The Baby Blue Rip-Off

19

So there I stood: Mallory, master cat burglar, caught with my metaphorical pants down. My self-congratulatory thoughts fizzled out like wet firecrackers and were replaced with a rush of emotions, including terror, panic, and the ever-popular despair….

I blinked all that away.

Only for a split second had I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity and fear, but that was one split second too many in a situation as tight as this.

The rest of the second I used more wisely, used it to appraise the situation; the footsteps belonged to two people, it seemed, and they had entered through a doorway in the front of the building, a corner door directly opposite from where I was standing, back by the workbench. They hadn’t seen me (and I hadn’t seen them) because the view was blocked by the green van between us. But I couldn’t think of making a dash for the window, which they had already noticed as being broken, and I wouldn’t have had an ice-cube-in-hell of a chance to make it over there and not get caught, much less seen. Could I circle around the van and sneak out the door behind them?

“Lock that door up,” one of the voices said.

Any other questions, Mallory?

“Already did,” another voice said, with irritation that implied doing so was standard operating procedure. This was a high-pitched voice that belonged, I thought, to my old pal Hulk. He was saying, “Why so uptight about the door?”

“If somebody’s in here, I don’t want ’em getting out.”

“I don’t see nobody,” Hulk observed.

“Probably just some goddamn neighbor kid broke the window to see what was in the big mystery garage. Well, we’ll have a look-see anyway and make sure.”

During that last exchange of dialogue, beginning at “Already did,” I came to the conclusion that my only possible course of action was to duck into the lavatory that took up the corner nearest me next to the workbench. Before I did, I hastily opened up a drawer and traded the piece of black cloth and masking tape for that pair of scissors I’d used, then got shut soundlessly inside the can, all before the guys out there could get past the van to the point where they could see me.

Scissors in hand, I examined my cage. Like the outer, larger room of the garage, the john was not the pigsty you might be led to expect, judging from the exterior of the seedy-looking building. That doesn’t mean you’d eat off the floor, but there were worse toilets in the world to have to make a home in. Seemed to be relatively clean, if not lavish: just bare facilities, standard stool and sink. Cramped it wasn’t, and spaciously empty enough to suggest it had been designed with mechanics in mind, back in whatever era the place was used as a service garage; plenty of room to move around, not that I wouldn’t have liked a dozen closets, two attic entries, and one trapdoor to a basement to hide in. Or at least a shower stall. But no, it was nothing more than a somewhat oversize naked can, with no place to hide unless you were very small and could tread water. No place at all.

Except maybe one.

A large cardboard box, big enough for a small stove, had been stuck in here to serve as an oversize wastebasket. Evidently, enough labor was still done in the garage to make necessary the frequent washing of hands: on the wall was a PULL DOWN, TEAR UP brown-paper towel dispenser, and the soap was strong, mechanic-strength powder in a dispenser over the sink, with the big carton apparently a spare liberated from warehouse duty to catch refuse.

Now I didn’t want to make much noise, but figured the search for the intruder was going to lead here pretty soon, so I waited until I could hear a conversation going on out there, which I hoped would cover any sounds I’d make, and crawled into the box of wadded-up brown paper. Trying not to cause too much of a racket, and imagining every crinkle of paper to be a thunderclap, I squirmed and wriggled and swam in the sea of paper wads, getting a layer of the stuff over me.

It was not comfortable. Like I said before, the box was big enough for a small stove; but I am not shaped like a small stove. Also, most small stoves do not have two cracked ribs. Still, there I was, on my back in the box, my knees touching my chest, my arms around my legs, hugging, and my concentration going toward ignoring the pain, holding onto the scissors, and not breathing heavily.

I was like that for maybe two minutes, a bunched-up, awkward fetus clutching scissors in a box of crumpled towels, and then the john door burst open, like a fat man letting out air, and the light switched on and somebody came clumping in. I felt the box quiver as somebody gripped the side of it to peer in. I gripped the handle of the scissors. Tight.

“Nothing in here,” the voice said. And it didn’t sound like a voice with a wink in it, so I assumed I’d properly fooled the guy.

The door shut, and I was alone in the can again. And thankfully alone in my box. I wouldn’t have liked any company; those used-up towels were obnoxious enough as it was.

Then I did something you will probably think is stupid, but I ask you to remember that everything I’d done for the past hour or so was pretty stupid, so as least I was consistent. What I did was carefully, as soundlessly as possible, get back out of the box so that I could approach the door and lay my ear to the wood and listen to the talk going on out there.

