Metzger's Dog

7 As Chinese Gordon worked in his shop he tried to keep Doctor Henry Metzger in his sight. It had been a week since he’d installed the steel shutters on the windows and the automatic lock on the sliding door, both without consulting Doctor Henry Metzger. Now what was beginning to bother Chinese Gordon was that Doctor Henry Metzger didn’t seem to be aware that anything had changed. The entire building had been closed so tightly that Chinese Gordon would have believed nothing larger than an ant could possibly break into it. Still, a dozen times a day Doctor Henry Metzger would disappear from the shop and reappear a short time later, ostentatiously cleaning his fur of the dust and seeds and leaf particles he’d picked up walking through the tall weeds in the empty lot next door.

At first Chinese Gordon had tried to ignore it, but Doctor Henry Metzger showed him no mercy. If Chinese Gordon didn’t acknowledge immediately that he’d returned, Doctor Henry Metzger would spit out the debris from his fur and sneeze and shake himself so hard that his ears made a noise flapping against his head. Once, to emphasize the ease with which he eluded Chinese Gordon’s security measures, he brought back with him a pair of panty hose, a feat of such difficulty that it amounted in Chinese Gordon’s mind to a major taunt.

There was a loud rap on the sliding door, and Chinese Gordon shouted, “Yeah!” as he went to slide the bolt aside. Immelmann slipped in, already talking, and closed the door behind him.

“Chinese, I’ve been thinking about this thing a lot lately, and I think we ought to put it off for now.”

“We can’t. Tonight is perfect. I’ve checked the place out and we can do it. There’s no moon, the night will be cloudy, and everything is set. If we wait too long those professors will have cut all of Grijalvas’s cocaine into lines and pumped them up the noses of five hundred degenerate bums who claim to have migraine headaches.”

“I’m starting to get a migraine myself,” muttered Immelmann. “Chinese, I just don’t feel lucky.”

Chinese Gordon started carefully hanging his hand tools on their pegs along the wall. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” said Immelmann. “I didn’t get much sleep last night and I don’t feel sharp. You shouldn’t do something big if you don’t feel sharp.”

“Why didn’t you sleep?”

“There was a party in the apartment across the court. It was unbelievably noisy. The music was so loud I could feel it, and people kept going outside and then when they came back they’d have to shout louder than the music to get somebody to open the door. Then I called the police.”

“So?”

“So I dialed the number and a very strange voice came on. It was slow and deep and kind of gravelly, like this: ‘Who…is…this?’ I said, ‘I’d like to make a complaint.’ The voice, honest to God, Chinese, it sounded weird, like a big fat ghost. ‘Who…is…this?’ again. Three times. I said, ‘I’d like to file a complaint.’ Then the voice said in that same way, ‘Go…fuck…yourself.’ Then he hung up.

“Then I called the phone company and they said they’d connect me. As soon as I heard it ringing I knew it was the same voice: ‘Go…fuck…yourself,’ before I could say anything. I didn’t sleep at all.”

Chinese Gordon suddenly realized he’d lost sight of Doctor Henry Metzger, who had gone out through his secret exit again. “Don’t be a fool,” Chinese Gordon said. “It’s just nerves. This thing will only take an hour or so, and then you can sleep tonight and the next few days after that. You could even spend the night calling the same number and giving him a hard time.”

Immelmann pondered the idea. Then he shrugged and said, “I’m going to go try him right now,” and stomped up the stairs to Chinese Gordon’s living quarters.

Kepler didn’t knock, just kicked the door and yelled “Yo!” When Chinese Gordon let him in, Doctor Henry Metzger scampered in among the feet, and Chinese Gordon glared at him in anger.

Kepler said, “Hello, Doctor Henry,” and the cat rubbed its body against him and leaped up on the workbench. Chinese Gordon clenched his jaw and turned away so Kepler wouldn’t sense his annoyance. Kepler said, “You know, Chinese, I wouldn’t have put all those steel shutters and bolts and things on if I were you. It makes burglars think you’ve got something in here they’d want. What did it cost you, anyway?”

