Good Behaviour Page 14

  "Say," Howey said, but that was it; he went back to breathing.

  "Write me a note," Dortmunder suggested.

  "Take a vow of silence."

  "By golly," Howey said, and quit again to breathe. Then he slapped his Coors cap on his head, took a deep breath, grabbed the railing with both hands preparatory to pulling himself to his feet, and said, "Say … you couldn't find a… nun… in a dungeon, could ya?"

  "Tower," Dortmunder said unsympathetically.

  "That's all I've got."

  "Whoosh," said Howey, and heaved his butt up off the metal stair. On his feet, he held the railing and gazed up the endless stairwell, Adam's apple bobbing in a scrawny throat that looked like a beer can somebody had squeezed with his hand.

  "I never was a mountain climber," he announced.

  "Wimmin, that's all I ever wanted to climb."

  "Think how easy it'll be on the way down," Dortmunder told him.

  "Sixteen times… how many floors? Seven to seventy-four, but no thirteen, that's, uh, uhhh…"

  Dortmunder said, "Can you do math and climb stairs at the same time?"

  "Maybe," Howey said, and at last started off, trudging up the steps, bony hand gripping the metal rail. Dortmunder hefted Howey's tool bag-Howey couldn't carry it himself, of course and followed.

  Fourteen flights ensued-very, very slowly. Dortmunder kept switching the tool bag from hand to hand. Occasionally, Howey would wheeze out a "Say," or a "Whooey," and once he stopped entirely in the middle of a flight to announce, "One thousand and fifty-six!"

  Dortmunder, just changing hands with the tool bag collided with Howey's back, lost his balance, did not fall down a flight of stairs, and said,

  "Now what?"

  "That's how many steps!" Howey said, turning around, giving Dortmunder a triumphant look, which then faded to a frown as he said, "I think it is, anyway. Let's see…"

  "Walk," Dortmunder told him.

  Howey turned and walked, one step up at a time, planting his feet solidly like a man in magnetic boots crossing a metal ceiling, and without further incident the two travelers corkscrewed on up the unchanging stairwell to the seventy-fourth floor, where Howey gasped, looked at the gate closing off the top two floors, pointed at it, gasped, shook his head in contempt, panted awhile, pointed at the gate again, and said, "Two minutes. Open it right up."

  "Fine," Dortmunder said.

  "And in three minutes you'll have a whole lot of new friends with guns in their hands." He pointed at the usual security panel low beside the hall door.

  "We go through there."

  Howey frowned at the gate.

  "Why not this way? Straight up the stairs."

  Dortmunder put Howey's tool bag down by the security panel and said,

  "Didn't you look at the specs? From here on up, it's a different security system. You can't touch it at all."

  "Is that so, now?" Howey seemed quite pleased by this piece of news.

  Scratching his grizzled jaw with his knuckles, gazing at the gate with new respect, he said, "They must really like that little nun up there, you think so?"

  "They want to keep her anyway," Dortmunder said. His watch said around quarter to five.

  "Come on, Wilbur," he said.

  The use of the first name was apparently just the personal touch that was needed; with no further ado, Howey assumed his cross-legged seated position in front of the security panel, did the maneuver with the screws "Goddamn said the same fellow down in security in the basement,

  "there goes another one!" He bunked the glass with a knuckle, and the rod flipped back from red to green.

  "No, it's okay," he said.

  "Goddamn things.") -and poked briefly inside among the wiring and control sheets, whistling, "Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do," between his teeth.

  "Hardly a thing up here," he commented at one point.

  "No security at all."

  Dortmunder knew that to be true, from the ledger books Sister Mary Grace had smuggled out. The engineering and architectural firms on this floor used only simple-level alarms on their main entrances, the law firm used a little heat-activated and voice activated stuff in a couple of rooms, and the Margrave Corporation didn't use any of the building's security at all. There was also, according to the plans, another staircase up to seventy-six from Margrave; that's the way Dortmunder would go, once Howey cleared the way.

