Don't Ask (34 page)

that?" Everybody agreed two weeks was fine. It was long enough to know if the negotiation with the insurance company was going to come to anything, but not so long as to drive everybody, and especially Stan, crazy. "Fine," Dortmunder said. "When I call this guy Guy on Thursday, I'll tell him the deadline. In the meantime, we already got a little taste, almost three grand apiece." "And me," Tiny said, deadpan, "I got three cents for the first caper. Things/are lookin up.'' Harry Hochman was not a detail man. The kind of man Harry was, he hired detail men, and they took care of the details, while Harry kept his mind and eye on the big picture. What Harry Hochman was was a big-picture man. Which was what made it so goddam irritating to be in this hotel room with these people, listening to details. The room itself was all right, but it damn well better be, it was his. But really his. This was the living room of the Imperial Dragon Suite on the top floor of the Dragon Host Hotel on Park Avenue in New York City, just north of Grand Central Station and south of the Crispinite monastery, and this was the flagship of a chain of seventeen Dragon Host hotels Harry owned in partnership with the Japs, because the only way to get into the Japs' pants was to let them get into yours. So Dragon Host ran hotels in New York and Washington and Chicago and San Francisco and Los Angeles, plus a few in Canada and South America, but it also ran hotels in Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto and Otaru and Yokohama and Nagoya and Kobe, and that's what Harry Hochman meant by the big picture. Not these goddam details about insurance and art thieves and private eyes. Why couldn't he just hire somebody to handle all these details and give him a call when everything was straightened out and the art was back where it belonged and Harry could go visit the Vermont chateau once more? But, no. Outside, if a person had the leisure to stand up and look out a window, was all of Manhattan Island, or at least all of Manhattan Island that a big-picture man like Harry Hochman needed to look at, but could he go look at it? No. He had to sit here in the living room of the Imperial Dragon Suite with a lot of detail men and converse with them about details. Like these Polaroid pictures of his art collection. Pictures showing it where it belonged, and then pictures of it in some goddam truck. "Do you recognize these, Mr. Hochman?" asked one of the detail men. Perly, his name was, Jacques Perly. He was the private eye, though in his blue suit and round plumpness he looked to Harry more like an untrustworthy doctor. Didn't look like any private eye Harry had ever seen. "Of course I recognize them," he snapped, leafing rapidly through the pictures, barely concentrating at all, for so many reasons. Details, for one. And the fact all this stuff was gone, stolen, for another. And that the thieves took the photos, for a third. If that pissant little faggot Hradec had only torn himself out of the embraces of his smarmy little lover--talk about your untrustworthy doctors!--long enough to hear an entire moving van being filled with paintings and statuary, none of this would be happening, and Harry would be comfortably concerning himself with some big picture somewhere, instead of looking at these little pictures in his hands here. (Since Harry wasn't taking any of Hradec's constant phone calls, he was unaware of Hradec's theory that the whole thing was the work of Diddums, nor was he aware of Hradec's contention that he and the ungood doctor had been drugged and were not sexually involved with one another, but, even if he'd heard all that, he wouldn't have believed it, mostly because he was too irritated.) The private eye, Perly, said, "The reason we need your positive identification, Mr. Hochman, is because your insurance companies are uninterested in paying for works that you don't own." "Well, they damn well better pay for the works I do own," Harry snarled, and glared around generally at the four men and two women here representing the insurance companies. More detail people, as were the two lawyers, the accountant, and the two men in wrinkled neckties from the New York Police Department. (How do people wrinkle neckties*) The NYPD men were here because, even though the theft had taken place in Vermont, and everybody's best guess was that it was a Boston gang that had pulled the job and they were hiding the loot somewhere in Boston, the extortion attempt was taking place in New York. The reason the Vermont police and the Boston police weren't here was because they were searching Boston for Harry Hochman's stolen art, and fat chance they had of finding it, is what Harry thought. Fat chance. He thought it was all in Canada. This detail man, this private eye, Perly, wasn't finished with him yet. "Sir," he said, "could you take a look at the photographs? Just identify one or two items for me, sir, if you would." Details; you could drown in details. "Very well," Harry said with bad grace, and peered at one of the photographs. "There," he said. "Leaning against the side of the truck there, that's a Botticelli, two angels with one ribbon around their necks, bought that eleven, no, twelve, no eleven, I think maybe twelve, years ago in Geneva. Then here--" "Thank you, sir. Something from one of the other photos would be good." Harry sighed long and loud to let them know what he thought of this pecksniffery. Lotta crap. "Here we are," he said. 