The Hot Rock

5

The lavender Lincoln with the MD plates nosed slowly amid the long low warehouses on the Newark docks. The setting sun cast long shadows across the empty streets. Today was Tuesday, the fifteenth of August; the sun had risen at eleven minutes past five this morning and would set at two minutes before seven this evening. The time was now six-thirty.

Murch, who was driving, found the sun reflected into his eyes from the rearview mirror. He switched the mirror to the night setting, reducing the sun to a yellowish ball in an olive haze, and said irritably, "Where the hell is this place anyway?"

"Not much farther," Kelp said. He was holding the typed sheet of instructions in his hands and was sitting beside Murch. The other three were in back, Dortmunder on the right, Chefwick in the middle, Greenwood on the left. They were all in their guard uniforms again, the policelike costumes they'd worn at the Coliseum. Murch, who didn't have a uniform like that, was wearing a Greyhound bus driver's jacket and cap. Although it was properly hot for August outside, the air conditioning inside made it jacket-and-cap-wearing weather.

"Turn there," Kelp said, pointing ahead.

Murch shook his head in disgust. "Which way?" he said with studied patience.

"Left," Kelp said. "Didn't I say that?"

"Thank you," Murch said. "No, you didn't."

Murch turned left, into a narrow blacktop alley between two brick warehouses. It was already twilight in here, but sun shone orange on stacked wooden crates at the far end. Murch steered the Lincoln around the crates and out to a large open area surrounded on all sides by the backs of warehouses. The blacktop ran one lane wide along the rear of the warehouses, like a frame around a picture, but the picture itself was nothing but a big flat square of weedy dirt. In the middle of the empty space stood the helicopter.

"That's big," Kelp said. He sounded awed.

The helicopter looked huge, standing out there all alone like that. It was painted a dull Army brown, had a round glass nose, small glass side windows, and blades that hung out like washlines.

Murch jounced the Lincoln over the rough ground and stopped near the helicopter. Up close it didn't look as gigantic. They could see it was just a little taller than a man and not much longer than the Lincoln. Squares and rectangles of black tape covered the body here and there, apparently to hide identifying numbers or symbols.

They all got out of the cool Lincoln into the hot world and Murch rubbed his hands together as he grinned at the machine in front of them. "Now, there's a baby that'll go," he said.

Dortmunder, suddenly suspicious, said, "You did drive one of these things before, right?"

"I told you," Murch said. "I can drive anything."

"Yeah," Dortmunder said. "That's what you told me, I remember that."

"Right," said Murch. He kept grinning at the helicopter.

"You can drive anything," Dortmunder said, "but the question is did you ever drive one of these things before?"

"Don't answer him," Kelp said to Murch. "I don't want to know the answer, and neither does he, not now. Come on, let's load up."

"Right," said Murch, while Dortmunder slowly shook his head. Murch went around and opened the Lincoln's trunk and they all started to carry things from the trunk over to the helicopter. Chefwick carried his black bag, Greenwood and Dortmunder carried the machine guns and between them toted by its handles a green metal box full of detonators and tear gas grenades and miscellaneous tools. Kelp carried a cardboard carton full of handcuffs and strips of white cloth. Murch checked to be sure the Lincoln was locked up tight, then followed carrying the portable jammer, a heavy black box about the size of a beer case, bristling with knobs and dials and retracted antennas.

The inside of the helicopter was similar to the inside of a car, with two padded bucket seats up front and a long seat across the back. There was stowage space behind the back seat into which they shoved everything, then arranged themselves with Murch at the wheel, Dortmunder beside him, and the other three in back. They shut the door and Dortmunder studied Murch studying the controls. After a minute Dortmunder said in disgust, "You never even saw one of these things before."

Murch turned on him. "Are you kidding? I read in Popular Mechanics how to make one, you don't think I can drive one?"

Dortmunder looked over his shoulder at Kelp. "I could be peddling encyclopedias right now," he said.

Murch, having been insulted, said to Dortmunder, "Come on, now, watch this. I hit this switch here, see? And this lever. And I do this."

A roaring started. Dortmunder looked up, and through the glass bubble he could see the blades rotating. They went faster and faster and became a blur.

Murch tapped Dortmunder's knee. He was still explaining things as he did this and that to the controls, even though Dortmunder couldn't hear him any more. But Dortmunder kept watching, because anything was better than looking up at the noisy blur overhead.

Abruptly, Murch smiled and sat back and nodded and pointed out. Dortmunder looked out and the ground wasn't there. He leaned forward, looking through the bubble, and the ground was way down below, orange-yellow-green-black, jagged with long shadows from the setting sun. "Oh, yeah," Dortmunder said softly, though no one could hear him. "That's right."

Murch fiddled around for a couple of minutes, getting used to things, making the helicopter do some odd maneuvers, but then he settled down and they began to move northeast.