  It was hard to tell exactly what Margrave itself was, except it was a corporation, it had offices, and it was tied in with other of Frank Ritter's holdings. But whatever it might be, the way Dortmunder had things figured, he wasn't likely to run into anybody doing business inside there at five in the morning, and once within Margrave it shouldn't be impossible to make his way up to where the nun was being held. Generally speaking, Dortmunder thought of himself as a kind of utility infielder in the smash-and grab line, not a specialist like Wilbur Howey but someone who could go past ordinary locks and security devices without too much trouble. So when Howey sat back on the floor, smiling with the satisfaction of a craftsman at the height of his powers-seventy fourth floor, after all-and said, "She's all yours,"

  Dortmunder! said, "That's fine, Wilbur. Close the panel up again so it doesn't-' look like anybody's come through, then go on back down. I'll take it from here."

  Howey said, "Sure you don't want me to do the office door?"

  "I've seen the specs," Dortmunder assured him, opening the fire door to the hall (nothing went wrong down in Security's basement). "That Margrave door's a breeze. It'll open all by itself when it sees me coming." Touching his temple in a little half-salute of farewell to Howey, saying, "See you in a little while with Sister Mary Grace,"

  Dortmunder stepped through to the hall, letting the fire door ease itself closed behind him. Almost whistling-like Howey-he went around the corner to Margrave.

  Where the office door opened itself for him and a burly man in camouflage gear, holding a Russian AK-47 assault rifle casually in his right hand, looked out at Dortmunder and said, in exasperation.

  "Another straggler. Come along, fellow."

  "Urn," said Dortmunder.

  "Come on, come on," the burly man said, making shooing, motions with the rifle as though it were a broom, sweeping?, Dortmunder in.

  "We're late as it is," he said. ' "Oh," Dortmunder said.

  "Uh huh." He walked into Margrave.

  The trouble with these ruthless-killer types, Virgil Pickens thought as he led the final straggler down the halls of Margrave to the assembly room, is they're not so good on discipline. Here's this fellow wandering around the public corridors when he's supposed to be learning the tools of his trade.

  The error, made by The People Upstairs, was that all the political orientation lectures had been done first, and for people like this crowd the politics and the social situations are utterly without interest. All they want to know is, what does our side look like, what does the other side look like, and what do I kill them with? We're to that part now, Virgil Pickens thought, but the boys are already turned off.

  Well, it was his job to turn them back on. Walking into the assembly room, a brightly lit small theater with seating for about a hundred in rows of red plush movie-house seats (but no tilt to the floor) all facing a small stage with a movie screen mounted on the rear wall, Pickens saw that less than half the troops were in conversation, in small clusters in the aisles, and those conversations stopped the instant he appeared, the talkers turning hooded, watchful, unfriendly eyes in Pickens' direction, he representing The People Upstairs. The rest of the boys meanwhile sat around singly or in pairs, silent, brooding at the blank movie screen, smoking from cigarettes held cupped in their palms, scratching their old tattoos, and looking mutinous.

  They were all just recently up and had their breakfasts, and were still sleepy and feeling mean. These, as Pickens well knew, were not folks to bore; these were folks to react to boredom by making a little excitement in the area.

  "Grab a pew,"
Pickens told the straggler-a deceptively mild looking fellow-and headed for the stage, saying loudly, "Find your seats, gents, we're gonna talk about death and destruction."

  A low general growl answered him, probably composed of equal parts appreciation and irritation. Pickens went up the four steps to the stage and over to the card table standing in front of the movie screen.

  Something lumpy on the table was covered with a red-white-and-blue flag composed of various triangles and stars.

  Standing behind the table, facing the crowd, Pickens held the AK47 aloft, gripping it just forward of the magazine-if the screen behind him had been red, he'd have looked exactly like a Bolshevik poster of the early twenties-and said, "Some of you know this weapon, do you?"

  "Shit, yes," said a lot of voices, while a few others said, "AK," some said, "Rooshen," and one voice called out, "Where's it from?"

  "This one," Pickens told the questioner, smiling, because the idea here was to arouse everybody's interest, "this one's from Czechoslovakia.

  It's a good one."

  "That's nice," said the questioner.

