And now fate had misdelivered to Walt a box meant for Argyle. Surely, he thought, there was some way to put this happy coincidence to use….
Clearly the name “Dilworth” was a fraud, unless Argyle was renting out the servant’s quarters these days. More likely it was some kind of blind—a way of protecting himself from being charged with improbable postal crimes if the contents were discovered.
Was it Argyle that had broken into the garage? The idea struck him like a stone. It was almost funny—a millionaire reduced to looting garages.
With his felt pen he crossed out the name “Dilworth” and wrote “Robert Argyle” above it. He picked up the tape roller and held it over the box. Then he put the tape down, opened the box again, and pulled out the bluebird of happiness, replacing it with wadded-up Chinese newspaper. He would keep the bluebird for a few days; he wasn’t quite sure why.
Well, he was sure why. He’d keep it in order to make Argyle unhappy, mystified, and irritated. At the end of the week he would throw it down the storm drain at the end of the street.
There was the sound just then of a horn honking, and he looked out through the barely open door. There were Henry and Jinx, pulling into the driveway, right on time. Walt went out through the back door carrying the bluebird tin with him. Hurrying, he crossed the lawn to the garden shed, already having made up his mind. He found the trowel, then stepped across the muddy garden to the tomato vines, where he scooped a hole in the dirt, shoving the tin into the ground and covering it nearly to the top. Then he arranged the vines over it so that unless you looked right at it, from a couple of feet away, you couldn’t see a thing.
“Bring me a decent tomato,” he said to the bluebird. Then he tossed the trowel into the shed and trotted back out toward the front of the garage. In the driveway, Aunt Jinx and Uncle Henry were pulling shopping bags full of wrapped Christmas presents out of the rear end of the motor home, which looked like a soda-cracker box on wheels.
10
HENRY’S HAIR WAS nearly pure white, and he kept it trimmed in a brush cut that gave him the look of a retired military man who would be going in for a haircut within the next day or two. He wore a polyester polo shirt, buttoned up, with a sports jacket and Sansabelt slacks and black loafers. He was short—shorter than Jinx—probably five-two or-three, but he made up for this by having the attitude that there was nothing a man couldn’t do if he put his mind to it, and Walt always got the notion that Henry had put his mind to a thousand things in his life and had accomplished them all, even though it wasn’t really clear what those things were. He was somewhere in his middle seventies, but it seemed as if he’d been retired forever.
He never gave any hint, though, that Walt, or anybody else, should be accomplishing anything in particular, and when Walt had told him, months ago, about the catalogue sales, he had said it sounded “fabulous.” He would have said the same thing if Walt were starting up a shoe store or an amphibian import service. Henry seemed to assume that every other man on earth felt the same way that he himself did, and was up to the same things, and that with luck and perseverance they’d all succeed together. Because of that he had a built-in respect for nearly everyone he met, and struck up conversations with sales clerks and gas station attendants. Henry didn’t have any enemies, and Walt liked him for that, although the blind trust that Henry had in the world seemed like a dangerous philosophy for a man of business.
Walt had always known that Henry and Jinx had money, largely because of family talk about Henry’s investments and business dealings. And so the motor home was no surprise to him. There was a shower in it as well as a toilet, and a refrigerator that ran off propane or electricity, whichever was handy. The cabinetry was first-rate—lots of chrome, a twenty-inch television set with a built-in VCR.
“What do you think?” Henry said to him, waving his hand at things in general. “Fabulous, isn’t it?” Jinx had already disappeard into the house to see about dinner.
“Nice,” Walt said. “Real deluxe.” He realized that Henry thought it was fabulous, too. He liked it. Things were right with the world, and this motor home was proof of it.
The screen door on the house slammed, and in a moment Aunt Jinx looked in, holding a bottle of salad dressing. “I found everything I need for muffins and a salad,” she said, “if that suits the two of you.”
“Suits me down to the ground,” Walt said. “What else will we have?”
“Oh, that’s enough, don’t you think? I’ll put chickpeas and tuna in the salad—a meal in itself. Is this what you two dress salads with?” She held out the bottle, which was nearly empty.
Walt nodded. “Not much there.”
“I’ll pep it up with a little canola oil. There’s less saturated fat than in bottled dressings. No stabilizers, either, or MSG.” She climbed up the steps into the motor home and pushed past Walt and Henry in order to open a cupboard, where she found the oil and a small bottle of dark red vinegar. There wasn’t a lot in the cupboard besides Styrofoam boxes of instant noodles. “The muffins are made entirely without oil or salt and are high in bran. They’re a first-rate source of roughage.”
“Good,” Walt said. “That sounds perfect.” He hated it when people advised him to eat “roughage,” like he was a cow or something. He imagined a big plate of chopped-up shrubbery.
“You’ll be surprised how satisfying it is. And with the Christmas season starting up, we’ll all be overeating. Fats, sugar …” She shook her head. “There’s no better time to start a new regimen. I called Ivy at the office, and she’s entirely in agreement. So you two quit nodding like fools and get it into your heads.”
“No,” Walt insisted. “It sounds fine to me.”
