“Right,” Dortmunder said. Waving his other arm—no tattoo on that one, either—he yelled, “We’ll go, but we want a better gun!”
“Weapon,” the snake-and-woman man said.
“Weapon!”
The snake-and-woman man took a step closer to Dortmunder, eying him with a certain repelled curiosity. “Listen, fella,” he said. “Where do you—?”
Crash.
Everybody stopped, including the snake-and-woman man. Silence fell. Dortmunder blinked, and looked toward the stage, where the burly man, evidently having had enough, had pounded his Valmet assault rifle like a gavel onto the card table, which had done the card table no good at all. It had crumpled, and the burly man had pounded the floor right through the table, making a racket bigger than the racket coming at him. Into the startled silence he’d created, he said, “Goddamnit, boys, I don’t like The People Upstairs any more than you do, but they hired us for this thing, and we’re taking their goddamn shilling, and that’s it. This is the hand we’ve been dealt, and we either fold or play. It happens this is what I do for a living, so I’m gonna stay and play. You gonna fold?”
The raucous and colorful responses he got this time were generally along the lines that everybody intended to blankety-blank stay and play the blankety-blank hand. “I never fold a bad hand!” Dortmunder shouted, getting into the swing of things, and immediately felt the snake-and-woman man’s eyes on him again. What did I do wrong now?
Fortunately, there was another distraction, because the burly man followed up his challenge by saying, “Any more questions?” and somebody behind Dortmunder and off to the right yelled out, with a voice you could use to scour frying pans, “When do we get our hands on those fucking Finnish nose-ticklers?”
“As a matter of fact,” the burly man said, grinning as though he’d been waiting for this question, “how about right now?” Then he called, “You in the back there, open the door and let them in.”
A stir of interest, as everybody turned to look, and an extra stir of interest from Dortmunder, who suddenly saw a way out. I’m near the back, he told himself, and I’m on the aisle, and I’m already standing. Quick as anything, he turned and stepped into the aisle, happy to do the burly man’s bidding right up to the point where he would step through the door he’d opened, and run like hell.
Except not. Somebody from the half dozen rows behind Dortmunder had also moved, and was already reaching for the door handle. Heck. Hell. Shit! Stepping back in from the aisle, pretending to be unaware of the snake-and-woman man’s eyes on him, Dortmunder watched that other son of a bitch open the door.
Several building security men came in, neatly pressed and creased in their blue uniforms with their handguns in polished leather holsters on their belts. Never had legitimate authority—even fairly legitimate authority—looked so good to Dortmunder. I’ll surrender to those guys, he thought, I’ll throw myself on their mercy because they just might have some mercy to throw myself on. But even as he thought that and inhaled the deep breath prior to making a mad dash for capture, he heard the snigger going around the room, among all these suddenly grinning tough guys; the sound of leopards looking at house cats. Forget it; there’d be no safe harbor for Dortmunder there.
The security men sensed the atmosphere, too, and moved stiffly, frozen-faced, maintaining their dignity even though pushing large wheeled luggage carriers down the aisle to the front of the room. Wooden crates, their tops already pried off, were piled on the luggage carriers, and when they reached the front the burly man took a folded sheet of typing paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and said, “Okay, everybody sit down.”
Everybody sat down. They do obey, Dortmunder thought.
“I’ll call off your names now,” the burly man said, “and when I do you come up and sign out your weapon, then stand along either side wall.”
Call off your names? Dortmunder stared at that piece of paper in the burly man’s hand. His name wasn’t on that paper. No name he’d ever used or could possibly answer to was on that paper.
Talk about slow death. Sixty people were now going to get their names called, one at a time. They were going to get up, one at a time, and walk to the front of the room and sign whatever name had just been called. One at a time they would get their assault rifles, and then they would go stand along the side wall, until every name had been called and every rifle had been given out and every seat had been emptied.
Except one.
Wait a minute. Stand along the side wall? How come? Dortmunder felt a sudden little trace of irritation, tucked away inside his larger and more pervasive sense of doom and destruction. Why did everybody have to stand along the side wall? If they all came back to their seats with their Valmets, at some point Dortmunder would simply pretend he’d already gotten his, and maybe, just maybe, just slightly possibly, he would get away with it. Even with the gimlet eye of the snake-and-woman man so frequently on him. But not if everybody’s going to wind up standing along the side wall, holding their guns. Weapons.
