“Now, in just a few seconds, Smith,” Pickens said, “you’re not gonna want to touch that burner at all. You know what I mean?”
“Uh huh,” Dortmunder said.
“But you are gonna touch it,” Pickens said, “or you’re gonna answer my questions, one or the other.”
“Faucet,” said a tough guy.
“That’s good,” Pickens said, nodding judiciously, approving of a bright student. “That’s another one,” he told Dortmunder. “We turn the water on in the kitchen sink and then we put some part of your head in the way. Your nose, for instance, or your mouth, or your ear.”
“Hot water,” suggested another one.
“That’s also good,” Pickens said.
“Burner’s turning red,” said the one called Jocko, over by the stove.
“Burner’s turning red,” Pickens told Dortmunder.
Dortmunder nodded. “I heard,” he said.
“So now,” Pickens said, leaning forward again, looking very serious, “let’s start with your real—”
“Hey!” said a tough guy, and another one said, “What the—” and another one said, “Jesus!”
Pickens, slightly annoyed, looked up at his troops. Dortmunder tried to, but his head wouldn’t lift that far. Cocking it at an angle like a bird, he looked upward slantwise and saw some of the tough guys, the ones who’d been facing the doorway, staring that way in astonishment. Pickens was already twisting around to look at the doorway, and Dortmunder turned his aching body sufficiently to look, too, and it was empty. Just a doorway.
“Now what?” Pickens said.
“There was a …” one of the tough guys said, and waved his arms, and said, “There was a woman there.”
“The daughter,” Pickens said. “We know about her.”
“Not the daughter,” the tough guy said. “I saw the daughter before and believe me, Mr. Pickens, that was not the daughter.”
“Then the cook,” Pickens said. He was getting really annoyed. “Don’t interrupt the interrogation.”
The tough guy said, “Mr. Pickens, this was a different woman completely. She was a, you know, a kind of a, she was kind of a …”
“Knockout,” said one of the other tough guys.
“She blew a kiss,” said a third.
“Mr. Pickens,” said a fourth, sounding awed, “she was topless!”
Pickens glared at his troops. “What the hell is all this guff?”
Those who had seen the vision told him what the guff was, volubly, agreeing with one another. Pickens shut them with a barked, “Enough!” and turned to one of the three private guards leaning against the side wall. “Who else is up here?” he demanded.
They shifted uneasily, glancing at one another. They didn’t have a leader, and hadn’t expected to do anything but observe. Finally, one of them said, “Nobody else.”
“Did you see this so-called topless woman?”
“Nope,” the spokesman said, and the other two nodded agreement with him.
“Maybe,” Pickens suggested, his jaw bunching with repressed anger, “maybe you birds ought to check out your territory.”
The three guards looked at one another. They were in civilian clothing, neat jackets and ties, but their manner was semi-military, and they clearly didn’t like taking orders from somebody outside their chain of command. Still, if a topless woman was wandering around their allegedly secure area, they ought to check it out, so finally the spokesman said, “Come on, boys, let’s see if there’s anything to it.”
“Oh, there’s something to it,” he was assured by one of the guys who’d seen the topless woman. “There’s a lot to it.”
Carefully blank-faced, the three guards left the kitchen, and Pickens turned back to Dortmunder, saying, “Before we were so rudely interrupted, we were talking about accidents that can happen in the home to people who don’t answer questions. As I remember, we hadn’t even got around to the whole subject of knives.”
“No, we hadn’t,” Dortmunder agreed.
“Smith,” Pickens said, “I’m tired of calling you Smith. Tell me your name.”
“Ritter,” Dortmunder said. “William Ritter.”
Pickens reared back to stare at him. “Ritter?”
“I’m the black sheep uncle,” Dortmunder explained. “Sister Mary Grace’s uncle.” He wished he could remember Sister Mary Grace’s other name, her family name; an uncle would be expected to know something like that.
Pickens squinted, as though trying to see Dortmunder more clearly. “You’re telling me,” he said, “you’re Frank Ritter’s brother?”
“No-good brother,” Dortmunder said, and then just sat there and looked at Pickens, allowing his patent no-goodness to substantiate his claim.
