“Ever seen those two before, Flora?” Ike asked.
“Can’t say that I have, Ike, but you know we get truckers and such in here all the time, I reckon that’s what they are.”
“One of them, yes, the other one, I don’t know…maybe.”
Ike turned his attention to his breakfast and newspaper.
***
Harry and Red crossed the parking lot.
“I don’t like it,” Harry said.
“Don’t like what?” Red replied, picking his teeth with a broken kitchen match. They got into the rental car. Harry took the wheel.
“I don’t like being made by the police,” he replied.
“Made,” Red snorted. “Son, this is the backest of the back woods. They do not have police in these little towns; they have the otherwise unemployable sons, nephews, or cousins of county politicians running their sheriff’s offices. These country dicks couldn’t find the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks.”
“Maybe so,” Harry mused, “but—”
“No buts, Grafton. I was born and raised in towns like this. The only thing on that sheriff’s mind this morning is how to get enough money together to make the payment on his house trailer.”
“You may be right, Burnham,” Harry said. “I hope so. But that one is different. I don’t know how or why, but I’d bet the farm he’s not just another local cop.”
“Horse hockey,” Red grunted as he leaned back in the seat and fished a muffin from his pocket. “You’re as jumpy as a girl in an asparagus patch. You can take it from me. The locals ain’t going to be a problem.” Harry was not reassured. He put the car in gear and drove off. He had work to do.
It took an hour and a half to make the round trip to Roanoke and the truck leasing company where he dropped off Red. It was a little after eleven when he parked outside the Art Storage Compound. The little plaque on the building’s corner read ARTSCp and had a number under it. Funny name, he thought. Usually colleges name their buildings Something Hall, but there it was, in neat stainless steel letters affixed to the wall: Art Storage Compound.
Harry got out of the car, stretched, and mopped his forehead. He scanned the area and spotted the camera. He entered the building. Harry shivered and slipped on his jacket. The guard sat behind a desk on the far side of a deep lobby. He looked at Harry.
“Brand, Jason Brand,” Harry said, handing the guard a letter of introduction, “from the Titan Company. We’re moving all this stuff in a couple of weeks. I’ve got to look at the building, measure doors, passageways, and estimate the time we’ll need.”
The guard glanced at Harry, the letter, and handed it back. “Help yourself,” he said, and turned his attention back to a dog-eared copy of Sports Illustrated. Harry saw himself and the guard on one of the monitors behind the desk as the camera swept the room. The other showed the parking lot.
“Thanks,” said Harry, “I won’t be long.”
He finished before lunch.
Chapter Seven
Four of them gathered in the room and even though it was large by motel standards, Harry felt confined, crowded. He supposed his discomfort measured an inner uneasiness more than the environment. He would soon become a thief. At one time or another he’d fantasized what it might be like to be on the other side of the law. His colleagues at the Bureau used to say that those fantasies were a necessary part of the business. “If you can’t think like one, you can’t appreciate how it must be, you can’t catch them,” his old chief used to say.
Harry wondered how he’d feel if he cracked a safe or broke into an office and then kept what he liberated instead of tagging it and putting it in envelopes or bags, or more usually, photographing it and putting it back. Well, now he was going to get his chance.
He glanced at the other three men. Donati looked exactly as he had the day they had met, down to the black suit, black silk shirt and black tie, and impassive, aquiline face. Angelo, Donati’s beefy factotum, flanked him. Harry recalled he had chauffeured them from the cemetery. Red, the player Harry had met two days before, lounged against the wall, lighting and stubbing out an endless chain of filter cigarettes.
Donati looked at Harry, his face expressionless, his hand resting in his lap. Harry squirmed under the scrutiny and wondered if he should speak or continue to wait. Silence made Harry uncomfortable. He remembered the sensitivity group he and his wife joined years ago in an attempt to improve, or was it salvage, their marriage. A favorite maneuver in those sessions was a silence that built tension until someone in the circle felt compelled to speak. Steeling himself, he returned Donati’s gaze.
“Okay, Grafton,” Donati said, “what have you got?”
Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He could talk now. He had a job to do and irrespective of whom he was working for or why, a job was a job. Harry, even in the bad days, took pride in his work, delighted in the challenge each new job provided. This one was no exception.
“It’s complicated, but not impossible,” Harry began. “There are two or three systems that have to be dealt with: first, we have the television surveillance—one camera outside sweeps the parking lot. It has a forty-five-second cycle one way—a minute and a half to return to the starting point.
“During the day there is one guard at the main desk. He used to be replaced after eight hours, but now, the guard tells me, there is an economy program on and so there is only one eight-hour shift—nine to five.”
“Except holidays and weekends. We all know that, Grafton.”
“Okay. The guard leaves at five and the whole system is switched up to the main security office. It will stay that way until nine in the morning. Inside, a second camera covers the lobby and reception desk on the first floor. There are none beyond that point.
