I found it, unfolded it. 'Here we are,' I said. 'Two calls, both under a minute. One at nine-forty-four in the morning, the other at two-thirty in the afternoon. Calling phone is 243-7436.'
'Man,' Kenan said, 'I just remember there were a couple of wrong numbers. I don't know what time they came in.'
'But do you recognize the number?'
'Read it again.' He shook his head. 'Doesn't sound familiar. Why don't we call it, see what we get?'
He reached for the phone. I covered his hand with mine. 'Wait,' I said. 'Let's not give them any warning.'
'Warning of what?'
'That we know where they are.'
'Do we? All we got's a number.'
TJ said, 'Kongs might be home now. Want me to see?'
I shook my head. 'I think I can manage this one by myself.' I took the phone, dialed Information. When the operator came on I said,
'Policeman requiring directory assistance. My name is Police Officer Alton Simak, my shield number is 2491- 1907. What I have is a telephone number and what I need is the name and address that goes with it. Yes, that's right. 243-7436. Yes. Thank you.'
I cradled the phone and wrote down the address before it could slip my mind. I said, 'The phone's in the name of an A. H. Wallens. He a friend of yours?' Kenan shook his head. 'I think the A stands for Albert.
That's what Callander called his partner.' I read off the address I'd written down. 'Six-ninety-two Fifty-first Street.'
'Sunset Park,' Kenan said.
'Sunset Park. Two, three blocks from the laundromat.'
'That's the tiebreaker,' Kenan said. 'Let's go.'
IT was a frame house, and even in the moonlight you could see that it had been neglected. The clapboard badly needed painting and the shrubbery was overgrown. A half-flight of steps in front led up to a screened-in porch that sagged perceptibly in its middle. A driveway, concrete patched here and there with blacktop, ran along the right- hand side of the house to a two-car detached garage. There was a side door about halfway back, and a third door at the rear of the house.
We had all come in the Buick, which was parked around the corner on Seventh Avenue. We all had handguns. I must have registered surprise when Kenan handed a revolver to TJ, because he looked at me and said, 'If he comes he carries. I say he's a stand-up guy, let him come. You know how this works, TJ? Just point and shoot, like a Jap camera.'
The overhead garage door was locked, the lock solid. There was a narrow wooden door alongside it, and it too was locked. My credit card wouldn't slip the bolt. I was trying to figure out the quietest way to break a pane of glass when Peter handed me a flashlight, and for a second I thought he wanted me to smack the glass with it, and I couldn't think why. Then it dawned on me, and I pressed the business end of the flashlight up against the window and switched it on. The Honda Civic was right there, and I recognized the plate number. On the other side, harder to see even when I angled the flashlight, was a dark van. The plate was not where we could see it and the color was impossible to determine in that light, but that was really as much as we had to see. We were in the right place.
Lights were on throughout the house. There were signs that the house was a one-family dwelling— a single doorbell at the side door, a single mailbox alongside the door to the porch— and they could be anywhere inside it. We worked our way around the house. In back, I interlaced my fingers and gave Kenan a boost. He caught hold of the windowsill and inched his head above it, hung there for a moment, then dropped to the ground.
'The kitchen,' he whispered. 'The blond's in there counting money. He's opening each stack and counting the bills, writing numbers on a sheet of paper. Waste of time. It's a done deal, why's he care how much he's got?'
'And the other one?'
'Didn't see him.'
We repeated the procedure at other windows, tried the side door as we passed it. It was locked, but a child could have kicked it in. The door in back, leading to the kitchen, hadn't looked much more formidable.
But I didn't want to crash in until I knew where they both were.
In front, Peter risked drawing attention from someone passing by and used the blade of a pocketknife to snick back the bolt of the porch door. The door leading from the porch into the front of the house was equipped with a sturdier lock, but it also had a large window which could be broken for quick access.
He didn't break it, but looked through it and established that Albert wasn't in the living room.
He came back to report this, and I decided that Albert was either upstairs or out having a beer. I was trying to figure out a way for us to take Callander silently and then figure out Phase Two later on, when TJ
got my attention with a fingersnap. I looked, and he was crouched at a basement window.
I went over, stooped, and looked in. He had the flashlight and played it around the interior of a large basement room. There was a large sink in one corner, with a washer and dryer next to it. A workbench stood in the opposite corner, flanked by a couple of power tools. There was a pegboard on the wall
above the workbench, with dozens of tools hanging on it.
In the foreground was a Ping-Pong table, its net sagging. One of the suitcases was on the table, open, empty. Albert Wallens, still wearing the clothes he'd worn to the cemetery, was sitting at the Ping-Pong table on a ladderback chair. He might have been counting the money in the suitcase except that there wasn't any money in the suitcase and it was a curious activity to conduct in the dark. But for TJ's flashlight, there was no light in the basement.
