The Digger's Game (20 page)

Magro stopped the Mercury next to the green Vega Kammback. Jay got out of the Mercury. “Need help with the trailer?” Magro said.

“Nope,” Jay said, “just go ahead. Three minutes.”

Magro parked the Mercury in the Post Office lot, finding a space between a chocolate-colored Porsche 911T and a Ford Country Squire. The Digger and Magro got out. Magro took the bolt cutter out of the
rear seat. He held it against his body with his left arm; the rubber grips were tucked into his armpit and he cupped the short, blunt blades in his fingers.

“Nice of the government,” the Digger said, “made a parking lot for the movies.”

The Digger and Magro stepped through the border of the parking lot, between the low shrubs. At the sidewalk they turned left and walked down past the supermarket. In the middle of the block they waited for a blue Cadillac convertible, top down and driven by a man with a bald head, to pass. It left behind a short verse of rock music. They crossed the street and went into the alley behind the Steinman block.

The Steinman block is a four-story brick building facing Beacon Street on the south. Cabot Street is at its westerly end. The northerly side backs onto the alley; it has receiving areas for the retail stores that occupy the first floor. The building is two hundred thirty feet long, sixty feet deep at its widest point.

The Digger and Magro walked up the alley to the third receiving area. It is surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence equipped with a double gate. The gate was closed and padlocked.

“That Marty is a smart bastard,” the Digger said. “That fuckin’ fence, see? Originally the guy that owns this is gonna give Marty a key or else he’s gonna leave the locks open onna gate. ‘Uh uh,’ Marty says, ‘that’ll tell ’em just like we left a note.’ So he turns it down. Then I come around, he starts thinking about it, comes out here and looks. Them posts’re too far apart. There’s about twelve feet between them posts. Thing like this, shouldn’t be more’n four, six at the most.”

“Beautiful,” Magro said. “How come?”

“There’s a fuckin’ water main under there, gas main or something. Some kind of shit. It’s right near the top. They hadda spread out the posts to miss the pipes.”

The Digger and Magro walked past the gates and stepped in behind the westerly fence. Cars passed on Cabot Street. The Digger and Magro stepped into the shadows. When their eyes adjusted they could see
Pavilion
in blue script on a small sign over the loading dock. The Digger knelt near the pole closest to the building wall. He took the chain-link fabric in his hands.

Magro opened the bolt cutter and started snapping the links nearest the pole. As he progressed, he and the Digger stood up. About five feet from the ground he stopped cutting.

“The other side,” the Digger whispered, “come on, willya?”

Magro wiped his forehead on the back of his left glove. “Just the same as always,” he whispered, “I do the fuckin’ work and you bitch about it.”

“I’ll cut, you want,” the Digger said.

Magro handed the bolt cutter to the Digger. Magro held the chain-link fabric taut against the next pole. The Digger opened the jaws of the bolt cutter their maximum inch. Then he brought the rubber grips together. He worked rapidly, the sweat breaking out on his forehead as the links popped.

“Hurry up,” Magro said.

“Shut the fuck up,” the Digger said. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

The green Vega and the U-Haul turned into the alley in front of the supermarket as the Digger reached the
five-foot mark. The Digger and Magro pushed the fabric inward and ducked under it into the receiving area. Then they turned and pushed the fabric upward, bending upward so that it hooked on the x-ends at the top of the fence.

Jay stopped the Vega and the trailer just beyond the receiving area. The Digger and Magro saw the backup lights come on. Jay swung the trailer into the receiving area next to Pavilion. He shut the lights down to parking. The Vega and the trailer moved forward. When they were straight, the backup lights came on again. Jay’s head showed at the driver’s side window. He backed the trailer into the Pavilion area through the hole in the fence. He cramped the wheels of the Vega and the trailer backed up to the loading dock.

Magro stepped forward and unlatched the door of the trailer. Jay got out of the car. He straddled the trailer hitch to open the rear door of the car. The Digger went to the fence. He pushed the cut section forward until the links rode off the x-ends. He lowered the cut portion slowly to the ground.

