August Corella, a blunt-featured man who looked like a cab-driver dressed up for his daughter's graduation, said, "The messenger didn't get it."
"Didn't get it? It's lost?"
"Not exactly," Corella said. "What happened is, our piece got mixed in with fifteen copies, and they all got given away as prizes."
"Prizes?" Krassmeier shook his head, as though to jangle these incomprehensible words out of his ears. "Prizes for what?"
"I don't know, Vic." Corella was the only person in the history of the world ever to call Victor Krassmeier "Vic". "And I don't think it matters that much, do you? The point is, sixteen different people got the pieces, and we don't know who got ours."
"But that's awful. We have to get it back."
Corella nodded. "Sure. Somebody has to trace out who those sixteen people are, and then go to all their houses and see which one has the winner. The question is, who's the somebody? You want to do it?"
Krassmeier stared at him. "Me? Personally?"
"Send somebody," Corella suggested.
"Impossible. No one knows I'm involved in this."
Corella had nothing to say. Krassmeier sat looking at him, waiting for something more, but all at once Corella was content to be silent. Krassmeier, feeling himself in a situation he didn't entirely understand, progressed cautiously, saying, "What about the messenger? Isn't it his responsibility?"
Corella shook his head. "In the first place, he didn't cause the screw-up. In the second place, he isn't part of the organization, he's an independent operator out at Kennedy. That's all he's ever used for, picking things up at Kennedy."
"Use him, anyway."
"I told you, Vic, he's an independent operator. If I let him know that wasn't any ordinary package, he'll go after it for himself, not for you and me. So when he called I cooled him out, I told him it wasn't that important."
"What about the person who did cause the mixup?"
"He got punished a little," Corella said, "He isn't in any shape to go look for things."
Krassmeier did not at all want to hear such details. Returning to the main point, he said, "We can't just let this matter go. The statue has to be found."
"Right," said Corella. And once again he closed down into that silence.
Krassmeier studied him. Suddenly tentative, he said, "You could do it, couldn't you?"
"I got a lot of other stuff on my plate, Vic," Corella said. But he didn't say no.
"You have people who could help you?"
"Not for free."
All at once, Krassmeier understood where they were and what was coming. Business was business, after all. "Oh." he said.
"No matter how you look at it," Corella said, with a little smile, "this is going to cost."
"I see," said Krassmeier.
"I think you and me, Vic, we're going to have to do, whadayacallit? Renegotiate."
However…
WHEN JERRY MANELLI came out of the library at Grand Army Plaza he felt like he'd been given Novocaine in his whole body, and it was just wearing off He kept blinking, and looking around, and when he got behind the wheel of the van he didn't start the engine right away but just sat there, staring across the wide roadway at the Civil War statues all looking so busy and sure of themselves. Well, now he knew what the story was, and the knowledge was like electric tingles in his brain. It was like the feeling when your car's been totalled in an accident and you walk away from it without a scratch and every part of you is trembling, vibrating like the beginning of an earthquake, hands, knees, elbows, ears, all shimmering while you stand there with your new high-pitched voice and you say, "I'm okay, I'm fine, I'm okay." And you're never exactly the same guy after that, ever again.
His new knowledge was like that, some informational absinthe eating into his brain. It had moved him up, out of himself, into something new. The Ultimate Hustle.
No turning back now. How could you spend the rest of your life knowing you'd walked away from the Big One?
What brand-new feelings these were. Jerry had always figured he was one of the sharpest citizens in the sharpest city in the world, and nothing before this had ever fazed him. Driving the van for the first time out past the "Authorized Personnel Only" sign at Kennedy, pulling that jukebox scam, or stealing from the numbers operators, he'd never been playing in a bigger league than he was ready for.
Well what the hell, there was no bigger league. He was the same guy he'd always been, in the same town, and he was still ready for anything that came along. Right? Right.
