A herd of people onstage were shouting a song: “Freedom means I got to be, I got to be, I got to be, Freedom means I got to be. Freedom means you got to be, you got to be …”
The stairs were carpeted in dark red and curved to the right. At the top was the loge, and Van poked the usher to make him move to the right, behind the seats and through another door and up a narrow flight of stairs that wasn’t carpeted at all.
In the room were six people. Two women and a man were counting money at tables with adding machines. Three men were wearing the uniform of a private protective service, including holstered pistols. Van stuck his foot around the usher’s and gave him a shove as they entered the room, so the usher cried out and went sprawling. It distracted everyone long enough for Van and Jack and Herman to line up in a row inside the door, guns in their hands and masks on their faces, establishing that they were already in control.
“Hands up,” Van said. “That means you, Grandpa,” to one of the guards. “I haven’t shot a senior citizen in three months. Don’t make me spoil my record.”
It sometimes seemed to Herman that Van leaned on people because he wanted them to give him an excuse to shoot them, but most of the time he realized that Van was playing a deeper game than that. He leaned hard so people would think he was trying to goad them, so they would think he was a bad-ass killer just barely in control of himself, and the result was that they were always just as nice as pie. Herman didn’t know Van’s entire history, but he did know there’d never been any shooting on any job the two of them had done together.
Nor would there be on this one. The three guards gave each other sheepish looks and put their hands up, and Jack came around to take their pistols away from them. Van produced two shopping bags from under his jacket, and while he held a gun on the seven civilians in the room — the usher had come up holding his nose, but it wasn’t bleeding — Herman and Jack dumped cash money into the two bags. They put crumpled paper on top, and Herman glanced almost longingly at the safe in the corner. He was a lockman — that was his specialty — he could open safes better than Jimmy Valentine. But this safe was already standing open, and there was nothing in it of any value anyway. He was along simply as a yegg this time, part of the team.
Well, it was for the Cause. Still, it would have been nice if there’d been a safe around to open.
Using the victims’ ties and socks and shoelaces and belts, all seven were quickly tied up and left in a neat row on the floor. Then Jack unscrewed the phone from its connection on the wall.
Van said, “What the hell you doing? Just yank the cord out of the wall. Didn’t you ever see any movies?”
“I need an extension in the bedroom,” Jack said. He put the phone on top of the crumpled papers in one of the shopping bags.
Van shook his head, but didn’t say anything.
When they left, they locked the door behind themselves and trotted down the narrow stairs to pause for a second behind the door leading to the loge. They could hear the chorus ripping through another song: “I hate bigots! Dig it! Dig it!”
“The line we’re waiting for,” Van said, “is ‘Love everybody, you bastards.’”
Herman nodded, and all three listened some more. When the line sounded, they pushed the door open, walked through, turned left and headed back downstairs.
The timing was perfect. As they came to the foot of the stairs the curtain came down on Act One, and people started up the aisle for a smoke break. The three men pulled their masks off and went through the lobby doors just ahead of the theatergoers. They crossed the lobby, went out to the sidewalk, and the Ford was half a block away to their left, coming along behind a slow-cruising cab.
“God damn it,” Van said. “What’s the matter with Phil’s timing?”
“He probably got stuck at a red light,” Herman said.
The Ford slipped by the cab and stopped at their feet. They slid in, the sidewalk behind them filled with smokers, and Phil drove them casually but firmly away from there.
The two shopping bags were in the back with Herman and Jack — Van was up front now — and every time they went over a pothole the damn phone tinkled, which began to drive Herman up the wall. He was a compulsive phone answerer, and there was no way to answer this phone.
Also, the money was getting to him. He was glad to give his expertise to the Movement, help the Movement cover its expenses in the time-honored fashion of the IRA, but at times he could feel his palm itching to hold onto some of the cash he got for them this way. As he’d told his guests a little earlier tonight, he had expensive tastes.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he had some private scores going, but it had been almost a year since he’d been involved in a non-political robbery, and the money from that last caper was just about gone. He needed something soon, or he’d be eating that black bread without the caviar.
They were heading up Central Park West when Phil said, “Do I hear a phone? I keep thinking I hear a phone.”
Van said, “Jack stole their phone.”
Herman could see Phil frowning as he drove. “He stole their phone? Why? Just to be mean?”
“I need an extension for my bedroom,” Jack said. “Lemme see if I can get it to be quiet.” He took it out of the bag and held it in his lap, and it didn’t tinkle as much after that.
Jack having moved the phone had dislodged some of the crumpled paper, and Herman could see green down in there. A hundred dollars, he thought, for expenses. But there was no point in it; a hundred dollars wouldn’t come near his expenses.
They let him off across the street from his building. They headed on uptown, and Herman sprinted across the street and inside. He went around to the service elevator, rode it up to his floor, and pushed the 1 button to send it back down again when he got off. He entered his kitchen and Mrs. Olaffson said, “Everything’s all right.”
“Good.”
“They’re getting drunk.”
“Very good. You can serve any time.”
“Yes, sir.”
He walked through the apartment to the living room and noted the shifts that had taken place in his absence. Several of them, but primarily involving George and Linda Lachine.
George and Susan were sitting together now, George with a rather fatuous smile on his face while Susan talked to him, and Linda was standing over on the opposite side of the room, trying to look as though she were admiring the W. C. Fields print.
Rastus and Diane were still together, Rastus now with his hand on Diane’s leg. The tinkling telephone and the reminder of his money worries had put Herman in a bad mood and left him feeling unable to cope with the complexities that Rastus would have to offer. So it was heterosexual time; why not?
First he had to make some general comments to the general group, who greeted his return with comments about how long he’d been away. “You know those people,” he said with a dismissing wave of the hand. “They can’t do anything on their own, not a thing.”
“Problems?” Foster asked. He had come with Diane but seemed uninterested in leaving with her.
“Nothing they can’t handle by themselves,” he said and gave everybody a brisk grin as he rounded the coffee table and headed for Linda.
But he didn’t get there. Mrs. Olaffson appeared again, in a rerun, complete with the same dialogue: “Telephone, sir.”
Herman looked at her, for just a second too bewildered to speak. He couldn’t say, “My call from the Coast?” because that was all over now. He very nearly said, “We’ve done that bit,” but stopped himself in time. Finally, out of desperation, he said, “Who is it?”