Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

8

WHEN WE GOT BACK, a committee of five was waiting for us in the room where I’d been folding the football uniforms my first day. Jerry Bogentrodder was there, looking big and pink and friendly, but with a black circle around his right eye. Billy Glinn was there, looking big and gray and deadly. Eddie Troyn the military man was there, and Bob Dombey, still with the same suspicious weasel expression as when I’d first seen him hurry past this doorway, and Joe Maslocki, the battered ex-welterweight. I assumed Max Nolan was still on duty out by the half-door, and with Phil and me that was the full complement of eight.

The five of them were sitting around the big wooden table in the middle of the room, and none of them seemed to have any expression at all on their faces. Phil, pulling another chair out to join them, said to Jerry, “What’s the black stuff around your eye?”

“The goddamnedest thing,” Jerry said. “I found a thing like a kid’s telescope, and when I looked through it there was like this black paint or something on it. I can’t get it off.”

Phil had settled into a chair, and I had followed suit. It was amazing how nobody was looking directly at me.

“That’s too bad, Jerry,” Phil said. Then he jabbed a thumb toward me and said, casually, “Well, he’s in.” Suddenly everybody was grinning and shaking my hand, everybody was cheerful, everybody was telling me how glad they were to have me one of the crowd. The relief was patent on every face, even Billy Glinn’s. Yep, I would have been seeing those big machines all right.

The welcoming ceremonies finally wore themselves out, and Phil turned to Joe Maslocki and said, “Okay, Joe. Tell him about the robbery.”