“I, too, share this terrible fear, my son,” Okino said. “But The Plain is vast, and though the multitude multiplies, it can know no boundaries here, it cannot be restrained by walls. Such was the reason The Plain was chosen by the elders for these yearly rites of spring.”
“I know you haven’t read the book,” Carella told Brown, “well, the first chapter, actually, is all he recommended…”
“Our local friendly librarian,” Brown said.
“It’s all about these rites of spring, the first chapter. And what he says is that there are…”
“Who’s this you’re talking about?” Brown asked. “The Deaf Man or the author?”
His shoes were wet from having trudged through the slush from the subway station to the precinct. His mother had told him that when your feet got wet and cold you felt cold all over. He didn’t feel cold all over, he just felt wet in the feet , and that made him irritated. When he was irritated, he scowled like a bear. He was not scowling at Carella, he was merely scowling at his wet shoes and his wet feet and this dumb weather for the end of March. Hadn’t come in like any damn lamb, either.
“The author,” Carella said. “Arturo Rivera.”
“And he says?”
“He says that this multitude gathers on this big open plain ringed by mountains….”
“We don’t have any mountains, this city,” Brown said.
“I know. This is another planet.”
“Another planet, huh? Sometimes I think this city is another planet.”
“What I think is he may be calling our attention to a crowd , you know?” Carella said. “A multitude?”
“The Deaf Man, you mean?”
“Yeah. Using Rivera as his spokesman.”
“So you think he’s planning something that has to do with a crowd.”
“Yeah, in an open space,” Carella said. “This vast plain , you know?”
“No plains in this city, either,” Brown said. His wet feet were beginning to irritate him more and more. He wondered if he had a pair of clean socks in his locker.
“What was that business about an explosion?”
“He fears an explosion.”
“Who, the Deaf Man?”
“No, no…”
“Then who? Rivera?”
“No, this guy Tikona.”
“Read that part out loud, will you?” Brown said.
Carella cleared his throat and began reading.
“ ‘I fear an explosion,’ Tikona said. ‘I fear the jostling of the feet will awaken the earth too soon. I fear the voices of the multitude will anger the sleeping rain god and cause him to unleash his watery fury before the fear has been vanquished. I fear the fury of the multitude may not be contained.’ ”
“He fears an explosion ’cause the crowd’s getting too big, right?”
“The multitude, right.”
“So all we got to do is find this multitude.”
“This whole damn city is a multitude,” Carella said.
“Find the multitude,” Brown said, “and then stop him from doing whatever it is he plans to do with the multitude.”
“Yeah,” Carella said glumly.
“Nobody said he’d make it easy,” Brown said.
“He himself said so.”
“No, Steve. He only said easier. Not easy. With him, nothing’s ever easy. What size socks do you wear?”
“I RECOGNIZE your obvious qualifications,” the Deaf Man was saying, “but the problem is you’re a woman.”
“Some people might consider that a sexist attitude,” Gloria said.
“It’s just that I’ve never seen a female garbage man.”
“What’s garbage got to do with a good wheel man? I’m either a good wheel man, or I’m not a good wheel man. You knew I was a woman when you asked me to come for the interview. So I come here at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, when most people are in church, for Christ’s sake, and you tell me…”
“I was expecting a different sort of woman,” he said.
He had not been expecting a thirty-two-year-old blonde with eyes the color of seaweed, some five feet nine inches tall and looking tall and slender and firm in a jump suit and high-heeled pumps. Sitting on the couch in his living room, facing Grover Park and a gunmetal sky. Oh to be in England, he thought, now that spring is here.
“What sort of woman were you expecting?” Gloria asked, raising one eyebrow and hitting the word hard.
“Someone more masculine,” he said. “Someone who might possibly pass for a man. I suppose I should have asked for a description on the phone, but fair employment practices seemed to preclude that,” he said, and smiled charmingly.
He’s so full of shit, Gloria thought.
But she wanted the job.
“Someone more masculine, huh?” she said.
“Someone who could pass for a truck driver,” he said. “Someone…beefier. With less refined features…”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Shorter hair…”
“I can cut my hair.”
“Yes, but you can’t gain forty pounds in the next six days.”
“Is that when it’s going down?”
“The fourth of April, yes.”
“A Saturday,” she said, and nodded.
“How do you happen to know that?”
“I have this trick I do,” she said.
“What trick?” he asked, his interest immediately captured.
“You give me any date, and I can tell you what day of the week it falls on.”
“How can you do that?”
“Secret,” she said, and smiled. “Have you got a calendar?”
“Yes?”
“Go get it.”
“Sure,” he said, and walked over to his desk and opened the drawer over the kneehole, and took from it a leather-bound appointment calendar. Without opening it, he said, “Christmas. December twenty-fifth.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, “give me a hard one.”
“Do Christmas first.”
“This year?”
“Sure.”
“It’ll fall on a Friday. Check it.”
He checked it.
“Friday is right,” he said. “How about May seventeenth?Next year.”
“Easy,” she said. “A Monday.”
He checked it. She was right.
“Have you got an almanac?” she asked.
“No.”
“Too bad. I could give you the day of the week for any date since we went on the Gregorian calendar.”
“How do you do it?” he asked.
“Do I get the job?”
“Gloria,” he said, “believe me, everything you’ve told me about yourself…”
“Damn right,” she said. “I’ve been driving since I was twelve, did my first wheel job when I was only sixteen. I’ve got the surest pair of hands in the business and the calmest nerves. I can drive through the eye of a needle with one eye shut. I can drive a racing car or a ten-wheeler, and I can outdrive any man in the business. You want me to cut my hair, I’ll cut my hair. You want me to gain a hundred pounds, I’ll gain a hundred pounds. You want me to be a garbage man, I’ll be a garbage man. I need this job. I’ll do anything to get this job.”
“Anything?” the Deaf Man asked.
“Anything,” she said, and looked him dead in the eye.
“Tell me how you do the date trick,” he said.
“Tell me I have the job.”
“Don’t you want to know what it pays?”
“I have a house on the Spit that’s about ready to fall into the Atlantic Ocean,” she said. “It’s gonna cost me a coupla grand at least to have them shore up the pilings or whatever it is they have to do. I usually work for a percentage of the take….”