'That's a de Chirico. You see the little white Doric column, the blue sky?" "Yes, sir, Mr. Hochman, thank you." Harry, with the feeling of an adult dragooned into a child's game, put that photo at the bottom of the stack in his hands and looked at the next one. He blinked. "Now," he said, "what the hell is thati" Nobody in the room had expected such a reaction. This was a simple cut-and-dried procedure, legally necessary but not normally full of surprises; the victim identifies the stolen insured items. The whole crowd in the room tensed up, detail people realizing that a detail was wrong. Jacques Perly, already leaning solicitously over Harry to guide him through the identification process, said, "What's that you say, Mr. Hochman?" "This damn thing," Harry said, pointing at the damn thing, prominent in the photograph. "What the hell is this supposed to be?" "Don't you know, sir?" "How the hell am I supposed to know? What is this?" "You mean, sir," Perly asked, bending down even closer to Harry and the photo, "that glass chest or coffer there? That small casket? No, let me see… reliquary, I would say." "Don't be stupid," Harry said. "I don't own any reliquary." "Are you sure, sir?" Harry did not believe his ears. In his own suite, in his own hotel, in his own nation, on his own planet, he was being insulted to his face. "Am I suret" Perly withdrew his objectionable head somewhat from Harry's lap but held out his hand instead, saying, "May I see that photo, sir? If I may?" "You can keep it," Harry said, and slapped the damn thing into the damn man's damn hand. Perly, unruffled, studied the photo. 'These other objects visible here," he said. "You do recognize these, don't you? Isn't this the de Chirico you mentioned before, in the background here?" "Don't show me that damn thing," Harry said, waving it away. "I didn't say the rest of it isn't mine, the rest of it is mine. I'm saying, what the hell is that glass box doing there?" "With something in it," Perly said, peering closely at the photograph. "And that isn't mine, either," Harry said. "Whatever the hell it is." One of the insurance munchkins said, "Mr. Hochman, isn't it possible, with everything you own, I mean, with all your possessions, isn't it, that you might have, uh, have, uh…" It was Harry's fierce eye that ground the fellow to a stop, and Harry's pointing finger that pinned him in his place. "Say the next word," Harry said, "and you're looking for a job." There was a long silence in the suite. Everyone but Harry was too uncomfortable to move; Harry was too irritated to move. When he'd established that the insurance company clown was not going to say the dread word, Harry answered it, anyway: "I know every piece of art I own. And I do not own that glass box. And I do not own whatever is inside it." Perly cleared his throat. "Excuse me, Mr. Hochman," he said. Harry bent his fierce eye on Perly, who, being an independent subcontractor, was less intimidated by it. "What," Harry said. "I believe, Mr. Hochman," Perly said, pointing at the photos in Harry's hands, "if you'll look through those, you'll see some showing the box in your gallery, on a pedestal." "Bullshit," Harry said. "If you would look, sir…" Harry looked. Harry's eyes widened. There it was. There the damn thing was, by God. And there it was again. And, tucked away in the background, there it was yet again. "Well, what the hell is this?" Harry demanded. "It's a pity, Mr. Hochman," Perly said, "that your collection was never catalogued." "What's the point in that? I'm always buying or selling; it changes all the time. We just did some painting down there, moved things around. But this glass box is not mine." "It appears to be, sir," Perly dared to say. "It very strongly appears to be." Harry had had enough of this. This goddam glass box was one detail too many, the detail that right this minute was breaking the camel's back. Glowering once more at Perly, Harry said, "You're the private eye, aren't you?" "We prefer private investigator, Mr. Hochman," Perly said. "Oh, do you. Well, I prefer to know what's going on, and it seems to me it's your job to tell me what's going on. Here's a picture of this glass box for you, Mr. Private Investigator. Investigate. When you've got it figured out, let me know." He strafed the room with his glare. "When you've all got it figured out, let me know," he said. "This meeting is over. Goodbye." He turned the Lamborghini onto Gansevoort Street, thumbing the