“That was quick,” Howard said. He was cradling a tumbler in his hands.
“There’s a man outside. He says he wants to see you. He says he has something you’ll be interested in.”
“I’m sure he has.” Howard raised the glass to his lips. “But tell him we’ll get along somehow without. These salesman, I should charge admission …”
“He’s not a salesman.”
“No? Who is he, then?”
“I don’t know,” the waiter said, unhappy in his role of intermediary. He held out a worn hand wrapped around something Howard couldn’t quite see. “He told me to show you this. He said you’d be interested.”
Howard flipped through the sleeves of a soft pigskin wallet, and came forward in the Barcalounger so quickly that his feet slapped against the floor. He took a twenty from his own wallet and tossed it at the waiter. “Treat yourself to the dinner for three at Lum Fong’s. I’m not hungry any more. And Malik, before you go, show the gentleman inside.”
Harry came into the office raking his hair with his fingers. To Howard he looked exhausted, a sleepless man in slept-in clothes. Howard stood up to greet him. But when he offered his hand, Harry raised the heavy cast that immobilized his right arm. The plaster was a pristine white, the only thing about him that seemed fresh and clean.
“Where are you keeping yourself?” Howard asked, studying the tired features. “We’ve been worried about you.”
Harry circled warily and then sat in the dark brown Barcalounger. “Why? You don’t know me. You don’t know the first thing about—”
“I know everything about you. Everything that Kate does. And Isaac.” When that produced only a pained smile, he added, “We were afraid you’d been hurt.”
“I was hidin’,” Harry explained.
Howard retreated to the desk and raised his hips onto it. As if it were expected of him he asked, “Where?”
“In various places. After your pal had his accident on the roller coaster, it didn’t seem like such a hot idea for me to be out in the street.”
“He wasn’t my friend,” Howard said.
“It wasn’t any accident either. At least no one would’ve believed it was. I thought I could be facin’ a murder rap. Only now I see in the papers where Bucyk’s takin’ the fall for that one, too.”
“You have Kate to thank,” Howard said. “She told the police Nick and Bucyk were trying to kill her because of what she knew about Nathan’s murder. Under the law, that makes what happened to Nick Bucyk’s fault. The detectives like neat packages, and Bucyk and his guns no doubt make up the neatest they have seen in some time. They were only too happy to believe that Kate was alone.”
“She covered for me?”
“For all concerned,” Howard said. It occurred to him that his chest had stopped hurting; he poured another drink anyway. “But that’s not what brings you to see me.”
Harry pushed back in the Barcalounger and put up his feet. Howard tried not to look dispossessed. He motioned toward the wallet. “It was this?”
“And these,” Harry said, tossing a ring of keys at the desk.
Howard got a hand on the key ring, but dropped it. “Americans are all baseball players,” he said as he bent down with an embarrassed grin. “You know how to catch since you are little children.”
“Got any ideas what they open?”
“Here are car keys. But these others, I don’t—”
“That one there,” Harry told him, “is for a safe-deposit box at the CitiCorp bank on Utopia Parkway. It’d be too bad there was anything excitin’ inside, ’cause there’s no way we get a peek at it that I can figure. The other one is for a Gardall SC1130 safe like the one Nicholas was keepin’ in his bedroom. I got a hunch you’re interested in what he had in there.”
“Am I?”
“You tell me.”
Howard sloshed a few drops of water from a copper pitcher into his glass. A long drink brought a softness to his mouth. “Of course I am,” he said. “Why pretend otherwise? If you believe Nick was holding goods belonging to me in that safe, well, so do I. I don’t mind admitting that I would love to have these back. The question is, what do you want.”
“I was thinkin’ in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars cold turkey might be fair.”
The hardness—and then some—returned to Howard’s face. “I think it’s highway robbery for keys.”
