“How many people are coming?”
I hauled out my list. “The names with a check mark are ones I called this morning. I’ll ask Ray to round up the ones with a star.”
“Hey, I’m on the list. You want me there?”
“Of course.”
“How come I don’t get a check mark or a star?”
“Because I didn’t call you this morning,” I said patiently, “and I didn’t think it would be necessary to have Ray bring you. I figured I’d just tell you about it, and you’d come.”
“No problem,” she said, scanning the list. “ ‘Barbara Creeley.’ I guess you’ll tell her, right? She’s a lawyer, she’s got meetings and closings all the time. Will she be able to come?”
“I hope so. It’s not a dealbreaker if she can’t, but I’d like to have her there.”
“ ‘GurlyGurl.’ You put Lacey on the list? And how come you wrote down her screen name?”
“Because I didn’t get much sleep last night and I’m a little rocky this morning and I couldn’t think of her damn name.”
“Don’t bite my head off, Bern.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you might like having her there, and it might be interesting for her. She’s not tied into any of it, but there’s a coincidental connection in that she works with Barbara. I figured it would be up to you to invite her, and it’s your call to make. Personally, I’d just as soon have a lot of people in the room.”
“Should I bring my cats? Just a little joke, Bern.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Man, you’re nicer company when you’ve had a full night’s sleep, aren’t you? This is a long list, isn’t it? Let’s see who else is on it.”
“This here is some list,” Ray Kirschmann said. “How you gonna fit ’em all in this guy’s house?”
Just bring them in through the milk chute, I thought. “It’s a big house,” I said. “Anyway, they’re probably not all going to come. Some of the people I invited sounded as though they didn’t know what I was talking about, and they’ll probably find something else to do tomorrow afternoon.”
“Weather report says there’s a fifty percent chance of rain tomorrow,” he said, “which is a lot like sayin’ they don’t know what the hell it’s gonna do. Rain or shine, that’s a lot of people to send clear up to the Bronx. I never heard of the street. ‘Devonshire Close.’ Close to what, Bernie?”
“Close to Ploughman’s Bush,” I said, “if that helps. They call it a close because it’s closed at one end.”
“You mean like a dead-end street? Why not come out and say so?”
“I suppose they could have,” I said, “but I guess the developers felt it would be harder to sell houses on Devonshire Dead End.”
“Either way, it’s a Roach Motel for cars. They get in but they can’t get out. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“I don’t either, Ray. I’m starting to have third thoughts about the whole business.”
“You mean second thoughts, don’t you?”
“I already had those. I’ve taken it to the next level. The whole thing could fizzle.”
“You mean you might not come up with a rabbit?”
“I’m not even sure I’ve got a hat.”
He looked troubled, perhaps imagining how he’d come out of it if my magic act fell flat. Then he brightened. “Aw, you’ll pull it off, Bernie. You always do. An’ if you don’t, well, hell, there’s names on this list we could just arrest on general principles.”
I made some more phone calls during the rest of Tuesday afternoon, and even went out to issue a couple of invitations in person. I met Carolyn at the Bum Rap, talked some more about the following day’s agenda, and went straight home. I was in bed by 7:45, and asleep by 7:46. I slept the clock around, waking up a few minutes after eight.
I showered and shaved. I broke some eggs in a bowl, swirled them with a whisk, tossed in some shredded cheese and a pinch of celery salt, added a soupçon of curry powder, and made better scrambled eggs than I could have gotten around the corner. I made coffee, too, and there was nothing wrong with that, either.
Washing up, I caught myself whistling, and was amused to realize the melody was that of “Put on a Happy Face.” I checked the mirror, and damned if I hadn’t followed the song’s advice. If my face looked any happier I could get a job as a village idiot.
I felt, I realized, uncommonly good—rested, of course, but also energized and optimistic. I was in high gear, and I felt as though nothing could stop me.
Of course I hadn’t left the house yet.
Thirty-Six
There was a bell, of course, but I used the lion’s head door knocker and gave it a couple of good thumps. I heard footsteps, and then the door opened, and the man who’d opened it must have whistled a different tune at the breakfast table, because the face he was wearing didn’t look much like a smile button. I could only hope he didn’t have a gun in his pocket, because he didn’t appear at all glad to see me.
“Mr. Rothenberg,” he said.
Well, a lot of people get it wrong. Aside from relatives, I’ve never come across another Rhodenbarr. I suspect the name was the gift of an overworked immigration officer at Ellis Island, but what it may have been before then is anybody’s guess. People who hear it are apt to turn it into something else, while people who encounter it in print tend to mispronounce it. I don’t know why, it’s simple enough, ROAD-in-bar, but for some folks it turns into a tongue-twister.
“It’s Rhodenbarr,” I said. “And you’re Dr. Mapes.”
He was, but my saying so didn’t make him visibly happier. Aside from the downcast expression, I’d have to say he looked pretty good. I knew he was around Marty’s age, but his face was younger than his years, with no pouches under the eyes, no loose skin hanging like crepe on his neck, and a minimum of the little lines that life etches into people’s faces.
