Surrounded

just as Chet had been. But at least he had caught on and understood that this was no hoax.
        "Furthermore," Tucker said, "we have hostages. We are holding two night watchmen. We've also got Mr. Rudolph Keski, who apparently owns a piece of this joint. Mr. Keski has asked me to tell you that he hopes you'll deal most diplomatically with this situation." He knew it would be a mistake to tell Brice that Keski was dead. If the police knew that murder had already been done, they wouldn't give the hostages very high odds. They might even try to break in and rescue them. Therefore, Tucker tried to sound like a desperate man-but not like a man without anything to lose. "We have Keski's bodyguard and his very lovely secretary, Evelyn Ledderson. Four men and one woman, Sergeant Brice. If anyone tries to come in here after us, we'll kill all five of them."
        "You're nuts," Brice said. "You'll never-"
        Tucker talked right over him. "We're armed with submachine guns, and we can do a great deal of damage if we want to. There are seven of us." The exaggeration could not hurt. It might make the police think twice before they tried anything too daring. A band of three thieves was just a few punks-while seven of them was a small army to be respected.
        "You're going to be sorry you got mixed up in this damned thing," Brice said sternly, like a father admonishing a child. "The best thing for you to do is walk out of there right now before the charges against you get a whole lot worse. Give yourselves up." He seemed to realize the uselessness of continuing along those lines. "What do you want from us?"
        "Right now," Tucker said, "I'm only asking that your people stay out, leave us alone."
        "For how long?"
        "As long as I say."
        "You'll want safe passage out of there in return for those people you're holding."
        "Not just yet. But that's an option that I want to keep open. For the next couple of hours, though, let's consider this a stalemate."
        "You can't last forever."
        "Long enough."
        "What in the hell did you want in there? Why get into something as crazy as this?"
        "We wanted the bank, for one thing," Tucker said. "Maybe we'll still get it."
        "Wait," Brice said, sensing that Tucker was about to hang up on him. "What's the number of that phone you're using?"
        "Why?"
        "We might want to get in touch with you again. Something might come up."
        In a crisis, Tucker decided, it would be a good idea to have a line open to the other side. He gave Brice the number and hung up before the sergeant could say anything more.
        When he stepped out of the booth, he heard more sirens approaching over the noise of the fountain.
        

----
        
        While Bates stood guard in the east corridor, Tucker led Frank Meyers into the warehouse, past the three hostages, back among the cartons and crates where they could hold a private conversation. Random patches of bright fluorescent light alternated with pools of deep blue shadows. The air was stale and moist here.
        "I don't see why you need to know everything," Meyers said when Tucker stopped and leaned against a ten-foot-high partition of solid cardboard boxes.
        "I want to understand exactly what you've dragged me into," Tucker said.
        "I haven't dragged you into anything."
        "Murder."
        "I killed him," Meyers said, trying to dismiss Tucker's apprehension with a rapid back-and-forth movement of his burly head. "You can't be had on that rap."
        "I can be nailed as an accessory."
        Meyers did not have an answer for that one.
        "Now, who was this Rudolph Keski?"
        "Look, Tucker-"
        "Who was he?"
        Meyers was much larger and stronger than Tucker, but Tucker was not the least bit afraid of him. He was so accustomed to dealing with his father and his father's henchmen that he could never be frightened of a man who had nothing more than a simple physical advantage. Tucker's father had always been capable of hurting him emotionally and financially as well as physically. Compared to the old man and the old man's high-powered lawyers, bankers, and bought politicians, Frank Meyers was no real threat at all. He was minor league in the extreme. He might be dangerous, violent, and cunning, but he could be handled easily enough.
        Meyers stared at the floor, reluctantly cowed by the