The elevator roof itself was perfect, mostly flat, metal, with the trapdoor into the elevator off toward a corner. The thing should work.
Parker put the pencil flash away, shut the cover, and put the padlock back on. Then he went back across the roof to the lighted men's room window and saw Formutesca in there looking for him.
Formutesca smiled and waved when he saw him, then pushed the ladder out the window again. Parker reached for it, rested the top end on the roof rim, and went hands and knees back to the other building.
Formutesca helped him through the window and then pulled the ladder back in and shut the window. He turned to Parker, not bothering to hide his excitement. “Well? How is it?”
“Fine,” Parker said. “It'll work. How long's it been?”
Formutesca looked at his watch. “Just about eleven minutes.”
“Good,” Parker said. “We have time to make a mess.”
For the next five minutes they attempted to make the room look like a place where plumbers had been at work. Parker flushed the three toilets, emptying their water tanks, and smeared a few streaks of grease here and there on walls and fixtures while Formutesca chipped three tiles out of the wall above one of the sinks and then carelessly glued them back on again, grouting somewhat sloppily around their edges.
When the superintendent came back, the room looked right. He looked around and said, “You got it done?”
“We think so,” Parker said. “We'll have to take a look in the basement, that's all. You don't have to stay with us any more if you don't want.”
“I don't know,” the superintendent said. “Maybe I better.”
“It's up to you,” Parker said. He took Hoskins' notebook out of his pocket. “In case this thing acts up again,” he said, “do me a favor. Don't call the department, call me personally. Otherwise they'll have me running my ass off. Will you do that?”
“Sure,” the superintendent said. “No skin off my nose.”
“Thanks,” Parker said. He wrote on a page of the notebook Mr Lynch, EL5-2598. That was a number in Gonor's apartment. If in the next few days the superintendent began to have questions or suspicions, if he was troubled or unhappy in any way, he would now call Parker rather than anyone else. It was a way to guard against surprises when they came back.
Parker tore the page out of the notebook and gave it to the superintendent, who looked at it and tucked it away in his pants pocket. Then the three of them took the elevator down to the basement, Formutesca again carrying the ladder and toolbox. This time Formutesca stayed in character.
In the basement, Parker kept the superintendent busy showing him where things were—the fuse boxes, the hot water line, the main water line—while Formutesca quietly looked around for an entrance. Parker wrote things on his clipboard, asked questions, and when Formutesca wandered over again, looked sleepy and stupid, Parker said to the superintendent, “All right, that should do it. I don't want any more trouble if I can help it.”
“I know what you mean,” the superintndent said, and led the way to the elevator. Behind him, Formutesca shook his head at Parker, meaning there was no usable way in.
They rode up to the first floor, walked down toward the door, and Parker stopped and said, “That valve under the sink.”
The superintendent said, “What?” He was obviously thinking most about going back to bed.
Parker said to Formutesca, “You know the one I mean. Go on up and check it.”
“Yeah,” said Formutesca, the word full of boredom and stupidity.
“This won't take long,” Parker told the superintendent. “ You just take him up and let him check that valve.”
“Ain't you coming?”
“I never want to see that John again,” Parker said, “as long as I live.”
“I feel the same way myself,” the superintendent said. He was beginning to feel peevish and put-upon. He turned away unhappily and led Formutesca back to the elevator.
As soon as the elevator started upstairs, Parker went to the front door, opened it, studied the lock for a minute, and then took a ring with half a dozen keys on it from his pocket. He frowrned over the keys, selected one, put it in the lock, and it worked. Satisfied, he put it away again and shut the door.
It was good he had one that would work, since the superintendent's patience was obviously beginning to run thin. If he hadn't been able to see a quiet way to get through this door he'd have had to make the superintendent show them the rear of the building next. He didn't mind exasperating the superintendent, but he didn't want the man calling some city department of water supply or something tomorrow to complain about being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.
He waited about three minutes, and then the elevator came back down and Formutesca and the superintendent came out. Parker said, “Was it okay?” That phrasing meant things were all right down here. If the door had proved a problem, he would have said, “Was anything wrong?”
Formutesca was obviously glad to hear they were done playing this game. “Sure it was okay,” he said, trying for the sullen and stupid sound again but this time not being completely successful at it.
But it wasn't a big enough slip for the superintendent to notice. His eyes were half closed; in spirit he was already back in bed and asleep. He walked Parker and Formutesca to the door, held it for them, nodded heavily when Parker voiced the hope that there wouldn't be any more trouble now, and then shut the door and went away.
Out on the sidewalk, Formutesca permitted himself a nervous grin. “That last part was scary,” he said. “Being on my own with him.”
“It was worth it,” Parker told him.
7
They looked like small bowling pins with clock faces on their undersides. Parker held them both in his hands, looking at the clock faces, and said, “How accurate are they?”
“To the minute,” Gonor said, as proud of them as if he'd manufactured them himself. He pointed to one of the clocks. “You see, you set both those red hands, that one for the hour and that one for the minute. The black hands keep the time, and when they coincide with the red hands it goes off.”
