“Not usually. Usually we talk inside me.”
It was hard for Gainer to accept that Chapin might be a believer. Technical, calculating Chapin, who now extended his hand to Leslie’s to demonstrate his understanding with a brief clasp. “The human level of observation is so limited it’s pitiful,” Chapin said. “We can’t hear or see very much and what we know is probably a hell of a lot less than what we don’t. We keep on amplifying and magnifying things and just when we think we’ve reached the bottom or the top of something all we find is another opening showing us we’ve still got a long ways to go.”
Leslie agreed firmly.
“Most people don’t want to think about it,” Chapin went on. “Most people swear they believe in a god and yet they live by the rules of not accepting anything they can’t see or hear.”
Vinny got up and went inside to use the bathroom.
Evidently the topic had pulled one of Chapin’s plugs, Gainer thought.
Chapin continued. “I remember once in a small town upstate, I had a tap going on a certain congressman. It was in October or November, just beginning to get cold. It was set up in an old farmhouse, a place that dated back almost three hundred years. One afternoon I went for a walk and was crossing an open field a short way from the house when suddenly I felt slowed down as if there was something in the air there that I had to use more effort to get through. After I’d gone about twenty feet it disappeared, like a release, making me stumble forward a little.”
“A gust of wind maybe,” Gainer said.
“It was so strange that I asked about the field and was told that part of it had been a family burying ground.”
Leslie took in Chapin’s every word as though they helped make up for a deficiency. “I had the same experience,” she said, “at least a similar sensation. One afternoon in Altman’s, of all places. There was hardly anyone in the store but it seemed difficult for me to go down the aisle, like I had to push my way along. Perhaps a lot of ladies from the other side who were once Altman customers had come back to look around.”
“Was there a sale on?” Gainer asked.
Leslie shot him a look.
Vinny returned. “I’ve got a package coming tonight,” he told Chapin.
“Forget it,” Chapin told him.
“It’s nice material,” Vinny said, “clean, and I can get it for only twenty large. Probably there’ll even be some sapphires,” he added, hoping that might help his cause.
Gainer glanced down, realized he was standing on one of Sweet’s pages. He picked it up and tried to straighten the crinkle in it. “What do you think?” he asked Chapin, expecting Chapin’s opinion about the robbery of Number 19 was the same as his own. “Those alarms all over the place.”
“The alarms don’t bother me so much,” Chapin said.
“No?”
“No, I think I can take care of the alarms. Getting in and out of there is the stumper. Have you given that any thought?”
“A lot,” said Leslie.
“Some …” Gainer said.
“You concentrate on that,” Chapin told them. “Let me worry about the alarms.”
“The split,” Vinny reminded Chapin.
“What do you think would be fair?” Chapin asked Gainer.
“You say.”
“Okay, why don’t we slice the forty down the middle. Twenty million each.”
“That’s still a nice long number,” Leslie commented.
Gainer and Chapin shook on it.
During the next week Gainer and Leslie focused most of their energies on coming up with answers for their part of the robbery. They tossed suggestions back and forth rather competitively and whenever they hit on an idea that had a possibility they worked it out, checked it out, did a lot of phoning and running around to such places as Paramus, New Jersey, and Mineola, Long Island.
Also, Leslie found an old tailor’s suit-form in the attic. The dimensions of Rodger twenty years ago. She set it up in front of a stone wall, pinned a hundred dollar bill where the heart would be so she and Gainer could practice with the ASPs. Gainer felt the same affinity for the weapon as he had in Paris. It went into his hand as though made for it, just waiting to be claimed by his grip. There were no ridiculous misses by him this time. His first shot from fifty feet put a hole through the edge of the hundred.
Every day Gainer and Leslie practiced for twenty-five rounds. From other ranges, angles and firing positions. Horsehair and cotton batting flew from the hole they blasted in the suit-form’s chest. The hundred was shot to unspendable shreds.
