“Yes, ma’am.”
He sat down, and she turned to the man–mountain, Tiny, and said, “Before I forget, John called, he wants a meet at the O.J. tonight at ten.”
“Good,” Tiny said. But then he pointed at Judson and said, “Whatcha keeping this around for?”
“He made me realize,” she said, “if I get an office manager, he can take care of all the old stuff, so I don’t have to give it up after all, and I can still concentrate on Maylohda.”
He considered, then nodded that massive head. “Not bad,” he agreed.
She stood and came around the desk, smiling much more welcomingly, hand stuck out, saying, “Welcome to the firm, Judson.”
He leaped to his feet. Her handshake was very hard. He said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“I’m J.C., of course,” she said, astonishing him yet again. “Josephine Carol Taylor. But you’re a bright kid, you figured that out, didn’t you?”
He could recover fast, which was a good thing, because, he now realized, he was often going to have to. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Nice to meet you, J.C.”
Chapter 9
* * *
When Dortmunder walked into the O.J. Bar & Grill at ten that night, the regulars were clustered, as usual, down toward the left end of the bar, while Rollo, whose apron was well on its way to becoming a regional cuisine all by itself, stood some way to the right, doing nothing in particular as he leaned against the high–tech cash register he never used, preferring to operate it with its till jutting open until all advanced technology should someday retreat out the door.
Dortmunder aimed himself at Rollo, and was halfway there from the front door when he realized something was wrong. It was silent in the joint. Not just quiet — silent. Not a regular was stirring. Apart from them and Rollo, there was only one occupied booth, over on the right — two guys in satin–bright polyester shirts, one emerald and one apricot, with wide contrasting collars, and except for their shirts those two were silent as well.
What was going on? Was it a wake around here? Nobody wore a black armband, but the faces on the regulars were long enough. They, all of them, men and the women’s auxiliary, too, were hunched over their drinks with that thousand–yard stare that suggests therapy is no longer an option. In short, the place looked exactly like that section of the socialist realist mural where the workers have been utterly shafted by the plutocrats. Dortmunder looked up, half–expecting to see top hats and cigars in the gloom up there, but nothing.
Nothing from Rollo, either. He stood against the cash register with his meaty arms folded, and gazed at his domain with what had to be at least a hundred–and–fifty–yard stare of his own. Dortmunder made sure to get directly into the line of sight of that stare, and then said, “Rollo?”
Rollo blinked. “Oh,” he said. He could be seen to recognize Dortmunder, but whatever welcome was rising toward the surface never made it. Instead, he shook his head. “Sorry,” he said.
“We thought we’d meet,” Dortmunder told him, “in the back room.” And he pointed generally toward the back room, in case Rollo had forgotten its existence.
“No can do,” Rollo said, and shook his head again.
This was unexpected — in fact, unprecedented. Dortmunder said, “You got other people back there?”
“No, it’s in use,” Rollo said, which sounded an awful lot like a contradiction.
Dortmunder was baffled. When the time came to get the string together, to discuss the situation and work out the possibilities, the place to do it was the back room at the O.J., always had been. The room was secure, the management minded its own affairs, and the drinks were priced with repeat business in mind. So this is where they would come. This is, in fact, where they were all coming tonight, summoned by Dortmunder himself.
Trying to get around this sudden bump in the road, Dortmunder said, “I suppose we could wait a while, you know, till it frees up, sit in one of those —”
The Rollo headshake again. “Sorry, John,” he said. “Forget about that room.”
Dortmunder stared at him. The entire world had gone mad. “Forget about it? Rollo, what’s —”
“Any problem here, Rollo?”
Dortmunder looked to his right, and it was the emerald shirt from the booth, with its pterodactyl collar. The man with it was short but strong–looking, as though his body were made of one hundred percent gristle, with a head on top full of outsize parts, so that he could only look reasonable in profile. Sideways, he could have been somebody on a Roman coin, but head–on he looked like a hawk that had gone through a windshield.
This person didn’t actually look at Dortmunder, but he made it clear he was aware of Dortmunder’s existence and wasn’t made particularly happy by the fact. “Rollo?” he asked.
“No problem,” Rollo assured him, though he sounded very gloomy when he said it. To Dortmunder he said, “Sorry, John.”
Dortmunder, still trying to find the old terra firma, said, “Rollo, couldn’t we —”
“He said he was sorry, John.”
Dortmunder looked at the emerald. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think you want to, my friend,” the emerald told him, and without actually moving anything he seemed to suggest that Dortmunder look past his emerald left shoulder to where, back at the table he’d come from, the apricot now watched Dortmunder with the fixed ferocity of a cat watching a chipmunk.
What Dortmunder might have said or done next he would never know, because movement farther to his right attracted his attention, and here came Andy Kelp, cheerful, smiling in sunny ignorance, saying, “We’re the first? Hey, there, Rollo, whadaya say?”
