He opened the entry port of the front door, swished his hand around to make sure, probably, there were no trip wires and then stepped inside, placing his feet to avoid where feet would normally step — probably to avoid mines.

He got a box and put it under the window, stood on it and undid the latch.

He returned to the door, beckoned to Bang-Bang to enter. Then Heller went outside. He carefully relocked the padlock, just as it had been.

Heller went to the outside of the window, lifted it and entered the building. He closed the window carefully. Now, to all intents and purposes, anyone approaching from the outside would have no sign that anyone was inside. Clever. I would have to remember how to do that.

The whole interior was stacked with islands of cartons, leaving only aisles and room to drive a car down the center. And it was these cartons which were getting Bang-Bang’s attention.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a (bleepch),” said Bang-Bang. “Will you look at this!” He had pried a carton open and was holding a bottle. “Johnnie Walker Gold Label!

Look, kid. I heard of it but I never seen any.” In the dimness he must have seen that Heller wasn’t tracking. “Y’see, there’s red label and there’s black label and you can get that easy. But gold label, they keep only for Scotland or sometimes export it to Hong Kong. It’s worth forty bucks a bottle!”

He looked at the cap. “No revenue seals! Smuggled!” He got the cap off adroitly to hide signs of opening. He touched his tongue to the top and tilted it.

Heller’s hand tilted the bottle back, vertical.

“No, no,” said Bang-Bang. “I never drink on duty.” He rolled the drop around on his tongue. “It ain’t fake! Smooth!” He put the top back on and restored it to the carton. Then he began to make an estimate of the number of cases, walking about. The islands were piled nearly to the ceiling and the garage/warehouse was big.

“Jesus!” said Bang-Bang, “there’s close to two thousand cases in here. That’s…” he was trying to add it up. “Twelve to the case and forty dollars…”

“Million dollars,” said Heller.

“A million dollars,” said Bang-Bang, abstractedly. He went deeper into the building. “Hey! Look at this.” He had his hand on some differently shaped cases. He expertly pried up a lid with a knife and hauled out a small box. “Miniature wrist recorders from Taiwan! Must be…” he was counting, “…five thousand of them here. Two hundred dollars apiece wholesale…”

“A million dollars,” said Heller.

“A million dollars,” said Bang-Bang. Then he planted his feet and glared down the widest aisle. “Well, God (bleep) me! You know what that son of a (bleepch) Faustino is trying to do? He’s trying to cut in on our smuggling! The (bleepard)! He’s trying to muscle in on us! He’s going to flood the market and drive us out of business! God (bleep)! Oh, when Babe hears about this, she is going to be livid!”

He stood and thought. “It’s that crook Oozopopolis!”

“Can we get on with this car?” said Heller.

Bang-Bang was promptly all business. “Don’t touch it!”

The Cadillac was sitting apparently where Heller had parked it. The license plates had been removed. The light was very bad there.

Bang-Bang got out a torch. Keeping his hands off the car, he gingerly slid under it. He was looking at the springs. “They sometimes put it under the leaves so when the car tilts, off it goes. Nope. Now for the… oh, for Christ’s sakes!”

Heller was kneeling down watching Bang-Bang under the car. Bang-Bang seemed to be working on the inside of a wheel. His hand emerged and he tossed something to Heller who caught it. A stick of dynamite!

Bang-Bang was working on another wheel. He tossed up another stick of dynamite. Heller caught it. Bang-Bang, scrambling around, shortly tossed a third and then a fourth stick to Heller. After playing his light around further underneath, Bang-Bang emerged.

“Cut-rate job,” said Bang-Bang. “There was a stick taped vertically to the inside of each wheel. Dynamite of this type is just sawdust and soup. The soup is usually spread all through the sawdust and is safe to handle unless concentrated.”

“Soup?” asked Heller.

“Nitroglycerine,” said Bang-Bang. “It explodes when you jar it. This car was rigged to blow up miles from here! As the wheels spun, the centrifugal force would make the soup move from the stick as a whole and concentrate at just one end. Then an extra bump on the road and BOOM! Cut-rate. They saved the expense of detonators! Cheap-o!” he added with scorn.

“But maybe these were placed just to be found,” said Heller, “and the real charge is still in there somewhere.”

“So these could have been decoys and the real charge is still in there somewhere,” said Bang-Bang.

He passed a very thin blade down through the window slit to make sure there was no trip wire and then opened the door. He looked under the panel. Nothing. He opened the hood. He looked back of the motor.

“Aha!” said Bang-Bang. “A cable job!” In a gingerly fashion he slid a matchbook cover between two contact points. Then he snipped some wires. Shortly he fished up a revolution counter.

“A second odometer!” he said. “The speedometer cable was taken off the back and put to this thing.” He was spinning its wheels. It suddenly went click. He read the numbers. “Five miles! It was set to go five miles from here.” He peered back down behind the motor. “Jesus! Ten pounds of gelignite! Wow, did they blow dough on setting this up! Somebody is big bucks mad at you, kid! That’s enough to blow up ten—”

“Shh!” said Heller.

A car was coming!

Hurriedly, Bang-Bang closed the hood and door. Heller dragged him to a point about fifteen feet from the main entrance and back between two stacks of boxes.

The car stopped.

Bang-Bang whispered, “You got a gun?”

Heller shook his head.

“Me neither! It’s illegal to carry a gun on parole.” He shifted his heavy sack of explosives. “I don’t dare throw a bomb in all this whisky. We’d go up like a torch!”

“Shh!” said Heller.

A car door closed. “I’ll put the car around back,” somebody said.

Silence.

A car door slammed in the back of the building. Footsteps going around. Then, in front, “The door’s still locked back there.”

“I told you,” said a new voice. “There ain’t nobody here.”

A rattle of keys. “You just got the jumps, Chumpy. He’s probably still running.”

“Anybody could have come in the time it took you!” It was the plump young man. He backed in. The door opened inward more widely.

Two men in expensive-looking clothes followed him through. “We came as fast as we could. Jesus, you don’t get from Queens to here in five minutes. Not in this traffic! See, there’s nobody here! Waste of time.”

“He’ll be back!” said Chumpy. “He’s a mean (bleepard)! If you don’t do nothing, I’m going to call Faustino!”

The other man said, “Look, Dum-Dum, it won’t do any harm to wait around for a while. Jesus, after all that drive. Tell you what. Leave the door unlocked and a tiny bit ajar, kind of inviting, and then we’ll go over and sit down behind those boxes opposite and wait. Jesus, I got to catch my breath. All those God (bleeped) trucks!”

He left the door ajar. Chumpy, getting out a burp gun, went over and sat down on the floor back of an island of boxes, in profile and in full view of Heller. I went cold. Then I realized Heller was looking through a slit between two cartons.

The other two disappeared behind the island opposite the door.

“Don’t shoot toward that old car in the back!” said Chumpy. “It’s a walking boom factory!”

“Shut up, Chumpy,” said one of the men. “We’ll give it an hour. So you just shut up.”

Heller looked down and slipped out of his shoes. He moved sideways until he could see the door. It was very dark right near it, the effect heightened by the slit of light coming through the ajar door.