Dinner was ready.
Leslie tried to pretend it was an easy spur-of-the-moment thing, merely tossed together. However the curried cream of pea soup had obviously taken some doing in advance. For a main course there was Roquefort stuffed ground sirloin with mustard seed sauce encircled with heaps of pommes Lyonnaise. Warm brioche and chived butter. The wine she had decanted was a Brunello di Montalano 1945.
Gainer loved every mouthful. Who wouldn’t?
The mustard seeds were tiny spicy explosions as he chewed, the potatoes crisp but not overdone, the wine like swallows of liquid silk with the flavor of currants and violets.
“Never met anyone else who could both cook and shave,” he told her.
“Never will.”
He complimented the wine, asking about it.
Because it was from Rodger’s cellar she didn’t tell him it cost a thousand a bottle. “Think I’d make someone a good wife?” she asked.
“By all means.”
“Means aren’t everything.”
Gainer broke off a piece of a brioche, dipped it into his wine and took it to her mouth. “Communion,” he said.
“We’ll always have it. Don’t you believe we’ll always have it?”
“One way or another,” Gainer replied.
Leslie reached over and stabbed up one of his potatoes. She still had some on her plate but wanted one of his. Offhand she asked, “Who is Millicent?”
“Who?”
“Millicent.”
“Only Millicent I know is one of Mrs. Darrow’s old friends.”
“How old?”
“Sixty-some.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, why?”
Leslie took a note-size envelope from her dress pocket. “This was slipped under your door at Number 19. I forgot to give it to you.”
Gainer read the note that said: “Dear Andrew—Perhaps next time? Millicent.”
Leslie knifed up a dab of butter for her tongue.
Gainer slipped the note into his shirt pocket, sipped wine and asked: “Been taking your Rescue? Seems to me you haven’t. At least not that I’ve noticed.”
Leslie allowed that to be absorbed by silence, then asked: “Perhaps what next time?”
“I about ten percent promised to teach her how to watch football.”
“And she about ninety percent wanted to play.”
“Don’t be crazy.”
“You really go for older women, don’t you?”
Gainer reached over and with a finger gently widened the opening of Leslie’s unbuttoned dress front. Appreciated matters in there a moment and then told her, “No.”
After dinner they went upstairs with a tray containing desserts, the architectural plans for Number 19 and the manila envelope Sweet had given Gainer. Clothes off, propped up by many extra pillows on another of Leslie’s luxurious beds, they kissed once good and long and went over the Sweet material together.
Sweet’s handwriting was inconsistent, in places large and loopy, at other places smaller and crammed. It also changed within a syllable from slant to backhand. Nevertheless, Sweet had done a thorough job of it. There were thirty pages, including several ruler-drawn diagrams with some measurements indicated to the inch. An accurate detailed description of the security setup that guarded The Balance at Number 19, as well as a timetable of operation.
Now, Gainer and Lesie were brought to realize what they were up against.
The wall that bordered the grounds was at no point less than nine feet high. Along the top of the wall, running continuously from relay to relay was an arrangement of photovoltaic detectors. Unlike ordinary electronic eye alarm devices that throw a line of light, these were specially designed with stacks of multiple phototransistors so the beam created was a band of light an inch thick and twenty inches high. Any mass that penetrated the beam could be measured and evaluated. A bird or squirrel, for instance, would not activate the alarm.
The rear grounds, from the base of the outer wall to the terrace and from the far corner of the garage on the north to the fence of the tennis court on the south, was considered a crucial area. (Fifty-two feet, wall to terrace; two hundred feet, garage to court.) It was believed that if ever an attempt was made on The Balance it would come from that direction. Therefore an elaborate grid of undersurface pressure sensors had been incorporated throughout the garden in this section of the grounds. The pressure sensors were time-set, automatically put on alarm from dusk to dawn. Originally they had been hooked up with undersurface explosive devices, but those were removed when a forgetful gardener and a drunk security man had lost three legs between them. Now the pressure sensor alarm was connected to the water sprinkler system that serviced the rear lawns and gardens. Activated, these water sprinklers worked with a second system of sprinklers to give off an unavoidable mist of H2S2O7 or fuming sulfuric acid. Anyone caught in the mist would probably be burned to death, or at the least, permanently blinded. The amount of weight necessary to set off the pressure system was fifty pounds. Which would exempt, say, most stray dogs and small children.
