Don't Ask (30 page)

But there was still a little pang of remembered terror when he found himself once again in this setting with all these people. Fortunately, he was fresh and rested from his vacation yesterday and this morning in the mountains, and he knew nobody here harbored any more suspicion concerning him and that miserable ruby, so he could rise above his instinctive fears and chair the meeting. "Tiny Bulcher and Andy Kelp gave you all the rundown on what we're doing here, right?" he asked, and looked around to receive general agreement from all these familiar faces.

Familiar faces. Over there was Wally Whistler, tanned and ready, back from a long stay in Brazil. A longer stay than he'd planned, in fact.

Usually, the way Wally Whistler traveled was by extradition; confess to the local police a crime you claim to have committed in the country to which you wish to travel, then retract the confession and demonstrate your ironclad alibi once the extradition is complete. Unfortunately, between Brazil and the United States there is no extradition treaty, a fact Wally had learned only too late. It had galled him, but finally he'd admitted defeat and performed enough burglaries around Sao Paulo to buy a first class ticket home. The worst of it, he now said, wasn't spending the money; it was the traveling alone, without the accompanying police escort who usually helped so accommodatingly to while away the time.

And there was Jim O'Hara, out of prison again, skin still pale and gray-looking. It seemed to Dortmunder that every time he saw Jim O'Hara, the guy was either going into prison or coming out. Their last encounter, a few years ago, had ended on a rooftop downtown, when Jim had made the error of taking a fire escape down into the arms of the waiting police while Dortmunder had more sensibly legged it the other way.

And over there was Fred Lartz, the driver, almost as good as Stan Murch (but don't tell Stan that). Of course, Fred's wife, Thelma, did all the actual driving these days, but Fred was still the one who made the meetings.

And here's Gus Brock, sitting blunt and four-square, with a grim expression on his face, as though his mustache was too heavy. And Harry Matlock and Ralph Demrovsky, a burglary tag team so proficient and persistent, they always traveled by van, just in case they happened across something too heavy to carry. And Ralph Winslow, debonair lockman, who always had a glass in his hand with ice cubes cheerfully tinkling, which meant he'd by necessity become adept at stripping locks one-handed.

"What we're doing here," Dortmunder told all these people, "is two different jobs. Well, no, it's three, but we're not doing the third one; a bunch of people over in Europe are doing that. In fact, the word is, they already did it. Right, Grijk?"

Grijk grinned and held up his massive left fist, around which was curled a sheet of slippery, shiny, crappy paper. "We god a fax," he announced. "We incurzed da Rivers a Blood Catedral; we god da box; id's flyin here righd now on a Coca-Cola plane." Dortmunder frowned. "I thought you said Pepsi-Cola." "Vun a dem," Grijk said, and waved a dismissive hand, the one with the fax wrapped around it. Because, after all, to an Eastern European, all American logos look alike.

Here's the situation: As major American corporations rush to bring Western culture to the opening markets of Eastern Europe--Pizza Hut, Kleenex, Budweiser--there's a certain amount of quidding taking place among all the quo. (Not necessarily to the extent that Harry Hochman and Hradec Kralowc were fondling one another, but still.) Corporate jets traverse the globe all the time, bearing vitally important executives to vitally important meetings, and there's always room aboard for a diplomatic courier from a recently friendly--that is, profitable-- nation. The soft-drink Lockheed currently skying NYward would not be subjected to any customs and immigration indignities upon landing in New York, nor would the courier riding it, bringing with him the medium-size pet carrier labeled:

Beware of Dog Extremely Dangerous

Extremely quiet, too, as it happened.

"Okay," Dortmunder said. "Part one is taken care of. Now, part two, I've got to tell you, and I'm sorry about this, but part two is ridiculous.

Part two is, we steal a bone. It isn't worth anything to you and me, but it's worth something to Grijk there and the people from his country, so we're doing it for them. Because, part three is where we get our own.

Part three is rare and valuable art, worth more than six mil, and Grijk and his country are gonna help us lift it. Right, Grijk?"

"Right!" Grijk flew his fax again briefly and beamed around at the mob.

Harry Matlock, speaking for himself and his partner, Ralph Demrovsky, said, "Dortmunder? Six mil, you say."

"Around that."

"What's in it for us?"

"We got a very high-powered fence," Dortmunder told him. "Not like the usual run of guy. He's gonna dicker with the insurance company for us."

Gus Brock said, "But…" and looked alert.

"But he gets half."

Nobody in the room liked that. That is, those who'd been aboard this thing from the beginning--Tiny Bulcher, Andy Kelp, and Stan Murch--understood the situation and didn't bother to like it or dislike it, but the seven new guys all didn't like it, and made that clear with grunts, body language, and the shaking of heads. Ralph Winslow cleared his throat, clattered the ice cubes in his glass, and said, "Does he get half of a bigger pie? Is that why he's worth it?"

"We hope so," Dortmunder said. "But for now, let's say it winds up he gets a million."

"He should do better than that," Ralph said.

"Probably he will," Dortmunder agreed. "But we're doing worst-case here.

