Good Behavior (13 page)

Elaine Ritter planted her feet somewhat apart, placed her fists on her waist with elbows akimbo, leaned her head forward, and raised one eyebrow:
Well? What's it all about?
Really fascinating how she managed to communicate so much without words. On the other hand, without words Hendrickson seemed unable to communicate anything at all, other than a vague unease.

But
what
words? What should he say?

I am the best, he reminded himself. But even the best can be tripped up, particularly by emotion. Over these past few months, while Elaine Ritter had persistently, unremittingly, implacably resisted him, and while Hendrickson himself had moved from self-assurance through wonder to a calm and amused acceptance of his inevitable defeat, it seemed he had all unconsciously also been breaking the cardinal rule of the deprogrammer; he had become emotionally involved with the subject. The fact was, damn it to hell and back, the fact was he
liked
Elaine Ritter, liked her spunk, liked her strength, liked the flailing sharpness of her logic on Thursday afternoons. He would miss her.

Elaine put her heels together, displayed her hands palm up, and gazed long-sufferingly at the ceiling:
What's with this yo-yo, God?

Hendrickson sighed. He knew what was keeping him silent; the only words he had were words he didn't want to use. But the time had come, hadn't it? There was nothing left for him to say to Elaine Ritter but the truth. “Ah, well,” he said, and sighed.

She looked alert, ready for him to go on.

“Ah, well, ah, well, ah, well.”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“The truth is, Elaine,” he said, then shook his own head and said, “I beg your pardon. The truth is, Sister Mary Grace—”

That
did
make her eyes widen.

“—the truth is, this is our last meeting.”

Her eyes narrowed:
What's up?

“Your father has decided,” Hendrickson said, and sighed, and went on, “to try a different tack.”

She leaned forward, very intent.

“I'm out, in short,” Hendrickson told her. “Well, we both knew it would happen, didn't we?”

She made
come-on-tell
gestures with both hands.

“Yes, you're right,” he said. “Very well. There's a new man coming in next week. I'm sorry, I can't pronounce his name, he's I think Hungarian, or Bulgarian, or one of those things.” Hendrickson waved a hand loosely toward Eastern Europe. “Before he defected,” he went on, “he was apparently an expert in brainwashing.”

She stepped back, wide-eyed, one hand to her throat.

“Your father …” Hendrickson sighed.

She did her imitation up-chuck.

Hendrickson sighed again. “You're not entirely wrong,” he admitted. “Your father is a strong-willed man, and he's getting impatient, and this Rumanian or Ukrainian or whatever he is, he's been known to convince
cardinals
to change their minds about God, so that's the way they'll try next. There will probably be some physical violence involved, which is not something I would ever do, so I'm out. When I last talked to your father, he was full of what's necessary when you make an omelet.”

She bunked the heel of her hand against the side of her head.

Hendrickson nodded. “I'm afraid so,” he agreed. “You're the egg they're going to break.”

She pointed at him, pointed at herself, pointed her thumb at the door.

He smiled sadly and shook his head. “Can't. They never let me leave this area by myself. If you tell your father this I'll deny it, but in fact I
would
help you escape if I could. Unfortunately, it's impossible. I'm sorry, Sister Mary Grace, but nobody can help you. My advice is, try to get used to that idea.”

Her lips moved. Hendrickson, peering at her, thought she had mouthed the word
John
. Saint John the Apostle? Her patron saint, perhaps, to whom she prayed when things looked blackest, such as right now. “John,” he said, and nodded solidarity with her.

She looked startled, then clamped her lips shut.

“Oh, it's all right,” Hendrickson assured her, pushing down on the chair arms, getting to his feet. He felt very weary. “In the days to come,” he said, “under this new fellow, I imagine you'll do a lot of talking on days other than Thursday, whether you want to or not.”

She folded her arms and looked mulish.

“We all do our best,” Hendrickson said, as much to himself as to her. “Do you suppose God actually does notice? ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Bless this bed of nails that I lie on.' Good luck, Sister Mary Grace.” He smiled again. “You came close to deprogramming
me
,” he told her, and went away.