Pickens said, “That is the most ridiculous—”
“Goddamn it!”
It was one of the tough guys who’d seen the topless woman, and he was staring at the doorway again. Pickens squinted at him. “You seeing things again, Ringo?”
“I saw—” Ringo turned to the guy next to him, and pointed at the doorway (it was empty). “Didn’t you see it?”
“Little guy,” the other one said.
“That’s right. Little old geezer.”
Dortmunder became very still.
“Now, goddamn, wait a minute,” Pickens said. “This wasn’t the topless woman? This was somebody else?”
“Little old geezer,” said the guy who’d said it before.
“And was he topless, too?” Pickens asked, with heavy sarcasm.
“No, sir, Mr. Pickens. He was bottomless.”
Ringo said, “He mooned us, sir.”
Pickens’ hands were bunched into fists on his knees. He said, “Mooned you?”
“You know, sir,” Ringo said. “When a fella turns his back and drops his pants and bends over and wiggles his ass at you.”
Pickens turned around and stared at the empty doorway. Then he turned back and stared at Ringo. “You’re telling me,” he said, “that a little old man came to that doorway and turned around and dropped his pants and bent over and wiggled his ass at you?”
“Bony old guy, too,” said Ringo.
“Say, I am not neither!” cried a voice from somewhere else in the apartment; it had the sound of the voice of a little old geezer, probably bony.
“There he is!” cried Ringo. “Hear him?”
“I heard him.” Pickens gave Dortmunder the fisheye. “What do you know about this, Ritter, or Smith, or whoever you are?”
Poker face, Dortmunder told himself; you’ll never have a better opportunity to practice your poker face. “Nothing,” he said.
Pickens stared at him a second longer, then turned to his men and pointed, giving out assignments. “Ringo, Turk, Wyatt, Pierce, go out there and get me that guy. And the topless woman. And find out where the hell those private guards got off to.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Pickens,” they said, and trooped out of the room.
“This place is supposed to be secure up here,” Pickens grumbled. “Most sophisticated security money can buy, and we’re loadin up with tourists. If this is Margrave employees having fun, I’m gonna get a whole bunch of people fired.” He glared around at his troops, but no one had anything to add to that sentiment, so he gave his attention once again to Dortmunder. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I could phone Frank Ritter, he’s just two stories down from here, in his office. I could phone him and ask him if you’re his brother. But if I do, and he says you’re not his brother, I’m gonna break both your arms and both your legs. You want me to go ahead and make that call?”
“Frank, uh, disowned me a while ago,” Dortmunder said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t blame him,” Pickens said, and leaned back, and said to his troops, “Do you suppose we could get his hand on that burner and his nose under that faucet at the same time?”
“We could anyway try,” one of them said.
“That’s the spirit.” Pickens nodded at Dortmunder as the
tough guys laid a whole lot of hands on him. “Anytime you want to talk with me,” he said, as Dortmunder was carried away toward the appliances, “just let me know.”
“Mr. Pickens!”
Everybody stopped, and turned to look at the doorway, the tough guys still holding on to Dortmunder, who sagged at waist-height among them like a rolled-up rug they were throwing away. They didn’t drop him, but their hands tightened on him, as they all saw their comrade Ringo in the doorway. He was naked, standing there with his hands over his crotch, and he looked utterly miserable.
Pickens rose slowly from his chair, staring. “Ringo,” he said. “What’s out there?”
Ringo didn’t move. He said, “Mr. Pickens, I’m told to ask for your surrender.”
“Surrender!” Pickens cried. “Never!” He sounded shocked at the idea. “Surrender to who?”
“Whom,” said a voice from the corridor.
“Mr. Pickens,” Ringo said, “these people—They say they want to avoid bloodshed, if they can.”
“Well, I don’t,” Pickens said, and turned to point at Dortmunder, saying, “Put that fella on the stove. Let’s let everybody listen to him holler.”
The troops hustled Dortmunder closer to the stove. “Say, uh …” he said. He could see the dull red glow of the burner.
