The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake Page A

in which Eugene Andrew Prosker sat and smiled on the other side of a wall of wire mesh.

    Greenwood sat opposite him, “How goes the world?”

    “It turns,” Prosker assured him. “It turns.”

    “And how’s my appeal coming?” Greenwood didn’t mean an appeal to any court, but his request for deliverance to his former pards.

    “Coming well,” Prosker said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you heard something by morning.”

    Greenwood smiled. “That’s good news,” he said. “And believe me I’m ready for good news.”

    “All your friends ask of you,” Prosker said, “is that you meet them halfway. I know you’ll want to do that, won’t you?”

    “I sure will,” Greenwood said, “and I mean to try.”

    “You should try more than once,” Prosker told him. “Anything that’s worth trying is worth trying three times at the very least.”

    “I’ll remember that,” Greenwood said. “You haven’t given my friends any of the other details, I guess.”

    “No,” Prosker said. “As we decided, it would probably be best to wait till you’re free before going into all that.”

    “I suppose so,” Greenwood said. “Did you get my stuff out of the appartment?”

    “All seen to,” Prosker said. “All safely in storage under your friend’s name.”

    “Good,” Greenwood shook his head. “I hate to give up that apartment,” he said. “I had it just the way I wanted.”

    “You’ll be changing a lot of things once we get you out of here,” Prosker reminded him.

    “That’s right. Sort of starting a new life almost. Turning over a new leaf. Becoming a new man.”

    “Yes,” said Prosker, unenthusiastically. He didn’t like taking unnecessary chances with double entendres. “Well, it’s certainly encouraging to see you talking like this,” he said, getting to his feet, gathering up his attache case. “I hope we’ll have you out of here in no time.”

    “So do I,” Greenwood said.

Chapter 7
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    At two twenty–five a.m. the morning after Prosker’s visit to Greenwood, the stretch of Northern State Parkway in the vicinity of the Utopia Park exit was very nearly empty. Only one vehicle was in the area, a large dirty truck with a blue cab and a gray body, the words ‘Parker’s Rent a–Truck’ in a white–lettered oval on both cab doors. Major Iko had done the renting, through untraceable middlemen, just this afternoon, and Kelp was doing the driving at the moment, heading east out of New York. As he slowed now for the exit, Dortmunder, in the seat beside him, leaned forward to look at his watch in the dashboard light and said, “We’re five minutes early.”
    “I’ll take it slow on the bumpy streets,” Kelp said, “on account of everything in back.”

    “We don’t want to be there too early,” Dortmunder said.

    Kelp steered the cumbersome truck off the parkway and around the curve of the exit ramp. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

    In the prison at this same time Greenwood was also looking at his watch, the green hands in the darkness telling him he still had half an hour to wait. Prosker had told him Dortmunder and the others wouldn’t be making their move until three o’clock. He shouldn’t do anything too early that might tip their mitts.

    Twenty–five minutes later the rental truck, lights off, rolled to a stop in the parking lot of an A&P three blocks from the prison. Street lights at corners were the only illumination anywhere in this part of Utopia Park, and the cloudy sky made the night even blacker. You could just barely see your hand in front of your face.

    Kelp and Dortmunder got out of the cab and moved cautiously around to open the doors at the rear of the truck. The interior of the truck was pitch black. While Dortmunder helped Chefwick to jump down onto the asphalt, Murch handed a ten–foot ladder out to Kelp. Kelp and Dortmunder stood the ladder up against the side of the truck while Murch handed out to Chefwick a coil of gray