“When’s the convention over?”
“Sunday night.”
“What do they do with their goods Friday and Saturday?”
She pointed at the ballroom. “They leave everything on the tables. There’s Pinkerton guards here the whole time. There’ll be one in this room, too.”
There was a closed door in the wall opposite the window. Parker unlocked it, opened it slowly, saw there was no one in sight on the mezzanine, and stepped through to look around.
The mezzanine was constructed around a large rectangular opening overlooking the lobby, surrounded by a wide walkway with ornamental railing. To Parker’s left was the double-doored ballroom entrance he and Claire had used. To the right, one-quarter around the walkway, were the elevators, with the staircase just beyond.
Parker stepped back into the room—a sign over the door said LAKE ROOM—relocked the door, and went over to take down the extension number of the telephone on the floor: one-nine-five. Then he turned to Claire, saying, “What else?”
“We’ll go back outside.”
They went through the ballroom again and back out to the walkway. Pointing across it, to the left of the elevators, she said, “The display room will be over there. Tables with special displays of sets of coins and paper money. But there’s no use taking any of that, most of it is too readily identifiable.”
Parker said, “So what we want is over here. Ballroom—what did you call it?”
“Bourse room.”
“Right. Bourse room and security room.” Parker looked thoughtfully around and said, “What about the Pinkerton men? Where are they stationed?”
“I don’t know. We’d have to wait and see.” Parker grimaced. “All right, let’s go back upstairs.”
“Will you do it?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve still got questions.”
“You ought to ask Billy, he knows more than I do.”
“We’ll see. Come on.”
They walked around to the elevator, where she said, “You don’t like it very much, do you?”
He didn’t, but he said, “I don’t see it yet, that’s all. Maybe I’ll never see it, I don’t know.”
The elevator came and they got aboard. She said, “But there’s all that money there, all in one place.”
“How much stock do these guys carry? A suitcase each?”
“Oh, at least,” she said. “Most of them will have more than that. Two or three carrying cases.”
The elevator reached seven. They walked down the hall, Parker saying, “Figure two suitcases a man. Full of coins. They’ll be heavy, figure a rough guess, maybe fifty pounds each.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s a lot, isn’t it?”
“A hundred fifty suitcases,” he said, unlocking his door. They went in and he switched on the ceiling light.
Claire said, in a small voice, “Seventy-five hundred pounds.”
“Round it off,” Parker said. “Four tons. It’s your idea to get three or four guys together and heist four tons of luggage.”
“There’s a way,” she said, trying to sound as though she believed it. “There’s a way to do anything, if you look for it.”
“Sing that,” he said.
“Damn it,” she flared, “you’re supposed to be the professional, why don’t you think of something?”
“I have.” He went over to the bed and stretched out on his back, hands behind his head.
“You have? What?”
“We stay away from the security room. We hit the bourse room late Saturday night.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe there’s no job in it at all, but if there is one it’s in the bourse room Saturday night.”
“But everything’s all unpacked then,” she said.
“Good. We can pick and choose, just take the best stuff.”
She was half-smiling, half-doubtful, hopeful, uncertain. She said, “Do you really suppose it can be done that way?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Lebatard some questions. Phone him now and tell him we’ll see him in the morning.”
She started to turn toward the phone, then looked back, saying, “In the morning?”
“It’s up to you,” he said.
“And if I say no, the deal’s off?”
“Wrong. If you say no, you leave now and come back for me in the morning.”
She seemed to consider, standing there near the phone.”That would be a lot of extra driving, wouldn’t it?”
He got off the bed and reached for her. A while later she made the call.
Seven
“IT WON’T work that way,” said Billy.
They were all in the backyard, at about ten-thirty in the morning. There was a small stone fireplace at the rear of the yard, at which Billy was cooking hamburgers. The wood he’d used wasn’t completely dry, and was smoking badly.
Lempke was sitting on the bottom step of the back stoop, a beer can in his hand. He was wearing an old straw hat, and squinting against the sun. Claire, in blue slacks and white top, was sitting in a ribbed lawn chair, the only piece of furniture back there. Parker, restless and intent, was prowling around the scruffy yard like a panther in an outdoor enclosure at the zoo.
Parker said, “What’s the problem? Why won’t it work?”
“You take valuable coins,” Billy said, gesturing with the spatula, “you just drop a lot of them in a canvas sack, carry them off someplace, dump them out on a table, you know what you’ve done?”
Parker said, “Tell me.”
“You’ve lowered their value,” Billy told him, “by maybe twenty-five per cent. Coins are more delicate than you might think. They rub together, knock together, the value goes right down. You go from unc to VF just like that.”
“Billy,” Claire said wearily, “they don’t know those terms.”
“I’ve got the idea,” Parker said. “The point is, we’ve got to pack them up, right?”
“Time, Parker,” Lempke said. “Time, time.” Having had an extra night to think things over, Lempke had turned pessimistic and was now being discouraged and gloomy about the whole project.
Parker said, “It all depends.” He turned back to Billy. “You say there’ll be a hundred dealers there.”
“About that. Maybe a few more, a few less.”
“You don’t want everything they’ve got.”
“Not a bit,” said Billy. “Some of the coins are too rare, I wouldn’t dare to try to sell them without being able to show where I got them.”
“And some,” Parker suggested, “aren’t worth enough to take.”
“Foreign coins,” Claire said.
“That’s right,” said Billy. “We don’t want foreign coins, except maybe Canadian and Mexican. Mostly American we want.”
Parker said, “So what’s that cut it to? Half of the stuff there?”
“Oh, less than that.” Billy thought, squinting in the smoke from his fire. “Maybe a third,” he said. “Maybe only a quarter.”
Lempke said, “Your burgers are burnin’ up.”
“Oh!”
Parker watched Billy, his head down in the smoke, turning his hamburgers. When he was done, Parker said, “How long would it take to pack up one dealer’s stock?”
“How long?” Billy moved away from the smoke, waving the spatula in front of his face to clear the air. “I can do mine,” he said, “I can do mine in, oh, three minutes.”
“About thirty dealers. An hour and a half. Figure two hours, to be on the safe side.”
“That’s too much time,” said Lempke. “In and out, that’s the only way, Parker, you know that yourself. You hang around, hang around, you’re asking for the collar.”
Parker didn’t bother answering him this time. He prowled around the yard, thinking it out, trying to see if there was a way to do it. More to himself than the others, he said, “Have to work a switch on the Pinkertons. One for one, one for one. Too many men.”
Lempke said, “Parker, it isn’t in the hand. You were right last night, you knew what you were talking about.” He threw his empty beer can away across the lawn, and Billy looked pained.