“With our hands,” Phil said, “full of jewels.”
9
The Margaret H. Moran Memorial Library was theoretically closed as of five P.M. on Sundays, but by the time the last patron and the last book/tape/DVD were checked out it was usually closer to five-thirty. Then whichever staff was on duty had to go through the public parts of the building for strays, occasionally finding one (usually in a lavatory), so that they were lucky if they were out of there, front door locked behind them and alarms switched on, by quarter to six.
This evening, late October twilight coming on fast, the library was dark and empty at six P.M., when a black Honda and a green Taurus drove slowly by. The two cars traveled on another block to a parking garage where they entered, took checks from the automatic machine at the entrance, left the cars, walked back down the concrete stairwell to the street, and separated. Parker and Mackey turned left, away from the library and Armory, while Williams crossed Indiana Avenue and Marcantoni and Kolaski and Angioni walked back to the library.
At the library, Marcantoni hunkered in front of the door while the other two stood on the sidewalk in front of him, chatting together, blocking the view of Marcantoni at work from passing cars. There was little traffic and no pedestrians in this downtown area at six on a Sunday.
Marcantoni opened a flat soft leather pouch on his knee; inside, in a row of narrow pockets, were his picks. Patiently he went to work on the locks, not wanting to disturb them so much as to set off the building’s alarms.
The fire law required the door to open outward. Marcantoni pulled it ajar just enough so he could put a small matchbox in the opening, to keep the spring lock from shutting it again. Then he put his picks neatly away, and was straightening when Parker and Mackey approached, with Williams behind them, just coming around the corner.
The six men went into the building, closing the re-locked door behind them. Marcantoni said, “There’s wastebaskets behind the main counter there, we’re gonna need them. There’s a lot of trash to move.”
Parker said, “Then you need shovels.”
“Right,” Marcantoni said. “I’ve got that figured out, too.”
There were three large metal wastebaskets, gray, square, behind the long main counter, all having been emptied by the staff before they left. Kolaski stacked the three and carried them, and Marcantoni, the only one who knew the route, led the way down the center aisle, book stacks on both sides. He carried a small flashlight, with electric tape blocking part of the lens, and Angioni carried a similar one, coming last. They picked up two more wastebaskets from desks along the way, these carried by Williams.
Toward the rear of the main section Marcantoni turned left to go down a broad flight of stairs that doubled back at a landing. This led them down to the periodicals section, with its own stacks full of bound magazines and its own reading room lined with long oak tables. “We’ll come back for a couple of those,” Marcantoni said, waving the flashlight beam over the tables as they walked toward the rear of the section.
Back here was another counter, for checking out magazines and microfilm. They picked up two more wastebaskets there, plus something else. “Look at this,” Marcantoni said.
On a separate wheeled metal table behind the counter were stacked several rows of small metal file drawers. Marcantoni opened one, pulled the full drawer out completely, and dumped the cards onto the floor. Shining the flashlight into the empty drawer, sixteen inches long, six inches wide, four inches deep, he said, “A shovel. Everybody grab one.”
They did, and moved on. In the rear wall, next to a coin-slot copying machine, was a broad wooden door marked NO ADMITTANCE. Marcantoni handed his flashlight to Williams, then got down to one knee and brought out his picks. “This one’s nothing,” he said.
Angioni and Williams shone light on the lock, Marcantoni worked with smooth speed, and he pushed the door open in just under a minute. The others waited while he put his picks away and stood, then Williams gave him back the flashlight. Carrying the wastebaskets and file drawers, they entered a storage area lined with rows of metal shelving.
“There’s no windows down here,” Marcantoni said. He closed the door they’d just come through, then hit the switch beside it. Fluorescent ceiling fixtures lit up to show a deep but narrow room with the metal shelves on both sides and across the back. “It’s down there,” Marcantoni said, and led the way to the rear, where the shelves were stacked with copier supplies.
Even with all the light on it, the door was hard to see, through the shelves stacked with boxes and rolls. It was painted the same neutral gray as the wall and the metal shelving.
Marcantoni said, “These shelves aren’t fixed to the wall. I just pulled one end out, the other time.”
There was not much clearance between the rear and side shelving. Williams tugged on the shelving’s left end and its legs made a shrieking noise on the floor, so he lifted the end instead. Mackey went over to help, and they wheeled the shelving out till it faced up against the right-side shelves.
Angioni was studying the door, featureless metal with barely visible hinges on the right side. In its middle, at about waist height, was a round hole less than an inch in diameter. Angioni said, “That’s the keyhole?”
“That’s it,” Marcantoni said. Walking over to the door, he took from his pockets a small socket wrench and a star-shaped bit. As he fitted them together at right angles, he said, “The last time, I didn’t want to mess up this door so somebody might notice something. I looked at the lock on the door at the other end, and I figured this one would be the same. It’s a double bar that extends beyond the door to both sides, hinged in the middle so it’ll pivot to unlock it. This works.”
Bending to the door, he inserted the bit into the hole, with the wrench extended to the right. With both hands on the wrench, he lifted. The wrench barely moved upward, and from beyond the door they could hear the scrape of metal on metal. “It’s goddam stiff,” Marcantoni said, “but I got it last — Here it comes.”
Slowly he pulled the wrench upward until it was vertical above the hole. “That should do it.”
He pulled the bit out, separated the wrench into its two components, and put them away in his pocket, bringing out a short flat-head screwdriver instead. Going down to one knee, he said, “Here’s where I pulled it out before. I figured nobody’d notice.”
Down close to the floor, where the bottom shelf would have covered it, the edge of the door and its wooden frame showed scratches. Marcantoni forced the screwdriver in there, levered it, and all at once the door popped an inch inward. He got to his feet, putting the screwdriver away. “There,” he said. “From now on, it’s easy.”
To show that, he put the fingers of both hands onto the protruding edge of the door and tugged. More metal-on-metal complaint, and then the door grudgingly came open. The old hinges didn’t want to move, but Marcantoni insisted, and at last the door was wide open, angled back away from the entrance.
Now they could look through into the tunnel, illuminated for the first several feet by the fluorescents in the storage room. It was narrow, about the width of an automobile, with brick floor and brick walls up to an arched brick ceiling. Angioni shone his flashlight, but it didn’t show much more than the fluorescents did. “It’s angled down,” he said.
“Yeah,” Marcantoni agreed, “it slopes down, not steep, then levels out, then slopes up again on the other side.”
“Well,” Angioni said, “shall we go?”