"I guess not."
"So that means they'll never get rid of the rest of it," Medrick concluded. "All the way back to smoke signals."
"I don't think they use those so much any more," Dortmunder said.
"If they did," Medrick said darkly, "they'd lie."
"Seating rows six forty-three to six fifty-two," said the announcement, so they boarded the damn plane.
Their third seatmate, next to the window over beyond Medrick, turned out to be okay, a very neat little old lady who put her own robin's egg blue Samsonite bag in the overhead rack, tucked her worn old black leather shoulderbag under the seat in front of her, kicked off her shoes, and opened a paperback novel by Barbara Pym, which she then proceeded to read with such intensity you'd think there was going to be a test on it when the plane reached Newark.
All Dortmunder wanted was the experience over with. He strapped himself in as though this were the electric chair and he'd just received word the governor was on the golf course, closed his eyes to pretend he was unconscious, experienced the rinse cycle of the plane taking off, listened to the announcements even though he knew in his heart he would never willingly associate himself with a flotation device, and at last the stew, who'd warned them ahead of time about futzing around with electronics during takeoff and landing, said, "Electronic equipment may now be used," and Medrick said, "Good."
Dortmunder opened his eyes. The phone was a neat gray plastic hotdog inset in the back of the middle seat ahead. Medrick yanked it out, did some credit card stuff, then did some dialing stuff, and then said, "Frank? Otto. It's nine-seventeen in the morning — what, you don't have any clocks on Long Island? I'm calling you about your son. Well, Frank, I'm in an airplane and I'm headed for Newark, which is not what I had planned for today, but while you been looking around for a clock the last four months your boy Raphael has been robbing me blind. Of course he wouldn't do that, and in fact — Frank, I know he's a good boy, and the reason I know he's a good boy, same as you know he's a good boy, is, he's too stupid to be anything else. Now, listen to me, Frank, I'm not blaming you, and I'm not blaming Maureen, you and me got the same genes inside us, so if there's moon-child genes floating around inside Raphael, which you damn well know there is, they're just as likely to come from our side of the family as hers."
Medrick listened for a minute, nodding impatiently, while a whole lot of nothing went by outside the window, past the Barbara Pym fan, and the stews started serving the beverage from the other end of the plane. Then Medrick said, "I wouldn't be giving you tsouris, Frank, but the fact is, the O.J. is gonna go into bankruptcy in like fifteen minutes unless we do something about it, and I happen to be in this airplane, and you happen to be on the ground, so what you can do— All right, I'll tell you what's going on. Raphael hooked up with some Jersey kid that's mobbed up or something, and he turned over running the joint to that kid, and now the kid—"
More pause. More impatient nodding. Then Medrick said, "I don't doubt that, Frank, Casper the Friendly Ghost is probably a better businessman than Raphael, but there's businessmen and businessmen, and what this businessman is doing, he's bleeding the joint white. If you'll listen to me, Frank, I'll tell you how he's doing it. He's using up the corporation's credit, he's buying stuff, not paying for it, he's gonna strip it all out, sell it to somebody else, walk away. Wait."
Medrick shook his head. Turning to Dortmunder, he said, "Like what is he buying?"
"Well, I happened to notice, four cash registers."
Medrick blinked. "Four cash registers?"
"They're all in the back room."
Into the phone, Medrick said, "Four cash registers, Frank, all in the back room."
"Maybe thirty barstools."
"Maybe thirty barstools."
"Already," Dortmunder said, "they took out a lot of French champagne and Russian vodka for a wedding."
Medrick, phone pressed to the side of his head, turned that head to give Dortmunder an outraged look: "A wedding? Now I'm paying for a wedding?"
"Looks like."
Into the phone, Medrick said, "Thank you, Frank, I'm glad you asked me. So I'll tell you what I want from you. Remember the phony doctor they made Raphael go to when he was on probation? Leadass, that's right, the psychiaquack, Oh, Ledvass, I beg your pardon, Ledvass the distinguished nut doctor. Call him, Frank, call him now, you'll get an answering service, tell them it's an emergency, when Leadass calls back you — I know, Frank — you tell him the diagnosis, and the diagnosis is delusions of grandeur, it's making him buy things he's got no use for, and for his own protection you want Leadass should commit Raphael today, so when I get off this plane—"
"Hurray," Dortmunder said.
"— I can go to all the vendors been unloading this stuff on the O.J., whado they care, I can say, take it all back, you been selling to a fellow mentally deficient, here's the commitment papers. You've got keys to the place, Frank, after you talk to Leadass go there — Frank, you want me to be your dependent? If the O.J. goes down, Frank, I've got nothing but what the government gives me, I got no choice, I'm moving in with you and Maureen."
Dortmunder noticed that several people in nearby seats were openly staring by now, and it seemed to him at least one of them had brought out an audio recording thing, though with the usual airplane background garble it was unlikely he'd wind up with anything he could bring into court. Anyway, the Barbara Pym lady was still deep in her book, and if Medrick didn't care how the whole world knew his business, what skin was it off Dortmunder's nose?
Now Medrick was saying, "So you're going to the O.J., you'll look at all this stuff piled up in there, you'll find the paperwork, receipts, vouchers, invoices, whatever, with all of that you and Leadass can get Raphael committed, and I mean today, I want him inside from now until we get this whole mess straightened out. Frank, it's okay, don't apologize, I understand, we're all busy, like you say. Well, not me, in Florida we're not what you could call busy, but I know you are, and Maureen is, and everybody on Long Island is, and I'm glad you're taking this seriously, Frank, because it is serious, and — No, no, Frank, forget that, don't worry about it, just save me the O.J., and that's where I'm going just as soon as I get off this plane—"
"Hurray."
"— and I'm bringing with me this back-room crook that—"
"Hey."
"— told me about it, he's the one rescued the O.J., if in fact we're getting it in time, we owe him a debt of gratitude, I'll see you at the O.J. before one."
With a certain savage satisfaction, Medrick slammed the phone back into its cave. Ignoring the cry of pain from the seat in front, he said, "Oh-kay."
"Beverage?" asked the stew.
"Yes," said Dortmunder.
"I will have a frosty beer," Medrick said.
"Me, too," said Dortmunder.
"A Bloody Mary for me," said the Barbara Pym lady. Smiling sweetly at Dortmunder and Medrick, she said, "It's called a bust-out joint, and I hope you pin those cocksuckers good."
24
BIG JOSÉ AND LITTLE JOSÉ, as the most recent security hires at the Imperiatum apartment house at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street, got all the drudgery. They were the ones who had to carry Mrs. Windbom's groceries from the lobby to her apartment, since she was afraid the supermarket's delivery boys would rape her. It was they who periodically checked the anti-pigeon electric tapes on the roof, and who carried to its separate disposal bin the hazmat materials from the two doctors' offices with their own street-level building entrances around on the Sixty-eighth street side, and who walked the two stairways once a week in search of blown lightbulbs or other anomalies. And twice a month they did a security sweep of Penthouse A.