Watch Your Back (26 page)

Meanwhile, in the living room and the formal dining room, the red dots blossomed like a bad case of measles. Dortmunder and Tiny carried the designated goods back to the elevator, loaded it aboard, and sent it down to the garage, where Kelp and Stan unloaded everything, directed the elevator upward again, and stowed the goods in the capacious sixteen–foot–deep interior of the truck.

Arnie was in heaven. After his first rapturous flurry of red–dot dispensing, he slowed down, took his time, studied the wares on offer, and even rejected some as being, while first quality, not quite at the level he was growing used to here. He also refreshed his vision sometimes by standing at the windows to gaze down on Central Park or at the pork chop of Manhattan narrowing away to the south. All in all, he felt he was enriched by having known Preston Fareweather.

Around noon, Dortmunder and Tiny, carrying a marble athlete, lost their grip for a second, and a marble elbow thudded into the wall beside them. “Watch it,” Tiny said, though he was just as much to blame.

“It’s okay,” Dortmunder said, and they moved on while, the other side of that wall, Preston frowned in his sleep, and his mouth moved with small moist sounds, tasting itself. Like a bubble in a soda can, he was rising toward consciousness.

As Dortmunder and Tiny set the marble man on the floor in front of the elevator, its door opened, and Kelp stepped out, saying, “Stan says the truck’s about full.”

“We’ll make this guy the last of it, then,” Dortmunder said. “Help us load him.”

“I’ll ride down with him,” Tiny said.

Dortmunder said, “Then send it back up. I’ll collect Arnie. We don’t want to leave him behind.”

“For once,” Kelp said, and the elevator door shut on the trio.

Dortmunder went back to the living room, and Arnie was over at the window again, gazing dreamily out. Looking at Dortmunder, he said, “I run outa dots.”

“And the truck’s run outa space. Time to go.”

“I’ll take a quick look around at the other rooms,” Arnie said, “see is there any must–haves.”

“Fine.”

Arnie went off, and Dortmunder looked around for pocket–size stuff, of which there was a bunch. A Faberge egg, for example, a couple of gold medallions, a Mont Blanc pen, a nice piece of scrimshaw. Pockets bulging, he left the living room, and in the hall he met Arnie coming out of a side room.

Arnie grinned at him and said, “We got the cream, but just lemme look.”

“Sure.”

Dortmunder walked on, and Arnie opened the next door.

The
click
of the doorknob popped Preston’s eyes open. Bleary, somewhere between awake and asleep, he lifted his head and looked at Arnie Albright, frozen in the open doorway.

Preston blinked, there was a slam, and when his eyelids sluggishly lifted again, there was no Arnie Albright, only a closed door. Preston tried to frame a question, but was too befuddled to speak it, or even very much to think it. A dream? His head dropped back on the pillow.

A dream about Arnie Albright — too awful to think about. Down Preston went into oblivion once more.

Arnie raced down the hall, overtaking Dortmunder, whispering in shrill urgency, “He’s here! In bed!”

“What? Who?”

“
Him!
We gotta get outa here!”

Arnie scampered on, and Dortmunder followed him, looking over his shoulder, not seeing anyone behind them. Preston Fareweather was here? In bed? All along?

Arnie skittered in place at the elevator door. “We gotta get outa here! Outa here!”

“Arnie, we do have to wait for the elevator.”

But then it came, and they boarded, and Arnie pushed
Bot
so hard, it bent his thumb back, which he barely noticed. “Outa here,” he said. “This is no place for a person like me. Outa here.”

Another thing Mikey believed in was revenge. He probably believed in revenge more than in patience or anything else, if it came to that. If Mikey were ever to build a shrine to something other than himself, it would be to revenge.

Also, a third thing Mikey believed in, passionately and without question, was profit. Everybody earns; everybody’s taken care of. If you don’t have profit, what have you got? Nothing. QED.

In the O.J. Bar & Grill business, the three things Mikey believed in were finally about to come together. A sweet deal he’d set up had been queered for him by some stumblebum heister named Dortmunder, not Dortmund as originally reported, plus a few of Dortmunder’s unconnected loser pals. So what was needed? What was needed was to get revenge on Dortmunder and his pals, and to make a profit out of that revenge, and for all that to happen, Mikey had to be patient, which he damn well knew how to be.

