Put a Lid on It (21 page)

“I noticed.”

“Well, it can wait, anyway,” she said. “I mean, we can defer it.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“What I'm saying is,” she said, looking where she was walking and not looking at him, “and this is awkward for me, but you are not coming to my room tonight, and I am not coming to yours. So we don't have to make any decisions yet.”

“How come?” he said.

Shaking her head, speaking as though it should be obvious, she said, “Not with Jeffords under the same roof.”

“What?” he said. “It's a
hotel
, it isn't a house or something.”

“I don't care, it just wouldn't feel right,” she said. “Not with Jeffords there.”

“I get it,” he said. “We avoid the decision.”

She gave him a sharp look. “And
I
get it,” she said. “You've decided, that's what's wrong with her.”

“Well, it starts the list,” he said.

39

T
HE RED LIGHT
wasn't blinking on the phone, but that was all right; they were already in the room. Two guys, in the uncomfortable chairs to either side of the oval table by the window. The one writing in a notepad on the table wore a plaid bowtie, blue button-down shirt buttoned down, tan sports jacket, tan chinos, speckle-framed eyeglasses, and receding hair-colored hair. The one leaning back, legs straight out, ankles crossed as he gazed meditatively at the ceiling, wore black tassel loafers, designer blue jeans with a crease, dark gray sports jacket, black turtleneck shirt, Josef Stalin's moustache, and Josef Stalin's hair. Both smiled when Meehan entered the room, and got to their feet. In an amiable, welcoming way, Bowtie said, “Mr. Meehan.”

There were so many conflicting signals coming off these guys that Meehan, try as he might, could not find a thing in the ten thousand rules to guide him here. Smiling? But in the room? But a
bowtie?

They continued to smile at him, Moustache stepping to the side, offering the chair he'd been in, saying, “Have a seat.”

Then the appropriate rule did at last surface in his brain: If you don't understand where you are, go somewhere else. “I'll be back in five minutes,” he told them, “after you guys leave.”

They both raised objections, urging him to stay, but since neither flashed a firearm and one of them did wear a bowtie, Meehan ignored them, left the room, went down to the lobby, found the house phone, called Jeffords' room, and got goddam voice mail. “Goddam it,” he told it, “I told you to stay in tonight. I got two guys in my room, I need to know who they are.”

He hung up, went over to one of the two skimpy sofas in the lobby's seating area, sat in the one where he could look across the other one toward the street, and tried to figure out who the players were, without a scorecard. Not cops, definitely. Not linked to Yehudi and Mostafa, just as definitely. Not menacing, but on the other hand untroubled by breaking into somebody else's hotel room.

Well, but, they didn't actually
break
in, did they? If they had, Meehan would have noticed scars on the door. So they used some sort of key. Did they walk around with universal keys, or bribe a desk clerk, or what?

Were they from the Other Side, the crowd that wanted to replace the present president with their own president, so Clendon Burnstone IV could get some private bill through Congress? They had the right bland look, but that still didn't seem to explain them.

And here they came, out of the elevator, talking earnestly at one another, then
beaming
with pleasure when they saw Meehan, veering to move straight toward him.

And he got it. Standing, pointing at the belly beneath the bowtie, he said, “Press.”

“Yes, of course,” said Bowtie.

“We
tried
to identify ourselves,” said Moustache, “but you simply turned around and left.” With which, he and Bowtie extended business cards, which Meehan took without looking at, but kept in his right hand.

“We understand,” Bowtie said soothingly, “that you were startled by our appearance in your room, but we meant nothing threatening at all, I assure you.”

Meehan already knew that much. And that they would pull a stunt like that on him meant they knew his background, knew he was one of the people they could walk on. He said, “Get it over with.”

Moustache gestured to the sofas. “Shall we sit? Unless you'd rather we talked up in your room.”

“I wouldn't rather we talked anywhere,” Meehan said. “I'd rather you got to it and got it over with.” He almost said, “because I have to get up early,” but he didn't want them to know that, did he?

“Well, at least we can get comfortable,” Bowtie said. “And we promise not to take up more than a few minutes of your time.”

Moustache did his hospitable wave at the sofas again, so Meehan sat back down where he'd been, and they took the sofa facing him over the square Formica coffee table.