beeper on his visor as he did so, and down the block, amid the warehouses and the few remaining elements of the meat-packing industry, his battered old green garage door lifted out of the way. Perly steered into the building, beeped the door shut behind him, and drove up the concrete ramp. The conversion didn't start until the second floor, where the high stone block walls were painted a creamy off-white and spotlights mounted high in the metal ceiling beams pinpointed the potted evergreens in front of his office door. Perly parked in his spot--the other was for the occasional client--crossed to the faux Tudor interior wall, handprinted the door open, and stepped into his reception roonywhere Delia looked up from her typing to say, "Hi, Chief. HoVd it go?" "Weird one this time, Delia," Perly said, skimming his hat across the room to a perfect ringer on the hat rack. "They're all weird, Chief," Delia reminded him. "What's the story this time?" Sitting with one heavy hip cocked on the corner of Delia's desk, Perly said, "Rich guy, Harry Hochman, hotels. Art collection stolen up in Vermont. Thieves took pictures of the loot, prove they've got it." He took several photos from his inner jacket pocket, hefted them. "Did the standard ID with Hochrnan, showed him the pictures." He put a photo on the desk in front of Delia, pointed. "See that reliquary?" "It's a beauty, Chief." "Hochman says it isn't his." "He does?" Perly spread the rest of the photos in front of Delia. She looked at them, photo after photo of Harry Hochman's art collection, with the glass box. She did her soundless whistle. "Wow, Chief," she said. "Why would he say a thing like that?" "That's the question all right, Delia." Perly stood from her desk, brushed the seat of his trousers, shot his cuffs, and said, "I told you, Delia, it's a weird one this time. Call Fritz, tell him I need blowups of the best pix of the box, soonest. Then call Margo, Jerry, and Herkimer. Meeting here at four o'clock." "High gear, eh, Chief?" said Delia. "You've got it, Delia," Perly said. "I want to know what that box is, and I want to know what that thing inside it is, and I want to know what it's all worth, and I want to know why Harry Hochman's so shy all of a sudden. And I want it all yesterday." "Consider it done, Chief," Delia said, and reached for the phone. A, ^rchbishop Minkokus rarely if ever read the lay press. It was so full of discomforting information. "In order to hold your faith intact/Be sure it's kept unsullied by fact." Therefore, he had not known, when he'd phoned Hradec Kralowc on Monday about Tsergovia's wondrous abdication by fax, about the Votskojek ambassador's other problems, the robbery in Vermont and the sudden public doubts about his sleeping patterns and sleeping partners. It wasn't until Wednesday morning, when one of his clerks brought him the anonymous letter and the photograph that had just been hand-delivered to the guard desk by the UN building's main entrance down below, that the archbishop began to learn what had been going on in the mundane world while he'd been concentrating on the eternal. The photograph, a Polaroid shot, placed neatly on the desk in front of him, was clearly a picture of the sacred relic of St. Ferghana --he recognized the reliquary--supposedly in the care and safekeeping of the Votskojek authorities in Novi Glad, but apparently in some sort of underlit art gallery somewhere. Naked statues and paintings of naked women were discomfitably visible in the photo, causing the archbishop to look hastily away and to stare at his clerk instead, saying, "Father? Why are you showing me this?" "The letter explains, Your Grace." The letter. The first draft of this letter had been written personally by John Dortmunder, by hand, on Sunday night. It had been read, on Monday and Tuesday, by Dortmunder's faithful companion, May, by Andy Kelp, by Tiny Bulcher, and by Grijk Krugnk, all of whom pronounced it wonderful, and all of whom knew how to fix it. Statements were altered by this editorial staff, emphasis was shifted, entire sentences were moved from place to place, additional thoughts were inserted (some of them later to be removed again), and eventually a letter was produced that everybody but Dortmunder found satisfactory. He still preferred his first draft. But the letter the archbishop now held was far from that first draft. Handwritten by May on typewriter paper from the Safeway, it read: Dear Archbishop Minkokus. I am a disgruntled employee of Mr. and Mrs. Hoch man, the hotel people. They think their better than anybody. So I helped steal all their art. But I am a devout person, I pray to Saint Dismas all the time, and I was shocked when I saw this sacred relic in among all the profane and filthy art that people like those people like. Naked pictures, and pictures that hold the Church up to scorn. Mr. and Mrs. Hochman are doing many dirty deals with Ambassador Hradec Kralowc of Votskojek, like him helping them get around the tax laws in this country
