Boston was clear, dry, and a bit windy. It was midday and the airport was filled with people. Phillip was waiting behind the railing as Harry's plane made the landing. Harry was the fifth person off, and Phillip probably spotted him before he came to the door of the plane.
Phillip walked eagerly toward Harry and began speaking to him before they were face to face.
"Good to see you. Everything is all set."
They got into a taxi quickly and rode to Phillip's hotel suite.
Immediately, Phillip pulled out a few diagrams. "Your entry is here.
I'll take care of the dog. We have to follow the plan exactly, there's no other way. If one thing fails, we split up as planned and leave it."
Suddenly Harry felt back in the business again. It was like being reborn and nothing counted, nothing else could give him the feeling.
Phillip reached into his pocket. "Here's a list of what we need. Pick them up and go back to your hotel for a short rest. Leave a call for seven o'clock. I'll be by half an hour later."
Phillip waited in a large foyer of Harry's hotel at the appointed time.
There was no sign of Harry. One of the elevators opened and a fat lady walked out; Harry was concealed behind her. Phillip felt annoyed at his partner's slight lateness when he saw him walking closely behind the fat dowager, luminent in paste, phony diamonds. Harry had a slight devil's smile. Then they caught each other's eye. There was a moment when Phillip smiled too. He thought Harry looked good, freshly awakened, dressed in the usual Burberry and crepe-sole shoes. They joined and went out the revolving door and into a black Dodge sedan.
Harry shifted into first, took a package from his coat and handed it to Phillip.
Phillip opened a bottle containing large, clear capsules, raised it to his nose and smelled. Then he took a butcher-like package and unwrapped it, exposing a chunk of raw meat, a little larger than a man's fist. Opening a small knife, Phillip repeatedly plunged the blade into the meat. Then he inserted six or seven of the capsules deep into the cuts. Pinching the openings closed, he rewrapped the meat.
Harry watched him out of the side of his eye. "It looks like that gives you a pleasure of its own."
Phillip said nothing. He put the package back into one of his coat pockets.
"I thought you despised violence?"
"I never said I was against violence," Phillip continued with his penetrating half-artificial smile. "Only unnecessary violence."
Their car moved slowly along the road toward Beacon Hill. Harry slowed to a stop opposite a twelve-foot stone wall. The wall was thinly vined, making strange shadows, giving it a foreboding aspect.
They left the car and walked across the street to the wall. Phillip took a small gadget from his pocket, and squeezed it erratically. It was a child's toy cricket. With the other hand he held the steel tube in his mouth and blew, silently, alternating with the cricket. There was a distant ominous growl, then barking. At a quick nod from Phillip, Harry sped away.
Phillip continued blowing the dog whistle and working the toy cricket. The barking became louder. He unwrapped the package and threw it to the howling animal.
Harry arrived at the outside corner of the medieval style wall. Then deftly, like a seasoned artist, he fitted a small grapple-like hook on the end of a tight coil of thin rope. He heard the furious barking of the dog.
What if it was a wolf and not a dog? In his imagination he saw Phillip torn to pieces by a slobbering wolf.
The barking stopped, utter silence again. Harry came out of his fantasy reflecting, "How the fuck did Phillip get naked anyhow?"
He tossed the hook over the far top of the wall to test the ropes tautness. He was unnerved by his lapse into the unconscious, something he hadn't allowed himself to do since he was a kid. "I hope it isn't an omen, Harry old boy," he said to himself more out of superstition than intuition. "But you never know. You never know."
He grabbed the rope tenaciously and pulled himself up and over.
Freeing the hook as he dropped to the ground, Harry faced a huge sweep of moonlit lawn. He had a sudden desire to masturbate under the huge yellow moon. To make another circle of luminosity on the smooth, close-cropped greenness of the lawn. In his mind's eye he saw himself a lone slender figure, his shadow behind him as he pulled on his penis, rubbing it not frantically, but assuredly. He would turn his head slightly and watch his shadow, like watching someone else jerk off. He would get hotter and hotter that way.
