The Hot Rock

11

The New York Coliseum stands between West 58th Street and West 60th Street facing Columbus Circle on the southwest corner of Central Park in Manhattan. The Coliseum faces the park and the Maine Monument and the statue of Columbus and Huntington Hartford's Gallery of Modern Art.

On the 60th Street side, midway along the beige brick wall, there is an entrance surmounted by a large chrome number 20, and 20 West 60th Street is the address of the Coliseum staff. A blue-uniformed private guard is always on duty inside the glass doors of this entrance, day and night.

One Wednesday night in late June, at about three-twenty in the morning, Kelp came walking eastward along West 60th Street wearing a tan raincoat, and when he was opposite the Coliseum entrance he suddenly had a fit. He went rigid, and then he fell over, and then he began to thrash around on the sidewalk. He cried, "Oh! Oh!" several times, but in a husky voice that didn't carry far. There was no one else in sight, no pedestrians and no moving automobiles.

The guard had seen Kelp through the glass doors before the fit started, and knew that Kelp had not been walking as though drunk. He had in fact been walking very calmly until he had his fit. The guard hesitated a moment, frowning worriedly, but Kelp's thrashing seemed to be increasing, so at last the guard opened the door and hurried out to see what he could do to help. He squatted beside Kelp, put a hand on Kelp's twitching shoulder, and said, "Is there anything I can do, Mac?"

"Yes," Kelp said. He stopped thrashing and pointed a.38 Special Colt Cobra revolver at the guard's nose. "You can stand up very slow," Kelp said, "and you can keep your hands where I can see them."

The guard stood up and kept his hands where Kelp could see them, and out of a car across the street came Dortmunder and Greenwood and Chefwick, all dressed in uniforms exactly like the one the guard was wearing.

Kelp got to his feet, and the four marched the guard into the building. He was taken around the corner from the entrance and tied and gagged. Kelp then removed his raincoat, showing yet another uniform of the same type, and went back to take the guard's place at the door. Meanwhile Dortmunder and the other two stood around and looked at their watches. "He's late," Dortmunder said.

"He'll get there," Greenwood said.

Around at the main entrance there were two guards on duty, and at this moment they were both looking out at an automobile that had suddenly come out of nowhere and was hurtling directly toward the doors. "No!" cried one of the guards, waving his arms.

Stan Murch was behind the wheel of the car, a two-year-old Rambler Ambassador sedan, dark green, which Kelp had stolen just this morning. The car had different plates now, and other changes had also been made.

At the last possible second before the impact Murch pulled the pin on the bomb, shoved the door open, and leaped clear. He landed rolling, and continued to roll for several seconds after the sounds of the crash and the explosion.

The timing had been beautiful. No eyewitness - there were none but the two guards - would have been able to say for sure that Murch had leaped before the crash rather than been thrown clear because of it. And no one would have supposed that the sheet of flame that suddenly erupted from the car as it crashed to a stop halfway through the glass doors was not the result of the accident but had been made by the small incendiary bomb with the five-second fuse whose pin Murch had pulled just before his exit.

Nor would anyone suppose that the stains and smears on Murch's face and clothing had been carefully applied almost an hour ago in a small apartment on the Upper West Side.

The crash, at any rate, was magnificent. The car had leaped the curb, had seemed to bound twice in crossing the wide sidewalk, and had lunged into and through the glass doors on the rise, thudding to a grinding halt, half in and half out, and then bursting at once into flame. Within seconds the fire reached the gas tank - it was supposed to, having been assured by some alterations Murch had made this afternoon - and the explosion shattered what glass the car had missed.

No one in the building could have failed to hear Murch's arrival. Dortmunder and the others heard it, and they smiled at one another and moved out, leaving Kelp behind to guard the door.

Their route to the exhibit area was roundabout, involving several corridors and two flights of stairs, but when they at last opened one of the heavy metal doors leading to the second floor exhibit area, they saw their timing had been perfect. There wasn't a guard in sight.