Jerry reached out a faintly trembling hand and started the engine. He was okay, he was fine, he was okay.
Unfortunately…
"LISTEN!"
Wally Hintzlebel reared up on his elbows and listened. All he could hear was his own heart pounding. He whispered, "What is it?"
The woman beneath him, a married lady named Angela Bernstein, whispered, "I think it's my husband!"
Wally, a swimming pool salesman whose avocation was afternoon sex, had an absolutely Pavlovian reaction to the word "husband"; he would immediately leap into his pants. That's what he did now, trampolining off Angela, who gave a little yip of surprise and pain and fright, and he was already kicking into his loafers and reaching to the nearby chair for his shirt when the dreaded male voice came from downstairs: "Angela? You home?"
Angela too was scrambling out of bed, engaging in a swirling frantic wrestling match with her robe and whispering at Wally, "Hide! Hide!"
"Out the back way!" he whispered. He was nearly dressed.
"Too late!" They could hear the footsteps on the stairs. "In the closet!"
"What!?"
"In! In!" And she kicked and shoved and packed him into the closet and slammed the door in his face.
He would have argued the point, if there'd been time. Never in his career, never, had he been forced to hide inside a house occupied by a husband. If one couldn't get out of the door, one could always get out of the window. This time, though, it had been impossible to push Angela out of the way, and so here he was in the damn closet, just knowing the husband would open this damn door pressed against his nose, and he'd never felt so foolish in his life.
Wally Hintzlebel, a tall stringbean of twenty-four with big round glasses and an engaging smile, lived with his divorced mother in a little house in Valley Stream, just across the city line in Nassau County. Wally had been the man of the house since his parents had separated when he was thirteen, and he just couldn't do enough for his mother. For instance, the swimming pool in the backyard was almost as big as the whole house, and although Wally had gotten a nice discount from his boss at Utopia Pools, it had still cost a pretty penny. But only the best was good enough for Mom.
Wally didn't suppose he'd ever marry. He was perfectly content at home with Mom, who took just as good care of him as he did of her, and as for sex, the world was absolutely full of other men's wives. It was only natural for a swimming pool salesman to say to an attractive prospect, "I bet you look terrific in a bathing suit," and Wally could invariably tell by the quality of the answering smile whether he was going to score or not. In four years of selling swimming pools, he had never for a minute felt deprived.
Nor, until this very minute, had he ever been trapped in a closet with an unexpected husband on the other side of the door. Outside there now, husband and wife were meeting face to face and two simultaneous questions were being asked: "What are you doing in bed?" "What are you doing home this time of day?"
The elbows of wire coat hangers were sticking into the back of Wally's neck, but he was afraid of the jangling should he try to dislodge them. In fact, he was afraid to make any move at all, and so he stood teetered against the door, stuffy clothing crowding him at the back and any number of shoes trickily underfoot, while outside the questions got themselves sorted out and then simultaneously answered:
"I wasn't feeling good, I think I'm coming down with a cold or something."
"I'm supposed to meet Jerry here. He is
n't here yet, huh?"
"Jerry? What's he up to?"
"It's something about that damn box with the statues in it. Say, what are you wearing under that robe?"
"What about the — Stop that, Mel!"
"Well, look at you. Comere, kid."
"Mel, not now, I—"
"Be good for your cold, baby. Sweat it right out of you."
"Mel, don't. Mel — Mmmmmmmmelllll."
"Let's have a nooner, baby."
"Oh, Mel, I—"
Wally closed his eyes, even though it was already pitch-black in the closet and he couldn't see anything. He sighed, and rested his forehead against the wood of the closet door, and outside the voices had lowered, were murmuring, were accompanied by the squeaking of bedsprings, were getting louder and softer, were carrying on like nobody's business. . .