“No,” Rollo said.
“John, you got the bottle? We gotta —”
“Rollo told you no,” said the emerald. “Politely. I heard him.”
Kelp reared back to look the emerald up and down. “What flying saucer did this come out of?” he wanted to know.
The emerald wore his magnificent shirt outside his pants, and now his quick move toward his waist at the middle of his back did not suggest a sudden lumbar distress. Kelp cocked an eyebrow at him, interested, half smiling.
“Andy,” Rollo said, with a kind of muffled urgency, and when Kelp turned toward him, still smiling, still bland, he said, “We don’t want any trouble in here, Andy. Believe me, we don’t want any trouble in here.”
The emerald was still in position, hand at his back, eyes fixed on Kelp. And here came the apricot, saying, “Some kinda problem, Rollo?”
“Everything’s fine,” Rollo said, though not as though he meant it. Then he said, “John, listen, wait a minute,” and both his hands dove under the bar. Everybody tensed. Even the regulars rustled slightly. But then Rollo came up with a quart bottle of Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon — ‘Our Own Brand’, holding it in both hands like an abandoned baby, which he thrust toward Dortmunder, saying, “On the house. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience.”
Dortmunder found himself holding the bottle. He’d never gotten a freebie bottle in here before, but somehow the circumstances clouded the gift. “Rollo,” he said, “is there anything I can do?”
“Go home, John,” Rollo suggested, but then he leaned forward, lowered his voice so that only people in the bar could hear him, and said, “Do me a favor. Don’t let Tiny get upset.”
Kelp said, “He will, you know.”
“Please,” Rollo said.
Kelp looked at Dortmunder. “John?”
There was nothing to be done. Dortmunder sighed. “He did say please,” he said, and turned toward the door.
All the way out, they could feel those eyes on the backs of their heads.
Chapter 10
* * *
“If you don’t like the route I’m taking,” Murch’s Mom snarled at her only child, “why don’t you steal a car, find your own way to the O.J.? We’ll see who gets there first.”
“No matter who’s driving,” the ungrateful pup replied, “or how many
cars we’re in, I wouldn’t try to drive up inside Central Park at ten o’clock at night in the summer. Do you see all these hansom cabs, all these horses crapping all over the place, all these tourists getting the experience of the real New York by riding around in a horse and buggy?”
“They’re not even going anywhere,” his Mom complained. Her right thumb hovered over the horn button but didn’t quite touch it.
“Sure they’re going someplace,” her son corrected, never agreeing with anybody. He shifted a little, trying to get his knees farther from the air conditioner wind here in the front seat of his mother’s cab, and said, “They’re going all around in a great big circle inside Central Park at, what, seven miles an hour? And back down to Fifty–ninth Street, and thank you very much, and walk back to the hotel and call Aunt Flo back home, guess what, we just had a real New York experience, forty minutes through Central Park behind a farting horse. Making unwary people late for their appointments.”
“It isn’t the tourists that bother me,” his Mom informed him. “It isn’t the horses, the carriages. It’s the cop on my tailpipe. Don’t look around!”
“Why not?” Stan asked, twisting all the way around to gaze at the patrol car that was, indeed, traveling so close behind their cab he could see a bit of spinach caught in its grill. “I can rubberneck just as well as anybody else out for a mosey through the park.” Facing front again, he said, “How did you let that happen?”
“I was committed to the turn into the park,” she said, “nobody behind me, and all of a sudden he was there. I think maybe he U–turned. Believe me, Stanley, I do not choose to be followed through the city of New York by a cop.”
“Bad luck,” Stan said, which was probably meant to make peace.
Accepting the offer, at least a little, his Mom said, “These horses and carriages and tourists aren’t going to get in my way, Stanley, not if I can use my horn. But with that cop behind me? They love to hassle the cabbies, especially when there’s tourists around to watch.”
“Well, here comes Seventy–second Street,” Stan said, “slower than I’ve ever seen it arrive before —”
“Enough.”
“When we do get outa the park, I think you oughta go —”
“I’ll pick my own route, Stanley.”
“Fine,” Stan said.
“Good.”
“You’re the driver.”
“That’s right.”
“The professional driver.”
“That’s right.”
“Years of experience behind the —”
“Shut up, Stanley.”
So he shut up, and when they finally got shut of the park, the horses, the tourists and the cop, he didn’t even tell her she was making a mistake when she took the right onto Central Park West. He didn’t mention that the better way was to run west past Amsterdam to Columbus, then make your right, so you’re on a one–way street with staggered lights, and to get back to Amsterdam it’s all right turns. No, fine, let her do it her way, up a two–way street, no staggered lights, and all left turns at the end of it. Great.
Eventually, though, they did get onto Amsterdam, but just as Murch’s Mom was pulling in next to the fire hydrant down the block from the O.J., out the door of the place came Dortmunder and Kelp, Dortmunder carrying a bottle. Surprised, Stan said, “The meeting’s over already? We can’t be that late.”
