Don't Ask (10 page)

Blond hair lank around her anonymously beautiful face, Linda smiled down upon this ambassador--from a minor Eastern European nation, granted, but she was herself only a local feed, so they could both feel pleased with the accomplishment--and murmured, "We'll be back, after this."

As she climbed off and went tripping away toward the bathroom, lovely behind gleaming like a beacon of hope in a dark and dangerous world, the ambassador rolled over, grasped the bedside telephone a bit more savagely than necessary, and said, "Yes?" (Being a professional diplomat, he kept all his snarls and savageries inside, beneath a calm, polite exterior.) It was Lusk, from the office, of course. "Diddums, Ambassador, on one."

What? Baby talk? Hradec said,"Lusk? What did you say?"

"John Diddums, Ambassador. The man you introduced us to the other day."

John Diddums! The unexpected visitor from the sea. Or from the river, actually. "Call me anytime," Hradec had said to the fellow, in his diplomatic way, and now, be damned if the man hasn't done it. "Right,"

Hradec said, sitting up, listening to the toilet flush--maybe he should ask Harry Hochman if one of his hotel maintenance people could put in a quieter fixture there-- and punched the button for line one. "Mr.

Diddums! What a pleasant surprise!"

"You said I oughta call."

"Yes, I did, and I'm glad you took me at my word." Sound of the shower running; vision in mind of Linda soaping herself. Here, let me help with that, but not yet.

Diddums was saying, "The way you talked about, uh, Votskojek, you sure made it sound interesting. I got some vacation time coming up--"

"Really?"

"--and I thought maybe, well, maybe I could come around, talk to you and the other people there, work out a whatchacallit."

"A whatchacallit?"

"Itinerary," Diddums said. "That's what it is, itinerary."

"Yes, of course," Hradec said, keeping calm, keeping the excitement out of his voice as he had earlier kept out the irritation. A tourist, in Votskojek! An actual tourist, a vacationing traveler, in Novi Glad, in the Schtumveldt Mountains, in the Varja River-- Well, no, on the Varja River, let us hope, it not being a river for a human body to enter. No need to go into that now, though, with this sudden prospect of an actual deliberate visitor to the ambassador's native land.

Deliberate. Not an escaped homicidal lunatic from Transylvania; not a bewildered Ukrainian in a four-door Lada who'd made the mistake of trusting his Soviet maps; not a French balloonist blown off course, nor a Berliner full of berliners who'd fallen asleep on the through train, nor a Zemblan lepidopterist insensibly crossing the border net in hand in pursuit of some rare butterfly, nor a Tsergovian with a bomb to plant in the Chamber of Deputies, but an actual tourist, on purpose, intending to visit Votskojek. And an American at that, with dollars!

"I'd be delighted," Hradec said with simple honesty, "to see you, Mr.

Diddums, and work out an itinerary for your visit to Votskojek. At your convenience. When would you like to come by?"

"Uh, this afternoon?"

"Couldn't be better," Hradec assured him. "What time?"

"Uh, four o'clock?"

Hradec was slightly disturbed by Diddums's apparent inability to answer any simple question without first studying it for snares and pitfalls, but he was so dazzled by the prospect of this first swallow of the Votskojek tourist trade that he was blind to whatever warning signals Diddums might be tossing out ahead of himself. "Four o'clock is the perfect hour," the ambassador was pleased to tell his country's guest.

"I'll alert my staff to be ready for you, and I look forward to greeting you myself."

"Me, too," Diddums said. "That's what I want, all of us together, working on my trip."

"And that," Hradec said, hearing the shower stop--ah, well, too bad--"is what I want, too, Mr. Diddums."

TJLh] .hree-fifty p.m. In the offices of the Votskojek embassy aboard the Pride of Votskojek, Ambassador Hradec Kralowc and his office staff--Lusk and Terment--searched in vain for more pamphlets, photos, press releases, and other bumpf to fill out the truly anemic travelers' information packet they were assembling for John Diddums. (Down the hall, in the room with the relic, John Mickelmuss completed inputting into the computer his latest test data and turned to the rather more complicated matter of making a cup of coffee.) If he'd had more time, Hradec would have asked his hotelier friend, Harry Hochman, for help.