  It was nice. The odd thing about it, even though the AK-47 was a Russian design-with some help from captured German designers and engineers after the Second World War, the Russians having been very impressed by the Wehrmacht's Maschinenpistole MP44-the examples of it made in the Eastern European factories of the Warsaw Bloc tended to be a lot better than the ones actually made in Russia. Waggling this Czech-made rifle, Pickens grinned at his troops and said, "You've taken more than one of these away from little brown people here and there, haven't you, boys?"

  A low chuckle went around the room; they were warming up.

  The AK-47, particularly the model like this one with the metal folding butt so it can be reduced to a concealable twenty-four inches long, has been in the last thirty years the absolute favorite weapon of guerrillas, terrorists, freedom fighters, mercenaries and other bloodthirsty types all over the world, with only the Israeli Uzi even approaching it in popularity. Pickens smiled warmly at his boys, smiled warmly at the weapon in his hand, and said, "So here it is. And now"-with pause for dramatic effect-"you can forget the goddamn thing!" And he flung it side-arm, straight away from himself and off the stage to his right, where it crashed into the wall and fell on the floor behind the side curtain.

  That woke them up. Simple minds, simple pleasures; Pickens knew how to deal with rough boys like this, it was his living. Still smiling, he picked up the flag from the table by two of its corners, and displayed it, saying, "By the way, this is the Guerrera flag.

  When we get down there, if you see anybody wearing this or waving it or standing next to it, cut him down. That's our meat."

  The boys purred, looking at the flag. One of them called out, "What's our side look like?"

  "Green armbands, whatever rags and patches they might be wearing."

  Pickens still held up the flag.

  "Our friendly forces down there are very irregular, boys, stand well back if they decide to fire on something."

  That produced the comfortable laugh of the professional thinking about amateurs, which Pickens ended, in his carefully paced presentation, by balling up the Guerreran flag, hurling it offstage in the same direction as the rifle, and showing another assault rifle lying on the card table. He picked this one up, held it out in front of him, and said, "Gentlemen, the Valmet."

  "That's that Finnish fucker!" cried a voice.

  "Very good," Pickens told him, grinning as though he didn't at all mind having his surprise spoiled.

  "That's just what this is, the Finnish M-60 Valmet. Essentially, this is the design of the AK-47 adapted to the needs of Finland. It's like an AK-47, but it isn't an AK-47, so it isn't as familiar as you might think, and if you don't keep the differences in mind, the head you blow off may be your own."

  He had their attention now. Weapons, travel and money were the only things these fellows cared about, probably in that order.

  Holding the Valmet out, pointing to its features, Pickens said, "In the first place, you'll notice it's all metal, much of it plastic-coated, it doesn't have the AK's wooden stock or handguard. That's fine in a cold country like Finland, but we're going to a hot country, so keep this thing in the shade. The other thing, you'll notice it doesn't have any trigger guard, just this little piece of metal out in front here and nothing down under the trigger at all. The later model, the M-62, they added a skimpy little guard on the bottom, and some of you'll have those, but mostly we've got the original, the M-60. And you see also there's almost no curve to the trigger itself. Now, the reason for all that is, the Finnish troops have to be able to fire this thing with big heavy mittens on, because of the cold you got up there in Finland. And what it means to you is, you don't have that guard there where you're used to it, to protect you if your mind wanders. And your finger wanders."

  A voice from the auditorium called out, "Why the fuck are we taking some fucking North Pole fucking weapon to the fucking tropics?" A lot of other voices growled agreement with the sentiment.

  "Well, now, that's The People Upstairs," Pickens said.

  "They make the decisions, I just implement them. They didn't want to use Warsaw Bloc weaponry because they don't want anybody saying the revolution's Cuban supplied. And they didn't want to use NATO weapons because they don't want anybody saying we're fronting the CIA. And maybe they got a price on these Valmets, I don't know."

  "It's always the same fucking thing," cried a disgusted voice.

  "They want us to fight the wrong fucking war with the wrong fucking weapons on the wrong fucking terrain at the wrong fucking time of the year."

