Donald Westlake - The Hot Rock

After the first few minutes, Dortmunder liked it. Murch didn't seem to be doing anything wrong, and aside from the noise it was kind of nice to be hanging up in the sky here like this. The guys in back were nudging each other and pointing at things like the Empire State Building, and Dortmunder turned at one point and grinned at Kelp, who shrugged and grinned back.

The jet they were planning to use for cover normally roared over the police station at seven thirty-two every evening. Tonight they wouldn't be able to hear it, not being able to hear anything but themselves, so they would either have to see it or just take a chance on its being there. Dortmunder hadn't realized noise would be a problem like this, and it troubled him, detracting from the enjoyment of the ride.

Murch tapped him on the knee and pointed to the right. Dortmunder looked, and over there was another helicopter, with a radio station's call letters on the side. The pilot waved, and Dortmunder waved back. The man beside the pilot was too busy to wave, talking into a microphone and looking down at the West Side Highway, which was all snarled up.

Far away on their left the sun was sinking slowly into Pennsylvania, the sky turning pink and mauve and purple. Manhattan was already in twilight.

Dortmunder checked his watch. Seven-twenty. They were doing well.

The plan was to circle around the police station and come at it from the rear, so the cops out front wouldn't get a glimpse of the helicopter landing on their roof. Murch kept following the Hudson north, therefore, until Harlem stood snaggle-toothed on their right, and then he made a wide sweeping U-turn. It was like being a kid on one of those Coney Island rides, only higher up.

Murch had figured out the altitude adjustment by now. He eased down through the air over the Upper West Side, figuring out the street they wanted from landmarks like Central Park and the meeting of Broadway with West End Avenue. And then, dead ahead, there stood the black rectangle of the police station roof.

Kelp leaned forward and tapped Dortmunder's shoulder. When Dortmunder looked at him, he pointed to the sky on their right. Dortmunder looked up there and saw the jet coming out of the west, sweep-winged, sparkling, noisy. Dortmunder grinned and nodded.

Murch put it down on the roof as gently as he'd put a beer glass on a bar. He cut the engine and in their own sudden silence they could hear the passage of the jet, sliding down the sky above them toward LaGuardia.

"Last stop," Murch said, and the jet noise faded away to the east.

Dortmunder opened the door and they all clambered out. Chefwick hurried over to the door in the small shacklike construction atop the roof while the others unloaded the helicopter. Kelp took a pair of cable shears, went over to the front left edge of the roof, lay down on his belly, reached down and out, and cut the phone wires. Murch set the portable jammer down on the roof, turned it on, put earphones on, and began twiddling with the dials. All radio broadcasting from this building promptly became unintelligible.

By now Chefwick had the door open. Dortmunder and Greenwood had stuffed their pockets with detonators and tear gas grenades, and they followed Chefwick down the stairs to the windowless metal door at the bottom. Chefwick studied this door a second, then said, "I'll have to blast this one. Go on back up."

Kelp was on the way down, carrying the cardboard carton of handcuffs and strips of white cloth. Dortmunder met him midway and said, "Back up on the roof. Chefwick has to blast."

"Right."

The three of them hurried up to the roof, where Murch had left the jammer and was sitting on the roof near the front edge, several detonator caps beside him. He looked over at them and waved. Dortmunder showed him two fingers, meaning he should wait two minutes, and Murch nodded.

Chefwick came upstairs. Dortmunder said to him, "How we doing?"

"Three," Chefwick said in a distracted sort of way. "Two. One."

Phoom , said a noise.

Grayish smoke drifted lazily up the stairwell and out the door.

Dortmunder dashed downstairs through the smoke, found the metal door lying on its back at the bottom, and hurried through the doorway into a short square hall. Straight ahead, heavy barred gates blocked the end of the hall where the stairway went down. An astonished-looking cop was sitting on a high stool there, just inside the gates, with a paper-filled lectern beside him. He was a thin and elderly white-haired cop, and his reflexes were a little slow. Also, he wasn't armed. Dortmunder knew, from both Greenwood and Murch, that none of the cops on duty up here were armed.

"Take him," Dortmunder said over his shoulder and turned the other way, where a stout cop with a ham and cheese sandwich on rye in his hand was trying to close another gate. Dortmunder pointed the machine gun conversationally and said, "Stop that."

The cop looked at Dortmunder. He stopped and put his hands up in the air. One slice of rye dangled over his knuckles like the floppy ear of a dog.

Greenwood meanwhile had convinced the elderly cop to contemplate his retirement. The cop was standing beside his lectern with his hands up while Greenwood tossed three detonator caps and two tear gas grenades through the bars and down the stairs, where they made a mess. The idea was that no one was supposed to come upstairs.

There was one more officer on duty up here. He'd been in the area between the second gate and yet a third, where there was a scarred wooden desk. He'd been sitting at this desk, reading Ramparts , and when Dortmunder and Greenwood led the other two cops in at machine-gun point, the third one looked at them in bewilderment, put down his magazine, got to his feet, raised his hands over his head, and said, "You sure you got the right place?"

"Open up," Dortmunder said, gesturing at the last gate. Through there, in the detention block, arms could be seen waving through cell bars on both sides. Nobody in there knew what was going on exactly, but they all wanted to be a part of it.

"Brother," cop number three told Dortmunder, "the hardest case we got in there is a latvian sailor hit a bartender with a fifth of Johnny Walker Red Label. Seven stitches. You sure you want one of our people?"

"Just open," Dortmunder told him.

The cop shrugged. "Anything you say," he said.

Meanwhile, on the roof, Murch had started tossing detonator caps at the street. He wanted to make noise and confusion without killing anybody, which was easy the first couple of times he dropped the caps, but which became increasingly difficult as the street filled up with cops running around trying to figure out who was attacking who and from where.

In the precinct captain's office, on the second floor, the quiet evening had erupted into bedlam. The captain had gone home for the day, of course, the prisoners upstairs had been given their evening meal, the evening patrolman shift had been sent on its way, and the lieutenant in charge had been relaxing down into that slow quiet period of the day Dortmunder had been counting on. The lieutenant had been glancing through detectives' reports, in fact, looking for the dirty parts, when people started to run into his office.

The first one hadn't actually run, he'd walked. The patrolman on the switchboard it was, and he said, "Sir, the phone's gone dead."

"Oh? We'd better call the phone company to fix it pronto," the lieutenant said. He liked the word "pronto," it made him feel like Sean Connery. He reached for the phone to call the phone company, but when he held it to his ear there wasn't any sound.

He became aware of the patrolman looking at him. "Oh," he said. "Oh, yes." He put the phone back on its hook.

He was saved, momentarily, by the patrolman from the radio room, who came running in, looking bewildered, to say, "Sir, somebody's jamming our signal!"