“What are you—”
“I’ll get back to you,” Druff said.
“Hey there!” said Jerry Rector.
“Will we see each other again?” Miss Glorio asked.
“I’ll get back to you. No, really. I will,” he said, and replaced the telephone.
“An offer is on the table here,” Dan said.
“Are you giving me to understand I can’t leave? That I haven’t your permission?”
“No, of course not,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said.
“What, are you kidding us, you big lug?” said Jerry Rector.
“Jerry’s right,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs told him. “Aren’t I the party who warned against conducting business on the Sabbath?”
“Ham’s got something there, bub,” Jerry Rector said. “There are certain things that just aren’t done.”
“Which reminds me,” said Ham ‘n’ Eggs, switching sides, “there are psychiatrists in this town who’ll write you prescriptions for dinette sets, bedroom suites, expensive cars.”
“For custom-made suits,” said Jerry Rector. “Bespoke trousers of cavalry twill.”
“For ’round-the-world cruises,” Ham ‘n’ Eggs said. “You take it to your travel agent to be filled. She sells you a ticket, and you just take it off your taxes.”
“There are bugged confessionals,” Dan said, joining in. “Certain priests will sell you tapes.”
“And lawyers,” said Ham, “who go into the tank for the sake of the look on their clients’ faces when the jury counts them out.”
“Yeah,” Dan said, “they love that look.”
“Will you listen to us? We’re giving a City Commissioner of Streets civics lessons.”
“What you can get away with,” Ham said. “What the traffic will bear. Testing the limits. Pushing the envelope. When there are no more frontiers, you make them up. You strive, you stretch, you reach for the stars.”
“I heard him say ‘rugs,’ ” Dan said. “I distinctly did. Clear as a bell. He could have been in the next room.”
“He was in the next room, silly. That’s when we walked in on him.”
“But I can leave,” Druff said, just checking. “I’m free to go.”
“Dan,” Jerry Rector said, “there’s still an offer on the table.”
“Table it,” Dan said generously.
“Where’s his hat? Did he have a hat? Did you have a hat?”
“No.” (Feeling humiliated now, glad his girlfriend wasn’t there to see this, glad Rose Helen wasn’t, Mikey, Dick the Spy, Doug the Passive- Aggressive, his cronies and cohorts, the loyal opposition. More than a little downcast, in fact, to be himself on the scene. Well, he was outgunned. Three against one. Four, if you counted the black beadle with his keys to the closets where the brooms were buried, the mops and pails and wringers. Wondering where his powers had fled, the old MacGuffin confidence, backed, he would have thought, by just ages of tradition. Or perhaps his MacGuffin was merely magical, of the self-limiting kind, subject to conditions, stipulations, 5/50 arrangements like a warranty on a car. Subject, that is, to a commitment never to abuse the privilege of just having a MacGuffin, honoring his obligations to it, holding up his end. Maybe he wasn’t worthy of one. Maybe he wasn’t noble enough. Maybe Miss Glorio was a test he had failed. Having sweet truck with her not only a betrayal of his wife but, in a way, advantage taken of one already on her uppers physically, a little old lady practically, hoary-haired, a woman who almost couldn’t keep a battery in her hearing aids, of recent oddball speech patterns and edgy, jumpy attitudes and with a touch, too, of this just perceptible chronic limp. So a question of honor, finally, a matter of morals, of having — quite literally — been found wanting.
(But whatever. His courage was gone. He felt the absence of his breezy insouciance, the wisecracks and eloquent sort of gabardine he’d claimed to speak — and that they spoke better than he did. The universal language of toughs: “Where’s his hat? Did he have a hat? Did you have a hat?” Well, he wasn’t surprised. “No,” he had told them. They’d taken it from him. Ball in their court now, hat on their head.)
So what was he supposed to do with the leftovers? (That’s about what he asked himself now, that’s how he felt, as if he’d completely overestimated the appetites of guests at a party.) What was he to do with the leftovers, the leads and clues and flashy circumstantials, if he’d come to the part where his energy flagged?
Ol’ Bob Druff. Livin’ the Tammany life now. Routine, laid back, MacGuffinless. Yet what a way he’d come!
Here it ain’t been but a day, he thought, since he’d first surmised the MacGuffin and just look where it had taken him. His first tentative suspicion confirmed, connected to his second tentative suspicion, that one to a third and that to a fourth and so on. By God, he might have been hooking a rug! Because everything was linked, everything. If he had a sidekick (just about all that was missing here) he would tell him so. Begin with an initial observation. Make an observation, would tell him, any observation, any observation at all. Like one guy leading another through a card trick. Everything inevitable and conjoined in the vast, limitless network of things, merged in the world’s absolute ecology. There was, it seemed, no such thing as a loose end. Not in this life, there wasn’t. The universal synergy. In the end, thought our City Commissioner of Streets, all roads led.
And because they did, Druff, on the street again, who’d just been thinking, hadn’t he, of a sidekick, and what he might pass on to such a fellow if he had one, found himself — because hadn’t he been promised lunch (filet mignon, fresh vegetables, wine, strawberries out of season), which had never materialized, incidentally, and could it have been even three minutes ago he’d been thinking what could be done with the leftovers? — going into this little coffee shop where he sat in a booth wondering while he waited for his food to come — his rare hamburger, his order of fries, his coffee and pie à la mode — whether he should use the pay phone in the entryway to call Dick.
He signaled his waitress.
“Miss,” he said, “do me a favor, will you? There’s this guy I have to call, but, well, to be honest, I’m a little concerned that if I get up and phone him you’ll bring the food while I’m gone and my burger and fries will be cold and all dried out by the time I get back.”
“No problem,” she said. “I’ll watch you through the glass. I’ll wait until I see you’re off the phone before I bring your order.”
“Oh, hey, thanks, that’s very kind,” said Druff, perfectly sincere, on his own turf again, back, that is, with folks who’d never tag him, who couldn’t lay a glove on him, touched, actually moved, by the kindness of shockable, susceptible people. “I appreciate that. I really do.” (This part of the universal synergy too.) And with difficulty leveraged himself out of the booth (the quarters always too close in these places — even for a chap dropping into his clothing — their shallow seats and steep backs, the unyielding Formica tabletop in its wraparound metal trim) and made his way to the pay phone between the lunchroom’s heavy inner and outer glass doors.
“No, I’m sorry,” the woman said, “you must have the wrong number.”
He quoted the number he’d called.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “There’s no one here by that name.”
Surprised, he checked it in the directory. Though he knew Dick’s number. He knew Dick’s number. Hadn’t he occasion to call it a hundred times a year? Sure enough. It was Dick’s number all right.