"If,” Alexander Brewster remarked haughtily. “If is the operative word.” A precise man, a professor at M.I.T. once, so he said, and before his rapid fall from grace, an authority on valence electrons. Something to do with adding chemical signatures to high explosives for forensic investigators. He'd have won the Nobel Prize one day, he maintained when drunk, if it hadn't been for that business with the undergraduate, her husband's missing research papers, and that regrettable inferno in the lab. A plot, he said, to discredit him, which is why he'd been forced to drive a Zippy cab the last twenty years of his working life.
"I been meaning to ask you, Doc,” Creepy said to him now, “you ever almost win any other prizes? Before the no-bell prize, I mean?"
"No,” Brewster snapped.
"I get it. Sort of a one-shot deal. One of them lucky guesses or somethin'."
Brewster turned an indignant red, about to leap to a shrill defense setting forth all the painstaking study, experimentation, and intellectual brilliance required to reach that exalted pinnacle in the competitive world of research. Billy saw it coming and headed him off.
"Let's stick to the point, guys."
"What is the point?” the doc snarled.
"What we were discussing. How we got ourselves into this mess."
"You can call it a mess,” Creepy Culbertson said. His grin seemed a permanent fixture. “I call it an opportunity. Our last chance to show folks they can't just write us off, three old-timers here in practically an old folks’ home."
"It is an old folks’ home,” Billy corrected him.
"Our last chance,” Creepy continued, “to show people we got to be taken seriously. An’ our last chance to get rich, don't forget that little detail.” Rich. They all liked the sound of the word. They looked on as Creepy leaned forward and dragged the fruit of their previous night's labors out from under the bed.
A hush fell over them. A meditative silence. The box of chemicals lying at their feet infused the sleepy old house with an air of menace.
"So what do we do now?” Billy Highway wanted to know.
* * * *
Robideau stood with Arney Arvelson outside the cage at the back of the storeroom, Arney pointing out the wrenched-off hasp, the now useless padlock still dangling from it. He had already shown Robideau the forced window in the lumber room.
"I always keep these things locked up,” Arney said. “I'm not required to, but I do it anyway. These types of chemicals can be used in dangerous ways."
"To make explosives?"
"Yes. Exactly."
"Wouldn't it be easier for the thief to just go out and swipe the finished product?"
"You might think so. It's been known to happen, of course. But it isn't all that simple. Explosives are kept under tight control. Quantities are itemized and must be accounted for. Their chemical ingredients, on the other hand, are much easier to get hold of."
"I see that,” Robideau said.
Arvelson made a tight sound down deep in his throat.
"Are you going to report this theft?” Robideau asked.
"I have reported it. You're here, aren't you?"
"I mean to whoever it is that keeps track of this stuff."
"Hello. I just told you. Nobody keeps track of it. I'm not even going to inform my insurance company. It's hardly worth it, too small a loss, and it might prompt those vampires to raise my premiums next time around.” He swung the gate shut, and the iron frame whined. “I'm afraid you're it, Chief. I've done my duty."
"Thanks,” Robideau said. “I think. Anything else missing?"
Arvelson gazed around with an air of defeat. “We carry thousands of items. I'll need some time to answer that one.” As they walked to the door, he pushed his spectacles up higher on his nose. “I'm glad you're back on the job, Chief Robideau. I know the town will be safer for it."
"You know that, do you?"
"Absolutely. You've got a nose for trouble, Chief."
"I'm beginning to think so,” Robideau said.
* * * *
He took his nose around to the back of Arvelson's store, more to be professionally thorough than with the expectation of learning anything helpful. It was more or less as he had thought. Here too the freezing rain had obliterated any incriminating signs. A few scrapes in the sill and on the sash of the forced window were visible. That was all.
He was so caught up in thought he walked all the way to Butts's office before remembering the car and having to go back for it. At last, pulling off his coat and hanging it up behind the office door, he stood for a moment with his arms at his sides, feeling a mix of emotions. His first day back in the saddle and things were heating up. He glanced warily at the telephone, half expecting it to ring with the horrific news that some End of Mainer, high on beer and chemicals, had dismembered his neighbor with an ice scraper.
