“Only if that’s her name,” the fourth regular said, and received massive frowns of bewilderment in response.
Rollo at last put down the spray can and faced Dortmunder. “It’s the thought that counts,” he said.
“You’re right about that.”
“You’ll be wanting the back room.”
“Sure. We’re gonna be the other bourbon, the vodka and red wine, the beer and salt, and the beer and salt’s Mom. I think she’s a beer, too.”
“She is,” Rollo agreed. A professional to his fingertips, he identified his customers exclusively by their choice of beverage. “I’ll give you the other bourbon’s glass,” he said, “and send everybody back when they get here. You’re the first.”
“I’m kind of the host,” Dortmunder said.
As Rollo went off to get glasses and ice and a bottle of Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—Our Own Brand, as it said on the label, the regulars spent some time trying to decide if it was Mary that was a grand old name or Ulysses S. Grant that was a grand old name. Ulysses S. Grant certainly sounded grander. Probably older, too.
Rollo brought over a round enameled metal Rheingold Beer tray containing two plain water glasses, a shallow ironstone bowl with ice cubes in it, and the alleged bourbon, which, beyond the brave statement of its label, was a muddy brown liquid that looked as if it might have been scooped from a river somewhere in Azerbaijan. “See me on the way out,” he advised.
“Sure,” Dortmunder said. “Merry exmas,” he added, and carried the tray past the regulars, most of whom were pretty sure at this point that Nerdy was not one of the original Seven Dwarfs. Dortmunder went on down beyond the end of the bar and down the hall past doors decorated with black metal dog silhouettes labeled POINTERS and SETTERS and past the phone booth, where a new string now dangled from the quarter slot, and on through the green door at the very back, into a small square room with a concrete floor. All the walls were completely covered from floor to ceiling by beer and liquor cases, leaving a minimal space in the middle for a battered old round table with a stained felt top that had once been pool-table green but now looked as though some Amsterdam Liquor Store bourbon had been poured all over it a long time ago and let dry. This table was surrounded by half a dozen armless wooden chairs.
This room had been dark when Dortmunder opened the door, but when he hit the switch beside the door, it all sprang to life, illuminated by one bare bulb under a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire. Dortmunder walked all around the table to sit in the chair that faced the door; the first arrival always did that. Setting the tray on the table, near his right hand, he shrugged out of his coat and let it drape behind him on the chair. Then he put two ice cubes into one of the glasses, poured muddy liquid on top, took a sip, and leaned back to gaze around the room in contentment. Small, cramped, windowless; what a nice place to be.
Tiny Bulcher appeared in the doorway. Barely visible in his left fist was a tall glass containing what looked like, but was not, cherry soda. He paused to cock his head and say, “Dortmunder. What’s that on your face?”
With his free hand, Dortmunder brushed at his face. “What, I got a smutch?”
“No,” Tiny said, coming in, moving around the table to put his glass at the place to Dortmunder’s left, “it almost looked like a smile.” He was wearing his World War I infantry coat again, which he dropped on the floor behind him, then sat down. “So what’s,” he said, picking up his glass, “with the giggling all at once? It ain’t like you.”
“Well, it coulda been I was thinking,” Dortmunder said, “that at last I know what I’m doing. Or maybe it’s just I’m somewhere at last that at least I should know what I’m doing because at least it’s the right place. Or maybe it’s just that Fitzroy and Irwin aren’t gonna be here.”
“So who is,” Tiny asked, “besides us?”
“Kelp, and Stan Murch, and I think Murch’s Mom.”
Tiny looked around at the table and the chairs. “You’re early,” he said, “which is right, and I’m on time.”
“So am I,” Kelp said, coming in, waving a thick manila envelope. “I brought the stuff,” he said. “Copies for all of us.” He took the chair to Dortmunder’s right, putting the envelope down there, shucking his coat, seating himself, reaching for the other glass on the tray.
“Which makes Murch late,” Tiny said. Tiny was known to disapprove of people who weren’t punctual.
“I wouldn’t be,” said a voice in the hall, approaching, “if we’d come the way I wanted to come.” Stan Murch appeared, walking briskly. “But no,” he said. “Whada they say? A boy should listen to his mother? Wrong again!”
“I couldn’t know there was gonna be an accident up ahead of us,” Murch’s Mom said, coming in behind her son. Both carried glasses of beer, and Murch also carried a salt shaker. Being a driver, he limited his alcohol intake to the point where his beer tended to go flat before he was finished with it, so from time to time he’d shake a little salt into it to bring the head right back up again.
“The accident wasn’t the point,” Murch said as he put his glass and shaker down beside Kelp. “Atlantic Avenue is the point,” he said.
“Hello, all,” Murch’s Mom said, electing to come over and sit beside Tiny instead of next to her son.
“Hello,” all said.
“Every known religion,” Murch went on, shucking out of his coat, “has some big-deal event or celebration or thing in December, and every known ethnic, too, and for every known religion and every known ethnic, there’s three other blocks of stores on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn that has everything especially for them, and in December on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, every known religion and every known ethnic is shopping, and not one in a million of those people, that came here from thousands of places that you don’t even know about, ever learned how to drive.”
Tiny said gently to Murch’s Mom, “Would you wanna close the door there, okay?”
“Sure,” Murch’s Mom said. “It was the accident,” she confided, and went over to shut the door.
Taking his seat, Murch said, “To drive on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in December is to make a serious statement that you don’t really wanna go anywhere.”
Tiny patted the air in Murch’s direction with one big palm. “Okay, Stan, thank you,” he said. “You weren’t that late.”
“Fine,” Murch said. “I was an obedient son, that’s what you get.”
They were all seated now as though the door were the television set they were going to watch. The chairs facing away from the door got very little use, all in all.
Dortmunder said, “Okay, what we got here, we got an ongoing situation that Murch and Murch’s Mom should be brought up-to-date on, so what it comes down to, for the benefit of the recent arrivals, we got a place to go into that’s loaded with stuff, out in the boonies, and while we’re there, we gotta get some hair from a hairbrush. Or a comb.”
Murch and his Mom continued to look at Dortmunder, who considered himself finished. Murch said, “That’s it? We’re up-to-date now?”
“I don’t feel,” Murch’s Mom said, “like I’m fully aboard here, somehow. How about you, Stanley?”
Murch, who’d forgotten about the horrors of Atlantic Avenue, shook his head and said, “No, Mom, I gotta admit. Aboard? No.”
Dortmunder sighed. “We gotta go through all this DNA and the Indians and all this?”
“I think so,” Murch’s Mom said.
“I’m feeling kind of at a loss without it,” Murch said.
Kelp said, “John, let me take a whack at it.”