Donald Westlake - The Hot Rock

Dortmunder studied the guards. They looked bored, but not sleepy. He studied the glass, and it had the slightly olive look of glass with a lot of metal in it. Bulletproof, shatterproof, burglarproof. The edges of the glass cube were lined with strips of chromed steel and so was the line where the glass met the floor.

They were on the second floor of the Coliseum, the ceiling about thirty feet above their heads, a balcony overlooking the floor on three sides. The Pan-African Culture and Art Exhibit was spread throughout all four display floors, with the main attractions here on the second floor. The high ceiling bounced back a general stirring of sound as people shuffled by the exhibits.

Akinzi not being a very large or important African nation, it wasn't out in the very middle of the floor, but the Balabomo Emerald being considered an impressive stone, it wasn't shoved back against a wall or up onto the fourth floor either. It stood in a fairly exposed position, miles from any exit.

"I've seen enough," Dortmunder said.

"Me too," said Kelp.

They left the Coliseum and went across Columbus Circle and into Central Park. They took a path that headed for the lake and Dortmunder said, "That would be tough, taking it out of there."

"Yeah, it would," said Kelp.

"I wonder maybe we should wait till it goes on the road," Dortmunder said.

"That won't be for a while yet," said Kelp. "Iko won't like us sitting around doing nothing at a hundred fifty bucks a week per man."

"Forget Iko," Dortmunder said. "If we do this thing, I'm the one in charge. I'll handle Iko, don't worry about it."

"Sure, Dortmunder," said Kelp. "Anything you say."

They walked on over to the lake and sat on a bench there. It was June and Kelp watched the girls walk by. Dortmunder sat looking at the lake.

He didn't know about this caper, he didn't know whether he liked it or not. He liked the idea of the guaranteed return, and he liked the idea of the small easily transported object of the heist, and he was pretty sure he could keep Iko from causing any trouble, but on the other hand he had to be careful. He'd fallen twice now, it wouldn't be a good thing to fall again. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life eating prison food.

So what didn't he like? Well, for one thing, they were going after an item valued at half a million dollars, and it only stood to reason an item valued at half a million dollars was going to get some pretty heavy guarding. It wasn't going to be easy to get that rock away from the Akinzi. The four guards, the bulletproof glass, that was probably only the beginning of the defenses.

For another thing, if they did manage to get away with the stone, they could count on very heavy police activity. The cops would be likely to spend considerably more time and energy tracking down the people who stole a half-million-dollar emerald than going after somebody who copped a portable television set. There would also be insurance dicks all over the place, and sometimes they were worse than the cops.

And finally, how did he know Iko could be trusted? There was something just a little too smooth about that bird.

He said, "What do you think of Iko?"

Kelp, surprised, looked away from the girl in the green stockings and said, "He's okay, I guess. Why?"

"You think he'll pay up?"

Kelp laughed. "Sure he'll pay up," he said. "He wants the emerald, he has to pay up."

"What if he doesn't? We wouldn't find any buyer anywhere else."

"Insurance company," Kelp said promptly. "They'd pay a hundred fifty gee for a half-million-dollar rock any day."

Dortmunder nodded. "Maybe," he said, "that would be the better system anyway."

Kelp didn't get it. "What would?" he said.

"We let Iko finance the job," Dortmunder said. "But when we get the emerald we sell it to the insurance company instead."

"I don't like that," Kelp said.

"Why not?"

"Because he knows who we are," Kelp said, "and if this emerald is this big symbolic thing for the people in his country, they could get awful upset if we cop it for ourselves, and I don't want some whole African country out to get me, money or no money."

"Okay," Dortmunder said. "Okay. We'll see how it plays."

"A whole country out to get me," Kelp said and shivered. "I wouldn't like that."

"All right."

"Blow guns and poison arrows," Kelp said and shivered again.

"I think they're more modern now," Dortmunder said.

Kelp looked at him. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? Tommy guns and airplanes."

"All right," Dortmunder said. "All right." To change the subject, he said, "Who do you think we should bring in with us?"

"The rest of the team?" Kelp shrugged. "I dunno. What kind of guys do we need?"

"It's hard to say." Dortmunder frowned at the lake, ignoring a girl going by in a tiger-stripe leotard. "No specialists," he said, "except maybe a lockman. But nobody for safes, nothing like that."

"We want five or six?"

"Five," Dortmunder said. He announced one of the rules he lived by: "If you can't do a job with five men, you can't do it at all."

"Okay," said Kelp. "So we'll want a driver, and a lockman, and a utility outfielder."

"Right," said Dortmunder. "For the lockman, there was that little guy in Des Moines. You know the one I mean?"

"Something like Wise? Wiseman? Welsh?"

"Whistler!" said Dortmunder.

"That's it!" said Kelp and shook his head. "He's in stir. They got him for letting a lion loose."

Dortmunder turned his head away from the lake and looked at Kelp. "They did what?"

Kelp shrugged. "Don't blame me," he said. "That's just what I heard. He took his kids to the zoo, he got bored, he started to play around with the locks kind of absentminded, like you or me might doodle, and the first thing you know he let a lion loose."

"That's nice," Dortmunder said.

"Don't blame me," Kelp said. Then he said, "What about Chefwick? You know him?"

"The railroad nut. He's crazy out of his head."

"But he's a great lockman," Kelp said. "And he's available."

"Okay," Dortmunder said. "Give him a call."

"I will." Kelp watched two girls in various shades of green and gold go by. "Now we need a driver," he said.

"How about Lartz? Remember him?"

"Forget him," Kelp said. "He's in the hospital."

"Since when?"

"A couple weeks ago. He ran into a plane."

Dortmunder gave him a long slow look. "He did what?"

"It ain't my fault," Kelp said. "The way I heard it, he was at the wedding of some cousin of his out on the Island, he was coming back into town, he took the Van Wyck Expressway the wrong way by mistake, the first thing he knew he was out to Kennedy Airport. He was a little drunk, I guess, and-"

"Yeah," Dortmunder said.

"Yeah. And he got confused by the signs, and he wound up on taxiway seventeen and he ran into this Eastern Airlines plane that just come up from Miami."

"Taxiway seventeen," Dortmunder said.

"That's what I heard," Kelp said.

Dortmunder pulled out his Camels and stuck one thoughtfully in his face. He offered the pack to Kelp, but Kelp shook his head and said, "I gave them up. Those cancer commercials got to me."

Dortmunder paused with the cigarettes held out in mid-air. He said, "Cancer commercials."

"Sure. On television."

"I haven't seen any television in four years," Dortmunder said.

"You missed something," Kelp said.

"Apparently I did," Dortmunder said. "Cancer commercials."

"That's right. Scare the life out of you. Wait till you see one."

"Yeah," Dortmunder said. He put the pack away and lit the cigarette in his face. "About a driver," he said. "Did you hear about anything odd happening to Stan Murch lately?"

"Stan? No. What happened?"

Dortmunder looked at him again. "I was asking you."