Phil pulled to the curb on Seventh Avenue in the upper forties. Herman and Van and Jack got out and walked away around the corner. Ahead of them, the Broadway theater marquees shouldered one another to be seen.
Ahead on the right was the new rock musical Justice! It had been panned on the road, it had come into town fully expecting to be a disaster, it had opened last night, and every last New York critic had given it a rave. The line for advance sale tickets had been around the block all day; the producers hadn’t expected the cash in-flow and hadn’t prepared for it, so the day’s receipts were spending the night in the theater safe. Well, part of the night. One of the brothers in the chorus had passed the word to the Movement, and the Movement had quickly assigned Herman and Phil and Van and Jack. They’d met late this afternoon, looked over the brothers’ map of the interior of the theater, worked out their plot, and here they were.
One usher stood in the outer lobby. He was short and stocky and wore a dark-blue uniform. He gave Herman and Van and Jack a supercilious look as they came in through the outer doors and said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘You can turn around,’ Van said and showed him a gun. ‘Or I can blow your head off.’
‘Good Christ,’ the usher said and stepped back into the doors. He also put his hand to his mouth and blanched.
‘Now, that’s what I call white,’ Herman said. His own gun remained in his pocket, but he had taken out the mask and was putting it on. It was a simple black mask, the kind the Lone Ranger wears.
‘Turn around,’ Van said.
‘Better do it,’ Herman said. ‘I’m gentle, but he’s mean.’
The usher turned around. ‘What do you want? Do you want my wallet? You don’t have to hurt me. I won’t do any –’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ Van said. ‘We’re all going inside and turn left and go up the stairs. You first. Don’t be cute, because we’re right behind you.’
‘I won’t be cute. I don’t want to be –’
‘Just walk,’ Van said. He gave off such an aura of weary professionalism that his victims almost always fell all over themselves to do what he wanted; not wanting to expose themselves as amateurs to his jaundiced eye.
The usher walked. Van put away his gun and donned his mask. Jack and Herman were already masked, but a casual observer watching them walk across the dark rear of the theater behind the usher wouldn’t have realized they had masks on.
A herd of people onstage were shouting a song: ‘Freedom means I got to be, I got to be, I got to be, Freedom means I got to be. Freedom means you got to be, you got to be …’
The stairs were carpeted in dark red and curved to the right. At the top was the loge, and Van poked the usher to make him move to the right, behind the seats and through another door and up a narrow flight of stairs that wasn’t carpeted at all.
In the room were six people. Two women and a man were counting money at tables with adding machines. Three men were wearing the uniform of a private protective service, including holstered pistols. Van stuck his foot around the usher’s and gave him a shove as they entered the room, so the usher cried out and went sprawling. It distracted everyone long enough for Van and Jack and Herman to line up in a row inside the door, guns in their hands and masks on their faces, establishing that they were already in control.
‘Hands up,’ Van said. ‘That means you, Grandpa,’ to one of the guards. ‘I haven’t shot a senior citizen in three months. Don’t make me spoil my record.’
It sometimes seemed to Herman that Van leaned on people because he wanted them to give him an excuse to shoot them, but most of the time he realised that Van was playing a deeper game than that. He leaned hard so people would think he was trying to goad them, so they would think he was a bad-ass killer just barely in control of himself, and the result was that they were always just as nice as pie. Herman didn’t know Van’s entire history, but he did know there’d never been any shooting on any job the two of them had done together.
Nor would there be on this one. The three guards gave each other sheepish looks and put their hands up, and Jack came around to take their pistols away from them. Van produced two shopping bags from under his jacket, and while he held a gun on the seven civilians in the room – the usher had come up holding his nose, but it wasn’t bleeding – Herman and Jack dumped cash money into the two bags. They put crumpled paper on top, and Herman glanced almost longingly at the safe in the corner. He was a lockman – that was his specialty – he could open safes better than Jimmy Valentine. But this safe was already standing open, and there was nothing in it of any value anyway. He was along simply as a yegg this time, part of the team.
Well, it was for the Cause. Still, it would have been nice if there’d been a safe around to open.
Using the victims’ ties and socks and shoelaces and belts, all seven were quickly tied up and left in a neat row on the floor. Then Jack unscrewed the phone from its connection on the wall.
Van said, ‘What the hell you doing? Just yank the cord out of the wall. Didn’t you ever see any movies?’
‘I need an extension in the bedroom,’ Jack said. He put the phone on top of the crumpled papers in one of the shopping bags.
Van shook his head, but didn’t say anything.
When they left, they locked the door behind themselves and trotted down the narrow stairs to pause for a second behind the door leading to the loge. They could hear the chorus ripping through another song: ‘I hate bigots! Dig it! Dig it!’
‘The line we’re waiting for,’ Van said, ‘is “Love everybody, you bastards.”’
Herman nodded, and all three listened some more. When the line sounded, they pushed the door open, walked through, turned left and headed back downstairs.
The timing was perfect. As they came to the foot of the stairs the curtain came down on Act One, and people started up the aisle for a smoke break. The three men pulled their masks off and went through the lobby doors just ahead of the theatergoers. They crossed the lobby, went out to the sidewalk, and the Ford was half a block away to their left, coming along behind a slow-cruising cab.
