The Hot Rock

Chefwick opened the cell door. The old man said, "Me? Me, fellows?"

Greenwood went in, his machine gun carried casually in his left hand, and headed directly to the rear wall, brushing by the old man, who kept blinking at everybody and pointing at himself.

The side walls of the cell were metal and the front was composed of bars, but the rear wall, being the outer wall of the building, was stone. Greenwood stood on tiptoe, reached up to just under the ceiling, and plucked out a small piece of stone that didn't look any different from any other part of the wall. He then reached in behind where the stone had been.

Kelp and Dortmunder meantime had hustled the three cops into the detention block and were waiting just outside the cell to put the cops in there when Greenwood came out.

Greenwood, his fingers in the hole in the wall, looked around at Dortmunder and gave a very glassy smile.

Dortmunder went over to the cell doorway. "What's the matter?"

"I don't under-" Greenwood's fingers were scrabbling around in the hole like spiders. Faintly from outside they could hear detonator caps going off.

Dortmunder said, "It isn't there?"

The old man, looking from face to face, said, "Me, fellows?"

Greenwood looked at him in sudden suspicion. "You? Did you take it?"

The old man suddenly looked astonished in a fearful way. "Me? Me?"

"He didn't take it," Dortmunder said. "Look at Mm. He couldn't reach up there, for one thing."

Greenwood was beginning to get wild. "Who, then?" he said. "If not him, who?"

"The thing was there almost two months," Dortmunder said. He turned to Kelp. "Ungag one of them."

Kelp did so, and Dortmunder said to him, "When did this bird take occupancy?"

"Three A.M. this morning."

Greenwood said to Dortmunder, "I swear I put it-"

"I believe you," Dortmunder said. He sounded tired. "Somebody found it, that's all. Let's get out of here." He walked out of the cell, a troubled Greenwood coming frowning behind him.

The old man said, "What about me, fellows? You're takin' me along, ain'tcha, fellows?"

Dortmunder looked at him, then turned to the ungagged cop and said, "What's he in for?"

"Exposing himself in Lord and Taylor."

"It's a frame-up!" cried the old man. "I never-"

"He's still in his working clothes," the cop said. "Have him open his raincoat."

The old man began to fuss and fidget. "That don't mean anything," he said.

Dortmunder said, "Open your raincoat."

"It don't mean a thing," the old man insisted.

"Open your raincoat," Dortmunder said.

The old man, hesitant, muttering, opened his raincoat and spread it wide. Underneath, he wasn't wearing brown trousers at all. He was wearing cut-off trouser legs that extended up to just above the knee, where they were held on with garters. Above that, he wore nothing under the raincoat at all. He needed a bath.

Everybody looked at him. The old man giggled.

Dortmunder said, "Maybe you ought to stay here." He turned to the cops. "Go on in there with him."

The cops went in, Chefwick locked the door, and they left. There was no one at all at the head of the stairs, down past the last gate, but they tossed two more tear gas grenades down that way anyway. They hurried up the stairs to the roof, following the getaway plan just as though the Balabomo Emerald had been there where Greenwood left it, and at the top Dortmunder dropped three detonators down the stairwell and shut the door.

Murch was already in the helicopter, and when he saw them coming he started the engine. The rotors began to spin and roar, and Dortmunder and the others ran through the wind to the side of the helicopter and climbed in.

Down on the first floor, the lieutenant paused in his supervising of the handing out of riot guns to cock a head and listen to the unmistakable chuff-chuff of a nearby helicopter. "My God!" he whispered. "They must be supplied by Castro!"

As soon as everybody was aboard, Murch lifted the helicopter into the air and swung them away north into the night. They ran without lights, curving north and west over Harlem again, then dropping low over the Hudson River and heading south.

Murch was the only one who didn't know about the missing emerald, but when he saw that no one else was happy he began to understand that something must have gone wrong. He kept trying to find out what, paying no attention to the controls or the dark water rushing by just below the flimsy craft they were in, so Dortmunder finally put his cupped hands against Murch's ear and bellowed the facts into his head. Murch then wanted to turn it into a conversation, but when Dortmunder pointed at the tanker they were about to crash into in Upper Bay, Murch went back to his knitting.

They were on the ground again at the starting point at ten past eight. In the humming silence that followed Murch's shutting off of the engine no one said anything at first, until Murch commented sadly, "I'd been thinking about buying one of these. It beats even the Belt Parkway, you know?"

Nobody answered him. They all climbed down to the ground, all feeling stiff, and walked over to the Lincoln, now less lavender in the darkness.

There was very little talk on the drive back to Manhattan. They let Dortmunder off at his apartment and he went upstairs, made himself a bourbon on the rocks, sat down on the sofa, and looked at his briefcase full of encyclopedia brochures.

Dortmunder sighed.

PHASE FOUR

1

"Nice doggy," Dortmunder said.

The German shepherd wasn't buying any. He stood in front of the stoop, head down, eyes up, jaws slightly open to show his pointy teeth, and said, "Rrrrrr," softly in his throat every time Dortmunder made a move to come down off the porch. The message was clear. The damn dog was going to hold him here until somebody in authority came home.

"Look, doggy," Dortmunder said, trying to be reasonable, "all I did was ring the bell. I didn't break in, I didn't steal anything, I just rang the bell. But nobody's home, so now I want to go to some other house and ring the bell."

"Rrrrrr," said the dog.

Dortmunder pointed to his attache case. "I'm a salesman, doggy," he said. "I sell encyclopedias. Books. Big books. Doggy? Do you know from books?"

The dog didn't say anything. He just kept watching.

"All right now, dog," Dortmunder said, being very stern. "Enough is enough. I have places to go, I don't have the time to fool around with you. I've got to make my rent money. Now, I'm leaving here and that's all there is-" He took a firm step forward.

"Rrrrrrrr!" said the dog.

Dortmunder took a quick step back. "God damn it, dog!" he cried. "This is ridiculous!"

The dog didn't think so. He was one of those by-the-book dogs. Rules were rules, and Dortmunder didn't rate any special favors.

Dortmunder looked around, but the neighborhood was as empty as the dog's mind. It was not quite two o'clock in the afternoon, September the seventh - three weeks and two days since the raid on the police station - and the neighborhood children were all in school. The neighborhood fathers were all at work, of course, and God alone knew where all the neighborhood mothers were. Wherever they were, Dortmunder was alone, trapped by a stupid overzealous dog on the porch of a middle-aged but comfortable home in a middle-aged but comfortable residential section of Long Island, about forty miles from Manhattan. Time was money, he had none to spare of either, and the damn dog was costing him both.

"There ought to be a law against dogs," Dortmunder said darkly. "Dogs like you in particular. You ought to be locked up somewhere."

The dog was unmoved.

"You're a menace to society," Dortmunder told him. "You're damn lucky if I don't sue you. Your owner, I mean. Sue the hell out of him."