Sweet had parenthetically noted that the enclosed diagram of the pressure sensor grid beneath the rear grounds was only an estimate, could be as much as a foot or two off.
The roof of the house was sealed. The dormer windows not openable, their frames made of one-piece steel. The entire roof surface was equipped with a pressure alarm that would activate whenever anything in excess of ten pounds came down on it. That allowance to again avoid false alarms caused by birds or squirrels.
Inside the house.
The upper corridor of the north wing.
An ultrasonic vibration alarm unit was situated ten feet from the entrance to The Balance Rooms. It was inset in the opposing walls of the corridor and consisted of oscillators that generated compressional waves capable of picking up any vibration above the frequency of twenty thousand cycles per second. Thus, anything more than the slightest stirring in that atmosphere would cause the alarm to go off.
The door to The Balance Room was automatically opened or locked by an electronic tonal combination transmitted directly to the door-bolting mechanism from a touch-tone telephone located in Darrow’s bedroom suite. Only Darrow, as Custodian, knew the combination.
The door itself was constructed of a steel alloy material, a space-age by-product, impervious to anything less than an 84mm recoilless antitank gun. The walls between The Balance Room and other rooms were internally reinforced with that same material, as were the floors of The Balance Room.
Within The Balance area itself was what everyone considered the ultimate feature of the security system. Heat sensor alarm units installed in the ceilings and walls. They were the refined application of the ordinary household thermostat. Far more sensitive, of course, they responded to the most infinitesimal change in the temperature of the atmosphere in the room. When The Balance area was bolted, the air in the room was quickly conditioned to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit by special air cooling units. That temperature was precisely maintained. If, for example, someone were able to merely expose their hand in the room, the heat sensors would react as though they had detected a four alarm fire. Furthermore, they were entirely remote, functioned without wiring. There were four such units in The Balance area, two fixed to the ceiling where the money was kept, two in the ceiling where it was processed. The heat sensor alarms were the reason why the men responsible for security at Number 19 relaxed at night—and why Darrow had one less, large worry.
The monitoring center for all alarms and prohibitive devices was located in the room above the garage. Indicators hooked up to the various phases were incorporated into an electronic console that was observed every second. A minimum of six security men were on duty at all times. There were eighteen altogether. They doubled as servants and answered only to the Custodian. Most of these men had come over to the private sector from government intelligence service, had that sort of training behind them. Such as the ability to kill swiftly with
hands or with just about any object. An arsenal of conventional weapons, including automatic rifles and sidearms, was kept at the monitoring center above the garage.
The final page of Sweet’s documentary was devoted to a map of Number 19 hand drawn by him out of scale but with dimensions noted. In the right hand bottom corner of the page was an unencouraging postscript.
Leave me your watch.
Gainer felt unable to move. His mouth must have been open because Leslie put a Teuscher champagne chocolate truffle in it. He thought maybe he should have carried to Zurich. Thought he ought to call Chapin and tell him to forget about it. He got up, went across the room and dropped Sweet’s report in the bottom drawer of a Regence chest. Shoved the drawer shut, locked it with its silk tasseled key. Tossed the key under the bed. Leslie understood. She felt much the same about the report. No use having it around reminding them of how it had ruined everything.
Well, not really everything.
