building, sixty feet above Varick Street, and out around them
the night was well advanced, it now being not quite four in the morning.
It was a cloudy night, not cold, and not particularly dark. The city generates its own illumination, and on cloudy nights
that glow is reflected down onto the streets and parks and rooftops, for a soft Impressionist cityscape.
Dortmunder and Kelp, dressed in dark grays to blend into the prevailing color scheme, walked the roof above Varick Street
and looked around to see what they could see. The building they stood on was flanked by two much larger, taller, heftier structures
extending both ways to the corner. To the north was the stone pile containing the Chase bank at basement level and street
level and one level up. From the look of the many sentry lights visible in the upper windows, most of the tenants above Chase
had also thought long and hard about the issue of security.
To the south, the other building’s ground floor housed a restaurant supply wholesaler, whose strategy in the realm of security
lighting was one illuminated wall clock at the rear of the showroom, in the pink glow of which were tumbled all the fast-food
counters, bartops, banquettes, ovens, walk-in freezers, and wooden cases of dinnerware recently collected from enterprises
that had unfortunately stumbled into nonexistence and whose gear was now awaiting the next hopeful entrepreneur with a certified
check in his pocket. The floors above this bric-a-brac were uniformly dark except for the red neon EXIT sign the fire code requires at every level.
That had been Dortmunder and Kelp’s route in. A low-security door on the side street, leading to the woks and barstools, had
given them easy access to the building and then its stairwell and eventually the sixth-floor office of an olive oil importer
through whose window they had stepped to get here on the roof.
There were several protuberances on this roof, and all were of interest, but the most interesting of all was the three-foot-by-five-foot
cinder-block box, seven feet tall, in the left rear corner. This would be the terminus of the iron staircase that zigzagged
up the interior. Inside that gray metal door would be the top of that staircase, and down that staircase would be GR Development,
and then Scenery Stars, and then Knickerbocker Storage, and then, last but far from least, Combined Tool.
While Dortmunder held a shrouded flashlight to marginally increase the illumination, Kelp studied the staircase door, bending
over it, squinting at it, not quite touching it. “It’s got an alarm on it,” he decided.
“We knew that,” Dortmunder said.
“It looks like it’s connected to a phone line,” Kelp said. “So it won’t make a lotta noise right around here.”
“That’s good.”
“It’ll do something somewhere, though. Lemme see what we can do here.”
While Kelp continued to study the problem before him, Dortmunder braced his wrist against the doorjamb to keep his light beam
steady while he studied the world around them. Although he saw many lit windows in the wall above the Chase bank, it didn’t
appear to him that any of those rooms were currently occupied. The windows in the wall down the other way were dark, and the
buildings across Varick Street were too far away to matter, so it seemed to Dortmunder they were unobserved at this moment
and would be likely to go on being unobserved anytime they happened to come up here at three-thirty in the morning. It was
a reassuring thought.
While he was thinking, Kelp was taking from one of his many pockets a short length of wire bounded at each end by an alligator
clip. The first clip he attached quickly to a bolt head jutting from the door just above the lock and handle. Then he thought
a while before attaching the other to a screw head on the door frame. Nodding in agreement with himself, he took another wire
from another pocket, this one with an earphone
the night was well advanced, it now being not quite four in the morning.
It was a cloudy night, not cold, and not particularly dark. The city generates its own illumination, and on cloudy nights
that glow is reflected down onto the streets and parks and rooftops, for a soft Impressionist cityscape.
Dortmunder and Kelp, dressed in dark grays to blend into the prevailing color scheme, walked the roof above Varick Street
and looked around to see what they could see. The building they stood on was flanked by two much larger, taller, heftier structures
extending both ways to the corner. To the north was the stone pile containing the Chase bank at basement level and street
level and one level up. From the look of the many sentry lights visible in the upper windows, most of the tenants above Chase
had also thought long and hard about the issue of security.
To the south, the other building’s ground floor housed a restaurant supply wholesaler, whose strategy in the realm of security
lighting was one illuminated wall clock at the rear of the showroom, in the pink glow of which were tumbled all the fast-food
counters, bartops, banquettes, ovens, walk-in freezers, and wooden cases of dinnerware recently collected from enterprises
that had unfortunately stumbled into nonexistence and whose gear was now awaiting the next hopeful entrepreneur with a certified
check in his pocket. The floors above this bric-a-brac were uniformly dark except for the red neon EXIT sign the fire code requires at every level.
That had been Dortmunder and Kelp’s route in. A low-security door on the side street, leading to the woks and barstools, had
given them easy access to the building and then its stairwell and eventually the sixth-floor office of an olive oil importer
through whose window they had stepped to get here on the roof.
There were several protuberances on this roof, and all were of interest, but the most interesting of all was the three-foot-by-five-foot
cinder-block box, seven feet tall, in the left rear corner. This would be the terminus of the iron staircase that zigzagged
up the interior. Inside that gray metal door would be the top of that staircase, and down that staircase would be GR Development,
and then Scenery Stars, and then Knickerbocker Storage, and then, last but far from least, Combined Tool.
While Dortmunder held a shrouded flashlight to marginally increase the illumination, Kelp studied the staircase door, bending
over it, squinting at it, not quite touching it. “It’s got an alarm on it,” he decided.
“We knew that,” Dortmunder said.
“It looks like it’s connected to a phone line,” Kelp said. “So it won’t make a lotta noise right around here.”
“That’s good.”
“It’ll do something somewhere, though. Lemme see what we can do here.”
While Kelp continued to study the problem before him, Dortmunder braced his wrist against the doorjamb to keep his light beam
steady while he studied the world around them. Although he saw many lit windows in the wall above the Chase bank, it didn’t
appear to him that any of those rooms were currently occupied. The windows in the wall down the other way were dark, and the
buildings across Varick Street were too far away to matter, so it seemed to Dortmunder they were unobserved at this moment
and would be likely to go on being unobserved anytime they happened to come up here at three-thirty in the morning. It was
a reassuring thought.
While he was thinking, Kelp was taking from one of his many pockets a short length of wire bounded at each end by an alligator
clip. The first clip he attached quickly to a bolt head jutting from the door just above the lock and handle. Then he thought
a while before attaching the other to a screw head on the door frame. Nodding in agreement with himself, he took another wire
from another pocket, this one with an earphone
Similar Books
