What's So Funny? Part 29

"No, listen," Kelp said. "He went in there, he took a leak, he came out, calm as ever. He never saw John!"

"Impossible," Tiny said.

"But that's what happened, Tiny, I saw it."

Judson said, "Are you sure he's in there?"

"I watched him go in," Kelp said. "And he didn't come back out, or where is he?"

"If he come out," Stan said, "even if Perly didn't see him, we would."

"Tiny," Kelp said, "we can stick around, because somehow John made himself invisible in there."

"Then I will stick around," Tiny said. "I'll want him to tell me how he did it."

53.

IT WAS NICE the bath towel thing had worked, but other than that, this whole situation sucked. Dortmunder stood in the pitch-black bathroom, hand on the edge of the shower stall so he wouldn't get lost, considered his current position, and decided he didn't like it. He was still stuck in here with a guy outside to whom he would be unable to offer any conceivable explanation as to why this person he'd never seen before was suddenly walking out of his bathroom.

"It must be a s.p.a.ce-warp kinda thing. I was just coming out of a bar in Cleveland." No.

Another problem with this place was that Perly himself wanted to make use of it, an experience Dortmunder had found not entirely pleasant. But the capper, and the reason he was standing out here in the dark with the bath towel over his shoulders, turns out, the showerhead had a leak. A slow insidious leak that you don't even notice until all at once the seat of your pants is soaking wet, and you wouldn't mind the opportunity to make use of this bathroom yourself. Which was also impossible.

What could he do to get out of here? What about the garage door opener? Would it work at this distance? If he hit the b.u.t.ton, would the noise of the door lifting distract Perly and make him run from the room and otherwise behave in a way that would allow Dortmunder to get out of here?

It was worth a try. He took the opener from his pocket, aimed it at the door, and pressed the b.u.t.ton.

Nothing. Too far away, or too many walls and doors in between.

What if he were to open the door, just a tiny tiny little bit, maybe while down low on the floor, and stick the opener out at ground level and try it from there?

Anything was better than to stay in here. Dortmunder let go of the shower stall, fumbled around, found the doork.n.o.b, and used it for support while he went down on his knees and very slowly, carefully, silently opened the door. He was just about to stick the opener out when he realized he could see Perly's desk out there, and Perly wasn't sitting at it.

So where was he? Was he standing or sitting somewhere that he'd have a fine clear view of an arm sticking out of the bathroom, holding a garage door opener?

The door opened inward. Dortmunder scooted over a bit on his knees until he could open it farther, a little farther, and there was Perly, walking away toward an open shelf-filled closet, his arms full of large binders and his back toward Dortmunder.

Out. Shucking off the bath towel, out he went, on his knees, pulling the door almost closed behind himself. Without a sound, over to the desk he went, down out of Perly's sight, and crouched low to look under the desk.

Over there, beyond the desk and across the polished wood floor, Perly's feet had turned around from that closet and were crossing the room. The feet stopped, then reversed and headed for the closet again, so that his back would be toward both Dortmunder and the doorway out of here.

Dortmunder's run was not graceful, but it got there. Out of Perly's office he galumphed, and paused at the closed outer office door to put the opener away. Then he eased open that door, slid through, admired the Lamborghini parked there for about a fifth of a second, and headed down the ramp.

How to get out of the building. He could just say the h.e.l.l with it and open the noisy garage door and make a run for it. Or he could hope to get through that other door without attracting Perly's notice upstairs. Or he might go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and out the back way and see if he could find Kelp's apartment with all the art treasures. Get at least something to show for the night's work.

At the foot of the ramp, he decided the h.e.l.l with it, let's just get gone, and was reaching in his pocket for the opener when, from his left, Kelp's voice did a loud whisper: "John!"

He turned. All four of his partners in alleged crime were over there, by the stairs that led down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Kelp gestured to him to come over, so he did and said, "I thought you people were long gone."