Leslie lay on her side. Gainer lay on his side. They pressed together. Face to face, their breaths seemed dependent, hers into his, his into hers, and every so often one tongue or the other moistening the other’s lips. For as long as it took for the chrysalis of passion to enclose them. They parted, split like the matching halves of some elongated fruit. Two hands each were not enough for so much at once gentle avarice and generosity, but then no hand was needed for him to find her with himself, join himself straight to her.
The walls of her clamped but their own slip let him nearly escape. He kept coming back in to risk capture.
He was in and also into.
Filling and full.
Gone past the line of separateness so that each of her pleasant little swellings that increased and broke convulsively over her were as much his.
Blessed convolution of Gainer and Leslie. So many times let up and recommenced.
“Love me sore,” she said.
And with that he lost hold and she knew, pulled the sweet string from him, one after one after one knots of excruciating, loving pleasure.
NEXT morning they didn’t speak of robbery. Not a word. Around ten she remarked that she needed to buy some shoes, as though she was down to her last pair. They drove to the city to Maud Frizon. Leslie tried on while Gainer waited. Thirty pair that he thought all looked better on her than they ever would on anyone. She had it in mind to charge ten pair but cut that down to four when Gainer insisted on paying for them. At that, the bill came to twelve hundred and some. Snapshot winnings.
It lifted their spirits somewhat.
However, on the way back to the house in Bedford, Leslie didn’t drive her usual fast and Gainer hardly said a word. Five minutes after they got home she took along a worn paperback edition of Seth Speaks and went down to the brook to stick her feet in.
Gainer roamed the house, not noisily, just restless. Ended up in what he presumed was Rodger’s upstairs study. Gray flannel upholstered Louis XV furniture. Gray flannel on the walls. Touches of navy and white and leopard. A female decorator’s impression of masculine without using leather. A nook of framed photographs. Rodger with a couple of presidents, Rodger with a couple of movie stars. The most prominently hung photo was a candid shot of Rodger with a white-haired man who looked like God in yachting clothes.
None of this helped alter Gainer’s mood. If he’d been in the city he would have gone for a long walk, perhaps over on the West Side, up Columbus and down Amsterdam, but out here with just trees and bushes and blue and white New York Times delivery containers fixed to every mailbox post, a walk wouldn’t have the same therapy, might subdue him all the more.
He glanced out and saw Leslie was still down by the brook, trying for Lady Caroline no doubt. He went out and drove away in the Fiat. Thought he was driving just anywhere down Route 22 through North Castle and Armonk to King Street. King ran parallel to Purchase and there, between them, was Westchester County Airport.
Not a vast commercial airport by any means, but a good deal more than an embellished landing strip. Westchester County Airport occupies seven hundred valuable acres and describes itself as the largest base for corporate aircraft in the United States. Mobil keeps its planes there. So does Union Carbide, American Can, Seagram, General Electric and Chase Manhattan. It is quite ordinary, for instance, to have one or the other of the Rockefellers taking off from there in one or the other of their Falcon 50s or Gulfstream III jets. The airport’s main runway is north to south. Numerous taxiways network to it and further off along each side are ample aprons. There are two principal hangars. Hangar “D” on the east side of the field and Hangar “E” directly across the field about a half mile away. Next to Hangar “E” is the air traffic control tower and a large orange radar scanner. A short distance from the control tower begins the undeveloped wooded area that serves as a buffer zone between the airport and the private houses along Purchase Street.
Gainer left the Fiat in the airport’s public parking lot while he wandered around. He noticed the closed main gate and the guard on duty, went down along the rear of Hangar “D” and used a door there. Assumed that old ambiance of belonging where he was as he entered a major hangar area.
The hangar’s huge doors were open to the field, and the corporate jets stood in there like huge birds in sanctuary, as though any moment they might simply fly out. The gray-painted concrete hangar floor was cleared and clean, the planes white, shining and trimmed sky-blue. The white coveralls of the maintenance men were spotless, opened at the neck to show fresh white shirts.