Bowtie pulled a little machine from his jacket pocket, saying, “Mind if I tape this?”

“Yes,” Meehan said.

Bowtie seemed surprised, but then shrugged, put the machine away, pulled out his notepad instead, and said, “Well, I'll just take notes, then.”

“No,” Meehan said.

Now Bowtie was truly surprised. “You don't want me to take notes?”

“No.”

Moustache said, “Mr. Meehan, an accurate record is to your advantage.”

“No, it isn't,” Meehan said. “No record at all is to my advantage. What do you want?”

They looked at one another, both shrugged, and Moustache took over, saying, “Essentially, all we want from you is confirmation of a rumor.”

Meehan was about to tell him what he could do with his rumor when, over their shoulders, through the street entrance, he saw Jeffords coming in.

Would they know Jeffords by sight? Why not, he was part of the Campaign Committee. To keep these two concentrated on him, and to give Jeffords a chance to get the hell out of sight, Meehan said, “Well, I'll listen. I don't promise anything.”

“Of course not,” Moustache said. He and Bowtie had little smiles on their faces at all times, as though they knew just a tiny bit more than anybody else in the world and really got a kick out of being who they were.

Halfway across the lobby, Jeffords saw the trio on the sofas, and recoiled like a kitten from a snake. His wide-eyed expression fastened on Meehan as though to say, “How
could
you betray me like this?” while Meehan did his best to keep his own concentration fixed on Moustache and Bowtie.

“The rumor is,” Moustache was saying, “that the CC is planning some sort of dirty trick against the challenger, some October Surprise, and that you were plucked from a federal penitentiary to be a part of it.”

Yeah, that was the press, in a nutshell. Get everything almost right, but nothing actually
right
at all. It was the Other Side that planned the October Surprise, and the MCC wasn't a federal penitentiary. But it was close enough to do the job, right?

While Jeffords, across the way, finally realized he should stop semaphoring betrayal and start scampering for the elevators, Meehan said, “I think you must have me confused with some other Francis Xavier Meehan. I have absolutely no federal convictions anywhere, you could look that up, and they wouldn't put me in a federal can unless they convicted me of a federal crime, like making war on Portugal or mailing a letter without a stamp.”

Bowtie, smirk undiminished, said, “Mr. Meehan, are you going to claim you have
not
been at meetings with Bruce Benjamin and Pat Jeffords of the CC?”

“Sure I saw them,” Meehan said. (Jeffords jittered, way over there, in front of a closed elevator door.) “The truth is, I used to live a life of crime, some little while ago, but now I'm rehabilitated, and I'm doing job interviews. Benjamin and Jeffords thought the Other Side might be planning some kind of dirty trick, and wondered if I had any talents that could help them.” (Another use of the rule that you should always tell the truth, with codicils, like the one upcoming.) “Unfortunately, I wasn't any use to them, so I'm still looking for work. Why don't you guys hire me?”

They smirked at one another, as Jeffords at last popped into an elevator and the door slid shut behind him. Moustache said, “
Us
hire you? To do what, Mr. Meehan?”

“Break into hotel rooms for you,” Meehan said. “Like, I wouldn't leave a lot of fingerprints up there, or a bribed desk clerk down here that'll fold the first time a cop frowns at him.”

“Oh, come on,” Moustache said.

Meehan waved the little business cards. “You could hire me, or I could put in a complaint. You broke into my room.”

“You won't do that,” Bowtie said.

Meehan grinned at him. “That's cause you think I'm tied up with Benjamin and Jeffords, and so I don't want to make any waves, so you were safe to bust into my room just to see if you could find anything in there to tell you what's going on. But I'm
not
tied up with anybody at all, I'm just a guy looking for a job. So maybe you could give me a job with you guys, or I could prepare my lawsuit against your paper by calling the cops.”

Moustache permitted himself to look stern. “It could be to your advantage to have a friend in the press, Mr. Meehan,” he said.

Meehan said, “Does anybody actually have a
friend
in the press? Aren't you guys just halfway up the ladder, kissing the ass above you and kicking the face below you?”

They stood, as one man, like a drill team. “I hope you won't be sorry,” Bowtie said, “that you decided to take this attitude toward us.”

“As to your calling the police,” Moustache said, “I'll hold my credibility up against a convicted felon any day.”

