Sharky's Machine (12 page)

There was a moment of stunned silence before everybody laughed.

‘No shit, there he was cruising down the interstate and his daughter’s husband is blowing him. Well, Weir takes the tape out to Degallante’s place on ‘West Wesley Road and they’re all sitting around the living room finessing each other out and Degallante is telling them how he’s not connected anymore and he’s retired and they can get lost and then Weir turns on the tape recorder. Thirty seconds and the old man throws up all over the floor and Weir tells him what they’re gonna do, they’re gonna give copies to The New York Times, Time magazine and Playboy. A month later he was back in Sicily and the whole family was with him and that’s the way it really happened.’

‘So how did you get in the OC?’ Papa said.

‘Weir told D’Agastino and D’Agastino drafted me. I got a workshop in the basement. He never sees me, I don’t see him. We’re both very happy about the arrangement.’

Sharky turned into Lindburgh Drive and headed towards Peachtree Street. The two white buildings loomed through the rain like stark, windowed tombstones.

‘How much time we gonna need?’ Sharky asked The Nosh.

‘Not long. We give the place a quick wash, decide where we want the buttons, then plant ‘em. I want to see the roof first, maybe set up a listening post up there. I’d say fifteen, maybe twenty minutes and we’ll be out.’

‘You’re on,’ Sharky said.

‘Papa and I can recognize her,’ Livingston said. ‘How about I stay in the car so I can spot her when she comes in? Papa can ride the elevator, slow her down if he has to.’

‘That’s the play, then,’ Sharky said.

They parked the car. Sharky, Papa, and The Nosh entered the building. The security guard, a large white.. haired man with a wasted body lost in an oversized uniform and a seamed face, was sitting in a small office reading The National Enquirer. The Nosh laid the card on the desk in front of him.

‘I’m Friedman, city inspection department. We’re doing a stress check on your elevators,’ he said. ‘We’ll be in and out of the place here for the next couple of days.’

The guard looked at the card and reached for the telephone. ‘I better check the main office,’ he said.

‘You didn’t get the letter?’ The Nosh said quickly.

‘I didn’t get no letter,’ the guard said, his hand resting on the phone.

‘Well, your main office got the letter. We already checked with them.’

‘Hell,’ the old man said. ‘I sit here on my duster all day, nobody tells me shit.’

‘Ain’t it the truth. We’re always the last ones to know, right?’

The guard relaxed. He had found company for his tarnished ego. ‘Sure is the way. The workin’ man is always the last one to know anything. Well, I go on Social Security in six months. After that they can all dip their wick in the mashed potatoes for all I care. You need any help?’

‘Is the door open onto the roof?’

‘Yep.’

‘Then we’re in business. Tell you what, we’ll leave Johnson here in the elevators. That way, if we have to shut down for a minute or two he can calm down the residents.’

‘I appreciate that. I get enough crap as it is. People ain’t happy if they ain’t bitchin’ about something.’

‘Keep the card so the night rnan’ll know we’re here, okay? Don’t want anybody takin’ a shot at us.’ The Nosh winked at him.

‘Gun ain’t loaded anyway.’

They got on the elevator.

‘There’s a guy got the wrong end of the chicken all his life,’ Papa said. He looked at The Nosh. ‘You coulda been a pretty good conman.’

‘He is a pretty good conman,’ Sharky said.

They got off at twelve. Papa said, ‘Keep in touch,’ as the elevator doors hushed shut. Sharky and The Nosh went up to the roof, surveying it through a hard, slanting rain. ‘Over there,’ said the Nosh, ‘that concrete blockhouse.’ They ran through the rain to the concrete shed in the middle of the roof and entered it. It was a single room, fairly warm and spotless. Fluorescent tubes flickered overhead, shedding uncertain light on a row of humming motors. On the wall facing the motors was a bank of power and water meters.

‘Perfect,’ The Nosh said.

‘What are we doin’ up here?’ Sharky asked.

‘What we’re gonna do, we’re gonna set us up a listening post in here, okay? The mark is only two floors down so we can use wireless mikes.’ He opened the tool chest and took out an object no larger than a button which was attached by a single wire to a rectangular box about the size of a disposable cigarette lighter. A pin protruded from the back of the button. It looked like a drawing pin.