and Europe. They paid to fix up a love nest apartment in that Votskojek ship for the Ambassador. And now he gives them this sacred relic, for them to pretend it is "art" like all that corrupt filth they have their, I say their going too far. Archbishop, the people that stole all that "art" may be thieves, but they have got more respect than that. They will treat the sacred relic like it should be treated, and when the insurance company pays and the art goes back I hope you will see to it that the sacred relic is treated decent and like it ought to be from now on. Sincerely, A Sinner but not a Total Loss "Absurd," the archbishop said when he'd finished this group effort. "Ridiculous. I don't even understand most of it." "Your Grace," said the clerk diffidently, "I took the liberty of bringing along these recent articles from the New York Times. If you'd look at these two reports, Your Grace, you'll see what the letter writer is talking about." The archbishop viewed the papers in the clerk's hands with deep mistrust. "It isn't about world population growth, is it?" "No, Your Grace. If s about the art theft referred to in that letter." "I hate all that anticlerical stuff about world population growth." 'This is something else entirely, Your Grace," the clerk assured him. Still dubious, prepared to clamp his eyelids shut at the first sign of an uncomfortable reality, the archbishop took the papers and began to read. When, four minutes later, he raised his head, he was a changed man, though not on the subject of world population growth. "Get me," he said coldly, "that man. On the telephone." "Yes, Your Grace." The clerk started to leave, but the archbishop said, 'Take these things with you," waggling bony fingers over the newspaper articles and the letter. "Yes, Your Grace." The clerk picked up the papers, saying, "Should I turn the letter over to the police?" The archbishop stared. "Whatever for? To have this shameful revelation in the newspapers?" "I only thought, Your Grace, the police might think it was evidence or some such thing. Concerning the crime." "Temporal laws are not our concern," the archbishop instructed. "We have the Church to consider. File that letter under miscellaneous correspondence." "Yes, Your Grace." "I'll keep this photo a while." "Yes, Your Grace." The clerk bowed himself out, and the archbishop brooded at the photograph, observing this treatment of the relic of St. Ferghana, until the clerk buzzed him that he had the ambas sador on the phone. The archbishop pressed the button. "Hello." "Hello, Archbishop, how are you today?" There was a nasty homosexual nasal quality to the ambassador's voice that the archbishop had never noticed before. If there was one thing the archbishop hated more than normal sex, it was abnormal sex. His own voice, usually thin and gravelly and harsh, became colder and more forbidding than ever as he said, "It doesn't matter how I am today, Ambassador. When do you intend to bring the relic of St. Ferghana over here to the UN and present it to the General Assembly?" There was a brief startled silence at the other end of the line, punctuated by little coughs and grunts. Then the ambassador said, "Well, Archbishop, I was on the phone yesterday with President Ka--" "I want to know," the archbishop said, "when we'll be seeing the relic over here at the UN." "Well, there should be, you know, Archbishop, a certain ceremony in connection with--" "When." "I had thought, well, uh, you know, a few weeks--" "Tomorrow," the archbishop said. The silence this time was stunned, and profound. "Tomorrow, Archbishop?" "Tomorrow." "But my president wants a ceremonial occa--" "You may have your ceremony whenever you want it," the archbishop said. "Whatever sort of ceremony a fellow like you might devise. But the relic is to be in this building, in my office, for safekeeping, tomorrow." "Archbishop," the miserable invert stammered, "I don't see how I can, uh, uh, uh…" The archbishop hung up. It turned out, Guy could host a lunch on Thursday, after all. There happened to be a few people in town who could be useful or amusing when put together at his table, at least two of whom immediately broke other appointments when they received his invitation, which was highly gratifying. The lunch went as well as Guy had expected, and after it, after seeing his guests out at the front door to their limousines waiting on East Sixty-eighth Street--Guy did prefer guests who departed by limo rather than by cab --he returned to his office, to learn that two calls had come in while he'd been lounging upstairs: Jacques Perly and the carpenters. "Ah," Guy said, standing over his secretary's desk, holding the two "While you were out" slips. "No number for the carpenters?" "They said they were on a job site without a phone," she explained, "and would call back after three. It sounded as though they were at a pay phone." The pay phone is to the telephone as the taxicab is to the limousine. "Get