Don't Ask (22 page)

Once it was securely ensconced in its proper traditional United Nations seat, once its economic treaties with its neighbors were in place, that little landlocked barren boulder in the Carpathians would become Harry Hochman's stepping stone to Europe. All of Europe.

Soon, Votskojek would join with the other former Comecon nations in a new economic alliance. This refurbished and renamed Comecon would join the European Community whether France and England liked it or not. And at the end of the day, from the Rockies to the Urals, Harry Hochman would be the hotel man. (He'd even suggested that already as a slogan to his advertising agency: "From the Rockies to the Urals, a Hochman pillow will rest your head." The ad guys were thinking about it.) And of course the hotels were just the beginning. Once established, they would be the base for horizontal expansion into all sorts of industries.

Insurance in Holland, television production in France, agriculture in Italy, mortuaries in England; the possibilities were infinite.

That this rosy future for this rosy man had become dependent on a bone was so ridiculous as to be infuriating. For the first time in many years, Harry had had to start putting the plastic protector in his mouth at night, to keep from grinding his teeth in his sleep. A bone\ It's a good thing I'm not a ruthless man, Harry had told himself more than once, I'd just have that senile clot of an archbishop assassinated.

Except, of course, stupid though it might be that the relic of St.

Ferghana had become this important in twentieth-century international politics, the fact was that Votskojek did have possession of the little beauty, which gave it a leg up (pardon the pun) on the competition. So.

The femur of St. Ferghana fronted the future hopes of Votskojek;

Ambassador Hradec Kralowc was responsible for the femur; and Kralowc was in Harry Hochman's pocket. Which was why he'd been so openhanded in setting up his flummery to "gaslight the fella to a fare-thee-well."

That, and it was fun.

Harry looked around his converted art gallery, the six-plus millions worth of art now completely out of sight behind the faux dungeon, and he almost wished he could keep the place this way. Come down here in this uniform from time to time, strut around, listen to the hollow thud of these boots on the barn-siding floor. "Damn shame," he said again.

"Harry, you're just a big boy," said his beloved wife, Adele, smiling indulgently upon him. Taller than her husband, and a little younger than he every year, stately as a frigate's figurehead; where he was red, she was black and white all over; hair as black as Ronald Reagan's, skin as white as any golem's. She almost always wore black, under the mistaken assumption that it made her look thinner. What it made her look like, in fact, was Dracula's aunt, but nobody was likely to tell her so.

Harry grinned back at his rather scary but beloved wife. "Admit it, Adele," he said. "You'd have liked to see that fella's face yourself when he walked in here."

"Poor Diddums," Hradec said, and laughed.

Harry's red face turned quizzical, "Poor Diddums? How come?"

"Such a minor cog in the wheel," Hradec explained. "A foot soldier, a nobody. And here he was, at the very center of all this machination.

What I would like to see is his face when he found out he was in Vermont!"

They all laughed at that idea, Tatiana saying, "Such amusement!" Then they all finished their champagne, and Harry reached into the ice bucket, grabbed the Dom Perignon by the throat, and refilled. "To John Diddums," he said, raising his glass. "The poor schnook."

"Hear hear," said Hradec.

"Of positive!" said Tatiana, and they all drank.

When the prowler fell over a chair in the kitchen, May woke up and knew exactly what to do. A woman alone had to be ready to defend herself, and May was ready. The drawer in the bedside table slid noiselessly open.

Her hand closed first on the flashlight, which she didn't want, but then she found what she was looking for and slid silently out of bed, holding it out in front of her. In the dark room, she crossed toward the greater darkness of the doorway, hesitated there, and heard the prowler shuffling cautiously in this direction down the hall. She took a breath, held it, turned the corner, and Maced the guy full in the face.

"Holy shit!" "John?"

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Crash bang thud bang crash.

