As Drackman was drawing the gun, the driver reached the back of the truck. Fiona came off the bank steps as the first bomb exploded, angling toward him, her right hand under her suit jacket, where she carried a pistol in a shoulder rig.
Just then, Mr. Smaller pulled to the curb behind the ColtThompson vehicle in a gray paneled van on the sides of which were emblazoned the name and logo of the armored-car service. Wearing a counterfeit ColtThompson uniform, he got out and headed toward the driver of the truck.
Fiona reached the driver first, and when he glanced at her, she came in close, doing her best to look terrified, saying, “Please, can you help me?” The second blast occurred, and the driver flinched, looked away from her. She shoved the muzzle in his gut and shot him dead, and Mr. Smaller arrived just in time to help her manage the body to the pavement, as if they were assisting a fellow worker who had suddenly been taken ill.
Pandemonium. People screaming, running, not sure what might happen next, oblivious to the heist in progress.
Lucas Drackman knelt next to the fallen guard on the sidewalk, by the open door of the armored truck, and popped the lid of his first-aid kit as if the man weren’t dead but merely in need of medical assistance.
At the back of the truck, Mr. Smaller dropped to both knees beside the dead driver. He used a small bolt cutter to sever the chain that connected a ringbolt on the man’s belt to the ignition key in his pocket.
After taking the key from Smaller, Fiona went to Drackman and tossed it to him. She quickly followed him into the truck as he clambered into the driver’s seat, and she pulled the door shut behind her. For security reasons, the windows were heavily tinted.
Mr. Smaller got up from the dead driver and once more got behind the wheel of the paneled van.
For use in an emergency, the ColtThompson truck had an array of flashing blue lights and an oscillating siren different from that of any police-or fire-department vehicles. Drackman switched them on and drove away from the curb just as the passing traffic began to jam up because of motorists gawking at the smoke now billowing from the shattered doors of the bank.
Mr. Smaller followed close behind in the paneled van. They turned right onto 52nd Street, where traffic was lighter.
When the remaining guard, closeted in the cargo hold, couldn’t get a response on the in-vehicle intercom, he made the mistake of assuming that twenty years of drama-free experience in his job must be predictive of twenty more. Curious but not sufficiently alarmed, he violated standard procedures and slid aside the steel plate that covered a two-inch-by-six-inch slot in the heavily armored wall between his redoubt and the forward compartment, calling out to the driver, “Hey, Mike?”
Prepared for this possibility, Fiona Cassidy thrust the muzzle of her pistol through the gap and emptied the magazine into the cargo hold. Following the roar of gunfire and the shriek of ricochets in the enclosed space, there was only silence from the third guard.
One block east of the bank, Drackman switched off the flashers and the siren, and at the end of the second block, as the truck and the van stopped for a red traffic light, my father got up from the bus-stop bench to which he had walked from the bank, and he joined Mr. Smaller in the second vehicle.
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When Mrs. Nozawa finished recounting her confrontation with Dr. Mace-Maskil and laying out her suspicion that Lucas Drackman had killed the professor’s wife, Mr. Tamazaki, in good spirits after his holiday, knew that he had enough circumstantial evidence to ensure that Mr. Otani could open his case file and obtain a warrant.
He worried, however, that if Mace-Maskil had warned Drackman about the woman’s interest, both she and Mr. Yoshioka, and perhaps others, might be in danger.
“Another good reason for my written report,” she said, “and now a good reason to have it notarized so it will serve as evidence if anything happens to me, though nothing will. I’m a tough cookie.”
After commiserating with Mrs. Nozawa about Toshiro Mifune’s poor health, he called Mr. Otani at the homicide division of the central police command, only to be told that the detective had taken the day off. When he tried Mr. Otani’s home number, no one answered.
Mr. Tamazaki shivered with a presentiment of tragedy.
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