Leslie invited Vinny to target practice with them but he said he didn’t need it. Vinny did little at all that week other than eat very well, nap on the down-filled, silk-covered sofa in the drawing room and wander around the house in his stocking feet. At various times Gainer happened to notice Vinny taking close-up interest in an eighteenth-century, signed Piere Gillions silver tea caddy, paying a good deal of attention to a painting by Matisse and looking long into the hall cedar closet where Leslie kept a few furs. Either by habit or with intention of casing the place, was Gainer’s impression. He decided not to mention it to Chapin.
Because Chapin was preoccupied with more important matters. Most of the while he kept to himself working with a note pad and a fine-tipped pen. His handwriting and the schemes he drew were so small it was a wonder he was able to make them out with bare eyes. When he was done with a problem he tore all the note pages into the smallest possible bits and flushed them down the toilet, keeping the solution in his head. Nearly every day he made a trip into town to his laboratory, where it was assumed he was preparing the devices he’d need. He also took those opportunities to get serviced by his working girls. He had to have his working girls.
On the seventh day Chapin announced that he had solved the photoelectric alarm system that ran along the top of the exterior wall of Number 19. Also the pressure alarms in the lawn and on the roof and the sonic alarm in the upper hallway.
“What about the heat sensor alarms?” Gainer asked. “The ones inside The Balance room?”
“Those have me stumped,” Chapin hated to admit. “I thought all along they’d be a problem.”
“Maybe Sweet didn’t give us enough information.”
“It’s not that. I know what sort of units they are and how they work. Under ordinary circumstances they’d be the easiest to fool because they’re remote. All I’d have to do is get a fix on their frequency and scramble the hell out of them, or jam them.”
“So, why not do that?”
“We could, but I think the chances of getting away with it would be against us. The guys in that monitoring room aren’t assholes. They’re sure to have a way of detecting such a scramble or jam designed into that remote unit. I know I would. No, it seems to me the better try would be to somehow get me into the monitoring room. I’d need ten minutes, maybe only five to fool the alarm on that end.”
“We’d need Hine’s help.”
“Tell him it’s crucial.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t go for it,” Gainer said. “He was firm about not sticking his neck out any further than it is.”
“Then I guess we’re stuck,” Chapin said.
“It’s only a snag,” Leslie encouraged.
The heat sensor alarm.
The heart of Number 19’s security system.
To fool it they had to get to it. But how could they get to it when just being in the same room with it would cause it to go off.
They turned the problem over and over in their minds.
For help Leslie made up a special flower remedy that she called Remedy R (for Robbery). It had equal parts of madia and penstemon and Scotch broom in it. Madia to keep their thinking focused. Penstemon so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the challenge. Scotch broom for perseverance and to offset feelings of what’s-the-use. At least twenty times a day Leslie had Gainer, Chapin and Vinny tilt their heads back and open their mouths for her to squirt it into them. When the Remed
y was used up, Leslie mixed another batch, doubled up on the Scotch broom.
It didn’t matter.
The give-ups started setting in.
They weren’t so smart after all.
Seemed as though it just wasn’t meant to be.
Too bad they went to all the trouble for nothing.
Gainer took some of the time to catch up with business. He’d already missed the opening week of pro football. He’d been so wrapped up in this other thing. Now he got up to date on the injury reports, what players had been picked up or placed on waivers. He reached out for information from guys he knew in the cities of all the teams. When he phoned in to Pointwise, Inc., his people were about to make a pick of their own, they sounded neglected and relieved. He told them for Sunday to give out the Falcons over the Saints by ten and for Monday night, Denver plus four over Oakland.
Chapin, meanwhile, began doodling an idea to beat the telephone company. It would allow anyone, for only a hundred dollar investment in materials, to use satellite telephone transmission for nothing, forever.
Vinny went out and bought a package of swag with a lot of gawdy David Webb stuff in it.
Leslie baked some bread that came out well. She paged through several mail order brochures, including those from Neiman Marcus and Tiffany. She sent away for a lot of things.
