The Monkey Handlers Read online

  The van pulled out, turned left onto Garden Street, and made directly for number 182. It turned into the driveway and drove under the porte cochere. The man in the right-front seat got out, glanced at the massive front door, and continued along the side of the house to the rear. There, arms akimbo, he looked up at the rear of the house as if estimating the time it would take to paint it.

  Inside the house, Saul Rosen rinsed off his razor in the sink of the same second-floor bathroom his sister had used. Face still bearing the residue of shaving cream, he stepped into the bathtub, pulled the curtain, and turned the shower on full blast.

  The man in the Duron painter’s cap noted with satisfaction that several second-floor windows were open to the balmy early June breezes, then walked back to the truck. He gestured to the driver, then toward the ladders. The driver dismounted, reached around into the club-cab area behind the front seat, and took out two five-gallon paint cans, both labeled DURON, and set them heavily on the ground. Then he went to assist his boss in taking down an aluminum extension ladder from the rack on top of the truck.

  The two men carried the ladder to the rear of the house and, holding it upright, pulled the rope to extend it, then set it carefully in place beneath the second-floor hall window. That accomplished, the men walked back and each carried one of the five-gallon paint cans to the base of the ladder. The man with the Duron cap went up first, carrying one of the paint cans, as the driver held the base of the ladder steady. At the top of the ladder, the climber first passed his paint can through the hall window, then himself. He checked quickly, then leaned out and gestured to the man on the ground. The driver picked up the other can and made his way up the ladder and inside.

  As he entered the second floor, the driver, the younger of the two, cocked his head and said, “Wasser?” The sound of running water somewhere was clear. The first man pointed outside the window toward the rear yard. There, at the right rear of the property, a large water-fan sprinkler was soaking Aunt May’s early radish and carrot bed. The driver grunted in reply, then the two men made their way downstairs, carrying the paint cans with them.

  On the first floor, the men split up, methodically searching each room, looking behind paintings on the wall and anywhere else it would be logical to hide a safe. When the driver entered Stone’s office, he saw immediately that his search was over. In the right-front corner of the office stood an ancient Mosler that housed the wills that Stone’s late uncle Harry had drawn and held for safekeeping against the deaths of his clients, clients now inherited by Michael Stone. “Here,” the driver called. The older man joined him, then slipped a screwdriver from a tool loop in his overalls and used it to pry the lid off one of the five-gallon paint cans.

  There was no paint inside the can. Instead, the man withdrew a portable cellular telephone and walked over to Michael Stone’s office desk. It was still furnished with Harry Stone’s old leather blotter holder and onyx desk set: double set of Parker pens on an onyx base, matching windup clock, onyx-based letter holder stuffed with bills to be paid and correspondence that could be put off, and a “perpetual” calendar that had not yet been switched from May to June. He set the phone down on the desk and the two then conferred about the safe. “Old,” said the younger man. “Should be easy to cut through with the torch.”

  “No. This is a lawyer’s office. The principal hazard is from fire. That box probably has alternating layers of steel and copper to draw off the heat. To burn it will take too much time.”

  “Drill, then?”

  “Not necessary. As you say, it is old. We pull the spindle.” He turned to pry off the lid of the other paint can.

  Upstairs and on the other side of the vast Victorian house, Saul Rosen shut off the water to his shower and fished around on the rack for a bath towel.

  A quarter of a mile away, Aunt May, disgusted that the personnel at the offices of New York Oil and Gas had never heard of Marsha and didn’t know what she was talking about when she proffered her bills for a refund, declined to wait around until the manager had time to see her and walked out the door in indignation, convinced that the state of the world was even worse than she had suspected. Her surveillor, startled to see her emerge so soon, took refuge behind a parked car and rapidly punched a number into his lightweight cellular telephone.

  The cellular telephone on Michael Stone’s office desk rang, and the leader picked it up, saying, “Ja, ja.”

  “The old woman,” said the voice on the telephone, “is returning.”

  “Delay her. We need more time.”

