“Thank you, Tiny.”
First Tiny retracted the ladder, getting more help than he needed along the way, and then he held it up horizontally over his head and set out across the valley of vehicles. If the world wore a propeller beanie, this is what it would look like.
They all made their way diagonally across the interior of the building, to the rear door Kelp had earlier tamed. He opened it again now, and everybody got out of the way as Tiny carried the ladder outside. He extended it, all by himself, then leaned it against the wall next to the leftmost second-floor window, which was smaller than the other windows at that level, and said, “Okay, kid, do your thing.”
“Right.”
The kid scrambled up the ladder, took his flashlight out of his jacket pocket, and shone it in through the window. “It’s a bathroom,” he reported.
Stan said, “We already figured that. All the johns are in the back corner there.”
“This is a very nice one,” the kid said. “Big walk-in shower, a painting of some castle on the wall, and one of those things girls use.”
The others all looked at one another, baffled. Stan hazarded, “A hair dryer?”
“No, no,” the kid said, rattling the ladder a little. “One of those things that’s like a toilet but isn’t.”
“Oh,” Kelp said, “a bidet,” pronouncing the T.
Dortmunder said, “Is that how you say that?”
“How would I know?” Kelp asked. “I never had to ask for one.”
Tiny said, “Kid, come down, move the ladder, see what else is up there.”
“Right.”
The kid came down, over, and up, and shone his light in the next window. “It’s a kitchen,” he said.
Dortmunder, unbelieving, said, “A kitchen?”
“A really nice one,” the kid said. “Big refrigerator, microwave, all kinds of stuff.”
Dortmunder said, “In Combined Tool? This is getting weirder.”
The kid said, “It’s big, too. It looks like it goes almost all the way across the back.”
Tiny said, “Go to the last window, see what’s in there.”
So the kid did, and said, “It’s a pantry. Big one, lots of nice shelves, but not much in there. Some pots and pans, some dishes. No food.”
“Let me see this,” Kelp said, and suddenly hurried up the ladder.
The kid, feeling the tremors in the ladder and looking down to see the top of Kelp’s head getting nearer, said, “Hey. You think this is a good idea?”
“Yes,” Kelp said. “Lean to the left.” And he muscled upward to the kid’s right, while the kid held on with all of his fingers and many of his toes.
“I think I’ll hold the ladder now,” Tiny said, and did so.
With the two of them side by side on the same rung up there, Kelp peered intently in at the sides and bottom of the window, pushing the kid’s head out of the way and saying, “Shine the light over there. No, on the jamb. Okay, and down. Okay.” And back down the ladder he zipped, followed a bit shakily by the kid.
Dortmunder said, “So whadaya think?”
“I think we aren’t gonna know what’s in there until we go in there,” Kelp said. “So we don’t know if it’s worthwhile until we do it.”
“And then,” Stan said, “it could turn out not to be cash at all, but some big boss’s love nest.”
“That would irritate me,” Tiny said.
Dortmunder said, “With the palm-print locks? I don’t think so. Andy, do you see any way to get in there through a window?”
“One way,” Kelp said, “and one way only. But it’s gonna use the place up, I don’t think we’ll be able to do the same thing twice.”
Tiny said, “You mean break the window.”
“No, I don’t,” Kelp said. “You break the window, you make a vibration, and that sets off the alarm.”
Dortmunder said, “In that case, you can’t open the window either.”
“I don’t wanna open it,” Kelp said. “This is not an easy thing here. What we’re talking about is at least two more trips.”
Tiny said, “Back twice more? This is beginning to look like a career.”
“We’re in it this far,” Kelp said, and nodded toward the far end of the areaway. “In the meantime, we can leave the ladder in the corner back there. Nobody’s gonna notice it.”
Dortmunder said, “Two more trips and still the ladder, but you don’t want to open the window and you don’t want to break it. What do you want to do in these trips?”
