Donald Westlake - The Hot Rock

Greenwood was spending most of his time at the window because he liked neither his cell nor his cellmate. Both were gray, scabrous, dirty, and old. The cell merely existed, but the cellmate consumed a lot of the hours in picking at things between his toes and then smelling his fingertips. Greenwood preferred to watch the exercise yard and the wall and the sky. He had been here nearly a month now, and his patience was wearing thin.

The door clanged. Greenwood turned around, saw his cellmate on the top bunk smelling his fingertips, and saw a guard standing in the doorway. The guard looked like the cellmate's older brother, but at least he had his shoes on. He said "Greenwood. Visitor."

"Goody."

Greenwood went out, the door clanged again, Greenwood and the guard walked down the metal corridor and down the metal spiral stairs and along the other metal corridor and through two doors, both of which had to be unlocked by people on the outside and both of which were locked again in his wake. This was followed by a plastic corridor painted green and then a room painted light brown in which Eugene Andrew Prosker sat and smiled on the other side of a wall of wire mesh.

Greenwood sat opposite him. "How goes the world?"

"It turns," Prosker assured him. "It turns."

"And how's my appeal coming?" Greenwood didn't mean an appeal to any court, but his request for deliverance to his former pards.

"Coming well," Prosker said. "I wouldn't be surprised if you heard something by morning."

Greenwood smiled. "That's good news," he said. "And believe me I'm ready for good news."

"All your friends ask of you," Prosker said, "is that you meet them halfway. I know you'll want to do that, won't you?"

"I sure will," Greenwood said, "and I mean to try."

"You should try more than once," Prosker told him. "Anything that's worth trying is worth trying three times at the very least."

"I'll remember that," Greenwood said. "You haven't given my friends any of the other details, I guess."

"No," Prosker said. "As we decided, it would probably be best to wait till you're free before going into all that."

"I suppose so," Greenwood said. "Did you get my stuff out of the apartment?"

"All seen to," Prosker said. "All safely in storage under your friend's name."

"Good." Greenwood shook his head. "I hate to give up that apartment," he said. "I had it just the way I wanted."

"You'll be changing a lot of things once we get you out of here," Prosker reminded him.

"That's right. Sort of starting a new life almost. Turning over a new leaf. Becoming a new man."

"Yes," said Prosker, unenthusiastically. He didn't like taking unnecessary chances with double entendres. "Well, it's certainly encouraging to see you talking like this," he said, getting to his feet, gathering up his attache case. "I hope we'll have you out of here in no time."

"So do I," Greenwood said.

At two twenty-five A.M., the morning after Prosker's visit to Greenwood, the stretch of Northern State Parkway in the vicinity of the Utopia Park exit was very nearly empty. Only one vehicle was in the area, a large dirty truck with a blue cab and a gray body, the words "Parker's Rent-a-Truck" in a white-lettered oval on both cab doors. Major Iko had done the renting, through untraceable middlemen, just this afternoon, and Kelp was doing the driving at the moment, heading east out of New York. As he slowed now for the exit, Dortmunder, in the seat beside him, leaned forward to look at his watch in the dashboard light and say, "We're five minutes early."

"I'll take it slow on the bumpy streets," Kelp said, "on account of everything in back."

"We don't want to be there too early," Dortmunder said.

Kelp steered the cumbersome truck off the parkway and around the curve of the exit ramp. "I know," he said. "I know."

In the prison at this same time Greenwood was also looking at his watch, the green hands in the darkness telling him he still had half an hour to wait. Prosker had told him Dortmunder and the others wouldn't be making their move until three o'clock. He shouldn't do anything too early that might tip their mitts.

Twenty-five minutes later the rental truck, lights off, rolled to a stop in the parking lot of an A amp;P three blocks from the prison. Street lights at corners were the only illumination anywhere in this part of Utopia Park, and the cloudy sky made the night even blacker. You could just barely see your hand in front of your face.

Kelp and Dortmunder got out of the cab and moved cautiously around to open the doors at the rear of the truck. The interior of the truck was pitch black. While Dortmunder helped Chefwick to jump down onto the asphalt, Murch handed a ten-foot ladder out to Kelp. Kelp and Dortmunder stood the ladder up against the side of the truck while Murch handed out to Chefwick a coil of gray rope and his little black bag. They were all dressed in dark clothing and they communicated in whispers.

Dortmunder took the coil of rope and went first up the ladder, Chefwick following him. Kelp, at the bottom, held the ladder steady until they were both on top of the truck and then pushed the ladder up after them. Dortmunder laid the ladder lengthwise on the truck top and then he and Chefwick lay down on either side of it, like Boccaccio characters flanking a sword. Kelp, once the ladder was up, went around back again and shut the doors, then got back into the cab, started the engine, and drove the truck slowly around the A amp;P and out to the street. He didn't turn the headlights on.

In the prison Greenwood, looking at his watch and seeing it was five minutes to three, decided the time had come. He sat up, throwing the covers off, showing he was already fully dressed except for shoes. He put his shoes on now, got to his feet, looked at the sleeping man in the top bunk for a few seconds - the old man was snoring slightly, mouth open - and then Greenwood hit him in the nose.

The old man's eyes popped open, round and white, and for two or three seconds he and Greenwood stared at each other, their faces no more than a foot apart. Then the old man blinked, and his hand sidled up from under the blanket to touch his nose, and he said, in surprise and pain, "Ow."

Greenwood, shouting at the top of his voice, bellowed, "Stop picking your feet!"

The old man sat up, his eyes getting rounder and rounder. His nose was starting to bleed. He said, "What? What?"

Still at top volume, Greenwood roared, "And stop sniffing your fingers!"

The old man's fingers were still against his nose, but now he took them away and looked at them, and there was blood on the tips. "Help," he said, in a very quiet voice, tentatively, as though to be sure that was the word he was looking for. Then, apparently sure, he let fly with a raucous string of helps, putting his head back, squeezing his eyes shut, yipping like a terrier, " Helphelphelphelphelphelphelphelp -" etc.

"I can't take it any more," Greenwood raged, taking the baritone part. "I'll break your neck for you!"

" Helphelphelphelphelphelphelp -"

Lights went on. Guards were shouting. Greenwood began to swear, to tramp back and forth, to wave his fists in the air. He yanked the blanket off the old man, wadded it up, threw it back at him. He grabbed the old man's ankle and began to squeeze it as though he thought it was the old man's neck.

The big clang came that meant the long iron bar across all the cell doors on this side of the tier had been lifted. Greenwood yanked the old man out of bed by his ankle, being careful not to hurt him, clutched him around the neck with one hand, raised his other fist high, and stood posed like that, bellowing, until the cell door opened and three guards came rushing in.