Horrified, May backed into the bedroom, frantically feeling along the wall there, finding the light switch, flicking it on, and there was John, all curled up on the hall floor near his spilled beer can, thrashing around like a bug that has just been sprayed with Raid. Which, in a way, he was.

Every time he came up for air, John told her a little more of the story, and May apologized all over again for everything, including having left that chair pulled out too far from the kitchen table. Then, kneeling on the bathroom floor, John would bend forward again like one of those novelty drinking birds and stick his flaming head back into the water-filled bathtub.

And so, piece by piece, May learned of John's capture and imprisonment, his jailer's deception, his own escape, his discovery of the truth, and his long journey home from Vermont in a scattered series of short hops in trucks, truck drivers being the only people in America who aren't afraid to pick up a hitchhiker who looks like John Dortmunder, since most of them look like John Dortmunder themselves.

When at last the stinging abated on John's face and neck and ears, and when he could keep his eyes open without shedding tears all over the place, and when the really bcwuuiaMdd taste in his mouth had to some extent gone away, May left him and went to the kitchen to get them both a fresh beer, plus for him a sliced American cheese sandwich with butter and mayo and mustard and ketchup on white bread nicely quartered into triangles, which she brought to the living room, where John now sat, the white towel around his neck setting off his red skin and red eyeballs, making him look like something that has just been shorn.

He made faces while he ate, the Mace apparently having altered the taste of things he ordinarily liked, but he made no comment beyond one mumbled, "What a homecoming," and he listened quietly while May gave him a report of events here in town while he'd been away up in Vermont on the slippery slopes. How the guys had lost the bone to the DBA but were pretty sure they were off to get it, and probably the Tsergovians even had it by this hour, and Andy Kelp would call tomorrow, probably--no, certainly --with good news, and would be delighted to learn that John was safe, and would bring over his five thousand dollars.

"So. All's well that ends well, then," John said inaccurately, but it was a nice thought to take along to bed, where it helped him sleep right through until Kelp showed up around ten the next morning.

"Dortmunder looked at the money he'd dumped out of the envelope onto the coffee table. "I don't get it," he said.

Kelp shrugged. 'Tiny says it's ours," he said, "and you know how seldom people argue with Tiny. As far as he's concerned, we got the bone and we delivered it. Gave it straight into his cousin's hands, got paid, and that was that. We did what they paid us to do."

"But," Dortmunder objected, "they don't have the bone." 'That's the way it looked to me, too," Kelp agreed, "but Tiny explained it this other way, and Grijk just sat there looking like one of those beached whales you see in the Post and said, 'Okay, Diny, okay, Diny,' in that way he has. Tiny told him to go borrow some more from Citibank, he wants us to do it again."

"And what'd Grijk say to that?"

"I think he's discouraged," Kelp said. "That whole crowd over there, I think they got the wind kind of knocked out of their sails."

Dortmunder looked into the coffee cup he'd brought in with him from the kitchen, but it was empty. Shaking his head, he said, "I don't follow the sequence there. Where'd those other people come from?"

"What it looks like," Kelp told him, "it looks like the Votskojeks put a tap on the Tsergovians' phone, so when Tiny called to say we had the bone and we're coming over, they went there real quick ahead of us, three of them. Two went upstairs and tied up the people there, and the third one stayed with Grijk to make sure he didn't slip us the high sign, and made Grijk say he was his deputy security guy. So we left the bone and split, and they copped it for themselves.''

'That's really irritating," Dortmunder said. He looked in his coffee cup, and it was still empty.

"Water over the bridge," Kelp said. "We did the job, and we got paid."

Dortmunder looked at the money on the coffee table. He looked around the room, but May was off at her cashier job at the Safeway, and there was no one else to consult. "I don't know about this," he said.

Kelp said, "What's not to know? John, this is the most successful job we pulled in recent memory. In even not so recent memory. There was something to get, we went out and got it, we got paid for it. Okay, we lost it for a little while--"

"You lost me, too," Dortmunder pointed out.