“Mr. Pickens, please,” Ringo said, and when they all turned to look at him again he was still in the same position as before, but now an arm had extended out from beside the doorway, and was pressing the barrel of a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber Official Police revolver against Ringo’s right ear. Blinking a lot, but not moving his head, Ringo said, “Mr. Pickens, they got Turk and Wyatt and Pierce locked up in a room. They got those guards in there, too. They say they don’t want to kill anybody, but they will if they have to.”
“Who says?” Pickens demanded.
“These people, uh, holding this gun to my head, Mr. Pickens.”
“Surrender to an enemy I can’t even see?” Pickens took a stomping step toward the doorway.
“Oh, no, Mr. Pickens!” Ringo said, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet. “If you come over here, they’ll just shoot me, and then they’ll shoot you, and then they’ll shoot everybody!”
Pickens stopped. He pointed at Dortmunder, hanging from his troops’ hands. “I’ve got my own hostage, goddamnit!” He was so mad he was punching the air with both fists, but he wasn’t moving toward the doorway anymore.
“Mr. Pickens,” Ringo said, “I think they’re kinda getting impatient.”
“They are, are they? Getting impatient, are they?” Pickens put both hands on his hips, and leaned toward Ringo and the doorway, and said, “I tell you what I’m going to do. You people hiding back there, do you hear me?”
A woman’s dulcet voice said, “Oh, we hear you, Mr. Pickens.”
“One-on-one,” Pickens shouted, and started pulling hand-guns out of his clothing and slapping them down on the butcher block island in the middle of the kitchen; three guns in all. “A fair fight, goddamnit,” he yelled, “like the old days, like the knights! Send out your best man, damn you to hell and back, no guns, no weapons at all! I’ll meet him one-on-one, and if I beat him you’ll surrender to me, whoever the hell you are! But if he beats me, I’ll surrender my entire company!”
Ringo moved backward, and from around the corner came Tiny Bulcher, stepping into the doorway, filling it, arms at his sides, carnivorous eyes on the blanching Pickens. “You called?” Tiny asked.
42
New York Police Department recording, 11:22:45 A.M., Sunday, a call to the emergency number, 911:
NYPD: Police Department, emergency.
FEMALE VOICE: I want to report a mercenary army.
NYPD: Your name and location, please.
FV: Hannah McGillicuddy, Seven fifty-one East Forty-fifth Street.
NYPD: And what is it you wish to report?
FV: A mercenary army. Sixty professional soldiers armed with Valmets and—
NYPD: Helmets?
FV: Vel—Wait a minute.
(male voice, unintelligible, off)
FV: (off) What difference does it make?
(male voice, unintelligible, off)
FV: (off) All right, all right, you risked your life for the information, the least we can do is get it right. Meantime, you can help clean up my office, (into phone) You still there?
NYPD: That was sixty soldiers in helmets.
FV: No, no, no. It’s a rifle, it’s—(off) I’m telling her! (into phone) An assault rifle, I’m informed, whatever that is. It’s made in Finland, it’s called a Valmet, V-A-L-M-E-T. It’s like a machine gun and the idea is, they’re planning to take a plane down to South America, to a country called Guerrera, and start a war.
NYPD: Where are these sixty armed men?
FV: At the top of the Avalon State Bank Tower on Fifth Avenue. A financier named Frank Ritter that owns the building is the one paying for the war. They plan to fly down tomorrow morning.
NYPD: And their weapons and supplies are in that building on Fifth Avenue?
FV: Right again. Fifty of them are hanging around the seventy-fourth floor, in the offices of something called Margrave Corporation, and the other ten are up on the seventy-sixth floor, in a bedroom there.
NYPD: And your name is Hannah McGillicuddy, of Seven fifty-one East Forty-fifth Street.
FV: That’s right.
NYPD: And your phone number there?
FV: Eight nine eight, five six five.
NYPD: That’s only six digits. Hello? Ms. McGillicuddy?
43
“As time is the fourth dimension of space, so patience is the fourth dimension of confidence.”
