“I haven’t been inside. Lempke has.”
“What would you have done if I had taken my clothes off?”
“Taken you to bed and left in the morning.”
“Maybe it isn’t pride,” she said. “Maybe I’m just smart.”
Parker laughed and sat up. “No more life story,” he said.
“Tell me the caper.”
Six
“THIS WILL be the bourse room,” she said. “There’ll be tables around the walls and two ranks of tables down the middle of the room, with one aisle going all the way around.”
They were in the ballroom on the hotel mezzanine. It hadn’t been used for anything tonight, and was open and empty, a long rectangular room with tall windows down at the far left end. A bluish-white streetlight gleamed in on the bare wood floor, making the place look like a basketball court in off-season. The wall opposite the doors was covered from end to end in maroon plush drapes, and the wall at the right bore a large historical mural, heavy with Indians.
“Down here,” she said, and led the way to the left. Down in the far corner, near the windows, was a small inconspicuous door in the long wall. Opening it, she said, “This will be the security room. Where the dealers will keep everything Thursday night.”
It was a small bare room, empty except for a cream telephone sitting on the floor. There was one window, through which the streetlight angularly shone. Looking out, Parker saw the hotel marquee down to his left, and the wide empty street outside.
“There should be a hundred dealers at this one,” Claire said. “Seventy or eighty will get in Thursday night and check their stock in here.”
“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.”