“The first one,” Kelp said, and gestured up toward the pantry window, “we bring epoxy and seal that window to the frame. I looked at it, and nobody ever opens it, so they’re not gonna notice.”
Tiny said, “Why are we doing that?”
“Vibrations again,” Kelp said. “Because when we come back the second time we’ve got our glass cutter and our suction cup with the handle on it.”
Dortmunder lifted his head, with a sudden surge of that unexpected quality: optimism. “I see it!” he said.
“If we do it right,” Kelp said, “we cut out the whole pane in one piece, prop it inside, go in, do what we’re gonna do, and on the way out we epoxy the glass back in place. ”
The kid said, “The line will show, where it was cut.”
Kelp said, “What do we care?”
“Oh, yeah,” the kid said. “Right.”
Tiny said, “I’m not gonna get through that window.”
“That’s okay, Tiny,” Stan said. “I’ll take pictures up there with my cell, you won’t miss a thing.”
Dortmunder said, “Glue tomorrow night, glass cutter Sunday night, and then on Monday morning we tell Doug we don’t want reality after all.”
“As we don’t,” Tiny said.
25
DOUG WAS WORRIED about Stan Murch. Not worried about him, exactly, but more worried for him. The news that he had been peremptorily kicked out of the gang had come as a real shock. Weren’t gangs supposed to stick together? Wasn’t it the gang against the world, and they relied on one another because there was nobody else they could rely on?
And what made it even worse, in some way it was Stan Murch who had put this gang together. His mother had sent Stan to Doug, and Stan had shown up with John, and then at the next meeting Andy was there, and it really looked as though this was a tight-knit group, people who had known and trusted one another through many nefarious experiences. Tiny and Judson had come in to complete the crew, and it had all made sense.
But then, because he himself had added Ray Harbach to the mix, all at once they threw Stan out. No regrets, no good fellowship, just cold calculation. It had changed the way he looked at the gang, and not for the better.
And how would Stan have taken it? Oh, John and Andy had dismissed all that, as being nothing of importance, because Stan knew the ways of the world and there would always be another job, but did that make sense? Would Stan not be resentful even a tiny bit?
Nonviolent, Doug thought. They’re supposed to be nonviolent, but who says so? They do. Do they look nonviolent?
He remembered asking them, John and Andy, when they’d told him Stan was out, asking them because he so much didn’t want anything really bad to happen, asking them if they’d actually killed Stan—the way the mobsters on television always do a reduction in staff—and he clearly remembered Andy’s answer:
“I can guarantee you, Doug, we stay away from violence completely unless there’s absolutely no way it can get back at us.”
And that’s a slippery sentence once you start to look at it, isn’t it?
What if they had killed Stan? Tiny, with those big hands of his. Killed him to keep him from betraying the gang to the police as revenge for his ouster, or to keep him from spying on them and robbing them once the job was done. Didn’t honor among thieves, really, go out with Robin Hood?
Doug fretted the entire weekend about Stan, where he was, what he thought about what had happened, and by Sunday afternoon, two days a
fter he’d been told about Stan’s downsizing, he couldn’t stand it any more. He had to find out. No matter what the truth was, he had to know it.
So finally, Sunday afternoon, giving up his futile attempts to read the Sunday Times, he took the only route he knew to get in touch with Stan, and phoned his Mom, only to get her answering machine, with her distinct impatient voice: “If I know you, say so, and I’ll call you back.”
“Mrs. Murch,” he told the machine, “this is Doug Fairkeep. Would you please have Stan call me as soon as possible?” And he hung up, to fret some more.
She called back at seven that evening. “He’s outa town,” she said.
“Out of town?”
“He went to California for maybe a month,” she said. “He had a couple possible job opportunities out there.”
“Do you have a contact number for him?”
“Not me,” she said. “He’ll check in, I’ll tell him you called.”
“I’d really like to hear from him.”
“You know how often people call their mother,” she said. “When he gets a minute off his busy schedule and gives me a ring, I’ll give him your message.”
