“You got time. Eight-thirty, right?”
“Right.”
“How does it look?”
He shrugged. “Possible. Crazy, but possible.” Then, to keep her from going
back to the subject of the movie and asking him more questions about it, he
said, “There’s still a lot of things to work out. But we maybe got a lockman.”
“That’s good.”
“We still don’t have anyplace to take it.”
“You’ll find a place.”
“It’s pretty big,” he said.
“So’s the world.”
He looked at her, not sure she’d just said something sensible, but decided to
let it go. “There’s also financing,” he said.
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“I don’t think so. Kelp saw somebody today.” He hadn’t known May very
long, so this was the first time she’d watched him put together a piece of work,
but he had a feeling with her as though she just naturally understood the situation.
He never gave her a lot of background explanations, and she didn’t seem to
need any. It was very relaxing. In a funny way, May reminded Dortmunder of
his ex-wife, not because she was similar but because she was so very different.
It was the contrast that did it. Until he’d started up with May, Dortmunder
hadn’t even thought about his former wife for years. A show-biz performer
she’d been, with the professional name of Honeybun Bazoom. Dortmunder had
married her in San Diego in 1952 on his way to Korea-the only police action
he’d ever been in on the side of the police-and had divorced her again in Reno
in 1954 on his way out of the Army. Honeybun had mostly been interested in
Honeybun, but if something outside herself did attract her attention she was
immediately full of questions about it. She could ask more questions than a kid at
the zoo. Dortmunder had answered the first few thousand, until he’d realized
that none of the answers ever stayed inside that round head.
May couldn’t have been more different; she never asked the questions, and
she always held onto the answers.
Now, they finished their heroes and left the Blimpie, and on the sidewalk May
said, “I’ll take the subway.”
“Take a cab.”
She had a fresh cigarette in the corner of her mouth, having lit it after finishing
eating. “Naw,” she said. “I’ll take the subway. A cab after a hero gives me
heartburn.”
“You want to come along to the 0. J?”
“Naw, you go ahead.”
“The other night, Murch brought his Mom.”
“I’d rather go home.”
Dortmunder shrugged. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”
“See you later.”
She slopped away down the street, and Dortmunder headed the other way.
He still had time, so he decided to walk, which meant going through Central
Park. He walked along the cinder path alone, and under a street light a shifty-eyed stocky guy in a black turtle-neck sweater came out of nowhere and said,
“Excuse me.”
Dortmunder stopped. “Yeah?”
“I’m taking a survey,” the guy said. His eyes danced a little, and he seemed to
be grinning and yet not to be grinning. It was the same kind of expression most
of the people in the movie had had. He said, “Here you are, you’re a citizen,
you’re walking along in the park at night. What would you do if somebody came
along and mugged you?”
Dortmunder looked at him. “I’d beat his head in,” he said. The guy blinked,
and the almost grin disappeared. He looked slightly confused, and he said,
“What if he had, uh, well, what if he was …” Then he shook his head, waggled
both hands and backed off, saying, “Nah, forget it. Doesn’t matter, forget it.”
“Okay,” Dortmunder said. He walked on through the park and over to
Amsterdam and up to the 0. J. When he went in, Rollo was having a discussion
with the only two customers, a pair of overweight commission salesmen in the
auto-parts line, about whether sexual intercourse after a heavy meal was
medically good or medically bad. They were supporting their arguments mostly
with personal anecdotes, and Rollo obviously had trouble breaking himself free
from the conversation. Dortmunder waited at the end of the bar, and finally
Rollo said, “Now, hold it now, hold it a second. Don’t start that yet. I’ll be right
back.” Then he came down the bar, handed Dortmunder the bottle called
Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon-“Our Own Brand” plus two glasses, and
said, “All that’s here so far is the draft beer and salt. His mother let him out by
himself tonight.”
“There’ll be more coming,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t know how many.”
“The more the merrier,” Rollo said sourly and went back to his discussion.