“Not much,” Chinese Gordon lied. “I did it myself, of course.”

“Well, if you need any more of the quarter-inch steel, let me know. I can get it cheap. Free, practically.”

“Thanks,” said Chinese Gordon, “but—”

Immelmann was coming down the stairs.

“Well?” said Chinese Gordon.

Immelmann said, “This time it was a different voice. The voice said, ‘Los Angeles Police Department.’ I have it figured out, though. There must be something wrong with my phone. When I dial the police number it registers wrong and gets The Voice.”

“Sounds possible,” said Chinese Gordon. “They can send a guy to fix it tomorrow.”

“Fix it?” said Immelmann. “Hell, no. I’m going to leave it that way. I can call him up any time I feel like it—in the middle of the night, of course.”

Chinese Gordon wondered how long it would take Immelmann to realize that he’d have to be awake to call the number, or that the second call had been placed by an operator. He hoped it would take at least twenty-four hours.

CHINESE GORDON DROVE THE VAN past the campus gate, and the uniformed parking service man gave a nod. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and Chinese Gordon had known the man wouldn’t look carefully enough at the ULA parking sticker to notice that it was three strips peeled off another vehicle and pasted on. At this hour the traffic was all in the exit lane, and the parking men were beginning to relax.

Chinese Gordon drove up the narrow street past a row of ten-story dormitories and into the parking structure. He pulled into a space marked “Service Vehicles Only” and left the motor running while Kepler and Immelmann applied magnetic signs to the sides and rear door of the van. When Chinese Gordon had insisted on a yellow revolving emergency light on top of the van, Kepler had said, “But Chinese, it’s ridiculous. The signs say ‘Klondike Air Conditioning Service.’” Chinese Gordon had replied, “Have you ever seen a repair truck without one of those?” Immelmann had agreed, so now he stepped on the front bumper and applied the finishing touch, a big yellow light in the center of the roof above the windshield.

“Not yet,” said Chinese Gordon. “The ceiling’s too low. We’ll never get out of the ramp.”

“Oh,” said Immelmann, and climbed back in the van.

Chinese Gordon drove out of the parking ramp and stopped to let Immelmann slide the light into its brackets. Kepler glanced at his watch, a big Rolex with a face like a gauge from an airplane cockpit. “Four thirty-nine.”

“Good,” said Chinese Gordon. “We’ll be parked outside the building at five when they all go home, so the night security will think we’ve been around all day.”

“You’re a clever man, Chinese,” said Kepler.

“Devious,” said Immelmann, squinting his eyes and pondering. “Odd that you should be such a jackass in other ways.”

“It’s one of the mysteries,” Kepler agreed.

“Get down now,” said Chinese Gordon. “We’re coming to the Social Sciences Building.” Immelmann and Kepler moved to the back of the van and crouched on opposite sides of the back door. Kepler sat back with his feet across the box covering the barrel of the M-39, glanced at his watch again, and said, “Four forty-six.”

Immelmann lay down flat as though to go to sleep. He sighed and said, “You know, nobody gives a shit if it’s four twenty-eight or four ninety-seven. Being with you two has been something of a religious experience for me.”

“Oh?” said Kepler.

“It proves that God, in His bounty and generosity, always creates more horses’ asses than there are horses to attach them to.”

“Amen,” said Kepler, popping open a beer can.

Chinese Gordon got out of the van and placed the red-and-white-striped sawhorse in front of the grille. He was pleased with it, even though the paint wasn’t completely dry—it looked so official and businesslike, but it served no purpose. He buckled his tool belt and then placed a second sawhorse behind the van. He walked into the Social Sciences Building and began stalking the hallways. He’d been here two days before, but that had been just a preliminary trip to get a general idea of how to penetrate the building. Now he was here to study the rooms. The time to find out where somebody kept something valuable was the end of the day, when they locked it up. He knew nobody would pay attention to him because he had already assumed his disguise, a gray work shirt with a label that said “Dave” sewn over the pocket.

