Another thing Mikey believed in was revenge. He probably believed in revenge more than in patience or anything else, if it came to that. If Mikey were ever to build a shrine to something other than himself, it would be to revenge.
Also, a third thing Mikey believed in, passionately and without question, was profit. Everybody earns; everybody's taken care of. If you don't have profit, what have you got? Nothing. QED.
In the O.J. Bar Grill business, the three things Mikey believed in were finally about to come together. A sweet deal he'd set up had been queered for him by some stumblebum heister named Dortmunder, not Dortmund as originally reported, plus a few of Dortmunder's unconnected loser pals. So what was needed? What was needed was to get revenge on Dortmunder and his pals, and to make a profit out of that revenge, and for all that to happen, Mikey had to be patient, which he damn well knew how to be.
This Dortmunder was such a clown, Mikey's people had been tailing him for two days, ever since Mikey's guy had picked up that name, almost the right name, in the O.J., and not once had Dortmunder even suspected there was somebody on his trail.
Not that he did much, most of the time. Once on Wednesday, and again this morning, he'd gone to the Upper West Side to the same apartment building, and this morning he'd come out of it with some gnarled little jerk, and they'd taken a cab over to Fifth and Sixty-eighth, where they'd met up with three other guys that were definitely part of Dortmunder's crew, part of the bunch that had screwed up Mikey's deal at the O.J. This time, they had a pretty big truck with them, and they and the truck all went into a garage on Sixty-eighth.
When all this was reported to Mikey, at home in New Jersey, he said, "We'll fuckin meet right there. In the fuckin park. Pass the word. We want the fuckin crew and we want some fuckin cars."
On his way to Central Park from farthest New Jersey, Mikey saw how it was going to play out, how it had to play out. Dortmunder and his people were heisters, independent heisters — he knew that much — and the story was, the reason they'd involved themselves with his sweet deal at the O.J. and loused it up the way they did in the first place was that they wanted to make a meet in the O.J.'s back room, because that was where they always met when they were planning a job.
Planning a job. Was that perfect? There they were now, in that garage, loading up the truck with something or other valuable from that house — or more likely the small private museum on the next street behind it.
Mikey would be patient. He would give them all the time they needed, all the time in the world, and whenever they finally did bring that truck back out of that garage, Mikey and his friends would be there to take it away from them. Revenge and profit, in one neat ball.
The only little potential difficulty was the fact that all this was taking place in New York City. Mikey's crew, and his father Howie's entire outfit, operated within an agreement with the families in New York: that the New York guys didn't interfere with New Jersey, and the New Jersey guys didn't interfere with New York. Pulling off anything at all on this side of the river could be looked at, by anybody who wanted to be a stickler for detail, as a violation of that agreement, which could possibly end in consequences.
On the other hand, this wasn't any New York City operation Mikey was messing in; this was a bunch of no-connection independents against whom he had a legitimate beef. So this would be like what the army guys call a surgical strike: invade, pull the job, clear out. Everything beautiful.
(The O.J, bustout, if it had gone down the way it should, would also have been a technical violation of the interstate agreement, but there it was a unique deal, with Mikey the only one who could get hold of the place to squeeze it, and at the end of the operation the appropriate New York family would have been given an explanation, an apology, and a small piece, and there would have been no trouble. This, involving hijack, maybe guns shown, violence on the streets of Manhattan, was a different matter entirely.)
By eleven Mikey had everything in position. Sixty-eighth Street was one-way east, so he had a car stopped by a hydrant down toward the other end of the block. The next intersection, Madison Avenue, was northbound, so he had a car stopped around the corner on Madison, and a third waiting beyond Madison on Sixty-eighth. He had two soldiers in each car, equipped with cell phones.
Whichever way the truck went, Mikey's people would be on it, two cars at first and the third catching up. They would tail it and wait for just the right spot to crowd it to a stop, throw those people out of there, take over the truck themselves, and drive it straight to New Jersey.
Also, unless Dortmunder's crew acted wise, which Mikey didn't expect to happen, in deference to the agreement with New York there would be minimum violence and, if possible, no shooting. Smart, you had to be smart.
Seated on a bench in the park, though it faced the wrong way, Mikey could twist halfway around and look back past the low stone wall at the park's edge and across Fifth Avenue and straight down Sixty-eighth Street. Like a general with an overview of the battlefield; nice.
Mikey sat there, on the bench in Central Park, and was patient.
49
THE TALK around the security desk all morning at the Imperiatum at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street was of the astounding return, way late last night, of the mythical Preston Fareweather. He'd showed up after four in the morning with some other guy and enough luggage for a 747, all of which the staff, including security(!), had had to wrestle up to the penthouse, using the public elevator in front and not his private elevator in the back. In fact, nobody had used the private elevator at all.
So now, Big José and Little José, all ears, at last learned the story of that elevator they'd seen at the back of Fareweather's penthouse. It didn't go to some other apartment in the building for hot sex after all, but all the way down to a garage at street level.
So whadaya thinka that? In addition to everything else he's got, Preston Fareweather's got his own elevator to his own garage, in which he keeps a really cool BMW.
Well, it was nice to know the truth about the elevator, though it was a shame to lose the fantasies about that hot TV news anchor. On the other hand, this return of the prodigal Preston Fareweather meant some distinct changes in the work lives of the Josés. As Little José pointed out, "You don't get to coop up there in his living room no more, man."
"I loved that eight-foot sofa," Big José said, because he did have trouble finding comfortable places in the world where he could stretch out his long frame.
Another change was that, with the owner's return, it would no longer be necessary to do the twice-a-month security sweep of the penthouse. But that was okay. At first, going through that place had been kind of exciting, with its great views and all the art and the furniture, but of course every time they went up there, it was the same views and art and furniture, so after a while, no matter how great it was, it did get a little boring. They could remember the place pretty well by now; they didn't need to go on seeing it every two weeks.
Besides which, the other boring, repetitive parts of the job were still active, so not that much had changed. For instance, at noon they had to go out and walk around to the two doctors' offices with separate entrances on Sixty-eighth Street and pick up whatever hazmat the doctors had assembled since yesterday. All of this material, radioactive or disease-ridden or whatever, heavily wrapped in protective plastics, the two Josés would, as usual, carry around to the special safe in the back room behind the security desk, from where it would be picked up in the afternoon by the people from the special company that had the legal permits and the facilities to dispose of the crap. Until some new hires came along, this would continue to be a part of the Josés' daily duty, and they couldn't help but think, why not drop the hazmat and keep the penthouse tour?