Gainer did a friendly, authoritative nod at two of the men as he passed them on his way to the front of the hangar. Stood there in the opening, hands in back pockets, not apparently viewing the various aspects of this airport for the first time.
He watched a yellow Cherokee glide down and land and run its speed out. And only moments after it a Falcon 50 jet came in sleeker. Across the way in the distance, Hangar “D” and the traffic control tower were diffused by the hot day haze. Also, that wooded area. Gainer decided, as long as he was there, he might as well get a thorough look. He returned to the Fiat and drove around to Route 120 for the side road that led into that newer section of the airport. Parked the car outside the administration building in an empty spot with someone’s name stenciled on it. Walked around the rear of the control tower and slipped unseen into the nearby brush.
Within twenty paces it seemed to Gainer that he was nowhere near an airport. The area was extremely overgrown, weeds and bushes up to seven feet tall. Thick twines and knots of wild grape and masses of nettle made the going difficult, and there was poison ivy everywhere.
A little further on were trees and undergrowth. Some oak and maple with trunks two to three feet thick. The ground was tricky, seldom level, outcropped with ledge and gullied.
Gainer did not see the fence until he was right up to it; it was that covered with vines. A steel mesh fence eight feet tall with three strands of barbed wire strung a foot and a half high along the top. He followed alongside the fence for quite a ways, then tore some of the vine from it for a look through.
There, six feet away, was the brick wall of Number 19. At that closer range he saw the relay points of its photovoltaic electronic beam. They were like oblong metal rods set every ten feet into the top of the wall. Beyond the wall Gainer could see only the upper reaches of the house, its aged blue slate roof silvery rich in the sun.
Impossible.
That was Gainer’s conclusion.
He was only there because he hated giving up. In that short while he had grown used to the prospect of all those millions. The money and all it would bring had slipped in between him and his earlier motives. Of course, revenge for Norma and the saving of his own ass were still right there pushing at him, but the idea of taking care of everything in one fell swoop had been most attractive. As things were, he had no choice but to keep enduring Darrow and hope for another way at him, hope that Darrow didn’t find out that he had not made the carry to Zurich. He would tell Hine it was o
ff, and Chapin. He’d call Chapin that day.
Gainer drove back to the Bedford house.
Parked next to Leslie’s Rolls was a new Cadillac Seville, obviously belonging to someone come to stay because there was luggage in the front hallway.
Leslie was out on the screened porch with Chapin and Vinny. Obviously she’d retrieved the tasseled key from beneath the bed to unlock the drawer because the pages of Sweet’s report were scattered about. Chapin and Vinny had been there a while. Brie and crackers on a plate were almost gone and there were smudged wine glasses around.
“Hello handicapper,” Chapin greeted him.
Vinny merely raised his hand for hello.
“I was just about to call you,” Gainer told them.
“Thought we might not show?”
“We’ve been going over things,” Leslie said brightly, her disposition up from where it had been. “They arrived right after you left.”
“Caught her washing her feet in the brook.” Chapin grinned.
Gainer filled a highball glass with wine, gulped some. “Any luck with Lady Caroline?” he asked Leslie, only because he thought she’d appreciate his interest.
“For a while,” Leslie told him. “She’s been in limbo.”
“Great place for a vacation.”
“Lady Caroline told me to tell you to go for it, steal the three billion—”
Chapin stopped her. “You didn’t mention anyone else in on this.”
“It’s another thing altogether,” Gainer assured him.
Leslie didn’t like that.
Chapin didn’t believe it. “There’s another three billion I suppose.”
“Lady Caroline is Leslie’s spirit guide,” Gainer explained with a self-conscious edge. “She gives advice from the other side. She’s been dead since 1917.”
“She’s infallible,” Leslie said.
“No shit?” Vinny said.
Chapin didn’t laugh as Gainer had expected. “You talk aloud to her?” he asked Leslie.
19 Purchase Street Page 36
