6

"How much time do you think we have?" I asked.

"At least until dark."

"How are we going to get in?"

"Who do you think inherited the Lamont von Heilitz collection of picklocks and master keys? Give me enough time, and I can get in anywhere. But it won't take five minutes to get into the Beldame Oriental."

"How can you be so sure?"

Tom let his mouth drop open, raised his shoulders, spread his hands, and gazed goggle-eyed around the room. "Oh. You went down and looked at it." He came back to the couch and sat beside me. "The entry doors on Livermore Avenue open with a simple key that works a deadbolt. The same key opens the doors on the far side of the ticket booth." He pulled an ordinary brass Medeco key from his jacket pocket and set it on the table. "There's an exit to the alley behind the theater—double doors with a push-bar that opens them from the inside. On the outside, a chain with a padlock runs between the two bracket handles. So that's easy, too." From the same pocket, he removed a Yale key of the same size and color and placed it beside the first. "We could also go in through the basement windows on the alley, but I imagine you've had enough B&E to last you a while."

"So do you want to go in through the front or the back?"

"The alley. No one will see us," Tom said. "But it has one drawback. Once we're inside, we can't replace the chain. On the other hand, one of us could go in, and the other one could reattach the chain and wait."

"In front?"

"No. On the other side of the alley there's a wooden fence that juts out from the back of a restaurant. They line up the garbage cans inside the fence. The top half of the fence is louvered—there are spaces between the slats."

"You want us to wait out there until we see someone let himself into the theater?"

"No, I want you inside, and me behind the fence. When I see someone go in, I come around to the front. Those old movie theaters have two entrances to the basement, one in front, near the manager's office, and the other in back, close to the doors. In the center of the basement there's a big brick pillar, and behind that is the boiler. On the far side are old dressing rooms from the days when they used to have live shows between the movies. If I come down in front, he'll hear me, but he won't know you are already there. I could drive him right back to the pillar, where you'd be hiding, and you could surprise him."

"Have you already been inside the theater?"

"No," he said. "I saw the plans. They're on file at City Hall, and this morning I went down there to check them out."

"What am I supposed to do when I 'surprise' him?"

"That's up to you, I guess," Tom said. "All you have to do is hold him still long enough for me to get to you."

"You know what I think you really want to do? I think you want to stick a gun in his back while he's unlocking the chain, march him downstairs, and make him take us to the notes."

"And then what do I want to do?"

"Kill him. You have a gun, don't you?"

He nodded. "Yes, I have a gun. Two, in fact."

"I'm not carrying a gun," I said.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to kill anyone again, ever."

"You could carry it without using it."

"Okay," I said. "I'll carry the other gun if you come inside the theater with me. But I'm not going to use it unless I absolutely have to, and I'm only going to wound him."

"Fine," he said, though he looked unhappy. "I'll go in with you. But are you absolutely clear about your reasons? It's almost as if you want to protect him. Do you have any doubts?"

"If one of those three turns up at the theater tonight, how could I?"

"That's just what I was wondering," Tom said. "Whoever turns up is going to be Fielding Bandolier-Franklin Bachelor. Alias Lenny Valentine. Alias whatever his name is now."

I said that I knew that.

He went to his desk and opened the top drawer. The computer hid his hands, but I heard two heavy metal objects thunk against the wood. "You get a Smith & Wesson .38, okay? A Police Special."

"Fine," I said. "What do you have, a machine gun?"

"A Glock," he said. "Nine millimeter. Never been fired." He came around the desk with the guns in his hands. The smaller one was cupped in a clip-on brown holster like a wallet. The .38 looked almost friendly, next to the Glock.

"Someone I once helped out thought I might need them sometime."

They had never been sold. They were unregistered—they had come out of the air. "I thought you helped innocent people," I said.

"Oh, he was innocent—he just had a lot of colorful friends." Tom pushed himself up. "I'm going to make the coffee and put it in a thermos. There's food in the fridge, when you get hungry. We'll leave here about eight-thirty, so you have about three hours to kill. Do you want to take a nap? You might be grateful for it, later."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll be around. There are a few projects I'm working on."

"You have somebody watching the theater, don't you? That's why we're not already on the way there."

He smiled. "Well, I do have two boys posted down there. They'll call me if they see anything—I don't think our man will show up until after midnight, but there's no sense in being stupid."

I carried the revolver upstairs and lay down on the bed with my head propped against the pillows. Three floors below, the garage door squeaked up on its metal track. After a couple of minutes, I heard a steady tapping of metal against metal float up from inside the garage. I aimed the revolver at the dormer window, the alligator, the tip of Delius's pointed nose. Fee Bandolier aroused so much sorrow and horror in me, such a mixture of sorrow and horror, that shooting him would be like killing a mythical creature. I lowered my arm and fell asleep with my fingers around the grip.