"It never rains unless it pours,” he reminded himself. A maxim often quoted by Mrs. Robideau.
Sitting at the desk, he pulled pen and paper toward him and jotted down three words in firm block letters:
BEER
SCRAPER
CHEMICALS
He stared at the result, waiting for some neat and obvious connection to pop into his mind. Somebody with too much time on their hands steals some beer, gets drunk, and uses Buzz Taylor's ice scraper to break into Arney Arvelson's hardware store in order to steal ... chemicals?
What for?
He considered the possibility that the crimes were unrelated, committed by different perpetrators, then quickly rejected the idea. In a larger community that would have been possible, even probable, but in End of Main it was hard to embrace the notion. Here, where practically everybody was a more-or-less model citizen and where one peaceful day flowed seamlessly into another, it just didn't seem credible.
The office chair was too low. He fiddled with the side levers but couldn't raise it any higher. Worn out, like everything else in the place. He sympathized with Butts, who had to run an effective operation on a shoestring. The town's public safety budget was regularly squeezed by vote-conscious councillors raiding it for their own pet projects; it was a wonder the chief had any office at all and wasn't expected to operate out of his car. He thought wryly about the TV show he had watched with Mrs. Robideau last night. It was one of her favorites, in which investigating officers had acres of high-tech facilities and experts of every description to assist them, and they were so flush with cash they drove around in Hummers, for crying out loud. Not here. Not in End of Main. Here, small-town reality ruled.
He looked at the words again, underscored them, then drew a circle around them. He hadn't noticed anything in particular. It just gave him a sense of accomplishing something.
* * * *
"Nobody better get hurt,” Billy Highway said.
"They're not going to. We're going in on a Sunday, the place is deserted,” Creepy Culbertson assured him.
"I could get hurt,” Billy Highway reminded them. He jerked his head at the heavy mix of chemicals Alexander Brewster was preparing in the sink. “Some of that leaks down and gets stuck in the drain, I'll pull the plug one day and get blown to smithereens. They'll find pieces of me from Fargo to Nunavut."
"Where's Nunavut?” Creepy Culbertson asked.
"If you're here when it happens, you'll find out."
"There's nothing to worry about,” the doc assured them crisply, “I know what I'm doing.” He was bent over the kitchen sink wearing oversized, bright yellow pot-scrubbing gloves. Billy's pink embroidered apron bulged in an unseemly way around his pudgy midriff.
"Correction, Doc, you used to know,” Creepy said. “Lotta water under the bridge since then.” And addressing Billy again, “Ever see that movie Fargo? That's a good one. A laugh riot."
But Billy was more interested in what Brewster was manufacturing in the sink. His sink. “What I don't understand,” he said, “is how you can make a proper explosive out of all that wet, mucky sludge."
"It's not sludge,” the doc
corrected him, “it's called a slurry. And stop carping. This is the way it's done. It's the same process used in factories, only there they have the benefit of automation and specialized equipment."
"I guess I'll have to take your word for it,” Billy said.
"Thousands wouldn't,” Creepy Culbertson remarked.
The doc rambled on.
"The usual active ingredient, C3H6N6O6—cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine—is virtually unobtainable, but I can assure you my own homegrown formula is superior in many ways, as are the binder and plasticizer I shall employ, both of which are innovations of my own.” Brewster nodded at a milk jug filled with heating oil siphoned from the tank in the furnace room, then at several bars of lye soap on the countertop. “If my calculations are correct, and of course they most certainly are, we shall have about a pound and a half of product as good as anything procurable on the black market."
"But will it go bang?” Creepy asked.
"Of course it will."
"Reason I'm askin', we don't want it to foozle on us."
"If you mean fizzle, you can stop worrying right now."
"I'm even more worried,” Creepy added, “like Billy here, that it might go off when it's not supposed to an’ take my face with it."
"That wouldn't be much of a loss."
"No, but it's my face."
