“You okay, Ruby?” I asked, genuinely concerned.
He looked up at me, and his small freckled face had never appeared so tragic before.
“I’m okay,” he said bitterly. “I’ll be even better when Dorothy gets that letter tomorrow.”
“You wrote Dorothy a letter? What for?”
My astonishment was real. Dorothy, Ruby’s fiancée, lived on 76th Street, and Ruby saw her every night that wasn’t devoted to his Fiendish Activities. Not that she knew about his secret life; I was Ruby’s only confidante in crime.
“I wrote her a letter, all right,” he said, with a mocking laugh. “She’ll never forget it. She’ll be sorry for the rest of her life.”
It was obvious that the bumpy road to love was bumpier than usual.
“You know what I told her?” Ruby said. “I told her what I really think of her. And I told her what she could do with that four-eyed freak she’s so crazy about.”
I looked at him queerly, since Ruby wears the biggest eyeglasses I ever saw in my life. I mean, they were so big that an optometrist could have hung them up as a sign.
“She doesn’t know I saw her,” Ruby continued with a snarl. “I was in the delicatessen across the street from her house, the Savoy. You remember the place.”
I did, of course. We had robbed it once, and lost money on the deal.
“I was just standing there, when I see this taxi pull up in front of her place, and Dorothy gets out with this four-eyed tall guy. I mean, they were friendly. Real friendly!”
I liked Dorothy, so I rushed to her defense. “Gee, Ruby, he was probably some guy from where she works, probably gave her a lift—”
“Yeah?” Ruby said cynically. “So how come he kissed her good-bye? I mean a real passionate kiss?”
That stopped me, and I joined Ruby in a morose sip of coffee and an angry bite of cruller.
“So today,” Ruby said, “I wrote her this letter and told her off good. Women are all alike, pal, don’t trust any of ’em. They’ll two-time you the minute you turn your back. I shouldn’t have just written her a letter. I should have gone up there and leaned on her a little.”
“Gosh, Ruby, you wouldn’t really hurt her?”
Ruby didn’t answer. He picked up his coffee cup and downed the brown- stuff like it was a hooker of rye. It’s a good thing alcohol made Ruby sick, or he would have gotten potted that night. I watched him and felt an emphatic melancholy; the idea that Ruby and Dorothy might part seemed as shattering to me as if my own parents were breaking up. Big tears welled in my eyes, and I think I would have blubbered right in the middle of the cafeteria, except that a sudden thought intruded. “Hey!” I cried. “Maybe Dorothy has a brother!”
“Naw,” Ruby said. “She’s got a lot of relatives out in the middle west, but nobody like that. Besides, that wasn’t any sisterly kiss, let me tell you.”
I stood up, and made a feeble excuse about washing my hands. I tried not to show my excitement, because I had decided to call Dorothy and see if there were some reasonable explanation for her behavior. I knew vaguely that the way of the peacemaker is hard, but I didn’t know how hard it was going to become.
In the rear of Hector’s, I put one of Ruby’s coins into the telephone and dialed Dorothy’s home number. When she answered, I didn’t know how to approach the subject delicately, so I just blurted it out.
“Hey,” I said. “Who was that guy last night?”
“What guy?” She sounded surprised.
I forced a laugh. “I was across the street yesterday, and I saw you getting out of the taxi. You better not let Ruby know about that, hah-hah.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about; I came home by subway. Are you with Ruby? Is he playing a joke on me?”
I didn’t know whether she was covering up or not. So I laughed again, in a kind of cracked debonair manner, and that made her sore.
“Look, will you stop acting so silly? If Ruby’s there, tell him to be sure and get here at seven-thirty. My cousin Ruth has to leave at nine, so we have to have dinner early.”
“Your cousin Ruth?”
“Ruby knows about it. Ruth came in last night, to see her husband off. He’s going into the Army. Would you please ask Ruby to come to the phone?”
“He’s not here!” I said wildly. “I mean, I don’t know where he is,” I stuttered. “Dorothy, does this cousin of yours look like you, even a little?”
“She does, as a matter of fact. Why?”
“Nothing,” I said miserably. “If I see Ruby, I’ll tell him to call you.” And I hung up.
I went back to the table, and told Ruby what I had done. When I got to the part about Dorothy’s cousin, his eyes glazed and realized the truth.
“Her cousin!” he said, slapping his high forehead. “I thought Dorothy looked different. Something about the hairstyle—”
“Boy, that’s a relief, huh?” I said. “But you better call her back.”
Ruby still looked stunned. I had to jog his elbow to get him to say something. When he did, the words gagged him.
“The letter!”
“What?”
“The letter I sent Dorothy! If she gets it, it’s the end!”
“Gee,” I said calmly, “why not just call her and tell her not to read it?”
“Are you nuts? Did you ever try and tell a girl not to do something? She’ll be so curious she’ll have to read it. I’ve got to get that letter back!”
“Maybe if you called the post office,” I said timidly. His glare told me what he thought of the suggestion, so I tried another. “Well, tell her the truth then. Tell her how jealous you got when you saw her cousin—”
“You don’t understand. It was a real nasty letter. I said things she could never forgive. I even said she was fat.”
I smiled pleasantly. “She is getting a little plump, isn’t she?”
Ruby groaned, and looked worse off than he had before. He slumped into his chair, and hid his face in his hands. I didn’t know what else to do, so I went and got some cheese Danish from the pastry counter. By the time I got back, Ruby looked entirely different, I had forgotten how swiftly his ingenious Criminal Brain worked.
“There’s only one thing to do,” he said. “We got to steal it back.”
“We?” I said, soprano. “Steal it?”
“It’s the only way. You’ve got to waylay the postman that comes to Dorothy’s apartment house.”
“I’ve got to? But Ruby—”
“You’re the only one who can do it. The mail comes at ten, and I’ll be at work then. I’d take tomorrow off, but we’re doing a job for our biggest client.”
“Ruby, you’re talking crazy. You can’t rob a postman. I mean, that’s a federal offense, it’s like killing somebody.”
“You’re not stealing money, just a lousy letter. Now listen carefully how it’s gonna work—”
I put my hands over my ears. “I’m not listening! I don’t want to listen! I did a lot of nutty things for you, Ruby, but you’re not getting no F.B.I. on my neck!”
“You won’t have any trouble,” Ruby said contemptuously “I’ve seen the guy who delivers the mail there. He’s about four feet high and built like a sparrow. When you shove that gun in his face, he’ll fold up.”
“Gun?” I said, spraying the landscape with the cheese crumbs in my mouth. “Ruby, I’m not sticking up any postman with a gun!”
“What else you gonna use, a bow and arrow? It’ll be a fake, of course, we’ll pick one up at Woolworth’s. All you have to do is wait around the hallway until he shows up. When he’s about to put the letter in Dorothy’s mailbox, you jump out and grab it.” He studied me reflectively. “Better wear a mask,” he said. “Nobody could forget a face like yours.”