The Black Ice Score p-1

by Richard Stark

  Hoskins looked like a man who wanted very much to start punching something. But all he did was stand there rocking slightly on the balls of his feet and glaring at Parker in helpless rage.

  Parker started toward him from the door.

  “I’m going,” Hoskins said, trying not to sound too hasty. “Don’t worry, I’m going. Back to L.A. I wouldn’t be involved in this”

  “That’s good.”

  “But you’ll regret it, mark my words. You’ll wish you had a man you could trust at your side.”

  Parker didn’t say anything to that. Hoskins looked anxiously around trying to find something else to say, but there wasn’t any more. He shook his head, tried to put on the scowling expression of a patrician leaving by his own choice and walked past Parker and out of the room.

  Parker shut the door after him.

  6

  It was a half-ton Ford panel truck, seven years old, dark blue. Some previous owner’s firm name and address and phone number had been painted off the doors and body sides with broad sweeps of paler blue, itself old enough now to be chipped in places. Parker was at the wheel, Formutesca beside him, and he was finding the transmission almost unworkable. But the truck wouldn’t be needed long, and it would never be asked to travel very far or very fast, so it would do.

  Formutesca was wearing his paint-smeared trousers, an old flannel shirt, an old brown leather jacket with ragged elbows and cuffs, and old brown shoes. Parker was in a suit and topcoat, but had his tie loose and his shirt collar open.

  They turned into Thirty-eighth Street from Park Avenue and found a parking space just up the block from the museum. Parker cut the ignition, pocketed the key, and said to Formutesca, “You ready?”

  “I think I have stage fright,” Formuesca said with a slightly shaky smile. “But I’ll be all right.”

  “Good,” Parker said. He picked up the clipboard from the seat between them and got out of the truck. He waited on the sidewalk while Formutesca went around to the rear of the truck and got the toolbox and the seven-foot stepladder.

  “Heavy,” Formutesca said, grinning shakily.

  “All you have to do,” Parker told him, “is look sullen and stupid.”

  “At this hour,” Formutesca said, “that should be easy.” It was a little after two in the morning.

  Parker led the way down the sidewalk to the building just this side of the museum. The pictures Gonor had taken showed this one to be the better bet of the two. The other was a residential hotel, but this one was primarily an office building, with very few twenty-four-hour tenants. Also, the windows in this building’s fifth floor seemed to be at just about the right height, and two of them side by side were of frosted glass, surely meaning rest rooms.

  There was a green canopy out front. Parker went under it, pushed open the door, held it for Formutesca, then went over and pushed the bell button beside the word Superintendent. When nothing happened after half a minute he rang again, and this time there came a response, a garbled voice sputtering out of the speaker above the buttons. The words couldn’t be made out, but the meaning was clear; he wanted to know who it was.

  Parker leaned close to the speaker. “Water supply,” he said. He sounded bored and irritated.

  “What”

  “Water supply,” Parker said, louder.

  “Whadaya want?”

  “We gotta get in.”

  There was a pause, and then a grudging, “Hold on.”

  They waited nearly five minutes, and then a short and heavyset man appeared at the end of the corridor inside. He was wearing a maroon robe, brown pants and slippers, and he walked in a heavy-footed waddle. He came slowly down to the glass doors, looked through them at Parker and Formutesca, then opened one door and said, “You people know what time it is?”

  “We don’t like it any better than you do,” Parker said. “If they’d done it right the first time, we wouldn’t have to be here on any emergency call.”

  “What emergency call? I didn’t call nobody.”

  “Not you,” Parker said. He walked through the doorway, Formutesca behind him. “The City,” Parker said. “It’s that fifth-floor men’s room again.”

  “What do you mean, again?” The superintendent was still half asleep; he was irritated, and he was bewildered. But he wasn’t suspicious.

  “It was supposed to be fixed three months ago,” Parker said. He consulted his clipboard. “Some smart inspector said it was all taken care of.”

  “What inspector?”

  Parker frowned suspiciously at him. “Didn’t you get that men’s room fixed?” he asked. “Three months ago?”

  The superintendent shook his head, befuddled. “There’s nothing wrong with any men’s room in here,” he said. “There hasn’t been.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Parker jabbed a thumb at the street. “You almost had a water main blow up out there, that’s how much there’s nothing wrong.”

  The superintendent looked toward the street, then back at Parker. “I don’t know a thing about it,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Parker, showing disgust. “You know what that means, don’t you? Somebody layin’ down on the job. Nobody came around here three months ago, that’s what happened.”

  “Sure it is,” the superintendent said, happy to have something he could be knowledgeable about. “Nobody came around at all.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Parker said. He shook his head. “All right,” he said, “let’s get the damn thing done right this time. Is it locked up there?”

  “No. I’ll take you up.”

  “Good.”

  Parker felt Formutesca trying to catch his eye, but the worst thing you could do in a situation like this was step out of character. Parker faced front and followed the superintendent down the hall to the elevator, Formutesca coming along behind him.

  They rode up to the fifth floor and the superintendent showed them where the men’s room was. Then Parker said, “All right. What we want you to do is go down and turn off the water. You got a watch with a second hand?”

