Around five, as the local people began getting out of work, business picked up fast, and from then till after nine, Atkins almost always had at least one customer browsing at his table. The bourse was to remain open till ten, but by nine-fifteen Atkins was too hungry to stick around any longer, so he draped the cloth over his table, joined three other dealers, and they went out to a restaurant, followed by another night of bar-hopping.
The others seemed ready to go all night, but Atkins had had enough by twelve-thirty, and went back to the hotel by himself. He rang for the elevator, but nothing happened for quite a while, so he went up the stairs. There was a Pinkerton man sitting at a card table near the staircase on the mezzanine floor. The ballroom and security room and display room doors were all closed. A second Pinkerton man was walking around the open mezzanine, strolling along, looking over the railing down at the lobby.
Halfway up the next flight, Atkins came across Billy Lebatard again, this time with a short, thin, older man who carried that inevitable symbol of the tourist, a camera hanging from a thong around his neck. The older man also carried a small sketch pad and a pencil, and had apparently been making some kind of drawing. The two of them hadn’t been going anywhere, just standing in the corner of the landing between the mezzanine and the second floor. When Atkins came into view, Lebatard acted very flustered, but the older man paid no attention to Atkins at all. Atkins said hello to Lebatard and went on upstairs, wondering vaguely at Lebatard’s reaction. He wondered idly if Lebatard might after all be homosexual, and had picked up—or been picked up by—an older man of the same type. Lebatard definitely wasn’t very masculine in his looks or actions. But it was none of Atkins’ business, and by the time he’d reached his room he’d forgotten about it.
Saturday was much busier than Friday. Atkins took a short fast lunch at two o’clock, but otherwise stayed at his table from ten o’clock opening till the bourse closed at eight o’clock for the banquet.
The Saturday banquet was an integral part of these conventions, where the social and hobby aspects reached their peak. Awards were given at the banquet for the best exhibits in the display rooms. Speeches were made, and entertainment had to be sat through. The majority of convention-goers attended the banquet, not including Terry Atkins”, who was too business-oriented to take much pleasure in the sight of hobbyists getting together to laugh too much at in-jokes, to give each other prizes, and to eat chicken and peas and ice cream. Atkins and a few like-minded dealer friends went instead to eat steak at a good restaurant and then to sit around a cozy bar and drink happily together. They told each other cheerfully that they were doing business, the stock was moving. It was a good convention. Nothing spectacular, nothing unusual, pretty much the expected sort of thing, but all in all a good convention.
They drank to it.
Two
LEMPKE STOOD in the kitchen of Billy Lebatard’s house and watched the water not boiling. What he really wanted was Jim Beam on the rocks, straight, in a tall glass, with the bottle and some more ice cubes handy, but he’d learned years ago—decades ago—that you don’t drink the same night you go out to pull a job, not if you want to stay outside and healthy. Afterwards he could drink all he wanted, could and would, but right now he’d have to make do with tea. If the water would just boil.
Billy Lebatard stuck his head in the doorway and said, “Parker wants to know where you are.”
“One minute,” Lempke said. It was late Saturday night, the clock on the kitchen wall reading eleven thirty-seven, and it was past time for the meeting to begin. But Lempke’s stomach was knotting up and he was going to have to put something inside there before he could go into the dining room and sit down at that table and take part the way he was supposed to, so he said, “Tell him just one minute. I’ll be right there.” And glared impatiently at the pot of water on the stove.
Billy said reluctantly, “Okay, I’ll tell him,” but he didn’t go anywhere. Instead, he leaned farther into the kitchen and whispered, “You won’t say anything, will you?”
“I told you I won’t,” Lempke said.
“I don’t want …” Billy looked troubled, and made vague gestures.
“I know what you want,” Lempke said sharply.
Billy looked startled, and then hurt. Wordlessly, he turned and went away. Lempke was already sorry at having lost his temper with the poor boy, but there was nothing to do about it now. Besides, the water was finally boiling. He poured it into the cup, where the teabag was already waiting, and then waited again, this time for the tea to steep, which shouldn’t take more than a minute.
The thing about Billy, he shouldn’t act like that. Not so upset, the way he got at the hotel last night when a dealer he knew came up the stairs, or the way he was now, asking Lempke over and over not to tell Parker how he’d gotten rattled at the hotel. For himself, Lempke thought, there was some excuse; he was an old man, he’d taken a fall, his wind and nerves and everything else were starting to go. But for Billy, young and smart, there was no excuse at all. Lempke had taken to the boy from their first meeting, and hated to have to admit to himself that Billy Lebatard was simply a coward. He was almost like a father saddled with a disappointing son.
August Lempke had no children of his own, though he’d been married twice. The first marriage had taken place when he was twenty-three, seven years after his first big-time heist. He had a house in Atlantic City in those days, he played the swell along the boardwalk, and that was where he met Marge. They fell in love, they married, and seven months later he made the mistake of telling her how he made his living. She went straight to the law, and he got clear by a whisker. She didn’t waste any time about divorces, but got herself an annulment instead, and for the next twenty-two years he lived the bachelor’s life, until twelve years ago he’d married Cathy Russell, widow of Cam Russell, one of the best of the old-time juggers, a man who’d known more about bank vaults than most bankers but who’d been shot down by a rookie cop on a job in Wilmington Delaware that had gone sour all the way. Lempke and Cathy had had six good years together before he took his fall, in Rhode Island, but she’d died—heart trouble—while he was inside, and when he’d come out at last a few months back there was nobody to greet him in the sunshine, no address written on a slip of paper in his pocket. He knew nothing except the life of the heister, knew no one except other pros in the business. He was broke and alone and for both those reasons he needed a score. And because he was old and had been out of circulation he knew A\ the score would have to originate with him; no one else would be going out of their way to include him on any string.
He started looking around among the people he knew, and a general heavy named Bainum sent him to Billy Lebatard. Bainum had knocked over a coin dealer fingered by Lebatard once, and though there hadn’t been much profit in it, a similar sort of job might at least set Lempke up with a new stake. So Lempke had looked Billy up, had found him to be a grown-up orphan, a man living alone in his dead folks’ house, a little boy still behind the adult facade, and Lempke had been ripe to play a paternal role.