Jacques for me, then," Guy said, "and put the carpenters through when they call back." "Yes, sir." Guy moved on into his own office, and beyond, to his bathroom, where he dropped two Alka-Seltzer into a glass of cold water. Carrying it back, listening to the fizz, feeling the faint shower of bursting bubbles on the hand holding the glass, anticipating the relief just ahead, he sat at his desk as the intercom said, "Mr. Perly on one." "Hello, Jacques." Guy sipped Alka-Seltzer. "How are we coming along?" "Slow and steady," Perly answered. "This situation, Guy, I'm afraid it isn't quite as simple as you and I, in our own simplicity, assumed." "Were we assuming that?" "Well, I was assuming it," Perly said, "and I suppose I was assuming you were assuming it, as well. But you already knew this affair was complicated?" "Well, no," Guy said. He felt his feet weren't quite touching bottom in this conversation. "I wouldn't say I thought it was complicated." "Because if there's anything I should know…" "No, no, no," Guy said. "I merely meant, I never assume any situation is simple.'''' "Ah. A wise philosophy. This situation is quite other than simple. I'm having to run down a few leads here and there." "Leads?" Guy drained the Alka-Seltzer, suddenly needing it more. "You mean to find the collection, rather than buy it?" Thirty thousand down instead of a million up; a hell of a thought. But Perly said, "Not precisely. In a way, I think what we're dealing with here is an inside job." "Fascinating," Guy said. "Anyone I know?" "I'll be happy to chat about it once I've cracked it," Perly said. "But what I need now is time." "Oh, dear." Guy was sorry the Alka-Seltzer was all gone. "You don't want me to stall these people, do you? Desperate criminals like these?" "Frankly, yes." "We discussed at lunch, Jacques, you know we did, the alternatives they do have. Europe, South America. To be just as frank as you are, I'm already out-of-pocket in this situation, to keep them contented--" 'That's up to you, of course." "I know it is; I'm not complaining. But to stall? They already phoned once today, while I was out; they'll be calling back after three." "All I want," Perly said, "is two weeks." "What? Impossible. How can I ask these people to wait two weeks, when they know any second they could be exposed, arrested?" "What can you do for me, Guy? I need time. Ten days, can you do that much?" "One week," Guy said firmly. "In good conscience, that5s all I could even try for." Perly sighed. "Well," he said, "then it's up to me, that's all. Work faster, that's all." Which was when Guy realized one week was how long Perly had hoped for from the beginning. To be negotiated with, and not notice; the Alka-Seltzer turned to gall and wormwood in Guy's stomach. "I'm sure," he said acidly, and burped, "you'll find the way. You're very resourceful, after all." And he hung up on Perry's suave goodbye. By one minute past three, when the carpenter called, Guy was feeling better about life, mostly because of other business dealings that had occupied his time. Now, hearing the gloomy tones of the chief carpenter in his ear, he was positively cheerful when he said, "No news yet, I'm sorry to say." 'That's okay," the carpenter said. "For now, it's okay. Pretty soon, though, it's not gonna be okay." "I understand." "We're hanging out here in the wind, you know." "I perfectly sympathize." "The longer it takes, the more chance something goes wrong, one of us gets nabbed, the whole deal goes south." "I couldn't agree more." "We got other things we could do with this stuff." "Everyone is aware of that, I assure you." "So we gotta have a deadline here, and then after that we're gonna have to go and do other things. Some one other thing." Here was the sticking point. Gripping the phone, speaking carefully, Guy said, "I don't know how much I can rush the process here. We're dealing, after all, with insurance companies and so on." "That's okay. You just tell them the deadline, if they ever want to see this stuff again. Or, if they'd like to pay a hundred cents on the dollar to the guy in Vermont, they could do that, too." "I'm sure they'd rather not." "So they'll meet the deadline." "I don't know how rapidly we could all--" "Two weeks." "You there?" "Oh, yes," Guy said. "You heard me?" "I heard you. Two weeks, you said." "And not a minute more." Guy smiled all over his face. "My friend," he said, "I think I can assure you, it might even be a few minutes less." The storm came out of nowhere, whipping northward up the Atlantic Coast, swamping small boats, eroding beaches, exposing the frenzied ocean waves to the lurid glare of its lightning bolts. Wind rammed the rain before it, sweeping across the bare decks of the Staten Island ferries as they wallowed in the heaving harbor and waddled slowly toward shore. Sheets of rain flung themselves up Broadway, drumming on taxi roofs, theater marquees, closed newspaper kiosks. Skyscrapers ran with fat tears of water; the