  The superintendent was confused again, but he nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Okay. We want you to time it. Turn it off for exactly fifteen minutes, and then turn it back on again. You got that?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” said the superintendent.

  “You can go a few seconds one way or the other,” Parker told him, “but get it as close as you can.”

  “Okay,” the superintendent said.

  “We’ll give you a couple minutes to get down there,” Parker said.

  The superintendent turned away, shaking his head. “You never get any sleep in this damn job,” he said.

  “You think you got troubles,” Parker told him.

  “I know,” the superintendent said, walking away. “It’s rough all over.”

  Parker and Formutesca went into the men’s room. Formutesca was grinning the second the door closed. “That was beautiful,” he said. “That was really beautiful.”

  “Don’t giggle and wink when he’s around,” Parker said. “We’re not here for fun.”

  Formutesca looked sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. It was just nervousness. I’ll be better now.”

  “Good.”

  Parker went over and opened the window. Four feet away and about a foot higher than the windowsill was the rim of the museum roof. “Perfect,” Parker said. “Let’s have the ladder.”

  They slid the ladder top-first out of the window till it rested with one end on the museum roof and the other end on the windowsill. Then, while Formutesca held the ladder in place, Parker went on hands and knees across it to the museum roof. He stepped off on to the roof and Formutesca pulled the ladder back in at the other end. If the superintendent should come back in while Parker was gone, Formutesca would just lean against the wall and be stupid.

  The roof surface was tar, quiet beneath Parker’s feet. He hurried over to the mounded shape of the elevator-shaft housing, found the padl
ock holding the lid down, and took from an inside pocket a small envelope with a dozen keys inside. He tried three keys before finding the right one, then put the rest back in the envelope and the envelope back in his pocket. The right key he put in a different pocket, removed the padlock, and lifted the housing cover. He got out a pencil flash and looked inside the shaft.

  It was fine. There was a broad metal beam one could stand on when one first climbed in, and the side cables were easily accessible for climbing down. The top of the elevator was a bare seven feet below him now, being stopped at the top floor, which was unexpected good luck. They’d assumed the Kasempas would keep the elevator at the first-floor level when they weren’t using it, in case Gonor or someone else should visit the place, but apparently they were feeling very secure and sure of themselves.

  The elevator roof itself was perfect, mostly flat, metal, with the trapdoor into the elevator off toward a corner. The thing should work.

  Parker put the pencil flash away, shut the cover, and put the padlock back on. Then he went back across the roof to the lighted men’s room window and saw Formutesca in there looking for him.

  Formutesca smiled and waved when he saw him, then pushed the ladder out the window again. Parker reached for it, rested the top end on the roof rim, and went hands and knees back to the other building.

  Formutesca helped him through the window and then pulled the ladder back in and shut the window. He turned to Parker, not bothering to hide his excitement. “Well? How is it?”

  “Fine,” Parker said. “It’ll work. How long’s it been?”

  Formutesca looked at his watch. “Just about eleven minutes.”

  “Good,” Parker said. “We have time to make a mess.”

  For the next five minutes they attempted to make the room look like a place where plumbers had been at work. Parker flushed the three toilets, emptying their water tanks, and smeared a few streaks of grease here and there on walls and fixtures while Formutesca chipped three tiles out of the wall above one of the sinks and then carelessly glued them back on again, grouting somewhat sloppily around their edges.

  When the superintendent came back, the room looked right. He looked around and said, “You got it done?”

  “We think so,” Parker said. “We’ll have to take a look in the basement, that’s all. You don’t have to stay with us any more if you don’t want.”

  “I don’t know,” the superintendent said. “Maybe I better.”

  “It’s up to you,” Parker said. He took Hoskins’ notebook out of his pocket. “In case this thing acts up again,” he said, “do me a favor. Don’t call the department, call me personally. Otherwise they’ll have me running my ass off. Will you do that?”

  “Sure,” the superintendent said. “No skin off my nose.”

  “Thanks,” Parker said. He wrote on a page of the notebook Mr Lynch, EL5-2598. That was a number in Gonor’s apartment. If in the next few days the superintendent began to have questions or suspicions, if he was troubled or unhappy in any way, he would now call Parker rather than anyone else. It was a way to guard against surprises when they came back.

  Parker tore the page out of the notebook and gave it to the superintendent, who looked at it and tucked it away in his pants pocket. Then the three of them took the elevator down to the basement, Formutesca again carrying the ladder and toolbox. This time Formutesca stayed in character.

  In the basement, Parker kept the superintendent busy showing him where things were the fuse boxes, the hot water line, the main water line while Formutesca quietly looked around for an entrance. Parker wrote things on his clipboard, asked questions, and when Formutesca wandered over again, looked sleepy and stupid, Parker said to the superintendent, “All right, that should do it. I don’t want any more trouble if I can help it.”

  “I know what you mean,” the superintendent said, and led the way to the elevator. Behind him, Formutesca shook his head at Parker, meaning there was no usable way in.

  They rode up to the first floor, walked down toward the door, and Parker stopped and said, “That valve under the sink.”

  The superintendent said, “What?” He was obviously thinking most about going back to bed.