"Look,” Brewster shot back, bridling, raising Billy's mucky wooden mixing spoon in the air, “I'm attending to my part of this fiasco. Billy's seeing to his, scrounging things, leading us to the chemicals—good thing he worked as a sweeper in that store at one time, is all I can say. And we're relying on him to construct a triggering mechanism."
"I'll kludge something,” Billy mumbled.
"And when our preparations are complete, it will be your turn, Mr. Culbertson. Your great moment of truth. Then we'll see what sort of felon you are. We'll see if you're up to the mark, the great safecracker you've made yourself out to be. Personally, I shall be surprised."
Creepy sniffed. “Fiasco, huh? The proof is in the pudding. That pudding you're concocting there. An’ if it lets us down, I can't speak for the consequences."
There was a bold knock at the door. Billy went pale. The doc threw a tea towel over the muck in the sink and backed away, looking terrified and wiping his hands on his apron. Creepy shook his head at them both, laughed, and sauntered down the hall to the door.
He unlatched it, opened it partway, and greeted the caller jovially. “Well, hello there, Buzz. What can we do for you? Mrs. Winnafree wander off again, slathered in jam? You won't find her here. Billy don't like jam."
His voice boomed off the bare walls.
"I'm not here about Mrs. Winnafree,” they heard Buzz say loudly. “I'm here about Mrs. Lump. I mean Mrs. Lumpenstetter. She says she thinks you boys are up to something. She believes you might be running a still in here."
Creepy laughed but kept his left hand tight on the doorknob, his right firmly locked on the jamb. “A still? What would Mrs. Lump know about stills? We were just gonna sit down an’ have our usual game of crib, that's all."
Buzz Taylor was trying unsuccessfully to peer into the place over Creepy's shoulder.
"Mrs. Lump is worried, that's all. Stills are dangerous. They can explode."
"She oughta know,” Creepy said. “Isn't that what killed her old man? Him cookin’ up some kickapoo joy juice, set off the fumes, an’ that's all she wrote?"
"He died of heart failure."
"Oh yeah, right. Saw Mrs. Lump without her face on an’ bought the farm. Dropped dead in his tracks right there."
"Anyway,” Buzz said with gravity, “I just thought I'd check. And don't forget about smoking in the rooms, all right?"
"It's all right if you say it is,” Creepy replied cheerfully, closing the door.
He came up the hallway, digging his fixings out of his pocket, and began constructing a cigarette while he grinned at them.
"The Buzzard says it's all right to smoke. Change of heart, I guess. An’ Mrs. Lump thinks we're gonna blow the dang place up. Ain't that cute?"
* * * *
They filed out of the Buzzard's boarding house and headed down Burton Street to make a reconnaissance. The object of their attention was the LFFCU—the Lakeside Farmer and Fisherman's Credit Union. Creepy cautioned them that they shouldn't all go into the place at once, that it might attract unwanted attention. This in mind, they entered separately; first Creepy, followed by Billy, and a minute or so later Alexander Brewster bringing up the rear.
The doc didn't even want to be there. He didn't see the need.
"What's the point?” he had argued back in Billy Highway's kitchen. “I have nothing whatsoever to do with that particular stage of the operation."
"You got everything to do with it,” Creepy had told him. “We all do. One for all and all for one, right?"
The doc stopped just inside the door with a look of suppressed irritation on his face; he feigned an interest in a rack of leaflets that set forth mortgage rates and the terms of savings accounts.
And there in the corner was the vault, its gleaming door standing open and looking like it weighed a couple of thousand tons. One of the tellers came free and raised an inquiring eyebrow at Creepy Culbertson, who shuffled forward immediately, grinning as if he had a pain somewhere.
"Can I get an income tax form here, sweetheart?"
"No. You get them at the post office."
"Thanks a million, hon."
They trooped out, forgetting to keep any distance between themselves. Slogging back along the icy pavement, Billy whispered, “Jeez, did you see the size of that door? I mean, I seen it before, but I never really noticed it. That sucker must be two foot thick!"
"All for show,” Creepy said. “We're gonna go in through the wall."
