“He just said it was a friend, sir.”
“Listen,” Rastus drawled in that Southern-cracker voice he liked to use when irritated, “ain’t we never gonna eat?”
“All right,” Herman said. To Rastus, to Mrs. Olaffson, to everybody. “I’ll make this one fast,” he promised grimly, strode from the room, went down the hall, and bashed his nose painfully when he turned the knob on the study door without stopping and the door turned out still to be locked. “God damn!” he said, his eyes tearing and his nose smarting. Holding his nose — he reminded himself of that usher — he trotted around through the kitchen and into the study that way. Dropping into the director’s chair, he picked up the receiver and said, “Yes!”
“Hello, Herman?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Who’s this?”
“Kelp.”
Herman’s spirits suddenly lifted. “Well, hello,” he said.
“Been a long time.”
“You sound like you got a cold.”
“No, I just hit my nose.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Herman said. “What’s happening?”
“Depends,” Kelp said. “You available?”
“Never better.”
“This is still a maybe.”
“Which is better than a nothing,” Herman said.
“That’s true,” Kelp said with some surprise, as though he’d never thought that out before. “You know the 0. J. Bar?”
“Sure.”
“Tomorrow night, eight-thirty.”
Herman frowned. There was a screening he’d been invited to … No. As he’d told his guests, he had expensive tastes, and as he’d told Kelp, a maybe was better than a nothing. “I'll be there,” he said.
“See you.”
Herman hung up and reached for a Kleenex. Smiling, he wiped the tears from his eyes, then carefully unlocked the study door and went out to the hall, where Mrs. Olaffson greeted him with “Dinner is ready, sir.”
“And so am I,” he said.
10
Victor stood smiling in the elevator. This building, on Park Avenue in the seventies, had been built at the turn of the century, but the elevator dated from 1926 and looked it. Victor had seen identical elevators in old movies — the dark wood, the waist-high brass rail, the smoke-tinted mirror, the corner light fixtures like brass skyscrapers upside down. Victor felt embraced by the era of the pulps and gazed around with a happy smile as he and his uncle rode up to the seventeenth floor.
Kelp said, “What the hell you grinning at?”
“I’m sorry,” Victor said contritely. “I just liked the looks of the elevator.”
“This is a medical doctor we’re going to,” Kelp said. “Not a psychiatrist.”
“All right,” Victor said soberly.
“And remember to let me do the talking.”
Earnestly, Victor said, “Oh, I will.”
He was finding this whole operation fascinating. Dortmunder had been perfect, Murch and his Mom had been perfect, the back room of the 0. J. Bar and Grill had been perfect, and the steps being taken to put the job together were perfect. Even Dortmunder’s obvious reluctance to let Victor participate was perfect; it was only right that the old pro wouldn’t want to work with the rank amateur. But Victor knew that by the finish he would have had opportunity to demonstrate his value. The thought made him smile again, until he felt Kelp’s eyes on him, when he immediately wiped the smile away.
“It’s unusual that I’d even bring you along,” Kelp said as the elevator door opened and they stepped out together into the seventeenth-floor foyer. The doctor’s door, with a discreet name plate, was to the left. Kelp said, “He might not even want to talk in front of you.”
“Oh, I hope not,” Victor said, laughing boyishly.
“If he does,” Kelp said, “you go right back to the waiting room. Don’t argue with him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Victor said sincerely.
Kelp grunted and went in, Victor following.
The nurse was behind a partition on the right. Victor stayed in the background while Kelp talked to her, saying, “We have an appointment. Charles Willis and Walter McLain.”
“Yes, sir. If you’ll just take a seat …” She pushed a buzzer that let them through the interior door.
The waiting room looked like the scale model of a Holiday Inn lobby. A stout lady looked up from her copy of Weight Watchers and gave them the glance of anonymous hostility with which people always look at one another in doctors’ Waiting rooms. Kelp and Victor pawed through the magazines on the central table, and Kelp sat down with a fairly recent Newsweek. Victor searched and searched, found nothing at all interesting, and finally settled for a copy of Gourmet. He sat down with it near Kelp, browsed along, and after a while noticed that the word “redolent” appeared on every page. He staved of boredom by watching for its reappearances.
But mostly he thought about the robbery and what he and Kelp were doing here. It had never occurred to him that big-scale robbers had to be financed, just like anybody else, but of course they did. The preparation of a robbery involved all sorts of expenses, and somebody had to foot the bill. Victor had eagerly asked Kelp a thousand questions about that facet of the operation and had learned that sometimes a member of the robbery team did the financing, in return for a larger share of the profit, but that more often the financing was done by outsiders, who put up the money for a guarantee of 100 percent profit, two dollars for every one, should the robbery turn out to he successful. If the robbery failed, of course, the financier got nothing.
“Mostly what we get,” Kelp had said, “is undeclared income. Doctors are the best, but florists are pretty good, too. Anybody whose line lets them keep some cash that they don’t tell the Feds about. You’d be surprised how many greenbacks there are in safe-deposit boxes around the country. They’re saving the money for when they retire. They can’t really spend it now, for fear the income-tax people will get after them. They can’t invest it anyplace legal for the same reason. So it just sits there, not earning any interest, getting eaten up by inflation, and they look around for some way to put it to work. They’ll go for a high risk if they can get a shot at a high return. And if they can be a silent partner.”
“That’s fascinating,” Victor had said raptly.
“I like doctors best,” Kelp had said. “I don’t know why, I’ve just got a thing about doctors. I use their cars, I use their money. They’ve never let me down yet. You can trust doctors.”
They spent half an hour now in this particular doctor’s waiting room. The stout lady was called in by the nurse after a while and never returned. Nor did any other patient come out. Victor wondered about that, but later on discovered the doctor had a different exit, another door that led back to the elevator.
Finally the nurse came back, saying, “Doctor will see you now.” Kelp followed the nurse, and Victor followed Kelp, and they all went down a hall to an examining room — white cabinets, black leatherette examination table. “Doctor will be right with you,” the nurse said, and shut the door behind her when she left.
Kelp sat down on the examination table and let his feet dangle. “Now, let me do the talking.”
“Oh, sure,” Victor said reassuringly. He wandered around the room, reading the charts and the labels on the bottles, until the door opened again and the doctor came in.
“Doctor Osbertson,” said Kelp, getting to his feet. “This is my nephew, Victor. He’s okay.”
Victor smiled at Dr. Osbertson. The doctor was fiftyish, distinguished-looking, well padded and irritable. He had the round face of a sulky baby, and he said, “I’m not sure I want to be involved in this sort of thing any more.”