Put a Lid on It (13 page)

Ignoring that, Bernie said, “So what's up?”

“A little something. We could talk, if you're free.”

“As a bird,” Bernie said. “Where do you wanna talk?”

“You say.”

“Come to the bowling alley.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. There's a bar there, always plenty of time between games. Also”—a his voice dropping—“it's so loud in there, you can have a private conversation, you know what I'm saying?”

“I hear you,” Meehan said.

The bowling alley, like Bernie's home, was in Queens, which meant Meehan first took a subway under the East River and way to hell and gone out to neighborhoods that haven't seen a stranger since Prohibition ended. From there, he had to take a bus through more neighborhoods of the same, until he debussed at an intersection where Atomic Lanes hunched like a war-surplus airplane hangar opposite him across six lanes of boulevard.

Sometimes a commercial operation's name places it in history. Atomic Lanes would be circa l946 to 1949, the war over, atomic bombs good, the guys home from the military and wanting to bowl. Most of the Atomic Diners and Atomic Car Washes and Atomic Shoe Repairs from that period were long gone, but here remained Atomic Lanes, unchanged, much like the neighborhood in which it was situated, also still circa 1946 to 1949.

Meehan had an opportunity to do several grafs of his monograph on commercial names in history in his head, just reaching the point of trying to figure out what the first set of changes would have been—Swingers Dry Cleaners?—before the traffic lights changed, and it became possible to cross the boulevard and enter Atomic Lanes.

Noise. That was the first thing that struck him, almost literally, when he pushed through one of the glass doors into the place, a continuous echoing racket bouncing off nothing but hard surfaces, a cacophony he associated with indoor municipal swimming pools.

There were wide steps dead ahead, and a high ceiling full of bright lights beyond. Meehan went up the steps, and the interior revealed itself to him a little more with each step. There must have been 40 lanes 40, every one of them in use. Mostly it was bowling leagues, the teams all in the same shirt, some male leagues, some female, some mixed. Everybody bowled, and everybody talked, and everybody shouted encouragement to everybody else. Everybody shrieked with triumph and cried out in despair.

I couldn't find a hundred Bernies in here, Meehan told himself, but then all at once he did. One, anyway. Six, seven lanes off to the right, dressed like his teammates—all male—in white short-sleeved shirt with maroon stripes on the sleeves and neck and ADDISON'S FUNERAL HOME in maroon italic on the back. That was Bernie there, skinny, quick-moving, mostly bald with pepper-and-salt steel wool around the edges. He was standing on the banquette seat, the better to see what his teammate was going to do with that 7-10 split, which was miss them both, causing four roars of triumph and four wails of agony. Then Bernie grabbed his ball off the return—a sparkly red-white ball, a popular auto color circa Atomic Lanes—and poised himself, waiting for the automatic pin-setter to finish fussing about, which was probably the only real change in here since opening day, the replacement of the pin boys who used to be back there, scrambling desperately out of the way of the oncoming balls.

Meehan walked along the raised aisle behind the banquettes until he was directly behind Bernie and his team, and watched Bernie knock over seven pins, leaving three on the left, then knock down the three. When he turned back to his team, shaking his head, he glanced up and saw Meehan. With a grin, he waved and pointed to something behind Meehan to his right. Meehan looked and it was the bar, open on this side, with tables next to it.

Meehan looked back to nod at Bernie, but Bernie was already again deeply involved with his team, so Meehan went to the bar, got a Rolling Rock, and sat with it at a table where he could watch Bernie's game without entirely understanding it.

By the time Bernie came trotting up, also wearing nonskid bowling shoes the same color as his bowling ball, Meehan was used to the racket. “Whadayasay,” Bernie greeted him on arrival, and Meehan heard him fine.

“I say that's a very healthful thing you got going there,” Meehan said.

“Yeah, thank God for the bar,” Bernie said. “Be right back.” And he was, with his own Rolling Rock, saying, “How you been?”

“Bad, until a few days ago,” Meehan told him, “but I'll get to that.” After having tried out his story on Woody, he'd decided this time to go at it from a different direction. “I got a lead on something,” he said, “that Leroy from Cargo's gonna take in a second. And it isn't even that hard to get at.”

“Sounds great,” Bernie said. “What is it?”

“Antique guns.”

Bernie cocked his head. “And again?”