This Dortmunder was such a clown, Mikey’s people had been tailing him for two days, ever since Mikey’s guy had picked up that name, almost the right name, in the O.J., and not once had Dortmunder even suspected there was somebody on his trail.

Not that he did much, most of the time. Once on Wednesday, and again this morning, he’d gone to the Upper West Side to the same apartment building, and this morning he’d come out of it with some gnarled little jerk, and they’d taken a cab over to Fifth and Sixty–eighth, where they’d met up with three other guys that were definitely part of Dortmunder’s crew, part of the bunch that had screwed up Mikey’s deal at the O.J. This time, they had a pretty big truck with them, and they and the truck all went into a garage on Sixty–eighth.

When all this was reported to Mikey, at home in New Jersey, he said, “We’11 fuckin meet right there. In the fuckin park. Pass the word. We want the fuckin crew and we want some fuckin cars.”

On his way to Central Park from farthest New Jersey, Mikey saw how it was going to play out, how it had to play out. Dortmunder and his people were heisters, independent heisters — he knew that much — and the story was, the reason they’d involved themselves with his sweet deal at the O.J. and loused it up the way they did in the first place was that they wanted to make a meet in the O.J.’s back room, because that was where they always met when they were
planning a job.

Planning a job. Was that perfect? There they were now, in that garage, loading up the truck with something or other valuable from that house — or more likely the small private museum on the next street behind it.

Mikey would be patient. He would give them all the time they needed, all the time in the world, and whenever they finally did bring that truck back out of that garage, Mikey and his friends would be there to take it away from them. Revenge and profit, in one neat ball.

The only little potential difficulty was the fact that all this was taking place in New York City. Mikey’s crew, and his father Howie’s entire outfit, operated within an agreement with the families in New York: that the New York guys didn’t interfere with New Jersey, and the New Jersey guys didn’t interfere with New York. Pulling off anything at all on this side of the river could be looked at, by anybody who wanted to be a stickler for detail, as a violation of that agreement, which could possibly end in consequences.

On the other hand, this wasn’t any New York City operation Mikey was messing in; this was a bunch of no–connection independents against whom he had a legitimate beef. So this would be like what the army guys call a surgical strike: invade, pull the job, clear out. Everything beautiful. (The O.J, bustout, if it had gone down the way it should, would also have been a technical violation of the interstate agreement, but there it was a unique deal, with Mikey the only one who could get hold of the place to squeeze it, and at the end of the operation the appropriate New York family would have been given an explanation, an apology, and a small piece, and there would have been no trouble. This, involving hijack, maybe guns shown, violence on the streets of Manhattan, was a different matter entirely.)

By eleven Mikey had everything in position. Sixty–eighth Street was one–way east, so he had a car stopped by a hydrant down toward the other end of the block. The next intersection, Madison Avenue, was northbound, so he had a car stopped around the corner on Madison, and a third waiting beyond Madison on Sixty–eighth. He had two soldiers in each car, equipped with cell phones.

Whichever way the truck went, Mikey’s people would be on it, two cars at first and the third catching up. They would tail it and wait for just the right spot to crowd it to a stop, throw those people out of there, take over the truck themselves, and drive it straight to New Jersey.

Also, unless Dortmunder’s crew acted wise, which Mikey didn’t expect to happen, in deference to the agreement with New York there would be minimum violence and, if possible, no shooting. Smart, you had to be smart.

Seated on a bench in the park, though it faced the wrong way, Mikey could twist halfway around and look back past the low stone wall at the park’s edge and across Fifth Avenue and straight down Sixty–eighth Street. Like a general with an overview of the battlefield; nice.

Mikey sat there, on the bench in Central Park, and was patient.

So now, Big José and Little José, all ears, at last learned the story of that elevator they’d seen at the back of Fareweather’s penthouse. It didn’t go to some other apartment in the building for hot sex after all, but all the way down to a garage at street level.