‘God damn it,’ Van said. ‘What’s the matter with Phil’s timing?’
‘He probably got stuck at a red light,’ Herman said.
The Ford slipped by the cab and stopped at their feet. They slid in, the sidewalk behind them filled with smokers, and Phil drove them casually but firmly away from there.
The two shopping bags were in the back with Herman and Jack – Van was up front now – and every time they went over a pothole the damn phone tinkled, which began to drive Herman up the wall. He was a compulsive phone answerer, and there was no way to answer this phone.
Also, the money was getting to him. He was glad to give his expertise to the Movement, help the Movement cover its expenses in the time-honored fashion of the I.R.A., but at times he could feel his palm itching to hold onto some of the cash he got for them this way. As he’d told his guests a little earlier tonight, he had expensive tastes.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he had some private scores going, but it had been almost a year since he’d been involved in a non-political robbery, and the money from that last caper was just about gone. He needed something soon, or he’d be eating that black bread without the caviar.
They were heading up Central Park West when Phil said, ‘Do I hear a phone? I keep thinking I hear a phone.’
Van said, ‘Jack stole their phone.’
Herman could see Phil frowning as he drove. ‘He stole their phone? Why? Just to be mean?’
‘I need an extension for my bedroom,’ Jack said. ‘Lemme see if I can get it to be quiet.’ He took it out of the bag and held it in his lap, and it didn’t tinkle as much after that.
Jack having moved the phone had dislodged some of the crumpled paper, and Herman could see green down in there. A hundred dollars, he thought, for expenses. But there was no point in it; a hundred dollars wouldn’t come near his expenses.
They let him off across t
he street from his building. They headed on uptown, and Herman sprinted across the street and inside. He went around to the service elevator, rode it up to his floor, and pushed the 1 button to send it back down again when he got off. He entered his kitchen and Mrs. Olaffson said, ‘Everything’s all right.’
‘Good.’
‘They’re getting drunk.’
‘Very good. You can serve any time.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He walked through the apartment to the living room and noted the shifts that had taken place in his absence. Several of them, but primarily involving George and Linda Lachine. George and Susan were sitting together now, George with a rather fatuous smile on his face while Susan talked to him, and Linda was standing over on the opposite side of the room, trying to look as though she were admiring the W. C. Fields print.
Rastus and Diane were still together, Rastus now with his hand on Diane’s leg. The tinkling telephone and the reminder of his money worries had put Herman in a bad mood and left him feeling unable to cope with the complexities that Rastus would have to offer. So it was heterosexual time; why not?
First he had to make some general comments to the general group, who greeted his return with comments about how long he’d been away. ‘You know those people,’ he said with a dismissing wave of the hand. ‘They can’t do anything on their own, not a thing.’
‘Problems?’ Foster asked. He had come with Diane but seemed uninterested in leaving with her.
‘Nothing they can’t handle by themselves,’ he said and gave everybody a brisk grin as he rounded the coffee table and headed for Linda.
But he didn’t get there. Mrs. Olaffson appeared again, in a rerun, complete with the same dialogue: ‘Telephone, sir.’
Herman looked at her, for just a second too bewildered to speak. He couldn’t say, ‘My call from the Coast?’ because that was all over now. He very nearly said, ‘We’ve done that bit,’ but stopped himself in time. Finally, out of desperation, he said, ‘Who is it?’
‘He just said it was a friend, sir.’
‘Listen,’ Rastus drawled in that Southern-cracker voice he liked to use when irritated, ‘ain’t we never gonna eat?’
‘All right,’ Herman said. To Rastus, to Mrs. Olaffson, to everybody. ‘I’ll make this one fast,’ he promised grimly, strode from the room, went down the hall, and bashed his nose painfully when he turned the knob on the study door without stopping and the door turned out still to be locked. ‘God damn!’ he said, his eyes tearing and his nose smarting. Holding his nose – he reminded himself of that usher – he trotted around through the kitchen and into the study that way. Dropping into the director’s chair, he picked up the receiver and said, ‘Yes!’
‘Hello, Herman?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Who’s this?’
‘Kelp.’
Herman’s spirits suddenly lifted. ‘Well, hello,’ he said. ‘Been a long time.’
‘You sound like you got a cold.’
‘No, I just hit my nose.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ Herman said. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Depends,’ Kelp said. ‘You available?’
‘Never better.’
‘This is still a maybe.’
‘Which is better than a nothing,’ Herman said.
‘That’s true,’ Kelp said with some surprise, as though he’d never thought that out before. ‘You know the O. J. Bar?’
‘Sure.’
‘Tomorrow night, eight-thirty.’
Herman frowned. There was a screening he’d been invited to … No. As he’d told his guests, he had expensive tastes, and as he’d told Kelp, a maybe was better than a nothing. ‘I’ll be there,’ he said.
‘See you.’
Herman hung up and reached for a Kleenex. Smiling, he wiped the tears from his eyes, then carefully unlocked the study door and went out to the hall, where Mrs. Olaffson greeted him with ‘Dinner is ready, sir.’