Worst-case, he gets a mil, he keeps half, we split half a mil about eleven ways, that5s--"

"Forty-five thousand," Ralph Demrovsky said, "four hundred fifty-four bucks. More or less."

"So that isn't bad," Dortmunder pointed out, "for a weekend's work."

"It should be more," Ralph Winslow said, and Ralph Demrovsky said,

"Ralph's right," and Ralph Winslow said, "Ralphs are always right," and Ralph Winslow and Ralph Demrovsky smiled at one another in perfect convivial understanding.

Dortmunder said, "So that means you two are out?"

The Ralphs stopped smiling. Ralph Demrovsky said, "Who said such a thing? Did I?"

Ralph Winslow said, "John, if you can renegotiate with this amazing fence, I know you'll do it. If you can't, and what we get is what we get, then that's what we get. I'm in."

"Naturally," Ralph Demrovsky said.

Dortmunder looked around the room. "Everybody?"

There was more shuffling, there was more body language, there was more grunting of discontent, but in the end everybody agreed with the Ralphs; they were in. "Good," Dortmunder said.

Then Harry Matlock said, "You say a weekend's work, and you say two jobs. When do we do all this?"

"Well," Dortmunder told him, "the main stuff is tomorrow night, but there's some setting up first. We need places to stash some stuff, and vehicles, and like that. Also, tonight we got to send a team up to Vermont, with Grijk here in charge, to keep the burglar alarm active."

Fred Lartz said, "That's sounding like a job for me."

"It is," Dortmunder agreed. "I'll give you a credit card; you and Thelma might as well stay at the ski place up there. I can recommend it."

Wally Whistler, who seemed to speak now with a faint Portuguese accent, after his long stay in Brazil, said, "You got something now in Vermont.

Nothing in New York? That's it for tonight?"

"Well, no," Dortmunder said. "Like I say, the main robbery's tomorrow night, but tonight we got to do a little preliminary something here in town." 'What?"

"A kidnapping," Dortmunder said.

Karver Zorn, M.D., F.A.C.S., F.R.C.S., P.C., R.N., C.N.M., D.D.S., D.M.D. (all disputed), sat at the old organ in the chancel of the deconsecrated church he called home and played an execrable version of Also Spracht Zamthustm. Well, in the first place, it's getting harder and harder these days to find a competent organ tuner; in fact, in some parts of the world, it's just about impossible. So when Dr. Zorn's scrubbed fingertip pressed upon a particular stained ivory key, the note that groaned or squawked out of the mighty machine curving all around him like an Art Deco half-moon was not necessarily the note that was supposed to emanate at that moment. In the second place, Dr. Zorn was a pretty miserable musician, and the key his scrubbed fingertip pressed upon was just as likely to be the wrong one. But none of that mattered, really, because, in the third place, Dr. Zorn was tone-deaf.

Given all of the above, it was fortunate for Dr. Zorn's neighbors that he didn't have any. The slum clearance project that had made this church de trop had swept through this once-bustling and -vibrant community in the South Bronx like the twentieth century's version of the black plague, but had done it a full genera tion ago, demolishing, leveling, razing, pounding everything flat and then pulverizing the remains beneath the treads of mighty yellow machines as intelligent as their masters.

And why didn't St. Crispinian succumb when all about it fell to the planners' scythe? The building had to be deconsecrated before it could be destroyed, an arcane ritual that causes no harm to the structure but the lack of which can cause political harm in the general area. By the time the two bureaucracies, divine and mundane, had completed all their mumbo jumbo, yet another of society's agonizing reappraisals had taken place, it had belatedly been realized that the wanton destruction of living communities for the sake of the erection of dead projects was wrong, and the whole plan had been scrapped. A chain-link fence was put around the area, and the planners all turned their serious, busy, college trained numskulls to the next corner they could brighten.

Leaving St. Crispinian. The Church didn't want the church back, having deconsecrated it and it having been stripped of its entire congregation.

The city didn't want to know about it-- though the city owned it now--because past errors are not merely embarrassing but are also uncomfortable hints that present schemes might also be imperfect. Yet leaving it there, all alone for blocks and blocks in every direction, boarded up however efficiently, was an open invitation to vandals, druggies, general criminals, cultists, and all sorts of undesirables.

Many are the small accommodations that take place between the United Nations headquarters apparat in Manhattan and the city government of New York. Each finds the other irritating but indispensable, and each occasionally finds the other useful. And so it was that the UN, once upon a time, took over control of St. Crispinian from the City of New York on a long-term no-cash lease, in aid of some forgotten scheme put forward by a Third World representative, whose government, unluckily, was overthrown, boiled, and eaten before the scheme, whatever it had been, got any further than the signing of the lease. Since when, the UN struggled to return the church to the city, which refused to take it, and in the meantime the world body tried everything-- guard dogs, private security, blue-helmeted soldiers from Sweden and Finland--to keep those aforementioned undesirables away from St. Crispinian, but nothing really worked until Dr. Zorn.

It wasn't only his musicianship that kept Dr. Zorn's surroundings pest-free. There was also something about his personality; for some reason, people didn't seem to warm to him, not even truly scuzzy people of the sort who might break into a deconsecrated church late at night in hopes of finding some leftover religious artifact they could pawn for drug money. And beyond that, there was his work for the UN.

