They both hold irritating part-time jobs, though at this point there’s no need to do so. They had these jobs before things got lucrative and, because of a fear they don’t understand, they haven’t quit. They know that seeing someone go off to work on a regular schedule keeps any neighbors from being too interested and the routine keeps their minds calm and occupied for the few days before any gig.
Yuk Tang works as an aide in an old-age home out on Main South. Darcey drives a shuttle van for the Foundation for Experimental Biochemistry. Yuk Fang pushes around a cart twenty hours a week, placing tiny cups of ginger ale and apple juice into palsied hands. He pulls lit cigarettes out of sleeping mouths and helps pick up people who have slid out of chairs to the floor. Darcey drives a two-year-old silver Ford van back and forth, every twenty minutes, down the same boring stretch of tree-lined road, dropping off and picking up people who, for all he knows, could be world famous. They all carry large manila envelopes and ask about the weather. They’re condescending without meaning to be. About ninety percent of them are Asian, which amuses and annoys Darcey at the same time. It makes him look funny at Yuk Tang sometimes, even in the middle of a job.
Lately though, Yuk and Darcey’s luck won’t let up. It’s good and it’s steady. It’s like they can do no wrong. Storm windows are missing from the shrubbery side of the house. Rolex watches are left out on the bathroom vanity. Ten hundred-dollar bills, all brand new and banded together, are found by accident underneath a thirteen-inch Trinitron when they move it off its stand. Street lights are out. Dogs have died or been shipped down to Florida. It’s getting scary, it’s so damned easy.
Then there’s a moment in this lawyer’s place up in Windsor Hills. Because things have been so sweet, Darcey and Yuk Tang have been pushing it up in the Hills. They’ve talked about setting a monthly limit on jobs in the Hills. They kicked numbers back and forth on the way to this lawyer’s house. Yuk Tang wanted to play it simple, a given number of houses in the area in any thirty-day period. Darcey, thinking of his club, figured it would be better to work up until they hit an agreed gross. They decided nothing and drove the last block to the job in silence.
They’d been given the word on the house two days before. Attorney and Mrs. Bennett stopped at the Avondale Animal Hotel on their way to the airport. Darcey drove past the Bennett home after work and filled out his checklist. He drove by again with Yuk Tang and they spent a few minutes discussing it over a small dinner plate at the Grille. Though neither one will acknowledge it, they know they didn’t give this gig the attention it requires. But it’s hard when things have been coming so easy. It’s like they’re working with the guardian angel of thieves and he doesn’t want a cut.
Then, in the midst of lifting a Toshiba receiver out of its slot in an enormous media wall, Darcey’s beeper goes off. He nearly has a coronary and drops the receiver and it breaks on the hardwood floor. Yuk Tang runs down from the bedrooms, glares at him in the doorway, and motions a thumb outside. They leave with half the potential take. In the car — a semi-restored MG — Yuk Tang, ever the minimalist, says only, “You’re not thinking,” and Darcey comes back with a loud “Screw you, Bruce Lee. Find me a phone booth.”
There’s a tension that grows in the quiet. Yuk Tang only recently confided in Darcey that Bruce Lee was a real spiritual hero to him, that at night he said what Darcey might consider prayers to Bruce Lee. Darcey, in the driver’s seat, knows he’s screwed up for the first time since their streak began. It’s no big problem. No one is hurt or pinched. But the stupidity of bringing the pager on a job has brought him next door to panic. He knows what to do on a job like he knows his own name. Like he knows how to breathe.
Darcey swings into a drugstore lot and uses the phone outside. The page turns out to be from Scalley, who’s excited and confused: He’s got some information. He’s not sure Darcey’s interested. He’s talking second-hand tip here. He needs a few dollars. He hasn’t eaten in two days. He thinks he has a fever. He’s leaving tonight on a plane for Ensenada or Buenos Aires.
Darcey has to scream into the phone to get him to quiet down. He tells Scalley to be at the Menard Diner in twenty minutes, jumps back in the car, and starts to head for the Menard without consulting Yuk Tang. Yuk Tang, not normally a hateful or violent man, daydreams as they drive, too fast, to the meeting. He imagines Bruce Lee holding Darcey above his head. Darcey’s terrified body parallel with the ground. Bruce Lee’s arms expanding with muscle and tension, waiting to snap this careless thief in two.
The Menard is one of the best of the many diners in Quinsigamond, always clean and almost never crowded. They sit in the wooden booth near the exit for close to an hour, getting wired on too many coffees. Darcey would like to talk, but thinks Yuk Tang might take this as an apology and a sign of weakness. A kind of peace gets made when Darcey orders a veal cutlet sandwich and Yuk Tang puts half the money on the table and says, “I don’t think your friend is coming.”
Darcey nods and pushes the money back at Yuk Tang.
“I don’t think we would have wanted what he had to offer,” says Yuk Tang.
“Little hard to say at this point,” Darcey says, cracking his knuckles and immediately regretting it. “I didn’t think you ate meat.”
“I’m a flexible man,” Yuk Tang says.
Darcey nods again, readies himself, and says, “About the crap with the pager...”
“I don’t think we need to talk about that,” says Yuk Tang. “Am I right?”
“You’re right,” Darcey says, and he slides out of their booth and up to the counter to hurry along the sandwich.
At the end of the counter, on the last seat on the left, sits an elderly man that he hadn’t noticed before. As he looks at the man, he thinks the guy might be blind. The man’s eyes have that rigid, unmoving stare. The man holds a full soup spoon an inch from his lips but doesn’t blow on it or sip at it.
The fry-boy hauls up the cutlet from the grease and Darcey’s tongue goes a little wet. He’s about to ask for two large milks when the blind man, the old man he thinks is blind, says, “Would you be Mr. Darcey?” in a quiet voice you’d use to talk to someone next to you. The voice contains an accent that gives the man away as a foreigner, but won’t get more specific.
Darcey looks over his shoulder to Yuk Tang, who holds out his right hand, palm down, like this were some signal between the two of them. Darcey turns back to the old man and, like he’s been called before the Pope, he walks down the aisle and slides onto the stool next to him.
“That’s right. I’m Darcey,” he says.
“I’m George Lewis,” the old man says and sinks his spoonful of soup back in his bowl, uneaten. The name doesn’t sound foreign and as he turns his head, Darcey wonders why he had the impression this guy was blind.
“Do I know you, Mr. Lewis?” Darcey asks.
“You do look familiar,” Lewis says, “but I really doubt we know each other. I haven’t been in Quinsigamond in years. Actually, I’m just passing through tonight.”
He looks at Darcey’s face and decides to continue. “I’m really just an accidental messenger,” he says and pulls a long white envelope from the pocket of his raincoat.
“From a friend of yours, I assume,” he says, “a Mr. Scalley. He asked me to say that he had to leave and to give you this.”
The envelope has been folded over and Darce is written across it in what looks like a child’s handwriting.
“I’ve been here awhile,” Darcey says, even but firm.
Lewis stirs his thick orange soup and after a minute says, “Yes, well, you don’t look a bit like your friend described you.”
The night’s not going well. Darcey wishes he’d just remembered to leave the damn pager on his bureau. He feels as if forgetting about the pager is the first domino in a long row, just falling over. Scalley would be number two. George Lewis, with his eyes and his voice, he might be three.