Ruth lived four blocks from the office, and he supposed they were heading there, though he didn't much care where they were heading so long as they got there quick. His feet were freezing, and his ears throbbed. He lowered his head as a fierce gust of wind knifed the avenue, took one hand from his pocket to clutch his homburg tightly onto his head, holding it there as the wind raged. His coat flapped wildly about his knees, his trousers were flattened against his legs, he coughed bitterly and hung on to his hat, pushing against the wind, trying to keep his footing on the slippery pavement. The wind died momentarily, and he took a deep breath and raised his head and then stopped dead in his tracks because the girls were directly ahead of him on the corner, not fifty feet away.
A tan Cadillac was parked at the curb, its engine running, white fumes billowing from its exhaust. The driver of the car had leaned over on the front seat toward the window closest to the curb, which was open. Both Ruth and Chickie, vapor pluming from their mouths, were slightly bent as they talked to the man in the car, snatches of sound rising, carrying unintelligibly on the wind to where Sidney stood rooted to the sidewalk. He watched a moment longer, and then realized how vulnerable his position was. Ducking into a doorway, he stared at the Cadillac from his new vantage point, watching as Ruth opened the front door and got onto the seat beside the man driving. She reached behind her almost immediately to unlock the back door, and Chickie opened the door and climbed in. Sidney blinked. The car idled at the curb a moment longer, and then gunned away in a burst of power, skid chains clanging.
Sidney emerged from the doorway and watched the car as it went up the avenue and out of sight.
In a moment, the wind rose again.
Leo Kessler was wearing an overlarge red robe, belted loosely at the waist. Beneath the robe, he wore a ribbed undershirt with shoulder straps, and red-and-white check undershorts with black piping on either leg. He had taken off his shoes and replaced them with fleece-lined slippers, but he was still wearing black socks supported by yellow and black garters. Every now and again, he dipped his nose into the brandy snifter in his hands, and then looked up at Sam Genitori, who was outlining what had happened that day in court. "Mmm-hmmm," Leo said, "mmm-hmmm," and then dipped his nose into the brandy snifter again, and looked up at Sam, and rose and walked to the windows and then walked back to his easy chair angled before the marble fireplace in his apartment on East 57th Street, and made himself comfortable, looking down at his long hairy legs and flashy garters, and nodding, and saying "Mmmm-mmm, mmm-hmmm," and then sipping a little brandy again.
"So I told him just where he could go," Sam said. "You got any more of that brandy?"
"Help yourself," Leo said.
"Damn egotistical jackass," Sam said, and poured some brandy into a shot glass.
"I think you were a little too rough with him," Leo said. "Don't you want a snifter for that?"
"I don't know where they are."
"Under the bar. Near the wine glasses."
"Too much trouble," Sam said. "Salute," he said, raising the shot glass, and then downing the brandy in one swallow. "Ahhhhhhhh," he said. "What do you mean too rough on him?"
"He seems to think he did a good job today."
"Knowles, you mean?"
"Mmm-hmmm."
"How do you know?"
"He told me."
"You saw him today?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"At the office."
"He came to the office?"
"Mmm-hmmm."
"Why?"
"To ask for six million dollars."
"Did you give it to him?"
"I gave it to him."
"You gave him six million dollars?"
"I authorized six million dollars for his new picture, yes."
"You gave that idiot six million dollars?"
"Someday, Sam, when I have a little time, I'll explain the motion picture business to you."
"Don't bother," Sam said. "All I know is that after his performance in court today, I wouldn't even trust him to walk my dog around the block. So you give him…"
"I don't have a dog," Leo said.
"Even if I didn't have a dog," Sam said, "I wouldn't trust Knowles to walk it around the block."
"He's a good director."
"He's a lousy witness."
"He makes good pictures."
"That's debatable."
"I'm not talking about artistic pictures, Sam. Artistic pictures can get you in the subway if you also happen to have a twenty-cent token. Ralph Knowles is a good director because his pictures make money."
"Some of them."
"Most of them."
"He still almost wrecked our case today."
Leo shrugged. "I'm not so sure he did, Sam. I heard him telling it this afternoon, and I've just now heard you tell it again, and I'm not so sure he wrecked our case at all."
"Leo, take my word for it…"
"Driscoll, maybe. Maybe he wrecked Driscoll. But not the case, and not API."
"He told them—"
"He told them he used the book."
"Yes, but he also—"
"He also told them there are no fairies in his pictures. What's so bad about that?"
"Leo, the point—"
"You want a man to go around saying there are fairies in his pictures? Come on now, Sam."
"Leo, by saying what he said—"
"It made it seem like Driscoll wrote a dirty book."
"No! It made it seem—"
"Which Knowles made into a clean picture."
"Leo, I think you're missing something important."
"What's more important than making clean pictures the whole family can go see? Is Walt Disney doing so bad with it?"
"Leo…"
"He also said he made two characters out of one character, right?"
"Yeah, did he tell you about that?"
"He told me. But they claimed one of those characters was a fairy, and that's where he had them, Sam. Because it wasn't."
"What wasn't?"
"A fairy."
"Leo, he walked into a trap, don't you see that?"
"It would have been worse the other way."
"What other way?"
"If he denied something he actually did. If he told them he didn't make two characters out of one."
"Leo, the truth is he doesn't remember what he did."
"Oh, certainly he does. He wrote the picture, didn't he? He directed it, didn't he?"
"All right, suppose he did make two characters out of one?"