“Hey. Hey, mister. There’s some limo outside honking his horn.”
“What? What’s that?” asked Druff, shaken from sleep by the doorman.
“Yeah, he’s been making a racket. He’s going to wake the neighborhood. I see he’s from the city, but my first duty’s to the building. Could you go out and get him to stop?”
So he was already angry, at himself for calling his spy, for the rote instincts and reflexes that lived in his hands and, independent of his intentions, pushed the buttons on his telephones for him, at the chauffeur, who, wakened from sleep, had blithely seemed to acknowledge all Druff’s troubled suspicions, at the chauffeur again for having been indiscreet with the city’s limousine.
The doorman was right. Druff could hear the chipper, almost larky soundings of the limousine’s horn. Not leaning on it, mind, which might almost have been extenuated by urgency, pressing business, perhaps — though this was a stretch — the saving of lives, but the brash, overly confident “Who, who owns this town? We, we own this town!” laid- back, boom-box musings of street punks and gang toughs. Steamed and double-steamed not because the man was out of uniform—Druff was out of uniform — or because he did not get out from behind the wheel and run around the side of the car to open the door for him, but because of the arm, thrown over the seat, across the lowered window partition, that loud arm that spoke contemptuous volumes, that, well, practically fucking smirked at him, God damn it, and which, were it longer or not too much of an effort for the chauffeur to get it to move, might have doubled itself up at the elbow and nudged him in the ribs. Was he winking? Was the son of a bitch winking? Was it some sexual high sign the brute was throwing at him off his fingers?
So, as you can see, he was already angry.
“I,” Druff gently reminded Dick when he’d closed the limousine door after himself, “am a public servant. You are a public servant’s servant. No, don’t start just yet. I’ll tell you when.
“Dum dum de dum dum, dum dum?” the commissioner asked. “I don’t think I quite care for your way with the taxpayers’ horn, Dicky,” he said. (Caring, despite what he’d just said, for it quite a lot, as a matter of fact.) “We aren’t hunters, kid. You didn’t pop by the trailer court to fetch some chum for a ride out to the duck blind. Dum dum de dum dum, dum dum? It’s three-thirty in the morning. You don’t wake neighbors. We ain’t fellows in the same car pool years. Dum dum de dum dum me no dum dum de dum dums, Dum-Dum,” he said so softly he knew Dick had to strain to hear him. And leaned forward and quite casually knocked his chauffeur’s arm from where it still rested along the ledge of the partition.
“Hey,” the man said. “Hey, what the…”
Druff moved the toggle switch that raised the window. “I don’t care to hear it,” he said through the intercom.
“You ready now?” the spy asked past what Druff — wondering Is he armed, is he armed? Is he licensed to kill me? — supposed were clenched teeth.
“Check the pressure in the tires,” Druff said.
“What?”
“There’s a pressure gauge in the glove compartment. Check the pressure in the tires.”
“What’s this shit?”
“Do it,” Druff said.
“The hell I’ll do it.”
“Then get out, I’ll drive myself.”
“No way,” spoke up his MacGuffin. “No way. This baby is signed out in the motor pool to me. Only me and Doug are authorized to check it out, and I’m the party that’s going to drive it.” Druff was already standing at the driver’s side. He’d opened Dick’s door. “No way,” Dick said, “no goddamn way. I ain’t turning over any fifty-five thousand dollars’ worth of equipment that I’m signed out on and responsible for to some guy who’s high because he just got his ashes hauled. No way!”
“Get out,” Druff said.
“You got a chauffeur’s license? You happen to be packing one of those? You may be a big-time City Commissioner of Streets, but I’m the cop in this deal and, honest to Christ, you make a move to drive off in this limo without a chauffeur’s license in your wallet and I’ll arrest you.”
But Druff, reaching into the limousine, already had the car phone in his hands, was already through to the sheriff’s office, was already on the line to the dispatcher, when the chauffeur pressed the “disengage” button and broke the connection. “What did you go and do that for?” Dick said. “What’s the matter with you? Do you like a showdown?” He sounded disappointed. “What’s to be gained? Nobody wins. All that can happen is that somebody’s feelings are going to get hurt and there’s blood on the other fellow’s hands. That’s no way. Ain’t you been a politician long enough to know that much at least? I’ll tell you something, Commissioner. You never asked and I never said, but all those times you ran for an office, I voted for you. I was in your corner. Maybe you didn’t know it but that’s true. I did and I was. Because I thought you were onto something. I really did. Hell,” he said, “you want to drive, drive.” He slid away from the wheel.
Druff made no move to take his place and the chauffeur looked at him expectantly.
“Check the pressure in the tires,” Druff said.
“Oh boy,” said the spy, “you’re really something. I thought we had a moment there, but you’re something. Yeah,” he said, “sure, I’ll check it.” He opened the glove compartment and to Druff’s surprise actually found a pressure gauge there. (Well, Druff thought, it was the MacGuffin. On overtime. Moving his fingers on telephones, riding his tongue, getting him laid, fighting his battles and, now, mining the rich, inexplicable ores of serendipity and golden, incalculable, long-shot, break- the-bank chance. Despite the fact that not half an hour earlier he’d wished it called off, at least suspended, so that he, together with Margaret of all the Boulevards, might make something out of what was left of his life. But it was the old story, wasn’t it? Once out of the bottle you couldn’t turn the genie off, call back a wish, rescind a fate or have ever again the boring old status quo ante. It was magic time, not Kansas anymore, and he had better learn to live with it.)
“They’re fine,” Dick said flatly. “Even the spare. Those guys in the garage,” he said. “We get the credit but they keep us flying. You want to go home now?”
In the back the City Commissioner of Streets made assent with his head and the chauffeur guided the long black limousine out into the traffic.
He can talk to me like this, mused the commissioner, because he’s civil service. But he’s right, Druff thought, push should never be allowed to come to shove. And marveled at how infrequently it did. How civil the civil service, he contemplated. How difficult it is to fire anyone in it. And, oh, the genius of men’s imaginings, and was astonished at the world’s astute behaviors, the sweet models of its arrangements and gracious systems. We take care of our own, they seemed to say. And meant it. They did. Everywhere a dependent, low-born incompetence, the slow, the dull, the stolid, the vicious, the crass. The foolish and crazy. The soft, flawed and fallible serving the fuddled. The cunning timeserver side by side with the simple drudge, sharing the planet with the sane and sober, with the dedicated, with the seers and masters. We take care of our own. Come one, come all! was life’s stirring cry. And offered its generous tit to any mouth that would have it. Sure, Druff thought, that’s why he can lip off to me like this. I can’t fire his rascal ass and the cocksucker knows it. He knows how many forms I’d have to fill out. He knows all the supporting letters I’d need to get together for his file. He knows all the hearings and committee meetings I’d be calling down on my head!