“Watch it, Stanley.”
“I’m only saying,” Stan said, and got out of the cab to say, “John? Andy? Whassup?”
Dortmunder gestured with the bottle. “Something screwy at the O.J.”
“What, it’s closed?”
“There’s some guys there,” Kelp said, “they seem to want privacy right now.”
Murch’s Mom, joining them on the sidewalk, said, “Closed for a private party?”
“Kinda,” Kelp said, and a horn sounded.
They turned to look, and Tiny was just buttoning open the rear window of a stretch limousine. Since he found regular taxis too form–fitting, Tiny tended to whistle up a limo when it was necessary to go somewhere. Now, window open, he said, “Everybody’s on the sidewalk.”
Dortmunder, walking toward him, said, “We can’t use the back room tonight, we gotta go somewhere else.”
Stan said, “Somewhere else? There isn’t anywhere else.”
Kelp said, “John, is May at the movies?” because usually that’s what she did when Dortmunder was out and about for one reason or another.
Lowering a suspicious brow, Dortmunder said, “So what?”
“So it looks,” Kelp said, “like we gotta convene at your place.”
“Why my place? Why not your place?”
“Anne Marie’s home, and she wouldn’t go for it, John.”
From the limo, Tiny said, “Josey wouldn’t go for it in spades.”
Stan said, “You don’t want to come all the way down to Canarsie,” that being where he and his Mom lived.
Dortmunder muttered and growled and scuffed his feet around. “I don’t see why everything’s gotta get screwed up.”
“John,” Kelp said, “it’s hot out here on the sidewalk. You got a nice air–conditioned living room.”
Stan called, “Tiny, we’ll meet you there. The rest of us will take Mom’s cab.”
“Done,” Tiny said, and spoke to his driver as he buttoned the window back up.
“Come on, John,” Kelp said. “You know it’s the only answer.”
“All right, all right,” Dortmunder said, still surly, but then he said, “At least I got this bottle.”
“Sure,” Kelp said. “Climb aboard.”
As they all did, Murch’s Mom said, “You know I gotta throw the meter, I wouldn’t wanna get stopped by a cop.”
“Fine,” Dortmunder said. “Stan can pay the fare.”
“No meter, Mom,” Stan said.
She sulked all the way downtown.
Chapter 11
* * *
Everybody hated Dortmunder’s living room. Dortmunder hated it himself, under the circumstances. They couldn’t sit all together around a table, everybody at the same height, the same distance from one another. There was nobody to bring drinks, and not that much variety of drink anyway. The only thing Tiny could find to mix with his vodka was cranberry juice, which was a comedown from the red wine he was used to. Stan and his Mom did have the beer they preferred to harder stuff when driving (and backseat driving), but neither of them liked Dortmunder’s salt shaker. “It comes out too fast!”
The first ten minutes were spent going back and forth to the kitchen, which was actually quite far from the living room, a fact Dortmunder had never noticed before. Finally, though, they all settled down, Dortmunder in his regular chair, Murch’s Mom in May’s regular chair, Tiny on much of the sofa with Kelp on the sliver of sofa that was left, and Stan on a wooden chair he’d brought from the kitchen.
“Now,” Tiny said, “I know we’re here because you people got something, but first I gotta know, what’s with the O.J.?”
Dortmunder said, “Rollo wouldn’t let us use the back room. He didn’t look happy.”
“He looked morose,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder nodded at him. “The very word I was thinking.”
“Also,” Kelp said, “the regulars weren’t saying anything.”
Stan said, “What? The loudmouths at the bar?”
“Not a peep,” Kelp told him. “They looked like they didn’t wanna attract attention.”
“That’s the only thing they ever want to attract,” Stan said, and his Mom said, “When Stan is right, he’s right,” and Stan said, “Thanks, Mom.”
“Also,” Dortmunder said, “there were two guys in the place, throwing their weight around.”
With a little purr in his voice, Tiny said, “Oh, yeah?”
Kelp said, “Those were mob guys, John. You could smell it on them.”
Tiny shook his head. “Mob guys in the O.J. Why don’t they stick to the Copacabana?”
>
Dortmunder said, “I think something’s going on in there that’s linked up with the mob.”
Kelp said, “You know how they like to kill one another in restaurants and bars? Maybe those guys were in there waiting for Mickey Banana Nose to walk in, and bang–bang.”
“Then I’d like them to get it over with,” Dortmunder said. “And not do any stray bullets into Rollo.”
“That could be why he was morose,” Kelp said, then held up the jelly glass into which he had poured from Dortmunder’s freebie bottle. “You know, John?” he said. “Not to badmouth your apartment, but this stuff doesn’t taste as good here as it does at the O.J.”
Watch Your Back Page 5