They were in Gonor's war room, their arsenal spread out on the table for Parker's inspection. Pistols, machine guns, smoke bombs, gas bombs. Plus coils of rope, knives, rubber gloves, rolls of adhesive tape. And the two time bombs in Parker's hands.
Parker said, “Good. We'll go put them in place.” He turned to Manado and Formutesca standing to one side. “You two all set?”
Manado was obviously frightened with something more than stage fright, but it didn't look as though it would immobilize him. He nodded jerkily, his eyes a little too wide. Formutesca, cocky now since his foray with Parker, grinned and said, “It's in the bag.”
“It's never in the bag,” Parker told him, “until afterwards.” He turned back to Gonor. “You ready?”
“Yes.” Gonor picked up two attache cases from the floor and put them on the table. They were exactly alike, both black with brass locks. “This is yours,” Gonor said, pushing one of the cases toward Parker. “Do you want to take it now or come back for it?”
“I'll take it now.”
Gonor opened the other attache case and put the two time bombs in it. He shut it, then looked at the other case and questioningly at Parker. “Aren't you going to count it?”
“It's all there,” Parker said. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
Parker took his case and left the room, Gonor following him. The other two stayed behind.
Parker and Gonor walked through the apartment in silence, went out to the elevator, rode it down, went out to Fifth Avenue, and got themselves a cab heading downtown.
“Thirty-eighth Street between Park and Lexington,” Gonor said.
It was drizzling slightly, a cold March rain, the air full of clamminess. The cabby had a balled-up rag on the seat beside him, and every block or two he used it to clear condensation from the windshield. He had the wipers on slow,
and they clicked back and forth with abrupt starts and slow sweeps across the glass.
They got out in front of the museum, knowing the Kasempas would be watching them from windows on the upper floors. But what would they see? Gonor, in the middle of the afternoon, unsuspectingly bringing another American scholar around to the museum.
Gonor unlocked the front door and led the way in. The air inside had the smell of an empty building, dry and chill and dusty. Shields hung on the walls in the foyer, and through doorways to the left and right Parker could see rows of glass-topped display cases. The wooden floor was highly polished and bare of rugs.
Gonor led the way: straight ahead and through a long narrow room with display cases on the left and wooden statuettes on pedestals on the right. At the far end was a doorway to a small square room with paintings on the side walls. Opposite was the elevator.
It was on the first floor now. They boarded, and as they rode up to three Parker checked the trap-door in the ceiling. There was a small handle that had to be turned. Parker left it in the “open” position.
The elevator reached the third floor, and for the next ten minutes they looked at the exhibits there. They had no way of knowing if one of the Kasempa brothers was close enough to hear them, so they spoke seldom, and everything they did say they phrased as though Parker were a visiting professor from some college, here for research purposes.
When they went back down to the first floor, they kept up the act. In the half-hour they spent downstairs they set the two time bombs and planted them in places where they would be least likely to start fires. They were set to go off two minutes apart.
Finally, Parker said, “Thank you, Mr Gonor. It's all been very helpful to me.”
“Thank you,” Gonor said. “I'm glad it has been.” He sounded exactly like a man trying not to show boredom.
They left the building together, Gonor carefully locking the front door, and walked up to Park Avenue, where Gonor waved and said, “There's a cab.”
“I'll take the next one,” Parker said.
Gonor looked at him in surprise. “Aren't you coming back with me?”
“There's no need to.”
“We'd assumed—” Gonor was at a loss. “We thought you'd be coming back.”
“There's nothing more to say,” Parker said. “They know what to do, they know how to do it.”
The cab Gonor had waved to was waiting beside them. “This is so abrupt,” he said.
“We're finished,” Parker said. “All you have to remember for yourself is don't leave the truck. And if something goes wrong and you have to start again, call me through Handy McKay.”
“All right,” said Gonor. “Well…thank you.”
“That's all right,” Parker said. He saw another cab coming up Park, and he waved to it. “Good luck,” he said.
“Thank you.” Gonor suddenly stuck his hand out, as though breaking a promise to himself. “It's been a pleasure,” he said.
Parker took his hand. “I hope you make out,” he said.
They got into their separate cabs. Parker said to the driver, “Winchester Hotel, West Forty-fourth Street.” Then he sat back and watched the world outside the cab window and stopped thinking about Gonor and the diamonds and the museum.
He thought about Claire. What name was she using? Mrs Carol Bo wen. At Herridge House, in Boston. In the last few days, while working out the details of this one, he hadn't thought of Claire at all, but suddenly his mind was full of her.
He could take the air shuttle; he could be with her in less than two hours.
At the hotel, he paused by the desk to tell them to get his bill ready. Then he went upstairs and into his room, and number one was there again, standing by the window watching the drizzle. The ex-colonist, the one who'd been going through Parker's suitcase way back at the beginning of this.