What a macabre idea! Here we are in the midst of the biggest hit yet, and I'm having wet dreams again. It must be the full moon, or my past is catching up with me.
He raced desperately across the lawn, as though running from himself and the thousand dark shadows in his brain. He disappeared around the back of the mansion. Phillip emerged swiftly from the darkness. They moved without noise together, like Indians stalking enemies. Now and then Harry would squeeze Phillip's arm almost passionately. Phillip did not understand this.
They moved toward a particular window. Phillip put the glass cutter to his mouth, and quickly passed his hand over the pane. He scored the glass with two swift, even, eight-inch diagonal strokes. He covered each score-mark with strips of adhesive tape. The sharp end of his cutter loosened the putty in each corner. Prying back slightly, the glass snapped. The diagonals fell out without a sound, hanging by the tape.
The gardener's cottage had a light on, but it was a night light. They were sure of this. However, they were not able to function with absolute impunity. Phillip reached through the broken pane and turned a knob in the wired copper alarm-box. Harry saw the door to the gardener's cottage open and a flood of light fell on the lawn.
When Phillip gently raised the window for expert entry, the gardener's head and shoulders showed in the doorway. They jumped through the window, sunk to the floor and looked over the window sill.
The gardener peered into the darkness, shrugged his shoulders, and closed the door.
Harry was holding a hooded flashlight. They were at the end of a long hallway. Phillip removed a whalebone collar-stay from his shirt.
With it he jiggled the lock of a large, arch-shaped door. Harry swept his flashlight around the room revealing a large library, book lined except for the outside wall, which was heavily draped with a dense vermilion velour. Taking opposite sides of the room, they started to look over and behind the shelves for the safe. Phillip ran his hand systematically along the upper inside corner of the shelves, from waist height to the shelf above his head, while Harry pulled books out in bunches, throwing them on the floor.
Phillip said suddenly, "Here, over here!"
Harry held the flashlight while Phillip reached under a high shelf and pushed a button. "Turn on the main switch, Harry, we need current."
Harry's mind was a blank now, deep in coordination. He threw on the lights. No movement in the gardener's cottage – he'd better be sleeping. The light was blinding for them; when they could focus, they saw an entire section the bookcase swing out. Phillip motioned to Harry to kill the lights as soon as he saw the panel he wanted.
Phillip pushed the panel back and exposed the safe. It was recessed in the wall about six inches. He rubbed his fingers together and began to spin the dial knob.
Harry parted the curtains slightly and looked out at the distant light of the cottage. Phillip's head was as close as it could possible be to the safe, he turned the dial slowly from right to left, pausing here and there.
He was perspiring heavily from the concentration. Harry moved nervously away from the window, lit a cigarette, and said softly, "Open thy portals." Phillip's hands and fingers were contorting with the insistence of a magician bent on amusing his audience.
Harry swallowed the smoke of his cigarette instead of exhaling it.
He did this unconsciously until he began to cough, then he spit the butt onto the carpet and ground it in. A faint ugly burning smell remained.
"OK Phillip! Let's bust it."
Phillip spun the dial impatiently. "Impossible. It's too heavy."
Harry grabbed his drill and pushed Phillip aside. Phillip was shocked at his aggressiveness. He picked up a crowbar and handed it to Harry.
"Use this, not the drill."
Harry took the small crowbar and worked furiously. The bar kept slipping out. On the floor about him were several tools, including a short sledgehammer lying near the smashed dial-knob. The steel punch was broken half off, protruding from the dial-hole of the safe. Harry was obsessed with the crowbar, nothing else appealed to him. He was banging it feverishly when Phillip put his hand on his shoulder hard.
"It's no good Harry. It's too far recessed; it would have to be blown."
After a pause, Harry stood up abruptly. His head lowered, he breathed like a man chased by a mad animal. Phillip spoke this time with authoritative decisiveness, "Come on, forget it. I'm sorry, but it's a bungled job."
Harry looked at the safe with fury. He wasn't going to leave, not now. Not with $200,000 in that box – no, no. "I'm not leaving without it," he shouted, his voice sharply raucous. "Tear down one of the drapes," he commanded Phillip.