“Thank you,” Doug said.
That was his own mother. She wouldn’t cover up for them, would she, if they’d… done… anything? Or had she been intimidated? (Though she hadn’t sounded particularly intimidated.)
But the more he thought about it, if they did decide to eliminate Stan because he knew too much, wouldn’t that mean Doug also knew too much? Not a happy thought.
All in all, he had a troubled night.
26
HE CALLED my Mom this afternoon,” Stan said, as Kelp got into this nice Chevy Gazpacho that Stan had borrowed half an hour ago from a perfectly legal parking place on West Forty-ninth Street.
Shutting his door, putting on his seat belt—because who wants to listen to all that ping-ping-ping—Kelp said, “Doug? What’d she tell him?”
Stan put the Gazpacho in gear and continued on downtown. “What we said. I’m out of town into California a while, considering my job prospects.”
“Good.”
Last night’s expedition to Varick Street, like this one tonight, had been only the two of them, since they didn’t need a whole crowd to gaff one window. They’d brought a different car from a different neighborhood last night, gone through the house like smoke, Kelp up the ladder while Stan held it, and sufficient epoxy glue was spread there to hold USS Intrepid in place. A gas-pipe explosion could take out the entire block, but that window would not leave that frame.
Tonight would be step two of the plan: Cut out the lower pane, carefully place the pane inside the room, case Combined Tool to find out at last what the hell was in there, gently epoxy the pane back in place, and depart. John had wanted to come along tonight, just because it was a kind of a matter of personal pride for him to walk around inside that forbidden city, but he’d come to understand it wasn’t necessary; soon they’d be going in for real.
Now, Stan parked in a temporarily legal place a couple blocks from Varick Street, and he and Kelp used paper towels to wipe down anything they might have touched in the car. When they were done here, Kelp would cab uptown and Stan would subway to Canarsie, and eventually the city would take charge of the Gazpacho. In the meantime, Kelp carried the thick tube of epoxy and the strong suction cup with a handle.
The walk to Varick Street and through the building was uneventful, but when they went out the back door to the areaway and looked up the lights were on in Combined Tool. “What the hell,” Stan said.
“Ssh,” Kelp whispered. Pointing toward the ladder, he whispered, “We gotta see.”
“Good.”
They went over to get the ladder, extended it without difficulty, and leaned it against the wall between two of the kitchen windows. Stan whispered, “I’m not doing that thing like you and the kid did, with two people at once up on this thing. You go up and come down, and then I’ll go up and come down.”
“I like that.”
Stan held the ladder and watched Kelp climb. The light from the kitchen was bright enough that he’d have to be careful up there looking in. His head bent far back, Stan watched as Kelp eased up and over, and then the light was on part of Kelp’s face including his right eye, and he was looking in.
Well? Get on with it. Stan wanted to call up to Kelp, Come on, what’re you looking at up there, what’s going on, but he knew he couldn’t do that, and eventually Kelp did come back down the ladder. He looked at Stan, shrugged in a manner that didn’t communicate anything, and gestured for Stan to take his turn.
Stan said, “What’s up there?”
“Look at it,” Kelp advised.
So Stan did. Up he went, and slowly eased his face into the light, and what he was looking at was the profile of a man seated at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal and reading a newspaper. The word “Zeitung” was the biggest word Stan could see on the newspaper, so it was in German.
The man himself was about fifty, thin, balding, spectacled, wearing a pale yellow dress shirt and dark patterned tie under a buttoned-up black vest, plus dark pants and black shoes. Very formal dress for eating cereal on Varick Street in Manhattan at one in the morning.
Stan went down the ladder. “We can’t do it,” he whispered. “Not with him in there.”
“I know it.”
“And you were all supposed to meet Doug here tomorrow. Except you weren’t going to.”
“Well,” Kelp said, “it looks as though we’re gonna meet Doug here tomorrow.”
