“Okay. We want you to time it. Turn it off for exactly fifteen minutes, and then turn it back on again. You got that?”
“Fifteen minutes,” said the superintendent.
“You can go a few seconds one way or the other,” Parker told him, “but get it as close as you can.”
“Okay,” the superintendent said.
“We’ll give you a couple minutes to get down there,” Parker said.
The superintendent turned away, shaking his head. “You never get any sleep in this damn job,” he said.
“You think you got troubles,” Parker told him.
“I know,” the superintendent said, walking away. “It’s rough all over.”
Parker and Formutesca went into the men’s room. Formutesca was grinning the second the door closed. “That was beautiful,” he said. “That was really beautiful.”
“Don’t giggle and wink when he’s around,” Parker said. “We’re not here for fun.”
Formutesca looked sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. It was just nervousness. I’ll be better now.”
“Good.”
Parker went over and opened the window. Four feet away and about a foot higher than the windowsill was the rim of the museum roof. “Perfect,” Parker said. “Let’s have the ladder.”
They slid the ladder top-first out of the window till it rested with one end on the museum roof and the other end on the windowsill. Then, while Formutesca held the ladder in place, Parker went on hands and knees across it to the museum roof. He stepped off on to the roof and Formutesca pulled the ladder back in at the other end. If the superintendent should come back in while Parker was gone, Formutesca would just lean against the wall and be stupid.
The roof surface was tar, quiet beneath Parker’s feet. He hurried over to the mounded shape of the elevator-shaft housing, found the padlock holding the lid down, and took from an inside pocket a small envelope with a dozen keys inside. He tried three keys before finding the right one, then put the rest back in the envelope and the envelope back in his pocket. The right key he put in a different pocket, removed the padlock, and lifted the housing cover. He got out a pencil flash and looked inside the shaft.
It was fine. There was a broad metal beam one could stand on when one first climbed in, and the side cables were easily accessible for climbing down. The top of the elevator was a bare seven feet below him now, being stopped at the top floor, which was unexpected good luck. They’d assumed the Kasempas would keep the elevator at the first-floor level when they weren’t using it, in case Gonor or someone else should visit the place, but apparently they were feeling very secure and sure of themselves.
The elevator roof itself was perfect, mostly flat, metal, with the trapdoor into the elevator off toward a corner. The thing should work.
Parker put the pencil flash away, shut the cover, and put the padlock back on. Then he went back across the roof to the lighted men’s room window and saw Formutesca in there looking for him.
Formutesca smiled and waved when he saw him, then pushed the ladder out the window again. Parker reached for it, rested the top end on the roof rim, and went hands and knees back to the other building.
Formutesca helped him through the window and then pulled the ladder back in and shut the window. He turned to Parker, not bothering to hide his excitement. “Well? How is it?”
“Fine,” Parker said. “It’ll work. How long’s it been?”
Formutesca looked at his watch. “Just about eleven minutes.”
“Good,” Parker said. “We have time to make a mess.”
For the next five minutes they attempted to make the room look like a place where plumbers had been at work. Parker flushed the three toilets, emptying their water tanks, and smeared a few streaks of grease here and there on walls and fixtures while Formutesca chipped three tiles out of the wall above one of the sinks and then carelessly glued them back on again, grouting somewhat sloppily around their edges.
When the superintendent came back, the room looked right. He looked around and said, “You got it done?”
“We think so,” Parker said. “We’ll have to take a look in the basement, that’s all. You don’t have to stay with us any more if you don’t want.”
“I don’t know,” the superintendent said. “Maybe I better.”
“It’s up to you,” Parker said. He took Hoskins’ notebook out of his pocket. “In case this thing acts up again,” he said, “do me a favor. Don’t call the department, call me personally. Otherwise they’ll have me running my ass off. Will you do that?”
“Sure,” the superintendent said. “No skin off my nose.”
“Thanks,” Parker said. He wrote on a page of the notebook Mr Lynch, EL5-2598. That was a number in Gonor’s apartment. If in the next few days the superintendent began to have questions or suspicions, if he was troubled or unhappy in any way, he would now call Parker rather than anyone else. It was a way to guard against surprises when they came back.
Parker tore the page out of the notebook and gave it to the superintendent, who looked at it and tucked it away in his pants pocket. Then the three of them took the elevator down to the basement, Formutesca again carrying the ladder and toolbox. This time Formutesca stayed in character.
In the basement, Parker kept the superintendent busy showing him where things were the fuse boxes, the hot water line, the main water line while Formutesca quietly looked around for an entrance. Parker wrote things on his clipboard, asked questions, and when Formutesca wandered over again, looked sleepy and stupid, Parker said to the superintendent, “All right, that should do it. I don’t want any more trouble if I can help it.”
“I know what you mean,” the superintendent said, and led the way to the elevator. Behind him, Formutesca shook his head at Parker, meaning there was no usable way in.
They rode up to the first floor, walked down toward the door, and Parker stopped and said, “That valve under the sink.”
The superintendent said, “What?” He was obviously thinking most about going back to bed.
Parker said to Formutesca, “You know the one I mean. Go on up and check it.”
“Yeah,” said Formutesca, the word full of boredom and stupidity.
“This won’t take long,” Parker told the superintendent. “You just take him up and let him check that valve.”
“Ain’t you coming?”
“I never want to see that john again,” Parker said, “as long as I live.”
“I feel the same way myself,” the superintendent said. He was beginning to feel peevish and put-upon. He turned away unhappily and led Formutesca back to the elevator.
As soon as the elevator started upstairs, Parker went to the front door, opened it, studied the lock for a minute, and then took a ring with half a dozen keys on it from his pocket. He frowned over the keys, selected one, put it in the lock, and it worked. Satisfied, he put it away again and shut the door.
It was good he had one that would work, since the superintendent’s patience was obviously beginning to run thin. If he hadn’t been able to see a quiet way to get through this door he’d have had to make the superintendent show them the rear of the building next. He didn’t mind exasperating the superintendent, but he didn’t want the man calling some city department of water supply or something tomorrow to complain about being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.
He waited about three minutes, and then the elevator came back down and Formutesca and the superintendent came out. Parker said, “Was it okay?” That phrasing meant things were all right down here. If the door had proved a problem, he would have said, “Was anything wrong?”
Formutesca was obviously glad to hear they were done playing this game. “Sure it was okay,” he said, trying for the sullen and stupid sound again but this time not being completely successful at it.
But it wasn’t a big enough slip for the superintendent to notice. His eyes were half closed; in spirit he was already back in bed and asleep. He walked Parker and Formutesca to the door, held it for them, nodded heavily when Parker voiced the hope that there wouldn’t be any more trouble now, and then shut the door and went away.