The Hot Rock

3

This time the ebony man with the long thin fingers took Kelp to the room with the pool table right away, without detours or side trips. He bowed his head slightly at Kelp and left, closing the door behind him.

It was a hot night outside, the last week in July, humidity building up toward 1,000 percent. Kelp was in thin slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt and the central air conditioning in here was making him chilly. He wiped leftover perspiration from his forehead, lifted his arms to air his underarms, walked over to the pool table, and racked up the balls.

He didn't feel like much of anything tonight, so he just practiced breaks. He'd rack the balls, line the cue ball up in this spot or in that spot, hit it here or there with or without some kind of english, aim for one spot or another spot on the lead ball, and see what would happen. Then he'd rack them again, set the cue ball up somewhere else, and do it all over again.

When the Major came in he said, "You haven't progressed so far tonight."

"Just fooling around this time," Kelp told him. He put the cue down and took a damp and crumpled sheet of paper from his hip pocket. He unfolded it and handed it over to Iko, who took it with some apparent reluctance to have his fingers touch it. Kelp turned back to the table, where he'd just made a break that had dropped two balls, and began to sink the rest of them, quickly but methodically.

He'd put three away when Iko squeaked, "A helicopter?"

Kelp put the cue down and turned back to say, "We weren't sure you could get your hands on one of those, but if you can't we don't have any caper. So Dortmunder said I should just bring you the list like always and let you decide for yourself."

Iko was looking a little strange. "A helicopter," he said. "How do you expect me to get you a helicopter?"

Kelp shrugged. "I dunno. But the way we figured, you've got a whole country behind you."

"That's true," Iko said, "but the country behind me is Talabwo, it is not the United States."

Kelp said, "Talabwo doesn't have any helicopters?"

"Of course Talabwo has helicopters," Iko said irritably. It looked as though his national pride was stung. "We have seven helicopters. But they are in Talabwo, naturally, and Talabwo is in Africa. The American authorities might ask questions if we tried to import an American helicopter from Talabwo."

"Yeah," Kelp said. "Let me think," he said.

"There's nothing else on this list to cause any trouble," Iko said. "Are you sure you have to have a helicopter?"

"The detention cells," Kelp said, "are on the top floor, which is the fifth floor. You go in the street entrance, you've got five floors of armed cops to go through before you ever reach the cells, and then you've got the same five floors of cops to go through all over again before you get back to the street. And you know what's out on the street?"

Iko shook his head.

"Cops," Kelp told him. "Usually three or four prowl cars, plus cops walking around, going in, coming out, maybe just standing around on the sidewalk, talking to each other."

"I see," said Iko.

"So our only chance," Kelp told him, "is to come down from the top. Get on the roof, and go from there down into the building. Then the detention cells are right there, handy, and we don't even see most of the cops. And after we get the emerald we don't have to fight our way through anybody, all we have to do is go back up to the roof and take off."

"I see," said Iko.

Kelp picked up his cue, dropped the seven, walked around the table.

Iko said, "But a helicopter is very loud. They'll hear you coming."

"No, they won't," Kelp said. He leaned over the table, dropped the four, straightened, said, "There's airplanes going over that neighborhood all day long. Big jets landing at LaGuardia, they go over that neighborhood a lot lower than you'd think. You know, they start their approach, some of them, like out at Allentown."

"You'll use their noise to help you?"

"We've kept a record on them," Kelp said. "We know who the regulars are, and we'll drift in while one of them is going by." He sank the twelve.

Iko said, "What if someone sees you, from some other building? There are taller buildings around there, aren't there?"

"They see a helicopter land on a police station roof," Kelp said. "So what?" He dropped the six.

"All right," Iko said. "I can see where it could work."

"And nothing else can work for a minute," Kelp told him and dropped the fifteen.

"Perhaps," Iko said. He frowned in a troubled way. "You could be right. But the problem is, where am I going to get you a helicopter?"

"I don't know," Kelp said, sinking the two. "Where'd you get your helicopters before this?"

"Well, we bought them, naturally, from-" Iko stopped, and his eyes widened. A white cloud formed above his head, and in the cloud a lightbulb appeared. The lightbulb flashed on. "I can do it!" he cried.

Kelp dropped the eleven and, on ricochet, the eight. That left the three and the fourteen still around. "Good," he said and put the cue down. "How you going to manage it?"

"We'll simply order a helicopter," Iko said, "through normal channels. I can arrange that. When it arrives in Newark for transshipment by boat to Talabwo, it will spend a few days in our warehouse space. I can arrange for you to be able to borrow it, but not during normal working hours."

"We wouldn't want it during normal working hours," Kelp told him. "About seven-thirty in the evening is when we figure to get there."

"That will be fine, then," the Major said. He was obviously delighted with himself. "I will have it gassed up and ready," he said.

"Fine."

"The only thing is," the Major said, his delight fading just a trifle, "it could take a while for the order to go through. Three weeks, possibly longer."

"That's okay," Kelp said. "The emerald will keep. Just so we get our salary every week."

"I'll get it as quickly as I can," Iko said.

Kelp motioned at the table. "Mind?"

"Go ahead," Iko said. He watched Kelp sink the last two and then said, "Perhaps I ought to take lessons in that. It does look relaxing."

"You don't need lessons," Kelp told him. "Just grab a cue and start shooting. It'll come to you. Want me to show you how?"

The Major looked at his watch, obviously torn two ways. "Well," he said, "just for a few minutes."