Surrounded

always have to be in charge of the operation. I accept that."
        "Just so we're straight with each other from the start."
        "I don't mind," Meyers said. "You've got a good reputation, so I trust you. The only thing that really matters is getting a team together, getting the job done." He was growing increasingly agitated, as on edge as he had been when Tucker had first come into the apartment. He wanted badly to get on with the job, wanted to set it up and knock it off as fast as possible. Apparently he needed money even worse than Tucker did. However, he looked as if he required it for something more essential than food, a new apartment, and a new woman. "What kind of split would you want?"
        "A third," Tucker said.
        Meyers winced, turned away, wheeled back again, rubbing his hands together incessantly. "Hey, that's steep."
        "It's the same thing that you'll be getting." Tucker gave him the folded diagram, chiefly to keep him from lathering his hands. "We'll need only one more man for this, and we'll divide the take three ways, even shares for everybody."
        "One more man?"
        "Someone to break the safe, two safes if necessary," Tucker said.
        "But we can't pull this off with less than four or five men," Meyers insisted.
        Tucker smiled. "Just watch us."
        

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        Imrie's place did not look like an illicit gun shop. It was a three-story brick building on a quiet lower-middle-class street in Queens. Weathered and somewhat soiled, it was also solid and dignified, a respectable neo-Colonial structure from the turn of the century. It shared the block with a neighborhood grocery, a pharmacy, a dry cleaner's, and many narrow well-kept apartment buildings. To add to the image of serenity there were even a few large battered elms shadowing pieces of the street and sidewalks. On the glass door to Imrie's first-floor showroom, gilt lettering read: antiques and used furniture. The antique dealership was mostly a front for the more lucrative gun business.
        Tucker pulled open the heavy door and went inside. A loud buzzer, like the shrill call of a jungle bird, sounded at the rear of the store, softened a bit by the intervening forest of old cane-back chairs, tables, table lamps, sideboards, gramophones, dry sinks, and teetering stacks of other valuable and worthless paraphernalia that Imrie had accumulated.
        Sudden shadows, dark corners, dust, and bare lightbulbs contributed to the decor. Imrie was sitting in an ancient maroon brocade chair in one of the few patches of light, just inside the door.
        "Sorry I took so long," Tucker said. "I had trouble catching a cab, and then the traffic was terrible."
        "It's always terrible," Imrie said, struggling to his feet with a deep groan of real physical distress. He was only five feet six, but he weighed more than two hundred pounds. His physique, his baby-smooth but sly and knowing face, and the crinkly fringe of gray hair that ringed his bald head all made him look like a philandering, vow-breaking medieval friar. He put down a pornographic novel that he had been reading and hitched up his baggy trousers, which tended to settle too far down over his gut. He had been eating cookies, and now he had crumbs on his shirt. Sighing with distaste at his own slovenliness, he brushed away the tiny bits. "Be with you in a minute, Tucker."
        He locked the door and put up the closed sign.
        "How you been?" Tucker asked.
        "Not too good." Imrie drew the blind down behind the front door. "I've got stomach problems." He turned around and slapped his ample belly. "It's this business. Anybody'd get ulcers from it. Too damned many worries." He put his hands on his stomach as if to reassure himself that it was still there. "There was a time not very long ago," he said wistfully, "when a man in my line could go about his work unhampered, when he could be certain of his place in things." This was Imrie's favorite topic for conversation, or rather for monologue. "These days, you have to worry about the anti-gun nuts, the bleeding-heart liberals, the peace fanatics, these mixed-up pacifist kids… They make me feel like a criminal, for Christ's sake."
        If you wanted to do business with Imrie, you were obliged to spend some time listening to his complaints. Trying to sound sympathetic, Tucker said, "I can see where it would ruin your digestion."
        "To say the