Thieves' Dozen d-12

by Donald E. Westlake

  "Can't," the driver said.

  "Whadaya mean, can't?"

  "Nothing's open." The driver ticked items off on his fingers. "Hunner twenny-third torn up by Brooklyn Gas, shut till Thursday. Prospect closed to ve-hic-ular traffic till eleven p.m., block party. Jay blocked by construction until April. Wheeler closed down, a demonstration about charter schools."

  Big said, "For or against?"

  "Who cares? Then there's Hedlong, they-"

  "All right, just a minute," Big said. "Lemme see about this."

  He got out of the limo, the driver watching with the look of a man who'd been here in New York City from far-off remotest Asia long enough to know nothing ever helped around here. Regardless, Big walked forward, slicing a V through the gawkers like a bowling ball through lemmings, until he reached the center of attention, beyond a line of blue police sawhorses.

  The center of attention, in a cleared semicircle of sidewalk, turned out to be a loony with a knife. Maybe forty years old, in blue and white vertically striped pajamas, ratty maroon bathrobe, barefoot, hair all messed around like a shag rug after a party, unshaved, eyes full of goldfish. He stood with his back against the brick wall of a Neighborhood Clinic, whatever that is, and he kept waving this huge meat cleaver of a knife back and forth, holding off the half-dozen uniformed cops crouched in a crescent in front of him, all of them talking to him, gesturing, explaining, pointing out, none of them holding a gun.

  Big knew how that went. Things rode along easy for a while, and whenever the cops met a loony like this on the street-which happens now and again in New York City, though most of them were crazy before they got here-they would just cheerfully blow him away, then explain in the report how the knife or the hammer or the postage meter had seemed at the time to be a serious threat to the officer's life, and that would be that. But then a few incidents would pile up, and the cops would decide to dial down for a while, so, when confronted with a prime prospect for the Off button like this one here, they'd do cajole instead, which never works, but which might possibly keep the loony contained until EMT could get here with the net.

  Which hadn't happened yet, and who knew when it would. Big went sideways along this sawhorse to the end, stepped through the gap, and when a lot of cops reached out to restrain him, he said, "Yeah, yeah," shrugged them away, and walked straight to the loony.

  The crescent of cops stared at him, not knowing what this was supposed to be. Big ignored them, kept walking toward the loony, stopped well within cleaver range, stuck out his left hand, and said, "Gimme the knife, bozo."

  Now, we know this loony really was a loony because, when confronted by Big, he did not immediately say yessir and hand over the cutlery. Instead of acting like a sane person, he went on acting like a loony, lunging forward with the cleaver slicing around in a broad sidearm swing, intending to bisect Big at the waist.

  The middle of Big's body curved inward as his left hand lifted out of the way of the slashing cleaver, then closed almost gently on the hand behind it. Hand and cleaver stopped as though they'd hit a glass door. With the loony's arm and body still thrusting forward, Big made a quarter turn to his right, like a partner in a very formal dance. His left hand flicked up-down. The crack of the loony's wrist snapping caused a flinch and a queasy look on every cop in the neighborhood.

  The cleaver clattered to the ground; so did the loony.

  Turning away from his good works, Big nodded at the assembled cops. Before strolling away, "Next time," he advised them, "try a little tenderizing."

  Stan was a very law-abiding driver, since the cars he drove invariably belonged to somebody else. For that reason, he obeyed every traffic regulation everywhere, and if he'd had a license, it would have been clean as a whistle. So he was astonished, and not happy, when the county cop on the motorcycle up ahead on the Long Island Expressway suddenly pulled off onto the shoulder, stopped, hopped out of the saddle, and briskly waved Stan down.

  No choice-hit the right blinker and pull in behind the bike. He'd always known this moment might someday appear, despite his precautions, and he'd worked out a game plan to deal with it. He intended to claim amnesia and let everybody else sort it out.

