What offended Andrew Foster could range from a smudge on a bellman's shoes ("The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is that the staff must be impeccably turned out. If you do that, everything else will fall into place."); to an overdone medium-rare steak ("The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is to give people at table what they ask for. If you do that, everything else will fall into place."); to fresh flowers starting to wilt ("The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is to keep the place from looking like a rundown funeral home! If you can do that, everything else will fall into place!").
The gilt- lettered sign appeared on the sidewalk shortly after Mr. Andrew Foster spotted a simple GARAGE FULL sign. Everything else would fall in place if people were told (by means of a sign that didn't look as if it came off the midway of a second-rate carnival) why they couldn't do something they wanted to and were offered the inn's apologies for the inconvenience.
Ignoring the sign, Pick Pickering drove his car, a black Cadillac convertible, roof down, a brand new one, into the parking garage. He quickly saw that the garage was indeed full; there was not sufficient room for the rear of the car to clear the sidewalk.
One of the neatly uniformed (after the fashion of the French Foreign Legion) parking attendants rushed to the car.
"May I park your car for you, sir?" the attendant asked, very politely.
Pick Pickering looked at him and grinned.
"Would you please, Tony?" he asked. "I'm really late."
"No!" the attendant said, in elaborate mock surprise. "Is that why everybody but the Coast Guard's looking for you?"
"Oh, Christ," Pickering said.
" "The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn,' " Tony quoted.
" is That People Are Where They Are Supposed to Be, When They Are Supposed to Be There,' " Pickering finished for him.
"You've heard that, Pick, have you?" Tony asked. "You want me to let him know you're here?"
"Please, Tony," Pickering said and walked quickly, almost ran, between the tightly packed cars to a door marked
STAFF ONLY.
Behind it was a locker room. Pickering started pulling the polo shirt off his head as he pushed the door open. He had his pants off before he stopped before one of the battered lockers.
Two dinner jackets were hanging in the locker, and three dress shirts in cellophane bags fresh from the hotel laundry, but there was no underwear where there was supposed to be underwear. And not even any goddamned socks!
Moving with a speed that could come only of long practice, he put suspenders on the trousers, studs and cufflinks in the shirt; and as he hooked the cummerbund around his waist, slipped his bare feet into patent leather shoes.
Ninety seconds after he opened the locker door, Pick Pickering tied the knot in the bow tie as he waited impatiently for an elevator.
The elevator door opened. The operator, a middle-aged black woman, stared at him and said, "You've got lipstick on your ear, Pick, and the tie's crooked."
"Would you believe this?" he said, showing her his bare ankles as he stepped into the elevator and reached for a handkerchief to deal with the lipstick.
"Going to be dull around here without you," she said, laughing.
"I understand he's in a rage," Pickering said. "Is there any special reason, or is he just staying in practice?"
"You know why he's mad," she chided. "Where were you, anyway?"
"San Mateo," he said. "I was delayed."
"I could tell," she said, then added, "You may wish you called him and told him."
Most of the "passenger waiting" lights on the call board were lit up, but the elevator operator ignored them as she took him all the way up without stopping. Pick watched annoyed and angry faces as the car rose past people waiting.
"Your ears are clean, but don't give him a chance to look at your feet," the operator said, as she opened the door.
Pickering was surprised to see that the foyer outside the elevator was full of people. Normally the only thing to be found in it were room service or housekeeping carts. He should have known the old man had more in mind than a lamb chop when he said he wanted Pick to have supper with him before he went.
Someone recognized him and giggled, and then applauded. That seemed like a good idea to the others, and the applause caught on like a brushfire. Pick clasped his hands over his head like a victorious prize fighter. That caused more laughter.
"I believe the Marine Corps has landed," Andrew Foster's voice boomed. "An hour late, and more than likely a dollar short."
"I'm sorry, Grandfather," Pick Pickering said.
"I assume that she was worth it," the old man said. "I can't believe you'd keep your mother and your father, not to mention your guests and me, waiting solely because you were riding around on a horse."
(Three)
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
21 August 1941
Two cops came to the cell.
"Okay, Joe Louis, on your feet!" one of them said, as the other signaled for the remotely operated door to be opened.
One of the cops came in the cell and stood over Tommy McCoy as he put his feet in his work shoes. When Tommy finally stood up, the cop took handcuffs from a holder on his belt.
"Put your hands behind you," he said.
"Hey, I'm all right now," Tommy said.
"Put your hands behind you," the cop repeated.
As he felt the manacles snap in place around his wrist, Tommy asked, "What happens now?"
The cop ignored him. He took his arm and sort of shoved him out of the cell, then out of the cellblock. They stopped at the property room and picked up their revolvers, then ripped open a brown manila envelope. They tucked his wallet, handkerchief, cigarettes, matches and change in his pockets, and led him out of the building to a parking lot in the rear.
"When do I get something to eat?" Tommy asked.
The cops ignored that question too.
He wasn't so much hungry as thirsty, Tommy thought. He'd really put away the boilermakers the night before, and the only water in the cell had been warm, and brown, and smelled like horse-piss.
What he really needed was a couple of beers, maybe a couple of boilermakers, to straighten himself out.
They took him to the mill to the small brick building just inside the gate. It looked like a regular house but was the place where the mill security police had their office. In there was also a dispensary where they took people until the ambulance arrived.
They led him into the office of the chief of plant security. He wasn't surprised to see him, but he was surprised to see Denny Walkowicz, Assistant Business Manager of Local 3341, United Steel Workers of America, a big, shiny-faced Polack.
No one said hello to Tommy, or offered him a chair.
"What's all this?" Tommy asked.
"You broke his nose, you might like to know," the chief of plant security said. "He said you hit him with a beer bottle."
"Bullshit," Tommy said.
"What do they call that?" the plant security chief said.
"We got him charged with 'assault with a dangerous object,' " one of the cops said.
"That's all?"
"Public drunkenness, resisting arrest," the cop said. "There's more."
"Nobody's asked for his side of it," Denny Walkowicz said.
"His side don't mean a shit, Denny. Let's not start that bullshit all over again."
Another man came into the room. One of the fucking white-collar workers from Personnel. Little shit in a shiny blue suit.
He had an envelope in his hand, which he laid on the table.
"Denny Walkowicz stood up for you, McCoy, Christ only knows why," the plant security chief said. "Here's what we worked out. There's two weeks' severance pay, plus what you earned through last Friday. You take that."
"Or what?"
"Or they take you back to jail."