“To put them out of commission, I will tap the lines carrying the transmission to the monitors at the security office. I’ll tape three minutes of surveillance, then cut the tapes into the lines, and transmit the same three minutes over and over again for the rest of the night.
“Getting inside the building is another matter. The system or systems are partly connected, partly freestanding. The report you gave me only described one set—the new one. The door is protected by a standard contact alarm, the kind you see all over the place—little boxes side-by-side on the door or windows. When the system is on, separating the boxes trips the alarm. That one is easy. The problem is the motion detector set up inside. Any movement and it triggers either a silent alarm through the house current or a siren, buzzer—something like that, which may, in turn, set off a sound-sensitive alarm.
“Like the door, once I get to it, it’s easy enough to deactivate, just pull the plug. Getting to it may take some doing. It and the door alarms are easy. After I get them turned off, I’ve got a series of things that have to be shut down. Whoever put the system in built it to last. It’s as good as I’ve seen. Better than they need.
Harry paused and searched the faces of his listeners for comprehension. Donati’s eyes remained impassive. Red exhaled smoke toward the ceiling where it mixed with the already heavy haze he had created. Angelo watched Donati.
“Anyway, I’ve got to get to the main panel and disarm thirty or forty separate trips before anyone can come in, and I’ve got that piece of science fiction to get by before I can do that.”
“What do you mean science fiction?” Donati murmured.
“The photoelectric alarm—but one with real class,” Harry replied.
“Photoelectric—invisible eye, something like that?” Donati replied.
“Yeah, but these are lasers and tricky. You know in big beam units you just have to set a couple mirrors at ninety-degree perpendiculars and bounce the beam around or back, depending on how it works. In this one, the tolerances are very tight and the transmission angles are a fraction off ninety degrees and no two alike. I
can’t make a mirror box because I don’t know the angles and I can’t get them until I see the beams on.”
“You mean there’s more than one?” Donati asked.
“Oh yes.”
“How many?”
“Forty-seven, one every foot or so in the floor and ceiling, and five horizontal, every two feet on the walls. The whole makes an irregular grid with one by two foot intervals. Since they used lasers, you can’t see the beams—just ruby dots on the floor, ceiling, and walls. And, as I said, the angles are off a degree here, three or four there. It’s tough.”
“Can you get through?” Donati asked.
“I think so.”
“You think so. I am not interested in what you think. What do you know?”
“I think so, yes. You ever go to the beach, Donati?”
“Huh?” Donati looked startled.
“The beach. You ever swim in the ocean?”
“Sometimes, when I was a kid…what’s the beach got to do with this?”
“People drown at the beach, Donati, and you know why? Because they know. You swim in the ocean. It’s always the same—waves come in, break, roll up the sand, wash back, and in comes another. You swim in the ocean a hundred times and it’s always the same. So you figure you know how to swim in the ocean. One day, you go to the beach and it’s the same—same sand, same sun, same umbrellas, and same surf. You decide to take a dip in this same ocean, only this time it’s not the same. There’s an undertow, never felt it before, or maybe there’s an icy current ten, fifteen feet off shore, a rip tide. It feels like the Arctic Ocean. Before you know it you’re under, cramped, or washing out to sea. People drown at the beach, Donati, because they know. Been to the beach a hundred times and they know.
“Now, the guy who doesn’t know, the guy who’s afraid of the ocean…respects it. He won’t drown. Nothing surprises him because he figures the worst could happen, so he’s careful. He checks everything—not once, but several times. He prepares. He thinks he knows but then, you never know, do you?
“I’ve seen every alarm system there is, Donati, a hundred times—and every time I work on one, I’m scared. See, I don’t know, Donati—I think.” Harry sat back, the challenge still in his eyes.
“Okay, you’ve made your point. How long will it take, all of it?”
“Maybe two and a half, three hours.”
“That’s too long, Grafton. We got four floors of pictures to put into the trailers. It gets light around five, and we can’t start until after midnight. You take two and a half hours and that leaves us two and a half hours for the rest. No good, you get one hour.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Look, Donati, I can’t work any faster and be sure. There are a lot of steps that have to be taken and systems to get around before I can even begin to work on the box. I can cut some time by rigging the TV early—say eleven o’clock. It shouldn’t make much difference when that happens. You can save some time by pulling the trailers close to the site and not putting the pictures in the racks. Why not just stack them flat—floor to ceiling. Leave out the spacers too.”
“It’ll ruin the pictures, they said. When we move, they’ll rub and mess up the paint.”
“What do you care about that? Look, if you are going to pack them right, you’ll need more than five hours—you’ll need five days. If you just toss them in the trailer, you can get all of it done by five thirty or six at the latest. That is at least three, three and a half hours. If one of you does nothing but pull frames and make bundles of say, thirty pounds each, and the rest of us just haul and stack, it could be done.”
Donati thought a moment and then agreed. “Okay, Grafton, two hours—one and a half would be better. You shoot for one and a half. Two is a maximum.”
Donati turned to Red, dismissing Harry from his thoughts.
“You got what you need?” Red scratched and nodded.