Could he get away now, sneak out of the bedroom and out of the house while the husband was otherwise occupied? It was possible, but it wasn't certain, and that element of doubt stayed Wally's hand from the doorknob, because if a cuckolded husband would be angry, a cuckolded naked husband suffering coitus interruptus would be an absolute hydrogen bomb. So Wally stayed where he was, and the team outside drove their wagon right through the pass and into the Promised Land, and then settled down to nuzzlings and cooings of a truly disgusting nature.
Fortunately, the doorbell rang downstairs, bringing that stage of the affair to an end. With a sudden loud twanging of bedsprings, the husband said, "Damn! That must be Jerry."
Angela said, "That's all right, I'll throw on a robe and let him in. You get dressed."
"Tell him I'll be down in a minute."
Wally listened, forehead and cheek both pressed to the door now, but there was no more conversation. Rustlings and shufflings in the bedroom, that was all, and then muffled conversation from far away downstairs.
Then, unexpectedly loud and clear, a new male voice said, "That's okay, I'll wait right here." Only this voice seemed to be coming from directly under Wally's feet.
"You want a cup of coffee, Jerry?" That was Angela's voice. Wally frowned down towards his feet, but the closet remained as dark as ever.
Jerry was saying, "We'll take care of ourselves, Angela. The other guys are coming over, too."
"Who?"
"Frank and Floyd."
Good Christ, thought Wally. It's a convention.
"I'll tell Mel you're here."
Wally waited. Nothing more was said under his feet, and then a minute or so later Angela's voice sounded in the bedroom again, saying, "Jerry says the other guys are coming over, too."
"I wonder what's up," said the husband.
"Beats me. I'll get dressed and be down in a minute."
"Mmmm. Love ya baby." And there was the unmistakable smack sound of a palm against bathrobed behind.
Could he get away now? Wally was just fumbling for the door-knob when the door abruptly opened about a foot wide and Angela's hissing voice said, "Stay there!" and his presentation book full of swimming pool photos, which had been left downstairs was jabbed painfully into his midsection. "Oof," he said, and the door slammed again.
And the husband's voice, beneath his feet, said, "What's up, Jerry?"
"Wait till everybody's here. I only want to tell the story once."
What the dickens was going on? Stooping, trying to shove clothing and hangers out of the way without making too much of a racket, Wally hunkered down in the darkness, shoved his presentation book away somewhere, and started feeling around among the grab bag of shoes. The voices continued just below his fingers, discussing traffic and the weather, and Wally felt a loose corner of carpet. He pulled, and a triangle of light appeared.
This two-storey one-family Cape Cod in Hollis, Queens, not far from Belmont, had been built during the housing boom just after the Second World War, and had been altered and adapted and converted by any number of handyman owners since then. Mel and Angela had added the wall-to-wall carpeting in their bedroom, and the floor covering man had thrown in carpet for the closet as well, covering the grill of a hot-air register dating from before a shuffling of upstairs walls had made this space a closet. The equivalent grill high on the wall of the dining room downstairs had been left alone, partly because it wasn't bothering anybody and partly because nobody currently connected with the house knew what it was for. The result was, when Wally put his face and shoulders right down amid the shoes on the closet floor, with his butt stuck up in the air behind him, and when he looked down and at an angle to his right, he could see very clearly through two gridwork grills into almost the entire dining room, where a somewhat chubby man in a white short-sleeved shirt and dark slacks was talking with a younger man in white coveralls.
The doorbell was ringing, and the chubby man was saying, "I'll get it." From his voice, he was the husband. He left the room and the other man — this would be Jerry — paced around the dining room table, looking annoyed but thoughtful.
Now was the time to leave, of course. Even if he couldn't get downstairs with all those men arriving and walking around, he could still go out a second-storey window and jump into the backyard. He'd done it before, and so long as you keep your knees bent and land on grass you won't break anything. Your feet will hurt for a little while, but there are far worse fates in this life. Lots of them.