  "You're goddamn right!" several voices cried, with variants.

  More and more of them got into the thing, some rising in their places to make their points, shaking their fists, yelling out their professional opinions.

  It was becoming bedlam out there. Pickens hunched his head down into his shoulders, and waited for the storm to subside.

  It wasn't easy, dealing with homicidal maniacs.

  Dortmunder's mouth was dry. His hands were wet. So far, the seat was dry. He was up here looking for a nun, and all of a sudden he's in this absolute army of killers. Attila would be happy to come back and hang out with these guys; all Dortmunder wanted them to do was disappear.

  They were an excitable crowd, too. Almost anything might set them off; disliking the weapon they were supposed to use in their upcoming slaughter, for instance. There was no telling how excited they'd get if they found out there was a noncombatant among them; a sheep, in wolf's clothing.

  Dortmunder did his best not to think about any of the various things that might happen to him if they found out the truth. He tried very hard not to visualize himself being torn limb from limb, and then the limbs being gnawed on by a lot of guys with heavy jaws and big teeth.

  He tried and tried and tried not to imagine the burly man leaping off the stage, foaming at the mouth, M-60 Valmet swinging in the air above his head as he came charging up the aisle. He worked hard to avert his mental gaze from images of himself being tromped into a welcome mat under all these tight laced paratrooper boots. He struggled and strained to keep these triptychs of his own martyrdom absolutely out of his mind. He failed.

  The nearest desperado, two seats to Dortmunder's right, was now on his feet, shouting toward the stage and waving an arm decorated with a tattoo of a snake entwined with a woman in what appeared to be an improbable sex act. Suddenly this fellow stopped, glared over at Dortmunder, and yelled, "You like that fucking snowman weapon?"

  Dortmunder looked around. His seat was on the aisle, three quarters of the way back, and from here he could see he was just about the only person still seated. Everybody else was up and yelling at the stage, or at least arguing with his neighbor. Don't be conspicuous! Leaping to his feet, "Heck, no!" Dortmunder told the guy with the snake and the woman.

  "I mean, hell, no! I mean, shit, no!"

  "Fucking-A well to
ld!" the guy announced, and punched the air. When he made a muscle, the woman and the snake interacted.

  Join in, Dortmunder told himself. Waving an arm with no tattoo on it at all, he yelled toward the stage, "Hell, no, we won't go!"

  The snake-and-woman man reared back.

  "What the fuck you mean, we won't fucking go? We don't fucking go, man, we don't get fucking paid!"

  "Right," Dortmunder said. Waving his other arm-no tattoo on that one, either-he yelled, "We'll go, but we want a better gun!"

  "Weapon," the snake-and-woman man said.

  "Weapon!"

  The snake-and-woman man took a step closer to Dortmunder, eying him with a certain repelled curiosity.

  "Listen, fella," he said.

  "Where do you-?"

  Crash.

  Everybody stopped, including the snake-and-woman man.

  Silence fell. Dortmunder blinked, and looked toward the stage, where the burly man, evidently having had enough, had pounded his Valmet assault rifle like a gavel onto the card table, which had done the card table no good at all. It had crumpled, and the burly man had pounded the floor right through the table, making a racket bigger than the racket coming at him. Into the startled silence he'd created, he said,

  "Goddamnit, boys, I don't like The People Upstairs any more than you do, but they hired us for this thing, and we're taking their goddamn shilling, and that's it. This is the hand we've been dealt, and we either fold or play. It happens this is what I do for a living, so I'm gonna stay and play. You gonna fold?"

  The raucous and colorful responses he got this time were generally along the lines that everybody intended to blanketyblank stay and play the blankety-blank hand.

  "I never fold a bad hand!" Dortmunder shouted, getting into the swing of things, and immediately felt the snake-and-woman man's eyes on him again.

  What did I do wrong now?

  Fortunately, there was another distraction, because the burly man followed up his challenge by saying, "Any more questions?" and somebody behind Dortmunder and off to the right yelled out, with a voice you could use to scour frying pans, "When do we get our hands on those fucking Finnish nose-ticklers?"