19 Purchase Street (45 page)

“Well, what do you think?” he asked.

“I'm leaning.”

“Which way?”

“Toward the deal.”

“Good.”

“But I need you to go over it again.”

“It's simple enough, just what I said.”

“I don't want any misunderstandings later. After all, it's not something we're going to have in writing. So give it to me again.”

“From what point?”

“From the top.”

Hine took in an impatient breath and outlined the proposal point for point. When he was vague or too brief, Gainer interrupted with questions. He got more from Hine this time regarding
orders
, how they worked, who could originate them and how they didn't get carried over from one Custodian to the next.

“Supposing everything goes as you say, except you don't get appointed Custodian, what then?” Gainer asked.

“Never happen.”

“Are you really in that solid?”

“Yes …” Hine didn't believe he was stretching the truth. He was more than qualified for the spot with his Hotchkiss, Yale and Harvard Business School background. He had also attended the prestigious Advanced Management Program at the University of Southern California and he was married to a Whitcroft of the High Board Whitcrofts. “… I'm in.”

There were other things Gainer wondered about and would have asked had he not felt better off not knowing. Such as where the money in The Balance came from and who it was Darrow and Hine answered to. It didn't quite sit that the Mob had Darrow and Hine types out front for them, but it made so much less sense the other way around that Gainer didn't even consider it.

“Is everything clear to you now?” Hine asked.

“Just about.”

“Are we in business?”

Gainer nodded.

Hine smiled and, rather like he was celebrating the consummation of the deal, he sucked in his stomach, made his long waist so concave there seemed to be nothing in there between his navel and spine.

“I'll need something from you,” Gainer said.

“I told you not to expect me to participate.”

“I want a rundown on the security set-up at Number 19, as detailed as possible and don't worry about it being too technical.”

“Sweet will see that you get that.”

“Also, my end has to be forty million.”

“That disturbs me.”

“Why?”

“The way you keep nibbling.”

“Nibbles to you, bites to me,” Gainer told him.

“This better be the last of it.”

“Yeah, it will, forty will do.”

T
HREE
hours later.

Gainer was at Chapin's apartment on East Forty-ninth. Leslie, Chapin and Vinny were there.

The apartment was a seven room duplex, the top two floors of a five floor brownstone. The lower floor was where Chapin did his living. It was a mess, the red long-fibered shag rug badly in need of vacuuming and looking as though it was hiding whatever had been dropped on it over the last six months. Nothing matched. A chair was a chair, a sofa a sofa, and that was all that mattered. There were lots of glasses with beer foam dried in them and ashtrays that were emptied but never washed so they were caked black. At least half the cigarettes stubbed out were lipsticked, various shades.

Vinny couldn't keep his eyes off Leslie's six carat D diamond ring.

The upper floor of Chapin's place was totally opposite to the lower. One long room immaculate and in perfect order. All surfaces were of white enamel or formica, the floor was seamed stainless steel. A large air exchange unit kept the atmosphere dust free. Banked along the walls and above work surfaces were electronic units for various purposes. Hundreds of switches, hundreds of indicators, black facades punctuated by tiny red power lights.

Apparently one item out of place was the fishing rod on the counter. Chapin had just detached the reel from it. His fingers had the delicacy and certitude of a surgeon. He spoke to Gainer as he worked. “Hope you sat as still as possible.”

“I tried to.”

“Any trouble getting it out?”

“No, except the leads broke.”

“Expected as much.”

Chapin was referring to a molded plastic capsule similar to the sort that contain small toys children get from quarter machines at supermarkets. This one, constructed by Chapin, encased a power source. It had been inserted into Gainer's rectum. From the power capsule a pair of wires, black and fine as thread, led out and ran left and right of Gainer's testicles and up into his pubic hair, where, entangled, they were lost from sight. At the top of each wire was a tiny module. One was a receiver, the other a transmitter.

As Vinny put it, Gainer really had a bug up his ass.

Vinny and Chapin had, of course, been the two fishing guys on the beach. Chapin's rod had served as an antenna, his reel and line a miniature tape recorder.

