“Hush,” Kelp told him.
But he couldn’t hush. “Violence is no way to solve problems,” he told them.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dortmunder said. “It’s never let me down.”
From the front of the church, underlining the point, came a crash, as Tom, exasperated beyond endurance, stood up, stepped back, and kicked the pulpit in the lattice, which smashed to kindling. The minister jumped like Bambi’s mother in Dortmunder and Kelp’s hands. They held him in place, quivering, while Wally, excitement making him seem taller but on the other hand wider, waddled hurriedly to the front of the church to see what was going on.
Up there, Tom was on his knees again, pulling out from inside the pulpit an old black cracked-leather doctor’s bag with a rusted-out clasp. “There’s the son of a bitch,” he said, with satisfaction.
“Gee!” Wally said. “The treasure in the pulpit!”
Tom gave him a look. “That’s right,” he said, and carried the bag down the aisle toward the others, Wally bouncing along like a living beachball in his wake.
“Is that it?” Dortmunder asked. “Can we go now?”
“This is it,” Tom acknowledged, “and we can go in a minute. Hold on here.” He put the doctor’s bag on a handy pew and fiddled for a while with the clasp. “Fucking thing’s rusted shut,” he said.
Shocked, the minister blurted, “Language!”
Everybody looked at him, even Wally. Tom said, “How come that’s talking?”
“I really don’t know,” Kelp said, studying the minister with unfriendly interest. “But I don’t think it’s gonna happen again.”
Taking a good-size clasp knife from his pocket and opening it, Tom said, “I hear from him again, I take his tongue out.”
“Drastic,” Kelp suggested calmly, “but probably effective.”
“Very.”
The minister stared round-eyed at the knife as Tom used it to slice through the old dry leather around the clasp, freeing the bag, opening it, and then putting the knife away. The minister sighed audibly when the knife disappeared, and his eyes rolled briefly in his head.
Tom reached into the bag, pulled out a wad of bills, peeled off a few, dropped the wad back into the bag, and turned to slap the bills into the minister’s enfeebled hand. Since the minister couldn’t seem to do it for himself, Tom closed his fingers around the money for him, saying, “Here’s half a grand to fix up the pulpit. Keep your nose clean.” To the others he said, “Now we can go.”
Dortmunder and Kelp released the minister, who staggered backward against a pew. Ignoring him, the others headed for the door, Dortmunder saying to Tom, “You’re a generous guy. I never knew that.”
“That’s me, okay,” Tom said. “Ever surprising.”
As they reached the door, the minister, beginning to recover from his fright, called after them, “Don’t you want a receipt? For your taxes?” But they didn’t answer.
TWENTY-FOUR
All was quiet in East Amity, a tiny bedroom community on the south shore of Long Island. Well after midnight, and the commuters were all tucked between their sheets, dreaming of traffic jams, while out on the village streets there was no traffic at all. The village police car drove by, all alone, down Bay Boulevard, idling along, Officer Pohlax yawning at the wheel, barely aware of the boutiques and tire stores he was here to protect. Ahead on the left bulked Southern Suffolk Combined High School (yay!), from which Officer Pohlax himself had graduated just a very few years earlier.
How old it made him feel now, still in his twenties, to look at the old school and remember that feeling of infinite possibility back then, the absolute conviction that a determined fellow, if he kept himself in shape and didn’t drink too much, could eventually sleep with every girl in the world. Various girls he had and had not slept with during those halcyon days drifted through his mind, every one with the same identical smile, and he and his police car drifted on past the high school, wafted by the gusts of imperfect memory.
Doug Berry, at the wheel of his black pickup with the blue-and-silver styling package, watched that goddamn slow-moving police car inch by and tapped impatient fingers against the steering wheel. He was parked on a dark side street across from the high school, engine running but lights off, waiting for the coast to be clear. He knew that would be old Billy Pohlax at the wheel—they’d gone to high school together, that very high school across the street, way back when—and he knew Billy wouldn’t pass by here again for at least an hour. Which should be plenty of time, if his students showed up when they were supposed to.
Three blocks away, brake lights gleamed like rubies on the village police car, which then made a right off Bay Boulevard, heading down to the docks and marinas along the waterfront. Doug slipped the pickup into gear, left the lights off, and scooted across Bay and onto the driveway leading up to the big parking lot wrapped halfway around the school, on its left side and rear. Doug drove around to the back, the equipment in the bed of his vehicle thumping and clanking from time to time, and pulled in close up against the rear door to which he had bought the key, just the other day, from another old classmate, now an assistant building custodian (janitor) at this same school.
Doug opened his pickup’s door, the interior light went on, and he slammed the door again, scared out of his wits. The light! He’d forgotten about the light! If somebody saw him…
Was there a way to turn off that damn light? Trying to study the dashboard in the dark, he succeeded only in briefly switching on the dashboard lights. Finally, he decided the only thing to do was chance it, and move as fast as he could. Pop open the door (light on!), scramble out, close the door rapidly without slamming it (light off), sag in relief against the side of the pickup.
Okay, okay. No problem. Not a single light showed in any of the houses on Margiotta Street, out behind the high school. No one had seen him. There was nothing to worry about.
Reassuring himself like mad, Doug went over to the door, tried the key, and was relieved, faintly surprised, and also faintly disappointed, when it worked and the door swung open. Standing in the open doorway, he was about to check the time on his waterproof, shockproof, glow-in-the-dark watch/compass/calendar when motion made him look up to see a long black car—a Mercedes, he realized—traveling without lights and just coming to a stop next to his pickup. In the extreme dimness, he could just make out the MD plate on the Mercedes, which was a real surprise. Those guys weren’t doctors. Standards haven’t slipped that much.
Both front doors of the Mercedes opened, without the interior light going on. (How did they do that?) Andy was the driver, John the passenger. They shut the car doors quietly and approached, Andy saying, “Right on time.”
“I’ve got the door open,” Doug announced, unnecessarily, since he was standing in it. Then he gestured at the pickup, saying, “All the gear’s here. It weighs a ton.”
It did, too. Wearing half the stuff and carrying the rest, the three staggered into the school building, Doug closing the door behind them and then leading the way with his pencil flash along the wide empty dark corridor—that well-remembered smell of school! — to the stairs, and then down the long flight and along the next corridor—not quite so wide down here—to the double swinging doors leading to the boys’ locker room, and through it to the entrance to the pool. An interior room in the basement, the pool area had no windows, and so there was no reason not to turn on lights, which Doug did: all of them, revealing great expanses of beige tile and heavily chlorinated water. Footsteps and voices echoed wetly in here, so you always had the feeling there was somebody else around, just behind you or on the other side of the pool.