The Hot Rock (9 page)

They retraced the route that Dortmunder and Chefwick had taken coming in here. Four more doors stood in the way, each having been unlocked by Chefwick on the way in and each now being locked again on their way out. They came at last to the exit from this building and waited there, clustered around the doorway, looking at the black cube of the laundry across the way. Dortmunder checked his watch and it was three–twenty. “Five minutes,” he whispered.

Four blocks away, Kelp looked at his watch, saw it was three–twenty, and got out of the truck cab again. He was finally getting used to the fact that the interior light didn’t go on when he opened the door, he having removed the bulb himself before they left the city. He closed the door quietly, went around back, and opened the rear doors. “Set,” he whispered to Murch.

“Right,” Murch whispered back and began pushing a long one–by–twelve board out of the truck. Kelp grabbed the end of it and lowered it to the ground so the board leaned against the rear edge of the truck body in a long slant. Murch pushed out another board and Kelp lined it up beside the other one, with a space of about five feet between the two.

They had chosen the most industrial area of Utopia Park for this part of the plot. The streets directly contiguous with the prison were all shabby residential, but starting two or three blocks out the neighborhoods began to change. To the north and east were residential neighborhoods, steadily improving the farther away they got, and to the west was a poorer residential area that got progressively slummier till it petered out in a flurry of used car lots, but to the south was Utopia Park’s industry. For block after block there was nothing but the low brick buildings in which sunglasses were made, soft drinks were bottled, tires were recapped, newspapers were printed, dresses were sewn, signs were painted, and foam rubber was covered with fabric. There was no traffic here at night, there were no pedestrians, a police car prowled through only once an hour. There was nothing here at night but all the factories and, parked in front of them, hundreds of trucks. Up this street and down that, nothing but trucks, bumpy–fendered, big–nosed, hulking, dark, empty, silent. Trucks.

Kelp had parked his truck in with all the other trucks, making it invisible. He had parked just beyond a fire hydrant so there would be room behind the truck, but other than that one open space the rest of the block was pretty well full. Kelp had had to drive around half a dozen blocks before he’d found this space, and it pleased him.

Now, with the two boards slanting out from the truck to the street, Kelp stepped up on the curb and waited. Murch had disappeared into the blackness inside the truck again, and after a minute there was the sudden chatter of an engine starting up in there. It roared a brief second, then settled down to a quiet purr, and out from the truck nosed a nearly new dark green Mercedes–Benz 250SE convertible. Kelp had run across it earlier this evening on Park Avenue in the Sixties. Because it wasn’t going to be used very much, it still bore its MD plates. Kelp had decided to forgive doctors.

The boards bowed beneath the weight of the car. Murch, behind the wheel, looked like Gary Cooper taxiing his Grumman into position on the aircraft carrier. Nodding at Kelp the way Coop used to nod at the ground crew, Murch tapped the accelerator and the Mercedes–Benz went away, lights out.

Murch had spent some of his idle time in the back of the truck reading the owner’s manual he’d found in the car’s glove compartment, and he wondered if the top speed of one hundred eighteen miles an hour was on the up and up or not. He shouldn’t test it now, but coming back maybe he’d have enough of a straightaway to find out.

Back in the prison, Dortmunder had checked his watch again, found that five minutes had passed, and said, “Okay.” Now the three of them were trotting across the open space toward the laundry, the searchlight having flashed by just before they started.

Dortmunder and Chefwick put up the ladder and Greenwood led the way up it. The three got to the roof, pulled the ladder up after them, lay down in the lee of the low perimeter wall, held their breaths while the searchlight went by, and then got to their feet and carried the ladder over to the outer wall. Chefwick went up first this time, toting his black bag, went over the top, and went down the rope hand over hand, the handle of the black bag clamped in his teeth. Greenwood followed him and Dortmunder came last. Dortmunder straddled the top of the wall and began pulling the ladder up. The searchlight was coming back.

Chefwick dropped to the ground just as Murch arrived in the convertible. Chefwick took the bag from his teeth, which were aching from the strain, and climbed over the side into the convertible. The interior lights of this vehicle hadn’t been tampered with, so they couldn’t open the door.

Greenwood was coming down the rope. Dortmunder was still pulling up the ladder. The searchlight reached him, washed over him like magic water, passed on, stopped dead, quivered, and shot back. Dortmunder was gone, but the ladder was in the process of falling onto the laundry roof. It went
chack
when it hit.

Meantime, Greenwood had reached the ground and jumped into the front seat of the convertible, Chefwick being already in back. Dortmunder was coming very fast down the rope.

A siren said,
Rrrrrr
— and began its climb.

Dortmunder kicked out from the wall, let go the rope, dropped into the back seat of the convertible and called, “Go!”

Murch hit the accelerator.

Sirens were starting up all over the place. Kelp, standing by the truck with an unlit flashlight in his hands, began to chew his lower lip.

Murch had turned on the headlights, since he was going too fast now to depend on the occasional street lights. Behind them, the prison was coming to life like a yellow volcano. Any minute it would start erupting police cars.

