Metzger's Dog (4 page)

7
                  
As Chinese Gordon worked in his shop he tried to keep Doctor Henry Metzger in his sight. It had been a week since he’d installed the steel shutters on the windows and the automatic lock on the sliding door, both without consulting Doctor Henry Metzger. Now what was beginning to bother Chinese Gordon was that Doctor Henry Metzger didn’t seem to be aware that anything had changed. The entire building had been closed so tightly that Chinese Gordon would have believed nothing larger than an ant could possibly break into it. Still, a dozen times a day Doctor Henry Metzger would disappear from the shop and reappear a short time later, ostentatiously cleaning his fur of the dust and seeds and leaf particles he’d picked up walking through the tall weeds in the empty lot next door.

At first Chinese Gordon had tried to ignore it, but Doctor Henry Metzger showed him no mercy. If Chinese Gordon didn’t acknowledge immediately that he’d returned, Doctor Henry Metzger would spit out the debris from his fur and sneeze and shake himself so hard that his ears made a noise flapping against his head. Once, to emphasize the ease with which he eluded Chinese Gordon’s security measures, he brought back with him a pair of panty hose, a feat of such difficulty that it amounted in Chinese Gordon’s mind to a major taunt.

There was a loud rap on the sliding door, and Chinese Gordon shouted, “Yeah!” as he went to slide the bolt aside. Immelmann slipped in, already talking, and closed the door behind him.

“Chinese, I’ve been thinking about this thing a lot lately, and I think we ought to put it off for now.”

“We can’t. Tonight is perfect. I’ve checked the place out and we can do it. There’s no moon, the night will be cloudy, and everything is set. If we wait too long those professors will have cut all of Grijalvas’s cocaine into lines and pumped them up the noses of five hundred degenerate bums who claim to have migraine headaches.”

“I’m starting to get a migraine myself,” muttered Immelmann. “Chinese, I just don’t feel lucky.”

Chinese Gordon started carefully hanging his hand tools on their pegs along the wall. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” said Immelmann. “I didn’t get much sleep last night and I don’t feel sharp. You shouldn’t do something big if you don’t feel sharp.”

“Why didn’t you sleep?”

“There was a party in the apartment across the court. It was unbelievably noisy. The music was so loud I could feel it, and people kept going outside and then when they came back they’d have to shout louder than the music to get somebody to open the door. Then I called the police.”

“So?”

“So I dialed the number and a very strange voice came on. It was slow and deep and kind of gravelly, like this: ‘Who…is…this?’ I said, ‘I’d like to make a complaint.’ The voice, honest to God, Chinese, it sounded weird, like a big fat ghost. ‘Who…is…this?’ again. Three times. I said, ‘I’d like to file a complaint.’ Then the voice said in that same way, ‘Go…fuck…yourself.’ Then he hung up.

“Then I called the phone company and they said they’d connect me. As soon as I heard it ringing I knew it was the same voice: ‘Go…fuck…yourself,’ before I could say anything. I didn’t sleep at all.”

Chinese Gordon suddenly realized he’d lost sight of Doctor Henry Metzger, who had gone out through his secret exit again. “Don’t be a fool,” Chinese Gordon said. “It’s just nerves. This thing will only take an hour or so, and then you can sleep tonight and the next few days after that. You could even spend the night calling the same number and giving him a hard time.”

Immelmann pondered the idea. Then he shrugged and said, “I’m going to go try him right now,” and stomped up the stairs to Chinese Gordon’s living quarters.

Kepler didn’t knock, just kicked the door and yelled “Yo!” When Chinese Gordon let him in, Doctor Henry Metzger scampered in among the feet, and Chinese Gordon glared at him in anger.

Kepler said, “Hello, Doctor Henry,” and the cat rubbed its body against him and leaped up on the workbench. Chinese Gordon clenched his jaw and turned away so Kepler wouldn’t sense his annoyance. Kepler said, “You know, Chinese, I wouldn’t have put all those steel shutters and bolts and things on if I were you. It makes burglars think you’ve got something in here they’d want. What did it cost you, anyway?”

“Not much,” Chinese Gordon lied. “I did it myself, of course.”

“Well, if you need any more of the quarter-inch steel, let me know. I can get it cheap. Free, practically.”