She also washed her Corniche. Put on white short shorts and a T-shirt and red rubber boots, got a bucket, chamois and other things from the garage.
Gainer saw her from their bedroom window.
She was hard at it, sudsing the trunk and taillights with a big, sloppy terrycloth mitten.
He went down to her.
No, she told him, she didn’t want any help. She stretched to reach across the hood causing her shorts to ride up.
Gainer sat on the nearby stone wall to enjoy her. As usual, her movements seemed choreographic to him. His love, washing her hundred and fifty thousand dollar car, he thought.
She sang to herself as she worked. “La dee da, see how they da. La dee da, see how they da. They all ran after ladadee da, she cut off their tails with a ladeeda, did you ever see such a sight in your life, la dee da …”
“Any loose change you find under the seat you can keep,” Gainer said.
“Thank you, sir!” Leslie snapped brightly.
She went on washing and humming. Then she stopped as though paralyzed. Car washing suds ran down her forearms and dropped from her elbow. From the covered look of her eyes she seemed to be listening. Then, just as abruptly, she was animated. “Lady Caroline!” she exclaimed. “I knew she’d come through!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DUSK.
Thursday, September 17.
The white truck was on Route 120 passing close by inlets of the Kensico Reservoir.
When it reached a point approximately two hundred feet from where the Westchester County Airport began, it pulled over and stopped on the wide, paved shoulder.
Vinny was at the wheel, Gainer beside him.
The truck was the sort of bucket-hoist vehicle used by tree service companies and New York Telephone and the State Highway Department. For reaching high places with a man. Behind its cab on a flatbed was housing for the motor that provided power for the hoist. The hoist could be rotated at its base. It consisted of two extensions or arms, each twenty feet long, connected in a hinging, adjustable manner, like an elbow. Fixed to the uppermost end of the second arm was a pair of plastic containers called buckets, waist-deep and large enough for a man to stand and move around in.
This particular bucket-hoist was painted white. The United States Government seal decaled on its doors was encircled with the words Federal Aviation Administration. Red, white and blue government license plates. None of that was fabricated. It was, indeed, an authentic official FAA truck. Stolen to order from Teeterborough, New Jersey Airport for a five thousand fee by a couple of Vinny’s people.
Gainer climbed down from the cab. Both he and Vinny were wearing white, loose-fitting coveralls and had FAA photo identifications pinned, above their left upper pockets.
Gainer studied the airport area ahead. None of the hangars or other buildings could be seen from there because of the terrain and high brush. However, the landing approach lights stood up in clear view on thirty foot stanchions evenly spaced in a straight line every fifty feet, a rack of five lights on each stanchion to help guide pilots straight to the runway.
Vinny handed the rifle and cartridges to Gainer. It was Rodger’s rifle bought by him several years ago to take to Canada for bear. A premier grade Remington 760 Gamemaster carbine. Gainer was a little careless with it now as he crawled beneath the truck, scraped the butt of its stock on the pavement. He positioned himself close to the inside of the front wheel, where he was less likely to be noticed. The sparse traffic along that stretch of road at that hour also helped. Spread belly down, elbows supporting the rifle, Gainer looked through the 4-12 telescopic sight.
The sight brought the individual landing approach lights right to him. He cross-haired on one and squeezed the trigger. Saw the light and its reflector explode under the impact of the 30-06 bullet. The report of the rifle was loud but somewhat contained by the underside of the truck.
Rapidly, without a miss, Gainer shot out ten landing approach lights from four different racks. It sounded as though some old truck was backfiring badly or perhaps some kids were setting off leftover Fourth of July M-80 bombs. Before anyone could come to investigate the shots, Gainer and rifle were back in the truck and under way.
Vinny took a left for the road that ran along the eastern side of the airport. Past the Air National Guard hangars to the main access gate.
The steel-mesh gate was closed.
A guard on duty there came to the truck.
