Why Me?

28

When Dortmunder got off the phone with Chief Inspector Maloney's (he also thought it was spelled that way) secretary—an odd-sounding guy for a cop—he was so drenched in perspiration that he took a shower in Andy Kelp's bathroom, emerging clad in Andy's robe (too short) to find a note on the kitchen table: "Out for lunch. Back in 10 min." So he sat with the Daily News and read about the manhunt for himself until Kelp came back with Kentucky Fried Chicken and a six-pack. "You're looking more relaxed already," Kelp said.

"I am not," Dortmunder told him. "I look like somebody with a disease. I look like somebody's been in a dungeon for a hundred years. I've seen myself in your mirror, and I know what I look like, which is exactly what I am: a man that made Tiny Bulcher mad."

"Look on the bright side," Kelp advised, distributing beer and chicken legs here and there on the kitchen table. "We're fighting back. We're working on a plan."

"If that's the bright side," Dortmunder said, cutting his thumb as he opened a beer can, "there's no point looking at it."

"While I was out," Kelp said, touching all the chicken legs in the bucket before making his choice, "I set things up for the phone call."

"I don't even like to think about it."

Kelp ate chicken. "It's a piece of cake."

Dortmunder frowned at the kitchen clock. "Half an hour." He picked up a chicken leg, studied it, put it down again. "I can't eat." Standing, he said, "I'll go get dressed."

"Drink your beer," Kelp suggested. "It's got food value."

So Dortmunder took his beer away and got dressed, and when he came back Kelp had eaten all the chicken legs but one. "I saved that for you," he said, pointing at the thing, "in case you changed your mind."

"Thanks a lot." Dortmunder opened another beer without cutting himself and gnawed a bit on the chicken leg.

Getting to his feet, Kelp said, "Lemme show you my access. Bring the leg."

Kelp's bedroom was behind the kitchen. Carrying the chicken leg and the new beer, Dortmunder followed him back there and into the closet, which turned out to have a false rear wall made of a single piece of Sheetrock. Removing this, revealing a brick wall with an irregular opening about five feet high and a foot and a half wide, Kelp grasped two suction-cup handles attached to a piece of wallboard beyond the bricks and did a complicated little lift-tug-twist-push which made that wallboard recede, exposing a dim, crowded-looking space beyond.

Kelp took a step through the hole into this space, still grasping the wallboard by the suction-cup handles, and twisted his body sidewise to get through the narrow opening in the bricks. Dortmunder watched him, dubious, but when Kelp was all the way through with no alarms or shouts or other hooraw, Dortmunder followed, slithering through into an obvious warehouse, lined with rows of rough-plank shelves and bins, all piled high with large or small cardboard cartons. Gray light hovered in the air from distant grimy windows.

Kelp, sliding the wallboard segment back into its slot, whispered, "We got to be quiet now. There's workers down at the front of the building."

"You mean now? There's people in here now?"

"Well, sure," Kelp said. "It's Friday, right? A working day. C'mon."

Kelp led the way down the nearest aisle, Dortmunder tiptoeing after. Kelp moved with absolute assurance even when the echoing sound of semidistant voices was heard, and eventually Dortmunder followed him through a windowed door into a smallish room where telephones and telephone equipment were displayed on tiny walnutish shelves on orange pegboard fronting all four walls. "Here we go," Kelp said, the compleat salesman. "Phones here, add-ons there, recording and playback equipment over there."

"Andy," Dortmunder said, "let's do it and get it over with."

"Well, make your selection," Kelp told him. "Whadaya want? Here we got a nice pink Princess, light in the dial, remember the Princess?"

"I remember the Princess," Dortmunder agreed. "You couldn't dial it, and you couldn't hang it up."

"Not one of our best designs," Kelp admitted. "Now, over here we got something Swedish. I notice this particular model is avocado, but you're not limited in color, we got every color you want. Here, give this a heft."

Dortmunder, having put down his beer can with the chicken leg balanced atop it, found himself holding the avocado something Swedish. It looked like minimalist modern sculpture, shaped somewhat like a horse's neck, curving and narrowing up from a not-quite-round base, then arcing at the top into what was apparently the part you listened to. And the little black holes down near the base were probably where you talked. Turning this object upside down, Dortmunder saw the dial on the bottom, surrounding a large red button. He pushed the button, then released it.

"Very popular," Kelp said, "with the trendy set. One little warning, though—if you put it down to like get a pencil, light a cigarette, you break the connection."

"Break the connection? I don't follow."

"It's like hanging up," Kelp explained. "That red button on the bottom hangs it up."

"So if I'm talking on this thing," Dortmunder said, "I can't put it down because then I'll hang up."

"You have to put it down on its side."

Dortmunder put the thing down on its side. It rolled off the shelf and fell on the floor.

"Then," Kelp said, turning away from the Swedish something, "we've got this little number from England. Very lightweight, very advanced design."

Dortmunder frowned at this new option, sitting like a praying mantis on its shelf. It was shaped more or less like a real phone, but it was smaller and colored two shades of avocado and made from the same kind of plastic as model Stukas and Stutzes. Also, it didn't have any rounded surfaces, just flat surfaces that met at funny angles. Dortmunder picked up the receiver and closed his hand around it and the receiver disappeared; a little bit of plastic stuck out of Dortmunder's mitt at each end, like segments of a mouse on both sides of a cat's smile. He opened his hand and looked at how close the ear-part and the mouth-part were, then held it tentatively to his cheek, then frowned at Kelp and said, "This is for people with tiny heads."

"You get used to it," Kelp assured him. "I've got one of those in the hall closet."

"In case you're hanging up your coat when the phone rings."

"Sure."

Dortmunder poked the other part of this English number with his finger, planning to dial it, but the phone jittered away as though ticklish. He pursued it as far as the wall, where he got halfway through dialing a «6» when the phone loused him up by turning with him. "You need two hands to dial it," he objected. "Just like the Princess."

"It is better," Kelp conceded, "on incoming calls."

"From the Munchkins. Andy, all I want's a phone."

"How about this one shaped like Mickey Mouse?"

"A phone," Dortmunder said.

"We haven't even talked push buttons."

"Andy," Dortmunder said, "do you know what a phone looks like?"

"Sure. But take a look at this one in its own briefcase, built right in. Carry it anywhere, plug it in. Here's one with a blackboard on it, you can take messages, write them down with chalk."

While Kelp continued to point this way and that, calling Dortmunder's attention to things of no interest, Dortmunder picked up his chicken leg and beer, chewed and drank, and scanned the orange wall, searching, searching…until finally, on the lowest shelf way over to the right, he saw a phone. A real phone. Black, with a dial. Shaped like a phone. "That," Dortmunder said.

Kelp paused in his contemplation of a seven-eighths-size modern facsimile of an old wall-type crank phone. Looking at Dortmunder, he said, "What?"

"That." Dortmunder pointed the chicken leg at the real phone.

"That? John, whadaya want with that?"

"I'll talk on it."

"John," Kelp said, "even bookmakers wouldn't use a phone like that."

"That's the one I want," Dortmunder said.

Kelp considered him, then sighed. "You sure can get stubborn sometimes," he said. "But, if that's what you want…"

"It is."

Gazing sadly at all those rejected wonders, Kelp shrugged and said, "Okay, then, that's what you'll get. The customer is always right."