20

And what was this, twitching and winking and jittering around in the lobby of the Avalon State Bank Tower? Bless me if it isn't Wilbur Howey, flashing smiles and winks and salutes and tips of the Howey hat to every passing female, plus one kilted Scot and a delivery boy in a white apron. Dortmunder, entering the lobby, saw him there and a heavy weight seemed to settle on his shoulders; nevertheless, he went over and said to Howey, “Now what?”

Howey turned away from leering at two transvestites on their way up to their electrolysis appointment. Little sparkly eyes focused on Dortmunder, and he said, “Say! I know you!”

“I can't deny it,” Dortmunder admitted. “What are you hanging around down here for?”

“This is the place!” Howey did a little two-step, seemed about to twirl, didn't twirl, and said, “And here I am!”

“Not in the
lobby
,” Dortmunder told him.

“Say, look,” Howey said, “here's the story on that. You know that piece of paper, where Tiny wrote everything down?”

“You lost it,” Dortmunder said.

“Avalon,” Howey said, and snapped his fingers. “That much I got. I used to know a girl named Mabel, you know, gee, a whole bunch of time ago. So they sound alike, and—”

Dortmunder said, “They do?”

“Mabel,” Howey said. “Avalon. Get it?”

“Anyway, you're here.”

“Johnny on the spot, that's yours truly,” Howey said, and grinned, and popped a salute.

“It's seven-twelve,” Dortmunder told him. “Come on.”

As they went over to the 5–21 elevators, Howey said, “I never knew any girls with numbers instead of names.”

What was there to answer to a remark like that? Dortmunder maintained an increasingly grim silence as they entered an elevator already containing two slender young women dressed for success in dark blue long-skirted suits, plain white blouses and colorful bunchy neckties. They were talking about diet chocolate-chip cookies from a marketing point of view. “Our main subject is the assuagement of guilt,” one said, and the other said, “Exactly. Of
course
you're as fat as a hippopotamus and your husband can't stand the sight of you, but every time you reach for a diet chocolate-chip cookie it shows you're seriously trying. No more guilt.”

The doors slid shut, the elevator started up, and Howey leaned toward the nearest young woman, winking as he said, “Hi, Toots. I
like
a double-breasted suit, you catch my drift?”

The women turned their young serious gazes on Howey, then on Dortmunder, who was facing front, pretending he was on a street corner in Boise, Idaho, waiting for a bus. One of them said to Dortmunder, “Is this with you?”

“We're a team, Toots,” Howey said, lifting his hat as though about to break into song. “We could double-date!”

Still speaking to Dortmunder, the first young woman said, “Shouldn't it be on a leash?”

Dortmunder breathed shallowly, looking at the door.

“Be careful,” the second young woman told the first. “It may not have had its shots.”

“Say, you know what I like about women's lib?” Howey piped up, while Dortmunder closed his eyes. “I
love
to be free with women! Hotcha!”

The shutters remained closed. Down inside his dark head, Dortmunder heard the first young woman say, “Ouch!” and then the sound of the slap, and then Howey, full of beans, saying, “Say, listen, girlie, didn't you ever hear of a senior citizen's pass?”

The elevator bumped to a halt. Dortmunder opened his eyes and saw the doors sliding open, with the seventh floor corridor just beyond. One of the young women was saying, thoughtfully, “You know, Arlene, the Eskimos may have had the right idea after all.”

The other young woman said, “Putting the oldsters out to sea on an ice floe? You bet.”

The doors were open. The irrepressible Howey, as Dortmunder lugged him away by the elbow, called back, “Bring your friend, Toots! I got a
lotta
catching up to do!”

Then the elevator and the young women were gone and Dortmunder could release the little madman's elbow. As they made their way down the corridor, Howey said, “Too bad we're busy, huh, pal? Those two were ready, willing and Betty Grable.”

“The only thing in this world that gives me any pleasure at all,” Dortmunder muttered, “is the knowledge that you're about to meet J.C. Taylor.”

“Nice fella, huh?”

“In a way,” Dortmunder said, and opened the door leading to Super Star Music, Allied Commissioners' Courses and—last but not at all least—Intertherapeutic Research Service.

J.C. Taylor was being the receptionist again, typing labels. Today she was in a plaid shirt open halfway to the waist, and designer blue jeans. Glancing up when the door opened, she said, “Hail, hail, the gang's all here. There's three guys already inside.”

