Good Behavior (15 page)

Garrett perked up a little. He actually liked Elaine, even though he thought she was sort of wimpy and silly. “How is the kid?” he asked. “Get over all that religion business?”

“We're working on it,” Ritter said darkly. A flick of cuff, and he looked at his watch. “Our freedom fighters will be assembling. Time for the pep-talk.”

“Freedom fighters,” Garrett echoed, and couldn't prevent a slight expression of repugnance to curl his lip. Coming through the Margrave offices to this meeting he had seen them lolling about in the various rooms, telling one another hair-raising anecdotes, nearly sixty hard-bitten mercenaries, merciless veterans of uncounted wars in Africa and Asia and Central America, assembled by Frank Ritter to spearhead the “liberation” movement that would repay that upstart South American dictator Pozos for becoming an annoyance. Garrett considered himself manly, God knows, but he was also civilized, and these “freedom fighters” were nothing but timber wolves in human shape. You could
smell
the testosterone. He said, “I just don't understand why you're assembling that bunch of thugs
here
.”

“Security,” his father told him. “In any of the more usual staging areas, Florida or Texas or wherever, there'd be too much possibility of information leakage. Most of these men are known to the Federal law-enforcement agencies. If they assemble somewhere, it becomes known. But
anybody
can assemble in New York City without being noticed, that's what this town is for. So they come here, and they'll spend the weekend in these offices and the dormitory, they'll study our maps and models of the terrain, and they'll organize their plan of attack. On Monday, two of our buses will take them out to our airfield on Long Island, where our plane will fly them south to Guerrera, refueling along the way at our resort island in the Caribbean.”

This part was fun for Garrett, like playing Dungeons & Dragons back in college. “And when they get there?” he said.

“There's an anti-government underground already in place,” Ritter said. “Pro-American, oddly enough, but all involved with land reform and that nonsense. With proper financing, they could probably take over on their own, but they're dirt poor. We negotiated with Mr. Avilez, the rebels' man in New York pleading their case at the UN, and we've arranged a trade of mineral rights for financing, but instead of financing we'll send our own army. The rebels will cooperate until Pozos is overthrown, and then you'll fly down and help them decide who runs the next government.”

“So it's not another Bay of Pigs,” Garrett said.

“Absolutely not,” Ritter said. “We have the people, and we'll go on having the people until we
have
the people.” He smiled, and looked around this pleasant room, symbol of his empire, and then frowned, staring at a half-closed door across the way.

“Dad? What is it?”

“I'm not sure.” Ritter got to his feet and strode across the room to shove that door open and look in at a small book-lined research library, with refectory table and four heavy wooden chairs in the middle of the room. The door in the opposite wall was closed. Ritter shook his head and turned away.

Garrett had followed him, and now said, “What's up?”

“Strangest thing,” Ritter said. “For just a second, I thought I saw Elaine standing in this doorway.”

Garrett looked past his father at the library. “Elaine? Down here?”

“Ridiculous, I know.”

“You think—Do you think she could have heard what we were talking about? The invasion? Would she tell anybody?”

Ritter's mouth formed a mirthless grin. “She doesn't talk, remember? Besides, it was just a trick of the light, she's locked away upstairs. Come along, let's explain to our freedom fighters what they're fighting for.”

22

“I think it's bad luck to whistle in an elevator,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp said, “John, you think everything's bad luck.” But he stopped whistling.

It was still Saturday afternoon, and so still possible to use the elevators without calling attention to oneself, and J.C. Taylor's office had already become confining. Wilbur Howey had gone into several minutes of frozen dazzled silence when he'd first come across the Scandinavian marriage secrets book, but ever since, he'd been going through it with the avidity of a teenager with a book on hotrod customizing, popping and snapping in all directions and piping, “Say!” at intervals like a mantel clock. Meantime, Tiny insisted on reading aloud great long sections of the how-to-be-a-detective book with an attempted sarcastic delivery but stumbling along slowly and mispronouncing all the long words, while Stan over at the window produced running commentary on Saturday afternoon's traffic on Fifth Avenue and the nearby cross-streets, so when Kelp had pointed out that he hadn't yet seen the places they intended to burgle tonight Dortmunder had immediately said, “I'll show you.”

“That's okay, John,” Kelp had said. “It's the twenty-sixth floor, right? I can find it.”

“I'll
show
you,” Dortmunder had said.

To go from the seventh floor to the twenty-sixth floor, because of the wonders of modern technology, it was necessary to take two elevators. They were alone in the first elevator, going down to the lobby, during which ride Kelp, his musical side awakened by the piano in the Taylor office, had started whistling something that might have been “Malaguena” if it had all been in the same key. In the vaulted lobby, with a couple of security guards in pale blue uniforms and black gunbelts chatting casually together over by the closed newsstand, they walked around and took a 22–35 elevator, sharing it with an extremely scruffy four-man rock group arguing about the harmonics. “No,” one of them kept saying, “it's
duh-
buh-buh,
duh
-buh-buh.” Another one was saying, “That's not even in four-four,” when the elevator stopped at twenty-six. “You want
duh-
buh,
duh-
buh,” Kelp told them, as he and Dortmunder got off. The doors slid shut on the rock group's astounded and revolted faces.

Dortmunder said, “Andy, I don't think they were looking for your help.”

“Well, they needed it,” Kelp said. “This is it, huh?”

This was it. An office directory faced them from the wall opposite the bank of elevators. They stepped over and studied it:

 

Dortmunder said, “They're all wholesalers and importers, so I guess they don't need a storefront down on the street.”

“Duncan Magic,” Kelp said. “I'll want to take a look in there, too.”

“I figured you would,” Dortmunder said.