  Saul Rosen, dripping water onto the bath mat, pressed the towel hard to his face to absorb the water from in and around his eyes. It was then that he heard the telephone downstairs. Because of the distance, the sound was faint. He decided not to try to answer it and take a message. It would undoubtedly stop ringing just as he got there. Suddenly, Saul Rosen’s skin started to tighten at the base of his spine, the way it tightened in Vietnam when he walked into the tall grass and first suspected he had entered an ambush. The telephone had rung just once. Sure, someone could have changed his mind and hung up after the first ring, but that was unusual. More important was the fact that it was an electronic ring—and there were no electronic telephones in Michael Stone’s house. Very slowly, Saul wrapped the towel around his dripping waist and eased through the bathroom door into his bedroom.

  Saul wiped his hands carefully along his thighs to towel them dry, then slowly reached into his suitcase to withdraw a Browning P-35 Hi Power 9 mm semiautomatic pistol. A small hole directly behind the trigger betrayed the fact that the magazine safety had been removed. He depressed the safety on the left side of the frame and the hooked top of it slipped out of a notch in the bottom of the slide, freeing it. Saul eased back the slide, checking to ensure that there was a round in the chamber. That brought the hammer back into the cocked position. He left it that way, and left the safety off as he made his way carefully down the hall toward the stairway.

  Downstairs, in Michael Stone’s office, the man in the painter’s cap froze abruptly.

  “Was ist…?” the younger man started to say, only to be hushed by the movement of a finger to the lips of his leader.

  “Das Wasser,” the leader whispered. The younger man cocked his head. The sound of running water was greatly diminished. He looked out the window toward the garden. The sprinkler fan was still oscillating.

  The two men, moving as slowly and silently as they could, both reached into the second paint can and withdrew identical .22-caliber Walther PP semiautomatic pistols to which slides had been fitted from the PPK model. Because the PPK slide was shorter, the PP barrel protruded five-eighths of an inch from the shorter slide. The protruding part had been threaded and a six-inch tubular-steel sound suppressor screwed onto it. Both men carefully checked for a round in the chamber, then proceeded out of Stone’s office.

  * * *

  As Aunt May walked down Albany Street away from the New York Oil and Gas offices, her step was sprightly enough for a woman twenty years younger. She threw her head back to inhale the scent of late spring, then blew it out sharply as her lungs took in more auto exhaust than fresh air. With an alternating roaring and hissing of air brakes, a diesel-powered bus turned onto the street at the other end of the block. Aunt May wrinkled her nose in disgust. More pollution. A body couldn’t even enjoy a springtime walk through town anymore, what with all the smelly machines. And the people! Time was when people stopped to say hello to friends and were at least courteous to women. Now a woman was lucky not to be bowled over by some fresh child in a hurry.

  Aunt May felt a presence behind and to her left. It was a man, she could tell, much larger than she. He was too close for comfort, invading her personal space. Probably, Aunt May thought, trying boorishly to get through the crowd ahead of everyone else so he could push his way first onto the bus, now headed for the curb.

  As the man started to thrust her toward the street, Aunt May’s eyes blazed with indignation
. She started to turn toward him, and said, “Now, see here!”

  As Aunt May turned, the man, his body now directly against hers, swept her up in a running push. “Oh!” she cried, her legs trying but failing to keep up with her motion and starting to trip. She turned away from the offending man to see where she was going and try to regain her balance. Too late, she realized her right foot was out over the curb. It came down nearly a foot farther than she expected, pitching her violently forward. On the startling blast of an air horn, she looked upward. Oh, dear God! May thought as the blind eye of the bus headlight swung inexorably toward her in what seemed like slow motion. It’s going to hit me!

  Instinctively, Aunt May threw up her right arm and turned her face away as the right-front corner of the bus struck her all along her body. She lost consciousness to the sound of her own cry being drowned out by the screech of air brakes and the descending howl of the bus’s turbocharger. As the asphalt rose to meet her, Aunt May was furious at the thought of dying because of the rudeness of the kind of man who probably wouldn’t give up his seat to a pregnant woman on crutches.

