“I know what you mean.” Penny lay down beside him. “The Japs make seats and spaces between seats that suit them, but they’re too damn cramped for Americans. I’m not a great big gal, but I’m not teeny-tiny like that, either.”
He reached out and let his hand rest, almost as if by accident, on her leg. One thing led to another, and then to another after that: both of them, worn out by long travel and other, happier exertions, fell asleep on that big, comfortable bed. When Rance woke up, he heard the shower going. It stopped a couple of minutes later. Penny came out, wrapped in a white hotel towel. “Oh, good,” she said when she saw his eyes were open. “Now I don’t have to shake you.”
“You’d better not.” Sitting up made Rance’s ruined shoulder yelp, but he did it anyhow. “What time is it?” Asking her was easier than looking at the clock on the nightstand.
“Half past six,” she answered. “Why don’t you spruce up, too? Then we can go downstairs and get ourselves some supper.” As if to spur him out of bed, she let the towel drop.
“Okay,” he said, groping for his stick when he would sooner have been groping her. But soap and hot water were good in their own way. After endless hours in that airplane, he felt filmed with grime. Scraping sandy, gray-streaked stubble off his chin and cheeks made him look less like a stumblebum and more like an up-and-coming ginger dealer.
Everybody in the Vintage Room, the Four Seasons’ restaurant, looked like somebody, whether he was or not. Whiskies arrived with commendable speed. The steaks Rance and Penny ordered took a lot longer, though. The service was courteous and attentive, but it was slow. After Japanese food on the airliner, Auerbach’s stomach seemed empty as outer space. He finally lost patience. When his waiter walked by, he growled, “What are you doing, waiting for the calf to grow up so you can butcher it?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” The waiter didn’t sound more than professionally sorry. “I’m sure your supper will be ready before too very long.” Off he went. The restaurant wasn’t crowded, but things didn’t move very fast even so.
A couple of tables over, a fellow with a splendid graying handlebar mustache waved for his own waiter. “I say,” he boomed in tones unmistakably upper-crust British, “has everyone in your kitchen died of old age?”
“Oh, good,” Penny said with a laugh. “We’re not the only ones who can’t get fed.”
“Not the only ones starving to death, you mean,” Rance grumbled. He studied the Englishman. After a moment, he grunted softly. “God damn me to hell and throw me in a frying pan if that’s not Basil Roundbush. I haven’t seen him in years, but that’s got to be him. Couldn’t be anybody else, by Jesus.”
“That ginger smuggler you have connections with?” Penny asked.
“The very same,” Auerbach said. “Now what the devil is he doing here? I hadn’t heard that he’d given up on England.” He paused. “For that matter, with the Nazis down for the count, there’s no point in giving up on England, you know?” His eyes narrowed. “Maybe he’s here on business.”
“Yeah.” Penny’s eyes lit up. “Maybe we could do some business if he is. Finding somebody like that-we wouldn’t need to chase around after locals with connections. It could save us a lot of time.”
“You’re right. Money, too.” Rance grabbed his stick and used it to get to his feet. He limped over to the table where Basil Roundbush was sitting and sketched a salute. “Long as you’re not getting fed, either, want to not get fed along with my lady friend and me?”
Roundbush’s gaze swung toward him. The Englishman was so handsome, Rance wondered if he ought to let him anywhere near Penny. But it was done now. And, no slower than if he’d seen Rance day before yesterday, Roundbush said, “Auerbach, as I live and breathe.” He sprang to his feet and shook Rance’s hand. “What are you doing in this benighted Land Without Supper?”
“This and that. We can talk about it, if you want to,” Auerbach said. “And I might ask you the same question. I will ask you the same question, when you get over there.”
“I hope my waiter eventually realizes where I’ve gone-or even that I’ve gone.” But Roundbush grabbed his own drink and followed Rance back to his table. He bowed over Penny’s hand and kissed it. She did everything but giggle like a schoolgirl. Auerbach had known she would. Sourly, he waved to his waiter for another drink. Roundbush’s waiter came by the empty table and stared in blank dismay. More handwaving got that straightened out. The dinners did eventually arrive.
Over what even a Texan had to admit was pretty good beef, Rance asked, “And what are you doing in Canada?”
“Taking care of a nasty little spot of business,” Basil Roundbush answered. “Chap named David Goldfarb-fellow wouldn’t do what he was supposed to. Can’t have that go on: bad for business, don’t you know?”
“Goldfarb?” Rance’s ears pricked up. “Not the fellow you sent down to Marseille?”
“Why, yes. How the devil could you know that?” Before Auerbach spoke, Roundbush answered his own question: “Don’t tell me you were the people the Lizards had involved in that fiasco. Small world, isn’t it?”
“Too damn small, sometimes,” Rance said.
“It could be, it could be.” Basil Roundbush waved airily. “In any case, the bloke’s not wanted anything to do with us since. He knows rather more than he should, and so…” He shrugged. “Unfortunate, but that’s how life is sometimes.”
“You ask me, you ought to leave him alone,” Rance said. “You asked for trouble, sending a Jew down into the Reich. I’d give you what-for, too, you tried that on me.”
Penny kicked him under the table. He wondered why, till he remembered they might be able to sell Roundbush their ginger. Well, that was water over the dam now. The Englishman gave him a frosty stare. “I’m afraid your opinion doesn’t much concern me, old man. I intend doing what suits me, not what suits you.”
Rance’s temper kindled. He didn’t care who the limey was, or how big a wheel. Nobody brushed him off like that. Nobody. “You can goddamn well leave him alone, mister, or you’ll answer to me.”
Penny kicked him again, harder. He ignored that, too. He’d thought she would make trouble here, and now he was doing it. Roundbush didn’t laugh in his face, but he came close. He said, “If you think your foolish words will do the slightest thing toward changing my mind, old man, I must tell you you’re mistaken.”
“If you think I’m just talking, old man, you’re full of shit,” Rance replied. Penny did her best to take his leg off at the ankle. The Lizards had done their best to take it off at the thigh. He wasn’t afraid of anything, not any more, not even-maybe especially not-of dying. It gave him an odd sort of freedom. He intended to make the most of it.
Whenever the telephone rang these days, whether at home or at the Saskatchewan River Widget Works, David Goldfarb answered it with a certain amount of apprehension. He also answered it with pencil and paper handy, to record the phone numbers of callers. That wouldn’t do him any good with Basil Roundbush, of course, but it might help with local hired muscle, if the Englishman chose to use any. Goldfarb had no way of guessing how many scrambler sets Roundbush had brought along.
“Saskatchewan River Widgets,” he said now, pencil poised. “David Goldfarb speaking.”
“Hello, Goldfarb. We met once upon a time, a long ways away from here. Do you remember?” It wasn’t Roundbush’s voice. It wasn’t a British voice at all. That accent was American, with an odd twang. The fellow on the other end of the line also spoke in a harsh rasp, as if he hadn’t had a cigarette out of his mouth for five minutes since the day he was born.
More than anything else, that rasp reminded David Goldfarb of who the caller had to be. “Marseille,” he blurted, and then, “You’re one of the Yanks the Lizards used to try to nab Pierre Dutourd.”