He and Scoot went back down to work.
For nearly an hour.
They emerged from the manhole then and said they'd done as much as they could and maybe it was enough. Strand and Springer with the lifting keys put the inner seal and the manhole cover back in place. The tarpaulin was taken down. The ropes, the power extension cords, the strings of pennants, everything was put neatly into the van. Last was the sawhorse barrier. Even before Strand and Scoot could get it disassembled, a bus was reclaiming that lane of the avenue, honking insolently and threatening to run them over.
By four o'clock that afternoon the van was unstolen.
One of Danny's people just drove it into the Con Edison garage at Avenue C and 16th Street, parked it among all the other identical vans, and casually walked away.
It hadn't been missed.
Chapter 33
It was nearly night.
The rain had wind with it now, vagrant gusts that blew it into sheets.
The sidewalks were deserted. The few taxis and cars were like strays. A lot of fifty-dollar theater tickets would go unused, restaurants would suffer no-shows. The high-rises were decapitated and the bag ladies had taken to the deeper doorways.
Vince Fantuzzi, driving a white 1977 Chrysler with a stolen New Jersey license plate, waited for the light at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 55 th Street. On green he hung a right and about a third of the way down the block pulled into the Star Parking Garage.
A sign that Vince's eyes couldn't miss told him to turn off his engine and leave his keys. He did as he was told because he was doing what he was told. He was one of Danny's people, a knock-around guy whose hard and fast rule was ask no questions, need no lies.
A parking attendant came out of the office, grabbed the top ticket from a stack that was on a small shelf below a punch clock. He'd done it so many times he didn't have to look when he inserted the ticket in the slot of the clock and— chunk, chunk, chunk —imprinted the hour and minutes on it in three places. He tore the ticket, put the main part of it under the wiper on the wet windshield of the Chrysler, handed the stub to Vince, and asked, "When ya goin' out?"
"If I get lucky not until morning."
The attendant came as close to smiling as he ever did, but then it occurred to him this guy could be on his way to only a card game.
Vince put the parking stub in his shirt pocket where he was less likely to lose it. He didn't have a raincoat or an umbrella. He wasn't the sort to own an umbrella. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and walked out into the downpour.
The parking attendant started up the Chrysler and pulled it ahead into the industrial type elevator. He closed the elevator gate and took it up to eleven. The Star Parking Garage was fourteen floors. Which floor a car was put on depended upon how long it was going to be in. The cars that were going to be in for only a couple of hours were put on the lower floors so they were easier and faster to get to. The overnights and others were put higher up, where they'd be out of the way. A few cars had been up there four or five months. At what came to about a dollar an hour the parking bill on such cars was more than their worth. Usually it turned out they were stolen, either that or whoever owned them had disappeared or died one way or another.
The attendant parked the Chrysler on the back side of the building where there weren't any windows. Left it dripping. On the way down in the elevator he thought about the slow night ahead. There was no ball game to watch on the small black-and-white television in the office. Later maybe he'd try a few trunks and glove compartments. Week before last he'd scored a complete set of nickel-plated Cerman-made tools from the trunk of a Mercedes. Once, from a Pennsylvania car, he'd gotten a woman's Rolex watch and nothing had ever been said about it. He was always getting sunglasses.
By the time the attendant returned to street level two cars had come in. A blue Pontiac Bonneville and a gray Olds Cutlass Supreme. The manager had them already ticketed, so all the attendant had to do was take them up. They were both overnights. He arbitrarily put them next to one another on nine and took the elevator back down.
An estimated five minutes were waited, four hundred pulse counts.
On eleven the only sound was the rain dripping from the Chrysler, contributing to the puddles beneath it.
Then the contradicting sound of its trunk lid popping open, released from the inside.
Springer pushed the lid up. He and Audrey climbed out. They glanced around to get their bearings. The place was dark, had a strong automobile smell to it, every inch of every surface permeated with carbon monoxide. They knew from the elevator ride that they were on one of the upper floors of the garage but they didn't know exactly which. They removed their fishing vests from the trunk of the Chrysler and put them on. The vests felt snugger with every pocket bulging. They also now had on the taupe-colored work trousers and shirts and the sneakers and their work gloves, what Audrey called their burglary outfits.
They listened for the elevator. Its frictional whir would warn of anyone coming up. The atmosphere of the garage amplified every little sound, but their steps were close to silent as they went across to the front of the building to one of the windows. There were five windows spaced about ten feet apart. They were narrow casement type, intended merely for ventilation. Each was open to some extent, no regard for the rain.
Springer looked out and down and knew upon seeing the wide ledge one floor below that they were on eleven. The top five floors of the garage building were inset about twelve feet, no doubt for some structural reason, as otherwise it was an irrational waste of premium city space. Springer and Strand, during their street-level reconnoitering, had noticed the tenth-floor ledge created by the inset and it had been the decisive factor in their choosing the garage as a starting point rather than the Hotel Shoreham farther down the block.
