Closing Time (26 page)

Michael had remarked lightly already to Yossarian that M2 seemed to him to possess all the typical attributes of the serial sex killer: he was white.

"When we went to the terminal," he confided, "he was only interested in looking at the women. I don't think he could recognize the transvestites. Is his father that way?"

"Milo knows what a prostitute is and didn't like us going after them. He's always been chaste. I doubt he knows what a transvestite is or would see much difference if he found out."

"Why did you ask me," M2 asked Yossarian now, "if we still have our catering service?"

"I might have some business. There's this wedding-"

"I'm glad you mentioned that. I might have forgotten. My mother wants me to talk to you about our wedding."

"This is not your wedding," corrected Yossarian.

"My sister's wedding. My mother wants my sister married, and she wants it done at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She expects you to arrange it. She knows you're in ACACAMMA."

Yossarian was genially amazed. "The ceremony too?"

"It's been done before?"

"The actual ceremony? Not that I know of."

"You know trustees?"

"I'm with ACACAMMA. But it might be impossible."

"My mother won't accept that. She says-I'm reading now, from her fax-that if you can't manage that, she doesn't know what else you're good for."

Yossarian shook his head benignly. He was anything but insulted. "It will take money, and time. You would have to begin, I would say, with a donation to the museum of ten million dollars."

"Two dollars?" asked M2, as though repeating.

"Ten
million
dollars."

"I thought I heard two."

"I did say ten," said Yossarian. "For the construction of another new wing."

"We can handle that."

"With no strings attached."

"There'll be strings attached?"

"I said no strings attached, although of course there will be strings. Your father specializes in string. You're practically out-of-towners, and they just don't take ten million from every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants to give it."

"Couldn't you persuade them to take it?"

"I think I could do that. And then there's no guarantee."

"There's a good guarantee?"

"There is no guarantee," Yossarian corrected again. "You and your father seem to have the same selective hearing impairment, don't you?"

"Collective hearing impairment?"

"Yes. And it will have to be wasteful."

"Tasteful?"

"Yes. Wasteful. It will have to be lavish and crude enough to get into the newspapers and high-fashion magazines."

"I think it's what they want."

"There might just be an opening they don't know about yet," Yossarian finally judged. "The wedding I mentioned will be in the bus terminal."

M2 reacted with a start, just as Yossarian had expected. "What's good about that?" he wanted to know.

"Innovation, Milo," Yossarian answered. "The museum isn't good enough for some people anymore. The bus terminal is just right for the Maxons."

"The Maxons?"

"Olivia and Christopher."

"The big industrialist?"

"Who never set foot in a factory and never laid eyes on a product any company of his ever manufactured, except maybe his Cuban cigars. I'm helping Maxon out with the logistics," he embroidered nonchalantly. "All the media will cover it, naturally. Will you take the bus terminal if we can't get the museum?"

"I'll have to ask my mother. Offhand-"

"If it's good enough for the Maxons," tempted Yossarian, "with the mayor, the cardinal, maybe even the White House…"

"That might make a difference."

"Of course, you could not be the first."

"We could be first?"

"You could not be first, unless your sister marries the Maxon girl or you want to make it a double wedding. I can talk to the Maxons for you, if your mother wants me to."

"What would you do," M2 asked, with a gaze that seemed circumspect, "with the whores at the bus terminal?"

The white light in M2's gray eyes as he said the word
whores
invested him instantaneously with the face of a ravenous man blistering with acquisitive desire.

Yossarian gave the answer he thought most fit.

"Use them or lose them," he answered carelessly. "As much as you want. The police will oblige. The opportunities are boundless. I'm being realistic about the museum. Your father
sells
things, Milo, and that's not elegant."

"My mother hates him for that."

"And she lives in Cleveland. When is your sister getting married?" j

"Whenever you want her to."

"That gives us latitude. Who is she marrying?"

"Whoever she has to."

"That might open it up."

"My mother will want you to make up the guest list. We don't know anyone here. Our dearest friends all live in Cleveland, and many can't come."

