The Hot Rock (10 page)

The police car stopped. It was that or run over him. Murch leaned on the fender and announced loudly, “I wanna go home. Brooklyn. Take me to Brooklyn, cabby, and be fast about it.” It was well after midnight and except for Murch this residential block on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was quiet and peaceful.

The non–driving policeman got out of the police car. He said, “Comere, you.”

Murch staggered over. Winking hugely he said, “Never mind the meter, pal. We can work out a private arrangement. The cops’ll never know.”

“Izzat right?” said the cop.

“That’s only one of the million things the cops don’t know,” Murch confided.

“Oh, yeah?” The cop opened the rear door. “Climb aboard, chum,” he said.

“Right,” said Murch. He lurched into the police car and fell asleep at once on the rear seat.

The cops didn’t take Murch to Brooklyn. They took him to the precinct house, where they woke him without gentleness, took him from the back seat of their car, trotted him up the slate steps between the green lights — the globe on the left one was broken — and turned him over to some other cops on the inside. “Let him sleep it off in the tank,” one of them commented.

There was a brief ritual at the desk, and then the new cops trotted Murch down a long green corridor and shoved him into the tank, which was a big square metal room full of bars and drunks. “This isn’t right,” Murch told himself, and he began to shout. “Yo! Hey! What the hey! Son of a bitch!”

All the other drunks had been trying to sleep it off like they were supposed to, and Murch, doing all that shouting, woke them up and irritated them. “Shut up, Bo,” one of them said.

“Oh, yeah?” Murch said and hit him in the mouth, and pretty soon there was a good fight going on in the drunk tank. Most people missed when they swung, but at least they were swinging.

The cell door opened and some cops came in, saying, “Break it up.” They broke it up, and worked it out that Murch was the cause of the trouble. “I ain’t staying here with these bums,” Murch announced, and the cops said, “Indeed you aren’t, brother.”

They took Murch out of the drunk tank, being not at all gentle with him, and ran him very rapidly up four flights of stairs to the fifth and top floor of the precinct, where the detention cells were.

Murch was hoping for the second cell on the right, because if he got the second cell on the right that was the end of the problem. Unfortunately, there was somebody else already in the second cell on the right, and Murch wound up in the fourth cell on the left. They pushed him in at high speed and shut the door behind him. Then they went away.

There was light, not much, coming from the end of the corridor. Murch sat down on the blanket–covered metal bunk and opened his shirt. Inside, taped to his chest, were some sheets of typewriter paper and a ballpoint pen. He removed these from his chest, wincing, and then made a lot of diagrams and notes while it was still fresh in his mind. Then he taped it all back to his chest again, lay down on the metal bunk, and went to sleep.

In the morning he was given a good talking to, but because he had no record and he apologized and was very chagrined and embarrassed and decent about it all, he was not held.

Outside, Murch looked across the street and saw a two year–old Chrysler with MD plates. He went over and Kelp was behind the wheel, taking photographs of the front of the station house. Chefwick was in the back seat, keeping a head count on people going in and coming out, cars going in and coming out at the driveway beside the building, things like that.

Murch got into the Chrysler beside Kelp, who said, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Murch said. “Boy, don’t ever be a drunk. Cops are death on drunks.”

A little later, when they were done, Kelp and Chefwick drove Murch across town to where his Mustang was parked. “Somebody stole your hubcaps,” Kelp said.

“I take them off when I come to Manhattan,” Murch said. “Manhattan is full of thieves.” He opened his shirt, removed the papers from his chest again, and gave them to Kelp. Then he got in his car and drove home. He went up to 125th Street and over to the Triborough Bridge and around Grand Central Parkway to Van Wyck Expressway to the Belt Parkway and home that way. It was a hot day, full of sun and humidity, so when he got home he took a shower and then went downstairs to his bedroom and lay on the bed in his underwear and read what Cahill had to say about the Chevy Camaro.

It was a hot night outside, the last week in July, humidity building up toward 1,000 percent. Kelp was in thin slacks and a short–sleeved white shirt and the central air conditioning in here was making him chilly. He wiped leftover perspiration from his forehead, lifted his arms to air his underarms, walked over to the pool table, and racked up the balls.

He didn’t feel like much of anything tonight, so he just practiced breaks. He’d rack the balls, line the cue ball up in this spot or in that spot, hit it here or there with or without some kind of english, aim for one spot or another spot on the lead ball, and see what would happen. Then he’d rack them again, set the cue ball up somewhere else, and do it all over again.