  But there was something different about this traffic stop. In the first place, the cop, instead of taking that leisurely stroll around to the driver's window that's standard for such encounters, dashed for the passenger door, going klop-klop in his high leather boots, face strained with urgency. Yanking open that door, he flung himself backward onto the seat, hurling his left arm out to point, so forcefully he banged his gloved fingertip into the windshield as he cried, "Follow that Taurus!"

  Stan looked at him. "What?"

  The cop had himself turned around and completely into the car now. As he slammed the door, he aimed a very red face in Stan's direction. "Follow," he said, and thumped his leather-gloved fist on the dashboard, "that" and did the fingertip-mash against the windshield again, "TAURUS!"

  "Okay, okay."

  Stan didn't see any Tauri, but he figured, if he drove the direction the cop kept pointing, sooner or later a Taurus would present itself. It's a popular make of car. So he tromped the accelerator, and the car, a very nice BMW recently in the longterm parking lot at LaGuardia, leaped forward so as to multiple-g the cop backward into his bucket seat.

  Taurus, Taurus. The cop peeled himself off the seat to say, "Good, that's good. See him? The green Taurus."

  Then Stan did: recent vintage, pallid green, middle lane, moderate speed. "Got him."

  "Good. Don't overtake him," the cop warned, "just keep him in sight."

  "Piece of cake."

  The cop had a little radio high on the angled strap of his Sam Browne belt. Flipping the toggle, he said into it, low but still audible to Stan, "Cycle broke down, commandeered a civilian vehicle, suspects in sight, still eastbound within city limits."

  But not for long. Stan watched his exit go by, but he and the Taurus kept heading for Long Island, while the cop's radio made nasal guttural vomiting sounds the cop apparently interpreted as speech, because he said, "Ten-four," which Stan knew cops say because they can never seem to remember "Uh-huh."

  Stan had never been commandeered before. He wondered if it came with benefits, but somehow doubted it. He said, "You don't mind my asking, wha'd the Taurus do?"

  "Held up a jewelry store in Astoria."

  Stan was astonished. "There's jewelry stores in Astoria?"

  The cop shrugged. "Why not? Wedding rings, sorry-honeys. Your jewelry store's your universal."

  "I suppose you're right," Stan said, and the cop tensed all over, like a sphincter: "He's gonna exit!"

  Stan too had seen the Taurus's right directional blink on. Keeping well back, he said, "I suppose these guys are armed and dangerous."

  "Jeez, I hope not," the cop said. "I'm on traffic detail. That's why we don't wanna overtake them, make them suspicious, just keep them in sight." "Ten-four," Stan said.

  "When they get stopped at a light," the cop said, "pull up next to them, I'll look it over, see if I can take them down without backup."

  Stan knew he was just saying that to cover for what he'd said a minute ago, but what the hell: "You got it."

  The cop took off his hat, to be in disguise, and sat forward, eyes tense, licking his lips.

  Never had Stan seen anybody so lucky with traffic lights. The Taurus went this way and that way on the city streets, block after block with a traffic light hanging over every intersection, the Taurus steadily trending south by east, and every last one of those traffic lights was green when the Taurus arrived. Sometimes, particularly twice when the Taurus had made a turn at an intersection, Stan had to goose it to scoot through on the yellow, but he figured, he was under cop's orders here; he should be covered.

  It bothered him a while, knowing he was part of messing up the day of a couple of fellow mechanics, but then it didn't bother him any more.

  Meanwhile, the cop kept talking to his radio, giving it coordinates,
progress reports, and the radio kept barfing back. Then the cop tensed again, putting on his hat as he said. "This is it. Next intersection-there!"

  They were almost a full block back, a tan Jeep Cherokee between them, the green Taurus almost to the corner, when all at once cop cars came out of everywhere, left and right and practically dropping down from overhead, surrounding the Taurus, blocking it in good and, by the way, freaking out the driver of the Cherokee no end.

  Stan slammed on the brakes. "Now what?"

  "Wait here!" the cop barked, and jumped from the car.