Now Chapin carefully wound the magnetic wire from the reel onto a proper spool.

“Maybe just a lot of hassle for nothing,” Gainer remarked.

“Believe in me,” Chapin said.

He put the spool on a playback unit, fed the wire through and fixed it to a take-up spool. Turned on the playback.

First heard was a range of scratchy sounds along with a mushy hiss.

“Hair and ocean,” Chapin explained.

Then came Hine's voice, not perfect fidelity but understandable and, most important, unmistakably Hine.

They played the recording all the way through. It was all there, what Gainer could use as a backup to keep Hine straight. There would be no double cross. The moment Hine even seemed to be making such a move, one session with this tape would keep him in line. Forever.

Chapin filtered out most of the extraneous noises on the tape, refined it even more and transferred it to a regular cassette. He destroyed the original. “Where does this go?” he asked, handing the cassette to Gainer.

“In a deep, dark box.”

“You could take it to this guy Darrow, use it to buy yourself an out.”

“Could.”

“Darrow ought to be eternally grateful.”

“For a week or two,” was Gainer's opinion.

“By that, you mean you're going to try to pull it off?”

“Somehow.”

“You can't,” Chapin told him.

“It's worth a shot.”

“For one thing, do you know how much three billion weighs?”

Vinny winced at the amount.

“A billion in hundreds comes to twenty thousand pounds,” Chapin said. “Three billion would be sixty. You can't handle it … not alone.”

“I'll be helping,” Leslie put in.

Chapin went across the room, snapped a few switches on and off to give his hands something to do. “Wouldn't it be great,” he said, “to make a triple crown winner out of a cheap dog. A filly maybe to make up for Genuine Risk.”

Gainer could sense Chapin's mental circuits working unrelated to the words coming from his mouth. Chapin glanced through a 30X magnifying glass to a microcircuit in progress. “It will take three guys, at least three,” he said.

“Suggest something,” Gainer said.

“I owe you.”

“Not anymore.”

“You didn't say that. What you just said was you feel I still owe you and you want me to even up by coming in on this thing with you. Isn't that what he said, Vinny?”

“That's what I heard, no question about it.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

G
AINER
wondered if he really appeared to be appreciating the garden.

He was on one of its footpaths strolling leisurely while he took measure of the rear grounds of the house and the wall that ran uninterrupted along the perimeter. On the other side of that wall, Gainer knew, was Westchester County Airport property, a section of the outer reaches of the airport, actually a buffer area of woods and undergrowth. At no point did the wall come within fifty feet of the house; it came closest to a large shed connected to the back of the garage, but the garage was separated from the house by a good twenty feet.

Gainer picked a snapdragon. Squeezed the pink blossom to cause its mouth to open in beautiful ferocity. Meanwhile, he studied the objective, the solid back of that upper part of the north wing.

No easy way up to it. No way into it from the outside. He came to the conclusion that the only possibility would be from the inside. Hardly a prospect. What, he chided himself, had he expected, that stealing three billion weighing sixty thousand pounds would be a piece of cake?

He heard his name called out by Darrow, who was standing in the open french doorway of his study. Darrow beckoned once with a forefinger, and Gainer went up to him. “I'm sure you dislike hanging around here doing nothing,” Darrow said.

“I don't mind.”

“Where is Mrs. Pickering this morning?”

“She had an errand.”

“Oh? So do you. I've decided to take you on as a regular carrier. How does that strike you?”

“Thanks.”

“Perhaps you doubted my largesse?”

“Never.”

“It's all arranged. You make your first regular carry tonight. That won't be an inconvenience, I hope.” Implying it better not be.

“No.”

“Did Mrs. Pickering by chance say when she would return?”

“She had a lot of business to take care of.”

“Well, Hine has your carry all packed and ready.”

“How much?”

“Three million. I suggest you get with Hine at once. And, by the way, Andrew … this time abide by the two-week stay rule.” Darrow smiled with his lips and stepped back into the study, closed the french doors to be definitely done with Gainer.