“There's this rich guy up in Massachusetts,” Meehan explained, “he collects antique guns from early American wars. Famous collection, goes on tour and everything. Lot of valuable rifles and shit, full of history, Minute Men, Johnny Reb, all that.”

“And you've got a way to get it.”

“I know where it is,” Meehan said. “I gotta case it a little more.”

“There's gonna be locks for me,” Bernie suggested. He was a lockman, usually.

“Oh, yeah,” Meehan said.

“Sounds interesting,” Bernie admitted. “Do you know how much is in it?”

“I didn't ask Leroy,” Meehan said. “You want, give him a call, tell him you're coming in with me, it's the Burnstone collection.”

“No, I don't need to,” Bernie decided. “Leroy wouldn't get excited if it wasn't pretty good.”

“That's what I figured.”

Glancing away, Bernie said, “Can you stick around? I'll be back next game.”

“Sure,” Meehan said.

When next he saw Bernie heading toward the bar, Meehan said to Mona, “There's my friend. I gotta talk to him. So we're on for dinner?”

“Sure,” she said, with a grin he was learning to like. She was with an all-girl league.

Meehan paused at the bar for a new Rolling Rock, joined Bernie, and Bernie said, “You're still a bachelor, huh?”

“No,” Meehan told him, “I'm still an ex-husband. Our needs are greater.”

“I can see that,” Bernie said. “So how did you come on to this gun thing?”

“Well, that's the weird story,” Meehan said. “It was brought to me by a guy.”

“You can count on him?”

“Wait'll you hear,” Meehan assured him. “The thing is, though, there's a deadline involved. The guy's got his own problems, and we gotta pull the job no later than Thursday.”

“
This
Thursday?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeez,” Bernie said.

“I been up there once,” Meehan told him, “and it looks good. I figure we drive up there tomorrow, be certain sure. Could we use your car?”

“Fine,” Bernie said. “Only, who's this guy with the deadline?”

So Meehan told him.

When Meehan was finished, there was as much silence at their table as had ever happened in that bowling alley. Then Bernie said, “Took you out of the MCC.”

“They needed somebody in a federal facility.”

“Is this guy setting you up? Is he who he says he is?”

“He is,” Meehan said. “They're paying for my lawyer, six thou already, plus one for me, walking around money. I'm flying in corporate jets contributed to the campaign. They put me up in a United States Parks Department complex down in North Carolina. They're weird, but they're real.”

“The weather's supposed to be nice tomorrow,” Bernie said. “I'm not tied up, a drive might be nice. Massachusetts, you say?”

“Two and a half hours, no more.”

“Okay,” Bernie said, and grinned. “What the hell. It's worth it just to be part of that story.”

“That's my man.”

“So where and when do you want to meet?”

Meehan glanced over toward Mona. “I'll call you in the morning,” he said. “We'll set a rendezvous.”

27

M
EEHAN WAS FINISHING
his breakfast at the diner two blocks along the boulevard from Atomic Lanes—the California Dreamin Diner, a more recent vintage—when he saw Bernie pull into the parking lot in a gray Honda Accord with Maryland license plates. Meehan rose, left a dollar on the table, paid the cashier, and went out to where Bernie sat at the wheel, reading the
Daily News
. Meehan slid in beside him and said, “Maryland?”

“Oh, sure,” Bernie said. Tossing the paper onto the back seat, steering out to the boulevard, he said, “I put those on if I'm working, going out of town. Those or the Florida plates. I got ID to go with both of them.” Stopping at a red light, he grinned and said, “One time, I found out at the end of the day, I had the Florida plates on the car, the Maryland ID in my wallet. Good thing I wasn't stopped.”

“Yeah,” Meehan said. “You got it right today, though, huh?”

“Ever since then, I double-check.”

Bernie drove over to the Van Wyck Expressway, and they did the Whitestone Bridge and the Hutch and on north, and two and a half hours later, as Meehan had promised, they turned off US 7 onto Spring Road. A couple miles later, they came to Burnstone Trail on their left, with a sawhorse across it bearing a sign NO ACCESS. “Aha,” Meehan said.

Bernie had stopped, to consider the road and the sign. There was no other traffic on Spring Road today. He said, “That wasn't there, the last time you came up?”

“There was a picnic kind of thing going on last time. Let's see what happens, we go on down Spring Road.”

