Why Me? (23 page)

So they had light, they had heat, they had food and drink and reading matter, they had communication with the outside world; and still Dortmunder was gloomy. “I'm a dead man,” he repeated, brooding at the piece of pizza in his hand. “And I'm already buried.”

“John, John, you're
safe
here.”

“Forever?”

“Until we think of something.” Kelp used a fingertip to push pepperoni into his mouth, chewed a while, swigged some beer, and said, “One of us is bound to come up with something. You
know
we are. We're both clutch-hitters, John. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

“Where?”

“We'll think of something.”

“What?”

“How do I know? We'll know what it is when we think of it. I tell you what'll happen: We won't be able to stand it down here any more, and one of us will think of the solution. Necessity is the mother of invention.”

“Yeah? Anybody know who the father is?”

“Errol Flynn,” Kelp said, and chuckled.

Dortmunder sighed and opened the paper. “If they hadn't slowed the space program,” he said, “I could of volunteered for a moon shot. Or the space station. That can't be all scientists and pilots; they're gonna need somebody to sweep up, polish the windows, empty the wastebaskets.”

“A custodian,” Kelp said.

“A janitor.”

“Actually,” Kelp said, “custodian is more accurate than janitor. They both come from the Latin, you know.”

Dortmunder paused in turning the pages of the paper. He looked at Kelp without speaking.

“I'm a reader,” Kelp explained, a bit defensively. “I read a piece about this.”

“And now you're gonna tell it to
me
.”

“That's right. Why, you in a hurry to go someplace?”

“Okay,” Dortmunder said. “Whatever you want.” He looked at the editorial page and saw, without recognizing it, the name Mologna.

“Janitor,” Kelp told him, “comes from the two-faced Roman god Janus, who was in charge of doorways. So way back in the old days a janitor was a doorkeeper, and over the centuries the job kind of spread. A custodian is from the Latin
custodia
, meaning to take care of something you're in charge of. So custodian is better than janitor, especially in a space station. You don't wanna be doorkeeper in a space station.”

“I don't wanna be a squirrel in a tunnel the rest of my life either,” Dortmunder said.
Mo-log-na
, he thought, and scanned the editorial.

“Squirrels don't go in tunnels,” Kelp objected. “Squirrels hang out in trees.”

“That's another piece you read?”

“I just know it. Everybody knows it. In tunnels what you've got is rats, mice, moles, worms—”

“All right,” Dortmunder said.

“I'm just explaining.”

“That's it, that's all.” Dortmunder put down the paper, picked up the phone, and started to dial. Kelp watched him, frowning, until Dortmunder shook his head, said, “Busy,” and hung up. Then Kelp said, “What is it? Another pizza?”

“We're getting out of here,” Dortmunder told him.

“We are?”

“Yeah. You were right; there was gonna come a time when one of us couldn't stand it any more, and he'd think of something.”

“You thought of something?”

“I had to,” Dortmunder said, and tried the number again.

“Tell me.”

“Wait a minute. May?” Dortmunder whispered again, cupping the mouthpiece, hunching a bit over the phone like a man trying to light a cigarette in a high wind. “It's me again, May.”

“You don't have to whisper,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder shook his head for Kelp to shut up. Still whispering, he said, “You know the thing? That made all the trouble? Don't say it! Take it with you when you go out tonight.”

Kelp looked very dubious. Apparently, in Dortmunder's ear May was also being dubious, because he said, “Don't worry, May, it's gonna be all right. At last, it's gonna be all right.”

39

March is just about the end of the winter frolic season in the northeast quadrant of the United States. In the Sleet & Heat Sports Shoppe on lower Madison Avenue, late that afternoon, the staff was busily stashing its leftover stock of toboggans, ski boots, ice skates, parkas, crutches, and flasks to make room for summer fun equipment—sunburn lotion, chlorine, shark repellent, salt tablets, poison ivy spray, bug killer, arch support sneakers, decorator-designed sweatbands, and T-shirts bearing comical messages—when a clerk named Griswold, a chunky, healthy, wind-burned twentyish sports freak, a sail-boater and a hang-glider, a mountaineer and a cross-country skier, who was only working here anyway for the employee discount and what he could boost, looked out through his bushy red eyebrows and saw two men slinking into the store: old men, maybe even forty, no wind, no legs, no staying power. Midwinter pallor on their drawn faces. Abandoning the display of Ace bandages he'd been setting up, Griswold approached these two, on his face the smile of superior compassionate pity felt toward all losers by all perfect specimens. “Help you, gentlemen?”

