Chapter 2

On the other side of town, three men and a woman had been up all night.

On the second floor of a crumbling tenement were four people whose faces-by late that afternoon-the whole town would know. Their names would take longer to find out.

First of all there was Moose. If he had a last name, nobody'd heard it for years. Moose was an enormous man-six-feet four-inches of beefy muscle and fat. Moose was slow, with his big belly and his big feet, but he was strong. He was stronger than any two men he'd ever met. And if his mind was as slow as his body was large, that just made him even more valuable to the others, because he never challenged anybody's power. He'd take orders unquestioningly.

Mick Fleet was more of a problem to the gang's leader, Roger Barron. Mick Fleet was like a little bantam rooster-he liked to strut and show off and make a lot of noise-so Roger let him. It was easier to keep him in line that way.

Roger Barron was cool. He was tall and elegant-not an ounce of fat on his lean muscular body. His clothes were always simple-and expensive. Let Mick Fleet look like a little white pimp if he wanted to. Roger could have passed for a businessman, unless one looked closely at his face. The eyes were a cold, steely blue. They gleamed like metal and seemed to belong more to a precision machine than to a human being. There was no sign of feeling-all they betrayed was a coolly calculating mind. And then there was the scar-from an old knife fight-that ran clear across one cheek. He'd been sixteen the first and only time he'd been wounded in a fight-but the other guy wound up in the morgue looking more like a plate of spaghetti than a man.

And then there was Lena. Lena, black and beautiful. She had run away from home at 13, had made her living on the streets for five years, until she realized she'd never make it to 25 unless she got smarter. And smarter she got. Now she had just one man-except for a few favors for his friends-and that man was Roger Barron. For a black chick from the ghetto, Lena figured she was doing okay.

Her chocolate colored skin was smooth and tight, her body long and sinewy. Her hips were slender like a boy's but her buttocks were large and high and round. And her breasts though small, were hard and pointy, their nipples always erect.

There was an air of high tension and excitement in the shabby room now as the three men leaned over the floor plan of the First City Bank. Mick was jumpy. He had his switchblade in his hand and was flicking it out and closing it up, flicking it out and closing it up.

"Hey, man," said Lena in her deep throaty voice-"You makin' me jumpy. Cut it out."

"No one tells me what to do," Mick snarled viciously, and pointed the knife at Lena's long slender neck.

She laughed, her large lips baring flashing white teeth, and Roger's hand reached out calmly and took Mick's hand by the wrist.

"Mellow out," he said. "Save your energy."

Mick pulled his hand roughly away. "Well, let's get a move on then. Let's get going."

Three rifles were leaning against the wall. They had been cleaned several hours earlier and gleamed dangerously against the peeling, filthy wallpaper.

"Okay," said Barron. "Mick, you take one rifle. Moose, you take the other. Lena, you keep one on the car floor-just in case."

"Hey, Barron," said Moose, scratching his head, a puzzled look on his face. "Ain't you gonna want a rifle?"

Barron pulled a small sleek revolver from his pocket. It was almost like a woman's handgun, except that the handle, instead of mother-of-pearl, was ebony, and the barrel was unusually long and slender. "This is all I need," he smiled.

The tension in the room was so thick you could almost slash it with a knife, as-for the last time-Barron went over each position, every maneuver.

"Okay. Let's go," he said, his jaw set with determination. "And may Lady Luck be with us."