"What do we heist?"
"Greenwood."
Murch said, "Hah?"
"Greenwood," Dortmunder repeated, and Rollo came in with Chefwick's sherry. He went out again and Dortmunder said, "Greenwood's price is we bust him out. His lawyer tells him there's no way to beat the rap, so he's got to beat a retreat instead."
Chefwick said, "Does that mean we're going to break into jail?"
"In and back out," Kelp said.
"We hope," Dortmunder said.
Chefwick smiled in a dazed sort of way and sipped at his sherry. "I never thought I'd be breaking
into
jail," he said. "It raises interesting questions."
Murch said, "You want me to drive, huh?"
"Right," said Dortmunder.
Murch frowned and drank a whole mouthful of beer.
Dortmunder said, "What's wrong?"
"Me sitting in a car, late at night, outside a jail, gunning the engine. I don't feature it. It don't raise any interesting questions for me at all."
"If we can't work it out," Dortmunder said, "we won't do it."
Kelp said to Murch, "None of us wants to go into that jail for more than a minute or two. If it looks like years, don't worry, we'll throw it over."
Murch said, "I got to be careful, that's all. I'm the sole support of my mother."
Dortmunder said, "Doesn't she drive a cab?"
"There's no living in that," Murch said. "She just does that to get out of the house, meet people."
Chefwick said, "What sort of jail is this?"
"We'll all go out there, one time or another, take a look at it," Dortmunder told him. "In the meantime, this is what I've got." He began to spread out on the table the contents of the three manila envelopes.
5
Kelp was shown to a different room this time, but he said, "Hey! Hold on just a minute."
The ebony man with the long thin fingers turned back in the doorway, his face expressionless. "Sir?"
"Where's the pool table?"
Still no expression. "Sir?"
Kelp made motions like a man operating a cue. "The pool table," he said. "Pocket billiards. The green table with the holes in it."
"Yes, sir. That's in a different room."
"Right," said Kelp. "That's the room I want. Lead me to it."
The ebony man didn't seem to know how to take that. He still had no expression on his face, but he just stood there in the doorway, not doing anything.
Kelp walked over to him and made shooing motions. "Let's go," he said. "I feel like dropping a few."
"I'm not sure-"
"I'm sure," Kelp told him. "Don't you worry about it, I'm positive. Just you lead me there."
"Yes, sir," said the ebony man doubtfully. He led the way to the room with the pool table in it, shut the door after Kelp, and went away.
The one ball being blind after the break, Kelp decided to play straight pool this time. He dropped twelve balls with only four misses and was taking aim at the one at last when the Major came in.
Kelp put the cue down on the table. "Hi, Major. Got another list for you."
"It's about time," said the Major. He frowned at the pool table, and he seemed irritated by something.
Kelp said, "What do you mean, about time? Less than three weeks."
"It took less than two weeks last time," the Major said.
Kelp said, "Major, they don't guard coliseums the way they guard jails."
"All I know is," said the Major, "I have so far paid out three thousand three hundred dollars in salaries, not counting the cost of materials and supplies, and so far I have nothing to show for it."
"That much?" Kelp shook his head. "It sure mounts up, doesn't it? Well, here's the list."
"Thank you."
The Major sourly studied the list while Kelp went back to the table and sank the one ball, leaving the nine and the thirteen. He missed a try for the nine but wound up with perfect position on the thirteen. He dropped the thirteen with enough back spin on the cue ball to practically put it inside his shirt, and the Major said, "A truck?"
"We're going to need one," Kelp said. He sighted on the nine. "And it can't be hot, or I'd go out and get one myself."
"But a truck," said the Major. "That's an expensive item."
"Yes, sir. But if things work out, you'll be able to sell it back when we're done with it."
"This will take a while," the Major said. He scanned the list. "The other things should be no problem. You're going to scale a wall, eh?"
"That's what they've got there," Kelp said. He hit the cue ball, which hit the nine, and everything dropped. Kelp shook his head and put up the cue.
The Major was still frowning at the list. "This truck doesn't have to be fast?"
"We don't want to outrun anybody in it, no."
"So it doesn't have to be new. A used truck."
"With a clean registration we can show," Kelp said.
"What if I rent one?"
"If you can rent a truck that it won't get back to you if things go wrong, you go right ahead. Just remember what we're using it for."
"I'll remember," the Major said. He glanced at the pool table. "If you're finished with your game…"
"Unless you'd like to try it with me."
"I'm sorry," the Major said with a dead smile, "I don't play."
6
From his cell window Alan Greenwood could see the blacktopped exercise yard and the whitewashed outer wall of Utopia Park Prison. Beyond that wall hunkered the small Long Island community of Utopia Park, a squat flat Monopoly board of housing, shopping centers, schools, churches, Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, and orthopedic shoe stores, bisected by the inevitable rails of the Long Island Railroad. Inside the wall sat and stood and scratched those adjudged to be dangerous to that Monopoly board, including the gray-garbed group of shuffling men out there in the exercise yard at the moment and Alan Greenwood, who was watching them and thinking how much they looked like people waiting for a subway. Next to the cell window someone had scratched into the cement wall the question "What did the White Rabbit know?" Greenwood was yet to figure that one out.
Utopia Park Prison was a county jug, but most of its inmates belonged to the state, the county possessing three newer jugs of its own and no longer needing this one. The overflow of various state prisons was here, plus various charged men from upstate who'd won change of venue for their trials, plus some overflow from the boroughs of New York City, plus some special cases like Greenwood. No one was here for long, no one ever would be here long, so the joint lacked the usual complex society prisoners normally set up within the walls to keep themselves in practice for civilization. No pecking order, in other words.
Greenwood was spending most of his time at the window because he liked neither his cell nor his cellmate. Both were gray, scabrous, dirty, and old. The cell merely existed, but the cellmate consumed a lot of the hours in picking at things between his toes and then smelling his fingertips. Greenwood preferred to watch the exercise yard and the wall and the sky. He had been here nearly a month now, and his patience was wearing thin.
The door clanged. Greenwood turned around, saw his cellmate on the top bunk smelling his fingertips, and saw a guard standing in the doorway. The guard looked like the cellmate's older brother, but at least he had his shoes on. He said "Greenwood. Visitor."
"Goody."
Greenwood went out, the door clanged again, Greenwood and the guard walked down the metal corridor and down the metal spiral stairs and along the other metal corridor and through two doors, both of which had to be unlocked by people on the outside and both of which were locked again in his wake. This was followed by a plastic corridor painted green and then a room painted light brown in which Eugene Andrew Prosker sat and smiled on the other side of a wall of wire mesh.
Greenwood sat opposite him. "How goes the world?"
"It turns," Prosker assured him. "It turns."
"And how's my appeal coming?" Greenwood didn't mean an appeal to any court, but his request for deliverance to his former pards.