When the Major came in he said, “You haven’t progressed so far tonight.”

“Just fooling around this time,” Kelp told him. He put the cue down and took a damp and crumpled sheet of paper from his hip pocket. He unfolded it and handed it over to Iko, who took it with some apparent reluctance to have his fingers touch it. Kelp turned back to the table, where he’d just made a break that had dropped two balls, and began to sink the rest of them, quickly but methodically.

He’d put three away when Iko squeaked, “A
helicopter?
”

Kelp put the cue down and turned back to say, “We weren’t sure you could get your hands on one of those, but if you can’t, we don’t have any caper. So Dortmunder said I should just bring you the list like always and let you decide for yourself.”

Iko was looking a little strange. “A
helicopter,
” he said. “How do you expect me to get you a
helicopter?
”

Kelp shrugged. “I dunno. But the way we figured, you’ve got a whole country behind you.”

“That’s true,” Iko said, “but the country behind me is Talabwo, it is not the United States.”

Kelp said, “Talabwo doesn’t have any helicopters?”

“Of course Talabwo has helicopters,” Iko said irritably. It looked as though his national pride was stung. “We have seven helicopters. But they are in Talabwo, naturally, and Talabwo is in Africa. The American authorities might ask questions if we tried to import an American helicopter from Talabwo.”

“Yeah,” Kelp said. “Let me think,” he said.

“There’s nothing else on this list to cause any trouble,” Iko said. “Are you sure you have to have a helicopter?”

“The detention cells,” Kelp said, “are on the top floor, which is the fifth floor. You go in the street entrance, you’ve got five floors of armed cops to go through before you ever reach the cells, and then you’ve got the same five floors of cops to go through all over again before you get back to the street. And you know what’s out on the street?”

Iko shook his head. “Cops,” Kelp told him. “Usually three or four prowl cars, plus cops walking around, going in, coming out, maybe just standing around on the sidewalk, talking to each other.”

“I see,” said Iko.

“So our only chance,” Kelp told him, “is to come down from the top. Get on the roof, and go from there down into the building. Then the detention cells are right there, handy, and we don’t even
see
most of the cops. And after we get the emerald we don’t have to fight our way through anybody, all we have to do is go back up to the roof and take off.”

“I see,” said Iko.

Kelp picked up his cue, dropped the seven, walked around the table.

Iko said, “But a helicopter is very loud. They’ll hear you coming.”

“No, they won’t,” Kelp said. He leaned over the table, dropped the four, straightened, said, “There’s airplanes going over that neighborhood all day long. Big jets landing at La Guardia, they go over that neighborhood a lot lower than you’d think. You know, they start their approach, some of them, like out at Allentown.”

“You’ll use their noise to help you?”

“We’ve kept a record on them,” Kelp said. “We know who the regulars are, and we’ll drift in while one of them is going by.” He sank the twelve.

Iko said, “What if someone sees you, from some other building? There are taller buildings around there, aren’t there?”

“They see a helicopter land on a police station roof,” Kelp said. “So what?” He dropped the six.

“All right,” Iko said. “I can see where it could work.”

“And nothing else can work for a minute,” Kelp told him and dropped the fifteen.

“Perhaps,” Iko said. He frowned in a troubled way. “You could be right. But the problem is, where am I going to get you a helicopter?”

“I don’t know,” Kelp said, sinking the two. “Where’d you get your helicopters before this?”

“Well, we bought them, naturally, from —” Iko stopped, and his eyes widened. A white cloud formed above his head, and in the cloud a light bulb appeared. The light bulb flashed on. “I can do it!” he cried.

Kelp dropped the eleven and, on ricochet, the eight. That left the three and the fourteen still around. “Good,” he said and put the cue down. “How you going to manage it?”

“We’ll simply order a helicopter,” Iko said, “through normal channels. I can arrange that. When it arrives in Newark for transshipment by boat to Talabwo, it will spend a few days in our warehouse space. I can arrange for you to be able to borrow it, but not during normal working hours.”

“We wouldn’t want it during normal working hours,” Kelp told him. “About seven–thirty in the evening is when we figure to get there.”

“That will be fine, then,” the Major said. He was obviously delighted with himself. “I will have it gassed up and ready,” he said.

“Fine.”

“The only thing is,” the Major said, his delight fading just a trifle, “it could take a while for the order to go through. Three weeks, possibly longer.”

