The Hot Rock (21 page)

And the black men were still after him. Dortmunder looked to his right, and passengers were disembarking from an SAS plane over there. Join them? Except that he would look a little strange at customs, with no passport, no ticket, no luggage. He turned the other way and there was darkness, and he ran into it.

The next fifteen minutes were hectic ones for Dortmunder. He kept running, and the three black men kept running in his wake. He was all over the territory reserved for airplanes, running now on grass, now on a taxiway, now on gravel, jumping over marker lights, trying not to silhouette himself too clearly against the brightly lit areas and also trying not to get himself run down by a passing 707.

From time to time he saw the civilian part of the airport, his part, the other side of a fence, or around the corner of a building, with people walking and taxis driving along, but every time he headed that way the black men angled to head him off and keep him in the flat open exposed area.

And now he was getting farther and farther away from buildings, bright lights, all connection with the passengers’ part of the terminal. The runways were dead ahead, with the long lines of planes waiting their turns to take off. An Olympia jet would take off, followed by a Mohawk twin engine prop plane, followed by a pop singer’s Lear jet, followed by an ancient two–seater Ercoupe, followed by a Lufthansa 707, the monsters and the midgets one after another, obediently taking their turns, the big guys never shouldering the little guys out of the way, that being done for them in the control tower.

One of the planes waiting to take off was a Waco Vela, an Italian–built, American–assembled single–engine five–seater with an American–made Franklin engine. At the controls was a computer salesman named Firgus, with his friend Bullock asleep across the back seat. Ahead of him was a TWA jet, which trundled into place at the head of the runway, roared and vibrated a few seconds, and then began galumphing away like Sidney Greenstreet playing basketball. Till it became airborne, at which point it also became graceful and beautiful.

Firgus drove his little plane forward, out onto the runway, and turned right. Now the runway stretched ahead of him. Firgus sat there looking at his controls, waiting for the tower to give him the go–ahead, and regretting the chop suey he’d had for dinner, and all at once the right–hand door opened and a man with a gun got in.

Firgus stared at him in astonishment. “Havana?” he said.

“Just up in the sky will do,” Dortmunder told him and looked out the side window at the three black men running his way.

“Okay, N733W,” the tower said in Firgus’s earphones. “Cleared for takeoff.”

“Uh,” said Firgus.

Dortmunder looked at him. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said. “Just take off.”

“Yes,” Firgus said. Luckily he was an old hand with this plane and could fly it while his mind was doing flip–flops. He set the Vela going, they skeetered away down the runway, the black men came to a panting stop way back there, and the Vela climbed abruptly into the air.

“Good,” Dortmunder said.

Firgus looked at him. “If you shoot me,” he said, “we’ll crash and you’ll die too.”

“I won’t shoot anybody,” Dortmunder said.

“But we can’t make it to Cuba,” Firgus said. “With the gas I’ve got, we wouldn’t make it much past Washington.”

“I don’t want to go to Cuba,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t want to go to Washington either.”

“Then where do you want to go? Not over the ocean, that’s even longer.”

“Where were you going?”

Firgus couldn’t figure any of this out. “Well,” he said, “Pittsburgh, actually.”

“Head that way,” Dortmunder said.

“You want to go to Pittsburgh?”

“Just do what you were going to do,” Dortmunder said. “Don’t mind me.”

“Well,” Firgus said. “All right.”

Dortmunder looked at the sleeping man in back, then out the window at the lights going by in the darkness below. They were away from the airport already. The Balabomo Emerald was in Dortmunder’s jacket pocket. Things were more or less under control.

It took fifteen minutes to fly over New York and reach New Jersey, and Firgus was silent all that time. But he seemed to relax a little more when they were over the darker, quieter New Jersey swamp, and he said, “Boy, I don’t know what your problem is, but you sure scared the dickens out of me.”

“Sorry,” Dortmunder said. “I was in a hurry.”

“I guess you must have been.” Firgus glanced around at Bullock, who was still asleep. “Does he have a surprise coming,” he said.

But Bullock kept on sleeping, and another quarter hour went by, and then Dortmunder said, “What’s that down there?”

“What’s what?”

“That sort of pale strip.”

Firgus looked down and said, “Oh, that’s Route Eighty. You know, one of the new superhighways they’re building. That part isn’t done yet. And they’re obsolete, you know. This is the coming thing, the small private plane. Why, do you know —”

“It looks done,” Dortmunder said.

“What?”

“That road down there. It looks done.”

“Well, it isn’t open yet.” Firgus was irritated. He wanted to tell Dortmunder the wonderful statistics of private plane ownership in the United States.