Oh, well.

Still 3:50. Andy Kelp and four men wearing eye shadow and carrying canvas purses that were supposed to look like ammunition carriers but looked like purses were standing on the raft moored in the East River at the end of East Twenty-third Street, where the seaplanes ingest and egest their passengers. And here came the plane now, plowing heavily shoreward like an Indian elephant wading through the monsoon. The other four men adjusted their crotches and shoulder pads while Kelp looked away down river, frowning slightly.

Still 3:50. Murch's Mom steered her cab past four perfectly legitimate customers on Third Avenue between Nineteenth and Twentieth streets, all four of them frantically waving--hand, cane, attache case, dollar bills (that was the hard one to pass)--in order to yank it to a halt in front of Dortmunder, who hadn't been waving at all. Dortmunder got into the backseat, saying, "Hi," and Murch's Mom reached for the meter, explaining, "I gotta throw the flag on you, John. Otherwise, some candyass inspector's gonna write me up."

"That's okay," Dortmunder said. "I'm feeling rich. Besides, it's only a few blocks."

Three fifty-one. Tiny Bulcher strode eastward across Twenty-eighth Street like the scythe of fate, leaving a broad, empty swath in his wake. He merely walked, arms swinging at his sides, face with no particular expression, but nevertheless: Not just ordinary citizens but junkies, released maniacs, unsupervised retards, even mothers pushing babies in strollers, all moved out of the way when they saw Tiny coming.

And he paid no attention at all.

Three fifty-two. "Well, this is all we have," Hradec said, "and therefore this is all we have." (It sounded better in MagyarCroat, which he happened to be speaking.) "So," he said, "we'll simply fill in verbally with our own comments and descriptions of our native land. Of a positive nature, please."

Lusk and Terment nodded and looked subservient.

Three fifty-three. The seaplane lumbered to a halt at the raft, immediately ejecting its pilot, a short, chunky, barefoot man in silvered aviator glasses (what else?), string T-shirt, and khaki British army shorts, who held his mount fairly steady by a strut while two slightly sick ladies in Day-Glo spandex disembogued. Kelp continued to peer downstream.

Three fifty-four. Murch's Mom's cab, with Dortmunder in back and the meter running, remained stuck in the right lane on Third Avenue just below Twenty-third Street, where Murch's Mom wanted to make a right turn but where some sort of construction or destruction was going on and a backhoe kept lumbering around in the way of the traffic flow, backing up (beep beep beep beep) and going forward () and backing up (beep beep beep beep) and going forward ().

"How we doing?" Dortmunder asked, as though innocently.

"Just fine," Murch's Mom snarled.

Three fifty-five. Five blocks due north, Tiny, unencumbered by an automobile, crossed Third Avenue against the light and was not honked at.

Three fifty-six. John Mickelmuss tasted his coffee and found it not particularly good but somehow acceptable. That accomplishment behind him, he returned his attention to the sacred relic, the left femur of St. Ferghana, lying now like the nakedest of majas on a black cloth on a chest-high metal examining table beneath an X-ray camera.

The problem with testing this bone was that the parameters of the investigation included the instruction that the physical integrity of the artifact must not be invaded. In other words, it's no fair chipping off little chunks of the thing and dunking them in vials of acid. So testing had to be done from a distance, by light and temperature and weight and so on, which took longer than chipping and dunking, but there you are.

Three fifty-seven (beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep). "Maybe,"

Dortmunder said, "we should take some other way."

"You're sounding," Murch's Mom informed him in a not friendly fashion,

"like my boy Stanley."

Still three fifty-seven. The four purse-toting guys completed their boarding process into the wallowing seaplane, and the pilot raised an eyebrow at Kelp. "You coming or not?"

"Not," Kelp replied, and looked downstream.

The pilot didn't get it: "Listen, pal, I'm leaving."

"Good-bye," Kelp said.

The pilot shook his head, exasperated. 'This is the seaplane dock, you know. If you don't want a seaplane, what are you doing here?"