At the loading dock the Digger said, “You guys watch your ass, you get near the fence. Ends’re sharper’n knives.”

Magro had vaulted onto the loading platform. “Cut yourself?” Jay said. “You wanna look out, you’re liable to get lockjaw from that.”

“Nah,” the Digger said. “Scratched myself.”

“You guys having a meeting or something?” Magro said. “I try this thing or not?”

“Yeah,” Jay said.

Magro stooped and grasped the handle of the overhead
loading door. As he pulled, the latch snapped. The aluminum door rose silently. “Jackpot,” he whispered.

The Digger and Jay clambered onto the platform. Each of them cursed. “When’s the fuckin’ movie get out, now?” the Digger said, breathing heavily.

Jay looked at his watch. It had a luminous dial. “Forty minutes,” he said.

“We better haul ass,” the Digger said.

Magro pushed the door all the way up. The only sound was the rollers on the track. “Kosher,” Magro said. “No alarm switch. He didn’t shit us.”

They went inside. They waited until their eyes had adjusted to the deeper darkness. “Okay,” the Digger said, when the racks of furs were visible. “
Let’s fuckin’ go
, somebody comes out of the movie early.”

“Nobody leaves early,” Jay said, “it’s a skin flick. They got everything in it but that Great Dane you used to see all the time. They’re all sitting there thinking about how they’re gonna do it the same way, they get home.”

The Digger and Jay each wheeled a rack to the edge of the loading platform, Magro guiding them from the front. Magro jumped to the ground. The Digger and Jay peeled the furs off the hangers and dropped them to Magro. Magro put them in the trailer.

“Take it easy,” the Digger said, “throw the damned stuff around like that, Mikey-mike. That’s expensive stuff.”

“Animals didn’t take it easy,” Magro said. “Shut your big fuckin’ mouth and keep workin’.” He put furs in the car.

The Digger and Jay pulled the stripped racks back
into the building, the wooden handles clacking. They brought out full racks, and the wheels squeaked in the darkness. They emptied and returned all of the racks in the receiving area.

“Fine,” Jay said, checking his watch. “Nineteen racks, thirty-four minutes.” He jumped off the loading platform.

The Digger looked back inside once. Then he jumped heavily from the platform. Jay got into the Vega. The Digger walked toward the fence. Magro jumped lightly to the ground. He trotted to the fence behind the Digger. They rolled the fence fabric up again, but did not hook it.

Jay started the Vega. It moved forward, canted back on its rear springs. At the fence Jay said, “You got four minutes. Set off the alarm and run like a bastard.”

“No running,” the Digger said. “Alarm goes soon’s the movie lets out. See you in Worcester.”

The Vega and the trailer went through the hole in the fence. The Digger and Magro bent the wire fabric inward at waist level. When they released it, it stood slightly away from the posts. Magro picked up the bolt cutter.

The Vega and the trailer headed up the alley. The Digger and Magro saw it reach Cabot Street, hesitate and swing right.

Magro went back to the platform. He climbed up. He could see the Digger holding the corner of the wire. He could see the front of the theater on Cabot Street. He waited.

A man wearing a bright-green shirt opened the doors of the theater fully and stopped them against snubs on the sidewalk. One car went by on Cabot Street. Three
women and a man emerged from the theater. The man paused and lit a cigarette. Several more people came out and lit cigarettes. A large number of people came out and the people on the sidewalk moved away. Magro could hear engines starting. He could see the Digger motionless at the fence.

Magro turned the right side of his body away from the door. He allowed the bolt cutter to slip down through his left hand until he held it by one of the rubber grips. Turning his body slightly, he used a bowling motion to scale the bolt cutter noisily along the floor toward the interior door. He heard it strike, hard, and he heard the door snap open.

Magro jumped off the platform. He trotted across the pavement. The Digger went through the hole in the fence. He held it open for Magro. Together they bent the fabric back against the previous bend and tangled some of the cut ends together.

They straightened up quickly and put their hands in their pockets. At the Cabot Street end of the alley five moviegoers turned in. The Digger and Magro were back-to to the moviegoers, and about ninety yards ahead of them, when they reached the Post Office lot. Several people had reached the lot by different routes. The Digger and Magro got into the Mercury. It started at the same time as four other cars.