Somebody else apparently had the same question, if not the same problem: “How come we stand against the wall?” came the shout.
The burly man shook his head, grinning almost fondly at these ruffians and rowdies. “I don’t want you bringing your toys to your seats,” he said, “where maybe the guy next to you doesn’t have his yet, he’s a little impatient, he wants to look at yours. We’re all gonna remain calm.”
That’s what you think, Dortmunder thought.
Was there a way out, any way at all? Could he raise his hand and be excused to go to the bathroom? Not very likely, though, in fact, given his current situation he sort of did have to go to the bathroom. Well, how about this? In the middle of the weapons distribution, could he get to his feet as though responding to his name and then back up the aisle to the exit, pretending to walk forward toward the stage? No. Could he wait till most of the names had been called, and then quietly slide under his seat and crawl under the rows of seats to the exit and … open the door in full view of everybody? No.
A voice on the other side of the room called, “We get the ammo now?”
That drew a laugh, for some reason. The burly man smiled, and let the laugh work itself out before saying, “No, I don’t think so, boys. You’ll get cartridge clips on the plane, same time you get your green armbands.”
“When do we get to practice with the fucker?” the snake-and-woman man shouted.
“When you land in Guerrera,” the burly man told him. “Just shoot at people till you hit one; then you’ll know it works.”
“Why don’t we shoot at these little blue boys here?” somebody asked, and everybody else laughed deep in their throats, and the security men blinked a lot, looking as stern as they knew how and pretending they weren’t dressed in blue.
“These are friendlies, boys,” the burly man said indulgently, but it was obvious to everybody in the room, including Dortmunder and the security men that the “boys” might just as readily as not rip these friendlies into little pieces just for the fun of it.
But now the burly man cried out, “Let’s get on with it, boys,” and consulted his list, and called, “Krolikowsky!”
A guy with scars on his face and a missing ear got up and went forward to sign for his Valmet.
“Gruber! Sanchez!”
Maybe somebody didn’t show up, Dortmunder thought, slumping in his seat. Why not? It happens. Some guy misses the bus, or forgot to set his alarm. You get any group together, you get somebody calling the roll, there’s always some name that gets called and nobody at all says, “Yo,” and everybody looks around, and the person calling the roll makes a disgusted mouth and notes something on his clipboard and that missing guy is in trouble.
Well, not trouble. Not real trouble. Not like this trouble. But the point is, why wouldn’t that happen now? (Probably because this group had already been assembled some time ago and everybody knew who was or wasn’t here, but let’s ignore that possibility.) If it did
happen, if the burly man called out a name and nobody responded, then just as the burly man was looking around the room, ready to make a disgusted mouth and note something on that piece of paper, Dortmunder would leap to his feet and march forward and sign himself out an assault rifle.
Okay. A plan. Dortmunder sat tensely in his seat and waited for the little man who wasn’t there.
“Messerschmidt! Booneholler!”
It wasn’t taking long at all, not nearly as long as it should. Dortmunder slumped deeper and deeper into his seat as the army armed itself, trying to think of an alternate plan just in case the first one didn’t pan out. Shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater? Not this time; somebody would fire … a gun.
“Barbaranda! Peabody!”
Peabody? The snake-and-woman man was named Peabody? Dortmunder moved his knees out of the way and Peabody marched on down the aisle to get his weapon. The tattoo on his other arm involved a woman and an eagle.
“Mordred! Gollum!”
Fewer and fewer remained in their seats, more and more were lined up along the walls on both sides. They looked meaner standing up. They looked a lot meaner with assault rifles in their hands.
Could he pretend to have amnesia? No.
Could he rise at the same instant as somebody else and then claim he was Slade or Trask or whoever, and the other guy was the impostor? No; not for more than about eleven seconds.
“Zorkmeister! Fell! Omega!”