In the back room, Murch was sprinkling salt in his beer to restore the head.
He looked up at Dortmunder’s entrance and said, “How you doing?”
“Fine,” Dortmunder said. He put the bottle and glasses on the table and sat
down.
“I made better time tonight,” Murch said. “I tried a different route.”
“Is that right?” Dortmunder opened the bottle.
“I went down Flatlands and up Remsen,” Murch said. “Not Rockaway
Parkway, see? Then I went over Empire Boulevard and up Bedford Avenue all
the way into Queens and took the Williamsburg Bridge over into Manhattan.”
Dortmunder poured. “Is that right?” he said. He was just waiting for Murch to
stop talking, because he had something to say to him.
“Then Delancey and Allen and right up First Avenue and across town at
Seventy-ninth Street. Worked like a dream.”
“Is that right?” Dortmunder said. He sipped at his drink and said, “You know,
Rollo’s kind of unhappy about you.”
Murch looked surprised, but eager to please. “Why? Cause I parked out
front?”
“No. A customer that comes in and nurses one beer all night long, it doesn’t
do too much for his business.”
Murch glanced down at his beer, and then looked very pained. “I never
thought of that,” he said.
“I just figured I’d mention it.”
“The thing is, I don’t like to drink and drive. That’s why I space it out.”
Dortmunder had nothing to say to that.
Murch pondered and finally said hopefully, “What if I bought him a drink?
Would that do it?”
“Could be.”
“Let me give it a try,” Murch said, and as he got to his feet the door opened
and Kelp and Victor came in. The room was very small and very full of table
anyway, so it took a while to bring Kelp and Victor in while getting Murch out,
and during that time Dortmunder brooded at Victor. It seemed to him that
Victor was becoming more and more an accepted part of this job, which he
didn’t much like but couldn’t quite find the way to stop. Kelp was doing it, but
he was doing it in such a sneaky quiet fashion that Dortmunder never had a clear
moment when he could say, “Okay, cut it out.” But how could anybody expect
him to go steal a bank with some clown smiling at him all the time?
Murch finally shot himself out of the room, like a dollop of toothpaste
squeezed out of a tube, and Kelp said, “I see Herman isn’t here yet.”
“You talked to him?”
“He’s interested.”
Dortmunder brooded some more. Kelp himself was all right, but he tended to
surround himself with people and operations that were just a little off. Victor, for
instance. And now bringing in some guy named Herman X. What could you
hope for from somebody named Herman X? Had he ever done anything in this
line? If he was going to turn out to be another smiler, Dortmunder was just going
to have to put his foot down. Enough smiling is enough.
Sitting down next to Dortmunder and reaching for the bourbon bottle, Kelp
said, “We got the financing set.”
Victor had taken the spot directly across from Dortmunder. He was smiling.
Shading his eyes with his hand, Dortmunder ducked his head a little and said to
Kelp, “You got the full four grand?”
“Every penny. The light too bright for you?”
“I just went to a movie.”
“Oh, yeah? What’d you see?”
Dortmunder had forgotten the title. “It was in color,” he said.
“That narrows it. Probably a pretty recent one, then.”
“Yeah.”
Victor said, “I’m drinking tonight.” He sounded very pleased.
Dortmunder ducked his head a little more and looked at Victor under his
fingers. He was smiling, of course, and holding up a tall glass. It was pink.
Dortmunder said, “Oh, yeah?”
“A sloe-gin fizz,” Victor said.
“Is that right?” Dortmunder readjusted head and fingers-it was like putting
down venetian blinds-and turned firmly back to Kelp. “So you got the whole
four thousand,” he said.
“Yeah. A funny thing about that..
The door opened and Murch came back in. “It’s all set,” he said. He was
smiling, too, but it was easier to live with than Victor’s. “Thanks for setting me
straight,” he said.
“Glad it worked out,” Dortmunder said.