The Hot Rock

by Donald E. Westlake

  Greenwood said, “You mean bring in somebody new?”

  “I mean,” Dortmunder said, “bring in a specialist. This time we need a specialist outside the string, so we bring one in.”

  “What kind of a specialist?” Greenwood said, and Kelp said, “Who?”

  “Miasmo the Great,” Dortmunder said.

  There was a little silence, and then everybody began to smile. “That’s nice,” Greenwood said.

  Kelp said, “You mean for Prosker?”

  “I wouldn’t trust Prosker,” Dortmunder said.

  Everybody stopped smiling, and looked baffled instead. Chefwick said, “If not Prosker, who?”

  “An employee of the bank,” Dortmunder said.

  Everybody started smiling again.

  3

  The Major was leaning over the pool table when Kelp was shown in by the ebony man with the light-reflecting glasses, and Prosker was sitting at his ease in a leather chair to one side. Prosker was no longer dressed in pajamas and bathrobe, but was now wearing a neat business suit and nursing a tall drink that tinkled.

  The Major said, “Ah, Kelp! Come watch this, I saw it on television.”

  Kelp walked over to the pool table. “Do you think it’s all right to have him walking around?”

  The Major glanced at Prosker, then said, “There’s nothing to worry about. Mr. Prosker and I have an understanding. He has given me his word not to try to escape.”

  “His word and a dime will get you a cup of coffee,” Kelp said, “but it tastes better with just the dime.”

  “Additionally,” the Major said casually, “the doors are guarded. Now, really, you must watch this. You see, I have the cue ball here, and those three balls against that cushion over there, and that ball down at the far end. Now, I will hit the ball on the right end of those three, and all four will go into four different pockets. Do you think that’s impossible?”

  Kelp, who had seen the same thing on television several times, with a gradually mounting sense of apathy, was sure it was possible, but why spoil the Major’s fun? “You’ll have to prove it to me, Major,” he said.

  The Major gave the broad smile of a man who’s been practicing and leaned with careful attention over the table. He sighted along the cue, took a few tentative pokes at the cue ball, then struck. Clack-clack-clackety-clack, balls rolled hither and yon. One plopped into a pocket, two more did, and the fourth hit the shoulder, nearly fell in, but decided at the last second to roll the other way.

  “Drat!” said the Major.

  “That was almost,” Kelp said, to make him feel better. “And I can see now the way it would work. That one pretty near fell in.”

  “I did it before you came,” said the Major. “Didn’t I, Prosker?”

  “Absolutely,” said Prosker.

  “I believe you,” said Kelp.

  “I have to show you,” the Major said. “Just a moment now, just a moment.”

  The Major hurriedly set up the trick again. Kelp, glancing at Prosker, saw him giving a small sympathetic smile. Choosing not to accept the comradeship the smile implied, Kelp looked away again.

  The Major was ready once more. He urged Kelp to watch, and Kelp said he would. And he did, praying the Major would make it this time, because he was apparently prepared to keep trying all night long if he had to, in order to do it in front of Kelp.

  Clack. Clackety-clackety-clack. Ball number one dropped into a pocket, two and three followed, and number four hit the shoulder, teetered on the edge, spun slowly, reluctantly, and fell into the pocket.

  The Major and Kelp heaved simultaneous sighs of relief, and the Major put down his cue stick with obvious pleasure to have it done and over with. “Now,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “Dortmunder called last night and said he thought there was a way to do it. That was fast work, very fast. You have a list for me?”

  “No list this time,” Kelp said. “All we need is cash. Five thousand dollars.”

  The Major stared. “Five thou—” He swallowed and said, “For God’s sake, why?”

  “We have to hire a specialist,” Kelp said. “We can’t do this one like the other ones, we need a specialist. He gets a flat fee of five grand. Dortmunder says you can take it off our payments when we give you the emerald because he’s an extra man you didn’t count on.”