  * * *

  Moving silently on his bare feet, Saul Rosen, pistol held at the ready in both hands, made his way farther down the hall. He stayed along the wall until he came opposite the long banister that protected the stairwell, and eased over to it. Saul positioned himself at the edge of the stairwell, taking care not to expose any part of his body to anyone who might be watching below, and listened for any sound that might betray an intruder. In the silence of the great house, all he could hear was the faint running of water and the slow ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway below. Slowly, a pool of water gathered below Saul’s left foot as the bathwater on the inside of his legs slid downward. The water dripped off his big toe onto the small space between the carpeting and the edge of the stairwell, left bare to the hardwood floor because of the difficulty of fitting carpeting around the rails of the banister. The water pooled, then started to drip over the edge.

  The first drop of water fell onto the face of the bareheaded gunman as he was looking upward through the stair railing toward the first landing. He froze, then moved back gingerly to find and inform his superior, who was in the kitchen doorway. The man in the painter’s hat smiled mirthlessly at this intelligence, then gestured silently to his subordinate. The younger man carefully made his way back to Michael Stone’s office and repositioned the cellular telephone, glancing as he did toward the large overstuffed leather wing chair, intended for clients, that sat to the right front of the office desk. Satisfied with the position of the phone, the man crouched down behind the big chair, invisible to the office door.

  Saul Rosen, hearing nothing after a period of intent listening, descended the stairs slowly, his back to the wall, keeping his pistol close so as not to “flag” his approach. From the cracked-open kitchen door, the senior intruder watched the reflection of the bottom of the stairs in the glass of the cabinet of the grandfather clock. Silently, Saul Rosen’s bare lower leg appeared, then he swung suddenly left, pistol outstretched, to cover the living room. At that moment, the man in the kitchen finished pushing the last button on the kitchen telephone. A moment later, the portable telephone on Michael Stone’s desk broke the silence with its startling electronic ring.

  Saul pivoted expertly 180 degrees and covered the open door to Stone’s office. The telephone continued to ring. Saul crossed quickly to the doorway and glanced between the rear edge of the door and the frame to satisfy himself that no one was hiding behind the door. He checked again to see that the safety was off the Browning, then slowly approached the cellular phone.

  As Saul Rosen reached the phone, his back was to the empty chair. At that moment, the younger burglar rose silently from behind it and, with one smooth motion, slammed the suppressor-equipped barrel directly behind Saul Rosen’s right ear. Blood running from behind his ear down his neck, Saul Rosen collapsed into a limp, wet pile on the Oriental rug. A hand reached down, took the Browning from his reach, removed the magazine and ejected the cartridge from the chamber, then threw the piece back down on the floor six feet away. Immediately, the two burglars turned to their task. With a cold chisel and hammer taken from the paint cans, they knocked the dial off the front of the safe, then mounted a screw-operated extractor device to the spindle and pulled it from the opening in the safe door.

  The man in the painter’s hat operated the handle, and the safe door swung open with a squeak that asked for oil. He opened, then cast aside the petty-cash box and scooped out an accumulation of wills, all neatly enclosed in paper pockets that proclaimed in Old English script “Last Will and Testament of…” followed by handwritten names in the older documents, typewritten in the more recent.

  Sara’s photographs were not apparent. The leader picked up the will packets and, holding them by their closed ends, flipped them downward sharply so that the documents flew out onto the floor. No photographs. “Scheiss!” he muttered, then checked his watch. “We go,” he said.

  “But—” the younger man started to object.

  “The intelligence is bad. There was a third person where there were supposed to be two. Who knows whether there’s a fourth about to return? The whole house is left to be searched. There is no time. We go.”

  The men put their tools and weapons back in the paint cans and left, this time by the front door. They had retrieved their ladder and were gone by the time Saul Rosen, head throbbing and feeling nauseated, returned to consciousness.

