“Yeah?” The first regular was interested. “What ever became of him?”
“Friendly fire.”
“I take it,” Rollo said, placing on the bar in front of Dortmunder a round enameled Rheingold Beer tray, “you’re meeting some of your associates in the room in the back.”
“Yeah,” Dortmunder said, as Rollo put two thick squat glasses and a shallow ironstone bowl with ice cubes in it and a bottle of murky brown liquid labeled Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—Our Own Brand all in a row on the tray. “We’ll have the vodka and red wine and the beer with salt and the other bourbon,” he said, because Rollo knew his customers strictly by their liquid preferences. “And a guy with like a barrel chest and skinny arms and legs, answers to Chester, I don’t know what he drinks.”
“I’ll know,” Rollo said. “The minute I look at him.” Pushing the tray closer to Dortmunder, he said, “You’re the first.”
Good; that meant he’d get to sit facing the door. “Thanks, Rollo,” he said, and carried the tray past the holiday debate team, who were trying to decide if Arbor Day was an actual holiday or a typo for Labor Day. Leaving the front part of the bar, Dortmunder went down the hall with doors decorated with black metal dog silhouettes labeled POINTERS and SETTERS and past the phone booth surrounded by graffiti of hacker’s code and on into a small square room with a concrete floor. The walls were hidden, floor to ceiling, by beer and liquor cases, leaving just enough space for a battered old round table with a stained felt top that had once been pool-table green but now looked mostly like Amsterdam Liquor store bourbon. The table was surrounded by half a dozen armless wooden chairs.
This room had been dark, but when Dortmunder hit the switch beside the door, one bare bulb under a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire let you see all you wanted to see of the place.
Dortmunder walked all around the room to sit in the chair that most directly faced the door—the prize for being first. Then he added an ice cube to one of the glasses, poured in a little murk, and sat back to await his crew.
As far as Dortmunder was concerned, holidays were mostly an opportunity to improve your luggage.
5
DORTMUNDER HAD LEFT THE door open, which turned out to be a good thing. It wasn’t a good thing for the view it offered, which was of the opposite wall of the corridor, constructed many ages ago, apparently out of cooling lava, possibly with small life forms ambered within, but because the door being open made it possible for the next arrival to arrive.
He couldn’t have done it otherwise. With both of his hands encumbered as they were, a glass of beer (domestic, eight-ounce) in the right, a half-full glass salt-shaker with metal top in the left, he might have found it a little tricky to deal with that round smooth doorknob requiring a half turn to the left. It’s bad luck to spill salt, as everybody knows, and even worse luck to spill beer.
The bearer of these objects, a blocky ginger-haired man with freckles on the backs of his hands, gave Dortmunder a sour look and said, “You got here first.”
“Hi, Stan,” Dortmunder said. “You’re right on time.”
Stan came around the table to sit at Dortmunder’s right hand, which meant he would have anyway a three-quarter view of the door. Putting down his beer and his salt, he said, “I woulda been okay, I mean, I plotted it out ahead, I know the BQE’s no good, they’re putting in a bicycle lane—”
Dortmunder said, “On the BQE? Impossible. The slowest car on the BQE is doing Mach two. You’re gonna put bicycles up there?”
“A bicycle lane,” Stan corrected. “It keeps the greens happy, now they got a bicycle lane, it keeps the construction industry happy, now they got useless work at union wages, and if a green ever tries to use it, there’s another cause for happiness. Anyway, the Van Wyck’s no good because they’re putting in the monorail—”
“I don’t know,” Dortmunder said, “what’s happening to New York.”
Stan nodded. “You wanna know what’s happening to New York?” he asked. “I tell you what you do. You go to a used-magazine store, you look at the covers of science fiction magazines from the thirties. That’s what’s happening to New York. Anyway, I figured, the old streets are still okay, I’ll take a straight run up Flatbush Avenue, come to Manhattan that way. I’ve got ten-ten-wins on, to tell me anything I ought to know, this is the radio station they say, ‘Give us twenty-two minutes, we’ll give you the world.’ What about the demonstration at Flatbush and Atlantic? Isn’t that part of the world?”
Dortmunder said, “Demonstration?”
“The people that want Long Island to secede from New York State,” Stan said, shrugging as though naturally everybody knew about that, but before Dortmunder could ask the first of several questions that came to mind, Andy Kelp entered, empty-handed, followed by Chester Fallon, carrying a glass of beer much like Stan’s, but without the side order of salt.
They both scoped out the seating situation pretty fast, but Kelp was quicker, and slid in to Dortmunder’s left, leaving a less-than-half view of the doorway for Chester at his left as he reached for the “bourbon” bottle and the other glass and said, “Tiny’ll be along in a minute.”
Dortmunder said, “Where is he?”
“Out in the bar,” Kelp said, “arguing with some people, is Decoration Day a national holiday.”
Surprised, Chester said, “That guy? He’s with us? I wouldn’t argue with him.”
Dortmunder said, “The arguments don’t run long.”
Kelp said, “Some of the people out there think it’s Decorator Day, which is kinda muddying the issue.”
At this point a man-monster entered the room. Shaped mostly like an armored car, but harder, he held in his left hand a tall glass of red liquid while his right hand was to his mouth as he licked his knuckles. He left off the licking to glare around the room and say, “I was born in this country.”
“Of course you were, Tiny,” Dortmunder said. “Come on in. This is Chester Fallon. Chester, Tiny Bulcher.”
“Harya,” Tiny said, and stuck out a hand like a Christmas ham, with wet knuckles.
Chester studied this offering. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“I don’t hurt myself,” Tiny told him.
So they shook hands, Chester winced, and Tiny shut the door, then sat with his back to it, not giving a damn.
Stan said to Chester, “We weren’t introduced. I’m the driver, Stan Murch.”
Chester looked at him in surprise. “You’re the driver? I’m the driver.”
Stan gave him the critical double-o. “Then where’s your salt?”
Chester said, “Salt? You expect icy roads? In May?”
“The driver drinks beer,” Stan told him. “Like you, like me. But the driver doesn’t want to drink too much beer, because he’s gotta know what he’s doing when he’s at the wheel.”
“Sure,” Chester said, and shrugged.
“But the thing with beer,” Stan said, “it won’t last. You just sip it, sip it, one time you look, it’s flat, head’s gone, tastes like shit.”
“That’s true,” Chester said.
Stan picked up the saltshaker. “Every once in a while,” he said, “you tap in a little salt, gives it back its head, gives it back its zest, you can pace yourself.” He demonstrated, tapping a little salt into his glass, and they all watched the head improve.
Chester nodded. “Pretty good,” he said. “Not exactly driving expertise, but useful. Thank you.”