His hair was dark, too, and he had a full head of it. Younger than his years, I thought, but they showed in the stoop of his shoulders and the liver spots on the backs of his hands. He might have sipped from the fountain of youth, and even splashed some of its waters on his face, but he hadn’t gone for full-body immersion.
He led me inside to the living room, where his wife was waiting. She’d set out a plate of sandwiches with their crusts cut off, along with a thermos of coffee and a pair of bone china cups and saucers. She invited me to make myself at home, and said she’d just leave us men alone, as she had to be off right away if she was going to be on time for her afternoon bridge game.
I decided that Mrs. Mapes, like her husband, looked young for her age, and then I wondered how I could know that, since I had no way of knowing how old she was. Then I worked it out that her face, firm and unlined, looked younger than the rest of her. She had a dumpy figure and an old lady’s walk, but if you just looked at her face…
And then, of course, the penny dropped. The man was a plastic surgeon, for God’s sake. You’d expect him to give his wife the most youthful face his craft could furnish. And, while he would hardly operate on himself, surely he’d avail himself of the services of a skilled colleague. It wouldn’t inspire confidence in a prospective patient to confront a plastic surgeon with his face sagging halfway to his waist, with a wart here and a wart there and deep wrinkles all around. It would be as disconcerting as a visit to a snaggle-toothed dentist. But the occasional nip and tuck, along with periodic injections of Botox, could make the years go away. Mapes’s own face was his own best advertisement.
And as for the hair, dark and abundant…well, damned if the old goat wasn’t wearing a rug. It was a very good one, but once I looked for it I could spot it for what it was, and right away I felt a lot more in control of the situation. Nothing gives you the upper hand like knowing the other guy is wearing somebody else’s hair.
We stood around until Mrs. Mapes had backed out of the driveway and driven off. Then he pointed to the spread on the coffee table. “My wife insisted on this,” he said. “She be
lieves in applying a veneer of sociability to an essentially commercial transaction, and in this instance a distasteful one at that. But help yourself to sandwiches and coffee, if you like.”
“That’s awfully gracious of you,” I said, “but I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you clear all that out of here. There isn’t nearly enough to go around, and I’d hate for any of the others to feel left out.”
“Others?”
“I guess I forgot to tell you,” I said. “Company’s coming. Let’s see, we’ve got the sofa and the love seat and those chairs. We’re going to need more chairs. Why don’t you give me a hand, and for starters we’ll bring in the six ladderbacks from the dining room.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t want any other people coming here.”
“You didn’t even want me,” I said, “but that’s the way it goes. They’re on their way, and I couldn’t stop them now even if I wanted to. Come on, Doc. Don’t just stand there looking young. Grab a chair.”
I’d come up on the subway arriving right on schedule at one o’clock. It took a while to fill the living room with chairs, and we’d barely finished before the early birds began to show up for their worms. They kept coming, by ones or twos or threes, and I took over the duties of our reluctant host, meeting them at the door and ushering them to their seats. Most of them just went where I pointed them and waited in patient silence, but now and then somebody wanted to know just what the hell was going on. I told them more would be revealed.
Barbara Creeley was there, and so was Lacey Kavinoky, and neither knew what to make of the other’s presence. GurlyGurl turned out to be every bit as attractive as Carolyn had said, and closer to Laura Ashley than L. L. Bean. She sat next to Carolyn on the love seat, but had drawn a few inches away from her when Barbara arrived.
Ray showed up with a trio in tow, including William Johnson (the date-rape artist, not the safe-deposit boxholder) and a pair of police officers, out of uniform but unmistakable all the same. One was a woman, and you could still tell she was a cop. I don’t know what it is that gives them away. Maybe it’s the way they stare at people without the least embarrassment.
The pair split up, each electing to remain standing, one alongside the front door, the other in the archway separating the living and dining rooms, and stared hard at the rest of us. Meanwhile Ray took an armchair and put his feet on the matching ottoman, pointing Johnson to the straight-backed wooden chair on his left. Johnson looked all right—he’d had thirty-six hours to shake off the effects of the Rohypnol—but he walked carefully, rather like a man who’d been kicked in the groin.
Next through the door was Marisol Maris, living up to her name, with her sea-washed blue eyes and her sun-warmed brown skin. Wally Hemphill had brought her, on my instructions. There were a few people who might need a lawyer by the time the day was over, but she was the only one who deserved a good one, and he might as well be with her from the jump.
They chose the couch, with Wally on one end and Marisol in the middle, and the seat beside her was claimed in a heartbeat by the next person who entered. He was a wispy young man with a wispy blond beard, and you probably would have guessed he was a painter even if he hadn’t used his blue jeans as a drop cloth. He was Marisol’s first cousin, from the old neighborhood in Brooklyn, and you’ll know which side of the family he was on when I tell you his name, Karlis Shenk.