“Good,” Dortmunder said.

Meanwhile, Wilbur Howey was inhaling. He'd been inhaling steadily ever since he'd set eyes on J.C. Taylor, slowly rising up on his toes as though the volume of air he'd taken aboard was turning him into a balloon. Finally, he released a bit of that air: “Tooootts,” he said, half sigh and half croak. His hand moved up to his hat, moving like part of a mechanical figure, and raised it clear of his wisp-covered scalp.

Now she became aware of him. Her fingers slowed and then stopped on the typewriter keys. Her left eyebrow raised, and the corners of her mouth wrinkled in amusement. “Well, look at this,” she said, like somebody finding a really good prize in a Crackerjack box.

“My hat's off to you, Babe,” Howey said, which was the literal truth. Apparently he'd forgotten he'd doffed his skimmer—as he himself would undoubtedly have put it—and his upraised arm still held it way up there, like a flying saucer observing human mating rituals.

“You're cute,” J.C. Taylor told him.

Self-confidence never deserted Wilbur Howey for long. Waggling the hat, he returned it at a jaunty angle to his head, patted its crown, winked, and said, “And anything
you
want to take off for
me
, Toots, is one hundred percent hunky-dory.”

“Ignore him,” Dortmunder said.

“Why?” she asked, still amused. Slowly she stood, sinuously, moving her hips a lot more than necessary and arching her back and treating Howey pretty much as though he were the back row in the burleycue; she wanted to be sure she reached him. “What's your name, honey?” she asked, in a sugary voice Dortmunder hadn't heard her use before.

Howey was bobbing up and down by now, almost skipping, his big watery eyes blinking. “Say, Babe,” he cried, “they call me Wilbur Howey. I'm little, but I'm wiry.”

“And ex-
per
-ienced.”

“Oh,
say
, you can't see, any flies on me!”

With a little reflective half smile on her lips, Taylor reached out her left hand and touched the tip of her first finger gently to the side of Howey's jaw, just beneath the ear. Eye to eye, leaning just a bit toward him, breathing deeply and regularly, she slowly moved the fingertip and just an edge of fingernail lightly along the line of his jaw. Howey's bobbing grew more spasmodic, he vibrated all over, and by the time her fingertip had reached the middle of his jaw he was just standing there, spent, mouth hanging open. “Very nice,” she told him, patted his cheek, and said to Dortmunder, “He'll be all right now for a while.” And she sat down, turning back to her typewriter.

Dortmunder looked at Howey, who continued to stand there, unmoving, dazed, while J.C. Taylor began once again to type. “Come on,” Dortmunder said. “Before you embarrass me.”

A long sigh from Howey suggested the belated return of that long inhale. Once again his eyes had begun to sparkle, once again that cheery oblivious smile was spreading across his face. “
Say
, Toots,” he said. “You and me could trip the—After the job, why don't we—Say, couldn't we just see the world with, uh—Me and you and a roadster built for two—Waikiki Mama!”

Meanwhile, Taylor typed, aware of nothing else, alone in the room.

“Howey,” Dortmunder said, firmly. “We go through this door here.” And he tugged at Howey's arm.

Howey did permit himself to be led away, but he kept looking back at the unresponsive Taylor, and as Dortmunder pulled him through into the inner office he called back, “Keep them fires hot, Baby, I'll be right back to stoke ya!”

“Oh, no, you won't,” Dortmunder grumbled, and shut the door.

In a corner of the inner office there now stood a very large masking-tape-swathed cardboard box which had originally held paper towels. On top of all the stuff piled on top of the piano were two shopping bags from Balducci's deli down in the Village. Stan Murch stood at the window, looking down at traffic, while Andy Kelp picked out a one-finger version of “Camptown Races” at the piano. Pausing in that occupation, he nodded hello, saying, “How's it going?”

“It's been a long day already,” Dortmunder told him.

Tiny Bulcher was seated at the desk, studying a book. He nodded his heavy head at Dortmunder and said, “I'm learning to be a detective.” He showed the front of the book; gilt lettering said it was the textbook of the Allied Commissioners' Courses.