They had chosen the most industrial area of Utopia Park for this part of the plot. The streets directly contiguous with the prison were all shabby residential, but starting two or three blocks out the neighborhoods began to change. To the north and east were residential neighborhoods, steadily improving the farther away they got, and to the west was a poorer residential area that got progressively slummier till it petered out in a flurry of used car lots, but to the south was Utopia Park's industry. For block after block there was nothing but the low brick buildings in which sunglasses were made, soft drinks were bottled, tires were recapped, newspapers were printed, dresses were sewn, signs were painted, and foam rubber was covered with fabric. There was no traffic here at night, there were no pedestrians, a police car prowled through only once an hour. There was nothing here at night but all the factories and, parked in front of them, hundreds of trucks. Up this street and down that, nothing but trucks, bumpy-fendered, big-nosed, hulking, dark, empty, silent. Trucks.
Kelp had parked his truck in with all the other trucks, making it invisible. He had parked just beyond a fire hydrant so there would be room behind the truck, but other than that one open space the rest of the block was pretty well full. Kelp had had to drive around half a dozen blocks before he'd found this space, and it pleased him.
Now, with the two boards slanting out from the truck to the street, Kelp stepped up on the curb and waited. Murch had disappeared into the blackness inside the truck again, and after a minute there was the sudden chatter of an engine starting up in there. It roared a brief second, then settled down to a quiet purr, and out from the truck nosed a nearly new dark green Mercedes-Benz 250SE convertible. Kelp had run across it earlier this evening on Park Avenue in the Sixties. Because it wasn't going to be used very much, it still bore its MD plates. Kelp had decided to forgive doctors.
The boards bowed beneath the weight of the car. Murch, behind the wheel, looked like Gary Cooper taxiing his Grumman into position on the aircraft carrier. Nodding at Kelp the way Coop used to nod at the ground crew, Murch tapped the accelerator and the Mercedes-Benz went away, lights out.
Murch had spent some of his idle time in the back of the truck reading the owner's manual he'd found in the car's glove compartment, and he wondered if the top speed of one hundred eighteen miles an hour was on the up and up or not. He shouldn't test it now, but coming back maybe he'd have enough of a straightaway to find out.
Back in the prison, Dortmunder had checked his watch again, found that five minutes had passed, and said, "Okay." Now the three of them were trotting across the open space toward the laundry, the searchlight having flashed by just before they started.
Dortmunder and Chefwick put up the ladder and Greenwood led the way up it. The three got to the roof, pulled the ladder up after them, lay down in the lee of the low perimeter wall, held their breaths while the searchlight went by, and then got to their feet and carried the ladder over to the outer wall. Chefwick went up first this time, toting his black bag, went over the top, and went down the rope hand over hand, the handle of the black bag clamped in his teeth. Greenwood followed him and Dortmunder came last. Dortmunder straddled the top of the wall and began pulling the ladder up. The searchlight was coming back.
Chefwick dropped to the ground just as Murch arrived in the convertible. Chefwick took the bag from his teeth, which were aching from the strain, and climbed over the side into the convertible. The interior lights of this vehicle hadn't been tampered with, so they couldn't open the door.
Greenwood was coming down the rope. Dortmunder was still pulling up the ladder. The searchlight reached him, washed over him like magic water, passed on, stopped dead, quivered, and shot back. Dortmunder was gone, but the ladder was in the process of falling onto the laundry roof. It went chack when it hit.
Meantime, Greenwood had reached the ground and jumped into the front seat of the convertible, Chefwick being already in back. Dortmunder was coming very fast down the rope.
A siren said, Rrrrrr - and began its climb.
Dortmunder kicked out from the wall, let go the rope, dropped into the back seat of the convertible and called, "Go!"
Murch hit the accelerator.
Sirens were starting up all over the place. Kelp, standing by the truck with an unlit flashlight in his hands, began to chew his lower lip.
Murch had turned on the headlights, since he was going too fast now to depend on the occasional street lights. Behind them, the prison was coming to life like a yellow volcano. Any minute it would start erupting police cars.
Murch made a left on two wheels. He now had a three-block straightaway. He put the accelerator on the floor.
There are still milkmen who get up very early in the morning and deliver milk. One of these, standing at his steering wheel, put-putted his stubby white traveling walk-in closet into the middle of an intersection, looked to his left, and saw headlights coming at him too fast to think about. He yipped and threw himself backward into his cases of milk, causing a lot of crashing.
Murch went around the stalled milk truck like a skier on a slalom, and kept the accelerator on the floor. He was going to have to brake soon, and the speedometer hadn't broken a hundred yet.
No good. He'd have to brake now, or overshoot. He released the accelerator and tapped the brakes. Four-wheel disc brakes grabbed and held.
Kelp didn't hear the engine over the screaming sirens, but he did hear the tires shriek. He looked down at the corner and the convertible slid sideways into view, then leaped forward like Jim Brown going around end.
Kelp switched on his flashlight and began madly to wave it. Didn't Murch see him? The convertible kept getting larger.
Murch knew what he was doing. While his passengers clung to the upholstery and each other he shot down the block, tapped the brakes just enough at the right split second, nudged the wheel just enough, rolled up the boards and into the truck, tapped the brakes again, and came to a quivering standstill two inches from the far wall. He shut off the engine and switched off the lights.
Kelp, meanwhile, had put away his flashlight and was quickly shoving the boards back into the truck. He slammed one of the doors, hands reached down to help him up into the truck, and then the other door was shut.
For half a minute there was no sound in the blackness inside the truck except five people panting. Then Greenwood said, "We've gotta go back. I forgot my toothbrush."
Everybody laughed at that, but it was just nervous laughter. Still, it helped to relax them all. Murch turned the car's headlights on again, since they'd already proved no light from in here could be seen outside the truck, and then everybody shook hands with everybody, congratulating everybody on a job well done.
They got quiet and listened as a police car yowled by, and then Kelp said, "Hot on our trail," and everybody grinned again.
They'd done it. From here on it was simple. They'd wait here in the truck till around six, and then Kelp would slip out, get into the cab, and drive them all away from here. It was unlikely he'd be stopped, but if he was he was perfectly safe. He had legitimate papers for the rental truck, legitimate-looking driver's license and other identification, and a legitimate-sounding reason for being abroad. In a quiet spot in Brooklyn the convertible would be removed from the truck and left with its keys in it invitingly close to a vocational high school. The truck would be driven to Manhattan and left at the garage where Major Iko's man would pick it up and return it to the rental agency.
Everybody was feeling pleased and happy and relieved. They sat around in the convertible and told jokes and after a while Kelp brought out a deck of cards and they started to play poker for high paper stakes.