the moving gate. It seemed to be moving faster than he was running.

  Son of a bitch! he thought. Fresh sweat broke over his forehead and ran past the corners of both eyebrows into his eyes, stinging.

  The gate lumbered on, like a train.

  Hardesty’s heart pumped like a jackhammer.

  After they’d turned into Section D of the facility’s interior and driven about fifty yards past a succession of identical closed garage doors, Lester told Cory to stop.

  “Pull up in front of number 276 there.”

  Cory eased the Buick to a stop and turned off the ignition, leaving the key in it.

  “Okay, get out, screw.” Lester touched the back of Cory’s head with the gun. “Don’t try nothing funny.” In the rearview mirror, Cory saw Lester look over at Billie Sue. “You get out too, sugar.”

  As Cory opened the driver’s door and slid out, he quickly slipped the Ruger under his coat into his waistband.

  “Stand over there,” Lester ordered Cory. “Come over here, sugar,” he told Billie. He handed her his gun. “Keep him covered.”

  Lester turned his attention toward a large combination padlock on the garage door handle.

  Billie stood with Lester’s gun pointed at Cory. Her expression was stern, fixed in concentration; her eyes met with Cory’s in the pale light of a single bulb above the garage door. Remaining where he had been told to stand, Cory shrugged and held his hands out, palms up. Whatever.