“Land there,” Dortmunder said.

Firgus stared at him. “Do what?”

“It’s wide enough for a plane like this,” Dortmunder said. “Land there.”

“Why?”

“So I can get out. Don’t worry, I’m still not going to shoot you.”

Firgus banked the plane and circled back over the pale strip on the dark ground below. “I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “There’s no lights or anything.”

“You can do it,” Dortmunder told him. “You’re a good pilot, I can tell you are.” He didn’t know anything about flying at all.

Firgus preened. “Well, I suppose I could bring her in down there,” he said. “Be a little tricky, but not impossible.”

“Good.”

Firgus circled twice more before making the attempt. He was clearly nervous, and his nervousness communicated itself to Dortmunder, who almost told him to fly on, they’d find someplace better farther on. But there wouldn’t be anyplace better. Dortmunder couldn’t have Firgus land at a regular airport anywhere, so it had to be something irregular, and at least that was a straight ribbon of concrete down there, and wide enough to land the plane on.

Which Firgus did, very well, once he’d built his nerve up to it. He landed as light as a feather, brought the Vela to a stop in seven hundred feet, and turned a huge smile at Dortmunder. “That’s what I call flying,” he said.

“Me too,” Dortmunder said.

Firgus looked at Bullock again and said testily, “I wish to hell he’d wake up.” He poked Bullock’s shoulder. “Wake up!”

“Let him alone,” Dortmunder said.

“If he doesn’t see you,” Firgus said, “he won’t believe any of this. Hey, Bullock! God damn it, man, you’re missing an adventure!” He punched Bullock’s shoulder again, a little harder than before.

“Thanks for the lift,” Dortmunder said and got out of the plane.

“Bullock!” shouted Firgus, pummeling and punching his friend. “Will you for Christ’s sake wake up!”

Dortmunder walked away into the darkness.

Bullock came up to consciousness amid a rain of blows, sat up, yawned, rubbed his face, looked around, blinked, frowned, and said, “Where the hell are we?”

“Route Eighty in Jersey,” Firgus told him. “Look, do you see that guy? Look quick, will you, before he’s out of sight!”

“Route Eighty? We’re in an airplane, Firgus!”

“Will you look!”

“What the hell you doin’ on the ground? You want to cause an accident? What are you doin’ on Route Eighty?”

“He’s out of sight,” Firgus said, throwing up his hands in disgust. “I asked you to look, but no.”

“You must be drunk, or something,” Bullock said. “You’re driving an airplane down Route Eighty!”

“I’m not driving an airplane down Route Eighty!”

“Well, what the hell do you call it then?”

“We were hijacked, God damn it! A guy jumped on the plane with a gun and —”

“You should of been in the air, it wouldn’t of happened.”

“Back at Kennedy! Just before we took off, he jumped in with a gun and hijacked us.”

“Oh, sure he did,” Bullock said. “And here we are in lovely Havana.”

“He didn’t want to go to Havana.”

“No. He wanted to go to New Jersey. He hijacked an airplane to take him to New Jersey.”

“Can I help it?” yelled Firgus. “It’s what happened!”

“One of us is having a bad dream,” Bullock said, “and since you’re at the wheel I hope it’s me.”

“If you’d woke up in time —”

“Yeah, well, wake me when we get to the Delaware Water Gap. I don’t want to miss the expression on their faces when an airplane drives up to the tollbooth.” Bullock shook his head and lay down again.

Firgus stayed half turned in the seat, glowering at him. “A guy hijacked us,” he said, voice dangerously soft. “It did happen.”

“If you’re gonna fly this low,” Bullock said, with his eyes closed, “why not stop at a diner and get us a couple coffees and Danish to go.”

“When we get to Pittsburgh,” Firgus said, “I am going to punch you in the mouth.” And he faced front, turned the Vela around, took off, and flew in a bright fury all the way to Pittsburgh.

The Ambassador was eating a Sara Lee Cinnamon Nut Coffee Cake at the moment. The whole thing, all by himself, which was one of the reasons he was such a very stout man. It was his mid–afternoon snack for today. He was drinking with it coffee with cream and sugar. He was enjoying himself hugely, in more than one meaning of the term, and he disliked being interrupted. He said, “What does he want to see me about?”

“He says it concerns the Balabomo Emerald.”

The Ambassador frowned. “He’s a policeman?”

“I don’t think so, Ambassador.”

“What do you think he is?”

“A gangster, Ambassador.”

The Ambassador lifted an eyebrow. “Really,” he said. “Bring him here, this gangster.”

“Yes, Ambassador.”