Gainer entered the house by way of the rear hall, went up to his room. Hine was waiting for him there. A thirty inch suitcase with a red and white name tag stood near the door. Hine was strictly business. “Your passport is in order?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Let me see it.”

Gainer got it for him. Hine examined it.

“You're on the Concorde to Paris again,” Hine said. “Leaving at two. Sweet will run you out.”

Gainer packed. The bastards were hurrying him off same as before. He'd just gotten used to the idea of stealing for his life and fortune and now this lousy turn. He pushed his clothes into his suitcase.

Hine saw him down to the car. The final thing Hine said to him was: “You have two weeks.”

Sweet didn't take the shorter route of the Bronx Whitestone to Kennedy. Instead he went down Route 95 and when they came to the Triboro Bridge he hung a right and went over into town. Gainer, only along for the ride, didn't ask about it.

At the Sovereign Apartments on East Fifty-eighth Sweet pulled the car over. A young man with a suitcase got in. He was about Gainer's age and build, had similar coloring.

Sweet demanded Gainer's passport.

Gainer handed it over and, in return, Sweet gave him a flat manila envelope and told him, “Get the fuck out. And stay out of sight for two weeks.”

Gainer did. Stood on the curb and watched the car, containing the three million carry and his replacement, go down the street and turn out of sight. See, he told himself, how sometimes it's best to just go with the greedy flow of things. Obviously Hine had ordered the switch so Gainer could get on with his job. Better stay out of Darrow's sight for two weeks, though, like Sweet said.

He walked the seven blocks to the Forty-ninth Street garage and Norma's Fiat. Three-quarters of an hour later he was up in Westchester County pulling in at the drive to Rodger's house in Bedford. He'd never been there and his first impression was of all the places of Rodger's he knew, he liked this one most.

The house was set well back from the residential road beyond a well-chinked native rock wall and a grove of elms and oaks and dogwood. A New England Colonial of hospitable size, two and a half stories and twelve rooms with a separate servants' cottage and situated to best advantage on twenty acres. The exterior of the house was freshly painted white as white could be. Family white, Gainer thought. Each of its windows was eared by shutters enameled black, and hinged with gleaming brass. It occurred to Gainer that someone spent much of their life keeping all those hinges polished.

Leslie's Corniche was parked in the drive but she didn't seem to be anywhere about. Gainer finally found her down by the brook. Seated on a big, friendly flat rock with her white cotton dress hiked up and her feet in a slow-running pool. Apparently she was far away in thought, didn't seem to realize Gainer was there until he spoke up and asked what she was doing.

She hitched out of it. “When did you get here?”

“Just now.”

“I was trying to get through to Lady Caroline or, anyway, allow her to get to me. The water usually helps.”

“Maybe she's gone shopping or to the hairdresser's or something.”

“Whatever.”

“How does the water help?”

“It increases spiritual receptivity. I'm not sure of that but it makes sense. It's my own theory.” Leslie took a deep breath. “Lady Caroline has been buzzing and hovering around but at the moment, I don't know, she's not being at all attentive. Have you heard from Norma lately?”

“Not for a while.” He hadn't told Leslie about Norma's skimming from her carries. Another important thing withheld. They were mounting. Such omissions might be best for his psychological comfort but they bothered him.

“Try your feet in the water,” Leslie advised, taking hers out. Her feet appeared cold. She dried them on the bottom of her skirt. “Where were you?” she asked.

“At Number 19 and almost in Zurich.”

“You can't go to Zurich, we've got money to steal.”

Gainer agreed. He related how he'd gotten out of the carry.

“Bless Hine's heart,” Leslie said.

They walked up through the cared-for woods to the house. The acorns, twigs and pebbles Leslie stepped barefoot on didn't bother her. Gainer recalled she'd once bought a pair of clogs that had inner soles of hundreds of hard rubber protrusions. He tried them and was unable to take more than four excruciating steps, but she wore them around for hours at a time, even while doing her windowing twenty blocks up Madison. Marvelous massage therapy for the internal organs, she'd claimed. Gainer hadn't commented, couldn't accept how painful pressure on, for example, the heel area might benefit one's prostate.