Victor, looked back at Kelp again.
Kelp patted the air in a secretive way, hiding it from Victor. “We can talk
about all that,” he said. “The question now is the lockman. We know we’ll need
one.”
“How about Chefwick? The model-train nut.”
Kelp shook his head. “No,” he said, “he isn’t around any more. He hijacked a
subway car to Cuba.”
Dortmunder looked at him. “Don’t start,” he said.
“Start what? I didn’t do anything; Chefwick did. He got to run that locomotive
in that job with us, and he must’ve flipped out or something.”
“All right,” Dortmunder said.
“So he and his wife went to Mexico on vacation, and at Vera Cruz there were
these used subway cars that were going on a boat to Cuba, and Chefwick-”
“I said all right.”
“Don’t blame me,” Kelp said. “I’m just telling you what happened.” He
brightened suddenly, saying, “That reminds me, did you hear what happened to
Greenwood?”
“Leave me alone,” Dortmunder said.
“He got his own television series.”
“I said leave me alone!”
Victor said, “You know someone with his own television series.
“Sure,” Kelp said. “He was on a job with Dortmunder and me one time.”
“You wanted to talk about a lockman,” Dortmunder said. Somehow his glass
was empty. He splashed in some more of the Amsterdam Liquor Store’s Own
Brand of bourbon.
“I have a suggestion,” Kelp said. He sounded doubtful. “He’s a good man,
but I don’t know…”
“Who is it?” Dortmunder asked.
“I don’t think you know him.”
“What’s his name?” When dealing with Kelp, Dortmunder just got more and
more patient as time went along.
“Herman X.”
“Herman X?”
“The only thing,” Kelp said, “he’s a spade. I don’t know if you’re prejudiced
or not.”
“Herman X?”
Victor said primly, “Sounds like a Black Muslim.”
“Not exactly,” Kelp said. “He’s like in an offshoot. I don’t know what they
call themselves. His bunch is mad at the people that were mad at the people that
were mad at the people that went off with Malcolm X. I think that’s right.”
Victor frowned into space. “I haven’t kept up with that area of subversion,”
he said. “It wouldn’t be the Pan-African Panthers, would it?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“The Sons Of Marcus Garvey?”
“No, that’s not right.”
“The Black Barons?”
“The Sam Spades?”
Kelp frowned for a second, then shook his head. “No.”
“Probably a new splinter,” Victor said. “They keep fractionalizing, makes it
extremely difficult to maintain proper surveillance. No cooperation at all. I can
remember how upset the agents used to get about that.”
A little silence fell. Dortmunder sat there holding the glass and looking at Kelp,
who was mooning away at the opposite wall. Dortmunder’s expression was
patient, but not pleased. Eventually, Kelp sighed and shifted and glanced at
Dortmunder and then frowned, obviously trying to figure out what Dortmunder
was staring at him for. Then all at once he cried, “Oh! The lockman!”
“The lockman,” Dortmunder agreed.
“Herman X.”
Dortmunder nodded. “That’s the one.”
“Well,” Kelp said, “do you care about him being black?”
Patiently Dortmunder shook his head. He said, “Why should I care about him
being black? All I want him to do is open a safe.”
“It’s just you never know about people,” Kelp explained. “Herman says so
himself.”
Dortmunder poured more bourbon.
“Should I give him a call?”
“Why not?”
Kelp nodded. “I’ll give him a call,” he said, and the door opened and Murch
came in, followed by his Mom, wearing her neck brace. They were both
carrying glasses of beer, and Murch was also carrying a salt shaker. “Hey,
Stan!” Kelp said. “Come on in.”
“Sorry we’re late,” Murch said. “Usually, coming back from the Island, I’d
take the Northern State and Grand Central and Queens Boulevard to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, but figuring the time of day it was, and I was coming
uptown-sit down, Mom.”
“Victor,” Kelp said, “this is Stan Murch, and this is Murch’s Mom.”
“What happened to your neck, Mrs. Murch?”
“A lawyer,” she said. She was in a bad mood.
