The woman client, whose brown skin and surly manner had made her a prima facie subject for official suspicion, had proved too clever for Authority this time, having left all her guns and bombs at home. The guard reluctantly let her through, then turned to Dortmunder, who plunked his clipboard onto the rostrum and said, “Typewriter repair.”
“Which department?” Since Dortmunder was tall and male and white and not a client and not carrying any packages that might conceal guns or bombs, the guard had no reason to suspect him of anything.
“Beats me,” Dortmunder said. Running a finger down the top sheet on his clipboard, he said, “They just give me this address, that’s all. The typing pool, it says.”
“We got four typing pools in this building,” the guard said.
“I’m just the guy they send around,” Dortmunder told him.
“Well, how do I know what department?”
“Beats me,” Dortmunder said.
There’s a difference between a client and a workman, and the difference holds true everywhere, not merely in the Unemployment Insurance Division of the Department of Labor of the State of New York. The difference is, the client is there because he wants something, but the workman doesn’t give a damn what happens. The workman won’t extend himself, won’t try to help, won’t provide explanations, won’t in fact do anything but just stand there. The client wants to be liked, but the workman is just as willing to go back to his boss, shrug, and say, “They wouldn’t let me in.”
Everybody knows this, of course, including the guard on the door, who looked unhappily into Dortmunder’s unhelpful eyes for a moment, then sighed, and said, “All right. I’ll call around.” And he picked up his phone from the rostrum, simultaneously scanning his list of interior phone numbers.
The guard struck gold the first try, which didn’t surprise Dortmunder at all. “I’ll send him right up,” he told the phone, cradled it, and said to Dortmunder, “Osro.”
“What?”
“Out-of-State Resident Office, upstairs. Go to the end of that hall there, take the elevator to the third floor.”
“Right.”
Dortmunder, following instructions, eventually found himself in Osro, a large room full of desks and clerks and typewriters, semi-separated from one another by clusters of filing cabinets. He went to the nearest desk, bearing the sign INFORMATION, and told the girl there, “Typewriter repair. They just called up from downstairs.”
“Oh, yes.” She pointed. “The typing pool. Down past the second bunch of filing cabinets and turn right.”
“Fine,” Dortmunder said, and went to the typing pool, where the woman in charge, a tall gray-haired person with a face and body the texture of concrete, frowned at him, and said, “Do you know it’s been nearly three weeks since we put in our Form Two-Eighty-B?”
“I just do my job, lady,” Dortmunder said. “Where is it?”
“Over here,” she said, grumping, and led the way.
Of course, every large bureaucracy has many typing pools, and every typing pool’s typewriters break down from time to time, and no request for repairs ever takes less than four months to filter through that particular bureaucracy, so the woman in charge should have been grateful to Dortmunder for being so prompt, instead of complaining; but there’s too little gratitude in this world.
The woman left Dortmunder alone at the typewriter, a large Royal electric. He plugged it in and turned it on and the thing buzzed at him. He hit a few keys in his normal terrible typing style, and found that the machine’s problem was a refusal to automatically return when the automatic return button was pushed. He spent another two or three minutes fiddling with it, then unplugged it, picked it up – the thing weighed a ton – carried it over to the ungrateful woman’s desk, and said, “I’ll have to take it to the shop.”
“We never get machines back that go to the shop,” the woman said, which was probably true. It was certainly true of the last machine Dortmunder had taken from this building, about two years ago.
Dortmunder said, “I’ll leave it if you want, but it needs work in the shop.”
“Oh, very well,” she said.
“Do I need a pass or something with the guard on the door?”
“I’ll phone down.”
“Okay.”
Dortmunder carried the typewriter downstairs, where the guard nodded hello and waved him through. Outside, he put the machine on the passenger seat of the Plymouth he’d stolen for this trip, then drove back to Manhattan and to a friend of his who ran a pawn shop off Third Avenue. This man had never been known to ask anybody any question other than, “How much?” Dortmunder handed him the machine, accepted forty dollars, and went out to the street.