They were all out front, by the fire. Several of them were clustered around Murch, whose head was in a guard's lap and who was obviously in shock, lying there twitching, muttering, "It wouldn't steer… it wouldn't steer…" and moving his arms vaguely, like a man trying to turn a steering wheel. Some of the other guards were standing around the blazing car, telling one another what a lucky guy that lucky guy was, and at least four of them were at four different telephones, calling hospitals and police stations and fire departments.

Inside, Dortmunder and Chefwick and Greenwood made their way quickly and silently through the exhibits toward the Akinzi display. Only a few lights were on, and in the semi-dark some of the exhibits they moved among tended toward the startling. Devil masks, warriors in spear and costume, even wildly designed tapestries, all were a lot more effective now than during normal visiting hours, with all the lights lit and lots of other people around.

When they reached the Akinzi display they went immediately to work. They'd studied this for a week now, they knew what to do and how.

There were four locks to be undone, one in the middle of each side of the glass cube, down at the base, in the steel rim between glass and floor. Once these locks were opened the glass cube could be lifted out of the way.

Chefwick had with him a small black bag of the sort country doctors used to favor, and this he now opened, revealing many slender metal tools of the sort most country doctors never saw in their lives. While Greenwood and Dortmunder stood on either side of him, watching the exit doors on the far walls and the railing of the third-floor balcony overlooking this area and the stairs and escalator toward the front of the building, where they could see the reflected red glow from the fire down in the lobby, while they kept careful watch on all this, Chefwick went to work on the locks.

The first one took three minutes, but after that he knew the system and he did all the other three in less than four minutes more. But still, seven minutes was a long time. The red glow was fading, and the noise from downstairs was ebbing; soon the guards would be coming back to their duties. Dortmunder refrained from telling Chefwick to hurry, but with difficulty. Still, he knew Chefwick was doing the best he could.

At last Chefwick whispered a shrill "Done!" Still kneeling by the last breached lock, he hurriedly put his tools back into his bag.

Dortmunder and Greenwood got on opposite sides of the glass cube. It weighed close to two hundred pounds, and there was no way for them to get a really good grip on it. They could only press their palms against it at the edges and lift. Straining, sweating, they did so, gazing at each other's tense face through the glass, and when they got it up two feet Chefwick slid under and grabbed the emerald.

"Hurry up!" Greenwood said, his voice hoarse. "It's slipping!"

"Don't leave me in here!" Chefwick rolled quickly out from underneath.

"My palms are wet," Greenwood said, even his voice straining. "Lower it. Lower it."

"Don't let it go," Dortmunder called. "For God's sake, don't let it go."

"It won't-I can't-it's-"

The glass slid out of Greenwood's grip. With the pressure gone from the other side, Dortmunder couldn't hold it either. The glass cube dropped eighteen inches and hit the floor.

It didn't break. It went bbrrrooooonnnnNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGINGINGINGinginging.

Shouting from downstairs.

"Come on!" Dortmunder yelled.

Chefwick, rattled, shoved the emerald into Greenwood's hand. "Here. Take it." He grabbed up his black bag.

Guards were appearing at the head of the stairs, far away. "Hey, you!" one of them called. "You stop there, stay where you are!"

"Scatter!" Dortmunder cried and ran to the right.

Chefwick ran to the left.

Greenwood ran straight ahead.

Meanwhile, the ambulance had arrived. The police had arrived. The fire department had arrived. A uniformed policeman was trying to ask Murch questions while a white-garbed ambulance attendant was telling the policeman to leave the patient alone. Firemen were putting out the fire. Someone had taken from Murch's pocket the wallet full of false identification he had put in there half an hour ago. Murch, still apparently dazed and only semi-conscious, was repeating, "It wouldn't steer. I turned the wheel and it wouldn't steer."

"It looks to me," the policeman said, "like you panicked. Something went wrong with the steering and instead of hitting the brake you tromped on the accelerator. Happens all the time."

