Kelp said, “South Africa?”
“Because they speak English,” Chester said, “but they never heard of Monroe Hall. He needs people that never heard of him. Here comes the entrance.”
First there was a long one-story office building of gray stucco, with Venetian blinds in all the windows, some up, some down, some crooked. Then there was a six-foot-high wall of gray weathered barn siding, and then a blacktop road, one lane on either side of a rustic guardshack that looked like a tugboat coming at you. Serious-looking metal rods were down across both lanes, and three people in rent-a-cop uniforms could be seen inside the big-windowed guardshack. The blacktop road wandered in among more village-type buildings and some not-well-cared-for lawns and plantings. And way in back just a glimpse could be seen of Tara, the house from Gone With the Wind.
Kelp drove on, past another barn-siding wall, as Dortmunder called, “Was that it? The big white house back in there?”
Chester said, “It goes for about another mile along this road, and then there’s a shopping mall, by the intersection with the state highway.”
Stan said, “Was that big white house back there where Hall lives?”
“Yeah, that’s his place.”
“Andy! Andy! Hey, dammit, Andy!”
Kelp looked in the mirror, and there was Dortmunder again, waving like before, or maybe a little more desperately. “Hi, John,” he said. “You wanted something?”
“Find a place and park. Stop. I gotta talk to you people and I can’t do anything back here.”
“Sure, John,” Kelp said. “But maybe we oughta look at this mall first, see if there’s a way in from there.”
“Forget the mall,” Dortmunder said.
Chester said, “It isn’t easier at the mall, Andy, it’s worse. There’s an eight-foot-high chain-link fence all along the property line there.”
“Forget the mall,” Dortmunder said. “The mall doesn’t matter.”
Tiny said, “If we brought a truck in, we could go over the top of the fence.”
“Forget the mall, will you?”
Chester said, “But you’ve still got the electric fence. That goes all the way around the property.”
“Forget the mall!”
“Well, we’ll go on to the mall, anyway,” Kelp decided. “See what things look like along the way. I think John wants to stop for something anyway, when we get there.”
“Yes, stop! That’s right! Stop!”
Kelp said, “Chester, is there anything interesting along this part, before the mall?”
“No, it’s all pretty much the same.”
“I give up.”
So they drove on to the mall, and when they turned in at the entrance Kelp said, “Any kind of store in particular you want, John?”
“A parking space,” Dortmunder said. “Stop the car. Stop it. Make it stop.”
Stan said, “That’s a pretty big fence they got up there. Maybe we should get over closer to it.”
“Stop! Stop! Stop now!”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Kelp said, and drove around a little, and then found a parking space not too far from the home appliance store, in case it turned out anybody needed anything. He switched off the engine, looked in the mirror, and said, “John? Here okay?”
Twisting around, Stan said, “John, it took forever to get out here. We don’t want to waste too much time sitting around some mall. We gotta figure out a way to deal with that electric fence. We gotta figure out how to get in there and get back out again, with a whole lotta cars.”
“Forget that,” Dortmunder said. “Forget the fence.” Finally he had everybody’s attention. They all twisted around to look at him, the ones in front banging each other up pretty well along the way, and then Tiny said, “Dortmunder, we’re outside. The fence is there, all around. We gotta get inside. We gotta get past the fence. We can’t forget it.”
“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Dortmunder said. “There’s no way to defeat the fence. We gotta do it another way.”
Chester said, “John, there is no other way.”
“Well,” Kelp said, “if John says there is, maybe there is. John?”
“Monroe Hall needs staff,” Dortmunder said. “We hire on.”
10
OF ALL HIS CLIENTS, Flip Morriscone thought Monroe Hall was by far the one he hated the most. Oh, he hated them all, of course, flabby flatulent creatures, no self-discipline at all, expecting him to sweat for them, expecting his magic hour once a day or even once a week would make up for all the rest of their self-indulgent lives.
But of them all, Monroe Hall was the worst. Big self-involved baby, just too precious for words. And look at the security around La Manse Monroe—as though a movie star lived there, at the very least. But who would want to get close to Monroe Hall? As far as Flip was concerned, people would pay good money to stay away from the man. But no. So here we go again.
Flip drove his forest green Subaru Forester along the county road in the afternoon spring sunshine, perfectly on time for his three o’clock with Horrible Hall, turned in at the entrance and stopped before the iron bar, as he did three times a week, next to the guardshack.
And as also happened three times a week, every week, thirty-some weeks and counting, the sullen-faced guard came out, pretended he’d never seen Flip before in his life, checked his name off on the clipboard he carried like a tiny shield, and demanded identification. At one point, seven or eight weeks into the relationship, Flip had tried jollity, saying, “Surely you remember me? From two days ago?” But the expressionless guard had merely said, “Gotta see ID before you come in.” So since then Flip had merely flipped the Neanderthal a quick close-up of his driver’s license, and thus gained entry.
Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. First the clipboard, then the identification, then the call to the Master to confirm that yes, Flip Morriscone did have his usual appointment with the Big Cheese, all done with great solemnity, the required ritual, like a religious event or something.
But then at last, also as usual, the guard raised the metal boom and Flip could zip on in and up the long two-lane blacktop to the Big House, which is the way he thought of the sprawling white mansion that dominated the view within the compound. Drive up, follow the right fork of the blacktop to the parking area beside the house, then grab his long canvas bag from the back and carry it around to the front door. Heavy bag it was, flipped onto Flip’s shoulder, the knuckles of his right hand as he gripped the two cloth handles resting on his trapezius, flexing both the pecs and the ‘ceps.
The first two weeks he’d had this client, there’d been an angry man waiting for him at the front of the house, dressed in a uniform something like a United Parcel deliveryperson, to take the Forester from Flip and park it, but the third week United Parcel was gone and instead the butler called to him from the open front door, “Park it around the side there, that’s a good fellow.”
Good fellow. He’d lasted only a couple more months himself, the butler, and now it was Monroe Hall who opened the front door of the Big House to Flip three times a week. Staff seemed to be thinning out around the Big House.
Could Hall be getting a bit light in the coffers? It seemed unlikely, with evidence of the man’s wealth everywhere you looked (though in Flip’s experience that could be misleading, too), but in any case Flip was always paid promptly. And in cash, as well; no point getting the IRS mixed up in the transaction.
Once again, Hall himself stood in the open doorway, beaming out at him. How ridiculously happy the clients were to see him, as though he could possibly effect any real change at all in their lap-of-luxury lives. They all wanted to look like him, is what it was, so when they smiled him a greeting they were actually saying hello to the fantasy selves in their own minds.