"Why not do it at the museum in Cleveland? And your dearest friends could come."

"We would rather have your strangers." M2 seated himself gently in front of his computer. "I'll fax my mother."

"Can't you phone her?"

"She won't take my calls."

"Find out," said Yossarian, with more mischief in mind, "if she'll take a Maxon. They might just have an extra one."

"Would they take a Minderbinder?"

"Would you marry a Maxon, if all they have is a girl?"

"Would they take me? I have this Adam's apple."

"There's a good chance they might, even with the Adam's apple, once you fork over that ten million for another new wing."

"What would they name it?"

"The Milo Minderbinder Wing, of course. Or maybe the Temple of Milo, if you'd rather have that."

"I believe they would choose that," guessed M2. "And that would be appropriate. My father was a caliph of Baghdad, you know, one time in the war."

"I know," said Yossarian. "And the imam of Damascus. I was with him, and everywhere we went he was hailed."

"What would they put in the wing at the museum?"

"Whatever you give them, or stuff from the storeroom. They need more space for a bigger kitchen. They would certainly put in a few of those wonderful statues of your father at those stone altars red with human blood. Let me know soon."

And as M2 beat a bit faster on his keyboard, Yossarian walked away to his own office, to cope on the telephone with some matters of his own.

16

Gaffney

"She wants more money," Julian told him right off in his no-nonsense manner.

"She isn't getting it." Yossarian was equally brusque.

"For how much?" challenged his son.

"Julian, I don't want to bet with you."

"I'll advise her to sue," said his daughter, the judge.

"She'll lose. She'd have money enough if she called off those Private detectives."

"She swears she isn't employing any," said his other son Adrian, the cosmetics chemist without the graduate degree, whose wife had concluded, through an adult education course in assertiveness training, that she wasn't really as happy as she'd all along thought herself.

"But her lawyer might be, Mr. Yossarian," said Mr. Gaffney, when Yossarian phoned and brought him up-to-date.

"Her lawyer says he's not."

"Lawyers, Mr. Yossarian, have been known to lie. Of the eight people following you, Yo-Yo-"

"My name is Yossarian,
Mr
. Gaffney.
Mr
. Yossarian."

"I expect that will change, sir," said Gaffney, with no decrease in friendliness, "once we have met and become fast friends. In the meanwhile, Mr. Yossarian"-there was no insinuating emphasis -"I have good news for you, very good news, from both the credit checking services. You have been coming through splendidly, apart from one late alimony check to your first wife and an occasional late separate maintenance check to your second wife, but there is an overdue bill for eighty-seven dollars and sixty-nine cents from a defunct retail establishment formerly known as The Tailored Woman that is, or has been, in Chapter 11."

"I owe eighty-seven dollars to a store called The Tailored Woman?"

"And sixty-nine cents," said Mr. Gaffney, with his flair for the exact. "You might be held responsible for that charge by your wife Marian when the dispute is finally adjudicated."

"My wife wasn't Marian," Yossarian advised him, after cogitating several moments to make sure. "I had no wife named Marian. Neither of them."

Mr. Gaffney replied in a coddling tone. "I'm afraid you're mistaken, Mr. Yossarian. People frequently grow befuddled in matrimonial recollections."

"I am not befuddled, Mr. Gaffney," Yossarian retorted, with his hackles up. "There has been no wife of mine named Marian Yossarian. You can look that one up if you don't believe me. I'm in
Who's Who
."

"I find the Freedom of Information Act consistently a much better source, and I certainly will look it up, if only to clear the air between us. But in the meanwhile…" There was a pause. "May I call you John yet?"

"No, Mr. Gaffney."

"All the other reports are in mint condition, and you can obtain the mortgage anytime you want it."

"What mortgage? Mr. Gaffney, I intend no disrespect when I tell you categorically I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about when you mention a mortgage!"

"We live in encumbering times, Mr. Yossarian, and sometimes things befall us too rapidly."

"You are talking like a mortician."

"The real estate mortgage, of course. For a house in the country or at the seashore, or perhaps for a much better apartment right here in the city."