27
WHEN DORTMUNDER WALKED into the fake OJ at ten o’clock on Monday morning, Doug was there with Ray Harbach and Darlene Looper and Marcy and the flamboyant director, Roy Ombelen, plus a stocky fiftyish man in a bartender’s white apron and white shirt—though rather too white, in fact—who looked as though he might be Rollo’s mild-mannered cousin from San Francisco. More tofu than meat.
“Good morning, John,” Doug said. He had the harried look of a man having to remind himself to look cheerful. “Where’s the others?”
“They’ll be along,” Dortmunder said. He himself was feeling grumpy, since he’d thought everything would be done by now. They would set things up for the break-in, that was the plan, then disappear from Doug’s Global Positioning System, wait a week, and clean out Combined Tool and Knickerbocker Storage. Let Doug and his pals believe anything they wanted to believe, they wouldn’t be able to prove a thing. If they went so far as to look at a lot of old mug shots they might eventually identify one or more of their former reality-stars-to-be, but they still wouldn’t be able to prove anything, and Dortmunder and associates would all have rock-solid alibis for the night in question.
But it wasn’t to be. All at once, Combined Tool had turned into a pied-à-terre for a guy reading a Zeitung. They obviously couldn’t do their pre-heist survey with him there, and there seemed to be no way to find out who he was, or how long he intended to stay, or what he had to do with Combined Tool.
So there was nothing for it but to stick around a little longer, because none of them, not even Tiny, wanted to just walk away with no profit and no answers. Which was why he was here again, saying to Doug, “You wanted to start something today?”
“Roy’s going to tell you about it,” Doug said, “but it ought to wait till the rest arrive.”
“Fine,” Dortmunder said, and went into the non-OJ to sit at a booth on the right, which was, in fact, a little more comfortable than the ones in the original. Looking around he saw three cameras, hulking black things on big elaborate swivel-chair-type wheel arrangements, each camera attached by a black wire to the earphones of a cameraperson slouched negligently in a chair, reading a tabloid, while Doug and the others murmured together a little ways off.
He had barely made himself comfortable in this booth when that loud doorbell sounded, signaling the arrival of the rest, brought here in Tiny’s current limo. Doug hurried off to let them in.
Dortmunder had come here separately because he’d wanted a little solitary time to think over this unpleasant new development and had therefore decided to walk down from Nineteenth Street, hoping to find a solution to their problems along the way. Some hope.
Soon Kelp and Tiny and the kid appeared, and when they came over from the elevator they all started in about how terrific this imitation OJ was, and Dortmunder suddenly remembered, That’s right! I’m supposed to be seeing this thing for the first time. Instead of which, he’d just moped in and said something grumpy and sat down.
Well, fortunately, Doug and the others hadn’t noticed that slip, and now everybody else was making up for it; maybe overdoing it just a bit, but not bad.
Should he join them, suddenly overcome by this OJ clone? No; better just leave it alone.
Once everybody calmed down, Roy Ombelen assembled them at the tables in the non-OJ while he described what was going on. (Today his shirt was fuchsia, ascot teal, corduroy trousers café au lait, shin-high boots apricot.) “I realize,” he told them, “the security concerns you fellows are constricted by go a bit beyond the, shall we say, run of the mill? It is our firm intention not to recognizably film your faces, because such film we wouldn’t be able to use anyway.”
“You got that right,” Tiny told him.
“Well, that’s my job,” Ombelen said. “But in this particular instance, it’s your job as well. We will photograph you from above, from below, from behind. We will photograph your ears, your hands, your elbows. But we need your help to do this right, so here’s the one rule you must remember. If you can see the camera lens, the camera can see your face. Tell us at once if the camera has moved into the forbidden zone, and we’ll reshoot.”
“That sounds good,” Kelp said.
“It’s the only way,” Ombelen assured him, “we can make this peculiar situation work. Now, your opening scene, you will all be at the bar, and Ray Harbach will join you with some news. Our production assistant, Marcy, will describe the scene to you.”
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