“That’s okay,” Kelp said. “The emerald will keep. Just so we get our salary every week.”

“I’ll get it as quickly as I can,” Iko said.

Kelp motioned at the table. “Mind?”

“Go ahead,” Iko said. He watched Kelp sink the last two and then said, “Perhaps I ought to take lessons in that. It does look relaxing.”

“You don’t need lessons,” Kelp told him. “Just grab a cue and start shooting. It’ll come to you. Want me to show you how?”

The Major looked at his watch, obviously torn two ways. “Well,” he said, “just for a few minutes.”

The doorbell rang.

Dortmunder got heavily to his feet, went over to the door, and peered through the spy hole. Kelp’s cheerful face was framed there, as in a cameo. Dortmunder opened the door and Kelp came in, saying, “Well, how’s it going?”

Dortmunder shut the door. “You look pleased with life,” he said.

“I am,” Kelp said. “Why not?” He glanced at the money on the coffee table. “You don’t seem to be doing too bad yourself.”

Dortmunder limped back to the sofa and sat down. “You don’t think so? Out all day, walking from door to door, chased by dogs, jeered at by children, insulted by housewives, and what do I get for it?” He made a contemptuous wave at the money on the coffee table. “Seventy bucks,” he said.

“It’s the heat that’s slowing you down,” Kelp told him. “You want a drink?”

“It isn’t the heat,” Dortmunder said, “it’s the humidity. Yeah, I want a drink.”

Kelp went to the kitchenette and talked from there, saying, “What sort of dodge you working?”

“Encyclopedias,” Dortmunder said. “And the problem is, you ask for more than a ten–buck deposit they either balk or they want to write a check. As it is, I got one ten dollar check today, and what the hell am I going to do with that?”

“Blow your nose in it,” Kelp suggested. He came out of the kitchen with two glasses containing bourbon and ice. “Why you doing the encyclopedias?” he asked.

Dortmunder nodded at the slender briefcase over by the door. “Because that’s what I got the display case on,” he said. “You can’t sell a thing without a lot of bright pieces of paper.”

Kelp handed him a glass and went over to sit down in the armchair. “I guess I’m luckier,” he said. “Most of my work is done in bars.”

“What are you up to?”

“Me and Greenwood are working the smack over by Penn Station,” Kelp said. “We split almost three hundred today.”

Dortmunder looked at him in disbelief. “The
smack?
That still works?”

“They lap it up like cream,” Kelp said. “And why wouldn’t they? It’s me and the mark against Greenwood, there’s no way on earth we can lose. One of us has to win.”

“I know,” Dortmunder said. “I know all about it, I’ve tried that dodge myself once or twice, but I don’t have the face for it. It needs cheerful types like you and Greenwood.” He sipped at his bourbon and sat back on the sofa, closing his eyes and breathing through his mouth.

“Hell,” Kelp said, “why not take it easy? You can make ends meet on Iko’s two hundred.”

“I want to build a stake,” Dortmunder said, keeping his eyes closed. “I don’t like living on the bone like this.”

“That’s a hell of a stake you’ll build,” Kelp told him, “at seventy bucks a day.”

“Sixty yesterday,” Dortmunder said. He opened his eyes. “We’ve been tapping Iko four weeks since Greenwood got out. How much longer you think he’ll ante up?”

“Till he gets the helicopter,” Kelp said.

“
If
he gets it. Maybe he won’t get it at all. He didn’t sound happy when he paid me last week.” Dortmunder drank some bourbon. “And I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “I don’t have the belief in this job I have in some things. I’ve got my eyes open for something else, I’ve spread the word around I’m available. Anything else comes along, that rotten emerald can go to hell.”

“That’s the way I feel too,” Kelp said. “That’s why Greenwood and me are matching coins up and down Seventh Avenue. But I believe Iko’s going to come through.”

“I don’t,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp grinned. “You want to put a little side bet on it?”

Dortmunder looked at him. “Whyn’t you call Greenwood over and I can bet you both?”

Kelp looked innocent. “Say, don’t be in a bad mood,” he said. “I’m just kidding with you.”

Dortmunder emptied his glass. “I know it,” he said. “Build me another?”

“Sure thing.” Kelp came over and took Dortmunder’s glass and the phone rang. “There’s Iko now,” Kelp said, grinning, and went out to the kitchenette.

Dortmunder answered the phone and Iko’s voice said, “I have it.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dortmunder said.