So far everybody had rung the bell, but the next person used the knocker. I got the door, and in came three men in suits. The first and third were young and muscular, and if they didn’t spend as much time in the gym as William Johnson, they still looked capable of holding their own in a shoving match. Their suits were bargain specials from Men’s Wearhouse, while the man in the middle’s had been made to measure. He was well-groomed and clean-shaven, and he looked like a successful businessman, and I suppose that’s what he was. He was also Johnson’s uncle, and his name was Michael Quattrone. He looked around, and the seat he picked was one that gave him a good view of the room while presenting his back to the room’s sole unbroken wall. His two companions stayed on their feet, and posted themselves alongside the two standing cops.
They were followed moments later by two more men in suits, but the new arrivals looked like neither businessmen nor muscle. They had to be government employees, and they were, as I learned when one of them showed me his federal ID. He withdrew it before I could catch his name, and I never did learn it, so I can’t give it to you. His partner didn’t show me any ID, or much respect, either, and they both found seats and sat on them like wannabe models in posture class.
Next came a tall, wraithlike man with a precise black goatee and close-cropped black hair topped with a beret, also black, which he took off upon entering the house. His slacks and turtleneck were black, as were the carpet slippers on his feet. He might have been a monk of some particularly ascetic order, or perhaps a Greenwich Village bohemian left over from the 1950s, but then he wouldn’t have been accompanied by a pair of hoodlums. His name was Georgi Blinsky, and mothers in Brighton Beach invoked it to scare their children.
Blinsky looked around the room, but the only person he seemed to notice was Michael Quattrone, whom he acknowledged with a curt nod. Quattrone nodded back at him, and Blinsky found a chair and sat in it, while his two thugs posted themselves at the room’s two entrances, where they glared at Quattrone’s thugs and ignored the cops.
Next came Colby Riddle, who’d just wanted something to read. He used the lion’s head knocker, but very tentatively, and was equally tentative when it came to mounting the threshold and coming into the house. “I’m still not sure why I’m here,” he said. “But here I am.”
I picked out a chair for him, not wanting to confound him with choices, and got back to the door in time to open it for Sigrid Hesselblad, who was wearing a Brooks Brothers shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of jeans out at the knees and no makeup and no lipstick, and who looked drop-dead gorgeous.
Next up was a Mr. Grisek, a short and pudgy fellow dressed like a pre-Glasnost delegate to an Eastern Bloc conference on tractor maintenance. He was in fact a Latvian diplomat, and he had a one-person entourage, and that one person deserted him at the door, returning to sit behind the wheel of the limo parked across the street. Grisek didn’t seem to know anybody in the room, nor did they know him; he took a seat and waited for something to happen.
He got there at 2:05, and I decided I’d wait five more minutes and then get the show on the road. I don’t know if you’ve been counting, but I think that came to twenty-two, including me but not including the guy in the limo. I may be forgetting someone. It was a big room, but we were doing a pretty good job of filling it.
Ray was giving me a look, and people were squirming in their chairs, and it was time to get going or serve them drinks, or else I was liable to find myself facing a mutiny. I moved into position and cleared my throat, and right on cue the doorbell rang. It was Marty Gilmartin, looking splendid in a powder-blue cashmere jacket over pale gray flannel slacks. His shirt was open at the neck, and he was wearing an ascot, and was the rare sort of man who could do so without looking like a dork.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he murmured. “I had a cabdriver from hell, and he must have been trying to find his way home.” I told him he was just in time, and he found himself a seat. He must have noticed Marisol Maris, and he’d have had to have spotted Crandall Rountree Mapes, aka The Shitheel, but he gave no sign of it.
My throat was already clear, but I cleared it again and got everybody’s attention. There was any number of ways I could have started things off, but there’s a lot to be said for tradition, and sticking with the tried and true.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you all here…”
Thirty-Seven
Once upon a time,” I said, “there were three independent republics on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania was on the west, Estonia was on the east, and the one in the m
iddle was Latvia. They came into independent existence at the end of the First World War, and disappeared again at the onset of the Second. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the Soviet Union grabbed up the Baltics. Then, when Hitler went to war with Russia two years later, the Wehrmacht marched through the Baltics on their way to Stalingrad.”
The Latvians in my audience seemed to be paying the most attention to this little history lesson, and they were the ones who already knew it.
“When the Nazis retreated,” I went on, “the Red Army marched in again, and the Soviets established each former republic as a member state of the USSR. But the hunger for independence never died in those countries, as evidenced by the rapidity with which they broke free when the Soviet Union began to fall apart under Gorbachev.
“Almost half a century before that, when the war ended, partisan bands hid out in the forests of Latvia and launched periodic assaults upon the Soviet occupying forces. For over twenty years these Latvian wasps went on stinging the Russian bear. They couldn’t turn the tide, they were just a handful of poorly armed idealists, but they knew all they had to do was survive. As long as they were out there in the woods, the spark of Latvian independence could never be entirely extinguished.”
I looked around. Marisol had tears in the corners of her blue eyes, and her cousin Karlis looked as though he might burst into applause. Mr. Grisek, the Latvian attaché in the bad suit, was paying close attention, but didn’t seem as emotional about it.
The Burglar on the Prowl Page 24