‘This is the mike,’ The Nosh said, ‘and the little box is the amplifier. We pre-set the amplifier to a specific frequency and it can be picked up by this miniature FM tuner.’ The tuner Jay in the flat of his hand. ‘Then I plug this cassette deck into the tuner. It’s voice-activated. When anybody down there talks, the tuner picks it up, the recorder turns on automatically, and it’s all on tape.’ The cassette deck was also miniaturized. ‘I made it myself,’ The Nosh said. ‘Real simple. Only one circuit.’

‘You could put the whole works in your pocket,’ Sharky marvelled.

‘Each mike has its own tuner and recorder. If she walks from room to room talking, one recorder cuts in when the other one cuts off. We’ll plant the mikes in each room.’ He pointed to a button on the tape decks. ‘This is a monitor button. Push it down and you can listen continuously. I also have a set of earphones I’ll leave up here which will help with the monitoring.’

‘Amazing,’ Sharky said. ‘Will it pick up anything else?’

‘Yeah, stereo, radio, like that. Not walking or normal room noises. But don’t worry. Later on, see, we can go in with a dip filter and erase the background noise. What we do, we dip in there and set the filter for the voice frequency, then —‘

‘Nosh?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You’re telling me more than I want to know.’

‘Right.’

He took out three tuners and recorders and fitted them together and placed them in one corner of the room behind the motors. ‘One more thing,’ he told Sharky. ‘I got you a dozen or so cassettes and they’re clearly marked so you don’t put ‘em in backwards. The tapes’re good for ninety minutes a side. There’s a beeper on each tape which sounds off thirty seconds before the end.’

‘Right.’

‘Okay, let’s go down and see what we got on ten.’

Sharky removed a walkie-talkie from a case attached to his belt. ‘This is Zebra One, we’re leaving topside.’

They found 10-A next to the elevators. Sharky rang the bell. Nothing. He rang it again and they waited. Still nothing. He knocked sharply on the door.

‘Okay,’ The Nosh said, ‘let’s do it.’

He took a case from the tool chest and opened it. It contained a set of stainless steel needles varying in length from one to six inches. He studied the lock carefully, then selected one of the needles and, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, eased it into the keyhole, twisting it slowly as he did. ft caught for an instant and The Nosh gave it a quarter-turn, felt it slip farther until it caught again. Another quarter-turn and the tumblers clicked. He smiled, stood up, and opened the door.

They moved in quickly and quietly, closing the door behind them, waiting, listening. There was not a sound. ‘Okay,’ Sharky said, ‘check it out.’ They went swiftly through, the apartment, peering into each room. Empty. They returned to the small entrance ball by the front door and studied the layout. The living room was directly in front of them. On either side of it was a bedroom and bath. The dining room was immediately to their left and the kitchen was adjacent to it. A balcony connected the living room and the master bedroom to the right.

Sharky curled his tongue against his teeth and whistled softly.

‘I’ll give her one thing,’ he said. ‘She’s got class.’

The living room was done in beige and cream with pale mauve walls. A large Olympus beige-on-cream sofa faced them. It was several feet in front of the french doors, which opened onto the balcony, and half the width of the room. Two brown and beige striped Savoy chairs faced each other on each side of the sofa. A Porto Bello coffee table in antique white sat in front of the sofa and between the chairs. The vicuna rug was grey. There were plants all over the room, beside the french doors, in the corners and hanging from the ceiling, tall nephrolepis ferns, bottle palms, begonias, columnea, and spider plants. The stereo sat in a lowboy against one wall with the speakers in the ceiling.

The dining room had mirrored walls and a large smoked glass table with chromium and silk chairs.

‘Shit, the furniture in here cost more than my house,’ The Nosh said.

‘You take that bedroom and I’ll check out the master,’ Sharky said. ‘We may run out of time.’

The bed was king-sized and covered with a llama blanket. The wall behind it and the ceiling were mirrored. The rest of the furniture was white wicker with pale green cushions. An enormous Norfolk pine filled one corner of the room and several hanging baskets dominated the corner facing it. Sharky checked the drawers in the night tables. One contained s small bottle of pills, a vial of white powder, a silver cigarette case, and three vibrators of various sizes, one of which was shaped like an egg. Sharky tasted the powder, opened the cigarette case, smelled one of the cigarettes, and examined the pills.

‘Hey Shark, c’m’ere,’ The Nosh called from the other room.

