Donald Westlake - The Hot Rock

Dortmunder snorted. "Two thousand dollars to break into a police station? I wouldn't break into a tollbooth for money like that."

Kelp looked at the Major with the expression of a man disappointed in an old friend and protege. "That's awful little, Major," he said. "If that's the kind of offer you're going to make, you shouldn't say anything at all."

The Major frowned, looking from face to face. "I don't know what to say," he admitted.

"Say ten thousand," Kelp told him.

"A man?"

"That's right. And the weekly amount up to two hundred."

The Major considered. But too quick an agreement might make them suspicious, so he said, "I couldn't make it that much. My country couldn't afford it, we're straining the national budget as it is."

"How much, then?" Kelp asked him in a friendly, helpful sort of way.

The Major drummed fingertips on the desktop. He squinted, he closed one eye, he scratched his head above his left ear. Finally he said, "Five thousand."

"And the two hundred a week."

The Major nodded. "Yes."

Kelp looked at Dortmunder. "Sweet enough?" he asked.

Dortmunder chewed a knuckle, and it occurred to the Major to wonder if Dortmunder too was padding his part. But then Dortmunder said, "I'll look it over. If it looks good to me, and if it looks good to Chefwick, all right."

"Naturally," the Major said, "the pay will continue while you look things over."

"Naturally," Dortmunder said.

They all got to their feet. The Major said to Greenwood, "May I offer you congratulations, by the way, on your freedom."

"Thanks," Greenwood said. "You wouldn't know where I could find an apartment, do you? Two and a half or three, moderately priced, in a good neighborhood?"

"I'm sorry," the Major said.

"If you hear of anything," Greenwood said, "let me know."

"I will," said the Major.

Murch, obviously very drunk and holding a nearly empty pint of Old Mr. Boston apricot brandy in his hand, stepped off the curb, out in front of the police car, waggled his other hand at it, and cried, "Takshi!"

The police car stopped. It was that or run over him. Murch leaned on the fender and announced loudly, "I wanna go home. Brooklyn. Take me to Brooklyn, cabby, and be fast about it." It was well after midnight and except for Murch this residential block on Manhattan's Upper West Side was quiet and peaceful.

The non-driving policeman got out of the police car. He said, "Comere, you."

Murch staggered over. Winking hugely he said, "Never mind the meter, pal. We can work out a private arrangement. The cops'll never know."

"Izzat right?" said the cop.

"That's only one of the million things the cops don't know," Murch confided.

"Oh, yeah?" The cop opened the rear door. "Climb aboard, chum," he said.

"Right," said Murch. He lurched into the police car and fell asleep at once on the rear seat.

The cops didn't take Murch to Brooklyn. They took him to the precinct house, where they woke him without gentleness, took him from the back seat of their car, trotted him up the slate steps between the green lights - the globe on the left one was broken - and turned him over to some other cops on the inside. "Let him sleep it off in the tank," one of them commented.

There was a brief ritual at the desk, and then the new cops trotted Murch down a long green corridor and shoved him into the tank, which was a big square metal room full of bars and drunks. "This isn't right," Murch told himself, and he began to shout. "Yo! Hey! What the hey! Son of a bitch!"

All the other drunks had been trying to sleep it off like they were supposed to, and Murch doing all that shouting woke them up and irritated them. "Shut up, bo," one of them said.

"Oh, yeah?" Murch said and hit him in the mouth, and pretty soon there was a good fight going on in the drunk tank. Most people missed when they swung, but at least they were swinging.

The cell door opened and some cops came in, saying, "Break it up." They broke it up, and worked it out that Murch was the cause of the trouble. "I ain't staying here with these bums," Murch announced, and the cops said, "Indeed you aren't, brother."

They took Murch out of the drunk tank, being not at all gentle with him, and ran him very rapidly up four flights of stairs to the fifth and top floor of the precinct, where the detention cells were.

Murch was hoping for the second cell on the right, because if he got the second cell on the right that was the end of the problem. Unfortunately, there was somebody else already in the second cell on the right, and Murch wound up in the fourth cell on the left. They pushed him in at high speed and shut the door behind him. Then they went away.

There was light, not much, coming from the end of the corridor. Murch sat down on the blanket-covered metal bunk and opened his shirt. Inside, taped to his chest, were some sheets of typewriter paper and a ballpoint pen. He removed these from his chest, wincing, and then made a lot of diagrams and notes while it was still fresh in his mind. Then he taped it all back to his chest again, lay down on the metal bunk, and went to sleep.

In the morning he was given a good talking to, but because he had no record and he apologized and was very chagrined and embarrassed and decent about it all, he was not held.

Outside, Murch looked across the street and saw a two-year-old Chrysler with MD plates. He went over and Kelp was behind the wheel, taking photographs of the front of the station house. Chefwick was in the back seat, keeping a head count on people going in and coming out, cars going in and coming out at the driveway beside the building, things like that.

Murch got into the Chrysler beside Kelp, who said, "Hi."

"Hi," Murch said. "Boy, don't ever be a drunk. Cops are death on drunks."

A little later, when they were done, Kelp and Chefwick drove Murch across town to where his Mustang was parked. "Somebody stole your hubcaps," Kelp said.

"I take them off when I come to Manhattan," Murch said. "Manhattan is full of thieves." He opened his shirt, removed the papers from his chest again, and gave them to Kelp. Then he got in his car and drove home. He went up to 125th Street and over to the Triborough Bridge and around Grand Central Parkway to Van Wyck Expressway to the Belt Parkway and home that way. It was a hot day, full of sun and humidity, so when he got home he took a shower and then went downstairs to his bedroom and lay on the bed in his underwear and read what Cahill had to say about the Chevy Camaro.

This time the ebony man with the long thin fingers took Kelp to the room with the pool table right away, without detours or side trips. He bowed his head slightly at Kelp and left, closing the door behind him.

It was a hot night outside, the last week in July, humidity building up toward 1,000 percent. Kelp was in thin slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt and the central air conditioning in here was making him chilly. He wiped leftover perspiration from his forehead, lifted his arms to air his underarms, walked over to the pool table, and racked up the balls.

He didn't feel like much of anything tonight, so he just practiced breaks. He'd rack the balls, line the cue ball up in this spot or in that spot, hit it here or there with or without some kind of english, aim for one spot or another spot on the lead ball, and see what would happen. Then he'd rack them again, set the cue ball up somewhere else, and do it all over again.

When the Major came in he said, "You haven't progressed so far tonight."

"Just fooling around this time," Kelp told him. He put the cue down and took a damp and crumpled sheet of paper from his hip pocket. He unfolded it and handed it over to Iko, who took it with some apparent reluctance to have his fingers touch it. Kelp turned back to the table, where he'd just made a break that had dropped two balls, and began to sink the rest of them, quickly but methodically.