Parker said, “We’ve got to go through the Diablo Tours wall tomorrow night.”
Lempke said, “Why so early?”
“By Thursday they’ll be setting up for the convention.
Tomorrow night’s the last time we get the ballroom to ourselves.”
Lempke said, “But what about the woman at Diablo Tours? She’ll see the hole.”
“That was the hang-up,” said Parker. “But then I remembered about Otto here. He’s got a specialty.”
Lempke said, “You want to burn the building down?”
Parker turned to Mainzer. “I want a fire in their office. Tonight. It ought to do enough damage so they have to close shop for a few days. It ought to do a lot of damage to the inner office and especially around the rear wall. But it shouldn’t be arson.”
Mainzer grinned. “Short circuit,” he said. “Faulty wiring. Easiest thing in the world. But that’s extra, Parker.”
Parker held on for a second, not wanting to say anything to drive Mainzer away, because regardless of his personality he was a good addition to the string. Then he said, “We’ll all be doing extras, Otto. It’ll even out.”
Mainzer scratched his bald-looking head. “I don’t know, Parker,” he said. “That sort of thing, fires and all, that’s mostly private with me. I mean, you want me in the string for strong-arm, right? A mule, that’s my specialty. Now, this other stuff—”
Parker said, “You don’t have to stick around, Otto.”
Mainzer looked surprised, then grinned again and shook his head. “It’s late in the season to replace me,” he said.
“Then I’ll have to get on the phone right now,” Parker said, and got to his feet.
Mainzer frowned, sitting forward. “You wouldn’t really do that,” he said.
Parker stood by his chair, half-turned away, looking back and down at Mainzer. He was running a bluff, and they both knew it, but he was prepared to have the bluff called and to start looking for a replacement right now, and they both had to know that, too. It was a bluff with teeth in it. He said, “Make up your mind, Otto. Are you in or out?”
Mainzer studied Parker’s face, and began to crack his knuckles one by one, starting with the thumb on his left hand and continuing all the way through to the little finger on his right. When he was all done he grinned, and shrugged, and looked around at the rest of them, saying, “What the hell. It’s a donation. For the cause.”
Parker said, “Good.” Still standing, he turned and said, “What about you, Lempke? Still in?”
Lempke looked surprised, then apprehensive, then determined. “Still in,” he said.
“All right. Otto sets the fire tonight. Tomorrow night, Otto, Mike, Lempke and I go in and make the hole. Claire, you go to the hotel tomorrow afternoon, take a room for one night on a low floor, the lowest you can get. Lempke and Mike case the layout Friday night. Billy, you check out all the dealers Friday, be ready to give us a map Friday night showing the locations of the tables we want to hit.”
“Oh, sure,” said Billy. “I can do that.”
“We meet here tomorrow night at two, all except Billy.” Parker looked around. “Anything else?”
There was nothing else, and they all relaxed. Carlow went to the kitchen for more beer, and Mainzer told a dirty joke, telling it to the group but mostly to Claire, who ignored him. Lempke and Carlow got into reminiscences about mutual friends.
Lempke and Carlow were the first to leave, followed shortly by Mainzer, who had given up on Claire and was now pretending she didn’t exist. Billy hung around a while longer, until Claire told him she was tired and going to bed and he had to leave. He went reluctantly, but quietly. . When they were alone, Claire said to Parker, “That man Carlow seems all right. Very professional and competent.”
“He knows his business.”
“I don’t know about the other one,” she said.
“I do,” Parker said. “Otto knows his business, too. He’ll do what he’s here for.”
“What about Billy?” she said. “Are you sure it’s safe to stay at his place afterwards? What if the police come and he loses his nerve?”
“He’ll keep his nerve better knowing I’m a wall away.”
“If you say so,” she said, and shrugged, and changed the subject.
Much later, in bed, they heard a distant wail of sirens. Claire shifted position in the dark and whispered, “Is that Mister Mainzer’s fire?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
Parker lay on his back and listened to the sound, and then to the following silence. For the thousandth time, he found himself wishing the other members of a string could leave their personalities at home when they came to a job, but of course practically nobody ever could. Otto would do his work well, and had undoubtedly done the fire well, but between now and Saturday night Otto could be guaranteed to rub everybody else the wrong way at least once each. But the only thing to do was try to ignore him, concentrate instead on the job.
Claire moved again, and put one arm across his chest. He shifted closer to her, and shut his eyes, and after a while stopped listening to the post-siren silence and went to sleep.
Eight
IT HAD been a good fire, just exactly right. The outer office of Diablo Tours was smoke-streaked and waterlogged, the inner office was badly charred and burnt. The desk in there was a blackened shell, and the rear wall had been badly damaged by the fire. No one would be working here for a while, not until the place was redone, which wouldn’t start happening until after the insurance adjusters and fire department investigators were through, which was unlikely to take less than a week.
Parker and Carlow and Mainzer arrived a little after two in the morning. The door had been locked and a piece of plywood nailed over the hole in it where the firemen had knocked out the frosted glass panel, but the lock was an easy one and they went through it practically without stopping. Parker had previously worked out the best route in here, trying it by day, going through the hotel, up to the roof and through a corridor window into this building, which was several stories taller than the hotel. From there it was simple to come down the stairs and through the locked door into the wreckage of Diablo Tours, which smelled inside of dampness and charred wood.
When they entered the inner office, Mainzer looked around and smiled in satisfaction, saying, “Nice job. Admit it, Parker, it’s a nice job.”
“You did fine,” Parker said, both because it was true and because there was the necessity to keep Mainzer happy. There was always the necessity to keep people happy, that was why Parker seldom got along with people away from work. When a job was at stake he was willing to make the effort, but otherwise he wasn’t.
They couldn’t use any light of their own in here, not even a flashlight, but the same streetlight that illuminated the ballroom in the hotel next door also shone in the window here, its bluish-white light softening the effects of the fire, making the room like a small stage setting before a performance.
The wall was plasterboard, and the fire had exposed some of the lines of separation between the panels. Parker went to the corner of the wall farthest from the window and felt along the edge of the panel there. “This will do,” he said.
Car low had brought along a small toolkit, which he now put on the desk. They got screwdrivers and pliers from it and went to work on the plasterboard panel, removing all the nails holding it to the supports, not worrying about gouging the wall. While Carlow worked on the left side and Parker on the right, Mainzer removed the molding from the bottom of the panel and then stood on a chair to remove a narrow strip of wood where the wall met the ceiling.
It took fifteen minutes to completely free the panel, which was four feet wide and ran from floor to ceiling. When they were done, they leaned the panel forward slightly and slid it to one side, then rested it back against the wall beside the new hole.