There was the sound of drumming on the roof, and Walt realized that it had started to rain again. Aunt Jinx picked up a newspaper from the table and held it over her head before going back out.
“She intends to make men out of us,” Walt said, smiling at Henry.
“She’s a juggernaut. I’ve lost five pounds.” Henry patted himself on the stomach and then pulled open a drawer full of clothes, shifted some socks out of the way, and found a small box of Cheez-Its. Together they ate the crackers, sitting at the table, while Henry fiddled with the television set, trying to improve the reception. “It’s got cable hookup,” he said. “We’ll have to get a roll of coax and a splitter down at Radio Shack.”
With the rain falling outside now, the motor home began to feel snug and comfortable, and Walt was disappointed when Jinx came back out and told him he had a phone call in the house. He followed her in, jogging through the rain, and picked up the receiver in the kitchen.
“Hello,” he said, listening to the staticky connection. It sounded like somebody rustling paper on the other end. “Sorry, can you speak up?”
The man wanted something. It was a business call, and he was using a phone that was apparently wired into a beehive. “I was wondering about a certain product line having to do with … what shall we call it? Third-world religions—voodoo, Santeria. Do you carry anything along those lines?”
“I don’t believe so,” Walt said. “Anything in particular?”
“Herbals, perhaps?”
He thought about the stuff he’d found in the misdelivered box, and suddenly wondered who this was on the line. Argyle? It didn’t sound like him, but of course it wouldn’t make any sense that Argyle would call anyway; the call would come from one of his employees. “I guess not,” he said. “I’ve got nun finger puppets and plastic holy water bottles from Lourdes, night lights—that kind of thing.”
“Sounds basically like gag gifts. I wanted something more … primitive. Authentic.”
“Was there some specific item you were looking for?” Walt asked.
“Not really, no. Charms, elixirs, primitive religious artifacts, that sort of thing. Do you have a catalogue?”
“A new one, in fact,” Walt said. “I’ll send it out tomorrow. Where are you located?”
There was
a pause. “Costa Mesa,” the man said. “Two-twenty-five Fourteenth Street, 93341.”
Walt wrote it down and hung up after promising to send the catalogue. Then he went out into the rain and pulled the Thomas Bros. mapbook out of the Suburban, climbing onto the front seat and pulling the door shut. He was virtually certain that the zip was a fake, made up on the spot. He flipped to the index and scanned the addresses. Just as he thought, there was no 200 block of Fourteenth Street in Costa Mesa.
11
WALT FLIPPED ON THE garage light at six in the evening, leaving Ivy to wash up the dishes with Aunt Jinx. Henry was watching the news in the living room, drinking a cup of coffee laced with Half and Half and about a pound of sugar as an antidote to the chickpeas and shrubbery. Actually, there hadn’t been anything wrong with the food at dinner—nothing that a double cheeseburger from Wimpy’s wouldn’t cure. Of course, Jinx was probably right about what they needed, dietetically speaking. And probably she’d tire out soon.
It was pitch dark out and raining in flurries, but he decided he wouldn’t bother with an umbrella. He picked up Argyle’s cardboard carton and went down the carport toward the street, where the dim yellow circles of light from the streetlamps seemed, if anything, to make the night a little darker. The wind was blowing out of the east, and the sky overhead was heavy with clouds barely illuminated by a hidden moon. A car passed as he hurried toward the corner, but otherwise the streets were deserted. The bad weather kept everyone indoors.
He turned the corner and walked up toward Sycamore, and even from a distance he could see that Argyle’s house was lit up. There were a couple of cars parked along the street and smoke coming out of the chimney, and for a moment Walt thought about turning around and heading back home. But there was no sign of anyone outside, and the porch light was off.
He decided to risk it. He crossed the street, angling toward Argyle’s front porch, prepared to walk straight on past if anyone came out. Quickly he cut across the lawn, slid the box beneath the porch railings and gave it a good shove. It slid beneath a wicker chair where it lay hidden in the shadows. The box was nearly invisible; when Argyle found it he’d have to wonder whether it hadn’t been lying there for a week.
Just then the porch light blinked on, and Walt ducked, sliding around the side of the porch toward a couple of big hydrangea bushes against the side of the house. Immediately he knew he’d made a mistake. He should simply have headed for the street—just another pedestrian hurrying home in the rain. Now it was too late. He felt like a kid, out marauding through the neighborhood at night. There was the rattling of a latch, and then the door swung open, casting light from the entryway out onto the lawn. Walt crammed himself in behind the bush, pressing himself into the shadows.
It started to rain harder, and he pulled his coat shut, waiting for them to leave, listening to shoe soles scraping on the wooden floorboards of the porch. Then there was silence for a moment, followed by low conversation. Somebody laughed, and a voice said, “I’ll say.” Then there was silence again, as if they were standing there watching the rain fall, hoping that it would let up so they could make a dash for their cars.
“I hate this damned rain,” someone finally said.
“It’s the season,” someone else said.
“Well, I hate the season, too.”
“Too commercialized. I agree with you.”
“That isn’t what I mean. God, I hate it when people say that. To my mind it isn’t half commercial enough, not this year. Profit—that’s the only thing about Christmas that does me any good, and here we are in the middle of it and nobody’s spending any money.”