  The Major glanced at Prosker, then looked at Kelp again. “I wouldn’t have that much cash right now,” he said. “How soon do you need it?”

  “The sooner we get the money,” Kelp said, “the sooner the specialist goes to work.”

  “Who is this specialist?”

  “He calls himself Miasmo the Great.”

  The Major was taken aback. “What on earth does he do?”

  Kelp told him.

  The Major and Prosker exchanged a quick startled glance, and the Major said, “You mean on Prosker here?”

  “No,” Kelp said, not noticing how the word made them both relax. “We don’t trust Prosker, he might be able to fake it.”

  “That’s good,” Prosker said amiably. “Never be too trusting, that’s what I say.”

  The Major gave him a dirty look.

  “We’ll go for one of the guards of the bank,” Kelp said.

  “You have a plan, then,” the Major said.

  “Dortmunder’s worked out another dilly.”

  “I will have the money by two o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” the Major said. “Will someone come by for it?”

  “Probably me,” Kelp said.

  “Fine. And you need no other equipment?”

  “No, just the five grand.”

  “Then,” said the Major, moving toward the pool table, “let me show you something else I saw—”

  “I’d love to see it, Major, I really would,” Kelp said quickly, “but the fact of the matter is, I promised Dortmunder I’d come right back. We’ve got preparations to make, you know, things to get ready for.”

  The Major paused beside the table, clearly disappointed. “Perhaps when you come for the money tomorrow,” he said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Kelp said, making a mental note to send Murch for the money the next day. “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Major. I know my way to the door.”

  “Until tomorrow,” the Major said.

  “My best to Greenwood and all the boys,” Prosker said cheerfully, and Kelp left the room, closing the door behind him.

  The Major turned angrily to Prosker, saying, “You are not amusing.”

  “They don’t suspect a thing,” Prosker said easily. “None of them.”

  “They will if you keep being playful.”

  “No, they won’t. I know where to draw the line.”

  “Do you?” The Major lit a cigarette with nervous angry movements. “I don’t like toying with those people,” he said. “It could be dangerous. They could all be very very dangerous.”

  “That’s why you like having me around,” Prosker said. “You know I know how to deal with them.”

  The Major studied him cynically. “Is that why? I wondered why I wasn’t keeping you stuffed away in the basement.”

  “I’m useful, Major,” Prosker said.

  “We’ll see,” the Major said. “We’ll see.”

  4

  In suit and tie, Dortmunder could look like a slightly seedy small businessman. As though he operated something like a laundromat in a poor neighborhood. It was a good enough appearance to carry him through his errand to the bank.

  Today was Friday the thirteenth. A superstitious man might have waited until Monday for this part of the preparation, but Dortmunder was not a superstitious man. He accepted the fact that the Balabomo Emerald was a jinx in a jinxless world, and didn’t allow the contradiction to lead him into irrational fears of numbers or dates or black cats or spilled salt or any of the other chimerical goads with which people plague themselves. All other inanimate objects were tame and neutral, only the Balabomo Emerald was possessed of an evil spirit.

  Dortmund
er walked into the bank a little after two, a relatively quiet period, and walked over to one of the uniformed guards, a slender white-haired man sucking his false teeth. “I want to see about renting a safe deposit box,” Dortmunder said.

  “You’ll want to talk to an officer of the bank,” the guard said and escorted Dortmunder over behind a rail.

  The officer was a soft young man in a dandruff-flecked tan suit who told Dortmunder the box rental was eight dollars and forty cents a month, and when that didn’t seem to stun Dortmunder the young man gave him a form to fill out, full of the usual questions — address, occupation, and so on — which Dortmunder answered with lies prepared for the occasion.

  After the paperwork was done, the young man escorted Dortmunder downstairs to look at his box. At the foot of the stairs was a uniformed guard, and the young man explained to Dortmunder the signing-in procedure he would have to follow every time he visited his box. The first gate was then unlocked and they stepped through into a small room where Dortmunder was introduced to a second uniformed guard, who would take over from here. The young man shook Dortmunder’s hand, welcomed him once again to C&I’s happy family, and went back upstairs.

