Drat. Not wanting to be too close to the Rabbit, Zane slowed the Cougar, stopped several car lengths back, and waited for the jam-up to end. But the burly man in the street came trotting through the puddles, waving at Zane to move forward. With mighty gestures he informed Zane to get farther over to the left, where a large delivery van was parked half up on the sidewalk. Following directions, Zane tucked in beside the parked van, his door handle almost touching the van's olive-green side.
Next, the big man motioned for the Rabbit to back up, urging it also to move in close against the side of the van. Zane ducked his head, shielding his face with one hand as the Rabbit approached, its white reversing lights gleaming. When those lights clicked off, the Rabbit was still perhaps a car length ahead, but too close for Zane's comfort.
And now what were these people up to? While headlights in his rear-view mirror told him some other car was becoming involved in this mini traffic jam, the huge tractor-trailer that was causing all the trouble pulled completely out into the street, turning in his direction, apparently intending to start all over again in its effort to pull into the alley or loading dock or whatever it was up there. Sweeping out and around, it angled in from Zane's right until it was as close to the Cougar on that side as the delivery van was on his left, except that the tractor-trailer was headed the other way.
When would they get this over with? The tractor-trailer just stood there, apparently unable to figure out its next move, and Zane didn't realize anything was wrong until the lighting suddenly began to change.
First, the Rabbit's taillights went out. It was hard to tell from here, but its headlights seemed to have been switched off as well.
Second, the Rabbit's interior light went on, because somebody had opened its door. Both doors, in fact; Dortmunder and the driver were both getting out of their car, only the back half of which was jammed between the delivery van and the tractor-trailer.
Third, as Dortmunder and the driver shut their doors behind themselves, so that the Rabbit's interior light snapped off again, the headlights in Zane's rear-view mirror also went out.
Where were Dortmunder and the other one going? Was this their destination? What in hell was going on?
Some other vehicle was out front, something much larger than the Rabbit. Slowly, that vehicle was pushing the Rabbit toward Zane's Cougar. Zane instinctively switched into reverse, but with that other car behind him there was nowhere to go. Then he shifted into drive, but if he tried to push back against that larger vehicle he would simply smash his own car against the Rabbit.
The Rabbit stopped. The other vehicle – a truck of some sort – remained where it was.
Nothing at all happened.
"This is ridiculous," Zane said. He honked his horn: yap yap yaaaaap. The sound disappeared in the rain. The Rabbit made no response, nor did the tractor-trailer on his right, nor did the car behind him, nor did the delivery van on his left.
"Well," he said, and opened the door. It opened about half an inch, and then it stopped.
At last Zane got the picture. Quickly switching off the Cougar's engine, releasing his foot from the stirrup-accelerator, he slid across to the passenger door, pushed it open, and heard the thunk when it hit the side of the tractor-trailer.
Wider on this side; almost a full inch.
With the engine off, the windshield wipers had stopped, and it was through tears of rain on the glass that Zane looked out at the Rabbit, with the truck parked beyond it. No way to push through. Twisting around, he tried to look through the water-smeared rear window, but though he could make out little about the vehicle blocking him from behind, he was certain in his heart about one thing: it would have too much weight for his Cougar to move it.
Trapped. Dortmunder was up to something, that son of a bitch. He'd trapped Zane here, he was pulling something, he was doing something right now. "When I get out of here," Zane muttered, and thumped the dashboard with a closed fist.
When he got out of here? Good God. Zane knew when he'd get out of here. When the real operators of these trucks came back to work, that's when, and not a second before.
On Monday.
Chapter 12
At exactly midnight, Arnold Chauncey put the key into the inside lock of the passage door, turned it, opened the door, and nobody came in.
What? Holding the door ajar, blinking in the misty rain, Chauncey peered out at the street and saw no one and nothing. Where was Dortmunder? Much more important, where was the painting?
All right; no reason to panic. Anyone can be a bit late. Keeping the door partway open, turning up the skimpy collar of his suede jacket against the rain and the chill, Chauncey settled himself to wait. Dortmunder would be here. And if something went wrong with Dortmunder, then Zane would take over. Not to worry.
The passage behind Chauncey's house was unheated, and in fact unroofed, the top only lightly covered with a trellis overgrown by vines. This offered less than no protection; the vine leaves, rather than stopping the rain, merely collected the tiny droplets into large gushes, which were dumped all at once down the back of Chauncey's neck. Meantime, his suede jacket and silk ascot and calf-height calf-leather boots, all of which had been designed primarily for indoor stylishness, were proving themselves effete and inadequate in the harsh reality of the outside world; rather like the French aristocrats of 1789.
Fortunately, Chauncey didn't have very long to wait, shivering in the darkness just inside the passage, peeking through the slightly open door, ducking back at the appearance of every non-Dortmunder pedestrian. After barely five minutes of this, a large dark car arrived, double-parked itself outside there, and Dortmunder's unmistakable figure – fairly tall, very narrow, stoop-shouldered, with lowered head – hopped out and hurried tippy-toe in his direction, trying to avoid puddles and dogshit at the same time. Three others emerged scrambling from the car in Dortmunder's wake, and followed his progression through the minefield, but Chauncey's eye was primarily taken by the long cardboard tube in Dortmunder's hand. Folly, home from the wars.
Dortmunder bounded through the doorway Chauncey held open for him, turned his collar down, and immediately turned it back up again, saying, "It's raining in here."
"There's no roof," Chauncey told him, and reached for the cardboard tube. "Shall I hold that?"
But Dortmunder held the tube out of reach, saying, "We'll switch inside."
"Of course," said Chauncey, disappointed, and led the way to the house. At the back door, Dortmunder paused, saying, "Doesn't this trigger the alarm?"
"I told Watson I'd use this door tonight."
"Okay."
The house was wonderfully warm and dry. They climbed the two flights of stairs to the sitting room where Chauncey, sounding rather more regretful than host-like, said, "I suppose you'd all like drinks."
"You bet," everybody said. They were standing around rubbing their hands together, working their shoulders up and down, grimacing and twitching the way people do when they leave the cold and wet for the warm and dry.
Chauncey took drink orders – they all wanted bourbon, thank you – and while he poured he said to Dortmunder, "You were late."
"We had a little chore to take care of first."
Chauncey handed around glasses, then raised his own in a toast: "Success to all our schemes."
"Hear, hear. Okay. I'll drink to that."
They did, and Chauncey had his first real opportunity to study Dortmunder's "string." And what a motley collection they were, all in all, dominated by a man monster with a face like a homicidal tomato, plus a skinny sharp-nosed bright-eyed fellow who looked like a cockney pickpocket, and a mild-mannered gent who looked like a cross between a museum curator and a bookkeeper out of Dickens. So these four – with the driver outside – were the team of burglars, were they? Except for the monster, they looked perfectly ordinary. Chauncey, who had been rather nervous at the prospect of having these people all together in his house, was almost disappointed.