  Fat chance. The Taurus is a very popular car, and wishy-washy green for some reason is a very popular color. One of those moments when the cop had been busy giving coordinates and looking for street signs, Stan had managed to stop following green Taurus number one and start following green Taurus number two. Therefore, he was already backing to the corner, swinging around it, flooring that BMW out of there, even before the four little old ladies with the missals in their hands came stumbling out of their Taurus to stare at all that firepower.

  What with one thing and another, Algy was the first to arrive at the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust. At first, he just walked past it, hands in his pockets, looking it over, trusting that nobody with a plastic bag full of loot would come hurtling out of this place.

  The car had been extracted and taken away. Guys in mustaches and blue jeans and tool belts were slowly closing the facade with sheets of plywood. Streamers of yellow Crime Scene tape were wrapped around everything in sight as though the Easter bunny had been here, bored, nothing else to do in October. And speaking of bored, that's what the two cops were in the prowl car parked out front, the only official presence still here.

  The bank was at the corner of a two-story tan-brick structure that ran the length of the block, shops downstairs-Chinese takeout, video rental, dry cleaner, OTB-and apartments above, most of them with window air conditioner rumps mooning the traffic on the boulevard beyond the skimpy plane trees. Each apartment facade was as individual as each store, one bearing rent strike! signs, one suggesting come to jesus!, one with windows painted black, one crying remember K with the rest of the paper torn off, one with what appeared to be curtains and blinds and drapes. The corner apartment, above the bank, expressed its individuality through paranoia; every window was as barred and gated as a maximum-security cell, and through those iron braces could be read no trespassing and beware of dog and no soliciting and keep out and private property.

  Downstairs, the bank had been a bit less prepared for intruders. It had been a retail store until its makeover into a branch

  bank-probably ladies' better fashions-and still retained the large windows along both front and side streets for the display of the merchant's wares; or at least had still retained them until Morry Calhoun had swung by.

  The video rental shop was next door to the bank; go in through there? But the shop was open and staffed, and its entrance was very much in the bored cops' sight line.

  Algy walked around the corner, to the side street where the bank's former glass had already been replaced by plywood, and at the rear of the building was a solid fence of unpainted vertical wood slats, eight feet high and six feet wide. Approaching it, Algy saw that half its width was a wood-slat door, inset into the fence, with a round metal keyhole but no handle. Behind it, from what he could see over the top of the fence, was an area way running the length of the block. At this end, it was between tin-rear of the bank and the blank brick side of the nursing home that fronted on the cross street. And above, a row of fire escapes.

  Hmmm. Algy strolled on down the block, crossed the street at the corner, and strolled back again, getting a good look at the rear of the bank building, the fire escapes, the windows of the second-floor apartment, which continued the theme stated along front and side, barred gates, though without the warning notices. The interior behind those windows was dark.

  Why not? the first step was to get inside the building, so why not into the apartment above the bank? From there, maybe Morry Calhoun had loosened some structural stuff, and an agile person could come down through the ceiling. Or there'd be a staircase, so the tenant could put trash in the areaway. Or whatever.

  Algy next strolled all around the block, away from the bank, pausing on the next cross street over to sit briefly on a fire hydrant while he removed his left shoe, took a few flat flexible pieces of metal from inside the heel, put the shoe back on and resumed his walk.

  Hearing the bank again, he held the flexible metal strips tucked into both palms and zeroed in on that wooden door in the wooden wail. He'd seen that kind of lock before; they were old friends, and this one didn't detain him long.

  Inside, as he'd expected, the concrete-floored areaway was garbage-can-strewn. There were doors spaced along the rear wall, but it looked as though the near ones were simply ground-floor access.

  On the third leap, he hooked a hand over the bottom rung of the fire escape, which his weight then brought downward, making it easier to climb. At the top, the flexible metal strips worked very nicely -to unlock the gate over the nearest window, then slip through between upper and lower sashes of the window itself to gently elbow the window lock out of the way. Slowly, silently, he lifted the window, leaned close to the opening, listened.

  Nothing. No TV, no snoring, no whistling teakettle.

  Algy slid over the sill, paused to close the gate and window behind himself, then looked around at a small, spartan bedroom. Framed photos of old-time boxers in manly stances were on the walls.