He knew exactly what he was searching for, so he wasted no time looking into classrooms and departmental offices. It would be a place with some activity, like a laboratory or a clinic, with more than one room, and right about now they’d be putting the cocaine into a safe. Chinese Gordon started on the top floor and began to work downward. It wouldn’t be on the ground floor, because somebody would think of that as a security risk. On the fourth floor he found what he was looking for. The sign on the door said “Institute for Psychobiological Research. Director: Gottlieb.” Stenciled in big red letters on the door was “Admittance by Appointment.” Chinese Gordon admired that way of putting it: No sense offending those invited to come in for a free toot of cocaine, and no sense spending the day fighting off a crowd of marble-eyed beggars with noses like snorkels. Chinese Gordon kept moving. He knew that these people would be closing up for the day now, and they’d be in the hallways within minutes.

On the third floor things were about the same. There were a few classrooms, a lot of little offices, and not much else. Near the far end of the hall, he passed an office that seemed to have an unusual amount of activity. There were too many people coming out. The place didn’t look big enough to hold them. Three of them were probably secretaries, women in their late twenties or thirties who wore high heels and makeup and expensive, conservative clothes. Then there were others, people too old to be undergraduate students, wearing work shoes and sneakers and boots, their outfits all reminiscent of lumberjacks or cowboys. He decided to wait near the stairwell. For something to do, he unraveled a few feet of insulated wire from the spool on his tool belt and began cutting and splicing it into insane patterns that would intimidate anyone who saw them.

At five-fifteen two men came out together. The first didn’t look as though he belonged in a university. He was in his middle thirties, wearing a beautifully tailored gray suit and carrying a briefcase of lustrous Italian leather, so thin that it seemed designed to carry two-page letters or maybe contracts. The second man was older, his coat a worn and ageless tweed, and his briefcase was of the voluminous sort that might have held books, or the term papers of a fair-sized class. He was saying, “It’s very disruptive.”

The first man answered, “The work will be done this weekend. By Monday the whole security problem will be solved.” As the two disappeared into the elevator, Chinese Gordon smiled.

WHEN CHINESE GORDON RETURNED to the van it was dark outside and the few cars that passed were moving as quickly toward the campus exit as the narrow, winding street permitted. He opened the door of the van and Immelmann and Kepler climbed out. Both were now wearing gray work shirts like his. Over the left breast pocket each had a patch sewn on that said “Dave.” Immelmann had stolen them from a dryer in a Laundromat.

“Okay,” said Chinese Gordon. “Make it look heavy.”

The two lifted out a large cardboard box that said “HOTPOINT POWER PLUS” on it and followed Chinese Gordon into the building. The hallways were now empty, and the steps of the men echoed on the tiles. Chinese Gordon noted with satisfaction that the elevator was waiting on the first floor. Nobody had gone up, but somebody had come down.

The fourth floor was only dimly lit, another indication to Chinese Gordon that things were going well. He held the box while Kepler and Immelmann flipped a coin to see who would open the door. Kepler picked the two locks and then stood back.

“There must be an alarm. Let’s check it out first,” he whispered.

“I don’t see any lights,” said Chinese Gordon.

“How about strips?” said Immelmann.

“No, but there must be something,” Kepler muttered. “My high school principal had an alarm in his office twenty years ago, for Christ’s sake, and the locks were a hell of a lot easier to pick than this.”

“That was when you were there,” Chinese Gordon whispered. “Besides, maybe he kept more cocaine than these guys.” He pushed past them into the room and set the box on the floor. The others followed.

In the dim glow of the single window, the room looked like the waiting area of a doctor with an impoverished practice. There were couches and mismatched chairs arranged to face a receptionist’s desk. A few worn magazines and crumpled newspapers were inexpertly stacked on a coffee table.