“Thanks,” said Chinese Gordon, “but—”

Immelmann was coming down the stairs.

“Well?” said Chinese Gordon.

Immelmann said, “This time it was a different voice. The voice said, ‘Los Angeles Police Department.’ I have it figured out, though. There must be something wrong with my phone. When I dial the police number it registers wrong and gets The Voice.”

“Sounds possible,” said Chinese Gordon. “They can send a guy to fix it tomorrow.”

“Fix it?” said Immelmann. “Hell, no. I’m going to leave it that way. I can call him up any time I feel like it—in the middle of the night, of course.”

Chinese Gordon wondered how long it would take Immelmann to realize that he’d have to be awake to call the number, or that the second call had been placed by an operator. He hoped it would take at least twenty-four hours.

C
HINESE
G
ORDON DROVE THE VAN
past the campus gate, and the uniformed parking service man gave a nod. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and Chinese Gordon had known the man wouldn’t look carefully enough at the ULA parking sticker to notice that it was three strips peeled off another vehicle and pasted on. At this hour the traffic was all in the exit lane, and the parking men were beginning to relax.

Chinese Gordon drove up the narrow street past a row of ten-story dormitories and into the parking structure. He pulled into a space marked “Service Vehicles Only” and left the motor running while Kepler and Immelmann applied magnetic signs to the sides and rear door of the van. When Chinese Gordon had insisted on a yellow revolving emergency light on top of the van, Kepler had said, “But Chinese, it’s ridiculous. The signs say ‘Klondike Air Conditioning Service.’” Chinese Gordon had replied, “Have you ever seen a repair truck without one of those?” Immelmann had agreed, so now he stepped on the front bumper and applied the finishing touch, a big yellow light in the center of the roof above the windshield.

“Not yet,” said Chinese Gordon. “The ceiling’s too low. We’ll never get out of the ramp.”

“Oh,” said Immelmann, and climbed back in the van.

Chinese Gordon drove out of the parking ramp and stopped to let Immelmann slide the light into its brackets. Kepler glanced at his watch, a big Rolex with a face like a gauge from an airplane cockpit. “Four thirty-nine.”

“Good,” said Chinese Gordon. “We’ll be parked outside the building at five when they all go home, so the night security will think we’ve been around all day.”

“You’re a clever man, Chinese,” said Kepler.

“Devious,” said Immelmann, squinting his eyes and pondering. “Odd that you should be such a jackass in other ways.”

“It’s one of the mysteries,” Kepler agreed.

“Get down now,” said Chinese Gordon. “We’re coming to the Social Sciences Building.” Immelmann and Kepler moved to the back of the van and crouched on opposite sides of the back door. Kepler sat back with his feet across the box covering the barrel of the M-39, glanced at his watch again, and said, “Four forty-six.”

Immelmann lay down flat as though to go to sleep. He sighed and said, “You know, nobody gives a shit if it’s four twenty-eight or four ninety-seven. Being with you two has been something of a religious experience for me.”

“Oh?” said Kepler.

“It proves that God, in His bounty and generosity, always creates more horses’ asses than there are horses to attach them to.”

“Amen,” said Kepler, popping open a beer can.

Chinese Gordon got out of the van and placed the red-and-white-striped sawhorse in front of the grille. He was pleased with it, even though the paint wasn’t completely dry—it looked so official and businesslike, but it served no purpose. He buckled his tool belt and then placed a second sawhorse behind the van. He walked into the Social Sciences Building and began stalking the hallways. He’d been here two days before, but that had been just a preliminary trip to get a general idea of how to penetrate the building. Now he was here to study the rooms. The time to find out where somebody kept something valuable was the end of the day, when they locked it up. He knew nobody would pay attention to him because he had already assumed his disguise, a gray work shirt with a label that said “Dave” sewn over the pocket.

He knew exactly what he was searching for, so he wasted no time looking into classrooms and departmental offices. It would be a place with some activity, like a laboratory or a clinic, with more than one room, and right about now they’d be putting the cocaine into a safe. Chinese Gordon started on the top floor and began to work downward. It wouldn’t be on the ground floor, because somebody would think of that as a security risk. On the fourth floor he found what he was looking for. The sign on the door said “Institute for Psychobiological Research. Director: Gottlieb.” Stenciled in big red letters on the door was “Admittance by Appointment.” Chinese Gordon admired that way of putting it: No sense offending those invited to come in for a free toot of cocaine, and no sense spending the day fighting off a crowd of marble-eyed beggars with noses like snorkels. Chinese Gordon kept moving. He knew that these people would be closing up for the day now, and they’d be in the hallways within minutes.