“Those damn krytrons, whatever the hell they are, have got to be in that safe.” Harry became aware that his good hand had balled itself into a fist. “You sayin’ now you don’t want ’em after all, that two men are dead on account of ’em and you were just playin?”
“That key is worth nothing to me … nothing.” Howard put down his drink. “Not when I have no way of getting past Nick’s security system.” He glanced toward the door and barely perceptibly showed his palm.
Someone darted by in a tan raincoat, a slender figure topped with taffy hair. Harry opened his own hand and raised it. “Hey,” he called out, “you don’t say hello any more?”
Kate stopped reluctantly. Tiny brass bells dangled from her ears and she was heavily made up. Harry counted eight rings on her left hand, more on the right. Below the raincoat golden slippers whisked against the flattened shag.
“Hello,” she said emptily.
Howard nodded and she came into the office, pinching the raincoat around her veils and halter top. She snatched Howard’s drink off the desk and carried it into a corner.
“This man has made me an outrageous proposition,” Howard said. “I would like your opinion if I should consider bargaining him down.”
“I don’t know anything about your deals.”
“You know him. You can tell me whether to take this seriously, whether I can trust him.”
Kate shrugged. “Why would he trust us?”
“Evidently, he doesn’t. He’s trying to hold me up. He wants twenty-five thousand dollars for the key to Nick’s safe, if that’s what he has.”
Harry said, “That’s the key. And twenty-five K is the price. How you get in is your business. You interested, or not?”
Howard twirled the key ring around his finger. He shook his head.
Harry pushed up out of the Barcalounger, plucked the keys from Howard’s hand.
Kate watched him walk away. “Thirty-five,” she called after him.
“Who gave you permission to—”
“Offer him thirty-five thousand, if he’ll empty the safe himself.”
Harry kept walking. When he reached the door, he dug a finger in his bad ear and turned the other one toward them. “You want my professional services, they don’t come cheap. I’ll go inside for you, but it’ll cost another twenty-five K.”
“You can do this?” Howard asked. “The police are not watching Nick’s place all the time?”
“Yeah,” Harry said.
“Yeah? Yeah, which?”
“I was out for a look this morning, and an unmarked car comes by every hour or so. But that don’t mean the job can’t be done. For fifty K, nothing’s impossible.”
Howard made a face like he’d found a scorpion in his shoe. “You’ll want half in advance. I’m giving ten percent.”
“We’ll discuss terms later.” Harry raised his cast with his good hand. “I can’t do it alone. You interested in comin’ along, maybe learnin’ a new trade?”
“You’re joking, yes?”
Kate said, “I’ll go.”
“I wasn’t askin’ you. I’ll find somebody.”
“Howard,” she said, “tell him everything is off if I can’t go with him. I wouldn’t trust him with five thousand dollars. I’ve been out there before. I know the kind of help he needs.”
“Take her.” Howard unscrewed the cap from the bottle again. “I want her watching out for my investment.”
“Your investment,” Harry said, “is ten K up front, and I don’t move a muscle till I see you bringin’ along the whole fifty. There’s nothing in the
safe, I can’t help that.”
Howard stiffened his elbows, raising himself off the desk, then sank down. “What you are demanding is entirely unreasonable.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, and made the keys disappear in his hand.
“The three of us will go,” Howard said without hesitating. A pull from the bottle amplified the resignation in his voice. “When is the best time?”
“You tell me.”
“I should? What do I know about—?”
Harry said, “You know how long it takes to raise that kind of cash.”
In a sweatshirt and jeans and her old shearling coat Kate dashed out the service entrance. Around the corner on Seventy-third Street the green Cutlass was parked behind a leased BMW 735i that was Howard’s latest plaything. She saw Harry duck out of the German car stuffing two thick envelopes in his pants. A gaslamp in a brownstone’s short yard threw spasmodic light on Howard motioning her to the driver’s door.
“For his own good I should have bargained him down,” Howard said. “He’s a wild man, you know. He’ll kill himself with fifty thousand dollars, throw it all after whores and bad drugs.”