“About half your goddamn Malsr is out, maybe even the Rail,” Gainer said brusquely, sounding technical and very much like an FAA maintenance man irritated by the inconvenience of so much work. Malsr was an acronym for Medium-Intensity Approach Light System Rail. Rail itself stood for Runway Alignment Indicator Lights, Gainer had learned.
“What do I know?” the guard said. He went into a cubicle and put in a call.
A Lear jet came sibilantly skimming in, blinking red.
The guard returned. “Control didn’t know anything about it until just now when that Lear complained. What are you guys, psychic or something?”
“We got the call,” Gainer said with annoyance.
The guard pressed a button and the electrically controlled gate rolled open.
Vinny drove through and in about a hundred feet. Stopped there. In their side mirrors Gainer and Vinny observed a gasoline tanker behind them stopped at the gate. An eighteen-wheeler. Orange and blue Gulf insignia and AVGAS 100LL painted on it. The guard waved it through. The tanker drove in all the way to the concrete apron, turned left and continued on—along the face of Hangar “D.” Most of the doors to the various corporate sections were closed.
The tanker maneuvered and came to a stop on the apron, its front end facing the field. Idled there.
Vinny pulled the bucket-hoist truck up next to the tanker.
“How’s your watch?” Gainer asked out his window.
“Six-forty-one,” Chapin replied from the cab of the tanker. He was alone. The Gulf tanker was another acquisition by Vinny’s people for another five thousand. Taken from an eating stop on Route I just outside Bridgeport. It was full when they took it so they’d made a little extra selling its eighty-six hundred gallons half price to an independent service station that was also a numbers office on Queens Boulevard.
“We’ll wait until ten to seven,” Gainer told Chapin.
Darkness had already come.
It was the best sort of night for a robbery. Clouds had formed a thick ceiling from horizon to horizon, were just hanging there a mile up. The three-quarters moon had no chance of getting through.
A twin-engine propeller job glided in three hundred from where the two trucks stoo
d. It passed from right to left down the runway.
“I don’t like this part,” Vinny remarked.
Gainer didn’t either.
Keeping headlights off, Vinny put the truck in gear and got it rolling. Chapin in the tanker was under way in the larger, longer tanker alongside. They went full-out through the pitch dark, across the apron and over a dry grassy strip onto the taxiing area, guessing where they were merely by the feel of the surface beneath the wheels. It was so dark Gainer had the sensation that they were about to go hurtling off an edge.
Within seconds they were passing over another area of grassy ground. This one wider and slightly depressed for drainage, and Gainer knew from his mental map of the airport that the next hard surface would be the main runway.
He looked off to his right.
Saw the landing lights of a jet on its approach to the runway. Large private jet coming in. Gainer was about to warn Vinny to brake but at that moment their wheels got hard runway and they were committed.
The landing lights of the jet grew wider apart as it came nearer. Like a pair of motorcycles forty feet off the ground. It did not see the two trucks until its beams caught them. It roared as though furious at having them in its way. Its undercarriage cleared the hoist-truck by three feet, the taller tanker by six inches.
“Vehicles on runway!” the jet’s pilot radioed the control tower.
An official in a jeep went out on the runway to investigate, but by then the two trucks were on the fringe of the undeveloped area that buffered the airport from the residences on Purchase Street. Letting up on their speed but not stopping, the trucks, in tandem, plowed into the high grass and on through the brush that enveloped them.
Now they turned on their headlights, and Gainer got his bearings.
When he’d been in this area two weeks earlier he’d seen how dense it was, but he hadn’t realized there were so many mature trees. The difference, of course, was being on foot and the reduced clearance that required. Now, with the trucks there were few spaces between trees that offered room enough, and several times it was necessary to cut back and go around in order to proceed. Also, the terrain had not seemed so uneven before. The huge trucks went bouncing, grinding, scraping along, few feet by few feet. At one point they came on an outcropping of granite ledge that was impassable, had to back off from it with great difficulty and find another direction. As it turned out that was fortunate, because it brought them to the easier going of a level clearing where they made better time, and then there was only wild sumac that their bumpers crushed down.
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