And that was it. And this was a party to which everybody had come; there were no no-shows here. There were only the now-empty wooden crates, the half dozen nervous security men, the burly man with his list up on stage, thirty armed barbarians lining each side wall, and Dortmunder. Seated. Alone. In the middle.
The burly man’s frown pressed against Dortmunder like a heavy wind, even from this far away. “Say, there, fellow,” he called, holding up his piece of paper and rattling it, “how come your name isn’t on this list?”
Think of something, Dortmunder ordered himself. “Uhh,” he said, and thought of nothing. “Yeah,” he said, aware of all those eyes, all those weapons. “Um,” he said.
The burly man turned his own Valmet around and pointed it in Dortmunder’s direction, saying, “This piece of armament, fellow, has a full clip in its belly. Name, rank and serial number, boy, and don’t hesitate.”
Dortmunder hesitated; he couldn’t help it. But he had to say something. “Well, uh, my name is Smith.”
“Haw,” said some of the people on the sides, but the burly man and his Valmet didn’t seem amused. Why did I say Smith? Dortmunder asked himself. It’s just gonna make them madder.
“On your feet, Mr. Smith,” the burly man said. “I am about to display the Valmet’s recoil action. Up!”
Dortmunder stood. He was still looking for a plan. Pretend to have a heart attack? Claim to be a policeman, and put them all under arrest? How about … how about … how about if he said he was from the company sold these people the Valmets, and the check bounced, and he was here to repossess them?
“Out in the aisle, Mr. Smith,” the burly man said, and Dortmunder obeyed, and the burly man said, “Now, boys, you’ll notice the recoil of this weapon is mainly rearward, with not much barrel rise, so you can place just about as many rounds as you want in a narrow target area without pause. Any last words, Mr. Smith?”
“I can explain,” Dortmunder said—my last words are a lie! he thought despairingly—and the lights went out.
Click. Snap. Darkness, pitch-black, just like that. Dortmunder wasted a full hundredth of a second being startled before he turned and ran like a chicken thief in the general direction of the door.
Whack! The door was closed. Dortmunder knocked it open with his forehead, nose, knees, elbows, knuckles and belt buckle, and the hall lights were out, too. Behind him, a whole zoo of noises suddenly erupted, roaring and squawling and braying and barking, and over those noises came a rapid BAP-BAP-BAP-BAP, huge and echoing in the enclosed air of that room. The door shuddered, hit by a couple of rounds, and Dortmunder caromed off it, arms flailing wildly as he reeled into the blackness of the hall, where a small cold hand closed around his wrist.
“YIIIII!!!” Vampires, ghouls, things that go bump in the night. This was even worse than the Valmet!
A second hand groped for his mouth, to shut it, found his nose instead, and squeezed. “Ngggg,” Dortmunder said, and the first hand tugged at his wrist while the second hand released his nose, patted his cheek, and departed.
A friend? In this madhouse?
Well, somebody turned off the lights, right?
Dortmunder allowed himself to be drawn away from the yelling and shouting back in the theater, pulled along at a half-trot by this small but strong hand encircling his wrist. They made a turn, the sounds in the background grew fainter, and then a pale light appeared back there, showing behind them at the corridor turn. “They’ve got the lights on,” Dortmunder said, and in the dimness peered at his rescuer.
A girl. Early twenties. Short, slender, in blue jeans and high-necked long-sleeved full-cut black blouse. Grim-faced and fiery-eyed she was, as she glanced back toward the light, then pushed open a door on the left side of the hall. They entered an ordinary office, empty, brightly illuminated by ceiling fluorescents. Slamming the door, leaning against it, taking a deep breath, the girl looked at Dortmunder, held up her right hand with one finger pointing up, tapped two fingers of her right hand to her raised left forearm, held up one finger again, tugged her earlobe, and blew him a kiss.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Dortmunder told her. “Kiss, sounds like sis, you’re Sister Mary Grace.”
She nodded and smiled, making an A-OK circle of thumb and forefinger.
“I’m, uh,” Dortmunder said, but what the hell, might as well admit it. “I’m John Dortmunder.”
She nodded again, patting the air: She too had figured things out.
Dortmunder sighed; it had to be said. “I’m here to rescue you.”