He put the pills back in the drawer and closed it. The other room contained a massage table over which was a light bar with four sunlamps aimed at the table. The two windows were stained glass. A pair of lovebirds cooed and kissed each other in a tall wicker cage that hung among the flowering baskets that dominated the room. A small marble-topped table covered with vials of oils and body creams Sat beside the massage table. In one corner there were perhaps a dozen multi-coloured pillows of all sizes arranged on the floor and against the wall. Tropical fish peered bug-eyed from an enormous gurgling aquarium against the other wall. The fish stared at them, then darted soundlessly through dancing seaweed.

‘It’s Disney World, Sea World, and Jungle World, all wrapped up in one,’ The Nosh said with delight. ‘I could let the kids loose in here for hours.’

‘The table in there by the bed has some first-rate machine rolled Colombian grass, Quaaludes, poppers, and some coke that must’ve cost a bill-and-a-half on the street.’

‘You ever get the feeling we’re in the wrong business?’ The Nosh said.

‘Only when I’m awake,’ said Sharky. ‘Let’s get it on.’

‘The plants are perfect,’ The Nosh said. He took one of the button-mikes and slipped the pin into the stem of a broad-leafed calathea plant in a corner of the room. The mike faced the massage table. He ran the wire down along the stem of the plant, securing it with a roll of green tape. Then he pushed the aerial down into the soft earth and brushed loose dirt over it. He opened one drawer of the tool chest and took a small tube of green paint from among many multi-coloured vials and dabbed the mike until it blended into the plant. He stood up and smiled.

‘That’s it. This room is fixed.’

‘What if she waters the plants?’ Sharky asked. ‘Won’t It hurt that equipment?’

‘Nope. All the stuff is coated with silicone, It’s waterproof. Let’s hit the living room.’

He stood in the centre of the room and snapped his fingers several times, checking the ambient sound. ‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘not bad at all. All the furniture, plants, that shit, deadens the room. We won’t get too much bounce. But we gotta keep away from those speakers in the ceiling.’ This time he chose a ficus tree and jabbed the mike into the trunk, close to the dirt. He dabbed it with brown paint, whistling softly to himself as he buried the amplifier. Sharky stood on the balcony, trying to look down at the parking lot, but he could barely see it.

‘Hey, Shark,’ The Nosh said, ‘you remember the time I bugged the teachers’ lounge at Grady and we caught old man Dettman screwin’ the phys. ed. teacher?’

‘Are you kidding? That’s how I passed geometry.’

‘I was just thinkin’ how at the time we thought they were such degenerates. She was a real hunk, Shark. A real hunk.’ He smoothed dirt over the amplifier. ‘Lookin’ back, I can’t say 1 blame old Dettman.’

‘Maybe we should’ve worked out a trade-out with her. Who ever uses geometry anyway?’

‘What was her name?’

‘Old Torpedo Tits.’

‘No, her real name?’

‘Jesus, I don’t remember.’

There was no way to see into the parking lot. He went back into the living room. ‘Old Torpedo Tits,’ The Nosh said, heading into the master bedroom.

Down below, a blue Mercedes 450SL drifted into the complex and stopped in front of the east tower. Sharky’s walkie-talkie came to life.

‘Zebra One, this is Zebra Three,’ Livingston said. ‘You got company.’

‘Okay Nosh, she’s back,’ Sharky said. He pressed the button on his box. ‘Zebra Two, this is Zebra Three. We need a little time.’

‘You got it,’ Papa said.

A porter came out of the building, running through the rain, and held the door for her. She got out, a long silk- sheathed leg preceding her. She stood an inch taller than the porter as she slipped him a dollar.

‘She’s heading for the lobby,’ Livingston said. The Nosh was on his knees, dabbing paint on the mike. ‘I’m wrapping it up,’ he said.

Sharky started to leave the room, then went back to the night table. He opened the drawer, took one of the joints from the cigarette case, and dropped it in his pocket.

‘Let’s hustle, brother.’ The Nosh was checking out his case.

‘I’m missing a paintbrush,’ he said. ‘It’s gotta be right around these plants somewhere.’

‘Shit,’ Sharky said.

Papa had seen the blue Mercedes pull up in front of the apartment, watched as she got out carrying a large Courrèges bag, tipped the porter, and then walked through the rain. He pressed several buttons on one elevator and sent it up, then waited in the other one. She entered the building, smiling at the security guard, walking with her chin slightly raised, looking straight ahead with azure eyes that glittered with life. She was taller than he remembered and very straight and as she approached the elevator she looked straight at Papa, but her gaze seemed to go through him, past him, off someplace beyond him. Papa was suddenly embarrassed, not from tension, but because she was prob.. ably the most stunning creature he had ever seen.