All such buildings as the garage were required to have an interior stairway. Springer and Audrey found it and went down to the tenth floor to the rendezvous point at the front windows. Those windows were also open part way, must have been left as they were for years because the geared cranking mechanisms that would allow them to be opened and closed were bound with rust. Not one of the windows was open enough.
The third window from the left had slight play. Springer used force on it, put increasing outward pressure on its metal frame, and, more easily than he expected, the cranking mechanism gave way, snapped off entirely, and the window swung wide open. A strong wind could have done it.
At that moment Strand and Scoot arrived, having gotten out of the trunks of the blue Bonneville and the gray Cutlass and come up the stairway from nine. Without hesitation, Scoot, the veteran swift, climbed out the window. Then Audrey, Springer, and Strand.
It was surely night now.
Even with the rain, the lights of the city reflected on the atmosphere above it and provided adequate visibility.
They paused on the twelve-foot-wide ledge to get used to being out there. Within moments their clothing was soaked through and sticking to them, their hair was plastered to their skulls. At that height there was more wind, and the storm they had thought so prerequisite seemed a dubious ally. After a
short while, they accepted that this was how it was going to be and moved left along the ledge to where it abutted the next building.
The roof of that next nine-story building was only about five feet higher. For that very reason it was protected by a six-foot-high steel mesh fence topped by concertina-type barbed wire. It was the sort of obstacle Scoot had opposed and won out over countless times. He toed his sneakers into the mesh openings of the fence and climbed up. Using a pair of snippers he cut the barbed wire at the few points where it was attached to the fence. It hadn't been conscientiously installed. The coiled-out wire sprang back into itself. Scoot continued up and over without a scratch. The others followed.
There was nothing extraordinary about the roof of the next building, nor that of the next two buildings over. All were typical of older New York City apa
rtment houses: tar-black, puffed up in some places, depressed in others. Television antennas, pre-cable relics, were like sky-worshiping mantises. Tubular aluminum patio chairs lay crippled and thus forsaken near the squat, square structure above the roofline that housed the elevator winches and the stairway that gave access.
Separating the three apartment houses were fences that ran all the way from front to rear, expressing the usual mutual distrust. The fences were alike, six-foot-high steel mesh with concertina-type barbed wire along the top. Same as the first that Scoot had so quickly reduced to little more than a schoolyard climb-over. Perhaps all these fences had been put up by the same company—one that knew nothing would stop whoever was motivated enough not to be stopped.
Such as Springer and Audrey, Strand and Scoot. Stealthily, although the pelt of the rain would prevent their footsteps from being heard by the tenants just below, they crossed the first apartment house roof and the second and were crossing the third when they saw the cigarette stub. Flicked from the doorway, it was immediately extinguished by the rain. The superintendent of the building. He'd come up for a solitary moment away from complaints and stopped-up toilets, and had it not been for the rain he would have been out on the roof rather than standing just inside the access doorway.
Strand, who was leading the way, came only a couple of steps from walking right into the superintendent's view. As it was, they were only a few feet from him, huddled against the wall of the elevator housing. If he happened to pop his head out and glance to his left he would be looking right at them.
The roof access door was metal coated yet a bit swollen from the humidity. It scraped on its threshold and required a solid shove to fit into its jamb. There was no doubt when the superintendent slammed it shut; nevertheless, the four remained in place awhile to completely recover from the effects of such a close call. Strand, Scoot, and Springer considered it a matter of fortunate timing. Audrey took it as a demonstration of how fate was determined to smile their way.
They continued on across the roof, to an obstacle more formidable than a fence: the side of a building four, nearly five stories higher.
It was the annex to the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where the church's administrative offices, social rooms, and so on were located. The plan had been to go up and over it using the grappling hook and climbing ropes, but they had underestimated, had believed it three stories higher at most. Perhaps, Springer thought, its height was exaggerated because they were standing close up to it. He backed off from the wall and measured it with his eyes and knew he would be fooling himself if he said it was less than forty-five feet. Were they stumped? Was this as far as they'd be able to go? Might he or Scoot be able to toss the grappling hook that high? Even then it would be a hell of a climb.
Scoot had the grappling hook and climbing rope out to give it a try. Audrey, meanwhile, went along the wall to the rear edge of the roof. From there she had an overview of the enclosed backyard-like space formed by the buildings of the block. Below to the right were the roofs of the buildings that faced onto Fifth Avenue. It was easy to make out which was Townsend's. First there was a six-story building, then a three-story one, and then Townsend's. So close it seemed she could take a flying leap and land on it. She stepped closer to the edge to better see the rear of the church annex building, peered around the corner of it. What a blessed gift it would be if there was a fire escape and they could simply walk right down, she thought. Her eyes scanned the rear surface of the church annex building. They caught upon what occurred to Audrey might be an alternative. She hurried back to tell the others, led them to it.
About three feet down on the rear of the adjacent annex building was a ledge. Not a nice, wide, perfectly safe ledge such as the one of the garage. This ledge was barely a foot wide, a mere outcropping that defined a structural aspect, probably a horizontal beam covered over.