They looked at him as though startled. Then the one with the sharp nose muttered to his friend, “You handle it,” and drifted back to stand by the door, hands in his pockets as he gazed out at the overcast late afternoon and the sidewalks full of people rushing to get indoors before the storm.

Griswold gave his full alert attention to the one who would handle it, a slope-shouldered, depressed-looking fellow. Whatever sport he was involved with, Griswold thought, it hadn't done much for him: “Yes, sir?”

The man put his hand up to his mouth and mumbled something behind it, the meanwhile his eyes flicked this way and that, scanning the store.

Griswold leaned closer: “Sir?”

This time the mumble made words, barely audible: “Ski masks.”

“Ski masks? Ah, skiing! You and your friend there indulge?”

“Yeah,” the man said.

“Well, that's fine. Come right over this way.” Leading the way deeper into the store, past splints and shoulder pads and groin cups, Griswold said, “You must have seen our ad in the paper.”

“We just happened by,” the man said, still talking into his hand, as though he had a tiny microphone in there.

“Is that so? Then this is your lucky day, if I may say so.”

The man looked at him. “Yeah?”

“We're in the middle of our end-of-season ski sale.” Griswold beamed happily at his customer. “Fantastic savings, right on down the line.”

“Oh, yeah?”

The other customer was still back by the door, looking out, and thus was out of earshot, so Griswold concentrated on the bird in hand. “That's right, sir,” he said. “Now, here, for instance, are these magnificent Head skis. Now, you know how much these little beauties would normally set you back.”

“Ski masks,” the man muttered, not even looking at the beautiful skis.

“All set for skis?” Griswold reluctantly let the beauties lean again against the wall. “How about boots? Poles? You see hanging on the wall there, sir—”

“Masks.”

“Oh, of course, sir, that's right here in this display case. Take your time. We also have more in the back I could bring out if you—”

“Those two,” the man said, pointing.

“These? Of course, sir. May I ask, what color is your primary ski outfit?”

The man frowned at him: “You gonna sell me these masks?”

“Certainly, sir, certainly.” Whipping out his sales book, remaining ineffably cheerful and polite, Griswold said, “Cash or charge, sir?”

“Cash.”

“Yes, sir. Let me just get a box for these—”

“Paper bag.”

“Are you certain, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” Writing out the sales slip, Griswold said, “I take it, this time of year, you're heading up Canada way. Ah, the Laurentians, they're wonderful. Best skiing in North America.”

“Yeah,” the man said.

“Can't beat the Alps, though.”

“Naw,” the man said.

“You get a lot of glare that far north. Could I interest you and your friend in goggles? Guaranteed Polaroid—”

“Just the masks,” the man said, and handed Griswold two twenty-dollar bills.

“That's fine, then,” Griswold said, went away, came back with the change and a paper bag, and as he turned over the customer's purchases made one last pitch: “Cold up there, sir. Now, our guaranteed Finnish Army parkas will keep your vital signs intact down to fifty-seven degrees below, or return with—”

“No,” the ex-customer said. Stuffing the bag full of masks inside his coat, he turned away, shoulders hunched, and joined his partner at the front door. They exchanged a glance, then left. Griswold, watching through the glass, saw them pause in the doorway and look both ways before turning their coat collars up, tucking their chins down in, shoving their hands deep in their pockets and skulking away, keeping close to the building front. Odd ducks, Griswold thought. Not your ordinary outdoor-enthusiast types.