It was a pleasant day late in the month of April, one of the few days all month without rain, so Dortmunder decided to leave the Plymouth where he’d parked it and walk home. He’d gone about half a block when he suddenly realized he was looking at Stan Murch through the windshield of a car parked next to a fire hydrant. He started to grin and wave a big hello, but Stan made a tiny negative gesture with his head and the hand on the steering wheel, so Dortmunder converted his own movement into a cough, and walked on.
May wasn’t at home, since she had the afternoon shift down at the Safeway, but a note was Scotch-taped to the front of the TV set: Call Chauncey.
“Oog,” said Dortmunder, and went out to the kitchen to pop open a can of beer. He stayed in the kitchen, not wanting to be reminded of that message on the TV, and was working on his second beer when the doorbell rang.
It was Stan Murch. “Yeah, I’d love one,” he said, looking at the beer in Dortmunder’s hand.
“Sure. Sit down.”
Dortmunder brought a beer from the kitchen to the living room, where Murch was now seated, looking at the TV. “You call yet?”
“He wasn’t home,” Dortmunder lied. “How come you give me the office out there?”
“I was following Zane,” Murch said, and swigged some beer. “Oh.” Since they believed that so far Zane hadn’t positively identified any of Dortmunder’s partners in the robbery, the group had been taking turns occasionally trailing Leo Zane around, trying to find the right handle to use on him later.
Then Dortmunder frowned. “What was he doing down around there?”
“Following you,” Murch said. “Someday you’ll have to tell me how you do that typewriter bit.”
“Following me?”
“Yeah.” Murch drank beer and said, “I’m following him and he’s following you. Pretty funny, in a way.”
“Hysterical,” Dortmunder said, and went to the phone to call Chauncey.
Chapter 10
Chauncey had called Zane first, upon arrival in New York:
“Chauncey here.”
“You got it, did you?” Zane’s rather weedy voice, empty of strength or emphasis, suggested a kind of wasting menace that Chauncey found thrilling; like a Brueghel allegory.
“Yes, I did.” This time, apparently, the robbery had been so unreproachably real that the insurance investigation had been barely a formality, bringing settlement much sooner than anticipated. “And your pet?” Chauncey asked. “How has he been keeping?”
“In his cage. He doesn’t even want to fly away.”
“Good. I’ll see him soon. You’ll keep an eye out?”
“I’ll follow him,” Zane said, “until you’re finished. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there.”
“Exactly right.”
“When do you do it?”
“As soon as possible,” Chauncey said. “I’ll call you back.” And he phoned Dortmunder, leaving a message with the rather dry-voiced woman who answered the phone.
It was nearly three hours before the man called back, and then his voice had such a grudging surly quality that Chauncey became at once suspicious, despite Zane’s assurances. “The painting’s all right?”
“Sure it is,” Dortmunder said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Then you’ll bring it here. I have the money.”
“In cash?”
Chauncey grimaced. Nobody uses cash any more, unless buying a newspaper, so Chauncey hadn’t thought at all about the actual physical transfer of funds from himself to Dortmunder. But of course he couldn’t very well offer the man a check, could he? And even if he could, Dortmunder certainly couldn’t accept it. Nor was Dortmunder likely to be on Diners Club or Master Charge.
“Chauncey?”
“I’m thinking,” Chauncey told him. “Wait there, Dortmunder, I’ll have to call you back.” But when he tried, half an hour later, the line was busy, and this was why:
“I’m telling you, Dortmunder, it isn’t finished.”
“And I’m telling you, Porculey, the goddam man is in New York and he wants his goddam picture back.”
“You can’t give it to him unfinished.”
“I have to turn it over, period.”
“You told me I had till May.”
“He’s here now, and he wants his painting.”
“It isn’t ready.”
(And so on, for several minutes, more and more of the same, while Chauncey kept dialing Dortmunder’s number and getting the same infuriating busy signal, until Dortmunder finally asked the following question:)