by Ed McBain
And tonight, by God, was it! His hand shook, holding the airline tickets, and something gnawed at his heart, as though in reality he’d never wanted to find the proof of her perfidy after all, which was of course nonsense. Because here it was. She was Anne Marie Carpinaw, of course, a stupid alias to try to hide behind. But who was Andrew Octavian Kelp?
Cousin Claude and his family were early to bed, early to rise, and usually so was Querk; jail does not encourage the habit of rising late. This evening, as usual, the entire household was tucked in and dark before eleven o’clock, but this evening Querk couldn’t sleep, not even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. He lay in the dark in “his” room, the packed bag a dark bulk on the floor beside the bed, and he gazed at the ceiling, thinking about the plan he and Janet had worked out, seeing how good it was, how really good. They’d gone over it together he didn’t know how many times, looking for flaws, finding some, correcting them. By now, the plan was honed as smooth as a river rock.
Janet almost always went to bed before Roger, and by the time he got there she would be asleep or at least pretending. Tonight, without a word, she went off to the bedroom and their separate beds just as he started watching the eleven o’clock news. He listened, and when he heard the bedroom door close he quietly got up, went to the kitchen, then through the connecting door to the garage. There was an automatic electric garage door opener, but it was very loud, and it caused a bright light to switch on for three minutes, so tonight Roger opened his car door to cause the interior light to go on, and by that light he found the red-and-white cord he could pull to separate the door from the opener, designed for emergencies like the power being off. Then he lifted the door by hand, leaned into the car to put it in neutral, and pushed it backward out of the garage. There was a slight downhill slope from garage to street, so the car did get away from him just a little bit, but there was no traffic on this residential side street this late at night, so he just followed it, and it stopped of its own accord when the rear wheels reached the street. He turned the wheel through the open window, and wrestled the car backward in a long arc until it was parked on the opposite side of the street one door down. A dark street, trees in leaf, a car like any other. Janet would have no reason to notice it. He went back to the house, into the garage, and pulled the door down. He could reattach the cord in the morning.
11:45 said Querk’s bedside clock, red numbers glowing in the dark. He got up, dressed quickly and silently, picked up his bag, and tiptoed from the house. Tonight, he had parked the Honda down the block a ways. He walked to it, put the bag on the passenger seat, and drove away from there.
In their separate beds in the dark room, Janet and Roger were each convinced the other was asleep. Both were fully clothed except for their shoes under the light summer covers, and both worked very hard to breathe like a sleeping person. They had each other fooled completely.
Every time Janet, lying on her left side, cautiously opened her right eye to see the table between the beds, plus the dark mound of Roger over there, the illuminated alarm clock on the table failed to say midnight. She had no fear of accidentally falling asleep, not tonight of all nights, but why did time have to creep so? But then at last she opened that eye one more time and now the clock read 11:58, and darn it, that was good enough. Being very careful, making absolutely no noise—well, a faint rustle or two—she rolled over and rose from the bed. She stooped to pick up her shoes, then carried them tiptoe from the room.
The instant he heard Janet move, Roger tensed like a bowstring. He forced himself to keep his eyes shut, believing eyes reflect whatever light might be around and she might see them and know he was awake. It wasn’t until the rustle of her movements receded toward the bedroom door that he dared to look. Yes, there she goes, through the doorway, open now because it was only shut if she was in bed while he was watching television.
Janet turned left, toward the kitchen, to go out the back door and around to the car. It was too bad she’d have to start its engine so close to the house, but the bedroom was way on the other side, with the bulk of the house and the garage in between, so it should be all right. In any case, she was going.
The instant Janet disappeared from the doorway, Roger was up, stepping into his loafers, streaking silently through the house to the front door, out, and running full tilt across the street to crouch down on the far side of his car. Hunkered down there, he heard her car motor start, saw the headlights switch on, and then saw the car come out and swing away toward town, which is what he’d been hoping. It meant his car was faced the right way. He let her travel a block, then jumped into the car, started it, didn’t turn the lights on, and drove off in pursuit.
12:20 by the dashboard clock, and Querk parked in the lot next to Sycamore House. There was no all-night street parking permitted in Central Sycamore, but there were always a few cars left at Sycamore House, by people whose friends had decided maybe they shouldn’t drive home after all, so the Honda wouldn’t attract attention. He got out and walked down the absolutely deserted silent street to the traffic light doggedly giving its signals to nothing, then crossed and walked to the entrance to Sycamore Creek and on in.
There was no problem unlocking the main gate, nor temporarily locking it again behind him. He crossed to the building, unlocked the one loading bay door with a faulty alarm he happened to know about, and made his way through the silent, dark, stuffy plant to the managers’ offices, where it was a simple matter to disarm the alarm systems, running now on the backup batteries. Then he retraced his steps, out to the street.
Janet had expected to be the only person driving around this area this late at night, but partway to town another car’s headlights appeared in her rearview mirror. Another night owl, she thought, and hoped he wasn’t a drunken speed demon who would try to pass her. These roads were narrow and twisty. But, no; thankfully, he kept well back. She drove on into town, turned into the Sycamore House parking lot, recognized the Honda right away, and parked next to it.
