The Specialists by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page B

stairs at the rear. There was a massive gate at the foot of the stairs, with an eye beam between the stairs and the gate. A guard came into view when they broke the beam. He and the bank officer nodded to each other, and the depressed a button to release an electronic lock. Inside was the bank’s own vault and, to the left, a few dozen feet of wall space given over to individual safe deposit boxes.
    In a curtained booth Dehn opened the box and took from his attach
 case a thick manila envelope sealed with heavy plastic tape. He put this in the box and watched as the guard locked it away. The envelope contained a stack of newspaper cuttings.
    He left the bank and drove to the motel where he had registered earlier as Moorehead. On a sheet of motel stationery he began sketching the bank’s floor plan. A rough sketch was all he wanted now. When he saw Giordano’s photos, the two of them could work together on it and produce something more detailed.
    He left the motel room. A beautiful day, he thought. Perfect for golf. He got into his car and headed north out of town, then cut west on Route 4. When he saw the driving range, he pulled off the road. He took his driver and his spoon from the trunk and bought a bucket of balls.
    He hit eight balls before he lost interest entirely. He topped the first one, caught the next two nicely, then sliced the rest. He left the remaining forty-two balls in the bucket on the rubber mat and put his clubs back in the bag and locked the trunk.
    He drove another half mile down the road to a gas station. The pay phone was set up for direct-dialing. He dropped a dime in the slot and called Tarrytown.
    Giordano hung the last of the prints up to dry. There were sixteen of them and almost all of them had come out sharp and clear. His camera was a Japanese job about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and he had loaded it with a very fast film. He studied the pictures now and was reasonably pleased with them. He had enlarged the negatives to four-by-five, and could have made them still larger without too much loss of definition, but he felt they would do.
    He poured his trays of chemicals down the sink and went upstairs. Helen Tremont was at the kitchen table reading a magazine. “Oh, Louis,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come up. You walk like a cat.”
    “I hope I didn’t startle you——”
    “Not at all.” She smiled. “You’re finished already? That was fast, wasn’t it.”
    “The darkroom’s a pleasure to work in.”
    “Yes, Walter spent hours on end down there. You’ve seen his nature photographs. He did some marvelous things. He always said it was the only hunting he cared for. Do you do very much photography yourself?”
    “Not anymore. I did for a few months, but then I realized I had a cabinet full of prints that I never looked at once I’d developed and printed them, and I sort of lost interest.”
    “I suppose that can happen.”
    “And I wasn’t an artist at it. I got to be competent, and then I never got to be anything better than competent, so from that point on it got dull for me. The only part I ever really enjoyed was the darkroom work. That’s still a kick, you know, putting the film through the bath and seeing what you come up with. This batch turned out fine.”
    “Roger will be glad to hear that. He’s upstairs, if you want to go up. Oh, what’s wrong with me? You’ll have a drink?”
    “I’d like some coffee, if there’s any made.”
    He stayed with her and drank the coffee in the kitchen. They talked about hobbies and travel, but Giordano had trouble keeping his mind on the conversation. When he was done with the coffee, he went up to the second floor and found the colonel in the library.
    “The prints are drying,” he said. “They came out fine.”
    “Good. I just spoke to Frank. He opened his account with no difficulty and managed to lease a safe deposit box. He had a look at the vault. No photographs, of course.”
    “His memory’s almost