They left, Victor carefully switching off the lights and locking the door behind himself, and the two of them walked down the dark driveway to the street. While Murch got into the station wagon parked there, Victor hurried across the street to the garage he rented from a neighbor, in which he kept his Packard. This was a more modern garage than his own, with an electronically operated lift door that he could raise or lower by touching a button on the dashboard of the car. For several months he’d been trying to get up enough nerve to ask his neighbor’s permission to do some work on the outside of the building, but so far hadn’t developed sufficient courage. What he wanted to do was make the front look like a seemingly abandoned warehouse, without doors, so that a section of wall would appear to lift when the dashboard button was pushed. There were two difficulties with this conception. First, he didn’t know what cover story to give the owner for wanting to make the change, and, second, a seemingly abandoned warehouse would look definitely out of place in this neighborhood — particularly in somebody’s back yard. Still, it was a pleasant idea, and he might yet be able to work something out.
At night, though, the effect was almost as good with the building just the way it was. Victor entered through the side door of the garage, switched on the dim red bulb he’d installed in the overhead light fixture, and by its darkroom-like illumination removed the plastic cover from the Packard, folding it like a flag and then putting it away on its shelf. Next he got into the car, took the cassette and microphone from his pocket and put them on the seat beside him, and started the engine. The Packard motor grumbled quietly but menacingly in the enclosed space. Smiling to himself, Victor turned on the parking lights only and pushed the button that caused the door to slide up. With a distinct sense of drama, he tapped the accelerator and steered the Packard out into the night, then pushed the button again and watched in the rear-view mirror as the door folded down once more behind him, the red-lit view of the garage interior narrowing from the top and at last disappearing completely. Only then did he switch on his headlights.
Murch seemed impatient. He was revving the engine of the stolen station wagon, and the instant Victor and the Packard reached the street he shot away from the curb and dashed away down the street. Victor followed at a more stately pace, but soon had to pick it up a little if he was going to keep Stan in sight at all.
The first time they were stopped at a red light, Victor ran the tape back a bit in the cassette, found the spot where he’d left off, and took it from there, dictating into the microphone as he followed Murch and his scuttling station wagon across Long Island:
“None of Dortmunder’s hoods had ever seen my real face. None knew my real name. None knew the truth about me, and it would be curtains for me if they did!
“Now, gimlet-eyed Dortmunder nodded in satisfaction. ‘Forty-eight hours from now,’ he boasted evilly, ‘that proud bank will be ours! Nothing can stop us now!’”
25
“If you’ll put the flashlight on my work,” Herman said, “things’ll go a lot faster.”
“Sure,” Kelp said. He adjusted the beam. “I was shielding it with my body,” he said.
“Well, don’t shield it from me.”
“Okay,” Kelp said.
“And don’t breathe down the back of my neck like that.”
“Right,” Kelp said. He moved half an inch.
Suddenly into Herman’s head came the replay of a television commercial from a few years back: Sure, you’re irritable. Who wouldn’t be? But don’t take it out on him. Take. — Take what? What was the product? Sounds like it should have been pot, but it probably wasn’t.
The distraction of that chain of thought was a pleasant interlude, three or four seconds long, which calmed him perhaps as much as the forgotten product would have done. Herman took a deep, slow breath, to calm himself even more, and returned his attention to the task at hand.
He was squatting right now like a Masai warrior in front of a black metal box emerging from the ground directly in front of the hitch end of the bank. Power and water and sewer lines terminated in this box, and it was Herman’s simple job at the moment to remove the padlock from the lid and open the box. And it was taking too long.
“Normally,” Herman said, speaking more gently than before, but still with a rasp of irritation he couldn’t quite get rid of, “I’m very good at locks.”
“Sure,” Kelp said. “Naturally.”
The padlock clicked and jittered in Herman’s long, thin fingers. “It’s just that safe,” he said. “It’s shaken my self confidence.”
“You’re still the best,” Kelp said. Not in a boosting way, but conversationally, as though commenting on the weather.
The padlock skittered away from Herman’s fingers and tick-ticked against the metal lid. “I’m also very good at self-analysis,” he said. His voice quivered again with barely controlled rage. “I figure out just where I’m at. And —” his voice rising, speeding up — “it doesn’t do a goddam bit of good!”
“You’ll be fine,” Kelp said. He patted Herman on the shoulder.
Herman flinched away from the touch like a horse. “I am going to get this thing,” he said grimly and sat down on the ground in front of the box. Legs folded tailor-fashion, he leaned over the box till his nose was almost touching the lock.
“I’m having a little trouble,” Kelp said, “keeping the light on the work.”
“Shut up,” Herman said.
Kelp knelt beside him and beamed the light principally at Herman’s right eye, which was glaring at the lock.
The problem was, they didn’t want to break it. In the morning, they would tell the trailer-court owner or manager that they’d found the thing unlocked and just hooked everything up themselves. If he saw his padlock in normal condition, he probably wouldn’t raise a fuss. But if he found it broken, he might not believe the story, and then he might make trouble.
That was the problem about why the padlock had to be picked rather than plucked. The deeper problem, Herman’s continuing inability to pick it, was very simply caused by that son-of-a-bitch safe. Half a dozen small tools from his black bag were already spread across the box lid, and he was poking away at the padlock’s keyhole with yet another small tool right now — the other end of which was currently endangering his eye — and he just couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing. He’d slip the tool into the padlock and his eyes would glaze as his mind drifted back to consider once again the safe inside the bank. He had no saw or drill — including the diamond tip — that would get through that metal. He had stripped away the combination plate and mechanism, but it had led nowhere. He had tried peeling the door and had bent his favorite medium-length bar. An explosion strong enough to rip open the safe would also destroy everything inside it and would probably open the trailer up like an avocado at the same time.
What it came down to was the circular hole. For the circular hole, you attached a suction clamp to the side of the safe, with a central rod extending straight out. An L-shaped arm swung from the rod, with a handle at the elbow and a clamp at the wrist for drill bits. A bit was put in place, so that it scraped against the side of the safe, and then the handle was turned in a large circle, over and over and over again. As each bit was worn away, a new one was added. It was the slowest and most primitive kind of safe-cracking, but it was the only thing that could possibly work against that goddam bastard son of a bitch — The padlock. His mind had drifted again, and he’d just been sitting there on the ground, poking aimlessly into the keyhole with the small tool. “God damn it,” he muttered, and clenched his teeth, and gripped the padlock so hard his fingers ached.