Roger had kept well back, sorry he had to use his headlights at all but not wanting to run into a deer out here, the deer population having exploded in this part of the world once all of the predator animals had been removed, unless you count hunters, and don’t. He followed the car ahead all the way into town, and when he saw the brake lights go on he thought at first she was braking for the traffic light up ahead, but then she suddenly made the left turn into the Sycamore House parking lot. Damn! He hadn’t expected that. Should he go past? Should he stop? If he tried to park along here, you just knew some damn cop would pop out of nowhere to give him both a hard time and a ticket, while Janet got away to who knows where. Guerrera, that’s where. San Cristobal, Guerrera.
He drove on by, peering in at the Sycamore House parking lot, but she’d switched her lights off and there was nothing to see. He got to the corner, and the light was against him, so he stopped, while no traffic went by in all directions. Diagonally across the street was Luigi’s, the Italian restaurant, and at the far end of it, he knew, was a small parking lot, hemmed in by the fake forest. He could leave the car there and hoof it back to Sycamore House, just as soon as this damn light changed. When would it—? Ah! At last.
He drove across the empty intersection, turned left at the small and empty parking lot, and stopped, car’s nose against pine branches. He switched off lights and engine, so now it was only by the vague streetlight glow well behind him that he saw, in his rearview mirror, the apparition rise from the floor behind the front seat, exactly like all those horror stories! He stared, convulsed with terror, and the apparition showed him a wide horrible smile, a big horrible pistol and a pair of shiny horrible handcuffs. “Didn’t that tarot deck,” it asked him, “tell you not to go out tonight?”
16
When Querk walked back into the Sycamore House parking lot, Janet’s Chrysler Cirrus was parked next to his little Honda; a bigger, more comfortable car, though not very new. She must have seen him in the rearview mirror because
she popped out of her car, the brief illumination of the interior light showing the hugeness of her smile but still the dark around her left eye. Then the door closed, the light went out, and she was in his arms.
They embraced a long time, he feeling her body tremble with the release of weeks of tension. Months. But now it was over. He was off parole, a free man. She was out of that house, a free woman. Start here.
At last he released her and whispered, “Everything’s going fine. Three, four hours, it’ll be all over.”
“I know you’ll do it,” she whispered, then shook a finger at him. “Don’t let them get any ideas.”
“I won’t.”
He took his bag from the Honda and put it in the Chrysler, then kissed her one last time, got into the Honda, and drove out to the street. He turned left, ignored the red light, drove through the intersection, and stopped next to the Hess station across the street from Luigi’s. Promptly, Dortmunder stepped out of the dimness inside the phone booth there, crossed the sidewalk, and slid in next to him.
Querk looked around. “Where’s Kelp?”
“A couple things came up,” Dortmunder told him, “nothing to do with us. He’ll take care of them, then catch up with us later.”
Querk didn’t like this, didn’t like the idea that one of his partners was going to be out of sight while the job was going down. “We’re gonna need Kelp in the plant there,” he said.
“He’ll be there,” Dortmunder promised. “He’ll be right there when we get back with the truck.”
There was nothing Querk could do about this development short of to call the whole thing off, which he didn’t want to do, so he nodded reluctantly and said, “I hope nothing’s gonna get screwed up.”
“How could it? Come on, let’s go.”
______
The Combined Darby County Fire Department and Rescue Squad existed in an extremely fireproof brick building in the middle of nowhere. Seven local volunteer fire departments and two local volunteer ambulance services, each with its own firehouse or garage, had been combined into this organization, made necessary by the worsening shortage of volunteers, and political infighting had made it impossible to use any of the existing facilities. A local nob had donated land here in the middle of the responsibility area, and the building was erected, empty and alone unless a fund-raiser dinner were being held or the volunteers’ beepers sounded off.
Querk parked the Honda behind the building, out of sight, and used a copy of Cousin Claude’s key to unlock the right garage door. He lifted it, stepped inside, and drove out the truck, which was red like a fire engine, with high metal sides full of cubicles containing emergency equipment, a metal roof, but open at the back to show the big generator bolted to the truck body in there.
Querk waited while Dortmunder lowered the garage door and climbed up onto the seat next to him. “Pretty good machine,” he said.
“It does the job,” Querk said.
It was with relief that Querk saw Kelp actually standing there next to the NO TRESPASSING sign. Kelp waved, and Dortmunder waved back, while Querk drove down to the closed entrance gates. “They’re unlocked,” he assured Dortmunder, who climbed out to open the gates, then close them again after the truck and Kelp had both entered.
Driving slowly alongside the building toward the window he wanted, Querk saw in all his rearview mirrors, illuminated by a smallish moon, Dortmunder and Kelp walking along in his wake, talking together. Kelp must be telling Dortmunder what he’d done about whatever problem he’d gone off to fix.
Querk wondered; should he ask Kelp what the problem was? No, he shouldn’t. Dortmunder had said it was nothing to do with tonight’s job, so that meant it was none of his business. The fact that Kelp was here was all that mattered. A tight-lipped man knows when other people expect him to be tight-lipped.
