Why Me?

16

Dortmunder had deliberately taken a subway in the wrong direction from Times Square to get away from a pair of uniformed cops who had been gazing at him with steadily increasing interest, so it was a quarter after ten, fifteen minutes late, before he walked into the O. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue, where three of the regulars were discussing Cyprus—probably because it was in the news in connection with the Byzantine Fire. "All you gotta do is look onna map," one of the regulars was saying. "Cyprus is right there by Turkey. Greece is way to hell and gone."

"Oh, yeah?" said the second regular. "You happen to be a Turk, by any chance?"

"I happen," the first regular said, with a dangerous glint in his eye, "to be Polish and Norwegian. You got any objections?"

"Well, I happen," said the second regular, "to be one hunnerd percent Greek, and I'm here to tell you you happen to be fulla shit. Both the Polish part and the Norwegian part. Both parts, fulla shit."

"Wait a minute, fellas," said the third regular. "Let's not cast a lotta national aspersions."

"I'm not casting anything," said the second regular. "This Norwegian Polack's telling me where Greece is."

"What is this?" demanded the first regular. "You have to be Greek before you know where Greece is?"

"There's something in what he says," said the third regular, who apparently saw himself as the voice of reason in a world of extremes.

"There's horseshit in what he says," said the second regular.

Dortmunder approached the bar some distance from the nationalists, where Rollo the bartender, tall, meaty, balding, blue-jawed, wearing a dirty white shirt and a dirty white apron, stood looking up at the color TV set, on which at that moment several very clean people were pretending to look worried in a very clean hospital room. "Whadaya say," said Dortmunder.

Rollo looked down from the screen. "Now they're rerunning the made-for-TV movies," he said, "and claiming they're movies. It's Whatsisname's law."

"It's what?"

"You know," Rollo said. "That law. Where the bad shit drives out the good."

"The good shit?" It occurred to Dortmunder that Rollo was beginning to sound like one of his own customers. Maybe he'd been in this job too long.

"Just a minute," Rollo said, and walked away to where the nationalists were beginning to threaten incursions into one another's territory. "You boys wanna fight," Rollo said, "you go home and fight with your wives. You wanna drink beer, you come here."

The pro-Turk Norwegian Pole said, "Exactly. That's what I come here for. I'm disinterested. I'm not even Turkish."

"Listen," Rollo said. "The law where it says bad shit drives out the good, which law is that?"

"The unwritten law," said the Greek.

The former mediator looked at him. "What are you, crazy? The unwritten law's when you catch your wife in bed with some guy."

"There's a law says some guy goes to bed with my wife?"

"No, no. The unwritten law."

"Well," said the Greek, "it better stay unwritten."

"That's not what I mean," said Rollo. "Hold it a second." He called to Dortmunder, "You still a double bourbon on the rocks?"

"Absolutely," said Dortmunder.

Reaching for a glass, Rollo told the nationalists, "I'm talking about the law where bad drives out good. I think it starts with G."

With obvious hesitance, the non-Turk said, "The law of gravity?"

"No, no, no," said Rollo, putting ice cubes in the glass.

"Common law," said the mediator, with absolute assurance. "That's what you're looking for."

The Greek said, "Another clown. Common law is where you aren't married to your wife, but you really are."

"That's impossible," said the mediator. "Either you're married or you're not married."

"They're both impossible," said the non-Turk.

Reaching for a bottle labeled "Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—Our Own Brand," Rollo said, "That's not it. It's something else."

"Murphy's law," suggested the Greek.

Rollo hesitated, about to pour bourbon into the glass. Frowning, he said, "You sure?"

"I think so," said the Greek.

Neither the mediator nor the non-Turk had any comment at all. Shaking his head in continuing doubt, Rollo brought Dortmunder his drink, gesturing at the TV screen and saying, "Murphy's law."

"Sure," said Dortmunder. "The others back there?"

"The vodka-and-red-wine," Rollo said, "and a new fella to me, a rye-and-water."

That would be Ralph Winslow. Dortmunder said, "Not the beer-and-salt?"

"Not yet."

"He's late. He must have taken a wrong route."

"Maybe so," said Rollo.

Dortmunder picked up his drink and walked toward the rear of the place, past the regulars, who were now discussing Salic's law of averages. Continuing on beyond the end of the bar, Dortmunder went by the two doors marked with dog silhouettes (POINTERS and SETTERS) and past the phone booth and through the battered green door at the end into a small room with a concrete floor. The walls all around were hidden behind beer and liquor cases stacked ceiling high, leaving barely enough space in the middle for several chairs and a round wooden table covered with green felt. From a black wire over the table hung a bare bulb with a round tin reflector. Seated at the table at the moment were two people, one of them a hearty heavyset man with a wide mouth and a big round nose like the bulb of an airhorn, the other a huge mean-looking monster who seemed to have been constructed out of old truck-engine parts. The hearty man was holding a tall glass of amber liquid, clinking the ice cubes in it and looking dubiously at the monster, who brooded at a half-full glass of what appeared to be flat cherry soda. Both men raised their heads at Dortmunder's entrance, the hearty man as though in search of an ally, the monster as though wondering if this new arrival were edible.

"Dortmunder!" said the hearty man, more heartily than necessary, emphatically tinkling his ice cubes. "Haven't seen you in a coon's age!" He had a loud but gravelly voice and the permanent air of being about to slap somebody on the back.

