Bad News

45

What I especially don’t like about Arnie Albright,” Dortmunder said, “is everything.”

“He must have some qualities,” Stan said.

“No, I don’t think so,” Dortmunder answered. “I think Arnie Albright is the one guy around and about with absolutely zero qualities. I think Arnie Albright is composed one hundred percent of deficits.”

They were having this conversation on the West Side Highway, having driven south in a two-car caravan after completing Fitzroy and Irwin’s travel arrangements. Stan and Dortmunder were in the Lexus, Kelp and Tiny behind them in some doctor’s dark green Bentley, and they were on their way to West Eighty-ninth Street, where a fence lived named Arnie Albright, who was the only fence Dortmunder knew who was neither in jail nor actually a cop running an undercover sting operation.

(The thing to do with those sting operations is know when to stop being a customer. The money’s always very good, and you know the cops aren’t going to rip you off. Also, they keep the neighborhood safe. So long as you aren’t present on roundup day, where’s the downside?)

The unfortunate part about selling stolen goods to Arnie Albright was, you had to be in his presence to do so. “I don’t see,” Dortmunder groused, “why Andy can’t go up and talk to him, he knows Arnie as well as I do.”

“Andy says,” Stan told him, “he barely knows Arnie at all, and only through you.”

“Everybody claims to barely know Arnie at all,” Dortmunder said, but he knew there was no way out of this. An Arnie Albright encounter was coming his way, like it or not; like one of those movies where the Earth is going along, minding its own business, and an asteroid crashes into it.

Both cars left the highway at Ninety-sixth Street, went past the argument in front of the parking building on the north side of the street just past the underpass that has been going on for three generations now, went east over to Broadway, then south to Eighty-ninth Street.

When they made the turn, they saw that the van was still where they’d left it. It was a blue Econoline van with white waves painted on its sides, plus the information:

ERSTWHILE FISH EMPORIUM

Estab. since 1947

J. Erstwhile, Founder

This van possessed commercial license plates, which meant it wouldn’t be towed away, which everything else is, sooner or later. It was not a found object, like the Lexus or the Bentley, but had been borrowed from a friend of Kelp’s, one Jerry Erstwhile, ne’er-do-well grandson of the original Jake. Since it was now full of everything the group had liberated from Thurstead, and since they hadn’t known exactly how long they’d have to leave it unattended at the curb, they’d wanted to be sure they had a vehicle that would not draw attention from anybody for any reason whatsoever, and so far, it had apparently worked.

As they drove past the fish van, Stan said, “I’m done with this car, unless you want it for something.”

“Not me,” Dortmunder said.

“No prints around?”

“Not me,” Dortmunder said, showing his gloves.

“Fine, then,” Stan said, and parked next to a fire hydrant, since there were, as usual, no legal places to park within several miles of this location.

Apparently, Kelp had had enough of the Bentley as well, because he took the next hydrant along, and the four gathered on the sidewalk, where Kelp said, “John, we’ll just loiter and make ourselves nondescript and unremarkable while you go have a word with Arnie.”

Dortmunder had too much dignity to try to get out of it with everybody watching, so he said, “I’ll be back,” much as General MacArthur once did, and marched down the block past Erstwhile to Arnie’s place, an apartment over a tanning salon that used to be a video shop and before that a bookstore.

As he walked, Dortmunder remembered various moments with Arnie Albright over the years, like the time Arnie had said, “It’s my personality. Don’t tell me different, Dortmunder, I happen to know. I rub people the wrong way. Don’t argue with me.” Or when he’d explained, “I know what a scumbag I am. People in this town, they call a restaurant, before they make the reservation, they say, ‘Is Arnie Albright gonna be there?’”

And the weird thing, as Dortmunder well knew, was that Arnie considered Dortmunder himself the closest thing he had to a friend. As he’d once said, “At least you lie to me. Most people, I’m so detestable, they can’t wait to tell me what a turd I am.” Which was probably true.

All Dortmunder hoped was that Arnie was healthy at the moment. Arnie got little diseases from time to time, each one more disgusting than the last. Recently, when Dortmunder had been forced by circumstance to have business dealings with Arnie, the fence had just broken out in something so horrible (salsa oozing from every pore on his body) that, he’d explained, “My doctor says, ‘Would you mind staying in the waiting room and just shout to me your symptoms?’” May Arnie today, Dortmunder prayed, to Whoever might be Listening, at least be healthy.

Dortmunder entered the tiny vestibule of Arnie’s building, rang the button, and waited for Arnie’s snarl of greeting over the intercom. Instead of which, without a word being said, the buzzer sounded, unlocking the door.

Dortmunder simultaneously pushed on the door and recoiled. No challenge? No “Who the hell goes there?”

Cops. Had to be. Like most fences, Arnie was occasionally visited by marauding bands of cops, who have a proprietary view of fencing, not liking civilians to horn in on their sting operations. So was this the middle of a cop visit? And had the cops said, “Just let them in, Arnie, let’s see who’s coming to visit”? Was this, in short, a trap?