A third voice spoke, Argyle this time. “Call me after someone’s had a look at LeRoy’s. Don’t worry about waking me up. We want those jars.”
“Yes, we do.” It was the second man now, the one who didn’t like Christmas. “I’m still not clear on something. I understand that we’ve got a green light over there tonight, but if we can’t—what shall I say—clean it out, are we absolutely certain … ?”
“And it rained fire and brimstone out of heaven and destroyed them all,” Argyle said, interrupting him.
“That’s just your style, Bob, to dismiss something like this with an irrelevant quote. It’s easier than thinking, isn’t it?”
Argyle laughed then. “Relax, George. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Just have your people take care of things over at LeRoy’s and let me know. They won’t be bothered over there tonight. When we’ve got what we want, we can all dismiss it. It’ll be an irrelevancy. And have them look around good—crawl spaces, secret panels, throw rugs. Don’t rush it. LeRoy had his own way with things, if you follow me. He went in for all the trappings. Leave the place clean.”
The rain let up abruptly, and Walt watched through the branches, hearing them descend the porch steps now, their shadows jutting out across the lawn. Something told him that he didn’t want to know anything more than he already knew—which was virtually nothing—but he couldn’t stop himself from wondering who the two men were. One of the cars was visible from where he was hidden, and when the door swung open the driver was illuminated for a moment by the dome light. Walt recognized him, from downtown. He was one of the Watson’s morning regulars, which meant he probably worked in one of the buildings around the Plaza. He usually wore a suit, too; so he was likely a professional of some sort—lawyer, maybe, or chiropractor.
The engines started up and the cars moved off. He heard footsteps crossing the porch, and then a moment later the house door shut and the light went out. Walt peeked past the edge of the house, making sure the porch was empty. He saw immediately that there was no carton beneath the wicker chair; Argyle had retrieved it, probably wondering right now how long it had lain there, gathering dust. He hurried out to the sidewalk and headed home, his jacket soaked and his hair plastered to his forehead with rainwater.
12
UNCLE HENRY STOOD in the garage, eating a doughnut out of the box on the bench. He held out the box. “I helped myself. Hope you don’t mind.”
“They’re probably a little dry by now.” There was only one left, so Henry must have eaten two of them. That didn’t surprise Walt any; last winter Henry had developed a habit, and he was probably anxious to take it up again.
“They’re just right,” Henry said. “Dryness improves the roughage.” He winked.
Walt took the last doughnut, realizing that he was famished.
“Been out for a walk?”
“Yes,” Walt replied. “I had to run something over to a neighbor’s house, and the rain started up on me. Caught me on the way home.” He noticed that the sleeve of his jacket was streaked with dirt from leaning against the wet wall of Argyle’s house. He’d leave it in the garage when he went in. There was no use trying to explain it to Ivy.
“Quite a setup you’ve got here,” Henry said, looking around.
“It’s cramped,” Walt said, “but it’ll have to do till I can find a bigger place.”
Henry shrugged. “There’s a lot of overhead in a bigger place. You can deduct overhead from your profits. Pretty soon you’re hiring help, buying trucks. Insurance goes through the roof. What’s wrong with this?”
“Nothing,” Walt said. “It’s a little small-time, that’s all. And I’m not zoned commercial either. I get away with it because there’s no customers coming around—just UPS trucks, and they come through the neighborhood twice a day anyway.”
Henry nodded, looking around at the stacked cartons, ordered and numbered, their contents listed on the sides in felt pen—rubber chickens, false noses, glow-in-the-dark fish, garden elves…. “Quite an inventory.”
“Yeah, I’m cramped for storage. I just bought a jumbo tin shed from Sears and Roebuck for overflow. It’s all set up, but I don’t think I’ll get around to shifting stock till after the Christmas rush.” There was nothing in Henry’s attitude to suggest that he found any of this stuff laughable, as if to him it was merchandise to be bought a
nd sold, and might as well have been shoes or automobile parts. Well, that was all right. Walt was content to let the customers do the laughing. The world needed more laughing.
“To tell you the truth,” Henry said, “I came out here tonight because I’ve got a small proposition for you. I’ve been thinking along a different line altogether—a way to make this business of yours fly without leaving home. No trucks. No warehouse. You hire all that out to someone else and take a profit right off the top.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought …”
“That’s the future, you know—electronics, the information highway. Everything out of your house with the push of a button. Are you willing to listen?” He squinted his eyes a little bit, as if Walt was going to have to make an effort here, but that it would be worth it.
This was exactly what Walt had feared—that Henry was going to try to rope him in on some kind of business deal. Last winter it had been asphalt and roof paint, sold door-to-door, but somehow it had never quite got going because the company had gone broke at the last moment, and Henry’s sample kits and sales-pitch brochures were suddenly worthless. To Henry it made no difference; you win some and you lose some. Walt couldn’t afford to lose any. He hadn’t ever leveled with Henry about it, though. Walt and Henry got along on a level of gentlemanly good humor and mutual support, and there wasn’t much room for truth in it, not any kind of practical truth, anyway.
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