She raised an eyebrow, grinning ever so slightly, but otherwise refrained from comment.
Noise out in the hall; moving this way. “Here they come,” Dortmunder said.
Sister Mary Grace listened for a second, then nodded, and headed across the room toward the other door, gesturing for Dortmunder to follow. He followed.
30
“You notice Dortmunder takes the easy part,” Tiny Bulcher said, hefting a black plastic bag filled with about fifty pounds of jade, gold, ivory and other nice things, which he then tossed over his left shoulder. With a second black plastic bag, similarly filled, on his right shoulder, he looked like the rebuttal to Santa Claus.
“Aw, come on, Tiny,” Andy Kelp said, stripping rings from his fingers and bells from his other fingers to go into the next plastic bag to be filled. “You didn’t want to go up there with the nun, you said so yourself.”
“We bust and break and carry and schlep,” Tiny said, unappeased, “and he drinks tea with some nun.”
Wilbur Howey, holding with both hands a six-inch-tall ivory reproduction of a piece of erotic statuary from Angkor Wat, said, “Wants to keep that little nun all to himself, does he?”
“Listen, Wilbur,” Tiny said, “you been holding that statue ten minutes now. You’re supposed to pack it, so I can carry it downstairs.”
“Oh, sure,” Howey said. Then, as Tiny continued to gaze upon him, Howey reluctantly bent and put the statue away in the half-full plastic bag, stroking it a lingering goodbye before the black consumed it.
Stan Murch came out to the hall from Macaran Ivory Co. with an armload of netsuke, which he dumped without ceremony into the plastic bag, then looked around and said, “We knocking off now?”
“No, no,” Kelp said. “I’m right with you, Stan.”
“So’s Wilbur,” Tiny said. “While I’m carrying all this stuff downstairs, and Dortmunder’s up there playing footsie with the nun.”
“You don’t play footsie with nuns, Tiny,” Kelp said.
&nb
sp; Howey looked startled at that, but then he frowned, as though prepared to listen to a second opinion.
“Work,” Tiny advised, and turned around to plod away, the bulging black bags on his back making him look as though he were on his way to Vulcan’s forge.
Stan went back into Macaran Ivory, past the sagging door that Tiny had kicked open a while back. Howey followed, bright-eyed, looking for more reproductions. Kelp paused, watched Tiny disappear through the stairwell door at the end of the hall, and then skipped lightly into Duncan Magic, next door to Macaran. He was there three minutes, deeply involved in the process of turning a long black cane into a bouquet of bright-colored plastic flowers, when Stan came in and said, “Andy, we been pals a long time.”
“Okay, okay,” Kelp said, and put the cane down on the counter. “I’m just coming now.”
“But if you come in here again,” Stan said.
“No, no,” Kelp assured him. “Not till we’re done with everything else.”
“I’m just gonna have to ask Tiny for advice,” Stan finished.
“You don’t have to do that, Stan, honest. Look, here I am, I’m going out to the hall. You coming?”
“Of course I’m coming,” Stan said, but in fact he was glancing back at the long black cane lying on the counter. How do you turn something like that into a bouquet of flowers?
No. Don’t even ask. Stan firmly turned his back on the cane and left Duncan Magic.
31
Pickens brooded, glowering. He was mad enough to eat the bark off a Saint Bernard.
“He’s got to be somewhere on this floor,” the head security wimp said. He was obviously made nervous by Pickens’ silence.
“That’s fine,” Pickens said, standing there next to the assembly room door with his hands on his hips. “Why don’t you show him to me, then?”
“We’re working on it,” the head security wimp said.
Working on it. They were all working on it; that is, the survivors were working on it. The scene in the assembly room had deteriorated badly once the lights went out. It had been a mistake to start blasting away with that Valmet. Pickens knew it full well and quite bitterly accepted the blame for the whole thing. He’d been aiming at the fellow purely as a threat—you don’t kill a man who hasn’t answered your questions yet—but the sudden darkness had startled him, and his finger was on that trigger anyway—no trigger guard, just as he’d pointed out to the troops—and his automatic reaction had been to squeeze.
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