“Two trailers, one big Peterbilt tractor. They are painted to look like Titan Van Lines, like you said.”
The room became silent again. Harry felt more uncomfortable. He allowed his mind to assemble a shopping list—magnets of different and standard strengths, induction coils, the video recorders, and switching boxes.…
Donati’s velvet smooth voice cut through Harry’s calculations.
“The plan is simple. We’re calling it Artscape—don’t ask why, I don’t know, it’s what they want. So, Thursday night, we go to the building and get into position. Red will have one trailer ready. As soon as Grafton starts, Red, you bring it into the lot and park by the door, unhook, and go get the other one. When the alarms are off, we go in and start pulling the pictures from the frames and loading. When the first trailer is filled, Red pulls out and we fill the second one. When we are done with that one, Red hauls it away and we all split.
“Grafton, you and Red go to the Dogwood Motel, out on the highway, and wait. Angelo and I will go to the Old Dominion, south of here. We will move around, one motel to the other until we are paid. Then, we all go our separate ways.
“I don’t like hanging around the area,” Red said. “Why can’t we all get out, go down to Roanoke and get lost in the crowd? Small-town motels are as private as army showers.”
“We stay around,” Donati explained, “because we have the goods and they have to be kept hidden. To do that, they have to be moved, from one truck stop to another. That’s your job. I need to keep an eye on you, so I stay. Angelo won’t leave me, so he stays. That leaves Grafton here, who’s new to the business.” Donati’s green eyes swept across Harry’s face. “I think he might need some support as he begins his new career, don’t you agree?”
“Okay,” Red complained, “but I still don’t like the motels.”
“These places are as safe as you’ll find,” Donati said. “There are five of them we will use—one near Lexington, one just south of Natural Bridge, this one, the Lee Jackson, and one just south of here. We have two rooms available to us for as long as we need them and whenever we need them.”
“You booked rooms in five motels for what, a week, two weeks? Donati, you’re crazy. The cops will be checking motels within hours. They’ll pick that up in no time. Even the bozos they have down here will figure that out,” Red fumed.
Donati remained calm; his voice never rose or varied. “We are not booked anywhere, Red. I said we have some rooms. They will be very private because no one will know we’re here—or care. All of the motels are owned by, ah, a former business associate. He was having some domestic problems that I was able to alleviate. He bought up a string of motels in the area with the insurance money. He has visions of becoming a redneck Conrad Hilton. Right now, he owns about a dozen. This is one of them. They’re all fixed up with what passes for comfort and convenience, for a cracker. As far as anyone knows, we are not here. There will be no names on the register. The help will not be in and out. That means no room service, no fresh towels, no one to make your bed. Feel better?”
“Yeah, I guess, but how long? When is this business over?”
“Monday night, our employers get a yes or no on the TV. We turn over the pictures to them, and they pay us the money. That part will be Tuesday or Wednesday. The drop is arranged so all Dillon has to do is get his fifty million together, say yes and then pay.”
“How do we know we’ll get paid?” Red asked.
“Because we have the paintings and I have their names. If they don’t pay, I approach them as I would any client who’d welch on a deal. You understand?”
Red shuddered and grinned, “What happens if Dillon won’t pay?”
“He’ll pay,” said Donati. “We don’t just have five hundred million dollars’ worth of paintings—we have part of the cultural heritage of the Western world. He may not want to, but he will pay. He won’t stand by and let all that culture go up i
n smoke.”
“Smoke?” asked Harry. “What do you mean, smoke?”
“I mean, Grafton, that Dillon will be told to pay or the paintings will be burned—incinerated. He can get them back for fifty million dollars. He will have to pay. There is no way he, or anyone else, for that matter, could take the heat from the press, if he let them go. You see?”
“But.…” Harry was going to ask a question, and then decided not to. He had enough of his money up front and did not care about problems in that area. Once the job was done, he was out of it.
“But,” Donati said, picking up on Harry’s unspoken thought, “how do we know he’ll believe it? Because he will be sent one picture already burned. That’s it. Our employer will take the risks after the robbery. They will contact Dillon and make the exchange. If there is a screw-up, they get nailed for the whole job and we are clean. Okay, you people lie low. Stay out of town and out of sight. Grafton, you go get your gear together, and all of you be ready by nine o’clock. We will move into the area at ten forty-five, and we should be out by five the next morning. Let’s go, Angelo.”
Donati and his sidekick-shadow-bodyguard oiled their way out the door and into the night. Red lit another cigarette and sighed.
“I’m going out, just as soon as those guys clear the area.”
“Out. Are you crazy? That is the last thing you need to do.”
“Sorry, but I need a drink. I’ll just drop down to the bar and get me a six-pack. You want one?”
More than anything in the world, Harry wanted a six-pack. A dozen—enough to numb the fear and the sordid sense of personal betrayal he was fighting. A drink. He licked his lips.
“No, I guess not, got to do some more planning. Thanks anyway.”
“See ya in a coupla.”
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