They all turned toward him at once. “Huh?”
The old guy waved his arms. “Drag him out through the crack in the window. Bury him in the backyard in a manila envelope. He knows about us.”
“He knows what about us?” asked Dortmunder reasonably.
Everybody nodded and turned back to Ken, still all smiles. The mean-looking old guy lapsed into moody silence.
Ken lowered his window another fraction of an inch and said, “Ngyou dough wanna arngue?”
Andy grinned amiably at him. “Argue with a fluent guy like you? I wouldn’t dare. Have a happy. Drive it in good health.” Then he leaned closer, more confidentially, to say, “Listen; the brake’s a little soft.”
The other vehicles were all out of the way now, but people kept milling around back there. The van driver returned from moving his van to lean down by Ken’s window and say, “You heading back to the city? What you do, take the Palisades. Forget the Tappan Zee.”
Ken couldn’t stand it. Trying hopelessly to regain some sense of control over his own destiny, he stared around, grabbed the tambourine out of the backseat, and shoved it into the van driver’s hand.
“Here,” he said, “this ain’t ghu bank’s.” For some reason, it was probably the clearest sentence of his life.
The blond guy stood down by the sidewalk and gestured for Ken to back it up, so he could guide him out to the street. Ken put the Cadillac in reverse again, and the woman from the porch came over to say, “You want a glass of water before you go?”
“Gno!” Ken screamed. “Gno! Jus lemme outta gnere!”
They did, too. Three or four of them gave him useful hand signals while he backed out to the street, and eight of the nine stood in the street to wave goodbye; a thing that has never happened to a carhawk before. Only the old guy glared after him with hate-filled eyes. Only the old guy knew how to act.
Ken had his Cadillac, but as he drove away, he just didn’t feel very happy about it. Much of the fun had gone out of the transaction. There were right ways and wrong ways to do things. A repoman took a car, the people driving it resisted. That was the way it had always been, that was the way it would always be.
But not with these cheesecakes.
Halfway back to the city, however, the Toyota behind him on the towbar, Ken brightened. First Gyppo blood for him, right? He turned on the radio and started to drum his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music. He’d finally figured out what was wrong with those screwy people who’d just given him the Caddy without any argument.
They were crooks; and you just couldn’t trust crooks. Crooks never did what was right and proper. Only the old guy who’d wanted to kill him had it right.
Back in Jersey, there was a message from Bart Heslip. Meet him and Larry Ballard in Grand Island, Nebraska, as quick as he could get there. Drive all day, all night if he had to.
Ken checked out and was on the road twenty minutes later in Pearso Stokes’s new silver Eldorado. What a great road car for eating up the miles!
Chapter forty-three
Late that night, as Ken sped west through moonlit darkness toward Nebraska, O’B was getting himself arrested on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi just south of Stupidville.
It came about this way.
He arrived from Florida that afternoon to find that Giselle had reserved rooms for everyone at the Bide-A-Wee Motel.
But Dan Kearny had not checked in yet.
Bart Heslip had not checked in yet.
Ken Warren had not checked in yet.
Larry Ballard had checked in the day before, but then had left again, saying he would be back “in a day or two.”
Giselle Marc had checked in but was nowhere around. No message. So O’B, at loose ends, did what he did best.
He played liar’s dice in the Pirate’s Landing (“Choice Steaks, Cocktails”) — “I’ll drink to that” — played horse in the Blue Moon Cafe (“DW — Dipped Walleye — Our Specialty”) — “I’ll drink to that” — shot pool at Kreuzer’s Sportsman’s Hall (“You Catch It — We Cook It”) — “I’ll drink to that” — played shuffleboard at the Gallery (“Where the Elite Meet to Eat”) — “I’ll drink to that” — and at nearly midnight had a hamburger at the Marina Mooring (“Deck Dining May to September”) — “I’ll even drink to that.”
Alas, with all those drinks in him, it seemed to O’B like a good idea to scout out the huge conclave of Gypsies camped in Dieter Braun’s field a mile south of town. Local kids liked to go up to the bluffs overlooking the field and park, he had learned, but the cops had been chasing them away because of reported “scandalous doings” in the encampment below.
O’B, knowing that the Gypsy society is among the most rigorously modest on earth, felt the tales of scantily clad dusky women parading around campfires was more adolescent wishful thinking than anything else. The Town Meeting scheduled for tomorrow night at the Elks Lodge would examine, he was sure, the Gypsies’ endless thieving rather than any scandalous doings.
Anyway, O’B staggered back to the motel and got his car, by trial and error found the narrow dirt road winding through the hardwoods up to the big open-view area overlooking the moon-silvered Mississippi. There were no other cars.
Knee-high in sweet-smelling grass, he scoped the encampment below the edge of the bluff with a pair of binoculars he’d found in the glove box. There actually was enough light from campfires and the moon to let him pick out several new Cadillacs beside the tents and trailers. Easy pickings for DKA tomorrow...
Headlights transfixed him, a harsh voice snapped, “Hold it right there, mister!”
O’B turned, squinted into the lights, holding the hand with the binoculars up to shield his eyes. Two burly uniformed policemen moved in on him from either side of the headlights.
“Tryna get a look at them Gypsy women?” demanded one cop.
O’B started to reply with something zesty — like, What are those binoculars in your hands for, Officers? — then remembered how much he’d had to drink. Whoa! Easy, hoss!
“Think we oughtta roust the bastard, Lloyd?”
“Let’s let him go this time, Frank...”
They waited as he walked back to his car — thank God for the uneven ground, it would account for any slight unsteadiness of gait — got in, and drove away. To find a track into a nearby cow pasture where he hid his car under the hardwoods, killed the lights and motor, and waited.
Roust him, indeed! Let the bastard go, indeed! They had started to believe the tales of the kids they’d sent home, that was it, and wanted him out of there so they could spy on the Gypsy women. But he was here on a professional mission! It all got his Irish up, begorra! He’d carry out that mission!
Of course a little basic caution was called for. Some camouflage, that was the ticket. And he knew just where to find it. Kalia Uwanowich, that Gypsy scamp, must have had a sideline for times when the bogus roofing trade was slow: O’B had found a trunkful of “novelty items” and “marital aids” while itemizing the personal property for his condition report on the Allante.
Ten minutes later the police cruiser went by, heading back to town. A little sober voice deep inside whispered that O’B should just return to the motel and go to bed — tomorrow was another day. But the booze was positively shouting in his ear, Action! Action!
Chuckling to himself, O’B opened the trunk on its spate of thoroughly ingenious — if often grotesque — devices from Japan to plug into auto cigarette lighters, insert into various body cavities, and the like. There were two cartons of explicit photo magazines from Australia (“XXX Nonviolent Erotica, All Models Over 18”). And, perfect for O’b’s purposes, two boxed Anatomically Correct Life-size Inflatable Latex Sex Dolls (“You Need Never Do It Alone Again”) made right here in the good old U.S. of A. One blonde, one brunette.