  Algy started across the bedroom toward the doorway, and was nearly there when he became aware of the eyes. They were in the hall beyond the bedroom door, they were at crotch height, and they were connected to the largest, meanest-looking, scariest dog Algy had ever seen.

  He stopped. The instant he did, the dog started. It didn't bark, because it was more serious than that. It didn't want to make a fuss; it merely wanted to kill Algy, slowly, with its teeth.

  Algy turned. Window closed and barred. No time.

  A shut door was to his right. He leaped to it, yanked it open, saw clothes hanging on a bar, lunged in among them, pulled the door shut; the dog thudded like a locomotive against the door.

  Now what?

  * * *

  John Rumsey's flexible metal tools were just as efficacious as Algy's on that wooden door, but then Rumsey chose to climb the inside of the fence, finding hand and footholds on the angle irons that held fence to building, and so reach the fire escape's upper landing that way. (He was too short to have caught the fire escape by jumping.) He was surprised, at the top, to find that both gate and window were unlocked though shut, but he thought this meant merely that even someone as security-conscious as this tenant appeared to be might eventually grow a little slack. He entered noiselessly, shut gate and window and started across the room, getting just about as far as Algy had before making that same dreadful discovery.

  Rumsey wasn't quite as fast as his friend had been. He made it into the closet, but left behind a triangle of trouser leg clenched between the dog's teeth.

  Slamming the door, hearing the dog slam into it from the other side, Rumsey became horribly aware that he wasn't alone in here. Someone-or something-rustled and slurfed right next to him. "What?" he called. Wham, went the dog against the door.

  "I'm not here!" cried a voice. "I can explain!"

  A familiar voice. Hardly believing it, Rumsey said, "Algy?"

  A little pause. "John?"

  Wham, went the dog.

  Stan, being a driver, took a slightly different approach. That is, he looked for a means of access that would, in its early phases, include a car. He drove around the block, noted the storefronts, the varied second-floor window treatments, the workmen applying plywood, the bored cops in their cruiser, then the nursing home (barely glancing at the wooden door in the wooden fence); on around the block, coming up at last to the far end of the building holding the bank.

  On this
block, the space equivalent to the nursing home at the other end was occupied by an open-sided four-story parking garage. Stan made note of that, turned at the corner, drove on down past the cops and the bank and the workmen, took that next turn, and pulled to a stop just short of the wooden fence.

  Plywood now covered the former windows on the side of the bank, but the blue police sawhorses were still there, swathed in gay yellow Crime Scene tape. Stan got out of the BMW; opened the trunk, and leaned in to open the small pass-through door between trunk and backseat, placed there because the kind of people who own this kind of car usually also own skis.

  The sawhorses came in three parts: two A-shaped sets of legs and the ten-foot-long crossbar, a two-by-six plank. Stan rescued two of these planks from their legs and the yellow tape and wrestled them into the BMWJ having to fold the front passenger seat down as well to ootch them in all the way. Then he drove around the block again, turned in at the parking garage, and took his ticket from the machine.

  He found a useful parking slot on the sloping third level, backed into it so the rear of the BMW was close to the waist-high concrete-block barrier that was all the building had for exterior walls, and slid the sawhorse planks out of the car and across the intervening space between parking garage and bank building roof, though down the block from the bank, closer to the middle of the building. The planks fit very nicely, with good overhang at each end. Stan went across on all fours-two per plank-then walked briskly along the roof to the final fire escape. He went down that, found the unlocked window, climbed in, saw the dog, the dog saw him, Stan bolted for the closet, and soon another reunion took place, though not an entirely happy one.

  Big knew he was a memorable guy, and so shouldn't walk past those cops in the cruiser, no matter how bored they were, more than once. He strolled down the block, took in the scene, turned down the side street, saw a couple of blue sawhorse leg sets lying on the sidewalk, remarked to himself that cops were usually

  neater than that, and noticed that where the next to last sheet of plywood overlapped the last sheet of plywood, there was a bit of a gap where the plywood might have been screwed down a bit more securely but was not.