  * * *

  It hadn’t taken Michael Stone long to serve the district attorney personally with his writ, then walk over to the office of the clerk of the court to file a copy there for the judge. That accomplished, there were still some papers left in his undernourished briefcase, some title searches that were long overdue, thanks to his preoccupation with the troubles of Sara Rosen. He went upstairs to the great room, where all the deeds recorded in Mohawk County since the time of the Dutch colonists were entered on great two-and-a-half-foot-square ledgers, and methodically went to work.

  Stone finished his stint in the record room just before noon. He hadn’t seen Ira Levin for a while and thought to drop in on him for the latest, be it solid information or mere gossip. Whatever Levin had to offer, it would at least be entertaining.

  The door to Levin’s cigar store was propped open to take advantage of the beautiful day. However, it served its most important function, as far as Stone was concerned, by venting to the outside the large concentration of lethal cigar smoke in which Ira Levin, like some alien creature that breathed another gas, seemed to thrive. Stone was expecting Ira’s customary enthusiastic greeting, so he was surprised when a look of sorrow crossed the man’s face when he saw Stone and said, “Aw, counselor, I’m so sorry. How’s your aunt?”

  “May? Fine when I left her this morning. Why the long face, Ira? What’s there to be sorry about?”

  Levin guessed immediately that Stone hadn’t heard about his aunt’s accident. “Come in the back, Michael, come in the back.” His voice and face were grim.

  “What is it?” Stone asked, standing with Levin in the back storeroom cum office. “What’s going on?”

  Ira Levin spoke as calmly and reassuringly as he could under the circumstances. “I hate to be the one to tell you, counselor, but your aunt had an accident earlier this morning. She was walking on Albany Street and, I dunno how it happened, but, maybe she was tryin’ to get on a bus or something—”

  “Ira, for Christ’s sake, what is it!”

  Ira Levin drew a deep breath and ran it all together: “Your aunt was hit by a bus at a bus stop. They took her down the hospital. She’s hurt, I dunno how bad—”

  “Thanks, Ira. Jesus!” Michael Stone turned to run out of the store, Ira calling out after him, “Come back and lemme know how she is, okay?”

  Stone sprinted to the parking lot, burned rubber to the exit, shoved a five-dollar bill at the startled lot manager, and, without waiting for change,
roared off down the street toward the hospital.

  The emergency-room nurse directed Stone to the intensive-care unit, telling him only that his aunt was alive and insisting that only the attending physician in intensive care could give him any further information. Frustrated, concerned, and angry, Michael Stone burst into the intensive-care unit, confronted the chief nurse, and demanded to see the attending physician: “Now!”

  The chief nurse was accustomed to dealing with distraught relatives, but nothing in her experience ever before had exposed her to anything like the cold and deadly eyes of the Michael Stone who stood before her. “One moment, sir,” she said, then picked up the phone and said, “Dr. Heller, come to the station, please, right away.” Then, to Stone, she said, “He’ll be right here.” Her voice was frightened.

  There was the sound of a pneumatic-mechanical slam, and big double doors from the main hall burst open. Through them, white coat and stethoscope flying, came a young man with dark wavy hair, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. “Yes?” he said to the nurse. She just nodded her head toward Stone.

  “I’m Michael Stone. I understand you have my aunt, Mary Stone—she goes by May—here. Accident case. I’m next of kin. I want to see her. How is she?”

  Dr. Heller looked Stone right in the eye and said, “How she is depends upon whether you’re one of the people who sees a glass of water half full or half empty. The half-full guy sees good news. Your aunt’s alive and gives every indication of staying that way. The half-empty part is that she’s hurt. She’s got a fractured rotator cuff of the right arm, broken right rib, lacerated right kidney, and a hyperextension of the tendon inside her right knee. The most serious is the kidney. She has blood in her urine. But all her injuries should heal. The knee will probably bother her for a year. Have to wear a brace. You can look in on her for a minute if you want, but you’d do better coming back late this afternoon. She’s out of it. Under sedation.”

  “What time?”

  Heller looked at his watch. “Try after four. Anything else you want to know? I’ll be off duty by then.”