The Starshine Connection (6 page)

But Slayton remembered something his late father had once told him regarding such immense wealth and the freedom it brought
to its holders: “The titled are entitled.”

Entitled, Slayton thought now, to kill themselves in pursuit of expressing the freedom money brings. The old, hoary patriot’s
rationalization. In that moment he found himself wondering if Roxanne Drake was doomed to the same sort of wealthy despair
as her stepmother.

He watched Anna precede him and hoped not.

The lock was as intimidating as the townhouse door—outwardly. It yielded easily to Slayton’s combination of picks after about
a minute of preliminary poking and teasing. The alarm system was based on interfacing electronic contacts. It would not go
off until the connection between the deadbolt and metal socket of the door jamb was broken.

Slayton drew a jumper out of his pocket. He could not have anticipated a specific type of electrical system, so he had brought
along the most practical jumper lead, one with a ball of conductant gum on each terminal. Unlike the fancier jumpers with
their clips and attachments specific to defeating certain kinds of lock and alarm systems, the gum allowed leeway because
it adhered to almost any surface.

He edged the door open about half an inch and poked the first terminal, a black wire with the wad of gum, inside. The difficult
part would be attaching it to the counterpart section of the door jamb.

Spearing the gum on one of his lengthier “tickles,” or lock picks, he extended the assemblage through the space too narrow
for his own fingers. The pick clicked onto the interface of the jamb, and Slayton pushed it with his thumb. The gum hit home
solidly and stuck.

Slayton stood up and carefully eased the door open. The slack wire played out. As far as the electrical systems were concerned,
the door was still in contact with the jamb, which was now several feet away. There was a dimly lit stairway leading up to
the front door proper.

He stepped over the nearly taut wire and closed the door behind him, withdrawing the jumper after it was closed. He could
figure out how to test-delay the system from the inside when he needed to get back out, later.

This was the address the two Treasury agents had delivered to Info Central, and which Slayton had gotten over the coded scramble
line minutes after they had checked in. The silver Trans-Am’s first stop was made here. There were two other locations on
the list. Slayton did not need to make an equipment stop; he had anticipated what he would need, and made sure that it was
all in his own car when he finally left the company of Anna Drake, promising her that she would see him again.

That had turned out to be another condition of her bargain. She was nothing if not a tough negotiator.

The door at the top of the stairs was nothing to defeat. Slayton was inside.

The first impression was much like the one he had gotten of Anna Drake: money, and lots of it, was tied up in this place.
Everything from the location and layout to the furnishings and rickrack on the display shelves bragged. It was the sort of
conspicuous, show-off consumerism Slayton expected of a
nouveau riche,
someone who has gone from the gutter to the top of the mountain with no humbling stops between the two. One of the giveaways
of a wealthy individual possessing no taste whatsoever was also glaringly obvious: the apartments were outfitted to please
visitors, not the occupant himself.

Slayton rolled his eyes, guessing that there would be a safe hidden in a fairly obvious location. In this sort of place, there
always was.

He discovered it behind a sprawling abstract rendered by some latter-day Picasso clone, a noisy clash of art-school technique
with commercial sleaze. It was painted on cheap canvas and mounted in a DeLarge frame that probably cost more than the painting
itself. It swung laterally out on interior hinges to reveal a formidable-looking safe built into a wall torn down and reinforced
specifically for the purpose.

Priorities would follow the safe. The desks would be next, then a general class-two search of the premises. Search priorities
were arranged according to how much time was available; Slayton figured he had at least half an hour, counting lead time—that
is, the time he needed to get in and out of the building.

He had brought along a Hofmeister Box, a safecracking device often employed by the CIA to make the work quick and easy. It
was a digital pocket analyzer with stethescope probes for attachment to the safe face. One complete twist of the dial on a
standard safe would cause numbers to fly in red neon across the board face. As the dial passed each key number, it would lock
in. The calculator aspect of the Hofmeister would then sort the numbers into sequence. On a more up-to-date, push-button combination,
the connection could be made electronically.