“My turn,” said Immelmann, who knelt to pick the lock on the door to the inner room, then slowly pushed the door open. “No alarm here either, but this could be the place.”

“Why?” said Kepler.

“There’s a little safe in the corner.”

“Of course that’s it,” said Chinese Gordon. “Do you see any other rooms? Watch it with the safe. That’s sure to be wired.”

Kepler and Immelmann walked up to the safe. Kepler chuckled. “Beautiful. Just beautiful.”

“What?” snapped Chinese Gordon.

“Go down and start the engine, Chinese. There aren’t even liquor stores with these things anymore. It’s a joke. It’s wired, all right. Come here.”

He pulled a length of wire from the spool on Gordon’s belt and snipped the wire off, then looped it and taped it to the strip of wire on the wall. Then he yanked off the wire to the safe and said, “Now it’s not.”

“I have something to do,” said Chinese Gordon. “Wait for me here.”

“Don’t take too long,” said Immelmann. “We’ll have the safe in the box in a minute. Just have to cut some bolts.”

Chinese Gordon took the stairs to the third floor. It took him only a moment to find the office he had noticed earlier, and he had no trouble opening the lock. He had expected things to be easy, but this reminded him of a dream he’d once had in which the walls of buildings were made of a thick, soft concoction like cheese.

Inside, he found a line of doors on a long hallway. He studied the doors and the placement of the rooms and decided on the one at the far end of the hall. It would be either a broom closet or the boss’s office. It must be on the corner of the building, so that meant a chance for two windows. The professor he’d seen before was definitely of two-window rank.

He opened the lock and smiled. It was the boss’s office, all right. There was a big desk and an old manual typewriter. No secretary would use a machine like that. The walls were lined with books, the sort of books that cost too much unless you got them free. Chinese Gordon scanned the office. There was no safe, no display case for something rare and valuable. He moved his face close to the painting on the wall, but even in this light he could see it was only a commercially printed reproduction of an Utrillo street scene. He’d stayed in a motel once where the same print hung over the bed.

Maybe it was a waste of time. They could have been talking about bolting down the office machines. He sat on the desk and thought. The younger man wasn’t the type for bolting down typewriters. In a five-hundred-dollar suit he wasn’t selling burglar alarms, either. Whatever it was had to be valuable. Upstairs Kepler and Immelmann were loading a million dollars in cocaine the university had been keeping in what amounted to a jewelry box, but the man hadn’t been up there. He’d been down here.

Chinese Gordon rushed into the hallway and began opening doors. He peered into each room for some sign that it might hold something worth stealing. There was nothing. In the fourth room he stopped. Inside was a computer terminal. Shit, he thought. What if they were just worried that somebody would come in and access their fucking data base? For an instant he considered smashing the screen of the terminal. It would have given him pleasure, but he controlled the impulse.

Everything about the way the rooms were arranged would induce the feeling that the farthest office was the safest. It had to be there.

Chinese Gordon went back to the boss’s office and stood in the doorway. There were books on the desk. When he tried the desk drawers they weren’t even locked, so he didn’t search them closely. Then he noticed the row of filing cabinets. There were four. The lock button was pushed in on the third one only. The time was going by. If this wasn’t it, then he’d have to forget it.

Chinese Gordon picked the lock and flung open the top drawer, which contained nothing. The second drawer was empty too. In the third drawer was a box the size of a ream of paper. He tried the last drawer, and it was empty.

There was no strong reason to take the box, but there wasn’t a strong reason not to, either. God knew he’d done enough work for the damned thing. He left the office with the box under his arm and ran up the stairs to the fourth floor.

IMMELMANN AND KEPLER WERE ALREADY IN THE HALLWAY holding the carton between them. When Chinese Gordon appeared, they moved into the elevator.

“Problems?” asked Kepler. “If there’s a security guard with a broken neck, I’d like to know.”