Strand shined his flashlight on it, very briefly but long enough to see that it went the entire width of the building. About thirty feet out, the ledge was interrupted by a six-inch exterior metal pipe, apparently a permanent drain. The pipe seemed to run all the way down the rear of the building. Perhaps at the sixth-floor level it ran close enough to that first building that faced upon Fifth Avenue, the one immediately north of the church.
Worth a try?
Audrey thought so.
Springer wasn't so sure. He'd never been one for heights; not phobic about them, but high places, even Audrey's apartment or the Windows on the World restaurant, always caused a slight hollowness in the pit of his stomach. He peered over the edge at the nine-story drop, told himself it made no difference whether it was nine or a hundred stories. He thought of Jake.
Strand was able to be a little philosophical about it. In all things improvisation was seldom without extra risk. That was certainly true here. The step-by-step plan had been to go up and over the church annex and down onto the church roof and from it easily over onto the roof of that first building facing Fifth Avenue. Strand looked at his watch. Whatever was decided, it would have to be soon or their timing would be off.
For Scoot it was just a matter of weighing risk against reward: no different, really, from the terms of any other burglary. There were legends about huge scores that had been easy, but he knew in his light-fingered heart they probably weren't true.
They huddled there near the edge and discussed whether to give up or go on. The thought of giving up was, for their separate reasons, unacceptable. The prospect of what lay ahead brought them to agree on trying the ledge and the pipe. They swiftly devised how best to do it, the mistakes that could be made, the advantages and cautions to be taken. Not the least of their considerations was the problem of being able to get back up.
Scoot felt inasmuch as he had the experience it was his responsibility to be the first to give it a go. A demonstration of his practical knowledge was the way he prepared the climbing rope. It was the type of five-eighths-inch woven rope used by mountain climbers, soft to the hands, lightweight, and yet extremely strong. Scoot arranged the rope into a series of reverse loops, laying one loop upon the other neatly. He threaded the end of the rope into the eye of the pile of loops and pulled it through. The result was magical. A knot appeared every two feet along the rope, accomplished in a fraction of the time it would have taken to tie that many knots individually.
Both Springer and Audrey drew some reassurance from observing that trick of Scoot's trade. It promised others in a pinch.
Scoot secured the end of the rope to a nearby standpipe. Tested how well it was secured by having a brief, vigorous tug-of-war with the pipe, because his life might depend on it. He lay prone with his shoulders and head over the edge of the roof to examine the ledge. He played his flashlight along the ledge, covering every inch of it. He examined the wall and the pipe for several minutes and took another comprehensive look at the ledge. He stood and removed his vest. The bulging pockets and back compartment of the vest was not compatible with the ledge. If he wore it he wouldn't be able to flatten against the wall. The vests would have to be carried for this part of it. Fortunately the armholes were large enough. Scoot put his head through one of the armholes so his vest hung down the front of him. It was awkward. The vest with all its contents felt heavier. It would be all the more difficult to maintain balance.
Improvisations, Strand thought cynically as he took off his vest and slung it around his neck. How much more improvising, additional risking, would there be?
Springer and Audrey did the same with their vests.
Scoot tossed the rope over the edge and then wrapped two turns of it around his forearm. He sat on the edge of the roof with his lower legs dangling over. He extended his right leg, reached for the ledge with it. Slid down until the edge of the roof was beneath his buttocks. His right foot found the ledge, then his left. As gradually as possible he transferred his weight and was standing on the ledge.
The others watched his every move, would try to imitate.
Scoot just
stood there for a while to get used to being on the ledge. It was about three inches wider than the length of his sneakers. He knew, and he had told them, the key to it was the head. And the feet, of course. The head had to be kept up, the back of the head in constant contact with the wall. Much of it would be a matter of depending entirely on feel. He felt the heels of his sneakers lightly in touch with the wall.
He took his first step.
A six-inch sidestep with his right foot.
He drew his left foot to his right.
That was how it went. Six inches or so at a time. Nibbling at the distance.
The weight of the vest hanging from his neck seemed to be trying to make him violate the rule of keeping his head up. The pouring rain was a help and a hindrance. The wetness increased the traction of the soles of his sneakers, but at places along the ledge it also slickened the accumulated pigeon droppings. Several times his mind tried to beat him, tried to get him to visualize where he was, how high up he was, the precarious thing he was doing. He knew such thoughts were traps and closed them off, concentrating on the back of his head, his heels, the wall, the ledge, the playing out of the rope around his arm, his little sidesteps.
His right elbow came in contact with the drainpipe before he realized it was that near. The thick pipe was cast metal, sturdy. There was, he found, room enough between it and the wall for his arm. He hugged the pipe with his right arm and let out that deep breath he'd been holding.
Using his right hand he pulled the rope taut and took a turn with it around the drainpipe. At a point about chin level a section of the pipe was fitted into the wider collar of another section below it. It was one of the things he had noticed initially and was counting on. He adjusted the turn he'd taken so it was snug above the collar, took a second turn, overlapping it into a good bite.
Now the rope was dangling in line with the pipe, the down end of it reaching to the third or fourth story.
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