  The new guard, who was named Albert, said, “Either George or I will always serve you, any time you want to get to your box.”

  “George?”

  “He’s the one on the sign-in desk today.”

  Dortmunder nodded.

  Albert then unlocked the inner gate and they went through into a room that looked like a Lilliputian morgue, with rank upon rank of trays for the tiny dead bodies. Buttons of various colors were attached to many of the drawer fronts, each color probably having great significance to the bank.

  Dortmunder’s drawer was low and to the left. Albert used his own master key first, then asked to borrow the key Dortmunder had just received from the young man upstairs. Dortmunder gave it to him, he unlocked the drawer, and at once gave the key back to Dortmunder.

  The safe deposit box was actually a drawer, about an inch high, four inches wide and eighteen inches deep. Albert slid it most of the way out, and said, “If you wish privacy, sir, I can carry it into one of the side rooms for you,” motioning to the small chambers off the main morgue, each containing a table and a chair, in which the box holder could at his desire communicate alone with his box.

  “No, thanks,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t need that this time. I just want to put this stuff in.” And he took from his inside jacket pocket a bulky sealed white envelope containing seven unused Kleenex tissues. He carefully placed this in the middle of the drawer, and stood back while Albert shut it up again.

  Albert let him out the first gate and George let him out the second, and Dortmunder went upstairs and outside, where it seemed strange somehow that it was still daylight. He checked his watch and hailed a cab, because he now had to get uptown and then come all the way back with Miasmo the Great before the bank’s employees started going home for the day.

  5

  “New York is a lonely city, Linda,” Greenwood said.

  “Oh, it is,” she said. “I know that, Alan.” He had kept his first name, and his new last name also started with G, which was safe enough and very convenient.

  Greenwood adjusted the pillow behind his head and clasped his arm tighter around the girl beside him. “When one meets a sympathetic soul in a city like this,” he said, “one doesn’t want to let go.”

  “Oh, I know what you mean,” she said and snuggled more comfortably against him, her cheek resting against his bare chest, the covers warm over their bodies.

  “That’s why I hate it that I have to go out tonight,” he said.

  “Oh, I hate it too,” she said.

  “But how did I know a treasure like you would come into my life today? And now it’s too late to change this other thing. I just have to go, that’s all there is to it.”

  She lifted her head and studied his face. The artificial fireplace in the corner was the only source of light, and she peered at him in its uncertain red light. “Are you sure it isn’t another girl?” she asked. She was trying to make the question light, but wasn’t entirely succeeding.

  He cupped her chin in his hand. “There is no other girl,” he said. “Not anywhere in the world.” He kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “I do want to believe you, Alan,” she said. She looked sweet, and plaintive, and yearning.

  “And I wish I was permitted to tell you where I am going,” he said, “but I can’t. I just ask you to trust me. And I should be back in no more than an hour.”

  She smiled, saying, “You couldn’t do very much with another girl in an hour, could you?”

  “Not when I want to save myself for you,” he said and kissed her again.

  After the kiss she murmured in his ear, “How much time do we have before you go?”

  He had been squinting at the bedside clock over her shoulder, and he said, “Twenty minutes.”

  “Then there’s time,” she murmured, nibbling his ear, “to make doubly sure you won’t forget me.”

  “Mmmmmm,” he said, and the result was that when the doorbell sounded, one long, two short, one long, twenty minutes later, he wasn’t finished dressing. “There they are,” he said, tugging on his trousers.

  “Hurry back to me, Alan,” she said. She was stretching and wriggling under the covers.

  He watched the covers moving and said, “Oh, I’ll hurry, Linda. Don’t you worry, I’ll hurry.” He kissed her, put on his jacket, and left the apartment.

  Chefwick was waiting on the sidewalk. “You were quite some time,” he said, gently chiding.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Greenwood said. “Which way?”