17
Dortmunder was bored. There was nothing to do about it but admit it; he was bored.
Usually, in a heist, what you do is, you case the joint, then you plan and plan, and then there’s a certain amount of tension when you break into whatever the place is, and then you grab what you came for and you get out of there.
Not this time. This time, the doors are open, the alarms are off, and nobody’s around. So you just waltz in. But then you don’t grab anything, and you certainly don’t get out of there.
What you do instead, you shlep heavy cable off a wheel out of the generator truck, shove it through a window Querk has opened, and then shlep it across a concrete floor in the dark, around and sometimes into a lot of huge machines that are not the machine Querk wants, until at last you can hook the cables to both a machine and a control panel. This control panel also controls some lights, so finally you can see what you’re doing.
Meanwhile, Querk has been collecting his supplies. He needs three different inks, and two big rolls of special paper, that he brings over with his forklift. He needs one particular size of paper cutter, a wickedly sharp big rectangle criss-crossed with extremely dangerous lines of metal, that has to be slid into an opening in the side of the machine without sacrificing any fingers to it, and which will, at the appropriate moments, descend inside the machine to slice sheets of paper into many individual siapas.
The boxes for the siapas already exist, but laid out flat, and have to be inserted into a wide slot in the back of the machine. The nasty wire bands to close the boxes—hard, springy, with extremely sharp edges—have to be inserted onto rolls and fed into the machine like feeding movie film into a projector. Having three guys for this part is a help, because it would take one guy working alone a whole lot longer just to set things up, even if he could wrestle the big paper roll into position by himself, which he probably couldn’t.
But after everything was in position, then you really needed three guys. It was a three-guy machine. Guy number one (Querk) was at the control panel, keeping an eye on the gauges that told him how the ink flow was coming along, how the paper feed was doing, how the boxes were filling up. Guy number two (Kelp) was physically all around the machine, which was a little delicate and touchy, following Querk’s orders on how to adjust the various feeds and watch the paper, which would have liked to jam up if anybody looked away for a minute.
And guy number three, Dortmunder, was the utility man. It was his job to replenish the ink supply when needed, which was rarely. It was also his job to wrestle the full boxes off the end of the chute at the back of the machine, but since in three hours there were only going to be five boxes, that didn’t take up a lot of his time. It was also his job occasionally to go out to see how the generator truck was coming along, which was fine. In addition, it was his job to keep checking on the laid-out boxes inside the machine with the money stacking up on them, and the alignment of the big paper-cutter, to make sure nothing was getting off kilter and to warn Querk to shut down temporarily if something did, which only happened twice. And generally it was his job to stand chicky; but if anybody were to come into the plant that they wouldn’t like to come in, it would already be too late to do anything about it.
So here he was, the gofer in a slow-motion heist, and he was bored. It was like having an actual job.
They’d started at ten after one, and it was just a few ticks after four when the last of the paper rolled into the machine and Querk started shutting its parts down, one section at a time until the fifth and final box came gliding out of the chute and Dortmunder wrestled it over onto the concrete floor with the others. Five boxes, very heavy, each containing a thousand bills compressed into the space, a thousand twenty million siapa notes per box, for a value of a hundred thousand dollars per box. In Guerrera.
Dortmunder stepped back from the final box. “Done,” he said. “At last.”
“Not exactly done,” Querk said. “Remember, this run never happened. We gotta clean up everything in here, put it all back the way it was.”
Yes; exactly like having a job.
18
Querk’s nervousness, once they’d drive
n the generator truck actually onto the plant property, had turned into a kind of paralysis, a cauterizing in which he couldn’t feel his feelings. He was just doing it, everything he’d been going over and over in his mind all this time, acting out the fantasy, reassuring Janet and himself that everything would work out just fine, playing it out in his head again and again so that, when the time came to finally do it, actually in the real world do it, it was as though he’d already done it and this was just remembering.
And the job went, if anything, even better than the fantasy, smooth and quick and easy. Not a single problem with the two guys he’d found to help, and that had always been one of the scarier parts of the whole thing. He couldn’t do it alone, but he couldn’t use locals, none of these birds around here had the faintest idea how to keep their mouths shut. Amateurs. He had to use pros, but he didn’t know anybody any more.
Nevertheless, if he was going to do it, he would have to reach out, find somebody with the right resume that he could talk into the job, and boy, did he come up lucky. Dortmunder and Kelp were definitely pros, but at the same time they were surprisingly gullible. He could count on them to do the job and to keep their mouths shut, and he could also count on them to never even notice what he was really up to.
The cleaning up after the print job took another half hour. The next to the last thing they did, before switching off the lights, was forklift the five boxes of siapas out to the generator truck, where they fit nicely at the back. Then it was disconnect the cables, reel them back into the truck, and drive out of there, pausing to lock the big gates on the way by.
Still dark on the streets of Sycamore. Still no vehicles for the dutiful traffic light to oversee. Dortmunder and Kelp rode on the wide bench seat of the truck beside Querk, who drove down the street to stop in front of Seven Leagues. “I’ll just unlock the door,” he said, as he climbed down to the street.