"I'm not buying a house, Mr. Gaffney," replied Yossarian. "And I'm not thinking of an apartment."

"Then perhaps you should begin thinking about it, Mr. Yossarian. Sometimes Se�or Gaffney knows best. Real estate values can only go up. There is only so much land on the planet, my father used to say, and he did well in the long run. All we'll need with your application is a specimen of your DNA."

"My DNA?" Yossarian repeated, with a brain bewildered. "I confess I'm baffled."

"That's your deoxyribonucleic acid, Mr. Yossarian, and contains your entire genetic coding."

"I know it's my deoxyribonucleic acid, God damn it! And I know what it does."

"No one else can fake it. It will prove you are you."

"Who the hell else could I be?"

"Lending institutions are careful now."

"Mr. Gaffney, where will I get that sample of my DNA to submit with my mortgage application for a house I don't know about that I will never want to buy?"

"Not even in East Hampton?" tempted Gaffney.

"Not even East Hampton."

"There are excellent values there now. I can handle the DNA for you."

"How will you get it?"

"Under the Freedom of Information Act. It's on file in your sperm with your Social Security number. I can get a certified photocopy-"

"Of my sperm?"

"Of your deoxyribonucleic acid. The sperm cell is just a medium of transportation. It's the genes that count. I can get the photocopy of your DNA when you're ready with your application. Leave the driving to me. And indeed, I have more good news. One of the gentlemen who is following you isn't."

"I will resist the wisecrack."

"I don't see the wisecrack."

"Do you mean that he isn't a gentleman or that he isn't following me?"

"I still don't see it. Isn't following you. He is following one or more of the others who are following vou."

"Why?"

"We will have to guess. That was blacked out on the Freedom of Information report. Perhaps to protect you from abduction, torture, or murder, or maybe merely to find out about you what the others find out. There are a thousand reasons. And the Orthodox Jew-excuse me, are you Jewish, Mr. Yossarian?"

"I am Assyrian, Mr. Gaffney."

"Yes. And the Orthodox Jewish gentleman parading in front of your building really is an Orthodox Jewish gentleman and does live in your neighborhood. But he is also an FBI man and he is sharp as a tack. So be discreet."

"What does he want from me?"

"Ask him if you wish. Maybe he's just walking, if he's not ther on assignment. You know how those people are. It may not be yQu. You have a CIA front in your building masquerading as a CIA front and a Social Security Administration office there too, not to mention all those sex parlors, prostitutes, and other business establishments. Try to hold on to your Social Security number. It always pays to be discreet. Discretion is the better part of valor, Se�or Gaffney tells his friends. Have no fear. He will keep you posted. Service is his middle name."

Yossarian felt the need to take a stand. "Mr. Gaffney," he said "how soon can I see you? I'm afraid I insist."

There was a moment of chortling, a systematic bubbling suffused with overtones of self-satisfaction. "You already have seen me, Mr. Yossarian, and you didn't notice, did you?"

"Where?"

"At the bus terminal, when you went below with Mr. McBride. You looked right at me. I was wearing a fawn-colored single-breasted herringbone woolen jacket with a thin purple cross-pat tern, brown trousers, a light-blue Swiss chambray shirt of finest Egyptian cotton, and a complementing tie of solid rust, with matching socks. I have a smooth tan complexion and am bald on top, with black hair trimmed very close at the sides and very dark brows and eyes. I have noble temples and fine cheekbones. You didn't recognize me, did you?"

"How could I, Mr. Gaffney? I'd never seen you before."

The quiet laughter returned. "Yes, you did, Mr. Yossarian, more than once. Outside the hotel restaurant after you stopped in there that day with Mr. and Mrs. Beach following the ACA-CAMMA meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In front of the Frank Campbell Funeral Home across the street. Do you remember the red-haired man with a walking stick and green rucksack on his back who was with the uniformed guard at the entrance?"

"You were the redheaded man with the rucksack?"

"I was the uniformed guard."

"You were in disguise?"

"I'm in disguise now."

"I'm not sure I get that one, Mr. Gaffney."