Briley said, “That wood’ll be nothing to punch out.”
“We don’t know what’s under it. Hold the light for me.”
From the toolkits Parker got a hand drill and a narrow handsaw. He and Briley knelt across the hole from each other, and while Briley held the flashlight low, Parker drilled a hole in the planking near one of the joists, put the drill to one side, inserted the first few inches of the saw into the hole, and slowly sawed the one plank all the way across. Then Briley got a hammer and chisel, and while Parker held the light, he pried up one edge across the saw-mark. His hands around the edge of the plank, knees braced on the roof, Briley bent the plank upward and back until it cracked with a sound like a pistol shot in a barn.
“Got you, you son of a bitch.”
Grinning, Briley twisted the plank back and forth till it ripped entirely free. Keegan had come back over by now, and the three of them looked down in when Parker shone the light through the new hole. They saw fluffy pinkness, like clouds: insulation. Also a length of old-fashioned metal-shielded electric cable.
Keegan said, “Now where do you suppose the box is?” Electricity was his department.
Parker said, “We’ll have to assume it’s live.”
Briley said, “At least the saw won’t cut through it. I saw a boy do that once with the new wire.”
“It wouldn’t hurt him,” Keegan said. “Your saw handles are wood.”
Briley demonstrated with hand gestures, saying, “He had his left hand on the top of the saw for more pressure.” He grinned and said, “There’s a boy burned for his sins.”
“Kill him?” Keegan sounded really interested.
“No. Threw him about twelve foot.”
Parker began to saw again. After a while he gave the saw to Keegan, and in the silence before Keegan started, the music could be heard, very faintly. But an actual presence now, and not merely a vibration.
As each plank was sawn through, Briley gripped it, bent it up and back, and each one snapped near the opposite joist. When an area had been cleared about a foot square, Parker took a linoleum knife from one of the toolkits and used it to cut through the insulation, slicing across the same line over and over until he got down to the paper backing. He slit that across, reached his gloved fingers under, and ripped the insulation upward. It had been stapled to the joists on both sides, and came up in a series of quick jerks.
And underneath was sheetrock, which should be the ceiling of the room below. The surfaces, from top to bottom, were the tar and gravel on tarpaper on wood laid across joists set on wooden planks laid across more joists going in the opposite direction, against the bottom of which was the sheetrock. With the joists, vertical two-by-twelve beams, going one way in the top air space and the other way in the lower insulated airspace, that meant there would be no opening they could make larger than fifteen inches square.
It was twelve-thirty when Parker took the linoleum knife and began to score the sheetrock along the edge of one joist; they’d been at this twenty minutes. They’d opened an area larger than they’d be able to use, and the electric cable was just outside the section they were working on.
Parker scored the sheetrock three times down the same line, and the fourth time the knife broke through over the whole length. Briley was holding the flashlight again now; Parker dropped the knife on the sheetrock and got to his feet, saying to Keegan, “I did the left side.”
Keegan got down on his knees beside the hole. “Getting colder,” he commented, though it wasn’t, and went to work on the opposite side. When that was cut through, he scored a line bridging the cuts at one end, drew the knife down along that line again, and when he did it a third time, the whole section of sheetrock sagged downward.
Parker had been standing across from Keegan, watching. Now he said, “We want to lift it up, if we can.”
Keegan looked up, squinting into darkness after looking into the flashlight’s illumination. “Why not just kick it through?”
“Noise.”
“Who’d hear anything with that racket? That’s the whole idea, isn’t it?” Every time they removed a layer of roof, the music and the crowd noises got louder. Now it was at about the level of a busy country bar on Saturday night, as heard from the driveway.
“We don’t know if there’s a room under this one,” Parker said. “Or if anybody’s in it. They’d hear something that heavy hit the floor.”
“No problem, anyway,” Briley said, squatting down beside the hole. “Here, hold the flash, Keegan.”
Keegan took the flashlight, and Briley took the linoleum knife. He chipped away a little at the stationary part of the end-line, so there’d be room for his fingers, then put the linoleum knife to one side, reached down to grasp the end of the sagging section of the sheetrock, and pulled it slowly upward. It curved, but wouldn’t split.
Parker stood beside him and took one corner in both hands. “Get a better grip.”
“Thanks.” Briley, still holding the sheetrock, got to his feet and then shifted his hands to the other corner. “When you’re ready.”
They pulled upward, and the sheetrock cracked along the fourth side with a flat sound like two pool balls hitting. They leaned it back at an angle against the edge of the cleared section, like an open trapdoor.
Morris called, “Something happening down below.”
All three went over to look. They were about fifty feet from the ground, the equivalent of a six-story building. There were windows in the top two stories, but below that the wall was blank. Black metal doors led out to the fire escape on the top two landings. By day, the wall was made of grimy gray-tan bricks; by night, it was simply darkness, with an illuminated blacktop alley at the bottom. Down there, near the bottom of the fire escape, a pair of large black metal doors led inside somewhere; all equipment for the shows put on here came through the wrought-iron gates at the sidewalk end of the alley, down across the blacktop and through those metal doors. At the far end, the alley was stopped by a blank brick wall. The opposite side of the alley was the rear wall of the Strand, a shut-down movie theater. The Strand and the Civic Auditorium stood back to back at opposite ends of a long block, all of which would come down, starting Monday. A sixty-eight-story office building covering the whole block was due to go up, starting next year.
Down below now, the wrought-iron gates over by 11 the sidewalk were standing half-open, and someone was moving around with flashlights. Two of them, with two flashlights.
“Now how the hell did they get onto us?” Keegan said. He didn’t sound surprised.
“They’re not onto us,” Morris said. He was still sitting on the wall, half-twisted around, with his shoulder braced against the curving top rail of the fire escape as he looked down.
“They’re cops, though,” Briley said.
“Looking for groupies,” Morris said.
Keegan turned an exasperated frown on Morris. Things he didn’t understand he liked even less than things he did understand. “Groupies? What the hell’s a groupie?”
“Rock-and-roll fan. Mostly girls.”
Briley laughed and said, “Looking for autographs?”
“Looking to get laid.”
A flashlight beam arched upward in their direction, and they all leaned backward. They waited a few seconds, and then Morris took a look and said, “They’re all done.”
“Just so they don’t come up the fire escape,” Keegan said.
Parker looked over the edge, and the flashlights were moving back toward the wrought-iron gates.
Morris said, “Just an easy check. Now they’ll put a man outside the gates, so nobody climbs over.”
“By God,” said Keegan irritably, “what if they see something on the Strand door?”
They wouldn’t, because there was nothing to see, but nobody bothered to answer him.
They had gotten here through the Strand. At four thirty this afternoon they’d driven up to the entrance of the Strand in a gray-and-white Union Electric Company truck, all four of them wearing gray one-piece coveralls with the company name in white on the back. It had been simple to get through the lobby doors of the Strand, carrying three toolkits, the third containing sandwiches and a Thermos container of coffee. Briley and Keegan and Morris had played blackjack to pass the time, betting the expected proceeds from this job, but Parker had slept for a while, walked around the dusty-smelling empty theater for a while, and sat for a while in darkness in the manager’s office, looking out at the city. He’d watched the crowds form for the early show, all the bright colors after the gray centuries of Reason, and then the traffic. Then he’d left the office to walk some more.