“A family room,” I said. “A radio, a color television set, a record player, a tape recorder – this is great, isn’t it? I’ll have to have all of these things when I have my house in the suburbs. All the latest things, all the conveniences.” I was babbling. “An electric wall-to-wall carpet. An automatic spoon. An electric blackboard in living color.”
“It sounds very Donald Duck,” Plum said.
Bowman said, “Donald Duck?”
“She means Mickey Mouse,” I explained. He seemed no less mystified than before, and no more interested. He suggested that I was out on my feet and that we ought to get to sleep.
I had stalled as long as I could. The radio had yielded nothing in the way of news, just some unnecessary music. I switched it off. Plum went to share a twin-bed room with Sheena. She wasn’t happy about it, but was too tired to protest much. The cumulative exhaustion of all those nights without one real night’s sleep hit her all at once, and she slipped out of the wrapper and under the top sheet and fell asleep before the sheet had settled into place about her.
There was another bedroom with a cot in it, and there was a somewhat forbidding couch in the family room. I told Bowman I would take it. He did not agree.
“Not a chance, baby. You been livin’ on nerves since we connected. I can see how tired you are. Your eyes are heavy, heavy.” His eyes gleamed hypnotically. “You need sleep.”
“But you’re too big for the couch.”
“I’m too long for the bed is what I am. I get uncomfortable in them little cots. On a couch, now, I can put my feet up on the armrest and be right comfortable.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I went into the bedroom and closed the door. I stretched out on the bed and waited. He was right. I had been living on nerves for far too long, and I was tired, and my eyes were heavy, heavy.
I had trouble staying in that room. A couple of times I wanted to go in and check, but didn’t. Then I heard the couch creak as he got up from it, and I heard his steps on the floor of the family room. I had unplugged the bedside lamp earlier and wrapped the cord around the base, and now I grabbed it up and stood to the side of the door, ready to take him the minute he gave me a clear shot. I was going to have one shot and one shot only, and if I didn’t get him the first try I could kiss my ass good-by. I had seen him in action. I knew.
The footsteps approached, stopped. There was a long moment of silence. Then his hand settled on the knob, and I saw the knob on my side of the door move slightly.
He spoke my name once, waited, said it again louder. I didn’t say anything. The doorknob turned. The door opened slowly, very slowly, and his head came through, and my hand tightened on the lamp as I readied myself for the blow.
He took one step inside, his eyes peering at my bed, and I was ready to strike when his jaw worked spasmodically and he started down. I never touched him. He fell like a tree, fell in one stiff-legged motion, fell neatly forward and smacked his head on the floor.
He slept for ten hours. He came to late in the afternoon. I was sitting by the side of the bed when consciousness returned. He tensed his muscles and strained, and veins stood out on his temples and forehead and a pulse worked in his throat. I thought for a moment that he would burst his bonds. I had tied him up securely with half a dozen electrical cords and Mrs. Penner’s fifty feet of clothesline, and even so I wasn’t sure it would hold him. The sonofabitch was unbelievably strong.
He went limp again, his eyes opened, and he saw me. He became extremely scrutable. A full complement of emotions played over his handsome face.
He said, “You were ready for me.”
“I was.”
“You weren’t asleep.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You hit me with something.”
“Never touched you.”
“I feel like I been drugged.”
“That’s what happened, all right.”
“With what?”
“Opium.”
The eyes widened. “How?”
“In your coffee. I gathered a little of it every time I wandered into the fields.”
“And here I thought you had dysentery, Tanner cat.”
“It was harvest time on the old plantation,” I went on. “Did you ever see how they gather opium? A week or so after the petals drop they cut into the fruit. Then they let it go on ripening, and the good stuff drains out of the opium fruit and hardens. Then they go through again and collect it.”
“And you put it in my coffee.”
“Uh-huh.”
“How’d you know how much to use?”
“I didn’t. I wasn’t worried about using too much. After all, it was completely raw opium. Not refined into morphine or codeine or anything. The only thing I was worried about was that you would taste it in the coffee.”
“That was pretty horrible tasting coffee, all right.”
“I didn’t think it would have as much effect as it did. It probably wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been close to the edge of exhaustion to begin with. Even so, you held out for a long time before it knocked you down. I was just hoping it would take the edge off your reflexes, even things out a little.”
He thought this over. “Well, Tanner cat,” he said at length, “I reckon I can see where it all lays. You want to do me out of my half of the Retriever’s treasury. And you also want to make sure I don’t inform on you to the Old Man. I can see your point, but the thing is-”
“Wrong.”
“Huh?”
“The Chief never wore a hat in his life. Bed-Stuy is a part of Brooklyn. And you ain’t Bowman cat, Bowman cat. You’re the Glorious Retriever of Modonoland, and do I call you Knanda or Ndoro or both?”
Chapter 15
After a few moments of respectful silence he said, “I am rather glad to have that out of the way, Tanner. Actually I was surprised the deception succeeded as long as it did. It was a difficult role to play.” His manner was entirely different now, the voice rich and resonant, the tones properly pear-shaped. He sounded like the announcer on the old Shadow radio program – Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
I said, “The Shadow do.”
“Pardon me?”
“An old joke.”
“Quite. I was saying that the role was not an easy one for me. Bowman was a crude, rough type. There was a raw primitive quality about him that was not without appeal, however. I doubt I’d have thought to pose as him if you hadn’t virtually put the suggestion into my head by greeting me with his name.
“You recognized the agency recognition signal.”
“Ah, yes. It was one of the items the man disclosed to me. Not the only one.” He smiled a private smile, a sly smile, not the easy grin he had used during the masquerade. “I must say I enjoyed playing the part. And it did take you in for rather a long time.”
“Not really.”
“Oh?”
I told him I’d known for a long time. That there was too much happening in his colloquialisms, too many outdated phrases mixed in with newer expressions. “And too many Britishisms. Not just the odd items Bowman might have picked up through exposure to you, not just bits he might have affected, but turns of phrase that would only be possible to someone whose education was British rather than American.”
“And I had fancied myself equipped with a keen ear for just that.”
“Oh, you’re good at it. You sound right most of the time. But it’s one thing to know how to use the regionalisms of another area and another to keep your own regionalisms out of your talk.”
“Quite.”
“And there were other things, too. The absolute fascination with Plum.”