Kate bent inside the window. “I wouldn’t count on that.” She smiled, then thought better of it. “What makes you say—?”
“He told me.”
Kate backed away. “Are we taking your car, or his?”
“Both of ’em.” The words came from behind her. “I’ll just hand over your stuff and be on my merry way.”
“He has his ten thousand?”
As though he couldn’t bring himself to say it, Howard whispered, “…All.”
“I’d better ride out with him.”
“Who invited you?” Harry said.
Howard touched the gas and the BMW began to purr. “I must insist that you let her.”
Kate got into the Cutlass as Harry was fitting a key into the steering column. “Why, it starts from inside now.” Also purring. “Aren’t we getting lazy?”
The BMW pulled into the street. Gunning his engine, Harry swerved around and nosed ahead at the crosswalk. “Let’s just don’t talk, huh?” The light changed and they sped down Broadway, turned again and headed toward the park.
“Fine with me,” Kate said. “That’s perfectly fine.” She slouched against the door, then sat erect and pressed down the lock with her elbow, then leaned back again. “I … you know, I have my own room at the brownstone.”
Harry adjusted the mirror. A cab had maneuvered between the Cutlass and Howard’s car, and he slowed to let the intruder by. He tugged at his ear. “I don’t hear so good.”
When they came off the bridge, Kate said, “I don’t imagine you remembered to bring fresh batteries?”
Harry pointed to his ear.
“I must be out of my mind going back there with you,” she shouted at him.
“Yeah,” he said.
The German car caught up again on Queens Boulevard and Harry kept it close the rest of the way to Forest Gardens. It was three-thirty by the police scanner in Kate’s lap when they passed under the arch and cruised the wooded streets toward Nicholas’s place.
Kate said, “This will never work. The guards can’t possibly be stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice.”
Harry started to touch his ear. Kate swatted his hand away. “Damn you,” she hissed.
They drove down Nicholas’s block and turned. A cream-colored Mercedes-Benz limousine took up the spot where they had parked the last time and Harry continued almost to the corner. He waved the BMW ahead. Howard found room on the other side of the intersection, then walked back to the Cutlass.
Howard’s chest was hurting again. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“It’s up to you,” Harry said. “You can hang around and keep an eye out, or go in with me. We’re playin’ on your nickel.”
“You’re sure you can get inside without alerting—”
“Howard will stay here,” Kate interrupted. “With my eyesight, he’s the best lookout we have. Also, I’ve been in the house before. Moving around in the dark, I’ll have some idea of where I am. You don’t mind, Howard, do you?”
Howard stood taller. He said, “Tell me how I do this.”
It was Kate who reached into the backseat for the walkie-talkies. “It’s simple,” she said as she got out of the car and hooked one of the radios to her belt. “You listen for police calls to the neighborhood and at the same time you watch for private security guards. If you see them, you press—”
“How do I know who I’m looking for?”
“In a few minutes you’ll be closer to them than you could ever want.” She glanced into the front seat for Harry’s approval, but the Cutlass was empty. She saw him heading up the walk, and chased after him along the flagstones. “I didn’t finish telling Howard—”
Harry pointed to his ear.
“Damn,” she said, and ran around to his left side. “Howard doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.”
“He’ll figure it out.”
When they came to the door, Kate stepped in front of him. “My turn,” she said, and drew her leg back.
Harry shoved her out of the way. He punched a four-digit number in the SafeTech unit on the panel as Kate retreated onto the lawn. When the alarm didn’t go off, she inched back and said, “You figured out the code? How?”
“Remember how smart you told me Nicholas was?”
“Brilliant. Are you saying you’re smarter?”
“The guy was such a brain,” Harry said, “he couldn’t get in his own house unless he had the combination written down.”
“You knew all along that you could just walk in. You should have said something.”
“Nobody asked.”
“So you charged Howard another twenty-five thousand dollars for turning a key?”