Slayton worked efficiently, his hands covered with thin latex surgeon’s gloves. After priming the Hofmeister, he did a routine
check of the apartment windows, starting with the side on which he had entered the building and working clockwise.

His time estimate had been off by nearly eighty percent. A threesome of men in topcoats were coming up the walk to the townhouse
door, and from the look of them, they had keys.

He was already gone from the window.

“What about the alarm?”

“Mick’s got the cutoff key. Which one of these damn things is for the doors, though—is it the same key?”

“Naw, shit,” came a third voice through the closed townhouse door. ‘They never bother with stuff like that. It’s always ‘here’s
the job, here’s the keys, hurry up…’ ”

Apparently, the men outside the door had the keys to the townhouse, but not the intellect to use them. Slayton had used less
time—and made less noise. Now there was nowhere for him to run; he was three stories up. There was no time to jump the alarms
on the windows and get out to the balcony, or the roof. For him, the only way out was past the trio presently on the stairs
leading to the front door. The men outside were keeping up an almost constant patter of small talk and bitching.

“Okay, here we go,” said one.

Slayton had stationed himself behind a plastic portable bar, a gigantic, seashell-shaped eyesore on casters that occupied
a corner formed by two thick, floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The curtains were open, and he dared not close them; the men
coming in might see their residual motion. From the street, he was clearly visible, hunkered down behind the bar, his ass
plastered against the window. The glass was so thick he guessed that it might be bulletproof, and he found himself wondering
again just what kind of nut had this kind of taste.

He was in direct line with the door. If luck was with him, he might be able to end-run through it, down the stairs, and out—to
hell with the alarm, then—while the men were still trying to collect their wits in the dark. Slayton took a quick slug of
bourbon from a decanter behind the bar, held his breath, and waited as the door finally opened.

“And that’s another goddam thing,” one man said as the trio entered the room. “How come we have to do their work for them
all of a sudden?”

“Hey, lights. Should we use the lights?”

“Naw,” said Number Three, seemingly the only one of the bunch with any wits at all. “Leave the lights off. Use your penlights.
Don’t want anything to look fishy from the street.”

Slayton’s mouth dropped open in amazement.
Burglars?
He heard the sounds of them moving around, orienting themselves in the dark, catching their first view of the arrangement
of things to keep from tripping over them.

“Classy joint,” one said.

“There’s gotta be a safe here,” said Number Three. Slayton waited for his liquid Bronx accent. “Look around; do the walls
first. Cheever, put that fuckin’ gun away—you don’t need it.”

Terrific. They were armed, on top of everything else. They were searching the apartment. Slayton knew he had to make a move
while surprise was still on his side.

The building was concrete through and through, which meant no creaking floorboards… which meant Slayton had to listen for
the faint sound of footfalls on the lush shag carpet to let him know it was football time. At least one of these inepts was
certain to hit the bar, even if it didn’t look as if it needed to be searched. Slayton strained to hear.

The plastic shell seemed thin, and useless for anything except hiding behind. One of the men stood on the other side of it,
drumming his fingers absently on the Formica top. Slayton saw that the man was wearing surgical gloves similar to his own.

“Hey, Rudy—what’s your pleasure? Got a hell of a bar here. Looks like—”

The man never finished his sentence, because at that point Slayton emitted the loudest war whoop he was capable of manufacturing
and put everything into a hard bicep-and-shoulder rush against his side of the caster-mounted shell. It took off like a rocket,
lifting the man off the floor and boffing his chin on the way up. Dislodged liquor bottles flew in a dozen directions; several
exploded against the hard stone wall, and the dark room was in stantly filled with the pungent aroma of spirits.

Slayton dashed beneath the carnage, tucking a cocktail shaker of frosted glass into the crook of his arm like a quarterback’s
prize. The man was scrambling to shuck the hollow shell of the bar, which was no great feat, considering its lack of substance.

Slayton shouted, “Jesus Christ, you guys, there’s somebody in here!”