Leafing through his commonplace book, waiting for Virgil Pickens to return from upstairs—he’d phoned down awhile ago that someone had been found up on seventy-six and the investigation was continuing—Frank Ritter came across that aphorism on the subject of patience, done at some time in the past, and he considered it without pleasure. It was too long, too many words, and the analogy seemed strained.
Or was it merely that this was a moment when he didn’t feel like hearing patience extolled? He wanted to know what was going on upstairs, he wanted to hear about it, and he wanted it to be done and over with. Skipping past his previous wisdoms to the most recent page, just beyond, “Lie down with wolves …,” he wrote, “Patience is sloth ennobled.” There; that took care of it.
A knock on the door. Pickens at last! “Come in,” Ritter called.
But it wasn’t Pickens. It was a middle-aged woman, the Sunday receptionist and telephone answerer whose post was at the desk just within the Margrave Corporation entrance. Ritter frowned at her, had time to notice her worried expression, and then she said, “Mr. Ritter, the police are—”
And two uniformed New York City patrolmen came in, sloppy young men with black hair over their collars and scuffed shoes and ill-fitting dark blue trousers. “Frank Ritter?” one of them said.
Ritter got to his feet; he was used to dealing with men in livery. “Yes, officers? What can I do for you?”
“We have a report,” one of the policemen said, “of a paramilitary organization assembling in these offices, armed with illegal weapons.”
Ritter’s spine stiffened. “I beg your pardon,” he said coldly. “This is a legitimate business office, with some respect and, if I may say so, influence in the world at large.”
“And lots of activity on a Sunday,” the second police officer said, unabashed.
The first one was also unabashed. “We have to follow up a report like this,” he said.
Ritter glared. “And do your superiors know you’re following up such an absurd accusation?”
A female police officer, just as sloppy as the males, with blonde hair messily over her collar, appeared in the doorway (where the worried receptionist still lingered, fretfully washing her hands) and said, “Door down here to some kind of theater, all shot up.”
The first policem
an cocked an arrogant eye at Ritter. “Running off a few practice rounds?”
“You people can’t do this!” Ritter insisted. “Come marching in here—Do you have a warrant?”
“We have probable cause,” the second policeman said.
“You most certainly do not!” Ritter still believed he could drive these interlopers out by force of will alone. “A man’s office is his castle!” he declared. “You can’t trample on my rights like this! Your law stops in the lobby!”
“Right now, Mr. Ritter,” the first policeman said, “in this office, we are the law.”
A second female police officer, this one with red hair curling over her collar, appeared carrying a Valmet with both hands. “There’s a bunch of them,” she said. “No ammo.”
A third male police officer, even younger than the others, and looking flushed with excitement, appeared and said to his comrades, “This army couldn’t wait to get started. A report just came in of looting in this building last night.”
That last remark made no sense to Ritter, and he was too bedeviled by the things he did understand to think about it. He put his hand on his telephone, glaring at the first policeman, whom he had decided was in charge of this farrago. “The mayor of this city is a personal friend of mine,” he said. “What do you suppose he’ll say to you if I call him now and tell him what’s happening here?”
The policeman grinned at the Valmet, and grinned at Ritter. “I think he’d call me sergeant,” he said.
44
Stan Murch, forehead pressed to the unopenable glass in the window in J.C. Taylor’s inner office, watched the activity on the street seven stories below. “There goes the last busload,” he said, as another Department of Corrections bus, dark blue with barred windows, pulled away from the curb in front of the Avalon State Bank Tower, taking the last of Pickens’ Army away to its final ignominious defeat.
“Hey, Stan,” Kelp called from the floor, “come on back to work, huh?”
Kelp was a little out of sorts because, while J.C. Taylor had been phoning the police, he was the one who’d been chosen to go back downstairs with Howey to the special elevator and back up to the top floor, carrying one plastic bag of swag to be distributed around the apartment up there; salting the felony mine, as it were. It had been Dortmunder’s idea, once he’d gotten over the personal humiliation of having been rescued twice by the putative rescuee, and everyone agreed it was a good one. It would distract the police, give them every reason to suppose there were no crooks in the building except the ones they already had, and suggest the rest of the loot had already been exfiltrated from the building via elevator.
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