"But what other chance do we have?" Bates asked.
"I've got a couple of ideas," Tucker said. "But before we start to talk about that, I want to get to a telephone and call the police. They've got to understand that we do have hostages."
"They saw the girl," Bates said.
"But maybe they think she's one of us."
Meyers wiped his face with the back of a seersucker sleeve. "They know we have the guards."
"And maybe they think we killed the guards," Tucker said. He looked at Bates. "Take Evelyn into the warehouse and tie her up with Chet and Artie."
Bates picked up his gun, which he had put on the floor by the gate, and he pointed at the woman. "Come along, please."
She looked at Tucker. Her face was puckered with doubt.
"It's okay," he assured her. "This man won't make a mistake. He won't hurt you."
Reluctantly, warily, she preceded Edgar Bates into the warehouse. The jugger turned as he was about to follow her through the gray door, and he said, "Hey, I left my satchel back up there at the bank. It's got the wire in it. What do I use to tie her up?"
"There ought to be some wire on the workshop shelves," Tucker said. "Look around in there."
"Oh," Bates said distractedly, as if he were half in a trance. "Yeah. Sure. I should have realized " He went into the warehouse after the woman.
"He isn't going to be much good if the situation gets any worse than it is now," Meyers said, looking after the older man.
"I have stronger doubts about you," Tucker said pointedly, staring at the big man.
Meyers's face reddened. His blue eyes couldn't hold Tucker's darker ones. "Look, I admit I fouled up. I should have known as much about Keski's office as I knew about the rest of the mall. I should have known about that alarm pedal, and-"
"Save it for later," Tucker said shortly. "I've got to call the cops before they do anything stupid." He looked past Meyers, out at the two squad cars, the revolving red dome lights, and the very cautious movements of the four policemen hovering around the cars. "You keep a close watch on them. But don't start any shooting."
"Of course not."
"I mean it."
"You can count on me," Meyers said.
Tucker smiled ruefully. Sure I can, he thought. Oh, I can really trust old Frank Meyers. He wished he didn't have to turn his back on the big man in order to walk up to the mall lounge.
He closed the telephone-booth door, shutting out the worst of the fountain's roar. Though he was rewarded with relative quiet, he now had to endure the clinging odor of a strong perfume that permeated the booth, an almost tangible spirit shed by the last customer. Wrinkling his nose and trying to breathe shallowly, he put a dime in the box and dialed the operator.
"Operator," she said, as if he might not have remembered whom he was calling.
"I'm at the Oceanview Plaza shopping mall," Tucker said. "I need to contact the police. Do you know which station covers this area? Would you dial them for me, please? It's an emergency."
"You want Directory Assistance, sir," she said, sounding as if she had quite accidentally plugged one of her wires into her nostril.
"Forget Directory Assistance," he said.
"Sir, I cannot help-"
"I told you this was an emergency," Tucker said. "There is a robbery in progress here. Get me the police now."
She hesitated. "Just a moment, sir."
"I don't have a moment."
Several seconds passed. Relays clicked in his ear. He could hear a distant conversation between two old women on another crossing line. Relays clicked again. A phone rang at the other end.
"Police," a gruff male voice said.
"To whom am I speaking?"
"Sergeant Brice," the cop said, not pleased that any caller should want to know. People reporting crimes usually didn't want to know the deskman's name. It was the crackpots who liked that touch of familiarity.
Tucker took a deep breath. "Listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you, Sergeant. I won't go over it again. There is a robbery in progress at the Oceanview Plaza shopping mall. You've already got several patrol cars out here." He paused. Then: "I'm one of the thieves who's involved in this thing. I-"
"What is this?" Brice demanded.
"Are you listening to me?"
"What do you mean you're one of the thieves?"
"I'm calling you from a public telephone in the mall's lounge," Tucker said.
"In the mall?"
"That's it. You've got it," Tucker said sarcastically. "I want you to pass on some information to whoever is heading up the police detail out here."
"Wait a minute," Brice interrupted.
"I'm not going to wait at all," Tucker said. "I'm going to say this quickly, and then I'm going to hang up. If you don't act on it properly, a lot of people are going to die unnecessarily."
"You're inside the mall," Brice said. "You're a thief." He was talking mainly to himself, wonderingly.
Tucker said, "There are only six ways to get into this mall. We've got every one of them sealed up tight. We have a fortress here. Your people can't force their way in unless they're prepared to die in the process."
"You're in real trouble," Brice said threateningly. He was being theatrical now, just as Chet had been. But at least he had caught on and understood that this was no hoax.
"Furthermore," Tucker said, "we have hostages. We are holding two night watchmen. We've also got Mr. Rudolph Keski, who apparently owns a piece of this joint. Mr. Keski has asked me to tell you that he hopes you'll deal most diplomatically with this situation." He knew it would be a mistake to tell Brice that Keski was dead. If the police knew that murder had already been done, they wouldn't give the hostages very high odds. They might even try to break in and rescue them. Therefore, Tucker tried to sound like a desperate man-but not like a man without anything to lose. "We have Keski's bodyguard and his very lovely secretary, Evelyn Ledderson. Four men and one woman, Sergeant Brice. If anyone tries to come in here after us, we'll kill all five of them."
"You're nuts," Brice said. "You'll never-"
Tucker talked right over him. "We're armed with submachine guns, and we can do a great deal of damage if we want to. There are seven of us." The exaggeration could not hurt. It might make the police think twice before they tried anything too daring. A band of three thieves was just a few punks-while seven of them was a small army to be respected.
"You're going to be sorry you got mixed up in this damned thing," Brice said sternly, like a father admonishing a child. "The best thing for you to do is walk out of there right now before the charges against you get a whole lot worse. Give yourselves up." He seemed to realize the uselessness of continuing along those lines. "What do you want from us?"