The Hot Rock

1

Major Iko said, "In the police station?" He stared at everybody in blank disbelief.

They were all there, all five of them. Dortmunder and Kelp, sitting in their usual places in front of his desk. Greenwood, the one they'd gotten out of prison last night, sitting between them in a chair he'd pulled over from the wall. And two new ones, introduced as Roger Chefwick and Stan Murch. A part of Major Iko's mind was fondling those two new names, could hardly wait for this meeting to be over so he could give the orders for two new dossiers to be made up.

But the rest of his mind, the major portion of the Major's mind, was given over to incredulity. He stared at everyone, and most especially at Greenwood. "In the police station?" he said, and his voice cracked.

"It's where I was," Greenwood said reasonably.

"But surely - at the Coliseum you could have - somewhere-"

"He swallowed it," Dortmunder said.

The Major looked at Dortmunder, trying to understand what the man had just said. "I beg your pardon?"

It was Greenwood who answered. "When I saw they were going to get me," he said, "I was in a hall. No place to hide anything. Couldn't even throw it away. I didn't want them to find it on me, so I swallowed it."

"I see," the Major said, a bit shakily, and then smiled a thin smile and said, "It's a good thing for you I'm an atheist, Mr. Greenwood."

In polite bafflement, Greenwood said, "It is?"

"The original significance of the Balabomo Emerald in my tribe was religious," the Major said. "Go on with your story. When did you next see the emerald?"

"Not till the next day," Greenwood said. "I'll sort of skip over that part, if you don't mind."

"I wish you would."

"Right. When I had the emerald again, I was in a cell. I guess they were afraid the rest of the guys might try to spring me right away, 'cause they hid me out in a precinct on the Upper West Side for the first two days. I was in one of the detention cells on the top floor."

"And that's where you hid it?" the Major said faintly.

"There wasn't anything else I could do, Major. I didn't dare keep it on my person, not in jail."

"Couldn't you have just kept on swallowing it?"

Greenwood gave a greenish smile. "Not after the first time I got it back," he said.

"Mm-mm," the Major admitted reluctantly. He looked at Dortmunder.

"Well? What now?"

Dortmunder said, "We're divided. Two for, two against, and one uncertain."

"You mean, whether or not to go after the emerald again?"

"Right."

"But-" The Major spread his hands. "Why wouldn't you go after it? If you've successfully broken into a prison, surely an ordinary precinct house-"

"That's just it," Dortmunder said. "My feeling is we're pushing our luck. We've given you two capers for the price of one as it is. We can't just keep busting into places forever. Sooner or later the odds have to catch up with us."

The Major said, "Odds? Luck? But it isn't odds and luck that have helped you, Mr. Dortmunder, it's skill and planning and experience. You still have just as much skill and are capable of just as much planning as in last night's affair, and now you have even more experience."

"I just have a feeling," Dortmunder said. "This is turning into one of those dreams where you keep running down the same corridor and you never get anywhere."

"But surely if Mr. Greenwood hid the emerald, and knows where he hid it, and-" The Major looked at Greenwood. "It is hidden well, is it not?"

"It's hidden well," Greenwood assured him. "It'll still be there."

The Major spread his hands. "Then I don't see the problem. Mr. Dortmunder, I take it you are one of the two opposed."

"That's right," Dortmunder said. "Chefwick is with me. Greenwood wants to go after it, and Kelp is on his side. Murch doesn't know."

"I'll go along with the majority," Murch said. "I got no opinion."

Chefwick said, "My opposition is similarly based to Dortmunder's. I believe one can reach the point where one is throwing good expertise after bad, and I fear we have reached that point."

Greenwood said to Chefwick, "It's a cinch. I tell you, it's a precinct house. You know what that means, the joint is full of guys typing. The last thing they'll expect is somebody breaking in. It'll be easier than the jug you just got me out of."

"Besides," Kelp said, also talking to Chefwick, "we've worked at the damn thing this long, I hate to give it up."

"I understand that," Chefwick said, "and in some ways I sympathize with it. But at the same time I do feel the mathematical pressure of the odds against us. We have performed two operations now, and none of us is dead, none of us is in jail, none of us is even wounded. Only Greenwood has had his cover blown, and being a single man with no dependents, it won't be at all hard for him to rebuild. I believe we should consider ourselves very lucky to have done as well as we have, and I believe we should retire and consider some other job somewhere else."

"Say," said Kelp, "that's just the point. We're still all of us on our uppers, we've still got to find a caper somewhere to get us squared away. We know about this emerald, why not go after it?"

Dortmunder said, "Three jobs for the price of one?"

The Major said, "You're right about that, Mr. Dortmunder. You are doing more work than you contracted for, and you should be paid more. Instead of the thirty thousand dollars a man we originally agreed to, we'll make it-" The Major paused, thinking, then said, "Thirty-two thousand. An extra ten thousand to be split among you."

Dortmunder snorted. "Two thousand dollars to break into a police station? I wouldn't break into a tollbooth for money like that."

Kelp looked at the Major with the expression of a man disappointed in an old friend and protege. "That's awful little, Major," he said. "If that's the kind of offer you're going to make, you shouldn't say anything at all."

The Major frowned, looking from face to face. "I don't know what to say," he admitted.

"Say ten thousand," Kelp told him.

"A man?"

"That's right. And the weekly amount up to two hundred."

The Major considered. But too quick an agreement might make them suspicious, so he said, "I couldn't make it that much. My country couldn't afford it, we're straining the national budget as it is."

"How much, then?" Kelp asked him in a friendly, helpful sort of way.

The Major drummed fingertips on the desktop. He squinted, he closed one eye, he scratched his head above his left ear. Finally he said, "Five thousand."

"And the two hundred a week."

The Major nodded. "Yes."

Kelp looked at Dortmunder. "Sweet enough?" he asked.

Dortmunder chewed a knuckle, and it occurred to the Major to wonder if Dortmunder too was padding his part. But then Dortmunder said, "I'll look it over. If it looks good to me, and if it looks good to Chefwick, all right."

"Naturally," the Major said, "the pay will continue while you look things over."

"Naturally," Dortmunder said.

They all got to their feet. The Major said to Greenwood, "May I offer you congratulations, by the way, on your freedom."

"Thanks," Greenwood said. "You wouldn't know where I could find an apartment, do you? Two and a half or three, moderately priced, in a good neighborhood?"

"I'm sorry," the Major said.

"If you hear of anything," Greenwood said, "let me know."

"I will," said the Major.