"I was," Tiny said. "Perly see you up there?"

"No," Dortmunder said. "But I left a towel on the floor, he might notice that."

Stan said, "Your pants are wet."

"I know," Dortmunder told him. "I'm well aware of that."

Judson said, "So does this mean it's a go again?"

Dortmunder looked around. Perly was upstairs and hadn't been spooked. Nothing else had changed. "Well, how do you like that," he said. "We go back to Plan A."

54.

OPERATION CHESS GAMBIT went off, at least in its earlier parts, without a hitch. The operation, code-named personally by Chief Inspector Francis Xavier Mologna of the NYPD before he'd taken himself off to his home, his wife and his comfortable and capacious bed in Bay Sh.o.r.e, Long Island, began at eleven o'clock, when, just exactly on time, two uniformed and armed operatives of the Continental Detective Agency, plus two of the agency's technical people, rang the street bell at Jacques Perly's office and, having identified themselves through the intercom, were granted admittance. Their unmarked small van drove up the curving ramp, parked next to the Lamborghini, and for the next fifty minutes Perly and the two operatives contented themselves with awkward conversation while the tech people laid out their special gadgets, including sensors on the windows and on the trapdoor to the roof.

When they were finished, the tech people turned their van around with some difficulty, due to the Lamborghini taking up so much of the available s.p.a.ce, and at last, after a lot of backing and filling, they drove down the ramp and away. Perly spent another ten minutes giving the operatives last-minute instructions about what was on-limits and what was off-limits in this office - he'd noticed that one of them had already managed to drop a bath towel on the floor - and then he turned the Lamborghini around with not much trouble at all, because he didn't have a second vehicle to contend with and was in any event used to the s.p.a.ce, and also drove away, headed for Westchester.

Once Perly was gone, one of the operatives phoned a fellow operative standing by up at the C&I International bank building, to tell him everything was ready for the cargo to be transferred, and then both found themselves comfortable places to sit and curl up with their books. Being a Continental operative could be slow work if you weren't a reader.

Meantime, up in the Bronx, the armored car drove out of the Securivan secure garage facility a few minutes early, at 12:25, and made terrific time coming down to midtown Manhattan, arriving at the C&I International building at 1:10, nearly an hour ahead of schedule. The driver chatted for a while with the four Continental operatives there, all uniformed and armed, who would be doing the heavy lifting, and then somebody said, "Listen, why wait till two o'clock? We're here now, the guys are ready downtown, let's call the cops and tell them we're starting now."

Everybody thought that was a good idea. Get the job done early, get home before sunup. So the NYPD was called, and by the time the Continental operatives, a.s.sisted by the guy from the bank, had the chess set mounted on its dolly and brought up out of the vault and across the lobby floor to the entrance there were four patrol cars in position out front.

Sometimes a task has a lot of screwups and irritations in it, but every once in a while you've got a job to do and everything works just fine, not a single problem, and that's how this chess set move went, at least for a while. There was no trouble moving the set, no trouble installing it in the armored car with the four operatives on the bench in there to guard it, and no trouble driving down the mostly deserted streets, accompanied now by only one patrol car.

They arrived at Jacques Perly's building at 1:27 exactly. One of the Continentals in with the chess set radioed the guards upstairs to open the garage door, which they did by pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.ton they'd been shown on the secretary's desk, and down in the bas.e.m.e.nt the five poker players jumped up and said, "What's that? It's the garage door! It isn't even one-thirty!"

They had planned to relieve the guards of their duties and their uniforms at two o'clock, which would have given them a solid half-hour before the chess set would arrive. Fuming, Stan said, "Doesn't anybody keep to a G.o.ddam schedule?"

"Only us," Dortmunder said. "Come on, let's see what this is."

The five hurried up the stairs just in time to watch the armored car nose into the building and groan tentatively up the ramp, while outside the patrol car went about its business, its nursing detail done. The five stared, all hope gone. This was disaster. They absolutely had to get their hands on that G.o.ddam chess set before it got into that impossible circle of security inside Perly's office, that was the whole point here.

