Strangers

night. But there was sufficient illumination for Jack to see the faces of his two companions Mort Gersh and Tommy Sung - who had been following him. They did not look as happy as they had been only a couple of minutes ago.
        They had been happy because they had successfully hit a major way station on the route of the mafia cash train, a collection point for narcotics money from half the state of New Jersey. Suitcases and flight bags and cardboard boxes and Styrofoam coolers full of cash arrived at the warehouse from a score of couriers, most of it on Sunday and Monday. Tuesdays, mob accountants in Pierre Cardin suits arrived to calculate the week's profits from the pharmaceutical division. Every Wednesday, suitcases full of tightly banded sacks of greenbacks went out to Miami, Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, and other centers of high finance, where investment advisers with Harvard or Columbia MBAS, on retainer to the mafia - or fratellanza, as the underworld referred to itself - wisely put it to work. Jack, Mort, and Tommy had simply stepped in between the accountants and the investment advisers, and had taken four heavy bags full of cash for themselves. "Just think of us as one more layer of middlemen," Jack had told the three glowering thugs who were, even now, tied up in the warehouse office, and Mort and Tommy had laughed.
        Mort was not laughing now. He was fifty years old, potbellied, slump-shouldered, baking. He wore a dark suit, pork-pie hat, and gray overcoat. He always wore a dark suit and pork-pie hat, though not always the overcoat. Jack had never seen him in anything else. Tonight, Jack and Tommy were wearing jeans and quilted vinyl jackets, but there was Mort looking like one of the guys in the background of an old Edward G. Robinson movie. The snapbrim of his hat had lost its sharp edge and gone slightly soft, rather like Mort himself, and the suit was rumpled. His voice was weary and dour. He said, "Who's out there?" as Jack slammed the door and stepped hastily away from it.
        "At least two guys in a Ford van Jack said.
        "Mob?"
        "I only saw one of them," Jack said, "but he looked like one of Dr. Frankenstein's experiments that didn't work out."
        "At least all the doors are locked."
        "They'll have keys."
        The three of them moved quickly away from the exit, back into the deep shadows in an aisle between piles of wooden crates and cardboard cartons that were stacked on pallets. The merchandise formed twenty-foot-high walls. The warehouse was immense, with a wide array of goods stored under its vaulted ceiling: hundreds of TV sets, microwave ovens, blenders, and toasters by the thousands, tractor parts, plumbing supplies, Cuisinarts, and more. It was a clean, well-run establishment, but as with any giant industrial building at night, the place was eerie when all the workers were gone. Strange, whispery echoes floated along the maze of aisles. Outside, the sleet fell harder than before, rustling and ticking and tapping and hissing on the slate roof, as if a multitude of unknown creatures moved through the rafters and inside the walls.
        "I told you it was a mistake to hit the mob," Tommy Sung said. He was a Chinese-American, about thirty, which made him seven years younger than Jack. "Jewelry stores, armored cars, even banks, okay, but not the mob, for God's sake. It's stupid to hit the mob. Might as well walk into a bar full of Marines and spit on the flag."
        "You're here," Jack said.
        "Yeah, well," Tommy said, "I don't always show good judgment."
        In a voice of doom and despair, Mort said, "A van shows up at this hour, it means one thing. They're delivering one kind of shit or another, probably coke or horse. Which means there won't be just the driver and the ape you saw. There'll be two other guys in the back of the van with the merchandise, carrying converted Uzis or worse."
        Tommy said, "Why aren't they already shooting their way in?"
        "As far as they know," Jack said, "there's ten of us, and we have bazookas. They'll move cautiously."
        "A truck used on dope runs is sure to have radio communications," Mort said. "They'll have already called for backup."
        Tommy said, "You telling me the mafia has a fleet of radio vans like the goddamned phone company or something?"
        "These days, they're as organized as any business," Mort said.
        They listened for sounds of purposeful