Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

“The sun don’t reach the bottom of the pool. You could look right at ’em and not notice ’em — unless you knew they were there. We’ll know, and we’ll come back for them tomorrow night, or the next.”

Johnny was nodding. “I’m in. When do we pull it off?”

Pete smiled and raised his glass of beer. “Tomorrow.”

On the following day, Johnny Stoop entered the fourth floor offices of the Downtown Diamond Exchange at exactly 12:15. The uniformed guard who was always at the door gave him no more than a passing glance. Pete watched it all from the busy hallway outside, getting a clear view through the thick glass doors that ran from floor to ceiling.

As soon as he saw the clerk produce a tray of diamonds for Johnny, he glanced across the office at the window. It was open about halfway, as it had been the previous day. Pete started walking toward the door, touched the thick glass handle, and fell over in an apparent faint. The guard inside the door heard him fall and came out to offer assistance.

“What’s the matter, mister? You okay?”

“I... I can’t — breathe...”

He raised his head and asked for a glass of water. Already one of the clerks had come around the counter to see what the trouble was.

Pete sat up and drank the water, putting on a good act. “I just fainted, I guess.”

“Let me get you a chair,” one clerk said.

“No, I think I’d better just go home.” He brushed off his suit and thanked them. “I’ll be back when I’m feeling better.” He hadn’t dared to look at Johnny, and he hoped the diamonds had gone out the window as planned.

He took the elevator downstairs and strolled across the plaza to the fountain. There was always a crowd around it at noon — secretaries eating their lunches out of brown-paper bags, young men casually chatting with them. He mingled unnoticed and worked his way to the edge of the pool. But it was a big area, and through the rippling water he couldn’t be certain he saw anything except the scattering of pennies and nickels at the bottom. Well, he hadn’t expected to see the diamonds anyway, so he wasn’t disappointed.

He waited an hour, then decided the police must still be questioning Johnny. The best thing to do was to head for his apartment and wait for a call.

It came two hours later.

“That was a close one,” Johnny said. “They finally let me go, but they still might be following me.”

“Did you do it?”

“Sure I did it! What do you think they held me for? They were goin’ crazy in there. But I can’t talk now. Let’s meet at the Birchbark in an hour. I’ll make sure I’m not followed.”

Pete took the same booth at the rear of the Birchbark and ordered his usual beer. When Johnny arrived the dapper man was smiling. “I think we pulled it off, Pete. Damn if we didn’t pull it off!”

“What’d you tell them?”

“That I didn’t see a thing. Sure, I’d asked for the tray of stones, but then when there was the commotion in the hall I went to see what it was along with everyone else. There were four customers in the place and they couldn’t really pin it on any one of us. But they searched us all, and even took us downtown to be X-rayed, to be certain we hadn’t swallowed the stones.”

“I was wondering what took you so long.”

“I was lucky to be out as soon as I was. A couple of the others acted more suspicious than me, and that was a break. One of them even had an arrest record for a stolen car.” He said it in a superior manner. “The dumb cops figure anyone who stole a car would steal diamonds.”

“I hope they didn’t get too good a look at me. I’m the one who caused the commotion, and they just gotta figure I’m involved.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll pick up the diamonds tonight and get out of town for a while.”

“How many stones were there?” Pete asked expectantly.

“Five. And all beauties.”

The evening papers confirmed it. They placed the value of the five missing diamonds at $65,000. And the police had no clue.

They went back to the plaza around midnight, but Pete didn’t like the feel of it. “They might be wise,” he told Johnny. “Let’s wait a night, in case the cops are still snoopin’ around up there. Hell, the stones are safe where they are.”

The following night, when the story had already disappeared from the papers, replaced by a bank robbery, they returned to the plaza once more. This time they waited till three A.M., when even the late crowd from the bars had scattered for home. Johnny carried a flashlight and Pete wore wading boots. He’d already considered the possibility that one or two of the diamonds might not be found, but even so they’d be far ahead of the game.

The fountain was turned off at night, and the calmness of the water made the search easier. Wading in the shallow water, Pete found two of the gems almost at once. It took another ten minutes to find the third one, and he was ready to quit then. “Let’s take what we got, Johnny.”

The flashlight bobbed. “No, no. Keep looking. Find us at least one more.”

Suddenly they were pinned in the glare of a spotlight, and a voice shouted, “Hold it right there! We’re police officers!”

“Damn!” Johnny dropped the flashlight and started to run, but already the two cops were out of their squad car. One of them pulled his gun and Johnny stopped in his tracks. Pete climbed from the pool and stood with his hands up.

“You got us, officer,” he said.

“Damn right we got you,” the cop with the gun growled. “The coins in that fountain go to charity every month. Anybody that would steal them has to be pretty low. I hope the judge gives you both ninety days in the cooler. Now up against the car while we search you!”

By nine o’clock the sun was streaming warmly into the blind and Johnny Tennant’s big retriever was asleep on the shooting platform, lying on a hunting coat with his head resting on the rucksack that held the lunch. Blackbirds worked noisily in the bog behind us, their red shoulder patches bright against the dead grass, and once three egrets lumbered whitely down the channel from the rice fields. “Snow geese,” someone said quietly back in the marsh and laughed, and the words came distinctly across the water. The sky was very blue and of course the only birds moving out of the refuge a mile away were impossibly high; it would not have been so bad except that it was the last day. It was the last day of the duck season and the last time, for most of us, that we would hunt together, or even meet, except accidentally.

Down in the point blind, Tom Randall stood up suddenly, hooting and thrashing his arms over the sedge and willow that camouflaged the blind, and an alarmed mud hen that had blundered almost into his boat skittered across the channel, peeping wildly. There was subdued laughter from the other three blinds around the point at the familiar performance. It was all very much like other days in other years — with one difference that made it not like any of them at all.

“I wish he had not taken the big gun,” Johnny Tennant said. He was sitting on the platform beside the sleeping dog, with his feet down in the boat. He had not smiled at the mud hen’s alarm.

“Your 20-gauge will be big enough,” I said. “The way the birds are flying.”

“I wasn’t thinking about the shooting. There won’t be any shooting.”

“If it really disturbs you for him to have the big gun, I’ll row down and get it back.”

“If he knew I was disturbed, he wouldn’t give it to you.”

“That’s probably true. He always carried a joke too far.”

“Even when it was not a joke,” Johnny Tennant said, not smiling.