Harry dug a stubby planchet out of his pants and fit it in the door. “Two keys.”
Kate entered ahead of him, moving cautiously through the blackened foyer. “Be careful,” she said. “There are steps here somewhere.”
Harry went the other way and switched on the wall lamp.
“Is that wise?” she scolded.
“I’m not a bat. I don’t work in the dark.”
Kate brushed back curtains from a living-room window. Howard was in the Cutlass with the scanner pressed to his ear. “What happens if someone does come?”
“We’re not gonna be here long enough to find out.”
He prodded her into the bedroom and turned on another small lamp. Where the safe had stood there was only a bold spot in the carpeting edged in dust.
“The police have it,” Kate said. “You’ve been taking this too lightly, I could tell.”
In an untroubled voice Harry said, “It’s a monster, a safe-chest combination. It’s gotta be around. Look in the closet.”
Kate slid open the door and they saw the safe camouflaged in a pile of men’s shirts. “Check out this beauty,” Harry said. “Interlocking tongue-and-groove closures on all sides, heat-resistant up to seventeen hundred degrees. No way the cops got in. You can see pry marks on the chest unit where they tried.”
Kate said, “…I’m sorry.”
“I told you I know this racket.”
“I mean I’m sorry about everything.”
Harry covered his good ear. “Stop yellin’. You want I should be deaf on both sides?”
“You were right about the safe like you were right about Nicholas. Like you were right about Howard. He gave me an interest in the place all right, and he expects me to dance three shows every night to earn it. What he really wants from me, I don’t know.”
Harry swept the shirts onto the floor. He unfolded a cloth sack from his jacket and spread it on top of the safe. “You know.”
“No, that’s one thing you were wrong about. He gave me a room on the top floor of the brownstone, and most days I don’t even see him till I get to the club. Sometimes I think that all he’s interested in is having me delive
r those krytrons to Israel for him. Getting them back, he’s obsessed with it.”
Harry crouched beside the safe’s lower unit. “Bring the light over, so I can see what I’m doin’.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said again. “I’m sorry I didn’t go away with you.” She went back for the lamp and carried it as close as the cord allowed.
“That’s good.”
“You’re not even listening to me,” she said.
“What?”
“What?” Kate shouted. “What? Is that all you ever say?” She was sniffling. “I’m sorry. That’s what.”
“Late for that,” Harry mumbled.
“At least I admit I made a mistake. You could be man enough to accept my apology.”
Harry had the key ring in his hand. “I accept,” he said. “Get out of the way.”
He pushed the key into the door, jiggled it delicately, then forced it, cursed, pulled it out. “You believe those clowns used a pick on a lock like this. It’s a miracle, they didn’t ruin it. Get me a pencil, huh?”
Kate found a mechanical pencil in a teak writing stand. “Will this do?”
Harry extracted the graphite and crushed it against the key. When he tried the lock again, the mechanism twanged softly. He tugged at the door and it eased open on silent hinges.
The safe was piled with bundles wrapped in thin paper. On top was a small gray box that Harry pulled out first, buttoning it inside his shirt when the lid refused to yield. “That’s my tip,” he said.
Kate guessed that there were forty bundles in the safe. As Harry brought out the first one, it nearly slipped from his hand. “Heavy,” he said. “What’re they made of, gold?”
“Who cares?”
“Not me.” He brought out two more and stacked them beside the first. “Still, a look wouldn’t hurt.”
Kate returned the pencil to the writing stand. “Hurry up,” she said. “You can look in the car.”
“What’s your rush? I thought you liked it where the other half lives.”
He tried peeling the paper from one of the bundles, but found that it had been glued on. He tore the wrapper with his teeth, revealing a smoked glass bowl tapering into an inverted bulb. In the weak light he couldn’t decide what to make of it. He held it toward the lamp. “All the grief these caused,” he said. “They don’t look like much, whatever they’re for.”
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