“Hal-loo-ooo.”

That was somebody calling down the stairs. Could that possibly have been Arnie? Curious despite himself, Dortmunder pushed the door farther open and looked up the staircase, and there at the top, smiling, stood Arnie Albright himself, a grizzled, gnarly guy with a tree-root nose.

Dortmunder, not trusting the evidence of his senses, said, “Arnie?”

“Why, it’s John Dortmunder!” Arnie cried with evident delight. “Come on up, John Dortmunder, it’s been too long since I seen you!”

Dortmunder stepped all the way into the hall, letting the door snick shut behind himself. He peered hard, but there didn’t seem to be anybody behind Arnie holding a gun to his head. He said, “Arnie? Is that you?”

“The new me, John Dortmunder!” Arnie announced, and waved a beckoning arm. “Comon up, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “we got some stuff in a van out here.”

“In a minute, in a minute, I’ll get my coat. But come up first, let’s visit.”

Visit? With Arnie Albright? Wondering if he had somehow fallen into a parallel universe, Dortmunder went on up the stairs, the smiling Arnie receding before him like a friendly vampire. “Come in, come in for a minute, John Dortmunder,” this new Arnie said, backing into his apartment. “You wanna cuppa tea?”

“Well, Arnie,” Dortmunder said, following him across the threshold, “I got these guys downstairs, you know, by the van, they just wanna show you this stuff we got.”

“Oh, sure,” Arnie said, “we don’t wanna keep nobody waiting. Hold on, I’ll just get my coat.”

Arnie’s apartment, small underfurnished rooms with big dirty windows showing no views, was decorated mostly with his calendar collection, walls festooned in Januarys from all over the twentieth century, under pictures of girls in short skirts in high winds, kittens in wicker baskets with balls of yarn, paddle-wheel steamers, and much, much more. Much more.

While Arnie went on into his bedroom to get his coat, Dortmunder waited in the living room among the Januarys, and some Mays and Novembers, too (incompletes), and called after him, “Arnie? How come you’re the new you?”

Arnie came back, shrugging into a drab and raggedy black coat you wouldn’t let a barn cat sleep on, and said, “You remember, last time you was here, I’d come down with something.”

Salsa. “You were ill,” Dortmunder understated.

“I looked like a torture victim,” Arnie said, more accurately. “Finally, my doctor wouldn’t see me no more, wouldn’t even hear me no more, he said I was the reason the Board of Health shut down his waiting room, so he passed me on to this like referral doctor, you know, the doctor all the other doctors refer you to whenever they’re away.”

“Which is whenever,” Dortmunder said.

“You got it. Well, this guy, this referral doctor, turns out, he’s okay, he’s like making a comeback from parole, and after he cured me of the ooze thing he said, ‘Lemme give you a second opinion, you’re also obnoxious,’ and I said, ‘I know it, doctor, you don’t have to tell me, I’m so hard to be around I sometimes shave with my back to the mirror,’ and he said take these pills, so I’m taking them.”

Dortmunder said, “Pills. You mean like Prozac?”

“This stuff is to Prozac,” Arnie said, “like sour mash is to sassafras. How in hell it’s legal I will never know, and if this is legal how in hell anything else is illegal I’ll also never know.”

“But it did the job, huh?” Dortmunder said. “You aren’t obnoxious anymore.”

“Oh, no, John Dortmunder, not like that,” Arnie said. “I’m as obnoxious as I ever was, believe me, when the shock wears off, you’ll begin to notice for yourself, but I’m not angry about it anymore. I have come to accept my inner scumbag. It makes all the difference.”

“Well, that’s great, Arnie,” Dortmunder said, though not as enthusiastically as he’d hoped. Apparently, he was going to lie to the new Arnie as much as he used to lie to the old one.

Arnie once again showed Dortmunder his new smile. His teeth were not of the best. “So, John Dortmunder,” he said, “you’re doin so good these days, you’re bringin me the stuff in vanloads, is that it?”

“Pretty much,” Dortmunder agreed. “We got a variety of stuff down here.”

“Do I want my loupe?”

“Maybe so.”

“And my Polaroid camera?”

“Could be.”

“And my gold-weighing scale?”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Dortmunder said, “if maybe we should just drive the van up the stairs and into the apartment.”

“Nah, never mind, John Dortmunder. We’ll go down and see what you got.”

So they went down to see what they got, and what they got was three guys loitering very obviously around the Erstwhile van. Fortunately, no law-enforcement elements had yet noticed them, so it was okay.

“Well, hey, Andy Kelp,” Arnie said, coming down the stoop with his very best new smile, “John Dortmunder didn’t say we was all gonna be old friends around here.”

Kelp blinked, looked glazed, and said, “Arnie?”

“But we’re not all old friends,” Arnie corrected himself, looking at the other two. “John Dortmunder, introduce me to your pals.”

“This is Arnie,” Dortmunder said, “and that’s Stan and that’s Tiny.”