Phillip, stunned by Harry's furor, crossed the room mechanically, like a somnambulist, pulled down one of the huge velour drapes and hurled it to him. It fell directly on top of Harry. He looked quite mad, Phillip thought, as he twisted himself out of the cloth.
"Thanks," said Harry bitterly. In a flash, he nailed one end of the drape against the wall with a cold chisel. He pulled the other end over the hold of the safe and proceeded to lash it to the wall with his sledge.
The heavy drape muffled the sound considerably, but it soon began to rip apart where he was pounding.
At this point, Harry threw another command at Phillip. He shouted breathlessly for him to bring the car around to the side gate. "If I'm not there in five minutes Phillip, split!"
Phillip nodded in accordance. He had been watching Harry, strangely fascinated by his tenacity. Phillip was no longer a part of this action, barely an accomplice. His risk was extreme and for what? For the impetuousness of a maniac, a young god-like maniac. The agreement was always to give up if things got dangerous. He never dreamed it would turn out this way. So this was what Harry had all cramped up inside him.
He left Harry in the flickering light of the flashlight, lying askew on the floor. Harry's form was illuminated as he lashed feverishly at the wall, the dulled sounds of his blows thudding like distant drum beats.
When Phillip reached the light-swept lawn before the gardener's cottage, he thought the drums were still there, beating in his ears, dull rhythmic thuds, but he knew he was out of earshot.
The flashlight was now in Harry's mouth. He swung powerfully at a bolt on an iron sidearm, which was set in concrete. The other side of the wall, by the safe, was in shambles with the sidearm sprung loose from the concrete. With a final blow from the sledge, the bolt parted and Harry used the crow-bar to loosen the safe.
Bracing one leg against the wall beneath, he gave an inhuman yank on the supporting strips. The safe moved forward about five inches.
Harry looked as if he had been down in a coal pit for days. Covered with sweaty grime, his face was twisted into a frightful mask. He heaved against the safe again; it came out a trifle more. It was so heavy every muscle in his body swelled until he thought he would rip apart.
But soon the safe plunged to the carpeted floor with a smashing sound.
Harry fell to the floor beside it. Gasping, he got to his feet and with monumental effort and slowly lifted the safe onto a heavy wooden chair. Kneeling, his back to the chair, he took one of the side-arms in each hand and tilted the chair forward. It rested heavily against his back.
Staggering to his feet, though bent double, he struggled toward the door. He left the flashlight burning on the floor, shining on all his evil tools. He made his way slowly down the long hall.
When he finally reached the entry window with the taped diagonals, he allowed himself to slump against the sill. Sick and breathless, he rested for a second, his half-closed eyes taking in the gardener's cottage, the same light glittering forth. He coughed and gagged, and in a flash he raised the safe to the window sill and sent it tumbling to the lawn. He jumped out after it.
He held the safe against his groin and knees and staggered like a hunchback across the lawn. When he neared the cottage, he moved to the left of the fieldstone path, passing onto the left lawn which was bathed in a flood of light. Clearly silhouetted in the moonlight, he progressed toward the wooden gate. The safe brushed the ground. He halted by the gate and let it drop, collapsing against the stone portal.
Harry leaned his head against the cool stone wall. It did not ease his pain. His eyes were closed and his breath came in gasps, like an asthmatic's. His head ached. But soon we'll live happily ever after …
as long as that gardener stays fast asleep…
He reached into his coat pocket and extracted the small sledge hammer. Pushing himself away from the wall with his left hand, he raised the sledge and with one tremendous blow, smashed the cast iron lock and handle. The noise shattered the silence and the heavy door swung creakily open.
He glanced behind himself for an instant. That fucking light in the gardener's cottage never burns out, he thought.
Harry lifted the safe to his knees and propelled himself to the sidewalk. Phillip was at the wheel, the rear door of the car open and welcoming. In three steps Harry had the safe to the car. He dumped it in with a heave and collapsed on top of it saying, "OK Daddy, drive…"
He fell unconscious.