The staff member went away, and the Ambassador filled the waiting time and his mouth with Sara Lee Cinnamon Nut Coffee Cake. He was just adding coffee when the staff member returned and said, “I have him here, sir.”

The Ambassador waved a hand to have the gangster brought in, and Dortmunder was ushered into his presence. The Ambassador motioned for Dortmunder to sit down across the table, and Dortmunder did so. The Ambassador, still chewing and swallowing, made hand motions suggestive of offering some coffee cake to Dortmunder, but Dortmunder said, “No, thank you.” The Ambassador drank some more coffee, swallowed hugely, patted his lips with his napkin, and said, “Ahh. Now. I understand you want to talk about the Balabomo Emerald.”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.

“What do you want to say about it?”

“In the first place,” Dortmunder said, “this is just between you and me. No police.”

“Well, they’re looking for it, of course.”

“Sure.” Dortmunder looked at the staff member, standing alertly near the door, and back at the Ambassador. “I don’t like saying things in front of two witnesses, that’s all,” he said.

The Ambassador smiled and shook his head. “You’ll have to chance it, I’m afraid,” he said. “I prefer not to be alone with strangers.”

Dortmunder thought about it for a few seconds, then said, “All right. A little over four months ago, somebody stole the Balabomo Emerald.”

“I know that,” said the Ambassador.

“It’s very valuable,” Dortmunder said.

The Ambassador nodded. “I know that too,” he said. “Are you building up to an offer to sell it back to me?”

“Not exactly,” said Dortmunder. “Most valuable stones,” he said, “have imitations made up by their owners, to put on display here and there. Are there any imitations of the Balabomo Emerald?”

“Several,” said the Ambassador. “And I dearly wish one of them had been on display at the Coliseum.”

Dortmunder glanced mistrustfully at the staff member, then said, “I’m here to offer a trade.”

“A trade?”

“The real emerald for one of the imitations.”

The Ambassador waited for Dortmunder to go on, then said with a puzzled smile, “I’m afraid I don’t understand. The imitation, and what else?”

“Nothing else,” Dortmunder said. “A straight trade, one stone for the other.”

“I don’t follow that,” the Ambassador admitted.

“Oh, and one thing more,” Dortmunder said. “You don’t make any public announcement that you’ve got it back until I give you the all–clear. Maybe a year or two, maybe less.”

The Ambassador pursed his lips. “It seems to me,” he said, “you have a fascinating story to tell.”

“Not in front of two witnesses,” said Dortmunder.

“Very well,” said the Ambassador and turned to his staff member. “Wait out in the hall,” he said.

“Yes, Ambassador.”

When they were alone, the Ambassador said, “Now.”

“Here’s what happened,” Dortmunder said, and told him the whole story, without names, except for Major Iko’s. The Ambassador listened, nodding from time to time, smiling from time to time, tut–tutting from time to time, and when Dortmunder was done he said, “Well. I suspected the Major might have something to do with the theft. All right, he tried to cheat you and you got the emerald back. Now what?”

“Someday,” Dortmunder said, “the Major’s going to come back with two hundred thousand dollars. It might be next month, next year, I don’t know when, but I know it’ll happen. He really wants that emerald.”

“Talabwo does, yes,” the Ambassador said.

“So they’ll raise the cash,” Dortmunder said. “The last thing the Major shouted after me was that I should hold on to the emerald, he’d come pay me, and I know he will.”

“But you don’t want to give him the emerald any more, is that it? Because he cheated you.”

“Right. What I want to give him now is the business. And I will. That’s why I want to work this trade. You get the real emerald, and keep it under wraps for a while. I take the imitation and hold on to it till the Major shows up. Then I sell it to him for two hundred thousand bucks, he takes it home to Africa on the plane, you break the story about having the real emerald back.”

The Ambassador gave a rueful smile. “They would not treat the Major well in Talabwo,” he said, “if he paid two hundred thousand dollars for a piece of green glass.”

“That’s what I kind of thought.”

Still smiling, the Ambassador shook his head and said, “I must make a memo to myself never to try to cheat you.”

Dortmunder said, “Is it a deal?”

“Of course it’s a deal,” said the Ambassador. “Aside from having the emerald back, aside from anything else at all, it’s a deal because I’ve waited years to give the Major one in the eye. I could tell some stories of my own, you know. Are you sure you won’t have some coffee cake?”

“Maybe just a little slice,” Dortmunder said.

“And some coffee. I insist.” The Ambassador glanced over at the rain–smeared window. “Isn’t it a beautiful day,” he said.

“Beautiful,” said Dortmunder.