Dortmunder had never realized before just how full the sky was. Newark Airport was just a little ways behind them, and the sky was as full of circling planes as a shopping center parking lot on a Saturday is full of people circling to find a place to park. Murch was moving along under them, heading for New York at a good clip. They passed over Newark Bay and Jersey City and Upper Bay and then Murch figured out how to steer and he turned left a little and they followed the Hudson north, Manhattan on their right like stalagmites with cavities, New Jersey on their left like uncollected garbage.

After the first few minutes, Dortmunder liked it. Murch didn't seem to be doing anything wrong, and aside from the noise it was kind of nice to be hanging up in the sky here like this. The guys in back were nudging each other and pointing at things like the Empire State Building, and Dortmunder turned at one point and grinned at Kelp, who shrugged and grinned back.

The jet they were planning to use for cover normally roared over the police station at seven thirty-two every evening. Tonight they wouldn't be able to hear it, not being able to hear anything but themselves, so they would either have to see it or just take a chance on its being there. Dortmunder hadn't realized noise would be a problem like this, and it troubled him, detracting from the enjoyment of the ride.

Murch tapped him on the knee and pointed to the right. Dortmunder looked, and over there was another helicopter, with a radio station's call letters on the side. The pilot waved, and Dortmunder waved back. The man beside the pilot was too busy to wave, talking into a microphone and looking down at the West Side Highway, which was all snarled up.

Far away on their left the sun was sinking slowly into Pennsylvania, the sky turning pink and mauve and purple. Manhattan was already in twilight.

Dortmunder checked his watch. Seven-twenty. They were doing well.

The plan was to circle around the police station and come at it from the rear, so the cops out front wouldn't get a glimpse of the helicopter landing on their roof. Murch kept following the Hudson north, therefore, until Harlem stood snaggle-toothed on their right, and then he made a wide sweeping U-turn. It was like being a kid on one of those Coney Island rides, only higher up.

Murch had figured out the altitude adjustment by now. He eased down through the air over the Upper West Side, figuring out the street they wanted from landmarks like Central Park and the meeting of Broadway with West End Avenue. And then, dead ahead, there stood the black rectangle of the police station roof.

Kelp leaned forward and tapped Dortmunder's shoulder. When Dortmunder looked at him, he pointed to the sky on their right. Dortmunder looked up there and saw the jet coming out of the west, sweep-winged, sparkling, noisy. Dortmunder grinned and nodded.

Murch put it down on the roof as gently as he'd put a beer glass on a bar. He cut the engine and in their own sudden silence they could hear the passage of the jet, sliding down the sky above them toward LaGuardia.

"Last stop," Murch said, and the jet noise faded away to the east.

Dortmunder opened the door and they all clambered out. Chefwick hurried over to the door in the small shacklike construction atop the roof while the others unloaded the helicopter. Kelp took a pair of cable shears, went over to the front left edge of the roof, lay down on his belly, reached down and out, and cut the phone wires. Murch set the portable jammer down on the roof, turned it on, put earphones on, and began twiddling with the dials. All radio broadcasting from this building promptly became unintelligible.

By now Chefwick had the door open. Dortmunder and Greenwood had stuffed their pockets with detonators and tear gas grenades, and they followed Chefwick down the stairs to the windowless metal door at the bottom. Chefwick studied this door a second, then said, "I'll have to blast this one. Go on back up."

Kelp was on the way down, carrying the cardboard carton of handcuffs and strips of white cloth. Dortmunder met him midway and said, "Back up on the roof. Chefwick has to blast."

"Right."

The three of them hurried up to the roof, where Murch had left the jammer and was sitting on the roof near the front edge, several detonator caps beside him. He looked over at them and waved. Dortmunder showed him two fingers, meaning he should wait two minutes, and Murch nodded.

Chefwick came upstairs. Dortmunder said to him, "How we doing?"

"Three," Chefwick said in a distracted sort of way. "Two. One."

Phoom, said a noise.

Grayish smoke drifted lazily up the stairwell and out the door.

Dortmunder dashed downstairs through the smoke, found the metal door lying on its back at the bottom, and hurried through the doorway into a short square hall. Straight ahead, heavy barred gates blocked the end of the hall where the stairway went down. An astonished-looking cop was sitting on a high stool there, just inside the gates, with a paper-filled lectern beside him. He was a thin and elderly white-haired cop, and his reflexes were a little slow. Also, he wasn't armed. Dortmunder knew, from both Greenwood and Murch, that none of the cops on duty up here were armed.

"Take him," Dortmunder said over his shoulder and turned the other way, where a stout cop with a ham and cheese sandwich on rye in his hand was trying to close another gate. Dortmunder pointed the machine gun conversationally and said, "Stop that."