"Hello, Ralph," Dortmunder said. Nodding at the monster, he said, "Whadaya say, Tiny?"

"I say our host is late," Tiny said. His voice was deep and not loud, like the sound emanating from a cavern in which a dragon is alleged to sleep.

"Stan'll be along," Dortmunder said. He sat with his profile to the door, putting his glass on the felt.

"Haven't seen you since the pitcha switch," Tiny said. Incredibly, he laughed. He didn't do it well, or as though it came quite naturally, but the effort itself was praiseworthy. "I hear you had more trouble later on," he said.

"A little."

"But I got mine out of it," Tiny said. His big head nodded in slow satisfaction. "I always get mine."

"That's good," Dortmunder said.

"It's necessary." Tiny gestured with a hand like a baby bear. "I was just telling Ralph here what happened to Pete Orbin."

Ralph Winslow moodily tinkled ice. He didn't look as though he wanted to pat Tiny's back at all.

Dortmunder said, "Something happened to Pete Orbin?"

"I was in a little thing with him," Tiny said. "He tried to shortchange me on the cut. Said it was a mistake, he was counting on his fingers."

Dortmunder's brow corrugated. Reluctantly, he asked, "What happened?"

"I took off some of his fingers. Now he won't count on them any more." Wrapping his own sausage fingers around his glass, Tiny drained the red liquid from it, while Dortmunder and Ralph Winslow exchanged an enigmatic glance.

The door opened again and they all looked up, but it wasn't Stan Murch, who had called them all to come here tonight, it was Rollo the bartender, who said, "There's an ale outside, asking for a Ralph Winslow."

"That's me," Winslow said, getting to his feet.

Tiny pointed at his empty glass. "Again."

"Vodka and red wine," Rollo agreed. To Dortmunder he said, "It wasn't Murphy's law. It's Gresham's law."

"Oh," said Dortmunder.

"The way we found out, we called the precinct."

Rollo and Winslow left, closing the door behind them. Dortmunder worked some at his drink.

Tiny said, "I don't like this. I don't like to hang around—wait around." His heavy features were arranged in a peeved expression, like an annoyed fire hydrant.

"Stan's usually on time," Dortmunder said. He tried to stop wondering what parts Tiny removed from people who irritated him by being late.

"I got a head to break later on tonight," Tiny explained.

"Oh?"

"The cops grabbed me this morning, hung me around at the precinct two hours, asking dumb questions about that big ruby got hit."

"They're really leaning," Dortmunder agreed.

"One of them leaned too heavy," Tiny said. "Little redheaded guy. What you call your petty authority. He went too far."

"A cop, you mean."

"So he's a cop. There's still limits."

"I guess so," Dortmunder said.

"A friend of mine'll follow him home tonight," Tiny said, "to get me the address. He's on the four to twelve. Around one, I'll put on a ski mask and go to that guy's house and put his head in his holster."

"A ski mask," Dortmunder echoed. He was thinking how much good a ski mask would do to disguise this monster. In order to be effectively disguised, Tiny would have to put on, at a minimum, a three-room apartment.

The door opened again and Ralph Winslow returned, with Tiny's fresh drink and with a second man, a narrow sharp-faced type with bony shoulders and quick-moving eyes and that indefinable but unmistakable aura of a man just out of prison. "John Dortmunder," Winslow said, "Tiny Bulcher, this is Jim O'Hara."

"Whadaya say."

"Meetcha."

Winslow and O'Hara sat down. Tiny said, "Irish, huh?"

"That's right," O'Hara said.

"So's that little redheaded cop. The one I'm gonna mutilate tonight."

O'Hara looked at Tiny more alertly. "A cop? You're gonna beat on a cop?"

"He was impolite," Tiny said.

Dortmunder watched O'Hara absorbing Tiny Bulcher. Then the door opened once more, and they all looked up, and this time instead of Stan Murch it was Murch's Mom, a feisty little woman who drove a cab and was now in her working clothes: check slacks, leather jacket, and plaid cap. She looked hurried and impatient; speaking rapidly, she said, "Hello, all. Hello, John. Stan told me come by, tell you, the meeting's off."

"More impoliteness," Tiny said.

Dortmunder said, "What's up?"

"They arrested him," Murch's Mom said. "They arrested my Stan, on nothing at all."

"The police," Tiny grumbled, "are getting to become a nuisance."

"Stan says," his Mom said, "he'll call everybody again, set up another meeting. I gotta go, my cab's double-parked, there's cops all over the place."

"You can say that again," said Ralph Winslow.

However, she didn't. She merely left, moving fast.

"It's a hell of a homecoming," Jim O'Hara said. "I come back after three years upstate and there's a cop on every piece of pavement."

"It's that ruby," Tiny said.

"The Byzantine Fire," Winslow said. "Whoever grabbed that, he can retire."

"He should of retired before," Tiny said.

O'Hara said, "What retire? How does he convert it to cash? Nobody'll touch it."

Winslow nodded. "Yeah, you're right," he said. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"And in the meantime," Tiny said, "he's making trouble for everybody else, forcing me to spend valuable time teaching some cop good manners. You know what I'd do if I had that guy here?"

Dortmunder drained his glass and got to his feet. "See you all," he said.

"I'd pull him through that ring," Tiny said. He told Winslow and O'Hara, "You guys stick around. I don't like to drink alone."

Winslow and O'Hara watched wistfully as Dortmunder went away.