The Hot Rock

4

In suit and tie, Dortmunder could look like a slightly seedy small businessman. As though he operated something like a laundromat in a poor neighborhood. It was a good enough appearance to carry him through his errand to the bank.

Today was Friday the thirteenth. A superstitious man might have waited until Monday for this part of the preparation, but Dortmunder was not a superstitious man. He accepted the fact that the Balabomo Emerald was a jinx in a jinxless world, and didn't allow the contradiction to lead him into irrational fears of numbers or dates or black cats or spilled salt or any of the other chimerical goads with which people plague themselves. All other inanimate objects were tame and neutral, only the Balabomo Emerald was possessed of an evil spirit.

Dortmunder walked into the bank a little after two, a relatively quiet period, and walked over to one of the uniformed guards, a slender white-haired man sucking his false teeth. "I want to see about renting a safe deposit box," Dortmunder said.

"You'll want to talk to an officer of the bank," the guard said and escorted Dortmunder over behind a rail.

The officer was a soft young man in a dandruff-flecked tan suit who told Dortmunder the box rental was eight dollars and forty cents a month, and when that didn't seem to stun Dortmunder the young man gave him a form to fill out, full of the usual questions - address, occupation, and so on - which Dortmunder answered with lies prepared for the occasion.

After the paperwork was done, the young man escorted Dortmunder downstairs to look at his box. At the foot of the stairs was a uniformed guard, and the young man explained to Dortmunder the signing-in procedure he would have to follow every time he visited his box. The first gate was then unlocked and they stepped through into a small room where Dortmunder was introduced to a second uniformed guard, who would take over from here. The young man shook Dortmunder's hand, welcomed him once again to C amp;I's happy family, and went back upstairs.

The new guard, who was named Albert, said, "Either George or I will always serve you, any time you want to get to your box."

"George?"

"He's the one on the sign-in desk today."

Dortmunder nodded.

Albert then unlocked the inner gate and they went through into a room that looked like a Lilliputian morgue, with rank upon rank of trays for the tiny dead bodies. Buttons of various colors were attached to many of the drawer fronts, each color probably having great significance to the bank.

Dortmunder's drawer was low and to the left. Albert used his own master key first, then asked to borrow the key Dortmunder had just received from the young man upstairs. Dortmunder gave it to him, he unlocked the drawer, and at once gave the key back to Dortmunder.

The safe deposit box was actually a drawer, about an inch high, four inches wide and eighteen inches deep. Albert slid it most of the way out, and said, "If you wish privacy, sir, I can carry it into one of the side rooms for you," motioning to the small chambers off the main morgue, each containing a table and a chair, in which the box holder could at his desire communicate alone with his box.

"No, thanks," Dortmunder said. "I don't need that this time. I just want to put this stuff in." And he took from his inside jacket pocket a bulky sealed white envelope containing seven unused Kleenex tissues. He carefully placed this in the middle of the drawer, and stood back while Albert shut it up again.

Albert let him out the first gate and George let him out the second, and Dortmunder went upstairs and outside, where it seemed strange somehow that it was still daylight. He checked his watch and hailed a cab, because he now had to get uptown and then come all the way back with Miasmo the Great before the bank's employees started going home for the day.