So Mac twisted around, and behind them, just off the road, had parked a little white two-seater Porsche. As Mac focused on it, both doors opened, and Mark and Os stepped out, dressed in their usual suits and sunglasses and supercilious expressions. “Hey, it’s Harvard,” he said.
Buddy said, “I still say Dartmouth.”
“Anyway,” Mac said, as their two alleged co-conspirators approached their Taurus, “we know they’re not Oklahoma Normal.”
This time, without an invitation, Mark and Os simply joined them, opening both rear doors, Mark sliding in on Mac’s right, Os on his left. Fortunately, the new arrivals were both slender, so it wasn’t too crowded back there. “We’ve had a thought,” Mark said, by way of greeting.
“We’ve had a lot of thoughts,” Mac told him.
“Oh, really?”
“We were here now goin over the last of them. Pole vault.”
“Ah, “ Mark said. “We considered that one, as well. But it’s not so good on the follow-through.”
“Follow-through?”
“Let us say,” Mark suggested, “that one of us, or for that matter all of us, are athletic enough to pole-vault over the fence, landing in absolute safety on the far side. Do you know what happens next?”
“Something bad we didn’t think about,” Mac guessed.
Os said, “The pole keeps going. It hits the fence. It breaks the wire.”
Mark shook his head. “No way to stop it.”
Ace said, “How do you like that, Mac? Your catapult idea was better after all.”
“Catapult?” Surprised, Mark said, “No, that’s one we didn’t think of. On the other hand, you’d hit the ground at rather an unacceptable speed, wouldn’t you?”
“We rejected it already,” Mac said.
“Quite sensibly. In fact,” Mark said, “we’ve noticed that you haven’t come up with anything consistently except to keep very close tabs on our friend the personal trainer.”
Mac said, “You’ve noticed?”
Excited, Buddy said, “I’ve seen that white car, Mac! They been following us.”
“In reality,” Mark said, unruffled, “we’ve all been following the personal trainer, at a loss for anything else to do. You three have been in his home so often you ought to pay rent. We’ve all searched his car. Through sources I can’t reveal, we’ve gone into his background and found nothing useful to blackmail him with.”
“Same with us,” Mac said. “Through sources we can’t reveal, we came up with the same nothing.”
“So we now,” Mark said, “have a suggestion.”
Sounding suspicious, the way he always did, Ace said, “Yeah? What?”
“The approach direct,” Mark said.
33
“KNOCK, KNOCK.”
“Who’s there?” Chester asked hopelessly.
“O.J.,” Mellon said.
“O.J. who?”
“Orange juice sorry now?”
“Yes,” Chester said truthfully.
“Time for lunch,” Mellon said. “Turn in up there, the restaurant in there’s good and it’s always empty.”
Having left the town of Mellon’s last appointment, they were now out in the country again, driving past a mall where the tallest and most impressive construction was the sign out by the road: MIDPOINT MALL. Which, come to think of it, was probably the goal for every mall, wasn’t it?
Turning in at that giant sign, seeing in truth acres of parking lot with only a few dusty vehicles, mostly pickups, huddled close to the glass fronts of the line of stores, Chester said, “How come it’s so empty?”
“They lost their anchor store. What we want is down at the end, past where it used to be.”
Driving straight ahead, ignoring the white parking-space lines painted all over the blacktop, Chester said, “How come they lost it?”
“Went bust,” Mellon said. “It was one of those big box housewares places, but there was an even bigger one about ten miles farther on. Killed them. Now there’s nothing in here but the little satellites, the photo developer, the liquor store, cell phone store, restaurant. It’s just past where the anchor used to be.”
Driving by the onetime anchor store, Chester slowed to look at the place. Large windows were blankly open, but showed little of the cavernous interior because there were no lights on in there. A chain was looped through the six door handles and padlocked. Above the entrance, the faint ghosts could be seen where the letters of the store’s name had been removed: SPEEDSHOP.
Making out those letters, Chester said, “They’ve got other stores, don’t they?”
“Oh, sure,” Mellon said. “These big chains, if they make a mistake where they put one of their places, they just walk away from it, cut their losses.”
The restaurant was next, and last. Chester said, “Would you mind, before we go in, we drive around and take a look at the back?”
“The back? Whadaya want the back for?”
At the corner of the building, where the large restaurant windows showed mostly empty booths, the blacktop continued on around, and Chester continued with it as he said, “Some friends of mine and me, we’re gonna steal some very big things pretty soon, and we’ll need a place to stash them. If there’s a big enough back door, this place could be fine.”
Mellon looked at him, a half-smile on his lips. “Chester,” he said, “you’ve got one dry sense of humor.”
“Yeah, I been told that.”
Chester took the next corner, and here was a lot more blacktop, because deliveries were made at the rear of the stores. Three big wide segmented iron garage doors were closed in the area where the Speedshop must have been. The doors stopped about three feet up from the ground, at the level of the floor of a big tractor-trailer, but that shouldn’t pose too much of problem.
“Yeah,” Chester said, looking it over. “That’ll do just fine.” And he made a U-turn to go back around to the restaurant.
Mellon’s look had turned quizzical. “It is a gag,” he said, not as though it were a question; but it was a question.
Chester grinned at him. “Sure. You think you’re the only one can tell a joke?”
Mellon laughed like a fool, all the way to the booth.
34
WHEN YOU SPENT LAST night on a kitchen floor, you don’t have that much to pack today. Dortmunder was packing it when Kelp came by to say, “I’ll go promote us a car now.”
Dortmunder said, “You can’t take one with MD plates, you know.”
Kelp looked stricken. “Why not?”
“You’re a private secretary, not a doctor. You got guards at the gate there, they’re gonna have your license number on their list.”
“Gee, I’m glad you thought of that,” Kelp said. “I’ll grab a couple extra plates, too.”
He would have left then, but Chester came in and said, “I got it. You wanna see it?”
Kelp said, “You got what?”
Dortmunder said, “Why would I wanna see it?”
“Pretty soon,” Chester pointed out, “you’re gonna have a bunch of hot cars on your hands. You’re gonna want to stash them. I think I got the place. You wanna see it? I’ll drive you there.”
Kelp said, “Great. And then you can drop me at a mall, I gotta shop for a car.”
“It is a mall,” Chester said.
“Okay,” Dortmunder said. “In that case, I gotta see it.”
•
It took most of an hour to get there across trackless Pennsylvania. They arrived just before six in the evening, still full daylight at this time of year, though the little anchorless mall somehow seemed darker then the rest of the world. Chester had explained about the loss of the anchor, so Dortmunder was prepared for a mostly empty parking lot, but the reality was still grim. It was like a medieval village after the plague.