His two friends weren't around. In their place he held a Colt automatic casually in his right hand as though he knew how to use it but was sure it wouldn't be necessary.
Parker said, “What now?”
“I thought we could have a talk,” he said.
Parker remembered the three names in Hoskins' notebook. “Which one are you?” he said. “Daask?”
He seemed surprised. “You know the names? Oh, from Hoskins, of course. No, I'm Marten, Aaron Marten.”
“All right, Marten,” Parker said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“We could talk about Gonor,” Marten said. “When will the robbery take place? Where are the diamonds now? Where will he take them after the robbery?”
Parker shook his head. “You've got to know better,” he said.
Marten seemed unruffled. “You don't want to talk about that? Very well. Would you care to talk about Mrs Carol Bowen instead? Who is no longer at Herridge House in Boston, Massachusetts?”
Three
1
Claire's head hurt. That's what woke her up, the pounding of it behind her forehead, up behind her eyes. A real killer of a headache, so that her first conscious thought was I must have drunk too much. But then through the pain came more consciousness, and awareness, and memory, and she thought, I didn't drink anything yesterday. That made her open her eyes, and she saw she was in a place she'd never been before.
She wasn't frightened at first, just bewildered. Continuing to lie there on her side, head cradled by the pillow, covers pulled up around her neck, she looked at the slice of room she could see, the gray wall and the brown kitchen chair and the closed old-fashioned-looking door, and she wondered, Where am I?
Her clothing was on. She suddenly realized that. She was in bed with the covers pulled up, but underneath the covers she was fully dressed. She was wearing everything but shoes.
She sat up abruptly and looked around, and it was a room she didn't know, a large bedroom with old furniture in it: the brass double bed she was in, two dressers, a vanity, night tables, and two more brown kitchen chairs. The bedside lamps had pleated pink shades. The windows had white curtains and dark green shades, the shades halfway down. Gray-white daylight poured through the lower half of the windows. Two windows, both along the wall opposite the bed.
There was no one else in the room. Claire listened, and there was no sound from anywhere in the house.
Where was she? How had she gotten here?
It was hard to think with this pounding headache, hard to make sense out of anything. She bent her head and massaged her temples, and that seemed to work a little. She continued to massage gently and tried to think.
Where had she been last night? Where had she been at all yesterday?
She'd gone to a beauty parlor yesterday afternoon, downtown on Franklin Street, she remembered that. And then she'd gone looking to buy a fall, but she couldn't find anything she really liked that matched her hair color. She'd gone back to the hotel, hoping Parker would be there today—it was nine days today—or at least a message from him, but there had been nothing. She hadn't felt like dinner alone in a restaurant so she'd ordered something from room service, and while she'd eaten she'd looked at the paper to see what movie she wanted to sit through tonight or if there was anything at all bearable on television.
Had she gone to a movie? She couldn't remember any movie, couldn't remember any television either. What had she done after dinner? The last thing she could remember was eating dinner sitting on the chair at the writing-desk, the dishes spread out on the desk, the paper propped up against the wall in front of her. And feeling tired. And waking up here.
Drugged? Could that be the reason for this headache and the vagueness of her memory of last night? It had been a different waiter who'd brought in her dinner, but that hadn't meant anything at the time; there were several different waiters she'd seen in the last nine days.
But that was what it must have been. She could remember eating dinner, not noticing any odd tastes about anything, and then growing very sleepy. Sitting at the writing-desk, the dishes in front of her, food left uneaten and she growing
sleepier and sleepier.
Had she gotten up from the desk and gone over to stretch out on the bed? She couldn't remember exactly. It seemed as though she'd done that, or at least had wanted to do it, but she couldn't remember whether or not she'd actually made it out of the chair and over to the bed.
She rubbed her head. If only the pain would stop. She couldn't think; she couldn't concentrate.
Who would do this?
She looked at her watch. It was still running and it showed twenty-five minutes past four. Past four? It must be afternoon; she must have been asleep nearly twenty hours.
She pushed the covers off and slowly put her legs over the side of the bed. She was very shaky, nerves all ajangle. The pain in her head was worse when she moved, so she moved slowly, gingerly. Also, she didn't want anyone to hear her and know she was awake. If there was anyone around to hear.
Standing made her dizzy. She kept one hand on the wall and tiptoed in stocking feet over to the door. It was locked. Gently she turned the knob, easily she pulled, and the door was locked.
The windows? She took the long way around, always keeping next to the wall, one palm flat on the wall for support. She reached the first window, remained leaning against the wall beside it, and bent her head to the glass to look out.
Second floor. A lake, with partially thawing ice, looking very cold and very bleak. Mountains beyond the lake, also cold, also bleak. A scruffy brown yard between the house and the lake, with a few bare-branched trees and some woody bushes. A dark, squat boathouse, and beside it a concrete deck.
A key grated in the door behind her and she spun around, suddenly terrified, losing her balance and almost falling, but leaning against the wall instead. Staying there beside the window, she watched the door open and a man come in.
The Black Ice Score Page 7