"I don't care who you mean. That talk is discourteous and insensitive and unbecoming of a public servant. Also, I might add, it betrays a narrowmindedness that is certainly discouraging to behold in this day and age. So much of the time, Mr. Bowman, you just seem to be so… so… full of baloney!"
I would have phrased it a little differently, but probably to less good effect.
Bowman actually blushed. "Well, I have to admit, Mrs. Fisher, that I'm… still learning." He was crimson now, looking as if he feared Dot might have him write "No More Fag Jokes" five hundred times on the blackboard.
"We're all still learning," Dot said. "And I congratulate you on being big enough to admit it."
Bowman relaxed a little, no longer worried that he might get sent to the principal's office.
The phone rang. Bowman, relieved, lunged for it. "Let me get that!"
Dot glanced at me and rolled her eyes.
"For you, Strachey. It's your- It's Mr. Callahan." He handed me the sweat-drenched receiver.
"I found out about Wilson," Timmy said.
"This line is not private," I told him quickly. "I'll call you back in fifteen minutes. Where are you?"
"At the… you know. On Delaware."
"Fifteen minutes."
I hung up and asked Bowman to accompany me outside. We stood under a pear tree and I told him about Joey Deem.
"I figured that," he said. "One of my men stopped by the Deem place earlier, and the kid took off with a friend when my man arrived. Out the back door, zip-zip. The kid's mother was defensive when asked about her boy's state of mind and activities, but in due course she allowed as how her son might conceivably be capable of criminal matters on a limited scale. We'll pay the lad a visit tomorrow morning and squeeze him. He'll own up."
"I don't doubt it, Ned. Not with irresistible you conducting the interview. Or have you mellowed after getting roughed up in there by Mrs. Fisher? 'Rude.' That's the word, all right. Dot put her finger on it."
His little eyes narrowed like those of the Ned Bowman I'd known five minutes earlier. "Don't you push my face in it, Strachey, I'm warning you! I've got a list and you're at the head of it.
Sure, I'll lay off the informal talk when I'm around Mrs. Fisher from now on. Hell, I've got nothing against two broads doing it, even a couple of old dames like those two. I'm broad-minded.
I've never disapproved of that. In fact, the idea of it has always kind of turned me on. But two 65 men? That is sicko stuff, Strachey, and you'll never convince me otherwise."
Bowman the Bunny Hutch philosophe.
"Glad to hear you talk that way again, Ned. You had me worried for a minute. I was afraid word of your newly benign outlook might get around and your career in Albany city government would be jeopardized."
"Thanks for the sentiment."
"Tell me, are all those bushes out there in the dark full of your guys?"
"They will be by midnight. The go team is gathering now in my office."
"I'll be behind a bush too. You might want to alert your people. Just how crowded is it going to get out there?"
"Crowded enough. If they drop off the Greco guy, twenty men will be on top of them in nothing flat. If they just snatch the ransom and take off, there'll be unmarked radio cars doing relays a block behind them till they get where they're going. Just to be on the safe side, we've got a homing transmitter sewn into the bottom of the money case. When they get to where they've got Greco, we'll move in fast. They'll never know what hit 'em."
"Sounds close to being foolproof. It'd better be. Here's the rest of the cash."
I tugged Trefusis's envelope out of my back pocket and shoved it toward Bowman. He grinned.
I drove over to Central and went into a Grandma's Pie Shop. Grandma wasn't there that night, but the cashier, a comely grandson whom I'd seen around, directed me to a pay phone. I dialed the apartment.
"Hello?" His voice was scratchy, distant.
"It's me. I love you."
"Don't be manipulative. I'm in no mood for it. This will be a non-personal conversation. I obtained the information you requested regarding William Wilson."
"I apologize. Really. It'll rarely happen again. Hardly ever. Not often at all."
"Do you want this information or don't you?"
"Once every three months, about. That'd be it. And only in other cities. Never in Albany or any contiguous municipality. Doesn't that sound reasonable? Short of storing my nuts in a jar of vinegar, which you would keep locked in your desk drawer, that's the best I can do. I think you'll have to agree that it's fair, given certain chemical imbalances in my frontal lobe. So. Are we friends again? Lovers, at least?"
Cutesy sniveling got me nowhere. He didn't even pause. "Here is what I have learned. Are you listening?"
"Sure. Yeah. I'm listening."
"I talked to Gary Moyes out at the Drexon Company. The word is, Bill Wilson runs the plant baseball pool. Except there's some scam going on and nobody ever seems to collect any winnings. They're all 'reinvested' in the following week's pool-which is not the way the players understood the pool would operate. There's a lot of grumbling, and Wilson's time may be running out.
"Moyes guesses that as soon as one of the more impatient employees comes up a winner, Wilson will either have to pay everybody off or suffer dire consequences. If he's getting rich in a small way, it looks as if he'll need every dime of it for a new set of teeth and maybe a neck brace.
Wilson definitely is in bad trouble, or soon will be."
"Nnn. Yeah. That explains Wilson's bragging to his wife about soon making her a rich woman, I guess. But it also looks as if he's in need of even more cash and must be fairly desperate to come up with it. This might lead Wilson to behave irrationally, criminally. Unless he's got all the pool 66 money stashed somewhere, which he might. He doesn't appear to be spending it on anything or anybody at home. Can you check his bank records and the plant credit union?"
"On a Saturday night? Neither of us has those kinds of contacts."
"Yeah. Crap. It looks as if we're back to square one with Wilson. Not that I'm all that much interested in him anymore. Maybe Bowman will come up with something on him. His guys are checking too."
"I have now fulfilled my obligation to you. Goodbye."
"Hey wait. I want to talk to you! We've really got to sort things out. You know and I know that we've got too much going for us to let-"
"I just want to say one last thing to you, Don. Listen to this. Listen carefully. I was thumbing through your Proust a while ago and came upon a line that jumped right out at me. It seemed so apt, so perfect. It was Swann talking to Odette, but it could as easily have been me to you. He says to her, Swann says, 'You are a formless water that will trickle down any slope that offers itself.' How about that? 'A formless water that will trickle down any slope that offers itself"
He waited.
I said, "Yeah. How about that? Quite a phrasemaker, Proust. The man was a genius, no doubt about it."
"He summed you up in fourteen words. Goodbye."
"Actually, it's probably less harsh in the original French, andHello? Timmy? Hello?"
With a phone company click he was gone.
"A formless water." I'd done it.
I ate a slice of pie, got change for a dollar from grandson, went back and piled some dimes by the phone. I dialed the apartment. No answer. I dialed my service. No messages.
Later. For sure.
Back in my booth I went over the Trefusis-Greco-McWhirter-Deem-Wilson-Fisher situation in my mind yet again. I had my coffee cup refilled twice. My head buzzed with heat, fatigue, and caffeine, and I swiped at flies that weren't there. One dropped into my coffee cup.
I couldn't figure any of it out. I still was nagged by the idea that I had not picked up on something crucial, but I didn't know what. I had been preoccupied, and that had been my fault, mostly.