“That’s probably the problem. Transduction overload. Let’s go take a look.”
The three of them trooped back down the hall. As they passed the living room, Al said, “This is sure a beautiful place Mr. Pope has got here.”
The living room was exquisitely furnished, filled with signed antiques worth a fortune. The floors were covered with muted-colored Persian rugs. To the left of the living room was a large, formal dining room, and to the right a den, with a large green baize-covered gaming table in the center. In one corner of the room was a round table, already set up for supper. The two servicemen walked into the den, and Al shone his flashlight into the air-conditioning vent high on the wall.
“Hmm,” he muttered. He looked up at the ceiling over the card table. “What’s above this room?”
“The attic.”
“Let’s take a look.”
The workmen followed Andre up to the attic, a long, low-ceilinged room, dusty and spattered with cobwebs.
Al walked over to an electrical box set in the wall. He inspected the tangle of wires. “Ha!”
“Did you find something?” Andre asked anxiously.
“Condenser problem. It’s the humidity. We musta had a hundred calls this week. It’s shorted out. We’ll have to replace the condenser.”
“Oh, my God! Will it take long?”
“Naw. We got a new condenser out in the truck.”
“Please hurry,” Andre begged them. “Mr. Pope is going to be home soon.”
“You leave everything to us,” Al said.
Back in the kitchen, Andre confided, “I must finish preparing my salad dressing. Can you find your way back up to the attic?”
Al raised a hand. “No sweat, pal. You just go on about your business, and we’ll go on about ours.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you.”
Andre watched the men go out to the truck and return with two large canvas bags. “If you need anything,” he told them, “just call me.”
“You betcha!”
The workmen went up the stairs, and Andre returned to his kitchen.
When Ralph and Al reached the attic, they opened their canvas bags and removed a small folding camp chair, a drill with a steel bit, a tray of sandwiches, two cans of beer, a pair of 12 by 40 Zeiss binoculars for viewing distant objects in a dim light, and two live hamsters that had been injected with three quarters of a milligram of acetyl promazine.
The two men went to work.
“Ol Ernestine is gonna be proud of me,” Al chortled as they started.
In the beginning, Al had stubbornly resisted the idea.
“You must be outta your mind, woman. I ain’t gonna fuck around with no Perry Pope. That dude’ll come down on my ass so hard I’ll never see daylight again.”
“You don’t gotta worry about him. He won’t never be botherin’ no one again.”
They were naked on the water bed in Ernestine’s apartment.
“What you gettin’ out of this deal, anyway, honey?” Al demanded.
“He’s a prick.”
“Hey, baby, the world’s full of pricks, but you don’t spend your life goin’ around cuttin’ off their balls.”
“All right. I’m doin’ it for a friend.”
“Tracy?”
“That’s right.”
Al liked Tracy. They had all had dinner together the day she got out of prison.
“She’s a classy dame,” Al admitted. “But why we stickin’ our necks out for her?”
“Because if we don’t he’p her, she’s gonna have to settle for someone who ain’t half as good as you, and if she gets caught, they’ll cart her ass right back to the joint.”
Al sat up in bed and looked at Ernestine curiously. “Does it mean that much to you, baby?”
“Yeah, hon.”
She would never be able to make him understand it, but the truth was simply that Ernestine could not stand the thought of Tracy back in prison at the mercy of Big Bertha. It was not only Tracy whom Ernestine was concerned about: It was herself. She had made herself Tracy’s protector, and if Big Bertha got her hands on her, it would be a defeat for Ernestine.
So all she said now was, “Yeah. It means a lot to me, honey. You gonna do it?”
“I damn sure can’t do it alone,” Al grumbled.