“No,” said Chinese Gordon. “Just thought I’d pick this up on a hunch. I’ll tell you about it later.”

The elevator door opened and they stepped out. The first-floor vestibule was still empty. Somewhere in a distant hallway they could hear the metallic clanking of a bucket and the squish of a mop wringer. They moved quickly out of the building. As the others made their way down the walk to the van, Chinese Gordon gently guided the door shut. It locked behind them automatically, and he smiled to himself. He liked it when things were as he’d expected them to be.

Chinese Gordon drove along the dark, deserted, winding road across the campus, stopping at every corner to obey the signs that protected the thousands of pedestrians who crowded the walks in the daytime. He started singing, “Look out the way, Old Dan Tucker,” as he made the long curve that led to the exit gate.

He was building to his favorite part when he’d get to sing about old Dan Tucker comin’ to town, when the headlights settled on the figure of a man in the road. It was a uniformed parking attendant, and he was setting up a sign that said “Exit Closed.” As the van drew nearer and the headlights brightened on him, the man raised his hand and squinted. His face and hands looked unnaturally white.

“Shit!” said Kepler. “It’s the same one.” He pulled up his pant leg and grasped the grip of his pistol.

“One of these times you’re going to blow your foot off,” Immelmann observed.

Kepler turned to Chinese Gordon. “You said they’d change shifts.”

Chinese Gordon said, “No problem. See?” The man stepped back and waved them on. “We’re going to make it.”

Suddenly the man’s face changed. The squinting eyes widened, the pinched expression flattened, and the mouth hung open as the man disappeared from the glare of the lights and the van glided past.

Kepler was holding the .357 Magnum in his hand now. First he lunged across Immelmann to reach the side window, but Immelmann’s long, lanky shape was trapped in the way. Immelmann bent his elbows like wings and tried to pull his bony knees to his chest, but he only succeeded in jerking a kneecap into Kepler’s chin. Chinese Gordon could hear Kepler’s teeth clap shut with a click. Kepler dropped to the floor and scrambled toward the back of the van.

Chinese Gordon studied the dark silhouette of the security man in the rearview mirror. The man was running now, a fat trot that seemed to bounce and jolt his body up and down without bringing it much nearer to the van.

Kepler shouted, “I’ve got the box off, Chinese!”

Immelmann said, “What for?”

“He’s going for the kiosk, you idiot! The telephone!”

Chinese Gordon stopped at the traffic light and glanced ahead for an opening in the stream of cars. Kepler was waving his pistol and shouting, “You’ve got to take out the kiosk, Chinese! Now, before he gets to the phone!”

Chinese Gordon pressed the three buttons under the dashboard. The generator whirred, the fan hummed, and the back door slid open. In the mirror he could see the lighted parking kiosk, a tiny outpost in the darkness, centered in the crosshairs. He could see the parking guard’s chubby shape trotting along, his hat now gone. Chinese Gordon grasped the remote-control switch in his right hand. Ten minutes could make all the difference.

He said, “Hold onto something” and flicked the switch with his thumb. The gun roared, the van jolted forward, and Chinese Gordon’s view was obscured by flame and smoke and movement. When he looked through the rearview mirror again, he could see that the kiosk was gone. Strewn along for a distance of a hundred feet beyond were pieces of burning wood and chunks of pulverized cinder block. He could see the parking guard crawling on his hands and knees down the center of the street at amazing speed.

Chinese Gordon stepped on the gas pedal and pulled out into traffic, the van trailing smoke out the back door and side vents. Cars along the boulevard had pulled over and stopped, as though the terrible noise had stunned them. Chinese Gordon turned on the flashing lights and leaned on the horn as he hurtled down the street among them. He squealed around the corner on two wheels and headed for the freeway entrance.

Immelmann moved to the rear of the van to help Kepler close the door. “I wonder what they earn,” he said.

“What?” shouted Chinese Gordon.

Immelmann smiled. “You know, those parking guys.”