They walked down the corridor together. The left wall was a cream-colored blank, but the right side was a series of plate-glass display windows and glass-paned shop doors, just as though these actually were storefronts down on the street. The first outfit they passed was Dearborn Jade Importers, with figurines and jewelry set out on glass shelves in the windows and the phrase “To The Trade Only” painted in gold letters on the glass door. Beyond them, Asiatic Antique Jewelry had similar displays and the identical statement on the door. Both shops were closed for the weekend.

At this end of the hall was the fire door marked
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.
“You open this door after six o'clock,” Dortmunder said, pushing on it, “and you set off the alarm down in the basement.”

They stepped through, the door automatically closed itself behind them, and on its other side was the concrete stairwell painted gray that they knew from upstairs. Pointing to a large metal plate mounted low on the wall next to the door, Dortmunder said, “That's the alarm system. Everything goes through there, the simple door alarms and the television monitors and everything else. That's what our friend Howey is supposed to neutralize.”

“Weird little guy,” Kelp said. “But if Tiny says he's good, he's good.”

“Let's hope so,” Dortmunder said, and went on, “The reason we picked
this
floor is because none of these companies use the closed-circuit television system, so when we do the bypass there won't be anything missing down in Security Control.”

“Gee, I like this caper,” Kelp said. “Even without the nun, you know?”

Dortmunder glanced up the stairway. “Yeah, well, the nun,” he said.

Kelp said, warningly, “John, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, don't think it. May would turn you into stew.”

“I know that,” Dortmunder said. “Believe me I do. I wonder how good Howey is at climbing stairs.”

“Well, he'll have all night to get there,” Kelp said. “Let's go look at the rest of these places. Where's that magic store?”

“Down the other way, past the elevators.”

They went through the fire door again and back down the hall. Past the elevators were more display windows, just on the one side, stretching all the way down to the end. Porcelain, jade, unmounted opals, semiprecious stones, ivory. Figurines, chess sets, rings and bracelets and necklaces of beaten gold with inlaid stones. The windows of Duncan Magic, midway along, with their bright red plastic balls and blue intertwined triangles and multi-colored squares of cloth and shiny lacquered boxes, with their top hats and wands in gleaming black and their false faces featuring eyeless grinning red Satans, were a kind of vulgar party-crasher amid all this restrained gaudiness of wealth.

“Very nice,” Kelp said. “
Very
nice.” But he was standing in front of Duncan Magic when he said it, looking at the bouquets of plastic flowers and the shiny chrome rings. This was the only place on twenty-six open on Saturday afternoon; inside, fathers and sons leaned on the counters to watch the salesman/magicians manipulate the tricks. Kelp looked as though he wanted to join them.

Dortmunder said, “Okay? You seen everything now?”

“Do you suppose these things come with instructions?” Kelp asked. “So you can see how it's done?”

“Probably so,” Dortmunder said. “Otherwise, who'd buy it?”

“Yeah, that's right.” Kelp nodded at the Satans, who grinned back. “See you later,” he said.

When they got back to the elevators, Dortmunder said, “Let's walk down.”

“Walk? We'll do enough of that tonight.”

“We ought to check the territory,” Dortmunder pointed out, “see is there anything along the way might be trouble.”

“What's gonna be along the way?” Kelp asked. “That's the fire stairs, by law they got to keep them clear and open.”

“Just to see,” Dortmunder said.

“You saw this part of it,” Kelp reminded him. “That's what it'll all look like.”

Dortmunder shook his head. “Andy,” he said, “how much of a hurry are you in to get back to that office down there?”

Kelp thought about that. “Maybe we oughta check the stairwell,” he said.

“Good thinking,” said Dortmunder.

So they walked down eighteen flights of stairs—there was no thirteenth floor, a thing hardheaded New York City real estate developers do to propitiate some very old gods indeed—and Kelp had been correct. Every landing looked like every other landing, the entire stairwell being empty and clear. In the wall at each floor was another of those low metal wall panels concealing the security systems. And, for the last five flights, they were hearing somebody whistle, “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad.” Dortmunder said, “It has to be, you know. It couldn't be anybody else.”

“I know,” Kelp said.

And it was. When they reached the seventh-floor landing, there was Wilbur Howey himself, seated cross-legged tailor fashion on the floor. He had removed the metal plate over the security system wiring and was now poking around in the green and yellow and red and black spaghetti inside with a screwdriver and a line tester. Various other tools were spread out around him on the floor. He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't notice Dortmunder and Kelp's arrival until Dortmunder said, “Howey? What if somebody sees you?”

“Whoop!” cried Howey, and yanked both hands out of the panel. Blinking up at Dortmunder, he said, “Say, there, partner, don't sneak up on me like that! You don't want to startle a fellow when he's in there with the burglar alarms. What if my hand slipped? What if I made a little signal downstairs in Security?”

Dortmunder said, “What if somebody comes along and sees you here?”

Howey grinned and winked and snapped off a salute with the line tester. “Howdy, sir!” he piped. “Howdy, ma'am! Just doing the maintenance here, you know, we never sleep, no sirree!”

Kelp said, “John, he has to clear this door before six o'clock, so we can get
into
the stairwell later tonight.”

Dortmunder, not wanting to admit he hadn't thought of that, said, “I just wanted to know did he have a cover story, that's all.”

“Say, you think I'm green?” Howey demanded.

“No, no,” Dortmunder said. Then, vague memories of British Navy movies unreeling in the back of his mind, “Carry on,” he said, and reached for the doorknob.

“Whoops!” cried Howey. “Don't touch that! Say, pal, just hold it there, will you, give me a minute here.” He poked deep inside the panel with a screwdriver, while Dortmunder gave the top of his head an unfriendly look, then finally said, “Okay, pal, you can open it now.”