Cheek raised his hand and said, “Wait here.”
I stopped walking and cradled my book. The thick young expediter moved quickly behind me to the sandwich block and pulled a knife off the rack. He retrieved some onions from a plastic container below and deftly began to peel and slice them on the board with the knife’s serrated edge. The pock-faced man pushed tomato sauce around the pie shell with the bottom of his ladle in slow, careful circles. Cheek entered a small office in the back of the kitchen. I watched him do it.
Two men sat in chairs in the office. I could see their pants legs-one wore black twills, the other khakis-and the wooden legs of the chairs in which they sat. Some smoke drifted out of the office door. I listened to Cheek’s high voice, and a deeper one after that, and then the khaki legs unwound and the man inside them stepped out of the office with Cheek.
He was an average man of average-to-heavy build, with a blue work shirt tucked into the khakis and a dirty apron tied over half of both. There was a plastic foam cup in his right hand and the ass end of a cigar in the fingers of his left. He plugged the cigar in the side of his saliva-caked mouth and stopped walking a foot shy of my face.
“What ya got,” he said. Booze was heavy on his breath.
“Deals,” I said, my salesman’s smile glued ridiculously high. “Unbelievable deals, Frank.” I extended my hand. “Ron Wilson, Variety Foods.”
Frank put his hand to his mouth, unplugged the cigar, and had a gulp of scotch from the plastic foam cup. “Let’s skip all the bullshit, okay? Cheek said you had something good, and it’s New Year’s Eve, and to tell you the truth I’m already half in the bag. So let’s see what you got, quick, before my mood changes and I make you come in on order day like every other slob.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Where should we go? In your office?”
“Uh-uh.” Frank’s head tipped like a bell in the direction of the sinks. “Over there.”
I followed him and watched the office as I walked. Smoke still leaked out from behind the door. At the sink I set my black book on the drain platform and opened to a random page. Black-and-white photographs of canned goods ran top to bottom on the left quarter of the page, and corresponding price columns took up the balance.
“I assume you use all of these goods,” I said, lightly running the tip of my forefinger down the column of photographs, studying the gimmick as I spoke. The dollar amounts lessened as the purchase quantities increased.
“We use a lotta shit,” Frank said as he pulled the scotch cup away from his lips. He had chewed small crescents of plastic foam off the rim. “What’s the deal?”
“Like I told Mr. Cheek, fifty off.” I looked around for Cheek’s support, but he was back out front.
“Fifty off what?”
“Our best price on the sheet,” I stuttered through the smile. The smile had atrophied now to a twitch.
“Bullshit,” Frank said. A cloud of cheap cigar smoke hung between our faces. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” I said with wide eyes. “New Year’s special, onetime order. No limit. You get acquainted with our business, we make a new friend.”
The bluesy intro to Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath” played through the Sony. Frank had another slug and belched. The belch watered his eyes and causedyesem"› his lips to part like two pink slugs.
“One thing I always say, Winston.”
“Wilson. Ron Wilson.”
“One thing I always say. If it’s on sale today, it can be on sale tomorrow. Right?”
“Maybe so,” I said. “ But I sure would like to write an order before the clock strikes twelve.”
“Never happen,” Frank said. “I’m not that kind of sucker. Nice try, though. Always ask for the sale.” He rocked back on his heels. “Look me up after the New Year, hear?”
“I will. Thanks.” I extended my hand again, and again Frank ignored it. Instead he turned his head back toward the young expediter.
“Turn that shit down!” he yelled, pointing at the boom box. Then he waddled back like a man carrying something odious in the seat of his pants and shut the door behind him.
The thick young expediter moved to the Sony and reduced the volume by a hair. I closed my book, put it under my arm, and walked through the kitchen toward the lobby. The tall, wiry, pock-faced man glanced up and looked me over as I passed. His eyes were small and heavily hooded, all black pupil, whiteless as a snake’s. I felt them on me as I exited the kitchen.
TWENTY-SIX
Out on the street I walked quickly back to my Dart. I put the price book in the car and retrieved a heavy wool sweater from the trunk. I removed my tie and put the sweater over my shirt, and my overcoat on top of them both.
On my way back I stopped in a deli named Costaki’s and bought the largest go-cup of coffee they sold. I tore a hole in the plastic lid and sipped the contents as I walked south on Twenty-first. I kept low passing the Olde World and just beyond it cut left down a narrow alley.
The alley ran between Twentieth and Twenty-first. A tan building stood east to west on the south side of the alley, with two green dumpsters positioned and spaced against its side. A doorway cut into the building next to the dumpster closest to Twentieth. I walked down the alley and stepped up onto the curb and stood in the doorway. I could see the Olde World’s back entrance from the doorway, on the north side of the alley.
Nothing much happened after that. Steam rose from the hole in the coffee lid, and the traffic sounds from the right and the left began to soften. I had a cigarette and smoked it down to the filter. A couple of women walked across the alley and quickened their pace when they saw me in the doorway. A bundled bicycle courier rode by, and then a gray Step-Van, both without incident. An hour passed and dusk darkened the alley.
At 7:25 a brown Mercury Marquis drove by slowly and stopped in the alley at the Olde World’s door. From the shadow of my doorway I watched an obese man in a brown coat get out of the Marquis and open the trunk. He removed what looked to be two filled piromllowcases and carried them up to the door, where he rang the buzzer. Hands appeared shortly thereafter from behind the door. The hands grabbed the pillowcases, pulling them inside. The obese man in the brown suit walked back to the trunk and closed it, then reentered the driver’s side and drove out of the alley.
I lit another cigarette. By eight o’clock no one else had driven in or out of the alley. There was little sound now, except for the rustle of paper and debris that the wind blew and lifted in tight, violent circles.
I jogged back to my Dart, started it, and drove over to Twenty-first, where I parked facing south on the street, in sight of the Olde World’s window. I turned the radio on and switched it to WDCU. I listened to a Coltrane set, and one by Stan Getz. In the middle of the Getz set, the lights in the Olde World’s window went out. I turned the ignition key on my Dart.
A black Lincoln passed my car and stopped in front of the Olde World. The young expediter who had retrieved the car got out of the driver’s seat and left the engine running. A heavy man in his fifties with bushy gray sideburns walked out of the Old World and moved toward the car. A live cigarette in an alabaster holder dangled between his fingers as he walked. Black twill pants legs showed beneath his double-breasted black overcoat. The heavy man climbed into the Lincoln and drove away. Before he did it I wrote his D.C. license plate number in my notebook and checked my wristwatch. The time was 8:35.
The expediter zipped his green army jacket and walked north on Twenty-first, toward Ward Park. Frank and the tall pock-faced man emerged from the Olde World right after that. Frank had an inch of cigar in his mouth and a plastic foam cup in his hand, and he wore a corduroy car coat. The tall man had changed into gray slacks and a long gray overcoat a shade darker than the slacks. The two of them walked to a silver blue Lincoln parked three car lengths ahead. Frank unlocked the door and got behind the wheel. The tall man waited in the street until his side unlocked, then climbed into the shotgun seat. They pulled away from the curb. I yanked the column shift down out of neutral and felt it engage.