Famine relief. Let others concentrate on moving food around the world from where it is to where it's needed. Let others do long-term planning, with crop rotation, flood control, population density, and all that. Dr.

Zorn had set himself a simpler and more basic question to answer: What could people eat, if there wasn't any food?

The apse, and apsidal chapels, of the former church, arched and rounded stone recesses in.the final wall beyond the altar, had been converted now to something that was a cross between a kitchen and a laboratory, with beakers and retorts steaming away, foul liquids bubbling, electric arcs coursing between points, strings of lights flashing on and off, great coils of tubing that arced and swooped like carnival rides for roaches, plus high shelves full of glass jars containing strangely warped items that might have been--and sometimes were--diseased tennis balls. Here Dr. Zorn experimented with the food potential of things not usually though of as edible: socks, grass, riling cabinets, fingernail clippings. (To solve the problems of human hunger and waste management at one fell swoop; wouldn't that be a coup, worthy of the Nobel Prize!) Of course, the other indispensable element in all this experimentation was some actual humans. Someone had to eat all these outpourings from Dr. Zorn's kitchen. In the early days, the neighborhood provided a sufficiency of laboratory humans for the purpose, people who entered the church with agendas of their own but stayed to assist the good doctor in his Nobel work. (Various traps and pitfalls he'd installed around the narthex, assisted by tranquilizer darts and other mood-altering devices, ensured that his guests did not make untimely departures.) More recently, however, as the doctor's reputation had spread among the underclass, pickings had become rather more slim, and he was beginning to contemplate the idea of placing some sort of ad in the less prestigious public prints, if only he could figure out the precise wording. So difficult to describe scientific undertakings to the layman.

What made the setup here so perfect for Dr. Zorn's work, in addition to the church itself and the nearby supply of experimental persons, was the block on which the structure stood. Everything else had been reduced to a pink rubble, its color prettily tinged by brick dust, and then the entire block had been sheathed in an eight-foot-high chain-link fence.

Originally meant to keep people out, it worked just as well to keep people in, particularly once Dr. Zorn had electrified it. Oh, not with a lethal jolt, certainly not; just enough to discourage premature departure.

How pleasant it could be, on a moonlit night, to climb into the belfry and gaze down at the current herd, moving slowly about on the rubble below. It was even fun sometimes to take the BB gun up there and do a little plinking into the herd down below, keep them moving; good for the digestion.

At the moment, though, unfortunately, there was no herd. He having as yet found no really adequate substitute for food, Dr. Zorn's assistants tended to reach a point of emaciation at which their responses to stimuli were no longer adequate to his purpose, at which time he would permit them to crawl away (or would wheelbarrow them away on foggy nights, if it came to that).

Also Sfracht Zamthustm rolled on, magnificent in its awfulness. Dr. Zorn was so caught up in the sheer mass and complexity of what he was creating here, the volume of it, the rich confusion of cascading chords, that he barely noticed the white light mounted high on the stone column to his left when it began to blink.

He'd installed that light some time ago, since he couldn't hear anything else while playing the organ and so wouldn't know when the narthex had snared another customer. The blinking light meant something had just entered one of the traps; good. There were a number of nonfoods he was eager to try out on fresh subjects.

But there was no hurry. The visitor or visitors--the equipment in the narthex could capture and hold up to four newcomers at a time--would wait. He could finish his playing.

And did. And sighed with satisfaction as the last sprung chord clanged about the upper reaches of the structure. And turned about on the organ bench to gaze into the eyes of eight grim-looking individuals.

Oh, dear. They'd never shown up in this quantity before. The narrhex would have snared the first four, but then the next four would have released them while the good doctor had all unknowingly played on.

And now all eight were here, in the chancel, gazing at him without love.

From afar came the sound of slow dripping, a leak in the columbarium he'd never bothered to do anything about. Other than that, there was not a sound as they stood and gazed at him, apparently waiting for the final echoes of Zamthustm to fade inside their skulls before trying to move or to speak.

What now? These would be simple creatures. Negotiate with them, find out what they want, either send them on their way or somehow turn the tables on them. Dr. Zorn pondered, in the few seconds of silence he had for planning, on the arsenal of medicines and laboratory equipment at his command, and he tried to think how he might turn the tables on eight people all by himself, and while musing on that question he suddenly realized that one of those grim faces was somehow familiar.

Diddums! John Diddums, from the Votskojek mission!

Dr. Zorn was lithe and fast. He was off the organ bench like a shot, and halfway around the ambulatory before they laid hands on him. Many hands.

Many hard hands.

The person who sat on Dr. Zorn was immense. In a different context, the doctor would have been happy to have this fellow as a research assistant out there in the rubble; such a monster would survive on nonfoods for months. Unfortunately, this was not a different context, this was this context, and in this context the many hands had grabbed Dr. Zorn and picked him up and carried him back to the chancel and stretched him facedown on one of the remaining side pews originally meant for the choir. Then this huge one had sat upon him, quite effectively holding him in place while the others searched the church.