The cop looked at Dortmunder. He stopped and put his hands up in the air. One slice of rye dangled over his knuckles like the floppy ear of a dog.

Greenwood meanwhile had convinced the elderly cop to contemplate his retirement. The cop was standing beside his lectern with his hands up while Greenwood tossed three detonator caps and two tear gas grenades through the bars and down the stairs, where they made a mess. The idea was that no one was supposed to come upstairs.

There was one more officer on duty up here. He'd been in the area between the second gate and yet a third, where there was a scarred wooden desk. He'd been sitting at this desk, reading Ramparts, and when Dortmunder and Greenwood led the other two cops in at machine-gun point, the third one looked at them in bewilderment, put down his magazine, got to his feet, raised his hands over his head, and said, "You sure you got the right place?"

"Open up," Dortmunder said, gesturing at the last gate. Through there, in the detention block, arms could be seen waving through cell bars on both sides. Nobody in there knew what was going on exactly, but they all wanted to be a part of it.

"Brother," cop number three told Dortmunder, "the hardest case we got in there is a latvian sailor hit a bartender with a fifth of Johnny Walker Red Label. Seven stitches. You sure you want one of our people?"

"Just open," Dortmunder told him.

The cop shrugged. "Anything you say," he said.

Meanwhile, on the roof, Murch had started tossing detonator caps at the street. He wanted to make noise and confusion without killing anybody, which was easy the first couple of times he dropped the caps, but which became increasingly difficult as the street filled up with cops running around trying to figure out who was attacking who and from where.

In the precinct captain's office, on the second floor, the quiet evening had erupted into bedlam. The captain had gone home for the day, of course, the prisoners upstairs had been given their evening meal, the evening patrolman shift had been sent on its way, and the lieutenant in charge had been relaxing down into that slow quiet period of the day Dortmunder had been counting on. The lieutenant had been glancing through detectives' reports, in fact, looking for the dirty parts, when people started to run into his office.

The first one hadn't actually run, he'd walked. The patrolman on the switchboard it was, and he said, "Sir, the phone's gone dead."

"Oh? We'd better call the phone company to fix it pronto," the lieutenant said. He liked the word "pronto," it made him feel like Sean Connery. He reached for the phone to call the phone company, but when he held it to his ear there wasn't any sound.

He became aware of the patrolman looking at him. "Oh," he said. "Oh, yes." He put the phone back on its hook.

He was saved, momentarily, by the patrolman from the radio room, who came running in, looking bewildered, to say, "Sir, somebody's jamming our signal!"

"What?" The lieutenant had heard the words, but he hadn't comprehended their meaning.

"We can't broadcast," the patrolman said, "and we can't receive. Somebody's set up a jammer on us, I can tell, we used to have the same thing in the South Pacific."

"Something's broken," the lieutenant said. "That's all." He was worried, but he was damned if he was going to show it. "Something's just gotten broken, that's all."

There was an explosion somewhere in the building.

The lieutenant leaped to his feet. "My God! What was that?"

"An explosion, sir," the switchboard patrolman said.

There was an explosion.

"Two explosions," the radio patrolman said. "Sir."

There was a third explosion.

A patrolman ran in, shouting, "Bombs! In the street!"

The lieutenant took a quick step to the right, and then a quick step to the left. "Revolution," he babbled. "It's a revolution. They always go for the police stations first."

Another patrolman ran in, shouting, "Tear gas in the stairwell, sir! And somebody's blown up the stairs between the fourth and fifth floors!"

"Mobilize!" screamed the lieutenant. "Call the Governor! Call the Mayor!" He snatched up the phone. "Hello, hello! Emergency!"

Another patrolman ran in, shouting, "Sir, there's a fire in the street!"

"A what? A what?"

"A bomb hit a parked car. It's burning out there."

"Bombs? Bombs?" The lieutenant looked at the phone he was still holding, then flung it away as though it had grown teeth. "Break out the riot guns!" he shouted. "Get all personnel in the building to the first floor, on the double! I want a volunteer to carry a message through the enemy lines!"

"A message, sir? To whom?"

"To the phone company, who else? I've got to call the captain!"

Upstairs in the detention block, Kelp was using the handcuffs to lock cops' wrists behind their backs and the lengths of white cloth to gag them. Chefwick, having taken the keys to the cells from the desk, was unlocking the second cell on the right. Dortmunder and Greenwood were keeping alert, machine guns at the ready, and the clamor from all the other cells had increased to near pandemonium.

Inside the cell Chefwick was opening, staring out at them all with the blank astonished delight of someone whose most outlandish wish-fulfillment fantasy has just come true, was a short, wiry, bearded, dirty old man in a black raincoat, brown trousers, and gray sneakers. His hair was long and shaggy and gray, and so was his beard.