Over there on the ramp the armored car, angled upward like a turtle crawling over a log, stopped. It moved backward a little, then stopped. It moved forward a little, and very loud sc.r.a.ping sounds were heard. It stopped, moved backward, hitched itself around like a fat man adjusting his shorts, moved forward, and reproduced the sc.r.a.pe sound effect.

"It's too big," Judson said. He sounded stunned.

"These people," Stan said, "can't do anything right."

"Enough is enough," Dortmunder said, stepping forward from the stairwell. "Stan, get the van. Take the kid with you. Tiny, Andy, come on."

Everybody did as they were told, Stan and Judson exiting through the nearby door, Kelp and Tiny following Dortmunder, Kelp saying, "John? What's our plan?"

"We're getting what we came for," Dortmunder said, and yelled at the armored car as it did that sc.r.a.pe thing again, "Hey! Cut it out! Whadaya wanna do, knock down the wall?"

The armored car was completely inside the building now, on the ramp, in a position where it sc.r.a.ped the wall just as much when it went backward as when it went forward. The driver, over on the far side in his closed cab, looked out his right window at Dortmunder and shrugged his arms up in the air: "Whadaya want from me?"

Dortmunder went to the rear door of the armored car and banged on the bulletproof window. Cautiously, the door opened an inch, and the Continental in there, his hand on his holstered sidearm, said, "Who are you?"

"We work for Perly," Dortmunder told him. "We're the outside security, keep an eye on the place while you people are here, and brother, you need us. I got a van here," he went on, as Stan and Judson arrived with it. Turning to Kelp, he said, "Tell him to back it in. As close to the armored car as he can."

Kelp, looking awed, went away to instruct Stan, while Dortmunder said to the Continental, "You're gonna wreck this place. We'll get the chess set out and into the van, then get your truck outa here, then take the set up the ramp with the van. Also, we gotta take pictures of the damage."

"That's Securivan," the Continental told him. "That's not us."

From up above, one of the two Continentals already in position called down, "You need help down there?"

"Stay there," Dortmunder yelled up to him. "You don't wanna compromise the security you got there." Then he had to move briskly out of the way as Stan backed the van into the building and over to the rear of the armored car.

"I guess that's all we can do," the Continental said, and turned to tell his friends in the armored car what was going on. They all climbed out and, with all nine of them lending a hand, it took no time at all to transfer the chess set and its dolly into the van.

Once it was in and the van door shut, Stan drove the van out to the curb with Judson on the seat beside him, Kelp and Tiny sort of vagued themselves out of the scene and down the block, and Dortmunder said to the four Continentals, "You guys want to get in position where you can guide this driver. He's all messed up in here. You two go round front, you get on this side, you get on that side, I'll stand here by the door, be sure there's n.o.body coming."

Everybody got into position, and Dortmunder stepped back and thumbed the opener in his pocket, then galloped over to shove into the van next to Judson, which then left. The Continentals ran to the closing door, but didn't get there in time. If one of them had been a little spryer he might have been able to roll out under the closing door, but none of them were that spry.

Eventually they got the door open again, with a lot of shouting and recrimination, but the van was nowhere to be seen. Also, n.o.body had noticed its license number.

55.

THE LONGEST DAY of Jacques Perly's life started, appropriately enough, before dawn, with a phone call from the NYPD that woke him from a sound sleep at, according to the green LED readout of his bedside clock, 1:57 a.m., approximately fifty minutes since he'd shut his eyes.

"Jacques? Whuzza?"

"G.o.d knows," Jacques muttered, rolling over, lifting onto an elbow, tucking the phone between shoulder and jaw as he switched on the low bedside light and reached for pen and paper, just in case, while saying, "Perly."

"Jacques Perly?"