Meehan laughed; he couldn't help it. “Credibility!” he cried. “Mary wept! Credibility!”

The press departed, shoulders squared, and Meehan went up to the room to see that Jeffords had, of course, caused his message light to start blinking. He deleted without listening; let the jerk stew until morning.

40

“
I
DIDN'T KNOW
what to think,” Jeffords said.

“Sure you did,” Meehan said. “You thought I was selling you out to some reporters.”

“You all looked so cosy together there,” Jeffords explained.

“You're right,” Meehan said. “What I should of done, I should of stood up and shouted, ‘Don't worry, Mr. Jeffords, I'm not saying a thing about you.’”

“No, no, you were right.” Jeffords ate scrambled egg, and toyed with his coffee cup. “I just wish you'd called me last night.”

“I was sleepy,” Meehan told him, and ate a piece of bacon.

It was six-fifty in the morning, and they were in the Crowne Royale's coffee shop, along with a few solitary salesmen and army recruits. “I barely slept at all,” Jeffords said, “not knowing.”

“You can sleep on the drive,” Meehan told him, looking across the coffee shop and out its front window. “I think that's our car.”

Jeffords turned, crouched, craned to see. “He's early.”

“Good, let's get out of here.”

Their waiter was a young Hispanic suffering from expression deficit disorder. Jeffords waved at him, doing the signing-in-air gesture that means bring-my-bill, and he brought it. Since he looked mostly like his own death mask, but with its eyes open, he was hard to face directly. Fortunately, he immediately went away again, and Jeffords pushed the bill toward Meehan, saying, “I checked out, so you'll have to put it on your room.”

Meehan added a tithe and a signature and his room number and said, “You're getting your wallet, you can give it to me in cash. Fourteen bucks.”

“Prices in New York,” Jeffords said.

When they went outside, the man taking his chauffeur's cap off at the wheel of the limo was, surprisingly enough, Bruce Benjamin. Rolling his window down, he said, “Hello, you chaps. I suppose one of you wants to drive. I find it looks better if one wears the cap.”

“I'll drive,” Meehan said.

Climbing out of the limo, Benjamin said, “Pat and I'll ride in back.”

Meehan said, “Since when are you coming along?”

“Just for a little chat,” Benjamin assured him. “You can drop me off anywhere.”

Jeffords was already sliding into the back seat, but Meehan said to Benjamin, “Chat about what?”

“Well, first, what you and Ms. Goldfarb did for Pat yesterday was amazing. Well above and beyond. My congratulations to you both.”

Uncomfortable, Meehan shrugged and said, “We're used to having him around.”

“Then,” Benjamin said, “when Pat called me last night…”

“I get it. Climb aboard.”

They all boarded, and Meehan put on the cap, which fit pretty well. He adjusted the mirror so he could see the two back there, Benjamin giving Jeffords his wallet and watch. “Don't forget my fourteen bucks,” Meehan said.

“I won't.”

Meehan put the car in gear, drove to the first red light, stopped, and said, “You want to know what happened last night.”

“Yes, please,” Benjamin said.

“I'll tell you,” Meehan said, and started them forward as the light turned green. “But then, you know, I've been thinking about it, and I'm glad you're here, because I got some questions of my own, and it would be tougher to get answers just from Jeffords.”

Benjamin said, “But do clear up last night for me first, please.”

“I was out to dinner—”

“With Elaine Goldfarb,” Jeffords interjected.

Even at this distance, in the little mirror, by dawn's early light, Meehan could see Benjamin's eyebrows raise, as he murmured, “Oh?”

Meehan took the right at the next corner and headed for the West Side Highway. “When I got home—alone—those two bozos were in my room. So I left them there and went down to the lobby—”

“Excuse me,” Benjamin said. “You
left
them there? In your room?”

“There's two of them,” Meehan said, “they're already in there, I got nothing in there they can't look at, or even take away with them, and I'm not in a mood for conversation, so I left.”

“Unorthodox,” Benjamin commented, “but I've remarked that in you before.”

“Well,” Meehan said, “by the time they followed me down to the lobby, I'd figured out they were reporters. I was just about to tell them to take a hike when Jeffords walked in. I knew Jeffords didn't want them to see him, so I kept talking to the guys until he finally cleared out.”