Donald Westlake - The Hot Rock

Finally Murch was put on a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance and driven away, the ambulance siren screaming.

Chefwick, racing pell-mell for the nearest exit, heard the siren screaming and doubled his speed. The last thing he wanted was to spend his declining years in jail. No trains. No Maude. No fudge.

He yanked open the door, found a staircase, raced down it, found a corridor, raced along that, and suddenly found himself face to face with an entrance and a guard.

He tried to turn around while still running, dropped his bag, fell over it, and the guard came over to help him up. It was Kelp, saying, "What's wrong? Something go wrong?"

"Where's the others?"

"I don't know. Should we take off?"

Chefwick got to his feet. They both listened. There was no sound of pursuit. "We'll wait a minute or two," Chefwick decided.

"We better," Kelp said. "Dortmunder's got the keys to the car."

Dortmunder, meanwhile, had run around a thatched-roof hut and joined the chase. "Stop!" he shouted, running along in the middle of a pack of guards. Up ahead he saw Greenwood duck through a door and shut it behind himself. "Stop!" shouted Dortmunder, and the guards all around him shouted, "Stop!"

Dortmunder got to the door first. He yanked it open, held it for all the guards to run through, then shut it behind them and walked over to the nearest elevator. He rode this to the first floor, walked along a corridor, and came to the side entrance where Kelp and Chefwick were waiting. "Where's Greenwood?" he said.

"Not here," said Kelp.

Dortmunder looked around. "We better wait in the car," he said.

Meanwhile, Greenwood thought he was on the first floor but wasn't. The Coliseum, in addition to its first floor, second floor, third floor, and fourth floor, has two mezzanines, the first mezzanine and the second mezzanine. The first mezzanine is between the first and second floors, but only around the outer perimeter of the building, not in the central display area. Similarly, the second mezzanine is between the second and third floors.

Greenwood didn't know about the mezzanines. He had been on the second floor and he had taken a staircase down one flight. Some staircases in the Coliseum skip the mezzanine and go straight from the second floor to the first floor, but some other staircases include the mezzanine among their stops, and it was one of the latter kind that Greenwood had inadvertently chosen. Therefore, he now thought he was on the first floor but he was not. He was on the first mezzanine.

The first mezzanine consists of a corridor that goes all the way around the building. The staff has its offices here, there's a cafeteria, the private detective agency that furnishes the guards has its offices here, various nations maintain offices, there are storage rooms and conference rooms and miscellaneous offices. It was along this corridor that Greenwood was now running, the Balaboma Emerald clutched in his hand as he searched in vain for an exit to the street.

In his ambulance, meantime, Murch was socking his attendant on the jaw. The attendant sagged into sleep and Murch settled him on the other stretcher. Then, as the ambulance slowed to make a turn, Murch opened the rear door and stepped out onto the pavement. The ambulance tore away, siren shrieking, and Murch hailed a passing cab. "O. J. Bar and Grill," he said. "On Amsterdam."

In their other stolen car, the getaway car, Dortmunder and Kelp and Chefwick kept worriedly studying the 20 West 60th Street entrance. Dortmunder had the engine running and his foot was nervously tapping the gas pedal.

Sirens were coming this way now, police sirens.

"We can't wait much longer," Dortmunder said.

"There he is!" cried Chefwick, as the door over there opened and a man in a guard uniform came out. But then half a dozen other men in guard uniforms came out too.

"That's not him," said Dortmunder. "None of them is him." He put the getaway car in gear and got away.

Up on the first mezzanine, Greenwood was still loping along like a greyhound after the mechanical rabbit. He could hear the thundering of pursuit behind him, and now he could also hear the thundering of pursuit from around the corner in the corridor up ahead.

He stopped. He was caught and he knew it.

He looked at the emerald in his hand. Roundish, many-faceted, deeply green, a trifle smaller than a golf ball.

"Drat," said Greenwood, and he ate the emerald.

Rollo had loaned them a portable radio, small, transistorized, Japanese, and on it they listened to the caper on WINS, the all-news station. They heard about the daring robbery, they heard about Murch having made his escape from the ambulance, they heard the history of the Balabomo Emerald, they heard about Alan Greenwood having been arrested and charged with complicity in the robbery, and they heard that the gang had managed to get away successfully with the stone. Then they heard the weather, and then they heard a woman tell them the price of lamb chops and pork chops in the city's supermarkets, and then they turned the radio off.

Nobody said anything for a while. The air in the back room was blue with smoke, and their faces in the glare of the lightbulb looked pale and tired. Finally Murch said, "I wasn't brutal." He said it sullenly. The announcer on WINS had described the attack on the ambulance attendant as brutal. "I just popped him on the jaw," Murch said. He made a fist and swung it in a small tight arc. "Like that. That ain't brutal."

Dortmunder turned to Chefwick. "You gave Greenwood the stone."

"Definitely," said Chefwick.

"You didn't drop it on the floor someplace."

"I did not," Chefwick said. He was miffed, but they were all edgy. "I distinctly remember handing it to him."

"Why?" said Dortmunder.

Chefwick spread his hands. "I really don't know. In the excitement of the moment - I don't know why I did it. I had the bag to carry and he didn't have anything and I got rattled, so I handed it to him."

"But the cops didn't find it on him," said Dortmunder.

"Maybe he lost it," said Kelp.

"Maybe." Dortmunder looked at Chefwick again. "You wouldn't be holding out on us, would you?"

Chefwick snapped to his feet, insulted. "Search me," he said. "I insist. Search me right now. In all the years I've been in this line, in I don't know how many jobs I've been on, no one has ever impugned my honesty. Never. I insist I be searched."

"All right," Dortmunder said. "Sit down, I know you didn't take it. I'm just a little bugged, that's all."

"I insist I be searched."

"Search yourself," Dortmunder said.

The door opened and Rollo came in with a fresh glass of sherry for Chefwick and more ice for Dortmunder and Kelp, who were sharing a bottle of bourbon. "Better luck next time, boys," Rollo said.

Chefwick, the argument forgotten, sat down and sipped his sherry.

"Thanks, Rollo," Dortmunder said.

Murch said, "I could stand another beer."

Rollo looked at him. "Will wonders never cease," he said and went out again.

Murch looked around at the others. "What was that all about?"

Nobody answered him. Kelp said to Dortmunder, "What am I going to tell Iko?"

"We didn't get it," Dortmunder said.

"He won't believe me."

"That's kind of tough," Dortmunder said. "You tell him whatever you want to tell him." He finished his drink and got to his feet. "I'm going home," he said.

Kelp said, "Come with me to see Iko."

"Not on your life," Dortmunder said.

Dortmunder carried a loaf of white bread and a half gallon of homogenized milk over to the cashier. Because it was a Friday afternoon the supermarket was pretty full, but there weren't many people ahead of him at the speed checkout and he got through pretty quickly. The girl put the bread and milk into a large bag and he carried it out to the sidewalk with his elbows held close to his sides, which looked a little weird but not terribly so.