The men had come barrelling into the main room at the sound of the bar disintegrating. Against the light of the open windows
all they could make out were silhouettes—the man scrambling madly under the bar, and Slayton, standing. They entered just
in time to see Slayton break the cocktail shaker on the man’s skull. He uttered a little strangled cry and instantly went
boneless and limp, spilled alcohol soaking into his cheap suit.

He heard Number Three shout at his companion, “Don’t shoot, stupid, it might be Marty!”

The other man was looking around helplessly in the dark, swinging his pistol recklessly around. “Marty? Hey!”

Slayton spotted the gun and dived to the floor. The idiot was so trigger-happy that his planned diversion was not going to
work. As he hit the floor, Rudy put three .45 automatic slugs through the picture window.

It was not bulletproof glass. The entire window—and seemingly, the entire wall—blew outward into the night air. Rudy’s bullets
perforated key stress points in the glass, and the whole shebang exploded into billions of shards and splinters, collapsing,
shattering with an enormous grating din, showering down onto the sidewalk three stories below like deadly needles of petrified
rain. The noise was incredible.

Slayton used the cacophony to move. Number Three was yelling uselessly at his impulsive partner, dashing toward the window
as it crashed down and fell out. He clearly thought that Rudy’s shots had blown the intruder through the glass.

That left Rudy standing near the sofa, his right arm still raised and frozen in a professional fixing stance. He was staring
straight ahead of him as Slayton came up on his left side. With a sharp, balletlike kick, Slayton put the toe of his shoe
into the man’s wrist. The hand snapped open with the speed of a ‘jack-in-the-box, and the automatic somersaulted away to land
with a thump on the floor.

Rudy turned, and Slayton waded into him, putting a foreshortened, hard package of knuckles into his solar plexus to double
him over, then into his throat. The man shook off the force of the blows by dancing backward, stealing their impact. He successfully
blocked Slayton’s straight shot to his face, and countered with a flurry of karate chops. Slayton fended them off with a scissors-motion
of his arms, shielding his face and throat. Below, he saw the man’s right foot go back, preparatory to a more powerful blow.

Slayton dodged under the thrust. He knew the man at the window would be joining them any second, and Rudy had not proven to
be the short work Slayton had anticipated. A different defensive tack was needed.

The defensive salvo Rudy threw up was almost classic, even textbook. Slayton held it off with equal expertise. Then he yelled
as loudly as he could right into the man’s face. It was like a scream of pain, or the sound of a Neanderthal man ripping the
lungs out of a fresh kill. It was not what Rudy expected.

It caused him to hesitate, for just a split second. Slay-ton had intended that it might.

He cocked back and piled his fist into Rudy’s face. Rudy’s arms swanned backward, and his feet left him. The pain that shot
up Slayton’s arm told him that Rudy would have a few busted teeth when he woke up—since he failed to move after he hit the
floor.

There was no time to grope around in the dark for Rudy’s gun, and a run to the stairs was ridiculous, when the third man—the
sharpest of the three, Slayton recalled—could pick him off with his own weapon halfway down. The man was still there, and
he had to be taken, too.

He had wisely retreated from the almost sheer edge of the missing window, from the drop into darkness. For the first time
Slayton could hear the alarm, wailing away into the night like a rabid police siren. Both men had the same thought—to rush
for the door, to escape before the Gendarme men swarmed over the place.

But Number Three had no idea where Slayton was in the dark, and proceeded on the assumption that Slayton was armed. He made
it to the door first, backing out, his gun protectively in front of him.

Security would arrive any minute. Slayton charged the door and slammed it brutally against the hand clutching the gun. Through
the wood of the door, Slayton could feel the thin bones in the man’s wrist snap on impact. Outside, he screamed and staggered
backward.

Slayton had been wrong. Number Three had not been so smart, after all.

Through the stained glass of the windows below, Slayton could see reflections of the flashbar lights. The cavalry had arrived,
and he was trapped inside the townhouse.