But the thing I heard was not talk. It was the sound of a door slamming. For a moment I wondered if those two guys had left, and then I got my answer. A new voice-an apparent third party who’d just entered-said, “I just talked to Frank, and I don’t like it.”

There was silence for a moment, then: “Me neither.” My buddy Hulk talking. “I think Frank’s going out on a limb on this one.”

“Frank’s going out on a limb? Bull,” the new voice said. “We are the ones going out on the goddamn limb, not him.”

The remaining voice, the authoritative voice belonging to the guy who spotted the broken window, said, “Take it easy. We’ll be out of here by dawn, for Christ’s sake. And Frank’s right; we should cash in on some of our work at least, before we split. We laid the damn groundwork, and it’d be a pity to throw it away without making it pay off a little, anyway. I say go ahead.”

“But in daylight?” This was the new voice again, the whiner.

“Why not? We done it in daylight before.”

“But things weren’t as hot before. That SOB Mallory wasn’t sticking his puss into everything then.”

“That’s right,” Hulk agreed, “and he came around here snooping this afternoon.”

“What? Goddamn!” the whiner shouted.

“Forget Mallory,” said the authoritative one, who’d evidently already been filled in by Hulk about my visit, whereas it seemed to be news to the whiner. “We can handle him. We got him covered.”

Covered? What the hell did they mean by that?

“Well, even without Mallory, it’s still hotter,” the whiner said. “There’s a murder in it now, and things are going to be hot and stay that way.”

The authoritative voice was edged with anger this time. “I know that. Why do you think we’re moving out tonight if I didn’t know that?”

“I tell you, it bothers me,” the whiner continued, trying a new tack. “I don’t feel right about that old dead lady.”

“For Christ’s sake. Forget that old bitch.”

“It’s not that I give a damn about her, exactly; it’s I do give a damn about getting stuck with a murder rap just because the old bag up and died on us.”

“I’m getting sick of your goddamn complaining.”

“Yeah? Well I’m getting sick of your goddamn orders. You’re not running this show. Frank is.”

“Well, Frank says we’re going ahead with it. Right now.”

“Well, the hell with Frank and the hell with you,” the whiner said, a new toughness in his voice. “You and P. J. here can go ahead, but me, I’m going in the house and have a beer and see if I can cop a feel off P. J.’s woman. Let me know what happens.”

I heard a door slam, and the other two guys started in grumbling. I strained to make it out, finally caught a piece of what the authoritative guy was saying-“Let’s go talk to the stupid bastard”-and heard the door slam again.

I cracked the door of the can. Peeked out.

They were gone.

Gone back inside the house, I guessed.

I put the lid down on the toilet and sat, tried to get my heart working again, ran my fingers across my scalp to see if my hair was standing on end. Then I rose, ran some water in the sink, and splashed some on my face. It was good to be alive. It was good not to have any more cracked ribs than I already had; it was good not being kicked in the nuts.

I opened the lavatory door and walked back like a ballerina into the garage. My top priority was now to get the hell out of here and call Brennan. Obviously, going by what these guys had been saying, there was something on for tonight. Actually, a couple of somethings. It plainly sounded like they planned to get out of Port City by next morning, pack up and clear out.

But something else was up, too.

One last job, maybe? Groundwork was laid, the one guy had said, a pity to waste it. That had to be it, then: one last job, tonight.

On my way back over to the window, I stopped at the van. Out of almost idle curiosity, I tried the back doors of the van. Unlocked. I swung them open and looked in.

Empty.

That cinched it. Since they were planning to clear out of town by dawn, you would think the van would be loaded full of goodies. But no. Totally empty. Which meant one thing: there was one final farewell job planned for tonight. This van would be filled, but at some victim’s house. By nightfall this vehicle would be crammed full of possessions and valuables earned and collected by somebody in a life of hard and probably honest work, only to be ripped off by some punks with a collective IQ in the neighborhood of Lee Trevino’s average golf score.

I started closing the van doors, then stopped short.

Voices.

Voices outside the building, right outside the building, and the door was opening.

Damn! They were back already.

I ducked inside the van and closed the rear doors. Not all the way, but gently, so I could eventually nudge them open and hop out again when all was clear.

Sure.

“Well,” the authoritative voice was saying, “screw him then. The two of us can do it.”

“Hell, yes,” Hulk said, uncertain.

And I heard a sound that had to be the garage door going up.

And another sound that had to be the rear doors of the van being pushed tight-shut.

And another that had to be the van’s motor starting up.

We were moving.