Murch made a left on two wheels. He now had a three block straightaway. He put the accelerator on the floor.

There are still milkmen who get up very early in the morning and deliver milk. One of these, standing at his steering wheel, put–putted his stubby white traveling walk–in closet into the middle of an intersection, looked to his left, and saw headlights coming at him too fast to think about. He yipped and threw himself backward into his cases of milk, causing a lot of crashing.

Murch went around the stalled milk truck like a skier on a slalom, and kept the accelerator on the floor. He was going to have to brake soon, and the speedometer hadn’t broken a hundred yet.

No good. He’d have to brake now, or overshoot. He released the accelerator and tapped the brakes. Four–wheel disc brakes grabbed and held.

Kelp didn’t hear the engine over the screaming sirens, but he did hear the tires shriek. He looked down at the corner and the convertible slid sideways into view, then leaped forward like Jim Brown going around end.

Kelp switched on his flashlight and began madly to wave it. Didn’t Murch see him? The convertible kept getting larger.

Murch knew what he was doing. While his passengers clung to the upholstery and each other he shot down the block, tapped the brakes just enough at the right split second, nudged the wheel just enough, rolled up the boards and into the truck, tapped the brakes again, and came to a quivering standstill two inches from the far wall. He shut off the engine and switched off the lights.

Kelp, meanwhile, had put away his flashlight and was quickly shoving the boards back into the truck. He slammed one of the doors, hands reached down to help him up into the truck, and then the other door was shut.

For half a minute there was no sound in the blackness inside the truck except five people panting. Then Greenwood said, “We’ve gotta go back. I forgot my toothbrush.”

Everybody laughed at that, but it was just nervous laughter. Still, it helped to relax them all. Murch turned the car’s headlights on again, since they’d already proved no light from in here could be seen outside the truck, and then everybody shook hands with everybody, congratulating everybody on a job well done.

They got quiet and listened as a police car yowled by, and then Kelp said, “Hot on our trail,” and everybody grinned again.

They’d done it. From here on it was simple. They’d wait here in the truck till around six, and then Kelp would slip out, get into the cab, and drive them all away from here. It was unlikely he’d be stopped, but if he was he was perfectly safe. He had legitimate papers for the rental truck, legitimate–looking driver’s license and other identification, and a legitimate–sounding reason for being abroad. In a quiet spot in Brooklyn the convertible would be removed from the truck and left with its keys in it invitingly close to a vocational high school. The truck would be driven to Manhattan and left at the garage where Major Iko’s man would pick it up and return it to the rental agency.

Everybody was feeling pleased and happy and relieved. They sat around in the convertible and told jokes and after a while Kelp brought out a deck of cards and they started to play poker for high paper stakes.

Along about four o’clock Kelp said, “Well, tomorrow we go get the emerald and collect our dough.”

Greenwood said, “We can start working on it tomorrow, I guess. Three cards,” he said to Chefwick, who was dealing jacks or better.

Everybody got very quiet. Dortmunder said to Greenwood, “What do you mean, we can start working on it?”

Greenwood gave a nervous shrug. “Well, it isn’t going to be all that easy,” he said.

Dortmunder said, “Why not?”

Greenwood cleared his throat. He looked around with an embarrassed smile. “Because,” he said, “I hid it in the police station.”

They were all there, all five of them. Dortmunder and Kelp, sitting in their usual places in front of his desk. Greenwood, the one they’d gotten out of prison last night, sitting between them in a chair he’d pulled over from the wall. And two new ones, introduced as Roger Chefwick and Stan Murch. A part of Major Iko’s mind was fondling those two new names, could hardly wait for this meeting to be over so he could give the orders for two new dossiers to be made up.

But the rest of his mind, the major portion of the Major’s mind, was given over to incredulity. He stared at everyone, and most especially at Greenwood. “In the police station?” he said, and his voice cracked.

“It’s where I was,” Greenwood said reasonably.

“But surely — at the Coliseum you could have — somewhere —”

“He swallowed it,” Dortmunder said.

The Major looked at Dortmunder, trying to understand what the man had just said. “I beg your pardon?”

It was Greenwood who answered. “When I saw they were going to get me,” he said, “I was in a hall. No place to hide anything. Couldn’t even throw it away. I didn’t want them to find it on me, so I swallowed it.”

“I see,” the Major said, a bit shakily, and then smiled a thin smile and said, “It’s a good thing for you I’m an atheist, Mr. Greenwood.”

In polite bafflement, Greenwood said, “It is?”

“The original significance of the Balabomo Emerald in my tribe was religious,” the Major said. “Go on with your story. When did you next see the emerald?”

“Not till the next day,” Greenwood said. “I’ll sort of skip over that part, if you don’t mind.”

“I wish you would.”

“Right. When I had the emerald again, I was in a cell. I guess they were afraid the rest of the guys might try to spring me right away, ‘cause they hid me out in a precinct on the Upper West Side for the first two days. I was in one of the detention cells on the top floor.”