"That's me."

"This is Detective Krankforth, Midtown South. There has been a robbery at your office, sir."

Jacques was not really yet awake. He said, "A - a burglary?"

"No, sir," Detective Krankforth told him. "There were individuals present on the premises, that upgrades it to a robbery."

"Indi- Oh, my G.o.d, the chess set!"

"There are officers at the location," Detective Krankforth told him, "who would like to converse with you as soon as possible."

"I'll be there in an hour," Perly promised, and dropped the phone into its cradle as he scrambled out of bed.

"Jacques? Whuzza?"

"h.e.l.l," he told her. "Go back to sleep."

More h.e.l.l than he'd guessed. He couldn't park in his own building, couldn't even drive down that block. After being impatiently waved off by a traffic cop who didn't want to hear anything he might want to say, he found an all-night garage two blocks away and walked back, s.h.i.+vering in the cold. Three-fifteen in the morning now, nearly the coldest time of the night.

Two television remote trucks were parked outside the yellow crime tape that closed off the block. Whatever had happened here had caused some commotion because people leaned out windows into the cold up and down the block, and other people stood in clumps outside the yellow tape, staring at nothing much.

Perly identified himself to a cop at the tape, who radioed to someone, then nodded and let him in, saying, "See Captain Kransit in the command module."

The command module, in civilian life, was a mobile home, though sporting NYPD blue and white. A uniformed patrolman ushered Perly up the steps and in, where a disgruntled plainclothesman in brown suit and no tie, raw-boned, fortyish, craggy-faced, looking exactly like a disgruntled high school science teacher, said, "Mr. Perly? Have a seat."

The front half of the command module contained tables and benches bolted to the floor, with a closed door in a black wall partway back. Perly and Kransit sat facing one another, elbows on table, and Perly said, "The chess set was stolen?"

"We're still trying to work out exactly what happened," Kransit told him. "Somebody's coming down from C&I bank, should have been here by now. You got a valuable chess set delivered to you tonight, is that it?"

"Yes. After I left. The Continental Detective Agency provided uniformed guards, and Securivan made the transfer. NYPD provided escort coming down."

Captain Kransit didn't take notes, but did consult a yellow legal pad open on the table at his right elbow. "You were not here when this chess set arrived?"

"No, that wasn't necessary. The arrangement is, I'm renting my office to these people while the set is out of its vault for study and evaluation, so once the security people were in place I could go home. That was about twelve-fifteen" - glance at watch - "three hours ago. Can you tell me what happened?"

The microphone/speaker dangling from Kransit's lapel squawked like a chicken, and Kransit told it, "Send him in," then got to his feet. "The bank man's here. Let's go take a look at what we've got."

The command module had been warm, which Perly noticed when he stepped back out to the cobbled street. The man approaching them was black, well over six feet tall, and done up in thick black wool overcoat, plaid scarf and black homburg. He looked like a Negro Theater Ensemble production of The Third Man. "Woolley," he announced.

Introductions were made, hands were shaken, and they turned toward Perly's building, where the garage door stood uplifted. "The crime scene is still intact," Kransit said, as they walked. "The vehicle is still inside."

"Well, yes, it would," Perly started, then stopped and started. "It's on the ramp!" And there it was, tilted up, a big, dark, bulky ma.s.s of metal, crawling with forensic team members like ants on a rotted eggplant.

Captain Kransit seemed slightly embarra.s.sed on the armored car's behalf. "Yes, sir," he said. "Seems it got stuck in there."

Three or four men in dark blue overalls had been standing near the entrance. Now one of them came over to say, "Captain, we ready to pull this mother out of here?"

"Not just yet," the captain told him. "When forensics is finished."

"It's gonna take some doing," the overalled guy said, not without satisfaction. "Those guys really stepped on their d.i.c.k in there."

"I'll let you know when," the captain promised, and Perly said, "Captain, what did happen? And where are the guards?"