‘And so am I,’ he said.
10
Victor stood smiling in the elevator. This building, on Park Avenue in the seventies, had been built at the turn of the century, but the elevator dated from 1926 and looked it. Victor had seen identical elevators in old movies – the dark wood, the waist-high brass rail, the smoke-tinted mirror, the corner light fixtures like brass skyscrapers upside down. Victor felt embraced by the era of the pulps and gazed around with a happy smile as he and his uncle rode up to the seventeenth floor.
Kelp said, ‘What the hell you grinning at?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Victor said contritely. ‘I just liked the looks of the elevator.’
‘This is a medical doctor we’re going to,’ Kelp said. ‘Not a psychiatrist.’
‘All right,’ Victor said soberly.
‘And remember to let me do the talking.’
Earnestly, Victor said, ‘Oh, I will.’
He was finding this whole operation fascinating. Dortmunder had been perfect, Murch and his Mom had been perfect, the back room of the O. J. Bar and Grill had been perfect, and the steps being taken to put the job together were perfect. Even Dortmunder’s obvious reluctance to let Victor participate was perfect; it was only right that the old pro wouldn’t want to work with the rank amateur. But Victor knew that by the finish he would have had opportunity to demonstrate his value. The thought made him smile again, until he felt Kelp’s eyes on him, when he immediately wiped the smile away.
‘It’s unusual that I’d even bring you along,’ Kelp said as the elevator door opened and they stepped out together into the seventeenth-floor foyer. The doctor’s door, with a discreet name plate, was to the left. Kelp said, ‘He might not even want to talk in front of you.’
‘Oh, I hope not,’ Victor said, laughing boyishly.
‘If he does,’ Kelp said, ‘you go right back to the waiting room. Don’t argue with him.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t,’ Victor said sincerely.
Kelp grunted and went in, Victor following.
The nurse was behind a partition on the right. Victor stayed in the background while Kelp talked to her, saying, ‘We have an appointment. Charles Willis and Walter Mc-Lain.’
‘Yes, sir. If you’ll just take a seat …’ She pushed a buzzer that let them through the interior door.
The waiting room looked like the scale model of a Holiday Inn lobby. A stout lady looked up from her copy of Weight Watchers and gave them the glance of anonymous hostility with which people always look at one another in doctors’ waiting rooms. Kelp and Victor pawed through the magazines on the central table, and Kelp sat down with a fairly recent Newsweek. Victor searched and searched, found nothing at all interesting, and finally settled for a copy of Gourmet. He sat down with it near Kelp, browsed along, and after a while noticed the word ‘redolent’ appeared on every page. He staved off boredom by watching for its reappearances.
But mostly he thought about the robbery and what he and Kelp were doing here. It had never occurred to him that big-scale robbers had to be financed, just like anybody else, but of course they did. The preparation of a robbery involved all sorts of expenses, and somebody had to foot the bill. Victor had eagerly asked Kelp a thousand questions about that facet of the operation and had learned that sometimes a member of the robbery team did the financing, in return for a larger share of the profit, but that more often the financing was done by outsiders, who put up the money for a guarantee of 100 percent profit, two dollars for every one, should the robbery turn out to be successful. If the robbery failed, of course, the financier got nothing.
‘Mostly what we get,’ Kelp had said, ‘is undeclared income. Doctors are the best, but florists are pretty good, too. Anybody whose line lets them keep some cash that they don’t tell the Feds about You’d be surprised how many greenbacks there are in safe-deposit boxes around the country. They’re saving the money for when they retire. They can’t really spend it now, for fear the income-tax people will get after them. They can’t invest it anyplace
legal for the same reason. So it just sits there, not earning any interest, getting eaten up by inflation, and they look around for some way to put it to work. They’ll go for a high risk if they can get a shot at a high return. And if they can be a silent partner.’
‘That’s fascinating,’ Victor had said raptly.
‘I like doctors best,’ Kelp had said. ‘I don’t know why, I’ve just got a thing about doctors. I use their cars, I use their money. They’ve never let me down yet. You can trust doctors.’
They spent half an hour now in this particular doctor’s waiting room. The stout lady was called in by the nurse after a while and never returned. Nor did any other patient come out. Victor wondered about that, but later on discovered the doctor had a different exit, another door that led back to the elevator.
Finally the nurse came back, saying, ‘Doctor will see you now.’ Kelp followed the nurse, and Victor followed Kelp, and they all went down a hall to an examining room – white cabinets, black leatherette examination table. ‘Doctor will be right with you,’ the nurse said, and shut the door behind her when she left.
Kelp sat down on the examination table and let his feet dangle. ‘Now, let me do the talking.’
‘Oh, sure,’ Victor said reassuringly. He wandered around the room, reading the charts and the labels on the bottles, until the door opened again and the doctor came in.
‘Doctor Osbertson,’ said Kelp, getting to his feet. ‘This is my nephew, Victor. He’s okay.’
Victor smiled at Dr. Osbertson. The doctor was fiftyish, distinguished-looking, well padded and irritable. He had the round face of a sulky baby, and he said, ‘I’m not sure I want to be involved in this sort of thing any more.’
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