"John," Kelp said, more in sorrow than in anger, looking at him as though Dortmunder were guilty of some sort of low blow, "John, we said, 'Jump-' You remember that; Stan and me, we both said, 'Jump.'"

"Just pointing out," Dortmunder said. "You said you lost the bone; I'm just pointing out, you also lost me."

"Whatever you want," Kelp said. "We found the bone, and you found yourself--"

"In Vermont." (That still griped.) "--and we got paid. Success. Victory. Accomplishment. End of story."

"I don't know," Dortmunder said.

Kelp shook his head. He was getting exasperated. He said,

"JF/wtfdon'tyouknow?"

For answer, Dortmunder reached for the phone and dialed a number. The phone rang six times, and then there was a click, and then a sound like a bear roused too early from hibernation--part roar, part cough, part gnashing of teeth. "Tiny, it's John," Dortmunder said.

The growl formed itself into words: "I taught you wuh lost."

"I found myself," Dortmunder said. "Tiny, I want to go over to--"

"Don't you know what time it is?"

"What? No, I don't think so, I--Hold on." Dortmunder turned to Kelp, "He wants to know what time it is."

While Kelp vainly searched himself for a watch, Tiny roared in Dortmunder's ear, "I don't wanna know what time it is!"

"You don't?"

"I'll find out," Kelp said, getting to his feet and going away to the kitchen.

"And I don't care where you been, neither," Tiny said. "If that's what you're calling me about, forget it."

"I been in Vermont," Dortmunder said, "but that isn't the point."

"You been in Vermont?"

"But that isn't the point. The point is--"

"Vermont?"

"You don't care, Tiny, remember? The reason I'm calling is, I want to go see the Tsergovians, and I thought maybe you could bring me over there."

Tiny muttered a bit, like a subway going by far below ground level, and then he said, "Whadaya wanna go over there for? You got your money, right?"

"I got jerked around, Tiny," Dortmunder said. "I wanna know the story."

"What story? There is no story. You got hired, you did it, you went to Vermont, you got paid. The money's good, right? It isn't draffs, right?"

Kelp came back from the kitchen and said, "If s quarter after ten."

"It's quarter after ten," Dortmunder said into the phone.

There was silence. It stretched on and on. Had Tiny gone back to sleep?

Dortmunder said, "Tiny?"

A long sigh came snaking down the phone line. Tiny said, "You wanna go see these people, Dortmunder, whyntcha just go see these people? You need the address?"

"Grijk's the only one I met," Dortmunder reminded him. "You're their cousin; you can like vouch for me."

"I don't do family reunions," Tiny said. "I did what I could for that crowd, and now that's it."

"I don't ask you a lot, Tiny," Dortmunder said, and just let that lie there, and waited.

Long silence, even longer than before. But Tiny hadn't gone back to sleep, Dortmunder knew he hadn't. He waited.

Another long sigh. Tiny said, "All right, Dortmunder, this once." 'Thank you, Tiny."

"I'll call them; I'll call you back." 'Thank you."

"You know, Dortmunder," Tiny said, "you could go too far, you know."

"I wouldn't want to do that, Tiny," Dortmunder said.

"You're right about that," Tiny said.

Zara Kotor," Tiny said, "and Drava Votskonia, this is John Dortmunder and An-drew Kelp."

"Hi."

"How are you?"

"Call me Andy."

"Sit down, sit down."

They were in the upstairs parlor at the Tsergovian embassy, amid the tasseled shades and the commemorative plates. All the chairs and sofas up here were deeply stuffed mohair; you sank way down into them, and they itched. Zara Kotor, settling into the big maroon sofa under the ornately framed painting of a corner of a cul-de-sac at midnight during a power failure, patted the mohair seat cushion beside her--puff, puff, the dust lazily rose--for Tiny to come sit beside her, but somehow he managed not to notice and took the settee on the other side of the room.