Surrounded Read Free Page B

I've ever come across."
        Tucker grimaced, shrugged.
        Meyers took the hint. He moved his hand.
        "Look," Tucker said, "even if you had control of the four mall doors, what would you do with all of the customers? That place will be full of them any day of the week. Shoppers coming and going, in and out…"
        "I'm aware of that."
        "Glad to hear it."
        Meyers's hoarse voice was touched by anxiety. "Believe me, I've got it all figured out. I'm no amateur. Those people won't bother us."
        Tucker ignored him, because he was pretty much convinced that whatever Meyers had "figured out" would be full of holes. "And what are you going to do about the telephones?"
        "Telephones?"
        "There, must be a hundred or more public and private phones in a shopping mall that size. Are you going to be able to put them all out of use before anyone in there can call the cops?"
        "We won't have to worry about the telephones," Meyers said. He was grinning again, though only tentatively. He resembled a big clumsy hound that wanted approval, affection, congratulations. But there was a decidedly human desperation in his eyes.
        "Furthermore," Tucker continued, "you'd need an army to hold the mall, once you'd taken it."
        "Just four or five men," Meyers said hastily.
        "Is that right?" Tucker turned, started for the kitchen door.
        "Wait a minute," Meyers said. "I'm not stupid. I know what the hell I'm doing." His anger was feigned. It was only meant to arrest Tucker, to make him listen for another moment. In the middle of the cluttered living room he caught Tucker by the arm and stopped him. "We wouldn't hit the damned place during shopping hours. I never said that."
        Tucker sighed, pulled loose of the big man's hand. He worked his shoulders to straighten his coat. "It's still no good. This would be twice as difficult as any normal after-hours bank job. You'd have two sets of alarms to deal with-the mall's and the bank's systems."
        Meyers shook his burly head. His close-cropped hair glinted like metal bristles. "No alarms."
        "A bank without alarms?"
        "Come back to the kitchen with me," Meyers said. He was almost pleading now. His desperation, whatever the source of it, was growing sharper by the minute. "Look at the diagram and listen to me. Hear me out. I won't keep you long. But… Right now you don't have any idea what's up my sleeve."
        "And I don't think I want to know," Tucker said.
        "Felton deals with me!" Meyers said. His whispery voice now contained a note of pride, a curious dignity that was at odds with his slovenly appearance. "I'm not a loser. I've been in this business all my life. I've been successful at it, too."
        Tucker looked around at the dirty walls, the unswept carpet, the tattered furniture. "If you've been so terribly successful what are you doing in a place like this?"
        Following the younger man's gaze, Meyers seemed to see the apartment for the first time. He coughed, wiped his face with both hands, a man trying to slough off the insubstantial but disconcerting residue of a nightmare. "I have one weakness."
        "Is that right?"
        "Women."
        "That's no weakness."
        "It is with me." Meyers's right hand went to his throat. His blunt fingers traced a series of vague, pale scars that Tucker now saw for the first time. Someone had stomped on his throat, or had opened it with a quick knife. Right now Meyers looked as if he could still feel the flesh parting under the blade. "I get ahead, pull a few good jobs, build up a cushion, figure I don't have any worries… Then I hook up with a woman. And she takes it all away from me. You know how it is. Women are parasites."
        "Maybe yours are," Tucker said. "Mine isn't."
        "Then you're damned lucky," Meyers said. "Mine are always parasites." But there was a false note in his voice, a lack of