Thus it was that Chauncey was forced from time to time into risky alternative methods of balancing his books, of which false insurance claims – such as the plot currently in preparation – was only one. Arson, bribery, blackmail, procuring and simple unadorned theft had been other techniques by which over the years he had kept himself and his expensive tastes afloat. He had, for instance, stolen about forty per cent of the royalties supposed to be paid to Heavy Leather, the rock band he had managed back in the late sixties, when running with rock musicians was the thing to do. He hadn't wanted to steal those benighted Glaswegians' money, but at the time it had seemed to him his need was greater than theirs; certainly his arithmetic was. But how his conscience had pricked him, as it pricked him now, standing in the steamy heat of his shower cursing himself for a weakling and a wastrel and a spendthrift. A spigot, in fact, just as dear departed Uncle Ramsey had said, the old fart.
It took five minutes of hot spray to soothe Chauncey and make him forget again his disrespect for himself (he'd forgotten Sarah the instant he'd left her), and then he returned to the bedroom (Sarah was gone, of course), toweled himself dry, used the blower on his long blond hair – naturally yellow, and the envy of all his friends, male and female – and dressed himself completely in dark colors. Black suede moccasins and black socks. Black slacks and a navy blue cashmere sweater with a turtleneck. Then down the stairs (he almost never used the elevator) to the front-hall closet, where he put on a dark blue pea jacket and tucked his yellow hair inside a black knit cap, which made his tanned face look bonier, tougher. Black leather gloves completed his costume, and then he went down one more flight to the ground door, which in front was actually somewhat below ground level but which in back opened onto a small neat flagstone-covered garden. Flowering shrubs and bushes and small trees, all planted in large ornamental concrete pots, stood about in formal array. Ivy climbed the rear of the house and covered the eight-foot-high brick walls surrounding the garden on the other three sides. Now, in November, the garden was all bare branches and black stumps, but in the summer, when Chauncey was almost never in New York, it was a place of beauty.
Chauncey was a darker shape against the dark as he crossed the garden to the knobless door in the corner of the rear wall. A key from the cluster in his pocket opened this door, and he slipped through into utter blackness. This was a passage through a thick wall separating two properties that fronted on the next street. The wall, apparently left over from some earlier construction, was actually double, two thicknesses of old chalky brick with less than three feet of space between. A trellis had been laid across the top at some later date, and a jumble of vines crawled over the trellis, making a thick and leafy roof.
The footing underneath was treacherous with broken bits of stone and brick, but Chauncey slid along on the balls of his feet, his shoulders brushing the walls on both sides, dangling ivy branches occasionally catching at his knit cap.
At the far end was another featureless wooden door, which Chauncey opened with the same key, stepping out to a brick floored areaway in front of a townhouse very like his own. The door he'd emerged from looked as though it belonged to this house, was perhaps a basement entrance, though in fact there was no direct link between them.
It was two and a half blocks to the meeting place with Dortmunder and the alarm specialist, and as Chauncey neared it, coming south on Madison, he moved very slowly, determined to see Dortmunder and the other one before they saw him. It was just after eleven now, the streets were full of hurtling cabs and blundering buses and cowering private cars, and the sidewalks were virtually empty. Chauncey's breath steamed in the air and he came to a complete halt partway up the block, frowning, looking forward at all four corners of the intersection. Dortmunder wasn't there.
Had something gone wrong? Chauncey believed be understood Dortmunder, the man's low-key style, his low expectations and defeatist outlook. A man like that was ripe for direction from a stronger personality, which was the way Chauncey saw himself. He had been pleased with Stonewiler's choice, and convinced he could deal with Dortmunder without fear of being outfoxed.
Not that he intended to default. He would pay the man his hundred thousand, and welcome to it.
On the other hand, where was he? Not sure what was going on, Chauncey backed into the darkened entranceway of a nearby boutique, and his left heel came down on something soft, which moved. "Ouch!" yelled a voice in Chauncey's ear. "Get off my foot!"
Chauncey spun about, astonished. "Dortmunder! What are you doing in here?"
"The same thing you are," Dortmunder said, and limped out to the sidewalk, followed by a skinny scholarly looking man wearing large spectacles and carrying the kind of black leather bag doctors used when doctors made house calls.
Dortmunder glared back over his shoulder at Chauncey, saying, "Well? You coming?"
Chapter 7
Dortmunder and Chefwick nosed their way around the roof of Arnold Chauncey's house like a pair of hunting dogs in search of the scent. Illuminated by light angling up through the open trapdoor, Chauncey stood and observed, a faint expectant smile on his face.
Dortmunder wasn't sure about this fellow Chauncey. It was all right, for instance, for Dortmunder and Chefwick to hang around in dark corners, that was more or less part of their job, but Chauncey was supposed to be a straight citizen, and not only that, a wealthy one. What was he doing lurking in doorways?
It was Dortmunder's belief that in every trade with glamour attached to it – burglary, say, or politics, movies, piloting airplanes – there were the people who actually did the job and were professional about it, and then there were the people on the fringe who were too interested in the glamour and not enough interested in the job, and those were the people who loused it up for everybody else. If Chauncey was another clown leading a rich fantasy life, Dortmunder would have to rethink this entire proposition.
In the meantime, though, they were here and they might as well look the thing over. Even if the Chauncey deal fell through, it could be useful to know how to get into this place at some later date.
This was one of a row of ten attached houses built shortly before the turn of the century, when New York's well-to-do were just beginning to move north of 14th Street. Four stories high, twenty-five feet wide, with facades of stone and rear walls of brick, they shared one long continuous flat roof, with knee-high brick walls delineating each property line. Three of the houses, including Chauncey's, featured roof sheds housing elevator mechanisms, added later. Television antennae sprouted like an adolescent's beard on all the roofs, but many of them were tilted or bent or utterly collapsed, marks of the spread of cable TV. The roof construction was tar over black paper. The front parapet showed marks of a fire escape, since removed.
While Chefwick studied the wires that crossed to the roof from the nearby power and telephone poles, clucking and muttering and peering through his spectacles, Dortmunder took a stroll down the block, stepping over the low brick walls, crunching on one tarred roof after another until be reached the end of the row, where he stood facing a blank brick wall. Or, not entirely blank; here and there the outlines of bricked-in windows could be seen.