Half an hour later, stepping back to admire a just-completed pyramid of tennis ball cans surmounted by an elasticized elbow band, Griswold suddenly frowned, pondered, turned his head, and gazed inquiringly toward the front door. But of course they were gone by then.

40

It was raining. Eleven p.m. Dortmunder emerged from the side-street manhole into a gusty, chilly rain, slid the round cover back into place, and took refuge in the nearest storefront doorway. There were no pedestrians. A lone car squished by. Wind currents eddied in the storefront, flicking tiny cold raindrops in his face.

It was nearly five minutes before a Lincoln Continental with MD plates pulled to a stop at the curb out there. Dortmunder crossed the sidewalk, entered the dry warmth of the car, and Kelp said, “Sorry I took so long. Tough to find a car on a night like this.”

“You could of found a car,” Dortmunder told him, as Kelp eased the Lincoln forward to the nearest traffic light. “You just had to hold out for an MD.”

“I trust doctors,” Kelp said. “They're ease-loving people, they know all about pain and discomfort. When they buy a car, they want the best and they can afford the best. You say what you want, I'll stick with doctors.”

“All right,” Dortmunder said. Now that the chill was leaving his bones, now that he was beginning to dry, he was less annoyed.

The traffic light turned green. Kelp said, “Where is this movie?”

“Down in the Village.”

“Okay.” Kelp turned right, drove downtown to Greenwich Village, turned left on 8th Street, and parked just shy of the theater, whose marquee advertised “American Premiere— A Sound of Distant Drums.” That was the movie May had told Dortmunder she intended to see tonight, telling him about it last night, making small talk while Dortmunder's hand had soaked in the Palmolive Liquid. A call to the theater from their ghost telephone earlier this evening had told them the last show would break at eleven-forty.

And so it did. Beginning at eleven-forty and a half, a trickle of culturally enriched patrons emerged from the theater, grimacing at the rain, making complaining noises at one another, hurrying away through the wind-blown squall.

May was among the last to come out. She stood for a moment under the marquee, hesitating, looking this way and that. Kelp said, “What's she up to?”

“She knows what she's doing,” Dortmunder said. “She'll just walk around a while, so we see has she a tail.”

“Of course she has a tail,” Kelp said. “Probably half a dozen. Some pal of Tiny's. The cops. The Terrorists' Cooperative.”

“You're very cheery,” Dortmunder said.

Outside there, two nondescript men also stood under the marquee, apparently indecisive as to what to do now that the world of the cinema had been replaced by the world of rain. But then May finally moved on, heading down the block away from Kelp and Dortmunder, and after a minute both dawdling men strolled off in that direction as well, having nothing to do with one another, or with May, or with anything.

“Two,” Kelp said.

“I see them.”

“If they only knew.”

“Don't talk.”

“What she's carrying, I mean.”

“I know what you meant.”

Kelp waited till May and her two new friends were all out of sight in the spritzing darkness, then started the Lincoln and oozed away from the curb. In midblock they passed the two men, who were having some difficulty remaining unaware of one another, and a bit farther on they passed May, walking along like a person with nothing to think about but movies.

Astonishingly, the light at the corner was green. Kelp zipped around to the right, pulled in at the curb, left the engine running but turned out the lights. Dortmunder twisted around, looking back through the water-smeared side windows at the corner, his hand reaching back for the rear door handle.

May appeared, walking purposefully but not hurriedly. She turned right, continued to walk, and the instant the corner building cut her off from the view of the following men she made a brisk dash for the car. Dortmunder shoved open the rear door, May hopped in, and Kelp accelerated, turning the next corner before switching on the headlights.

“What a night!” May said, when Kelp eased enough on the throttle so she could peel herself off the seatback. “I knew this was you when I saw the MD plates.”

Kelp tossed Dortmunder a quick triumphant grin: “See? It's my trademark.” Looking in the rearview mirror he said, “Nobody behind us.”

May was studying Dortmunder like a mother hen. “How are you, John?”

“Fine.”

“You look all right,” she said doubtfully.

“I haven't been gone that long, May.”

“Have you been eating?”

“Sure I been eating.”