They went on down Spring Road and nothing happened; no houses, no turnoffs, nothing but increasingly thick forest and increasingly steep hill. When the blacktop switched to dirt, Bernie said, “What more do you want to see?”

“Let's go back.”

Bernie K-turned, and they looked at the same scenery from the other direction. Driving along, Bernie said, “You think it's better, go in at night?”

“Security's gonna be more serious at night,” Meehan said. “And anyway, I wanna give it the double-o.”

“Sure.”

They kept driving, and then Bernie said, “There it is, up ahead.”

“Stop by it,” Meehan said, so Bernie did, and Meehan frowned out the Honda window at the sawhorse and the blacktop road beyond it, meandering away. “We gotta get in there,” he said.

“Sure,” Bernie said.

Meehan frowned some more at the sawhorse, and all at once he said, “Wait a minute. What are we worried about? That isn't a burglar alarm, it's just a sawhorse.”

“That's true,” Bernie said.

“It doesn't even block the whole road.”

“True.”

“There's nobody here, nobody going in, nobody coming out.”

“Also true.”

Meehan looked away from the sawhorse. “You got a map of Connecticut?”

“We're in Massachusetts.”

“I know. That's why I want Connecticut.”

Bernie considered that for a second, then grinned. “I get it. We're lost.”

“That's exactly it.”

Bernie rooted around in the pocket of his door, and at last came up with a Connecticut map. “Got it.”

“Great. And I tell you what,” Meehan said. “Take the key, but don't lock.”

“'Cause we're innocent.”

“Just passing through.”

They got out of the Honda, walked around the sawhorse, and headed down Burnstone Trail, Bernie folding the map to show northwestern Connecticut, near where they were. All the bunting and election posters had been removed.

After a few minutes, they passed the break in the trees on the left, leading to the field, and Meehan said, “For the picnic, everybody parked in there, and golf carts took them over to the house.”

“Pretty snazzy,” Bernie said.

“It was a political picnic,” Meehan explained, “bring out the faithful. Everything was donated. The rich guy donated his house, or at least the out-front of it, but he was sorry, he couldn't be here.”

“Uh-huh,” Bernie said.

“I'm hoping he isn't back yet,” Meehan said. “What I'd like is nobody here, and no high-tech alarms.”

“That would be good.”

“If it comes to pass like that,” Meehan said, “we'll drive back to the city, get a couple more guys and a truck, come back up tonight, it's all over.”

“That wouldn't be bad,” Bernie agreed.

They kept walking, and Meehan said, “This is the part of the road I didn't see last time, because of parking back there.”

“It's no different from the rest.”

“No. There's the house.”

It was ahead of them, a lot of massive white through the green trees. They kept walking, and no gold rope was stretched across the road. “This was as far as they wanted you to go, last time,” Meehan said. “I mean, the people had to stay in this part, in front of the house.” He noticed the food tents were also gone. A neat job had been done, cleaning up.

They walked on by the house, studying it, and Meehan said, “What do you think? Anybody here?”

“No car out front,” Bernie said. “No sign of life inside.”

“So let's keep going. What we want's gonna be in one of the other buildings.”

They went past the house, and the Dixieland band was gone from the side porch, though somehow marching saints did still seem to hover in the air. Meehan smiled broadly when they went past the spot where the golden rope had said, PRIVATE. Off to the right, not only was the security guy gone, so was his chair.

Moving toward the outbuildings, Meehan could now see there were three. The first, white clapboard with the same dark green trim as the main house, looked more and more like a guest house, and the second, barn-red, still looked like nothing but a barn. Beyond the guest house, also white, was a third structure, smaller than the other two, mostly hidden by the others. One story high, it had a bungalow look, with a roof that angled down low over a central front door flanked by windows. There wasn't a porch, just one step up to a platform in front of the door, sided by white railings.

“Something tells me,” Meehan said, “our firepower's gonna be in that one back there.”

“The road goes right to it,” Bernie said.

Which it did; and stopped. Burnstone Trail's end, at the little white bungalow.

They walked to the bungalow, and Meehan went to the window at the right to look in, see what was what inside, and what he saw was a pale face looking out at him. No, it wasn't a reflection of his own face, not unless he'd aged forty years since he'd last checked. He recoiled, and the old guy, a ghostly white figure if you believed in ghosts, waved, then moved away from the window to open the door and lean out and tell them, “Say, you fellows. Come on in.”