Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

Rosa said, “But why leave their bicycle?”

“They didn’t take the truck,” Angelo pointed out.

Rosa gave him a look, but said nothing.

Vito sniffed. “I smell water,” he said. “Not very clean water.”

Rosa moved toward the rear windows: “What’s outside here?”

On the Quai de Valmy, beside the Canal St. Martin just north of the Rue du Faubourg du Temple, where the canal goes underground beneath Boulevard J. Ferry, Renee and Jean and Charles all stood up in the parked open-topped Volkswagen they’d commandeered at the warehouse, and they all gazed at the canal with some intensity. What they were watching so avidly was the slow but steady progress of the block-filled boat containing Herman and Rudi and Otto, moving in leisurely fashion away from them, southward. As they watched, the flat-bottom boat sailed serenely on underground and out of sight.

Slowly, Charles and Jean and Renee all sat down, Charles in the driver’s seat, Renee beside him, Jean in back. “Well,” said Charles.

“Agreed,” said Renee. “But what now?”

Thoughtfully Charles said, “This canal eventually goes on to the Seine. I imagine that’s their intention. From there, they could very easily get out of Paris in any direction at all.”

“Then let’s get a boat,” Renee said, “and follow them.”

“No,” Charles said. “They’d see us. We’ll drive down to the other end of this tunnel, and wait for them.”

Renee said, “Where’s that?”

“Place de la Bastille. We’ll see them come out there, and we’ll trail them till they stop.”

Jean said, “What if they turn around and come back out this way?”

Charles frowned at him. “Why would they do that?”

“They might,” Jean insisted. “Maybe they intend just to hide in there until tonight, and then come out again and go back the other way.”

Deadpan, Charles said, “Would you like to wait at this end, Jean, while Renee and I go keep watch at the Place de la Bastille?”

Smiling, Jean said, “And you’ll come back for me if you get the money, won’t you?”

Deadpan, Charles said, “Of course.”

Suddenly, pointing at the canal, Renee said, “Look!”

They looked, and what they saw was Herman and Rudi and Otto walking out from the darkness of the tunnel, pacing carefully along the narrow path between the edge of the canal and the stone embankment wall.

“They’re coming out,” Renee said, unnecessarily.

“Without the boat,” Charles pointed out.

“Ah,” explained Jean.

Pacing carefully along the narrow path between the edge of the canal and the stone embankment wall, Herman and Rudi and Otto walked in single file, talking over their shoulders to one another. Herman, in the lead, said, “Now we he for a few days, until the others wear themselves out with all their running around, and then we come back and collect our reward.”

“I’m going to open a beer garden,” Otto said. “In fact, a chain of beer gardens.”

“There is,” Herman said, the harsh planes of his face very nearly softening, “a small vineyard near Bernkastel, which I have coveted all my life. A fourteenth century castle stands atop the hill, overlooking the steep vine-covered slopes. There I will breed Doberman Pinschers.”

The three happy men climbed the narrow stone steps up to the Quai de Jemmapes, on the opposite side of the canal from their former colleagues in their former Volkswagen. Otto said, “What about you, Rudi? You must have plans for your money.”

“Oh, I do,” Rudi said. He smiled like a suitcase opening.

“What, then?”

“Las Vegas,” said Rudi.

Otto frowned at him. “What?”

“I have,” Rudi said, “an absolutely unbeatable system at the craps table. I intend to win myself a casino.” Preening a bit, smoothing down the wrinkles in his shirt, he said, “Can’t you see me, running things in Las Vegas?”

“Possibly,” Otto said.

“Taxi!” Herman said.

The sound of water lapping against the stone wall of the abandoned warehouse was obliterated by the sudden putt-putt of a motorcycle and cough-cough of a London taxi. Then the engine sounds stopped, and the eternal water of the Canal St. Denis was heard again, gently lapping. Eustace’s head appeared, with very wide eyes, in a window overlooking the canal. Eustace’s head disappeared, with abruptness. The putt-putt and cough-cough burst once more into their hearing, and rapidly receded. The water lapped.

Charles and Jean and Renee paced carefully along the narrow path between the edge of the Canal St. Martin and the stone embankment wall, reversing the route just taken by the departed Germans. Charles, in the lead, carried a small pocket flashlight, which he switched on as he reached the darkness of the tunnel.

“What an awful smell!” said Renee.

“Money sweetens all smells,” suggested Jean.

Into the darkness they walked, wrinkling their noses against the aroma, blinking as Charles flashed his light here and there.

The flat-bottomed boat was not very far from the entrance, tied to an old iron ring, and empty.

“Empty!” cried Renee.

Flashing the light around, Charles said, “They hid it somewhere.” But the ranging beam of light showed nothing in particular; merely the slimy tunnel and the fetid water.

Jean said, “Would it all be underwater?”

Pointing the light down at the greenish water, Charles said, “Not even Herman would willingly reach in there.”

“What did they do with it?” Renee cried, and her echo came back from the tunnel with a clear edge of panic in it. “They didn’t carry it away, it must be here .”

“There has to be an answer,” Charles said. So fiercely was he concentrating that the cigarette stood out straight from the corner of his mouth, like a signpost. “There has to be an answer.”

“I should hope so,” said Jean.

But as Charles continued to shine the flashlight first this way and then that way, never seeing anything but the tunnel and the water, the water and the tunnel, the tunnel and the water and the empty boat, a sense of defeat gradually spread through all three of them, until Renee voiced what all three were thinking: “We can’t find it. Whatever they did with it, we just can’t find it.”

Jean sighed.

“Very well,” Charles said. His cigarette drooped, but his furrowed brown denoted determination. “We’ll wait here,” he said, “until they come back to get it. Then we’ll follow them, and sooner or later we’ll find an opportunity to take it away from them.”

Jean sighed again, then coughed, then said, “Let us return to the outer world. I don’t much like sighing in this atmosphere.”

Discouraged, despondent, the three turned about and began to retrace their steps. But hardly had they taken half a dozen paces when Renee abruptly stopped and called, “Wait!”

The two men, who had been preceding her, halted and looked back, Charles shining his flashlight on Renee, who was pointing at the tunnel wall. “Look at this!” cried Renee. The men did. Charles obligingly lit it with his flashlight beam. The wall was a wall, nothing more. It had no doors or other features. Jean said, “What about it?”

“This is it!” Renee told them.

They looked at her. Charles said, “This is what?”

“The wall !” Renee patted a palm against it. “This isn’t the real wall, this is—”

Charles, suddenly understanding, reached out and poked at one of the wall’s stone blocks. It moved. “You’re right!”

Jean, at the edge of the false wall, pulled out a stone block and shook it. Chinkle . “This is it!”

“Now,” Renee said. “Now what?”