'Salem's Lot(33)

'Yeah.'

'Have them put it down cellar. Your men can enter through the outside bulkhead below the kitchen windows. You understand?'

'Yeah. Now, this sideboard - '

'One other service, please. You will procure five stout Yale padlocks. You are familiar with the brand Yale?'

'Everybody is. What - '

'Your movers will lock the shop's back door when they leave. At the house, they will leave the keys to all five locks on the basement table. When they leave the house, they will padlock the bulkhead door, the front and back doors, and the shed-garage. You understand?'

'Yeah.'

'Thank you, Mr Crockett. Follow all directions ex?plicitly. Good-by.'

'Now, wait just a minute - '

Dead line.

5

It was two minutes of seven when the big orange-and-white truck with 'Henry's U-Haul' printed on the sides and back pulled up to the corrugated-steel shack at the end of Custom House Wharf at the Portland docks. The tide was on the turn and the gulls were restless with it, wheeling and crying overhead against the sunset crimson sky.

'Christ, there's nobody here,' Royal Snow said, swigging the last of his Pepsi and dropping the empty to the floor of the cab. 'We'll get arrested for burglars.'

'There's somebody,' Hank Peters said. 'Cop.'

It wasn't precisely a cop; it was a night watchman. He shone his light in at them. 'Either of you guys Lawrence Crewcut?'

'Crockett,' Royal said. 'We're from him. Come to pick up some boxes.'

'Good,' the night watchman said. 'Come on in the office. I got an invoice for you to sign.' He gestured to Peters, who was behind the wheel. 'Back up right over there. Those double doors with the light burning. See?'

'Yeah.' He put the truck in reverse.

Royal Snow followed the night watchman into the office where a coffee maker was burbling. The clock over the pin-up calendar said 7:04. The night watchman scrabbled through some papers on the desk and came up with a clipboard. 'Sign there.'

Royal signed his name.

'You want to watch out when you go in there. Turn on the lights. There's rats.'

'I've never seen a rat that wouldn't run from one of these,' Royal said, and swung his work-booted foot in an arc.

'These are wharf rats, sonny,' the watchman said dryly. 'They've run off with bigger men than you.'

Royal went back out and walked over to the warehouse door. The night watchman stood in the doorway of the shack, watching him, 'Look out,' Royal said to Peters. 'The old guy said there was rats.'

'Okay.' He sniggered. 'Good ole Larry Crewcut.'

Royal found the light switch inside the door and turned them on. There was something about the atmosphere, heavy with the mixed aromas of salt and wood rot and wetness, that stifled hilarity. That, and the thought of rats.

The boxes were stacked in the middle of the wide ware?house floor. The place was otherwise empty, and the collection looked a little portentous as a result. The side?board was in the center, taller than the others, and the only one not stamped 'Barlow and Straker, 27 Jointner Avenue, Jer. Lot, Maine.'

'Well, this don't look too bad,' Royal said. He consulted his copy of the invoice and then counted boxes. 'Yeah, they're all here.'

'There are rats,' Hank said. 'Hear 'em?'

'Yeah, miserable things. I hate 'em.'

They both fell silent for a moment, listening to the squeak and patter coming from the shadows.

'Well, let's get with it,' Royal said. 'Let's put that big baby on first so it won't be in the way when we get to the store.'

'Okay.'

They walked over to the box, and Royal took out his pocket knife. With one quick gesture he had slit the brown invoice envelope taped to the side.

'Hey Hank said. 'Do you think we ought to - '

'We gotta make sure we got the right thing, don't we? If we screw up, Larry'll tack our asses to his bulletin board.' He pulled the invoice out and looked at it.

'What's it say?' Hank asked.

'Heroin,' Royal said judiciously. 'Two hundred pounds of the shit. Also two thousand girlie books from Sweden, three hundred gross of French ticklers - '

'Gimme that.' Hank snatched it away. 'Sideboard,' he said. 'Just like Larry told us. From London, England. Portland, Maine, POE. French ticklers, my ass. Put this back.'

Royal did. 'Something funny about this,' he said.

'Yeah, you. Funny like the Italian Army.'

'No, no shit. There's no customs stamp on this f**ker. Not on the box, not on the invoice envelope, not on the invoice. No stamp.'

'They probably do 'em in that ink that only shows up under a special black light.'

'They never did when I was on the docks. Christ, they stamped cargo ninety ways for Sunday. You couldn't grab a box without getting blue ink up to your elbows.'

'Good. I'm very glad. But my wife happens to go to bed very early and I had hopes of getting some tonight.'

'Maybe if we took a look inside - '

'No way. Come on. Grab it.'

Royal shrugged. They tipped the box, and something shifted heavily inside. The box was a bitch to lift. It could be one of those fancy dressers, all right. It was heavy enough.