“And how do you do? I won’t offer to shake hands,” Arnie said, to general relief, “because I know some people got feelings about germs, in fact, I got feelings about germs myself, for very good reasons, which we needn’t go into,” he said, to general relief, “except believe me, I know, my experiences have not all been sunny ones, and I take it this is the van here.”

Dortmunder recovered first. “Yeah, this is it, Andy’s got the key to the rear door.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kelp said, “I do, don’t I?” Reaching in his pocket, he waggled eyebrows at Dortmunder behind Arnie’s back: What’s with Arnie? Dortmunder rolled his eyes and shook his head: Don’t ask.

Kelp unlocked the rear doors of the van and opened the left one, to shield the loot from pedestrians. Arnie leaned forward to peer in, then paused and sniffed and said, “Scrod. Wait a minute, halibut. Wait a minute, perch.”

Dortmunder said, “Arnie, we aren’t selling you fish.”

Arnie nodded over his shoulder at Dortmunder. “Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m just trying out my new nose. The pills have this side effect, they improve my sense of smell, which, given me, you know, is a mixed blessing. Hold on, lemme see what we got here.”

“Sure,” Dortmunder said.

Arnie climbed into the van and started whistling. Unless it was Schoenberg, it was off-key.

“A little of your friend here,” Tiny said, “goes a long way.”

Stan said, “I’m ready for him to go a long way. I’ll help him pick out the route.”

“This is the improved version,” Dortmunder assured them.

“Actually, John,” Kelp said, “he is better than he was. Different anyway.”

“He’s being treated by a doctor,” Dortmunder explained.

Tiny said, “Yeah? No doctor ever stood me a round.”

“Everybody knows my feelings about doctors,” Kelp said, and Arnie backed out of the van, still whistling. Then he stopped whistling, nodded at everybody, and said, “What you got there is your basic mixed bag in there.”

Tiny said, “It all come from one place.”

“Maybe,” Arnie acknowledged, “but before that, it all come from all over the place.”

Dortmunder explained, “The guy was a collector.”

“You said it,” Arnie agreed. “Okay, some of this I can move to antiques guys upstate, some has to go out of the country and come back in to be museum-worthy, and some we’ll have to melt down for whatever. In any event, it should be nice. Worth the detour.”

“How much?” Dortmunder asked.

“Eventually, it could be nice,” Arnie told him. “You know me, John Dortmunder, I give top dollar. Even now when people can maybe stand to be around me, at least for a little while, even now, when maybe I wouldn’t have to give top dollar no more, even now, the habit is so strong, and my new pleasantness is so intense, even now I give top dollar.”

“Okay,” Dortmunder said.

“But not today,” Arnie said. “And by the way, I got no use for the van.”

“Not the van,” Kelp said. “I gotta return the van.”

Arnie nodded. “I take it, Andy Kelp,” he said, “you are the driver of the van.”

“Sure,” Kelp said.

“I’m gonna give you an address in Queens,” Arnie told him, “a bathroom fixtures wholesaler, you’re gonna go there and ask for Maureen, who I’m gonna call, and she’ll have a box there for you to unload everything in, and from time to time, as we lower this inventory here, you’ll get a little something.”

Stan said, “What about today?”

“Today,” Arnie said, “I can give you four G, on account.”

Tiny said, “On accounta what?”

“On accounta that’s how much cash I got upstairs,” Arnie explained. “So come along, Andy Kelp, come upstairs, I’ll give you that address and the cash and I’ll show you some new incompletes, they’ll knock your eyes out. I got one from a hospital, you won’t believe it, the picture’s their ER’s new waiting room.”

“Uh,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder beamed. “Yeah, Andy Kelp,” he said, “go on up with the new Arnie, we’ll wait here.”

“Or,” Arnie said, “you could all come up for herbal tea.”

“No, that’s okay,” Stan said, “we gotta keep an eye on the van.”

“That’s right,” Arnie agreed. “So long, then. Come along, Andy Kelp.”

Kelp, with one last mutinous look over his shoulder, followed Arnie into the building.

Tiny said, “This is really a changed individual?”

“I’m not sure,” Dortmunder admitted. “You know, there’s like a jacket, and you can get the jacket in blue or you can get the jacket in green? I think this is Arnie green, but somehow it’s still Arnie.”

“It is true,” Tiny said, “the downside of this profession is, some a the people you gotta associate with.”

Kelp hurtled out of the building. “I told him I had an appointment with my accountant,” he explained. “Gather close, I’ve got this cash here.”

Stan said, “Is it okay to touch?”

“Yeah, it was in a plastic bag when he gave it to me,” Kelp said, and pulled a plastic bag out from under his windbreaker. “Just lemme . . .”

For the next minute or two, while New Yorkers all around them passed on by, minding their own business, Kelp pulled bills out of the plastic bag and distributed them. “There we are,” he said at the end, “a grand apiece.”

Dortmunder had already pocketed his. “So,” he said, “I finally get my thousand dollars. May is gonna be pleased.”