"Waiting for the cross town," Kelp said. Then, seeing that the pilot was still not satisfied, and so to forestall more verbiage, Kelp added,

"Your people are gonna throw up in there, pretty soon."

Which was true. A seaplane idling at a dock is a restless thing indeed, and a couple of the passengers inside this one had already turned all over the color of their eye shadow. The pilot, seeing this, expelled an expletive, jumped aboard his trusty steed, and hi hoedout of there.

Three fifty-eight. Hradec consulted his watch, which read 3:56. "He'll be here soon," he told Lusk and Terment, who looked passive.

Three fifty-eight again. "Enough!" cried Murch's Mom, as she yanked the wheel hard left, gunned through the intersection, and caused a seven-car collision behind her, of which hers was none of the seven cars.

"About time," Dortmunder muttered, with one eye on his watch and the other on the meter.

Three fifty-nine. Tiny marched across First Avenue; traffic waited for him.

Four o'clock, on the button. As the seaplane trundled away from the raft upon which Kelp remained the only survivor, a small, sleek outboard motorboat of the sort James Bond used to leap into from passing seaplanes came slicing northward along the shore. Stan Murch stood at the wheel, in wet yellow slicker and hat, and with brisk, tricky adjustments of speed and rudder he brought his little boat to a perfect stop at Kelp's feet. "So what I did," he began, leaning over to press his palm on the rough planks of the raft to hold the boat steady while Kelp boarded, "I came around the Brooklyn side of Governor's Island, because that way you don't have the Statue of Liberty ferry to contend with, but then I came over to the Manhattan side before the turn for the Williamsburg Bridge, because you've got less commercial stuff over here."

"Good," Kelp said. "I thought that plane would never get the hell away from here."

"We've got time," Murch said, not bothering to look at his watch.

Four oh-one. "I don't like to say anything--" Dortmunder began.

"Then don't," Murch's Mom advised him as she careened east bound through the intersection at Twenty-sixth Street and Second Avenue not very long after the light had turned red against her, horn screaming defrance at those on Second Avenue who had it in mind to continue their own journeys downtown.

Four oh-two. Tiny strode through drifts of litter into the shade beneath the FDR Drive; no muggers followed. Ahead stretched the chain-link fence, the rotted old ferry building beyond it. To left and right, beneath the elevated highway, sagged the carapaces of former cars. But where, Tiny wondered, where were Dortmunder and Murch's Mom and the taxicab?

Coming, coming. (Still 4:02.) Screaming left turn onto First Avenue, another shaving of a red light at Twenty-seventh Street, cab wheels smoking. Murch's Mom clung grimly to the wheel, sharp chin just above it, jutting out at the windshield. In back, Dortmunder clung to the ashtray, it being the only thing he could find to hold on to.

Four oh-two. (Yes; still 4:02.) Kelp took the white lab coat out of the D'Ag Bag as Murch steered the little motorboat slowly north along the tumbled shore. Shaking out the lab coat, borrowed earlier today from a clinic farther downtown, Kelp said, "We don't want to be late."

"You don't want to be all over wet, either," Murch pointed out, "which is why I'm easing along here. Don't worry, we're doing fine."

Still 4:02. "It's four o'clock," Hradec said, looking at his watch.

"I'll go down and meet him."

Four oh-three, at last. Tiny emerged from under the FDR Drive, the fence closer now. The parked cars, a couple of them with diplomat plates, were just ahead and to his right. The guarded gate was beyond the cars over there, the sentries not yet aware of Titty's existence. But they would be.

And here came the cab, a yellow comet streaking beneath the FDR Drive, slashing by Tin^s left elbow like a surface-to-surface missile, and slamming to a stop just short of the fence. The two guards looked over in mild amaze as the dust of decades gently rose and slowly settled on the cab and its surround. "Why don't we just crash on through?"

Dortmunder suggested from the floor.

"That's three bucks eighty," Murch's Mom said, belting the meter with a solid right hand.

"About time," Tiny muttered to himself, and slowed his pace as he approached the cab from the rear.