"You shouldn't have called that woman sweetheart,” the doc lectured Creepy. “You reminded me of Humphrey Bogart in an old black and white gangster movie, just before the bad guys appear with their guns blazing."
"Really?” Creepy smoothed what was left of his hair back and stepped along a little more sprightly. “You think it'll land us in the pictures?"
"It's more likely to land us in the penitentiary."
"You worry too much."
"Someone has to."
"Guys,” Billy appealed to them, “guys. Are you listening to me here? After looking at that safe, really looking at it, I'm not so sure we can pull this off. It's not too late, you know. We can still back out of it. We can still pull the pin if we want to."
"What?” scoffed Creepy. “An’ sit around, the time we got left to us on this planet, takin’ crap from the Buzzard, an’ wonderin’ how things might've turned out if we'd just had some guts? We're this close to scoring—” He plucked an imaginary greenback out of the air. “—an’ we gotta go through with it!” He turned on Brewster. “How about you, Doc? You chickening out too? Are you ready to be shoved around by the likes of the Buzzard the rest of your natural life?"
Brewster trudged on a few steps, eyes hooded, face drawn down deep into his woolen scarf as he exercised his not inconsiderable mental powers.
"No,” he said finally and somberly, “I don't believe I can do that. I really don't think I can manage it.” He let out a thin sigh. “All my life I've been waiting for things to fall back into place for me. I kept telling myself, a man of my ability, it just had to happen. But it never did. And I know why too. I was too much the gentleman. I just wouldn't go against the system. No, I'm determined to see this through. Bite the bullet and take care of business."
"Atta boy, Doc,” Creepy said, clapping Brewster on the back so hard the other man staggered, “you hold that thought.” He glanced at Billy. “Well?"
"I'm in,” Billy Highway managed.
"Good man. We're still in business, then.” Creepy halted, holding his collar shut against the wind with a gnarled fist. “Well now, boys, would you check that out."
They had reached the end of the block where the tall
fieldstone facade of Our Lady of the Interlake Church took up most of the corner. A knife-edged wind pressed around the walls, cutting through their inadequate clothing and sucking the breath out of them. Creepy was gazing at a dry-cleaning van that had just pulled up at the curb. The driver had removed some plastic-sheathed garments from the back of the vehicle and was carrying them around to the side door that led up to the clerestory.
* * * *
"It's appalling,” Father Mulhollen told Robideau fervently. He had large, weepy eyes, which today looked particularly sad. “Theft of church property? I never thought I'd live to see the day."
"Someone slipped into the vestry ...?"
"I'm afraid so. Look here. They came up these stairs, then through this door and made off with my soutanes—my cassocks. I usually keep them in a closet in the glebe house, but they had just come back from the cleaners, and the deliveryman hung them in here. My bad luck.” A liverish look crossed his face as he reconsidered the point. “Or good luck. If the thief had come into the glebe house after them, I might have been butchered where I stood.” He crossed himself.
"You think someone would commit murder just to steal some old clothes?” Robideau said.
"Why not? It seems murder is taken very lightly nowadays. The church fights mightily to instill decent values, but look what we're up against. Video games, television, that insidious World Wide Web. These are secular times. We may be losing the battle. And besides, the vestments weren't that old."
"Anything else missing?” Robideau glanced around the room.
"Nothing. I've checked and double-checked. It's as if the clothing was what the thief came for, and once he had it, he left immediately."
"He?"
"Figuratively speaking."
"An ecclesiastical garment is a strange thing to steal,” Robideau observed, thinking as he said it of Pete Melynchuk's beer, Buzz Taylor's ice scraper, and Arney Arvelson's miscellaneous chemicals. He got his notepad out. “Soutane,” he said. “How do you spell that?"
Another word for his list
* * * *
But not the last. Little Freddie Ferguson called a few hours later to complain that a pair of brand-new walkie-talkies had disappeared from his car. “Little FRS jobs, Chief. Motorola, the latest model. Somebody opened the door of my vehicle and swiped them right off the dash, these little holders I got there for them."
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