'Yes.'
'Nice to be able to tell your friends the truth, isn't it?' The Mole took off his Coke-bottle glasses, rubbed them on his greasy jumpsuit, said nothing.
179
Later that night, Max slipped out of the gypsy cab, all in black. We were half a block away from the target, on a side street facing the back of their house.
Nothing to do but wait.
We sat in silence, Mole checking the windshield, me the back window. No smoking, a .38 held against my leg, pointed at the floor. It wasn't Max I was worried about— in this neighborhood, they strip cars with the passengers still in them.
Max moved like a squid in ink— didn't see him until he was almost on top of us.
Back in the bunker, Max made the sign of opening a door, held up two fingers. Two doors, front and back. Held up one finger, pushed forward, made a sign like turning a doorknob, put a fist to one eye, like looking through a telescope. Held up two fingers, pulled back, flattened his palm like it was gliding over a smooth surface.
The Mole sketched quickly, showed Max the house: front view, a door between two barred windows, peephole about face level, doorknob to the left. Max nodded yes. Then the back view: the door just a slab of flat metal, no peephole, no doorknob, arrows showing it opened out. Another nod of agreement. The Mole sketched a fire escape along the back of the building, running from window to window. Max shook his head, made the flat-palm gesture again. The Mole used his eraser, showed us a pure slab, windows bricked over.
'Only way in is the front,' I said. 'Have you got…?'
'We'll look again,' the Mole said.
180
I found the Prof on Wall Street the next day, working his shoeshine rag like a virtuoso. Clarence was his customer, sporting alligator loafers to go with his pearl-gray suit. I waited my turn.
'How about riding shotgun tonight, Prof?'
'Go slow, bro'. Put another quarter in, give me one more spin.'
'We got to check out a building. In the Bronx. Me, Max, and the Mole. Can't leave the car alone in that neighborhood. Just a watcher's job— scare anyone away, they come by.'
'If it's a score, there's room for more.'
'It's no score. Just something I'm gonna do.'
'Me too.'
'Listen, Prof, there'll be nothing to split up, where we're going, okay?'
'It don't scan, man. But I'll do what you say, back your play. Pick us up on the pier.'
'Us?'
'This boy don't take a turn, he ain't never gonna learn,' nodding his head at Clarence.
181
Clarence drove the Plymouth along the back street, its muffled exhaust motorboating against the sides of the diseased and deserted cars lining the block. He pulled to a stop, the back seat emptied. He took off as we started across the empty lot to the abandoned building.
Max went first. I brought up the rear, the Mole between us. Broken glass crunched under my feet as I turned to check behind us. I could see the Mole's bulk in his jumpsuit, stumbling along, his leather satchel in one hand.
So much garbage piled up in the gully behind the building that we could step right into the first-floor windows. The smell told me we weren't the first ones to figure it out. Rats scurried. I threw my pencil flash forward, sweeping. Newspapers piled in one corner, a shopping cart without wheels, metal frame to a TV set, plastic coat hangers, rags that had been clothes once. Another corner was the bathroom. Crack vials scattered among broken chunks of concrete from the building itself. Wine bottles. Fire scars on the walls, blackened pillars. Open-grave smell.
The metal staircase was still standing, pieces of the railing missing. Max took a length of black cord from somewhere, looped it around one of the stairs about halfway up, pulled as hard as he could. It held.
We started up the stairs, testing each one. The second-floor landing was solid. I played the flash over the walls— gang graffiti, faded under dust and ash. The next floor was better. Stronger staircase, less damage.
'Basement fire,' the Mole whispered. After the building had been abandoned, some wino fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. They probably just let it burn itself out— worth more money to the landlord empty anyway.
When we stepped out onto the roof, we could see in every direction: headlights on the highway, the quiet bulk of the Plymouth waiting. Looking straight down to the target, eyes pulled to a bright light like moths. A skylight, glowing yellow-orange, set into the center of their roof.
The Mole reached in his satchel, took out a pair of night glasses, and started his scan. Max walked the roof corner to corner, leaning far out over the edge, palms out as though the air could balance him.
The Mole handed me the glasses. I narrowed in on the cars parked along the side of the building, behind the chain link fence. Five of them, parked parallel to the building. One a Mercedes coupe for sure, but no hope of getting a license number from that angle.
182
'Their roof edges make a trapezoid,' the Mole told us. 'No way to get a grip. The top is smooth— even a grappling hook would come loose. And if you hit the skylight, broke the glass, it might be wired. Some kind of sensors all around the building, about chest high. Maybe infrared, motion detectors…can't tell.'
