Get Real

44

DORTMUNDER AND TINY had grown tired of each other’s company, seated here on the hard stairs outside Combined Tool. Dortmunder himself was fairly slow to impatience, but it wasn’t comfortable to be around Tiny when that gentleman was beginning to feel fed up, so what Dortmunder wished, he wished they could get on with it.

They had waited what already seemed a long time before the kid came back up the stairs to report that Kelp had cut through the window with no problems and was on his way now to open this door here. And then they waited some more. And then they waited some more.

And then Tiny said, “Kid, go see what’s up.”

“Okay, Tiny.”

And now they were waiting some more.

“If we could get that motorcycle up here,” Tiny said, “maybe we could drive it through the door. Or maybe the wall beside the door. Sometimes walls are easier.”

“That might work,” Dortmunder said. “We’ll get the kid to drive it. I think there’s a helmet with it.”

“No matter.” Tiny looked down the stairwell. “I don’t think he could drive it up the stairs,” he said. “We’d have to push it.”

And the apartment door opened and Kelp stood there, waving a Glock. “Come in, come in,” he said, as though they’d been the ones dawdling. “Prop the door open for the kid.”

So they entered the living room and, as Dortmunder put a table lamp on the floor to block the door from closing, Tiny said to Kelp, “You have a gun. In your hand.”

“The Asians Doug told us about,” Kelp said. “One of them’s here.”

“Where?”

“Right now, asleep on the kitchen floor.”

“An odd place to sleep,” Tiny suggested.

“That’s where we were,” Kelp said, “when I hit him with the frying pan.”

The kid, out of breath, barreled into the room and shoved the lamp out of the way of the door. “You have a gun,” he told Kelp.

“I know that,” Kelp said. “Come on, I don’t wanna leave him alone.”

So they trooped through a few more rooms, all as tasteful and anonymous as the living room and all, being interior rooms, comfortably air-conditioned. Dortmunder went second into the kitchen, following Kelp, and there on the floor, as advertised, was one of the largest Asian men he’d ever seen. Not in the Tiny league, but big enough so you wouldn’t want to argue with him.

Dortmunder noticed the frying pan on the wooden island in the middle of the room and said, “You hit him with that.”

“Right.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yeah,” Kelp said. “I checked. I figure he’ll be out for a while.”

“So we should find the money,” Tiny said, “and go.”

“It’ll be in some sort of safe,” Dortmunder said, “disguised as something else.” Looking around, he said, “I think it’ll be in the kitchen.”

Nobody else liked that idea. Tiny said, “Why?”

“Because,” Dortmunder told him, “everybody will think it’s in the bedroom.”

“I think it’s in the bedroom,” Tiny said. “So I’ll look in there, and you can look around at this kitchen here all you want.”

“Thank you.”

“And,” Tiny said, “you two guys look around the rest of the place.”

“I kind of like that living room,” Kelp said.

“I have no opinion,” the kid said, “so I’ll just look around.”

So the three of them left Dortmunder with the unconscious Asian. He considered the man. Find something to tie him up? No; the guy seemed really out, and the quicker they found the cash and got out of here the better. So, merely glancing from time to time at his silent companion, to be sure nothing had changed over there, Dortmunder considered the room.

It was a well-appointed kitchen. A wide double sink, with doors beneath fronting stored cleaning products. A big refrigerator, with two doors above, freezer on the bottom A big six-burner gas stove with two ovens beneath, both of them really ovens. Two dishwashers, one large and one small, next to one another. Cabinets mounted on the walls above the counter, and more cabinets under the counter. A broom closet, full of brooms.

Dortmunder opened all the cabinet doors, and behind every one of them was a cabinet, most of them less than half full, a couple empty.

The island was a rectangular wooden block on wheels. He moved it to the side and studied the tile floor under it, and it was nothing but a tile floor. He opened both dishwashers and they were both dishwashers.

Had he been wrong? He’d just believed that people wanting to conceal a safe in this apartment would use the kitchen. It was little more than a matter of faith, but it was a faith he didn’t want to give up.

He checked everything again. All the cabinets were cabinets, none with a false back. Refrigerator refrigerator. Freezer freezer. Dishwashers dishwashers. Stove stove. Broom closet broom closet.

Wait a minute. He opened both dishwashers for a third time, and this time he pulled out the top racks of both, and the top rack of the smaller dishwasher was only half as deep as the other.

Aha. He closed both dishwashers, tugged on the front of the smaller one, and nothing happened. He studied the controls on the front of the thing. One control turned it on and off, the other two dealt with the length and purpose of the cleaning cycles. Leaving the on/off off, he turned each of the other two controls forward and back, slowly, bent over the counter, listening very hard.

There. A satisfying little click.

Now he tugged on the front of the machine and it rolled out into the room, trailing wires and flexible pipe. And behind it, across the rear half of the space, was the front wall of the safe. A dial in the middle of that square face asked him if he knew the combination.

Not yet, but don’t go away.

Dortmunder left the kitchen, moved through the apartment, and found the kid in the very soothing pastel-colored dining room, turning the large heavy dining room chairs one at a time upside down, staring at all those identical bottoms, and putting them back.

When Dortmunder walked in, the kid looked at him, maintaining his stoop, and Dortmunder said, “Get everybody. I found it. In the kitchen.”

He didn’t even bother to gloat.