Who looked at him with relief. “About time,” Tiny said.
“The song begins,” Herman told him.
The four of them went off to the loading dock to relieve the guard in the little windowed office there of his duties, Jim taking his place, and then did the same service for the guard at the vehicle barrier, Gus taking his place. Tiny and Herman escorted the two now unemployed guards back to the air room, where they were immobilized and placed next to the sleeping technicians.
Across town, Stan awoke, yawned, stretched, and started the garbage truck.
Wally Whistler and Ralph Winslow bypassed several alarms to unlock their way into the cashier’s cage, where the three cashiers on duty slept peacefully. The two lockmen worked together, cursing quietly inside their gas masks, to countervene even more difficult locks and alarms to get from the cashier’s cage back to the counting room, where the cash intake was constantly counted and sorted and stacked, and where the two employees with the rubber fingers on their fingers slept like babies amid messy piles of unsorted greenbacks. And finally, just as difficult as the door to the counting room, was the door to the money room, where the metal shelves were lined with trays containing the neat stacks of money; but they got through that one, too.
And now the lockmen were finished, at least in here. They made their way back out to the main casino area, past doors carefully propped open, and the other six guys in gas masks nodded and went on in. Wally and Ralph walked away through the casino, tossing their gas masks under blackjack tables, and went back out the front door, giving the OK sign to the doorman on their way by, who grinned and forgot for just a second to look stupid.
The six now in the counting room and the money room took black plastic garbage bags out from under their uniform shirts and began stuffing them with money.
Wally and Ralph made their way to the Invidia and entered it, and from inside came a small but rousing cheer. Then Wally and Ralph came out again, each carrying a big plastic gallon bottle of spring water, and they walked from the parking lot around the side of the casino, past the swimming pool and the kiddie pool to the Battle-Lake, where they found Ralph Demrovsky pacing slowly along, looking exactly like a cop on the beat. Wally and Ralph grinned at the other Ralph, and then went on about their business, while Ralph Demrovsky turned and made his deliberate way to the cottages, paused on the path between cottages one and three, and took off his hat. He scratched his head, and put his hat back on.
Dortmunder, in the window of cottage three, lit a match and blew it out. Then he checked the glowing numbers on the dial of the watch he’d borrowed for this evening’s work.
Ralph Demrovsky strolled back to the Battle-Lake, in time to see Wally and the lockman Ralph reunite, neither now carrying a bottle of spring water. Ralph Demrovsky took a little machine from his pants pocket, pressed a button on its top and tossed it into the lake, where it floated inobtrusively. Then Wally and Ralph and Ralph all strolled off to the Invidia and climbed aboard. Laughter sounded from within. Then the door opened, and an extremely trussed and irritated Earl Radburn was carried out and laid gently on the tarmac between two parked cars, his head cradled by his hat. His eyes shot sparks, but nobody seemed to care.
Herman had some doors to unlock. The first led from a corridor near the kitchens to a side corridor that angled around behind the casino to a second door that needed his services, which led to the casino manager’s office, where the night-shift manager slept cozily, head on desk. There were two other doors in this office. The one leading via the manager’s secretary’s office to the casino floor was not locked, nor was it of interest. The other one was of interest, since it led to the cashier’s cage.
This last door was the only one Herman had to deal with while breathing tonight’s enriched air, though he wouldn’t be in here long enough to feel any real effect. The knowledge, however, did make him a little nervous and caused him to slip slightly and take a few seconds longer than he should have, which annoyed him. He thought of himself as cooler than that.
When Herman opened this last door, it was to find the six guys in guard uniforms and gas masks standing there waiting for him, now all holding full and heavy black plastic bags. There were muffled greetings, and Herman led the others back the way he’d come.
In the security offices, the monitors showed all this activity, none of which disturbed the sleepers at all, though the two recently inserted guards, being still awake, did stare at the monitors, and at one another, goggle-eyed.
Stan Murch steered the big garbage truck onto Gaiety property and around back, where Gus waved from his post at the barrier. Stan waved back, drove on in, made a U-turn, backed up against the loading dock, and Herman and the six guards came out. All the plastic bags and all the gas masks were thrown into the back of the garbage truck. Jim and Gus joined Stan in the garbage truck cab, and he drove them away from there.
Most of the people who’d come here in the Invidia, except the substitute doorman, went back to the Invidia, and Fred and Thelma drove them away.
The three guys who’d dealt with the security offices joined Herman and they walked through the hotel and past the check-in desk, and the other three went on out the front door while Herman paused at the house phones, dialed Anne Marie’s room, and let it ring once.
Anne Marie’s phone rang once. She and Andy Kelp turned away from the window. “I’m off,” Kelp said.
“You must be,” Anne Marie told him.
They kissed, and Kelp said, “Will I see you in the city?”
“I’ll phone you.”
“Okay.”
He left, and she went back to the window, to look at the nothing outside and think some more, while Kelp took the elevator down to the lobby and stepped outside. The limo waited, with Herman at the wheel, in his chauffeur’s cap. The side windows of the limo were shaded dark, so nothing could be seen inside there. The doorman came over to open the door for Kelp to get aboard, which he did. Then the doorman got aboard after him, and pulled the door shut behind him. Herman put the limo in gear, and it hummed away into the night.
Five minutes later, Dortmunder looked at his watch. “They’re done by now,” he told himself, and went over to the cottage phone. He dialed 9 for an outside line, and then dialed police headquarters. “I want to report a robbery,” he said.
61
Max dreamt of Elsie Brenstid, the brewer’s daughter. She still loved him, but she wanted him to drink warm beer. Then the phone rang. Odd; it was an American phone, not British. Then there were excited voices, disturbances somewhere, and Max opened his eyes. The burglar!
Where am I? Las Vegas, the Gaiety, cottage one, waiting for the burglar. Dark in this bedroom, the door outlined in light. But all the lights in the cottage had been switched off when at last he’d come to bed, too exhausted by tension to stay up any longer.
He’d been sleeping in most of his clothes, having taken off only pants and shoes. Now he hurried back into both, listening to the raised voices outside. What was going on? Was this the burglar, or wasn’t it? Why didn’t somebody come in here to tell him what was happening?
Max hurried from the bedroom, just a second before the bathroom window behind him was pushed open and a dark figure, made cumbersome by what he was wearing, climbed cautiously inside.