“And that’s where you hid it?” the Major said faintly.

“There wasn’t anything else I could do, Major. I didn’t dare keep it on my person, not in jail.”

“Couldn’t you have just kept on swallowing it?”

Greenwood gave a greenish smile. “Not after the first time I got it back,” he said.

“Mm–mm,” the Major admitted reluctantly. He looked at Dortmunder.

“Well? What now?”

Dortmunder said, “We’re divided. Two for, two against, and one uncertain.”

“You mean, whether or not to go after the emerald again?”

“Right.”

“But —” The Major spread his hands. “Why wouldn’t you go after it? If you’ve successfully broken into a prison, surely an ordinary precinct house —”

“That’s just it,” Dortmunder said. “My feeling is we’re pushing our luck. We’ve given you two capers for the price of one as it is. We can’t just keep busting into places forever. Sooner or later the odds have to catch up with us.”

The Major said, “Odds? Luck? But it isn’t odds and luck that have helped you, Mr. Dortmunder, it’s skill and planning and experience. You still have just as much skill and are capable of just as much planning as in last night’s affair, and now you have even more experience.”

“I just have a feeling,” Dortmunder said. “This is turning into one of those dreams where you keep running down the same corridor and you never get anywhere.”

“But surely if Mr. Greenwood hid the emerald, and knows where he hid it, and —” The Major looked at Greenwood. “It is hidden well, is it not?”

“It’s hidden well,” Greenwood assured him. “It’ll still be there.”

The Major spread his hands. “Then I don’t see the problem. Mr. Dortmunder, I take it you are one of the two opposed.”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said. “Chefwick is with me. Greenwood wants to go after it, and Kelp is on his side. Murch doesn’t know.”

“I’ll go along with the majority,” Murch said. “I got no opinion.”

Chefwick said, “My opposition is similarly based to Dortmunder’s. I believe one can reach the point where one is throwing good expertise after bad, and I fear we have reached that point.”

Greenwood said to Chefwick, “It’s a cinch. I tell you, it’s a precinct house. You know what that means, the joint is full of guys typing. The last thing they’ll expect is somebody breaking in. It’ll be easier than the jug you just got me out of.”

“Besides,” Kelp said, also talking to Chefwick, “we’ve worked at the damn thing this long, I hate to give it up.”

“I understand that,” Chefwick said, “and in some ways I sympathize with it. But at the same time I do feel the mathematical pressure of the odds against us. We have performed two operations now, and none of us is dead, none of us is in jail, none of us is even wounded. Only Greenwood has had his cover blown, and being a single man with no dependents, it won’t be at all hard for him to rebuild. I believe we should consider ourselves very lucky to have done as well as we have, and I believe we should retire and consider some other job somewhere else.”

“Say,” said Kelp, “that’s just the point. We’re still all of us on our uppers, we’ve still got to find a caper somewhere to get us squared away. We know about this emerald, why not go after it?”

Dortmunder said, “Three jobs for the price of one?”

The Major said, “You’re right about that, Mr. Dortmunder. You are doing more work than you contracted for, and you should be paid more. Instead of the thirty thousand dollars a man we originally agreed to, we’ll make it —” The Major paused, thinking, then said, “Thirty–two thousand. An extra ten thousand to be split among you.”

Dortmunder snorted. “Two thousand dollars to break into a police station? I wouldn’t break into a tollbooth for money like that.”

Kelp looked at the Major with the expression of a man disappointed in an old friend and protege. “That’s awful little, Major,” he said. “If that’s the kind of offer you’re going to make, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

The Major frowned, looking from face to face. “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

“Say ten thousand,” Kelp told him.

“A man?”

“That’s right. And the weekly amount up to two hundred.”

The Major considered. But too quick an agreement might make them suspicious, so he said, “I couldn’t make it that much. My country couldn’t afford it, we’re straining the national budget as it is.”

“How much, then?” Kelp asked him in a friendly, helpful sort of way.

The Major drummed fingertips on the desktop. He squinted, he closed one eye, he scratched his head above his left ear. Finally he said, “Five thousand.”

“And the two hundred a week.”

The Major nodded. “Yes.”

Kelp looked at Dortmunder. “Sweet enough?” he asked.

Dortmunder chewed a knuckle, and it occurred to the Major to wonder if Dortmunder too was padding his part. But then Dortmunder said, “I’ll look it over. If it looks good to me, and if it looks good to Chefwick, all right.”

“Naturally,” the Major said, “the pay will continue while you look things over.”

“Naturally,” Dortmunder said.

They all got to their feet. The Major said to Greenwood, “May I offer you congratulations, by the way, on your freedom.”

“Thanks,” Greenwood said. “You wouldn’t know where I could find an apartment, do you? Two and a half or three, moderately priced, in a good neighborhood?”

“I’m sorry,” the Major said.

“If you hear of anything,” Greenwood said, “let me know.”

“I will,” said the Major.