“So I figured,” Murch said, once he and his Mom were both seated, “I’d just
stick with Grand Central and take the Triborough Bridge to a hundred and
twenty-fifth Street and over to Columbus Avenue and straight down. Only what
happened-His Mom said, “Can I take this damn thing off anyway in here?”
“Mom, if you’d leave it on you’d get used to it. You take it off all the time,
that’s why you don’t like it.”
“Wrong,” she said. “I have to put it on all the time. That’s why I don’t like it.”
“Well, Stan, did you go take a look at the bank?”
“Let me tell you what happened,” Murch said. “Just leave it on, okay, Mom?
So we came across Grand Central, and there was a mess this side of La
Guardia. Some kind of collision.”
“We got there just too late to see it,” his Mom said. She was keeping the
neck brace on.
“So I had to go along the shoulder and push a cop car out of the way at one
point, so I could get off at Thirty-first Street and go down to Jackson Avenue
and then Queens Boulevard and the bridge and the regular way after that. So
that’s why We’re late.”
“No problem,” Kelp said.
“If I’d done my regular route, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Dortmunder sighed. “You’re here now,” he said. “That’s the important thing.
Did you look at the bank?” He wanted to know the worst and get it over with.
Murch’s Mom said, “It was a beautiful day for a drive.”
“I looked at it,” Murch said. He was being very businesslike all of a sudden.
“I looked it over very carefully, and I’ve got some good news and some bad
news.”
Dortmunder said, “The bad news first.”
“No,” Kelp said. “The good news first.”
“Okay,” Murch said. “The good news is it has a trailer hitch.”
Dortmunder said, “What’s the bad news?”
“It doesn’t have any wheels.”
“Been nice talking to you,” Dortmunder said.
“Wait a minute,” said Kelp. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. What do you mean
it doesn’t have any wheels?”
“Underneath,” Murch said.
“But it’s a trailer, it’s a mobile home. It’s got to have wheels.”
“What they did,” Murch said, “they put it in position, and jacked it up, and
took the wheels off. Wheels and axles both.”
“But it had wheels,” Kelp said.
“Oh, sure,” Murch said. “Every trailer has wheels.”
“So what the hell did they do with them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the company that owns the trailer has them.”
Victor suddenly snapped his fingers and said, “Of course! I’ve seen the same
thing at construction sites. They use trailers for field offices, and if it’s a long-term job they build foundation walls underneath and remove the wheels.”
“What the hell for?” Kelp asked. He sounded affronted.
“Maybe save strain on the tires. Maybe give it more stability.”
Murch said, “The point is, it doesn’t have wheels.”
A little silence fell on the group. Dortmunder, who had just been sitting there
letting the conversation wash over him while he basted in his own pessimism,
sighed and shook his head and reached for the bourbon bottle again. He knew
that May believed that planning even an idiot job that wouldn’t ever happen was
better than doing nothing at all, and he supposed she was right, but what he
wouldn’t give for news right now about a factory that still paid cash.
All right. He was the planner-that was his function-so it was up to him to
think about the details as they came along. No wheels. He sighed and said to
Murch, “The thing is sitting on those concrete block walls, right?”
“That’s right,” Murch said. “What they must have done, they jacked it up,
took the wheels off, put the concrete blocks in place, and lowered the trailer
down onto them.”
“The concrete blocks are cemented to each other,” Dortmunder said. “The
question is, are they cemented to the bottom of the trailer?”
Murch shook his head. “Definitely not. The trailer’s just resting there.”
“With concrete block all around underneath.”
“Not on the ends, just along the two sides.”
A tiny flicker of interest made Dortmunder frown. “Not at the ends?”
“No,” Murch said. “The one end is against the Kresge’s next door, and the
other end they’ve just got a wooden lattice across it. So they can get in at it, I
guess.”
Dortmunder turned his head to look at Victor. For a wonder, Victor wasn’t
smiling; instead, he was watching Dortmunder with such intensity he looked
paralyzed. It wasn’t much of an improvement. Squinting, Dortmunder said, “Is
there ever any time when the bank is empty? No guards at all?”
“Every night,” Victor said. “Except Thursday, when the cash is in it.”
“They don’t have a night watchman in there?”
“They don’t keep any cash there at all,” Victor said, “except on Thursdays.