Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

This was why Blinn must be the center of the band’s revolt against their leader. The others were afraid or, weighted down by the awe in which they held Bohlmann, could not conceive of his overthrow being successful, as if he had been touched by divinity.

Blinn reeled back from the door and fell to his cot, weakened as much by the prospect of deliverance as others are of death. He had been ready for death. His was a readiness that was absolute, that was devoid of self-deception. He knew that never would he be as ready, that the conditioning of his mind and soul undergone in the hours spent in the dark cell could not be replicated at some future date, could not be turned on, turned off, by some psychic finger pressing a button.

“What’s the matter with you?” Pardrilone hissed through the bars. “Are you with us?”

Desmond Blinn nodded as he rose and moved back to the door. “How? The plan. Does Quesada know?” Quesada was a faraway revolutionary figure to whom the band of irregulars owed a tenuous allegiance.

“He’ll approve. Later. Here’s a gun. Loaded.” The guard shoved between the bars an ugly automatic pistol. “The clip is full. One round is chambered.”

“I’ll kill Bohlmann with this?”

“Yes. When I come to get you, I’ll tie your hands loosely. Make sure to wear your woolskin so it will hide the gun. When you’re out there, work your hands loose, get the gun out fast, and shoot him as he sits watching.”

“Right in his fat, pig face.”

“No,” Pardrilone cautioned. “Too chancy — you could miss. Place your shots in his chest, around the heart. Can you do it?”

Blinn said he could.

“Good. You will be our new leader. That’s the way these things go.”

The next day, the plan worked perfectly. But despite what Pardrilone said, Blinn fired at and placed two bullets squarely in Bohlmann’s face and watched with satisfaction as the force of the shots toppled the fat man over backwards, his wide buttocks still clamped in the arms of the canvas chair which went over with him as he skidded and rolled to a stop against a car some six feet distant. Some of Blinn’s satisfaction was stolen, however, by Bohlmann, who saw, in the instant between the appearance of the gun and its discharge, what was happening and looked at Blinn calmly, a hint of wryness about his lips.

Pardrilone went over to the body, examined it, then growled at Blinn. “You should have fired at the chest. If you had missed, many of us would have been doomed. It was a stupid chance to take.”

“I didn’t miss — he’s dead, isn’t he?” Blinn replied matter-of-factly.

Pardrilone pondered this logic, accepted it, turned to the other members of the band, and yelled, “Hail Blinn, our new leader!”

The shouts were ear balm for Blinn, who stood the center of an admiring throng, any one of whose members would have shot him out of hand just moments before. He held his arms above his head, hands cupped in the manner of a champion boxer. Outside the circle — forgotten now even by Evelyn, his latest woman, who now turned her hot, fox eyes upon Blinn — lay Bohlmann, his shattered face a jagged O.

After that, Blinn led the band on many daring raids that garnered them much spoils and a number of casualties. They were richer than ever but disgruntled at the chances they had to take. So, one day, they grasped Blinn, tied his hands behind him, and dragged him to an open field. From the moment they had their hands on him to the moment they fired one sure shot into his head, Blinn, a bag of twitching, sagging flesh, cried and begged for his life. He had few thoughts at the end, but one of them was of how well Bohlmann had died. And how well he, Blinn, might have died that same day.

It was seeing a girl toss a penny into the plaza fountain that gave Pete Hopkins the idea. He was always on the lookout for money-making ideas, and they were getting tougher to find all the time. But as he looked up from the fountain to the open window of the Downtown Diamond Exchange, he thought he had found a good one at last.

He strolled over to the phone booth at the other side of the plaza and called Johnny Stoop. Johnny was the classiest dude Pete knew — a real fashion-plate who could walk into a store and have the clerks falling over themselves to wait on him. Better yet, he had no record here in the east. And it was doubtful if the cops could link him to the long list of felonies he had committed ten years ago in California.

“Johnny? This is Pete. Glad I caught you in.”

“I’m always in during the daytime, Pete boy. In fact, I was just getting up.”

“I got a job for us, Johnny, if you’re interested.”

“What sort?”

“Meet me at the Birchbark Bar and we’ll talk about it.”

“How soon?”

“An hour?”

Johnny Stoop groaned. “Make it two. I gotta shower and eat breakfast.”

“Okay, two. See you.”

The Birchbark Bar was a quiet place in the afternoons — perfect for the sort of meeting Pete wanted. He took a booth near the back and ordered a beer. Johnny was only ten minutes late and he walked into the place as if he were casing it for a robbery or a girl he might pick up. Finally he settled, almost reluctantly, for Pete’s booth.

“So what’s the story?”

The bartender was on the phone yelling at somebody about a delivery, and the rest of the place was empty. Pete started talking. “The Downtown Diamond Exchange. I think we can rip it off for a quick handful of stones. Might be good for fifty grand.”

Johnny Stoop grunted, obviously interested. “How do we do it?”

“ You do it. I wait outside.”

“Great! And I’m the one the cops grab!”

“The cops don’t grab anyone. You stroll in, just like Dapper Dan, and ask to see a tray of diamonds. You know where the place is, on the fourth floor. Go at noon, when there’s always a few customers around. I’ll create a commotion in the hall, and you snatch up a handful of stones.”

“What do I do — swallow them like the gypsy kids used to do?”

“Nothing so crude. The cops are wise to that, anyway. You throw them out the window.”

“Like hell I do!”

“I’m serious, Johnny.”

“They don’t even keep their windows open. They got air conditioning, haven’t they?”

“I saw the window open today. You know all this energy-conservation stuff — turn off the air conditioner and open the windows. Well, they’re doing it. They probably figure four flights up nobody’s goin’ to get in that way. But something can get out — the diamonds.”

“It sounds crazy, Pete.”

“Listen, you toss the diamonds through the window from the counter. That’s maybe ten feet away.” He was making a quick pencil sketch of the office as he talked. “See, the window’s behind the counter and you’re in front of it. They never suspect that you threw ’em out the window because you’re never near the window. They search you, they question you, but then they gotta let you go. There are other people in the store, other suspects. And nobody saw you take them.”

“So the diamonds go out the window. But you’re not outside to catch them. You’re in the hall creating a diversion. So what happens to the stones?”

“This is the clever part. Directly beneath the window, four stories down, is the fountain in the plaza. It’s big enough so the diamonds can’t miss it. They fall into the fountain and they’re as safe as in a bank vault, till we decide to get them. Nobody noticed them hit the water because the fountain is splashing. And nobody sees them in the water because they’re clear. They’re like glass.”

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “Unless the sun—”