Donald Westlake - The Hot Rock

"Hell," Kelp said, "why not take it easy? You can make ends meet on Iko's two hundred."

"I want to build a stake," Dortmunder said, keeping his eyes closed. "I don't like living on the bone like this."

"That's a hell of a stake you'll build," Kelp told him, "at seventy bucks a day."

"Sixty yesterday," Dortmunder said. He opened his eyes. "We've been tapping Iko four weeks since Greenwood got out. How much longer you think he'll ante up?"

"Till he gets the helicopter," Kelp said.

"If he gets it. Maybe he won't get it at all. He didn't sound happy when he paid me last week." Dortmunder drank some bourbon. "And I'll tell you something else," he said. "I don't have the belief in this job I have in some things. I've got my eyes open for something else, I've spread the word around I'm available. Anything else comes along, that rotten emerald can go to hell."

"That's the way I feel too," Kelp said. "That's why Greenwood and me are matching coins up and down Seventh Avenue. But I believe Iko's going to come through."

"I don't," Dortmunder said.

Kelp grinned. "You want to put a little side bet on it?"

Dortmunder looked at him. "Whyn't you call Greenwood over and I can bet you both?"

Kelp looked innocent. "Say, don't be in a bad mood," he said. "I'm just kidding with you."

Dortmunder emptied his glass. "I know it," he said. "Build me another?"

"Sure thing." Kelp came over and took Dortmunder's glass and the phone rang. "There's Iko now," Kelp said, grinning, and went out to the kitchenette.

Dortmunder answered the phone and Iko's voice said, "I have it."

"Well, I'll be damned," Dortmunder said.

The lavender Lincoln with the MD plates nosed slowly amid the long low warehouses on the Newark docks. The setting sun cast long shadows across the empty streets. Today was Tuesday, the fifteenth of August; the sun had risen at eleven minutes past five this morning and would set at two minutes before seven this evening. The time was now six-thirty.

Murch, who was driving, found the sun reflected into his eyes from the rearview mirror. He switched the mirror to the night setting, reducing the sun to a yellowish ball in an olive haze, and said irritably, "Where the hell is this place anyway?"

"Not much farther," Kelp said. He was holding the typed sheet of instructions in his hands and was sitting beside Murch. The other three were in back, Dortmunder on the right, Chefwick in the middle, Greenwood on the left. They were all in their guard uniforms again, the policelike costumes they'd worn at the Coliseum. Murch, who didn't have a uniform like that, was wearing a Greyhound bus driver's jacket and cap. Although it was properly hot for August outside, the air conditioning inside made it jacket-and-cap-wearing weather.

"Turn there," Kelp said, pointing ahead.

Murch shook his head in disgust. "Which way?" he said with studied patience.

"Left," Kelp said. "Didn't I say that?"

"Thank you," Murch said. "No, you didn't."

Murch turned left, into a narrow blacktop alley between two brick warehouses. It was already twilight in here, but sun shone orange on stacked wooden crates at the far end. Murch steered the Lincoln around the crates and out to a large open area surrounded on all sides by the backs of warehouses. The blacktop ran one lane wide along the rear of the warehouses, like a frame around a picture, but the picture itself was nothing but a big flat square of weedy dirt. In the middle of the empty space stood the helicopter.

"That's big," Kelp said. He sounded awed.

The helicopter looked huge, standing out there all alone like that. It was painted a dull Army brown, had a round glass nose, small glass side windows, and blades that hung out like washlines.

Murch jounced the Lincoln over the rough ground and stopped near the helicopter. Up close it didn't look as gigantic. They could see it was just a little taller than a man and not much longer than the Lincoln. Squares and rectangles of black tape covered the body here and there, apparently to hide identifying numbers or symbols.

They all got out of the cool Lincoln into the hot world and Murch rubbed his hands together as he grinned at the machine in front of them. "Now, there's a baby that'll go," he said.

Dortmunder, suddenly suspicious, said, "You did drive one of these things before, right?"

"I told you," Murch said. "I can drive anything."

"Yeah," Dortmunder said. "That's what you told me, I remember that."

"Right," said Murch. He kept grinning at the helicopter.

"You can drive anything," Dortmunder said, "but the question is did you ever drive one of these things before?"

"Don't answer him," Kelp said to Murch. "I don't want to know the answer, and neither does he, not now. Come on, let's load up."

"Right," said Murch, while Dortmunder slowly shook his head. Murch went around and opened the Lincoln's trunk and they all started to carry things from the trunk over to the helicopter. Chefwick carried his black bag, Greenwood and Dortmunder carried the machine guns and between them toted by its handles a green metal box full of detonators and tear gas grenades and miscellaneous tools. Kelp carried a cardboard carton full of handcuffs and strips of white cloth. Murch checked to be sure the Lincoln was locked up tight, then followed carrying the portable jammer, a heavy black box about the size of a beer case, bristling with knobs and dials and retracted antennas.

The inside of the helicopter was similar to the inside of a car, with two padded bucket seats up front and a long seat across the back. There was stowage space behind the back seat into which they shoved everything, then arranged themselves with Murch at the wheel, Dortmunder beside him, and the other three in back. They shut the door and Dortmunder studied Murch studying the controls. After a minute Dortmunder said in disgust, "You never even saw one of these things before."

Murch turned on him. "Are you kidding? I read in Popular Mechanics how to make one, you don't think I can drive one?"

Dortmunder looked over his shoulder at Kelp. "I could be peddling encyclopedias right now," he said.

Murch, having been insulted, said to Dortmunder, "Come on, now, watch this. I hit this switch here, see? And this lever. And I do this."

A roaring started. Dortmunder looked up, and through the glass bubble he could see the blades rotating. They went faster and faster and became a blur.

Murch tapped Dortmunder's knee. He was still explaining things as he did this and that to the controls, even though Dortmunder couldn't hear him any more. But Dortmunder kept watching, because anything was better than looking up at the noisy blur overhead.

Abruptly, Murch smiled and sat back and nodded and pointed out. Dortmunder looked out and the ground wasn't there. He leaned forward, looking through the bubble, and the ground was way down below, orange-yellow-green-black, jagged with long shadows from the setting sun. "Oh, yeah," Dortmunder said softly, though no one could hear him. "That's right."

Murch fiddled around for a couple of minutes, getting used to things, making the helicopter do some odd maneuvers, but then he settled down and they began to move northeast.

Dortmunder had never realized before just how full the sky was. Newark Airport was just a little ways behind them, and the sky was as full of circling planes as a shopping center parking lot on a Saturday is full of people circling to find a place to park. Murch was moving along under them, heading for New York at a good clip. They passed over Newark Bay and Jersey City and Upper Bay and then Murch figured out how to steer and he turned left a little and they followed the Hudson north, Manhattan on their right like stalagmites with cavities, New Jersey on their left like uncollected garbage.