Watch Your Back!

13

SILENT AS THE tomb. When Dortmunder and Kelp walked into the O.J. a little before two that afternoon, even the floor didn't creak. There seemed to be fewer regulars than usual, huddled together at the left end of the bar, as silent and miserable as kittens in a sack with the bridge getting close. The two watchful guys in the booth on the right were not the same as the two from last night, but they weren't that different, either. Rollo had a newspaper folded open on the bar at the right end, far from the immobile regulars, and was bent over it with a red Flair pen in his hand.

Approaching the bar, Dortmunder felt the eyes of the guys in the booth on him, but ignored them. Then he saw that Rollo was not reading the Daily News, like a regular person, but the larger paper, the New York Times. And then he saw that what Rollo was reading in the New York Times was the want ads.

Rollo didn't raise his eyes from the columns of jobs awaiting the qualified when Dortmunder and Kelp bellied up to the bar in front of him, but he was not unmindful of their presence. "Sorry, fellas," he said, eyes down, pen poised. "Still no go."

"Rollo," Dortmunder said, "all's we want's a beer."

"Two beers, in fact," Kelp said.

Now Rollo did look up. He seemed wary. "Nothing else in mind?"

"What else?" Kelp asked him. "It's a hot August day, the time seems right for a nice beer."

Rollo shrugged. "Coming up," he said, and went away to draw two.

While they waited, Kelp said, "I think it's my round, John."

Dortmunder looked at him. "What are you up to?"

"What up to? I feel like I wanna buy you a beer. It happens, we have another one, then you buy for me. That's how it works, John."

Dortmunder said, "What if we only have the one?"

"My feeling is," Kelp said, whipping out his wallet and putting cash money on the bar next to the glasses Rollo was putting down in front of them, "some day we'll be in a bar again."

Dortmunder could only agree with that. "You'll keep track, I guess," he said, as Rollo took Kelp's money away to his open cash register and rummaged around in there a while.

"No problem," Kelp assured him, and lifted his glass. "To crime."

"Without punishment," Dortmunder amended, and they both drank.

Rollo came back to put crumpled bills on the bar in front of Kelp, who took a few, left one, and said, "Thanks, Rollo."

Rollo leaned close over the bar. Very softly he said, "I just wanna say, this isn't the best place right now."

"We noticed that, Rollo," Kelp said, and nodded, and smiled in an amiable way, inviting confidences.

"The thing is," Rollo said, more sotto voce than ever, "there are people around here right now, what they are, they're criminals."

Dortmunder leaned very close to Rollo over the bar. "Rollo," he murmured, "we're criminals."

"Yeah, John, I know," Rollo said. "But they're organized. Take care of yourselves."

"Everything okay, Rollo?" demanded a nasty voice.

It was one of today's organized men, come from his booth to stand at the bar in front of Rollo's Times. His strange shirt was off-puce.

"Everything's jake," Rollo assured him. Scooping the loose dollar from the bar, he went back to his newspaper, while the puce, after one quick, dismissive look at Dortmunder and Kelp, headed back to his booth.

Dortmunder said, "You think everything's okay in life, and then something different happens."

Kelp gave him a look. "John? On one beer you're turning philosophical?"

"It's the environment," Dortmunder told him.

Meanwhile, returning to his want ads, Rollo called toward the entrance, "Just put 'em in back," and when Dortmunder turned to look, a blue-uniformed deliveryman was wheeling in a dolly piled five-high with liquor cartons.

"Right," the deliveryman said, and wheeled the dolly on by. The regulars didn't even turn to watch.

Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a silent glance as they sipped their beer. Soon the deliveryman returned, pushing his empty dolly, and Dortmunder stepped back from the bar to say, in a normal volume of voice, "I gotta hit the gents."

"I'll watch your beer," Kelp offered.

"Thank you."

Dortmunder circled the clustered regulars and went around the end of the bar and down the hall past pointers and setters, noticing that beneath setters was a thumb-tacked handwritten OUT OF ORDER notice, and past the entry-to-the-universe phone booth, and stopped at the open green door at the very end of the hall.

And there was the back room, where so often they had met in the past, and which was now transformed. It was so jam-packed full of stuff you couldn't even see the round table in the middle of it any more, let alone the chairs around it. The bare bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling was partially blocked by all the materiel that had been introduced into the place. Liquor cartons were stacked everywhere, along with new barstools with their plastic wrapping still on them, at least half a dozen cash registers, a complete mini pool table, and boxes and boxes of pretzels and Slim Jims.

"Help you, Mac?"

It was Puce, following Dortmunder down the hall. He had an aggressive swagger in his shoulders, as though he felt it was a little past time to start sparring with somebody.

"Gents," Dortmunder told him, calm about it.

"Pointers," Puce told him, and pointed at it.

"Thanks," Dortmunder said, and went into pointers, where the aroma immediately reminded him why generally he did not go into pointers. He stayed the minimum time plausible, flushed, washed his hands as the grimy sign said, and went out to the hall, which was now empty.

It wasn't a surprise that the door to setters was locked. Dortmunder headed for the bar, and on the way he passed the deliveryman, wheeling another quintet of cases, this one all rum.

Puce was back in his booth, muttering at his pal in plum, and Kelp was where he had been, at the bar. Dortmunder joined him, and Kelp raised an eyebrow as Dortmunder raised his glass. Dortmunder shook his head, drank, and the deliveryman came back, the dolly empty. This time he went around to extend a clipboard toward Rollo and say, "Sign it there, okay?"

"Sure."

Rollo, in the manner of someone signing his own commitment papers, signed the form on the clipboard, and the deliveryman and his dolly went away.

Dortmunder finished his beer. "Maybe," he said, "I'll buy you that round next time."