Magro swung the Mercury out of the lot and into the movie traffic. He turned right on Cabot Street and headed north, toward Commonwealth Avenue.

Twelve minutes after the Vega pulled out of the alley, Magro turned left on Commonwealth Avenue and proceeded at the legal limit toward the Massachusetts Turnpike. At the same time the Newton Police,
hampered by the movie traffic and using no sirens, parked four prowl cars near Pavilion, two in front and two in back.

“Keep in mind, now,” Sergeant Duggan said, “that’s a silent alarm. There could be guys in there with guns, and they don’t know we’re coming. You don’t get paid for getting shot.”

T
HE
G
REEK
surveyed the turquoise shag rug in Schabb’s private office. Schabb sat behind a kidney-shaped birch desk; the kneehole was screened in woven cane. Torrey sat to the left in a brown Naugahyde chair, set on a chromium pedestal. There was a Panasonic pop-up television set on the desk; the telephone was in a walnut box. Two prints of Degas paintings were on the wall.

“All right,” the Greek said. “I see it all.”

“Just what do you think, Greek?” Schabb said.

“I tell you,” the Greek said, “originally I come in here, I open the door and there’s this crotch at the desk there, I was gonna say, ‘Excuse me, must’ve got off the wrong floor.’ So I take a quick look at the door, it says, ‘Regent,’ I gotta be inna right place, there’s nothing wrong with the brain or anything. It’s just, the last time I’m here, there’s no tits in a see-through blouse staring me inna face when I come in.”

“She’s got a bra on, Greek,” Torrey said.

“I know she’s got a bra on,” the Greek said. “I could see the fuckin’ bra, don’t forget. I figure we’re gonna spend all this time on it, I would’ve read the fuckin’ label. She’s also got a mole on her left one, where the bra goes down, there.

“So I think to myself, Richie’s gone and done it. Then I see the rag, and the cabinets, and I, I
don’t
see you guys. So I say to Miss Tits, where are you? And she says, ‘Who?’ Well, them two guys, the one that eats you and the one pays you money so the first one can eat you. Them guys. Your fuckin’ employers.”

Torrey got up and shut the door. “Greek,” he said, “you really got a mouth on you like a fuckin’ sewer, you know that?”

“The worst thing I ever put in my mouth was a cigar,” the Greek said. “I know some guys can’t say that. Now this is my money too. I gotta right to know what’s going on. All of a sudden this thing I own part of gets turned into a fuckin’ first-line whorehouse and nobody ever sent me no letter or nothing. How much does Miss Tits cost? That’s for openers. Then we get to the rest of this shit you guys’ve got all of a sudden.”

“That kid is Joanie Halb,” Torrey said. “I know her brother, took himself a bad one down the track about four years ago, swapping spit boxes. She’s a nice kid and I’m helping a guy out. Eighty-five a week and she can answer the phone and do typing. That’s all she is and that’s all she does.”

“He’s gonna eat her,” the Greek said, to Schabb. “By ten fifteen today she’ll blow him. And private offices too, huh? How much this cost?”

“Two eighty on paper,” Schabb said. “Two sixty, actually. It was two eighty for this, they knocked the wall out. But for the two of them, five twenty.”

“What about all this
shit
you got in here?” the Greek said. “Them hairy rugs, this museum shit. How much am I out on this?”

“Total?” Schabb said, hesitating and looking at Torrey.

“Total,” the Greek said, “and never mind waiting for him to give you the word. I think I gotta right, know how mucha my money you assholes’re throwing out the window ’thout asking me.”

“Around three hundred a month,” Schabb said. “I’m
not sure on the rugs, yet. We rent the rest of the stuff.”

“That’s a hundred of mine,” the Greek said. He looked at Torrey. “I figure, about one eighty a month of my money this little thing of yours, you didn’t even ask me. I gotta loan around a thousand and make four calls to make that. That’s a nice goddamned thing to find out. You fuckin’ cocksucker, I could fuckin’ kill you for this.”