Knock Knock Who's There?

Ever since he could remember, he had dreamed of owning a boat. When he was a kid he had spent all his spare time down at the harbour where the rich had their yachts and the fishermen their boats. The sea had pulled and still pulled him like a magnet. When he should have been at school, he was messing around in boats. He didn't care bow hard he worked or what he was paid so long as be was allowed on board. He scrubbed decks, polished brass and spliced ropes for nickels. He still thought back on that time when he was a kid: the best time of his life!

Lying in the dark, he again felt the compulsive urge to return to the sea, but not as a kid working for nickels and sweating his heart out just to feel the lift and fall of a deck under his feet. He wanted to return with his own boat: a sleek thirty-footer and he would charter her for fishing: going along as Captain with one crew—someone like Sammy: even Sammy.

The boat of his dreams would cost money: then there was the heavy fishing tackle and the first running expenses. He reckoned he would need at least $60,000.

He told himself he was crazy in the head to be thinking like that, but that didn't stop him thinking nor dreaming. Like an aching tooth, the dream of owning his own boat, feeling the surge of the sea nagged him for as long as he could remember and was nagging him now as he sat at the window.

A dream that could come true if he could lay his hands on a large sum of money.

Some six months ago an idea had dropped into his mind which he had immediately shied away from . . . shutting it away like a man who feels a sudden stabbing pain shuts away the thought of cancer. But the idea kept coming back. It even haunted his dreams until finally, he told himself an idea was just an idea: it could be looked at, couldn't it? There was no harm in looking at it, was there?

And when he began to look at it, he realized for the first time what it meant to be a loner. It would have been so much better, so much more reassuring if he had someone to discuss the idea with, but there was no one: no one he could trust. What was the use of talking about a thing like this with his only real solid friend: Sammy the Black? What use would Melanie be if he told her what was going on in his mind? She would hate the idea of the sea and a boat. She would think he had gone crazy. Even if his mother had been alive, he couldn't have talked to her about it. She would have been horrified. His father had been too dumb, too much of a slave, to discuss with him any goddamn thing.

So he had looked at this idea when he was alone as he was now beginning to look at it again while sitting at the window.

Simply stated, the idea was for him to steal the Numbers collection, but to justify the high risk, he had, he told himself, to wait patiently until the big take came along as he knew it must from his past experience as a collector.

And now here it was! February 29th! Something like $150,000! The big take!

If I'm going to do it, if I'm ever going to own that boat, Johnny thought, Friday 29th is D-day! With that kind of money, I can buy a good boat, have money over so if the fishing charter idea flops, it won't matter. With that kind of money and living carefully, I can last out until I die and still have the boat, the sea and nothing to worry about. I swear I'll kiss the horses good-bye. I might even kiss the chicks good-bye and I'll shut my ears to any future hard luck story!

Well, okay, he said to himself, as he settled his bulk more comfortably in the old lounging chair, so on Friday night of the 29th, you go ahead and take this money from Massino. You've thought about it long enough. You have made plans. You have even gone so far as to take an impression of the key of Andy's safe. You have gone even further than that: you have made a duplicate key from the impression that you know will open the safe. That was where those two years in jail had' paid off: you learned things like taking key impressions and making keys from the impressions.

He paused here to recall just how he had got the impression and tiny beads broke out of his forehead when he remembered the risk he had run.

The safe was a big hunk of old-fashioned metal that -stood in Andy's tiny office, facing the door. The safe had belonged to Massino's grandfather.

More than once, Johnny had heard Andy complain about the safe to Massino.

"You want something modern," Andy had said. "A kid could bust into this goddamn thing. Why not let me get rid of it and fix you with something modern?"

Johnny well remembered Massino's reply.