  “This way.”

  Murch was at the wheel of his Mustang around the corner, parked by a fire hydrant. Chefwick and Greenwood got into the car, Chefwick in back, and Murch drove downtown to Varick Street, where all the office buildings had been shut down for hours. He parked across the street from the one they wanted, and Greenwood and Chefwick got out and went across the street. Greenwood stood watch while Chefwick opened the front door, and then they went in and up the stairs — the elevators not working now — to the fifth floor. They went down the hall, Greenwood lighting their way with a small pencil flash, until they found the door marked DODSON & FOGG, ATTORNEYS AT LAW. On the lower left corner of the frosted glass were five names, of which the second was E. ANDREW PROSKER.

  Chefwick went through this door so fast it might as well not have been locked at all. Now they followed the map Prosker had drawn for them, finding Prosker’s office amid the maze of cubbyholes, finding the furniture arranged as Prosker had said. Greenwood sat down at the desk, opened the bottom right-hand drawer all the way, and to the back was taped a small yellow envelope. Greenwood smiled and took the envelope and put the drawer back. He shook the envelope over the desk pad and a small key dropped out, looking exactly like the one Dortmunder had been given at the bank earlier today.

  “We’ve got it,” Greenwood said. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  “Perhaps our luck has changed,” Chefwick said.

  “And it’s Friday the thirteenth. Fantastic.”

  “Not any longer, it’s after midnight.”

  “It is? Let’s go. Here, you’ll give this to Dortmunder.”

  Chefwick put the key in his pocket and they left the office, Chefwick relocking doors on their route back to the street and Murch. They got in and Greenwood said, “Would you mind dropping me first? I’ve got a little something going on back at my place.”

  “It’s perfectly all right with me,” Chefwick said.

  “Sure,” said Murch. “Why not?”

  They drove back uptown and let Greenwood off in front of his building and he took the elevator up to his apartment, where he found the girl sitting up in bed and reading a paperback James Bond book. She put the book away at once and switched off the bedside lamp, while Greenwood got rid of a lot of extraneous clothing and got b
ack into bed beside her.

  Softly she said, “Did everything go all right?”

  “I’m back,” he said simply.

  She kissed his chest and looked up at him wickedly. “You’re in the CIA, aren’t you?” she said.

  “I’m not allowed to talk about it,” he said.

  “Mmmmmm,” she said and began to bite him all over.

  “I love patriotic women,” Greenwood murmured.

  6

  Thursday, the nineteenth of October, was one of those changeable days. It started off with a drenching rain in the morning, then turned windy and cold, then the clouds blew away in the middle of the afternoon and the sun came out, and by five-thirty it was as warm as a summer afternoon. Albert Cromwell, safe deposit box guard at the 46th Street and Fifth Avenue branch of C&I National Bank, had worn raincoat and rubbers in the morning as well as carrying an umbrella, and went home carrying all three. He didn’t know whether to be disgusted at the changeableness of the weather or pleased with the goodness it had finally arrived at, and decided to be both.

  Home for Albert Cromwell was a twenty-seventh-story apartment in a thirty-five-story building on the Upper West Side, and he traveled there by subway and elevator. Today, as he entered the elevator on the final leg of his homeward journey, a tall and imposing man with piercing black eyes, a broad forehead, and thick hair jet black everywhere except for the gray at the temples boarded with him. Albert Cromwell hadn’t noticed, but the same man had entered the elevator with him every evening this week, the only difference today being that this was the first time the two of them were alone.

  They stood side by side, Albert Cromwell and the imposing man, both facing front. The doors slid shut and the elevator began to rise.

  “Have you ever noticed those numbers?” the imposing man said. He had a deep and resonant voice.

  Albert Cromwell looked at the other man in surprise. Strangers didn’t talk to one another in the elevator. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

  The imposing man nodded at the row of numbers over the door. “I mean those numbers there,” he said. “Take a look at them,” he suggested.