Read Online The Vaults by Toby Ball - Free Book Online Page B

like.”
    Poole laughed. “I don’t think Carla would appreciate that so much.” This was not the first time she had been direct with him, and he was used to her enticements.
    She slouched back against the interior wall of the gazebo while Poole kept watch on the path for Bernal. Right on time came his footsteps on the pine-needled dirt path, sounding like someone punching a bag of rice. His silhouette came into view; hat, overcoat, and briefcase. Poole reached into his bag and pulled out a pillowcase with two eyeholes. He tossed it to Alice. “Put it on.”
    She looked at him inquiringly and he repeated his command. He didn’t want her to be the target of any reprisals. She pulled the case over her head and adjusted it so she could see out the eyeholes. He took a stocking from the bag, removed his hat, pulled the stocking over own his face, then replaced the hat. They looked absurd, he knew, but it was essential to keep their identities a secret. He had also found that under such circumstances, absurdity could be quite unnerving to the mark.
    Bernal hesitated twenty feet from the gazebo, and Poole beckoned him forward with an expansive arm gesture. Bernal resumed walking. Poole noticed that he did not look over his shoulder. At the foot of the three steps leading up to the gazebo, Bernal paused again.
    “Move,” Poole said.
    Bernal ascended slowly and stepped to the center of the gazebo. He gave the hooded Alice a look but did not seem perturbed.
    “Set the case on the floor.”
    Bernal did as he was told.
    “Did you bring the police?”
    Bernal shook his head.
    “Because if you did, now is the time to tell them to screw. I have an associate with the photos. I don’t return, they get sent to all the rags.”
    “I didn’t bring the police.”
    “Okay.” Poole showed Bernal his Luger. “I have one, just so you know.” He replaced it in the shoulder holster. “You wearing?”
    “No gun.” The man’s face was expressionless. He did not seem scared, though he was certainly tense.
    “Mind if I check?”
    Bernal spread his arms and legs, keeping silent. Poole, patting up his sides and legs and finally his back, found nothing.
    “Okay, open the case.”
    Bernal got down on one knee and sprang the two latches. Then he slowly lifted the lid to reveal the stacks of twenty-dollar bills.
    “Pick one out from the bottom and show me.”
    Bernal dug his hand into the case and removed a packet of bills. He flipped through them, showing Poole that they were all twenties. The wind gusted now, and the trees made a soft noise like fire on wet wood. It would be harder now to hear an approach.
    “You know that if you’re short—”
    “It’s all there.”
    “Okay. The other thing you are going to do for me is, you’re going to meet the union’s demands and end the strike.”
    Again, Bernal remained silent, but now his face betrayed him.
    “Savvy?” Poole prompted.
    “I don’t think you understand,” Bernal began, then thought better of it and tried again. “It’s not something I can just do.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “You can believe me or not. I can’t do it.”
    The wind was constant, the scent of phosphorus overwhelming the Christmas smell of the pines. The ripples on the water below began gathering into tiny waves.
    “You have two days to make it work. I don’t care what you have to do.I don’t care what excuses you have. Two days. Forty-eight hours. Then the photos go to press.”
    Bernal shut his eyes, and picking up the great tension in the man’s body, Poole realized that Bernal would hunt him dead were he ever to suss out his identity. Poole felt a sudden chill and with it the first stirrings of panic at all the sounds that would not be audible beneath the wind.
    “Close the case.” His words sounded shrill.
    Bernal opened his eyes, his gaze locking on Poole’s. Poole wondered just how effectively the stocking was managing to disguise his features.
    “Close the
goddamn case
,”