gutters boiled; trees in the parks bent and trembled before the fury of the elements. Far up in the Bronx, the storm raged and shrieked around the black bell tower of St. Crispinian, where pale arching currents of electricity feebly echoed the jolts of lightning from above, and where Hradec Kralowc's faint voice, torn by the wind, was heard to cry, "We can't give up! Not now!" Electric power had not failed, at least there was that. Round light globes beneath circular tin reflectors hung on long black wires from the shadowy stone ceiling high above Dr. Zorn's laboratory. The globes swayed in the air as crooked fingers of wind reached in through cracks in the church walls, making shadows twist and writhe in all the corners, but at least the lights stayed on. The experiment could continue. There was to be no defeatism. They were winning, they were! Hadn't Hradec succeeded in quitting the Pride of Votskojek unobserved, eluding the press by wearing the uniform of a Continental Detective Agency guard and exiting with the eight-to-four shift? Hadn't he brought his cellular phone with him, and hadn't he used it, right here in this former church yesterday afternoon, to convince Archbishop Minkokus, that fiend from Hell, that he needed twenty-four more hours before he could bring the sacred relic to the archbishop's office in the United Nations building? Hadn't he done so by claiming he couldn't move the relic without permission from his president back in Novi Glad, which permission had not as yet come through but would surely come through at any moment, once the situation had been sufficiently explained to the president? And hadn't that persuaded the archbishop to say, "Very well. Friday. By noon"? Friday, by noon. That was hours from now. Hradec had been here for more than twenty-four wakeful hours so far, spurring Dr. Zorn to greater heights of experimentation, demanding success, and they still had until noon tomorrow, nearly eleven hours. Surely, surely, surely by then they could fake a bone! "We won't fool anyoncl" Zorn insisted, that defeatist, that miserable mewling swine. 'This doesn't even look like a femur!" he cried, pointing at the bone they were working with, brought here by Hradec from a butcher shop in Chinatown, the closest thing he could find to his memory of the stolen relic. "We don't have to fool anyone," Hradec argued. "The only person who is going to see this bone is Archbishop Minkokus, that senile, old, doddering fool. This is only to buy time, Karver, only to buy a little time." "Defrauding an archbishop," Zorn wailed. "They'll lock us up forever!" "No one will know! The archbishop's half-blind!" "The other half will see this bone doesn't even come from a human being!" "How do you know? Maybe it does! No one knows what goes on in Chinatown!" Dr. Zorn picked up the bone in question and banged it on the autopsy table. "This is not a human bone." "How would the archbishop know such a thing? What does he know of the inside of the human body?" The argument raged on within as the storm raged on without. They shaved the bone; they painted it; they surged powerful beams of electric energy through it; they lowered it into various solutions; they exposed it to the storm; they radiated it; they boiled it but didn't keep the soup; they froze it. On and on the work continued, without pause or rest. Around the church, the storm keened and crashed, but the two within remained bent over their experiments. The storm abated, its cruel teeth withdrew, the storm fled away northward to exhaust itself on the upland slopes, and still Hradec and Zorn labored on. Morning came, and with it the sun, and still they did not rest. And then the phone rang. Hradec looked up from the container of dry ice. Smoke and steam enveloped his head. He listened to the tone of the ring. 'That's my phone," he said. "It must be Lusk or Terment, from the embassy; no one else has my cellular phone number." "You'd better answer it," Dr. Zorn suggested. He was haggard from lack of sleep, his reddened eyes behind the thick lenses looking this morning like targets. "Oh, God," Hradec moaned, turning unwillingly toward his briefcase, where the ominous phone shrilled once more. "What now?" And he fished it out. It was, as Hradec had supposed, Lusk or Terment; he himself didn't care which. "I am not to be disturbed," he barked, his voice hoarse and ragged. "A Mr. Perly called. He's investigating Mr. Hochman's theft." "I don't care about that." "He says he wants you at/Mr. Hochman's suite in the Dragon Host Hotel at ten o'clock this morning." "What? For God's sake, why?" "He didn't say. He just said Mr. Hochman will be there, and everyone else concerned will be there, and it would be better for you if you were there." Outraged through his exhaustion, fitting the tattered cloak of diplomatic immunity about himself, Hradec said, "Are you implying he threatened me?" "It sounded that way, sir. I told him you'd be there." "You take a lot on yourself!" Hradec