"For how long?"
"As long as I say."
"You'll want safe passage out of there in return for those people you're holding."
"Not just yet. But that's an option that I want to keep open. For the next couple of hours, though, let's consider this a stalemate."
"You can't last forever."
"Long enough."
"What in the hell did you want in there? Why get into something as crazy as this?"
"We wanted the bank, for one thing," Tucker said. "Maybe we'll still get it."
"Wait," Brice said, sensing that Tucker was about to hang up on him. "What's the number of that phone you're using?"
"Why?"
"We might want to get in touch with you again. Something might come up."
In a crisis, Tucker decided, it would be a good idea to have a line open to the other side. He gave Brice the number and hung up before the sergeant could say anything more.
When he stepped out of the booth, he heard more sirens approaching over the noise of the fountain.
While Bates stood guard in the east corridor, Tucker led Frank Meyers into the warehouse, past the three hostages, back among the cartons and crates where they could hold a private conversation. Random patches of bright fluorescent light alternated with pools of deep blue shadows. The air was stale and moist here.
"I don't see why you need to know everything," Meyers said when Tucker stopped and leaned against a ten-foot-high partition of solid cardboard boxes.
"I want to understand exactly what you've dragged me into," Tucker said.
"I haven't dragged you into anything."
"Murder."
"I killed him," Meyers said, trying to dismiss Tucker's apprehension with a rapid back-and-forth movement of his burly head. "You can't be had on that rap."
"I can be nailed as an accessory."
Meyers did not have an answer for that one.
"Now, who was this Rudolph Keski?"
"Look, Tucker-"
"Who was he?"
Meyers was much larger and stronger than Tucker, but Tucker was not the least bit afraid of him. He was so accustomed to dealing with his father and his father's henchmen that he could never be frightened of a man who had nothing more than a simple physical advantage. Tucker's father had always been capable of hurting him emotionally and financially as well as physically. Compared to the old man and the old man's high-powered lawyers, bankers, and bought politicians, Frank Meyers was no real threat at all. He was minor league in the extreme. He might be dangerous, violent, and cunning, but he could be handled easily enough.
Meyers stared at the floor, reluctantly cowed by the strength in Tucker's voice. He made a circle on the concrete with the point of his right shoe, looking pretty much like a sullen child. "Keski was a runner in the New York City rackets about twenty-five years ago," he said, still staring at the floor, unable to face Tucker. "Then he came West and set up something for himself. Started with a bar out here in Santa Monica. There was gambling in the back room. Then he moved into prostitution, set up a stable of girls. From there he went to dope-peddling-grass, hash, pills, even heroin. He wasn't above bank jobs, a payroll hijacking now and then, protection rackets "
"How'd you get to know him?"
"We were friends in New York. When he started setting up bank jobs out here, he asked me to come in with him. We did four jobs together over the years."
"And the last time you worked with him was two and a half years ago," Tucker said.
Meyers frowned. "How'd you know that?"
"Felton told me."
"He had no business-"
"I had my doubts about you," Tucker said. "I wanted a lot of answers from Clitus. If he hadn't given me a few of them, I never would have thrown in with you."
Wiping his sweat-glazed face with a dirty handkerchief, Meyers said, "The last time Keski used me, it wasn't a robbery. It was murder."
Tucker waited. He knew that the big man was going to tell all of it now, but at his own speed. There was no way to hurry him along.
"For most of the last twenty-five years," Meyers said, "Keski had a partner, a man named Teevers. They split everything down the middle, and they took equal risks. They weren't close, but they didn't hate each other either. About four years ago Keski decided that it was time to put their money into straight, legal businesses. He wanted to drop the more dangerous stuff like drug-dealing, gambling, and the protection rackets. Teever was old-fashioned. He couldn't see it at all. He was dumb enough to think there was more money in crime than in legit business."
"And Keski figured the best way to handle the disagreement was to have Teevers killed."
"Yeah," Meyers said. "Keski called me. Just the two of us were involved. We planned it, set it up. It looked like an accident, even to the police and insurance people. It was perfect."
"Keski and you were the only ones who knew the truth," Tucker said. "Beautiful."
"Yeah."
"You really didn't see what was coming next?" Tucker asked, incredulous.
Meyers looked up sheepishly. "I honestly didn't."
"Keski tried to kill you."
"Almost succeeded." Meyers tried a lopsided grin. It didn't work.
"But how?" Tucker asked. "You're so much bigger than he was."
"He paid me half in advance," Meyers said, "and was supposed to give me the rest after the job was done. He met me in my hotel room here in L.A. to give me the rest of the money Look, I'd worked with him before. He'd always been square with me. I turned my back on him, never thinking he might He came in behind me like a cat Reached around and slit my throat " Meyers's whispery voice grew shallower, haunted. "When someone cuts you like that, you're too busy trying to hold the edges of the tear together to protect yourself from anything else. When I fell, he stomped once on my neck. Nearly crushed my windpipe. Then he walked out and left me for dead."
"That was a mistake."
"You know it. He hadn't hit my jugular. He'd done badly enough otherwise. But he missed the jugular." He grinned, an expression that worked this time.
"Still, you must have bled. You must have-"