On the third floor things were about the same. There were a few classrooms, a lot of little offices, and not much else. Near the far end of the hall, he passed an office that seemed to have an unusual amount of activity. There were too many people coming out. The place didn’t look big enough to hold them. Three of them were probably secretaries, women in their late twenties or thirties who wore high heels and makeup and expensive, conservative clothes. Then there were others, people too old to be undergraduate students, wearing work shoes and sneakers and boots, their outfits all reminiscent of lumberjacks or cowboys. He decided to wait near the stairwell. For something to do, he unraveled a few feet of insulated wire from the spool on his tool belt and began cutting and splicing it into insane patterns that would intimidate anyone who saw them.

At five-fifteen two men came out together. The first didn’t look as though he belonged in a university. He was in his middle thirties, wearing a beautifully tailored gray suit and carrying a briefcase of lustrous Italian leather, so thin that it seemed designed to carry two-page letters or maybe contracts. The second man was older, his coat a worn and ageless tweed, and his briefcase was of the voluminous sort that might have held books, or the term papers of a fair-sized class. He was saying, “It’s very disruptive.”

The first man answered, “The work will be done this weekend. By Monday the whole security problem will be solved.” As the two disappeared into the elevator, Chinese Gordon smiled.

W
HEN
C
HINESE
G
ORDON RETURNED
to the van it was dark outside and the few cars that passed were moving as quickly toward the campus exit as the narrow, winding street permitted. He opened the door of the van and Immelmann and Kepler climbed out. Both were now wearing gray work shirts like his. Over the left breast pocket each had a patch sewn on that said “Dave.” Immelmann had stolen them from a dryer in a Laundromat.

“Okay,” said Chinese Gordon. “Make it look heavy.”

The two lifted out a large cardboard box that said “HOTPOINT POWER PLUS” on it and followed Chinese Gordon into the building. The hallways were now empty, and the steps of the men echoed on the tiles. Chinese Gordon noted with satisfaction that the elevator was waiting on the first floor. Nobody had gone up, but somebody had come down.

The fourth floor was only dimly lit, another indication to Chinese Gordon that things were going well. He held the box while Kepler and Immelmann flipped a coin to see who would open the door. Kepler picked the two locks and then stood back.

“There must be an alarm. Let’s check it out first,” he whispered.

“I don’t see any lights,” said Chinese Gordon.

“How about strips?” said Immelmann.

“No, but there must be something,” Kepler muttered. “My high school principal had an alarm in his office twenty years ago, for Christ’s sake, and the locks were a hell of a lot easier to pick than this.”

“That was when you were there,” Chinese Gordon whispered. “Besides, maybe he kept more cocaine than these guys.” He pushed past them into the room and set the box on the floor. The others followed.

In the dim glow of the single window, the room looked like the waiting area of a doctor with an impoverished practice. There were couches and mismatched chairs arranged to face a receptionist’s desk. A few worn magazines and crumpled newspapers were inexpertly stacked on a coffee table.

“My turn,” said Immelmann, who knelt to pick the lock on the door to the inner room, then slowly pushed the door open. “No alarm here either, but this could be the place.”

“Why?” said Kepler.

“There’s a little safe in the corner.”

“Of course that’s it,” said Chinese Gordon. “Do you see any other rooms? Watch it with the safe. That’s sure to be wired.”

Kepler and Immelmann walked up to the safe. Kepler chuckled. “Beautiful. Just beautiful.”

“What?” snapped Chinese Gordon.

“Go down and start the engine, Chinese. There aren’t even liquor stores with these things anymore. It’s a joke. It’s wired, all right. Come here.”

He pulled a length of wire from the spool on Gordon’s belt and snipped the wire off, then looped it and taped it to the strip of wire on the wall. Then he yanked off the wire to the safe and said, “Now it’s not.”

“I have something to do,” said Chinese Gordon. “Wait for me here.”

“Don’t take too long,” said Immelmann. “We’ll have the safe in the box in a minute. Just have to cut some bolts.”