“Of which today is the first day, if I remember correctly. Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re done feeding rescue workers at Ground Zero, and you’re done going to museums for dead outlaws, and you’re ready to get out there and kill one for the Gipper. Is that about it?”
“It’s close enough.”
“Because I’ve been turning down jobs left and right, Keller, and what I want to do is get on the horn and spread the word that we’re ready to do business. We’re not holding any two-for-one sales, but we’re very much in the game. Am I clear on that?” She got to her feet. “Which reminds me. Don’t go away.”
She came back with a pair of envelopes and dropped one on the table in front of him. “They paid up right away, and it took you so long to get home I was beginning to think of it as my money. What’s this?”
“Something I picked up on the way home.”
She opened the package, took the little black clay pot in her hands. “That’s really nice,” she said. “What is it, Indian?”
“From a pueblo in New Mexico.”
“And it’s for me?”
“I got the urge to buy it,” he said, “and then afterward I wondered what I was going to do with it. And I thought maybe you’d like it.”
“It would look nice on the mantel,” she said. “Or it would be handy to keep paper clips in. But it’ll have to be one or the other, because there’s no point in keeping paper clips on the mantel. You said you got it in New Mexico? In the town you’re figuring to wind up in?”
He shook his head. “It was a pueblo. I think you have to be an Indian.”
“Well, they do nice work. I’m very pleased to have it.”
“Glad you like it.”
“What’s not to like? It’s beautiful. And I think you’ll like this,” she said, brandishing the second envelope. “But maybe not. I told you I got a strange telephone call.”
“This was a while ago.”
“Right.”
“And you didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.”
“Partly because it was the phone, and partly because I didn’t know what to say about it.”
“Oh.”
She leaned back in her chair. “This guy called,” she said, “and it wasn’t a voice I recognized, and the only name he gave me was Al.”
“Al.”
“‘Al who?’ I said. ‘Just Al,’ he said.”
“Just Al.”
“He said he wanted to send me something,” she said, “and wanted to know where to send it.”
“What did he want to send you?”
“My question precisely. Something on account, he said.”
“On account?”
“On account of what, is what I wanted to know. On account of it’s Tuesday? Just something on account, he said, and where would I like him to send it.”
“He wanted to find out your address.”
“My first thought,” she said, “and I wanted to tell him to shit in his hat. I’m not telling you my address, I said, and he said he already knew it, but maybe I’d rather receive the parcel at another location. What parcel? I asked him. The parcel I’m going to send you, he said.”
“On account.”
“Right. At this point I was confused.”
“I can understand why.”
“I told him to let me think about it, and he said he’d call in a day or two. And that’s where it stood when I spoke to you that time.”
“When you said you had a weird conversation. You weren’t kidding.”
“He called back in a couple of days,” she went on, “and by then I had just about decided I wouldn’t hear from him again, which would have been fine with me, but there he was on the other end of the phone. ‘It’s Al,’ he said.”
“And?”
“I’d had some time to think. You know, a couple of times over the years I’ve used a post office box, or one of those private mailboxes. When we were dealing with somebody we didn’t know who didn’t know us, the box let us keep our distance. But if he already knew the address here on Taunton Place, why make a trip to a post office?”
“If he knew the address.”
“Well, he’d have to know it, wouldn’t he? He knew the phone number, and any four-year-old can Google a reverse directory and find an address to go with the number.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“So I told him to go ahead and send it here, whatever it was. I mean, say it was a letter bomb. What’s the advantage of picking it up at Mailboxes ‘R’ Us as opposed to getting it right here?”
“So you told him to send it.” He nodded at the envelope. “Is that it?”
She shook her head. “What I got,” she said, “came by overnight FedEx.”
“And it wasn’t a letter bomb.”
“I didn’t really think it would be. I thought it would be money, and it was.”
“Money.”
“Cash,” she said. “Fifty thousand dollars.”
“On account.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s…substantial.”
“It is,” she said, “and I don’t know what it’s for, but I could probably make an educated guess. I figured I’d get a phone call to explain it.”
“And did you?”
“I got a phone call, but not much of an explanation. ‘This is Al. I hope the parcel arrived in good order.’ I said it did, but I didn’t understand what was involved. ‘You’ll hear from me,’ he said, ‘when the time comes.’ That was all I could get out of him.”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“Hundred-dollar bills,” she said, “used and out of sequence. Five hundred of them.”
“That’s a lot better than a letter bomb,” he said. “Still…”
“It makes you think.”
“It does.”
“Sooner or later,” she said, “Al’s gonna expect us to earn it. Like the Godfather, talking to that undertaker. ‘Someday I’ll need a favor.’”
“I guess that was supposed to be Marlon Brando.”
“If I could do imitations,” she said, “I’d be on the Comedy Channel. Whoever he is, Al’s got a credit balance with us. My guess is we’ll hear from him. In the meantime, you get your share.”
He weighed the envelope in his hand. “You don’t really have to split this with me,” he said. “I mean, there are other people you’ve used from time to time. Who’s to say you won’t use somebody else for Al’s job?”
“And keep you from reaching your million-dollar goal? Not likely. No, I got fifty large on account, and you’re getting half of it, also on account. With both of those envelopes, I’d say you’re off to a good start. Though I suppose you’ll want to spend some of it on stamps.”
20
Two days later he was working on his stamps when the phone rang. “I’m in the city,” she said. “Right around the corner from you, as a matter of fact.”
She told him the name of the restaurant, and he went there and found her in a booth at the back, eating an ice cream sundae. “When I was a kid,” she said, “they had these at Wohler’s drugstore for thirty-five cents. It was five cents extra if you wanted walnuts on top. I’d hate to tell you what they get for this beauty, and walnuts weren’t part of the deal, either.”
“Nothing’s the way it used to be.”
“You’re right about that,” she said, “and a philosophical observation like that is worth the trip. But it’s not why I came in. Here’s the waitress, Keller. You want one of these?”
He shook his head, ordered a cup of coffee. The waitress brought it, and when she was out of earshot Dot said, “I had a call this morning.”
“From Al?”
“Al? No, not Al. I haven’t heard a thing from Al. This was somebody else.”
“Oh?”
“And I was going to call you, but it wasn’t anything to discuss on the phone, and I didn’t feel right about telling you to come out to White Plains because I was pretty sure you’d be wasting your time. So I figured I’d come in, and have an ice cream sundae while I’m at it. It’s worth the trip, incidentally, even if they do charge the earth for it. You sure you don’t want one?”