So it was time to go, and it was sensible to go, and it was Wally's style to go. And yet, there was something intriguing, something mysterious and interesting, in the manner and conversation of these men. He didn't know why he had this impression; he only knew his instinct told him it would be to his advantage to find out just what was going on in this house.
So he shifted himself among the shoes, trying to find a more comfortable position, and settled down to listen.
Whereupon…
JERRY SAT AT the dining room table and waited until the other two showed up. Mel was hot to know what was going on, but Jerry just said, "Wait. I only want to tell it once." Because it was clear in his mind now, he was calm, he was sure of himself, and none of the trembling showed. He was still vibrating inside, but that was just excitement, adrenalin, the feeling in a toreador the first time he goes out and sees that bull.
Floyd McCann came first, and then his brother Frank. Angela, dressed now in slacks and a halter top, took orders for beer and iced tea and coffee, and at last the four men settled down around the dining room table, with all eyes on Jerry, who started by saying, "We got something here. Something different."
Frank said, "You made the switch?"
"No." Jerry had already decided to give it to them the way it happened, and not pop the finish all at once. "I drove into the city," he said, "and I went to this Bud Beemiss outfit on Forty-fifth Street, and some girl there at a desk said, "Oh, the other boxes already went to the restaurant." And I said what restaurant, and she told me this Chinese restaurant uptown. And then she told me the idea was, all the statues in those boxes were being given out to people as like prizes. Sixteen different people."
Frank shook his head. "Not good," he said.
"Right. So I quick got back in the truck and headed uptown, and the goddam traffic was murder. By the time I got there it was too late; the statues were all gone and the people were gone and it was over. So I called the contact, right from there in the restaurant, and he told me call back in ten minutes, they wanted to think it over. So while I was hanging around I asked the Chink head-waiter there who these people were that got the statues, and he said they're called the Open Sports Committee. So I figure these statues must have been like bowling trophies you see around."
Frank said, "Those statues aren't bowling, they're taking a crap."
Mel said, "Hold it, Frank, let's listen to this. Then what, Jerry?"
"So after ten minutes I called back, and they said it didn't matter, don't worry about it, it wasn't that important. So I said okay, and I left."
Floyd McCann said, "So we're off the hook, right? We don't have to worry about the box any more."<
br />
"That's what I figured, too," Jerry said. "At first. But pretty soon it didn't sound right any more. I mean, these people were really hot to get that box, then they think about it for ten minutes and all of a sudden it doesn't matter, think no more about it."
Frank said, "They wrote it off, that's all."
"When they were so hot before?"
Frank said, "They're smuggling something inside the statues. Heroin, something like that. They wrote it off."
"No," Jerry said. "One little shipment of heroin isn't as important as they were acting up till now, and it isn't as unimportant as all of a sudden they're telling me on the phone. See what I mean?"
"No," said Frank.
"I mean," Jerry said, "they know we wouldn't go after a couple bags of H. If they're trying to make it sound small, it's got to be big."
Mel was looking very interested. "I think you've got something, Jerry," he said. "I think you're onto something there."
"Me, too," Jerry told him. "So I took the Manhattan Bridge down into Brooklyn and I went to the big library down there by Grand Army Plaza. You know the one?"
Mel knew the one, but the others didn't. Frank said, "Get on with it, Jerry."
"So I went in there," Jerry said, "with one of these statues, and I found some girl to help me find out what it was. She went through hell, that girl, she called people in other libraries, she looked in books, and finally she came up with it."
From his coverall pocket Jerry took a crumpled piece of paper and smoothed it out on the tabletop. The librarian's neat small handwriting was a little archipelago in a sea of white. "What these things are," Jerry said, "is copies of an old statue in South America, from before Columbus. It's called the Dancing Aztec Priest. But here's the thing. The original is made of solid gold, and it has emeralds for eyes, and it's worth a million dollars."
Everybody was taken aback. Frank said, "A million dollars? For a statue taking a crap?"
A New York Dance Page 4