“Their lips are sealed,” his brother pointed out.
“But—” George Walker nodded to Louis Creamer, who drew a pistol and shot one of the bound men in the back of the head. Mike Dunn and Eddie O’Day drew their guns, and more shots rang out. Within seconds the four presumably loyal employees were dead.
“Oh, Jesus,” Alfie said.
“Had to be,” George Walker told him. “They heard what my brother said to you, right? Besides, the money involved, there’s gonna be way too much heat coming down. They didn’t see anybody’s face, but who knows what they might notice that the masks don’t hide? And they heard voices. Better this way, Alfie.”
“Ten percent,” Eddie O’Day said. “You might walk away with a quarter of a million dollars, Alfie. What are you gonna do with all that dough?”
Alfie looked like a man who’d heard the good news and the bad news all at once. He was in line for a fortune, but would he get to spend a dime of it? “Listen,” he said, “you guys better beat me up.”
“Beat you up?”
“I think so, and—”
“But you’re our little buddy,” Louis Creamer said. “Why would we want to do that?”
“If I’m the only one left,” Alfie said, “they’ll suspect me, won’t they?”
“Suspect you?”
“Of being involved.”
“Ah,” George Walker said. “Never thought of that.”
“But if you beat me up...”
“You figure it might throw them off? A couple of bruises on your face and they won’t even think of questioning you?”
“Maybe you better wound me,” Alfie said.
“Wound you, Alfie?”
“Like a flesh wound, you know? A non-fatal wound.”
“Oh, hell,” Alan Walker said. “We can do better than that.” And he put his gun up against Alfie’s forehead and blew his brains out.
“Had to be,” George Walker announced, as they cleared the area of any possible traces of their presence. “No way on earth he would have stood up, the kind of heat they’d have put on him. The minute the total goes over a mill, far as I’m concerned, they’re all dead, all five of them. The other four because of what they might have picked up, and Alfie because of what we damn well know he knows.”
“He was in for a quarter of a mill,” Eddie O’Day said. “You look at it one way, old Alfie was a rich man for a minute there.”
“You think about it,” Louis Creamer said, “what’d he ever do was worth a quarter of a mill?”
“He was taking fifty grand apiece from each of us,” Alan Walker said. “If you want to look at it that way.”
“It’s as good a way as any to look at it,” George Walker said.
“Beady little eyes,” Eddie O’Day said. “Never liked the little bastard. And he’d have sung like a bird, minute they picked him up.” The Walkers had a storage locker that nobody knew about, and that was where they went to count the proceeds of the job. The cash, it turned out, ran to just over $650,000, and another count of the bearer bonds confirmed the figure of two million dollars. That made the total $2,650,000, or $530,000 a man after a five-way split.
“Alfie was richer than we thought,” George Walker said. “For a minute there, anyway. Two hundred sixty-five grand.”
“If we’d left him alive,” his brother said, “the cops would have had our names within twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours? He’da been singing the second they got the tape off his mouth.”
Eddie O’Day said, “You got to wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“How much singing he already done.” They exchanged glances.
To Mike Dunn, George Walker said, “This dame of yours. Alfie was married to her sister?”
“Right.”
“I was a cop, I’d take a look at the families of those five guys. Dead or alive, I’d figure there might have been somebody on the inside, you know?”
“I see what you mean.”
“They talk to Alfie’s wife, who knows what he let slip?”
“Probably nothing.”
“Probably nothing, but who knows? Maybe he thought he was keeping her in the dark, but she puts two and two together, you know?”
“Maybe he talked in his sleep,” Louis Creamer suggested.
Mike Dunn thought about it, nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
Later that evening, the Walkers were in George’s den, drinking scotch and smoking cigars. “You know what I’m thinking,” George said.
“The wife’s dead,” Alan said, “and it draws the cops a picture. Five employees dead, plus the wife of one of them? Right away they know which one was working for us.”
“So they know which direction to go.”
“This woman Mike’s been nailing. Sister of Alfie’s wife.”
“Right.”
“They talk to her and what do they get?”
“Probably nothing, far as the job’s concerned. Even if Alfie talked to his wife, it’s a stretch to think the wife talked to her sister.”
Alan nodded. “The sister doesn’t know shit about the job,” he said.
“But there’s one thing she knows.”
“What’s that?”
“She knows she’s been sleeping with Mike. Of course that’s something she most likely wants kept a secret, on account of she’s a married lady.”
“But when the cops turn her upside-down and shake her...”
“Leads straight to Mike. And now that I think about it, will they even have to shake her hard? Because if she figures out that it was probably Mike that got her sister and her brother-in-law killed...”
George finished his drink, poured another. “Her name’s Alice,” he said. “Alice Fuhrmann. Be easy enough, drop in on her, take her out. Where I sit, she looks like a big loose end.”
“How’s Mike gonna take it?”
“Maybe it’ll look like an accident.”
“He’s no dummy. She has an accident, he’ll have a pretty good idea who gave it to her.”
“Well, that’s another thing,” George Walker said. “Take out Alfie’s wife and her sister and there’s nobody with a story to tell. But I can see the cops finding the connection between Mike and this Alice no matter what, because who knows who she told?”
“He’s a good man, Mike.”
“Damn good man.”
“Kind of a loner, though.”
“Looks out for himself.” The brothers glanced significantly at each other, and drank their whiskey.
The sixth death recorded in connection with the robbery was that of Alfie’s wife. Mike Dunn went to her home, found her alone, and accepted her offer of a cup of coffee. She thought he was coming on to her, and had heard from her sister what a good lover he was, and the idea of having a quickie with her sister’s boyfriend was not unappealing. She invited him upstairs, and he didn’t know what to do. He knew he couldn’t afford to leave physical evidence in her bed or on her body. And could he have sex with a woman and then kill her? The thought sickened him, and, not surprisingly, turned him on a little too. He went upstairs with her. She was wearing a robe, and as they ascended the staircase he ran a hand up under the robe and found she was wearing nothing under it. He was wildly excited, and desperate to avoid acting on his excitement, and when they reached the top of the stairs he took her in his arms. She waited for him to kiss her, and instead he got his hands on her neck and throttled her, his hands tightening convulsively around her throat until the light went out of her eyes. Then he pitched her body down the stairs, walked down them himself, stepped over her corpse and got out of the house.
He was shaking. He wanted to tell somebody but he didn’t know whom to tell. He got in his car and drove home, and there was George Walker with a duffle bag.
“I did it,” Mike blurted out. “She thought I wanted to fuck her, and you want to hear something sick? I wanted to.”