Guffey almost lowered the rifle at that, it was so astonishing. “You do know, but wait a minute?”
“Listen,” John Dortmunder said earnestly, “you know Tom Jimson, right? Or Tim Jepson, or whatever you want to call him.”
“I surely do,” Guffey agreed, hands squeezing the rifle so hard he almost shot the fellow’s ear off prematurely.
“Well, then, think about it,” Dortmunder invited him. “Would anybody on this Earth protect Tom Jimson? Would anybody risk their own ear for him?”
Guffey thought that over. “Still,” he said, “Tim Jepson lives here with you, and you know where he is, but you don’t want to tell me. So maybe you’re just crazy or something, and what you need is shock therapy, like me shooting off your ear and then a couple of fingers and then—”
“No no no, just give me a chance,” Dortmunder cried, bouncing around on the bed some more. “I don’t blame you, honest I don’t. I know what Tom did to you, he told me all about it.”
Guffey growled, low in his throat. “He did?”
“Getting you stuck in that elevator and the whole thing.” Shaking his head sympathetically, he said, “He even laughed about it. I could hardly stand to listen.”
Nor could Guffey. “Then how come you hang out with this fella?” he demanded. “And protect him?”
“I’m not protecting Tom,” Dortmunder protested. “There’s other people in it that I do care about, okay?”
“I don’t care about nobody but Tim Jepson.”
“I know that. I believe it.” Dortmunder spread his hands, being reasonable. “You waited this many years,” he pointed out. “Just wait another day or two.”
Guffey gave that suggestion the bitter chuckle it deserved. “So you can go warn him? What kinda idiot do you think I am?”
Dortmunder stared around the room, brow corrugated with thought. “I tell you what,” he said. “Stay here.”
“Stay here?”
“Just till I get my phone call.”
“What phone call?”
“From the friends of mine that’ll say they’re done doing what they’re doing, and then—”
Guffey was getting that lost feeling. He said, “Doing what? Who? What are they doing?”
“Well, no,” Dortmunder said.
“By God,” Guffey said, taking a bead, “you can kiss that ear good-bye.”
“No, I don’t think I could, really,” Dortmunder told him. “And I don’t think I can tell you who’s doing what, or where they’re doing it, or anything about it. But if you shoot my ears off, I won’t be able to answer the phone, and then you’ll never get your hands on Tom Jimson.”
Guffey nodded and said, “So why don’t I forget about your ear and just drop a cartridge into your brainpan there and wait for that phone call myself?”
“They won’t talk to you,” Dortmunder answered. “And what do you want to sit around with a dead body for?”
“They’ll talk to me,” Guffey said. “I’ll tell them I’m your uncle, and they’ll believe me. And the reason I want to sit around with a dead body is, if you’re alive I won’t be able to sleep or turn my back or go to the bathroom or nothing for two, three days until the phone rings. As a matter of fact,” he added, having convinced himself with his own logic, “that’s just what I’m gonna do.” And he adjusted his aim accordingly, saying, “Good-bye.”
“Wait!”
“Quit shoutin things,” Guffey told him irritably. “You throw off my concentration, and that could spoil my aim. I’m givin you a nice painless death here, so just be grateful and—”
“You don’t have to!”
Guffey knew it was rude to sneer at a person you’re about to kill—it adds insult to injury, in fact—but he couldn’t help it. “What are you gonna do? Give me your word of honor?”
“I got handcuffs!”
Guffey lowered the rifle, intrigued despite himself. “Handcuffs? How come you got handcuffs?”
“Well, they kinda come in handy sometimes,” Dortmunder said with a little shrug.
“So your idea is, I should cuff you to the bed there—”
“Maybe to the sofa in the living room,” Dortmunder suggested. “So it’s more comfortable and I could watch television if I wanted.”
Was this some sort of trick? In Guffey’s experience, everything pretty much was some sort of trick. He said, “Where’s these cuffs?”
Dortmunder pointed to the dresser along the wall to Guffey’s left. “Top drawer on the left.”
By standing beside the dresser, back against the wall, Guffey could keep an eye on Dortmunder while he pushed the drawer open and studied its contents by means of a number of quick peeks. And what contents! Mixed in with gap-toothed combs and nonmatching cufflinks and broken-winged sunglasses and squeezed-out tubes of various lotions and ointments were worn-looking brass knuckles, a red domino mask, a Mickey Mouse mask, a ski mask, three right-handed rubber gloves, a false mustache mounted on a white card in a clear plastic bag, a sprinkling of subway slugs, and as advertised, a pair of chrome handcuffs with the key in the lock.
One-handed—the other hand keeping the rifle trained on Dortmunder—Guffey removed the handcuffs, dropped them on the dresser top, and pulled out the key, which he pocketed. Then he tossed the handcuffs at Dortmunder and said, “Good. Put em on, why doncha?”
“Well, hey, you know,” Dortmunder complained. “I just woke up. Could I get dressed? Could I at least go to the bathroom?”
“Just a minute,” Guffey told him. “Don’t move.”
So Dortmunder didn’t move, and Guffey stepped sideways to the doorway, then backed through it and looked to the left (apartment door) and right (kitchen, with stove visible) before saying, “Okay, Mr. Dortmunder. I’m gonna go in the kitchen there and make me some coffee. And I’ll keep an eye down this way. And if your head shows past this door before I say okay, I’ll blow it off. You got that?”
“Oh, sure,” Dortmunder agreed. “I’ll just stay in here until you say.”
“Good.” Guffey started to back away toward the kitchen, then stopped. Grudgingly, he said, “You want coffee?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Okay.” Guffey started to back off again, but Dortmunder raised his hand like a kid who knows the answer. Guffey stopped. “Yeah?”
“If it isn’t too much trouble,” Dortmunder said, “uh, orange juice?”
SIXTY-SEVEN
Shoulders hunched against the steady rain, Myrtle leaned her chest against the side of the house on Oak Street and stood up on tiptoe. Watching through the kitchen window, she could see Doug standing next to the refrigerator, telephone to his ear. Across the back yards and across Myrtle Street, she could hear faintly the sound of her own phone ringing.
When will he give up? she wondered, and at last he did, the ringing sound from the next block cutting off at the same instant. Shaking his head, Doug turned from the wall phone to say something bewildered—“She’s never home!”—to Gladys, who had just marched into the kitchen, wearing a zipper jacket and a cloth cap. But Gladys gave him an unsympathetic shrug, opened the refrigerator, took out a can of beer, and was just popping the top when someone tapped Myrtle on the shoulder.
That touch made Myrtle jump so high that both people in the kitchen turned to look out the window at the movement, and when she landed she sagged back against the rain-wet wall of the house like an overwatered clematis. In growing horror she stared upward at what appeared to be the Abominable Snowman standing before her in a yellow slicker and rainhat that made him look like a walking taco stand. This creature, spreading out massive arms with catcher’s-mitt hands at the ends of them to pen her in and keep her from running away (as though her legs had the strength to run or even, without the help of the house, to hold her upright!), growled low in his throat and then said (in English! like a person, a human being!), “You don’t look like my idea of a peeping Tom, lady.”