"Leave the patient alone," the ambulance attendant said.

Finally Murch was put on a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance and driven away, the ambulance siren screaming.

Chefwick, racing pell-mell for the nearest exit, heard the siren screaming and doubled his speed. The last thing he wanted was to spend his declining years in jail. No trains. No Maude. No fudge.

He yanked open the door, found a staircase, raced down it, found a corridor, raced along that, and suddenly found himself face to face with an entrance and a guard.

He tried to turn around while still running, dropped his bag, fell over it, and the guard came over to help him up. It was Kelp, saying, "What's wrong? Something go wrong?"

"Where's the others?"

"I don't know. Should we take off?"

Chefwick got to his feet. They both listened. There was no sound of pursuit. "We'll wait a minute or two," Chefwick decided.

"We better," Kelp said. "Dortmunder's got the keys to the car."

Dortmunder, meanwhile, had run around a thatched-roof hut and joined the chase. "Stop!" he shouted, running along in the middle of a pack of guards. Up ahead he saw Greenwood duck through a door and shut it behind himself. "Stop!" shouted Dortmunder, and the guards all around him shouted, "Stop!"

Dortmunder got to the door first. He yanked it open, held it for all the guards to run through, then shut it behind them and walked over to the nearest elevator. He rode this to the first floor, walked along a corridor, and came to the side entrance where Kelp and Chefwick were waiting. "Where's Greenwood?" he said.

"Not here," said Kelp.

Dortmunder looked around. "We better wait in the car," he said.

Meanwhile, Greenwood thought he was on the first floor but wasn't. The Coliseum, in addition to its first floor, second floor, third floor, and fourth floor, has two mezzanines, the first mezzanine and the second mezzanine. The first mezzanine is between the first and second floors, but only around the outer perimeter of the building, not in the central display area. Similarly, the second mezzanine is between the second and third floors.

Greenwood didn't know about the mezzanines. He had been on the second floor and he had taken a staircase down one flight. Some staircases in the Coliseum skip the mezzanine and go straight from the second floor to the first floor, but some other staircases include the mezzanine among their stops, and it was one of the latter kind that Greenwood had inadvertently chosen. Therefore, he now thought he was on the first floor but he was not. He was on the first mezzanine.

The first mezzanine consists of a corridor that goes all the way around the building. The staff has its offices here, there's a cafeteria, the private detective agency that furnishes the guards has its offices here, various nations maintain offices, there are storage rooms and conference rooms and miscellaneous offices. It was along this corridor that Greenwood was now running, the Balaboma Emerald clutched in his hand as he searched in vain for an exit to the street.

In his ambulance, meantime, Murch was socking his attendant on the jaw. The attendant sagged into sleep and Murch settled him on the other stretcher. Then, as the ambulance slowed to make a turn, Murch opened the rear door and stepped out onto the pavement. The ambulance tore away, siren shrieking, and Murch hailed a passing cab. "O. J. Bar and Grill," he said. "On Amsterdam."

In their other stolen car, the getaway car, Dortmunder and Kelp and Chefwick kept worriedly studying the 20 West 60th Street entrance. Dortmunder had the engine running and his foot was nervously tapping the gas pedal.

Sirens were coming this way now, police sirens.

"We can't wait much longer," Dortmunder said.

"There he is!" cried Chefwick, as the door over there opened and a man in a guard uniform came out. But then half a dozen other men in guard uniforms came out too.

"That's not him," said Dortmunder. "None of them is him." He put the getaway car in gear and got away.

Up on the first mezzanine, Greenwood was still loping along like a greyhound after the mechanical rabbit. He could hear the thundering of pursuit behind him, and now he could also hear the thundering of pursuit from around the corner in the corridor up ahead.

He stopped. He was caught and he knew it.

He looked at the emerald in his hand. Roundish, many-faceted, deeply green, a trifle smaller than a golf ball.

"Drat," said Greenwood, and he ate the emerald.