So whadaya thinka that? In addition to everything else he’s got, Preston Fareweather’s got his own elevator to his own garage, in which he keeps a really cool BMW.

Well, it was nice to know the truth about the elevator, though it was a shame to lose the fantasies about that hot TV news anchor. On the other hand, this return of the prodigal Preston Fareweather meant some distinct changes in the work lives of the Josés. As Little José pointed out, “You don’t get to coop up there in his living room no more, man.”

“I loved that eight–foot sofa,” Big José said, because he did have trouble finding comfortable places in the world where he could stretch out his long frame.

Another change was that, with the owner’s return, it would no longer be necessary to do the twice–a–month security sweep of the penthouse. But that was okay. At first, going through that place had been kind of exciting, with its great views and all the art and the furniture, but of course every time they went up there, it was the same views and art and furniture, so after a while, no matter how great it was, it did get a little boring. They could remember the place pretty well by now; they didn’t need to go on seeing it every two weeks.

Besides which, the other boring, repetitive parts of the job were still active, so not that much had changed. For instance, at noon they had to go out and walk around to the two doctors’ offices with separate entrances on Sixty–eighth Street and pick up whatever hazmat the doctors had assembled since yesterday. All of this material, radioactive or disease–ridden or whatever, heavily wrapped in protective plastics, the two Josés would, as usual, carry around to the special safe in the back room behind the security desk, from where it would be picked up in the afternoon by the people from the special company that had the legal permits and the facilities to dispose of the crap. Until some new hires came along, this would continue to be a part of the Josés’ daily duty, and they couldn’t help but think, why not drop the hazmat and keep the penthouse tour?

But no. At noon today, the two Josés left the Imperiatum, out onto Fifth Avenue, and walked around the corner onto Sixty–eighth Street, toward the doctors’ offices. They were almost to the first entrance when they heard a sudden rasping sound they didn’t recognize, out ahead of them, and then saw that the garage door in the next building was lifting.

It hit them both at the same time. That wasn’t their building, it was the next building, but that had to be Preston Fareweather’s garage! So, the first day home, he was taking his BMW out for a spin.

Poised at the doctor’s threshold, they waited, watching as the garage door very slowly lifted, waiting to see both the BMW and the fabled owner of that penthouse.

But what came out first was obviously neither. Three guys emerged, ducking under the rising garage door, and walked briskly away down Sixty–eighth Street. All three of them were guys, the Josés knew, who would never get past security in the front of the building, so what were they doing coming out of the back of the building, and coming out through territory that belonged to the richest guy in the building?

The garage door opened to the top, and there now backed out, springs sluggish as though it were very full, a white Ford truck, a pretty big one with what must be a sixteen–foot box, so it must have crammed that garage from end to end. In the cab of the truck were two guys wearing yellow hard hats, which didn’t make any sense, because for once there was absolutely no construction going on in this neighborhood.

The truck backed into the street in a half–turn as the garage door began to lower. The truck headed off down Sixty–eighth Street, and Little José said, “Take a look at that license plate.”

So Big José did: PF WON.

“That’s no commercial plate,” Little José said. “That truck’s gotta have a commercial plate. José, there’s something wrong.”

Big José already had the cell phone in his hand. The local precinct was on his speed–dial, and when the bored voice answered, he said, “This is José Carreras, security at the Imperiatum.”

“How can I help you?”

“There’s a white Ford truck just left this building with a New York license plate PF space WON. I think that license plate is supposed to be on a BMW instead, and there’s something funny going on.”

“You want me to run the plate? Hold on.”

The NYPD’s hold music was the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, which didn’t seem right somehow, but it was more pleasant than listening to perky female voices keep you up to date on local parking regulations. Besides which, it wasn’t that long before the original cop came back:

“You’re right, that tag is assigned to a four–year–old BMW Series One.”

“Owned,” Big José said, “by Preston Fareweather.”

“That’s right.”

“The truck just turned off Sixty–eighth onto Madison,” Big José said, “and Preston Fareweather just came home to his penthouse in the Imperiatum last night after a long absence. I think you might want to stop that truck and send some people over here.”

“They’re on their way.”