What was this building? Dortmunder went to the front, leaned over the parapet – trying not to see, from the corner of his eye, the sidewalk forty feet below – and saw that it was some kind of theater or concert hall, which faced onto Madison Avenue. What he could see from here was the side of the building, with its fire exits and posters of coming attractions.
Leaving the edge, Dortmunder backed off to study that blank wall, which rose another fifteen or twenty feet above the level of the row-house roofs. Near the top of the wall were several grilled vents, but none of them looked useful for a human being seeking passage.
Finished, Dortmunder retraced his steps, finding Chauncey still waiting by the open trapdoor and Chefwick now dangling off the rear of the building, head hanging down, humming happily to himself as he fingered the wiring. A line tester glowed briefly, showing Chefwick's earnest absorbed face.
Dortmunder continued on, walking to the other end of the row of houses, and there he found a ten-foot open space across a driveway, with an apartment building on the far side, its drapes and curtains and Venetian blinds and Roman shades and Japanese screens and New England shutters all firmly closed. The vision of a board stretched across that open space from one of those windows to where he was standing was followed immediately in Dortmunder's mind by a vision of himself crawling across that board. Turning his back on both vision and building, he returned to the Chauncey roof, where Chefwick was cleaning his hands on a Wash'n'Dri from his leather bag. "We'll come from down there," Dortmunder said, pointing toward the blank back of the concert hall.
"Our best bet would be the elevator shaft," Chefwick said. To Chauncey he said, "It would be easier if the elevator weren't on the top floor."
"It won't be," Chauncey promised.
"Then there's really no problem," Chefwick said. "Not from my point of view." And he looked a question at Dortmunder.
It was time to clear the air. Dortmunder said to Chauncey, "Tell me about that passage we came through, the one into your back yard."
"Oh, you won't be able to use that," Chauncey said. "You'd have to go right up through the house, all full of people."
"Tell me about it anyway."
"I'm sorry," Chauncey said, moving closer, away from the trapdoor illumination, "but I don't understand. Tell you what about it?"
"What's it for?"
"Originally?" Chauncey shrugged. "I really don't know, but I suspect it began merely as a space between walls. I understand my house was a speakeasy at one point during Prohibition, and that's when the new doors were added."
"What do you use it for?"
"Nothing really," Chauncey said. "A few years ago, when there were some rock musicians hanging about, a certain amount of dope came in that way, but normally I have no use for the thing. Tonight was different, naturally. I don't think I should be seen with suspicious characters just before my house is robbed."
"Okay," Dortmunder said.
Chauncey said, "Now let me ask a question. What prompted the interest?"
"I wanted to know if you were a comic-book hero," Dortmunder told him.
Chauncey seemed surprised, then amused. "Ah, I see. No romantics need apply, is that it?"
"That's it."
Chauncey reached out to tap a finger against Dortmunder's upper arm, which Dortmunder hated. "Let me assure you, Mr. Dortmunder," he said, "I am no romantic."
"Good," said Dortmunder.
Chapter 8
One of the regulars was flat on his back atop the bar at the O.J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue when Dortmunder and Kelp walked in on Thursday evening. He was holding a damp filthy bar rag to his face, and three other regulars were discussing with Rollo the best way to treat a nosebleed. "You put an ice cube down the back of his neck," one said.
"You do and I'll flumfle your numble," the sufferer said, his threat lost in the folds of the bar rag.
"Give him a tourniquet," another regular suggested.
The first regular frowned. "Where?"
While the regulars surveyed the body of their stricken comrade for a place to put an anti-nosebleed tourniquet, Rollo came down the bar, nodded at Dortmunder and Kelp over his impaired customer's steel-toed work boots, and said, "How you doing?"
"Better than him," Dortmunder said.
"He'll be okay." Rollo dismissed the Death-of-Montcalm scene with a shrug. "Your vodka-and-red-wine is here, your sherry is here, your beer-and-salt is here."
"We're the last," Dortmunder said.
Rollo nodded hello to Kelp. "Nice to see you again."
"Nice to be back," Kelp told him.
Rollo went off to make their drinks, and Dortmunder and Kelp watched the first-aid team. One of the regulars was now trying to stuff paper bar coasters into the bleeder's nose, while another one was trying to get the poor bastard to count backwards from one hundred. "That's for hiccups," said the third.
"No no," said the second, "you drink out of the wrong side of the glass for hiccups."
"No, that's for when you faint."
"No no no, when you faint you put your head between your knees."
"Wrong. If somebody faints, you slap their face."
"You do and you'll stumbun with me," said the patient, who now had bar rag and paper coasters in his mouth.
"You're crazy," the second regular told the third. "You slap somebody's face if they've got hysterics."
"No," said the third regular, "if somebody's got hysterics, you have to keep them warm. Or is it cold?"
"Neither. That's for shock. You keep them warm for shock. Or cold."
"No, I've got it," the third regular said. "You keep them warm for hysterics, and you keep them cold if they've got a burn."
"Don't you know anything?" asked the second regular. "For a burn you put butter on it."
"Now I know!" the third regular cried. "Butter's for a nosebleed!"
Everybody stopped what they were doing to stare at him, even the bleeder. The first regular, his hands full of paper coasters, said, "Butter's for a nosebleed?"
"You stuff butter up the nose! Rollo, give us some butter!"
"You won't dumrumbin my nose!"
"Butter," said the second regular in disgust. "It's ice he needs. Rollo!"
Rollo, ignoring the cries for butter and ice, carried a tray past the invalid's feet and slid it across the bar toward Dortmunder. It contained a bottle of Amsterdam Liquor Store bourbon, two empty glasses with ice, and a glass containing, no doubt, vodka-and-red-wine. "See you later," he said.
"Right." Dortmunder reached for the tray, but Kelp got to it first, picking it up with such eagerness to be of help that the bourbon bottle rocked back and forth, and would have gone over if Dortmunder hadn't steadied it.
"Thanks," Kelp said.
"Yeah," Dortmunder said, and led the way toward the back room.
But not directly. They had to stop for a second so Kelp could throw in his own contribution with the medics. "What you do for a nosebleed," he told them, "is you take two silver coins and put them on both sides of his nose."
The regulars all stopped squabbling among themselves to frown at this outsider. One of them, with great dignity, pointed out, "There haven't been any silver coins in circulation in this country since 1965."
"Oh," said Kelp. "Well, that is a problem."
"Sixty-six," said another regular.
Dortmunder, several paces ahead, looked back at Kelp to say, "Are you coming?"
"Right." Kelp hurried in Dortmunder's wake.