Chefwick opened the cell door. The old man said, "Me? Me, fellows?"

Greenwood went in, his machine gun carried casually in his left hand, and headed directly to the rear wall, brushing by the old man, who kept blinking at everybody and pointing at himself.

The side walls of the cell were metal and the front was composed of bars, but the rear wall, being the outer wall of the building, was stone. Greenwood stood on tiptoe, reached up to just under the ceiling, and plucked out a small piece of stone that didn't look any different from any other part of the wall. He then reached in behind where the stone had been.

Kelp and Dortmunder meantime had hustled the three cops into the detention block and were waiting just outside the cell to put the cops in there when Greenwood came out.

Greenwood, his fingers in the hole in the wall, looked around at Dortmunder and gave a very glassy smile.

Dortmunder went over to the cell doorway. "What's the matter?"

"I don't under-" Greenwood's fingers were scrabbling around in the hole like spiders. Faintly from outside they could hear detonator caps going off.

Dortmunder said, "It isn't there?"

The old man, looking from face to face, said, "Me, fellows?"

Greenwood looked at him in sudden suspicion. "You? Did you take it?"

The old man suddenly looked astonished in a fearful way. "Me? Me?"

"He didn't take it," Dortmunder said. "Look at Mm. He couldn't reach up there, for one thing."

Greenwood was beginning to get wild. "Who, then?" he said. "If not him, who?"

"The thing was there almost two months," Dortmunder said. He turned to Kelp. "Ungag one of them."

Kelp did so, and Dortmunder said to him, "When did this bird take occupancy?"

"Three A.M. this morning."

Greenwood said to Dortmunder, "I swear I put it-"

"I believe you," Dortmunder said. He sounded tired. "Somebody found it, that's all. Let's get out of here." He walked out of the cell, a troubled Greenwood coming frowning behind him.

The old man said, "What about me, fellows? You're takin' me along, ain'tcha, fellows?"

Dortmunder looked at him, then turned to the ungagged cop and said, "What's he in for?"

"Exposing himself in Lord and Taylor."

"It's a frame-up!" cried the old man. "I never-"

"He's still in his working clothes," the cop said. "Have him open his raincoat."

The old man began to fuss and fidget. "That don't mean anything," he said.

Dortmunder said, "Open your raincoat."

"It don't mean a thing," the old man insisted.

"Open your raincoat," Dortmunder said.

The old man, hesitant, muttering, opened his raincoat and spread it wide. Underneath, he wasn't wearing brown trousers at all. He was wearing cut-off trouser legs that extended up to just above the knee, where they were held on with garters. Above that, he wore nothing under the raincoat at all. He needed a bath.

Everybody looked at him. The old man giggled.

Dortmunder said, "Maybe you ought to stay here." He turned to the cops. "Go on in there with him."

The cops went in, Chefwick locked the door, and they left. There was no one at all at the head of the stairs, down past the last gate, but they tossed two more tear gas grenades down that way anyway. They hurried up the stairs to the roof, following the getaway plan just as though the Balabomo Emerald had been there where Greenwood left it, and at the top Dortmunder dropped three detonators down the stairwell and shut the door.

Murch was already in the helicopter, and when he saw them coming he started the engine. The rotors began to spin and roar, and Dortmunder and the others ran through the wind to the side of the helicopter and climbed in.

Down on the first floor, the lieutenant paused in his supervising of the handing out of riot guns to cock a head and listen to the unmistakable chuff-chuff of a nearby helicopter. "My God!" he whispered. "They must be supplied by Castro!"

As soon as everybody was aboard, Murch lifted the helicopter into the air and swung them away north into the night. They ran without lights, curving north and west over Harlem again, then dropping low over the Hudson River and heading south.

Murch was the only one who didn't know about the missing emerald, but when he saw that no one else was happy he began to understand that something must have gone wrong. He kept trying to find out what, paying no attention to the controls or the dark water rushing by just below the flimsy craft they were in, so Dortmunder finally put his cupped hands against Murch's ear and bellowed the facts into his head. Murch then wanted to turn it into a conversation, but when Dortmunder pointed at the tanker they were about to crash into in Upper Bay, Murch went back to his knitting.

They were on the ground again at the starting point at ten past eight. In the humming silence that followed Murch's shutting off of the engine no one said anything at first, until Murch commented sadly, "I'd been thinking about buying one of these. It beats even the Belt Parkway, you know?"

Nobody answered him. They all climbed down to the ground, all feeling stiff, and walked over to the Lincoln, now less lavender in the darkness.

There was very little talk on the drive back to Manhattan. They let Dortmunder off at his apartment and he went upstairs, made himself a bourbon on the rocks, sat down on the sofa, and looked at his briefcase full of encyclopedia brochures.

Dortmunder sighed.