  Parker said to Formutesca, “You know the one I mean. Go on up and check it.”

  “Yeah,” said Formutesca, the word full of boredom and stupidity.

  “This won’t take long,” Parker told the superintendent. “You just take him up and let him check that valve.”

  “Ain’t you coming?”

  “I never want to see that john again,” Parker said, “as long as I live.”

  “I feel the same way myself,” the superintendent said. He was beginning to feel peevish and put-upon. He turned away unhappily and led Formutesca back to the elevator.

  As soon as the elevator started upstairs, Parker went to the front door, opened it, studied the lock for a minute, and then took a ring with half a dozen keys on it from his pocket. He frowned over the keys, selected one, put it in the lock, and it worked. Satisfied, he put it away again and shut the door.

  It was good he had one that would work, since the superintendent’s patience was obviously beginning to run thin. If he hadn’t been able to see a quiet way to get through this door he’d have had to make the superintendent show them the rear of the building next. He didn’t mind exasperating the superintendent, but he didn’t want the man calling some city department of water supply or something tomorrow to complain about being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.

  He waited about three minutes, and then the elevator came back down and Formutesca and the superintendent came out. Parker said, “Was it okay?” That phrasing meant things were all right down here. If the door had proved a problem, he would have said, “Was anything wrong?”

  Formutesca was obviously glad to hear they were done playing this game. “Sure it was okay,” he said, trying for the sullen and stupid sound again but this time not being completely successful at it.

  But it wasn’t a big enough slip for the superintendent to notice. His eyes were half closed; in spirit he was already back in bed and asleep. He walked Parker and Formutesca to the door, held it for them, nodded heavily when Parker voiced the hope that there wouldn’t be any more trouble now, and then shut the door and went away.

  Out on the sidewalk, Formutesca permitted himself a nervous grin. “That last part was scary,” he said. “Being on my own with him.”

  “It was worth it,” Parker told him.

  7

  They looked like small bowling pins with clock faces on their undersides. Parker held them both in his hands, looking at the clock faces, and said, “How accurate are they?”

  “To the minute,” Gonor said, as proud of them as if he’d manufactured them himself. He pointed to one of the clocks. “You see, you set both those red hands, that one for the hour and that one for the minute. The black hands keep the time, and when they coincide with the red hands it goes off.”

  They were in Gonor’s war room, their arsenal spread out on the table for Parker’s inspection. Pistols, machine guns, smoke bombs, gas bombs. Plus coils of rope, knives, rubber gloves, rolls of adhesive tape. And the two time bombs in Parker’s hands.

  Parker said, “Good. We’ll go put them in place.” He turned to Manado and Formutesca standing to one side. “You two all set?”

  Manado was obviously frightened with something more than stage fright, but it didn’t look as though it would immobilize him. He nodded jerkily, his eyes a little too wide. Formutesca, cocky now since his foray with Parker, grinned and said, “It’s in the bag.”

  “It’s never in the bag,” Parker told him, “until afterwards.” He turned back to Gonor. “You ready?”

  “Yes.” Gonor picked up two attaché cases from the floor and put them on the table. They were exactly alike, both black with brass locks. “This is yours,” Gonor said, pushing one of the cases toward Parker. “Do you want to take it now or come back for it?”

&
nbsp; “I’ll take it now.”

  Gonor opened the other attaché case and put the two time bombs in it. He shut it, then looked at the other case and questioningly at Parker. “Aren’t you going to count it?”

  “It’s all there,” Parker said. “You ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Parker took his case and left the room, Gonor following him. The other two stayed behind.

  Parker and Gonor walked through the apartment in silence, went out to the elevator, rode it down, went out to Fifth Avenue, and got themselves a cab heading downtown.

  “Thirty-eighth Street between Park and Lexington,” Gonor said.

  It was drizzling slightly, a cold March rain, the air full of clamminess. The cabby had a balled-up rag on the seat beside him, and every block or two he used it to clear condensation from the windshield. He had the wipers on slow, and they clicked back and forth with abrupt starts and slow sweeps across the glass.

  They got out in front of the museum, knowing the Kasempas would be watching them from windows on the upper floors. But what would they see? Gonor, in the middle of the afternoon, unsuspectingly bringing another American scholar around to the museum.

  Gonor unlocked the front door and led the way in. The air inside had the smell of an empty building, dry and chill and dusty. Shields hung on the walls in the foyer, and through doorways to the left and right Parker could see rows of glass-topped display cases. The wooden floor was highly polished and bare of rugs.

  Gonor led the way: straight ahead and through a long narrow room with display cases on the left and wooden statuettes on pedestals on the right. At the far end was a doorway to a small square room with paintings on the side walls. Opposite was the elevator.

  It was on the first floor now. They boarded, and as they rode up to three Parker checked the trapdoor in the ceiling. There was a small handle that had to be turned. Parker left it in the “open” position.

  The elevator reached the third floor, and for the next ten minutes they looked at the exhibits there. They had no way of knowing if one of the Kasempa brothers was close enough to hear them, so they spoke seldom, and everything they did say they phrased as though Parker were a visiting professor from some college, here for research purposes.