Put a Lid on It (26 page)

But Jeffords was waving that away, saying, “No, don't even think about that, Francis, that's for the melodramas. It's tough enough to keep your footprints unnoticed when you're doing a simple little dirty trick on the Other Side. If we already knew we couldn't successfully pull a burglary on our own, trust me, we know better than to think we could pull off a murder.”

“Get another expert.”

Jeffords' laugh was bitter. “Are you kidding? Look at the trouble we've got from the first one. Besides, every professional hit man in America is actually an undercover FBI agent, as every schoolboy knows, and as is demonstrated regularly in headlines in the newspapers. No, you're free, goddamit. You gonna finish your lunch?”

“No. You made me lose my appetite.”

“Sorry.” To the Busters he said, “We're going now.” They stood, and Jeffords said, “I'll take the check here.”

“Thanks. And leave me a hundred, will you? Walking around money.”

Jeffords pursed his lips. Reaching for his wallet, he said, “I should've left you in the MCC.”

“Whoever else you got would've been worse.”

“Christ, and that's probably true, too,” Jeffords said, dropping greenbacks next to the onion rings.

“Don't forget your hat,” Meehan said, extending the chauffeur's cap.

Jeffords took it. “The next time they catch you,” he said, “you'll be on your own.”

“No, I won't,” Meehan said.

The first time he tried to call, from the diner, he hung up just before the answering machine would have come on. Then he spent some of Jeffords' hundred—ninety, Jeffords had given him, actually—on a cab from the diner the twenty miles westward to the railroad station in Hudson, along the Hudson River, where he tried calling again, and again avoided the answering machine.

He had time then to sit for a while, on the platform, looking out from the station at the wide slow river and all of America beyond it, and to think that, if he cared about it, he could probably decide the upcoming presidential election right now, all by himself. But that would mean
looking
at those people, those candidates, getting involved, studying their histories and their programs, making an informed decision; so screw it. Let the Americans work it out for themselves. How bad a choice could they make?

After the third failed phone call, he sat on a bench inside the station, just waiting it out, and was there when the two guys walked in, looked around, looked at him, and then walked straight toward him. Oh, come on, he thought. Enough is enough.

The two guys were not quite twins. They were both bareheaded, with thick black hair heavily piled all over their skulls. Both had smoky skin with darker beard-shadow and rich black moustaches. Both wore dark vinyl zip-up jackets zipped up, and creased clean blue jeans, and short black boots. Both were a little bigger than necessary, and so were their noses. One of them wore aviator-style glasses, clear, and the other one didn't.

Meehan sighed and waited, and the two came over to sit on the bench, one on either side of him. The one on his right, with the aviator glasses, said, “You will stand and come outside to our car now, or we will shoot you. We don't care.”

Meehan frowned, leaning toward him, listening. He said, “Would you say something?”

They gave each other surprised looks. The one with the aviator glasses said, “I already said it. Do you want to die?”

“Ah,” Meehan said, working it out. “So you're Mostafa.” Pointing at the other one, on his left, he said, “So that makes you Yehudi.”

Yehudi shook his head. “Why do you say that?”

“Sure, that's it,” Meehan said, agreeing with himself. “You're the one talked to me on the phone.” Turning back to Mostafa he said, “I never saw either of you guys, but I heard you talk.”

Mostafa scrinched the eyes up behind the aviator glasses. “You heard us talk?”

“Sure. I was in the closet at Goldfarb's when you showed up, with the electric tape on the door so it wouldn't lock? That jacket you're wearing, you put that in the closet, you keep some kinda pistol in that pocket there. I touched it.”

They both stared at him. Mostafa said, “You touched my pistol?”

“Listen,” Meehan told him, “I'm not the one you should worry about. I
left
the pistol there. I just wanted to see you two, no confrontations, but when I was going to go take a look at you in the kitchen, drinking tea there—”

“This is craziness,” Yehudi said. “What are you making up here?”

“I'm the one left the ladder in the elevator,” Meehan told him. “Remember? Mostafa told you there was a ladder in the elevator.”

“I did,” Mostafa said. He sounded awed.

“So,” Meehan said, “I'm gonna go take a look at you, just a quick peek, and Goldfarb comes out of the bedroom with your handcuffs on one wrist and carrying a pistol of her own. She was gonna shoot you two, no kidding.”

They looked at each other past him, frowning, and Mostafa said, not to Meehan but to Yehudi, “It was the woman who had the pistol, at Victor's.”

“Oh, Reader, you mean,” Meehan said. “Yeah, that's the point I'm making. I talked her out of it at her place, killing you, with cleaning all those bloodstains off her kitchen, but
she's
the one you gotta look out for, not me. And by the way, the job's over.”

Neither of them liked that. Mostafa, apparently trying to be tricky, said, “What job?”

“The job you wanted to know about,” Meehan explained. “The package, some kind of evidence could make some kind of trouble for the president. I got it, I don't know what it is, I don't
wanna
know what it is, and I gave it to Jeffords just a couple hours ago, which is why I'm here, waiting for the train. But the point is, you do something to me, Goldfarb'll tear your hearts out. This is just a friendly warning.”

They both remained silent, so he got to his feet, turned to look at them, and said, “And here's another question you oughta ask yourself. How long are
you
two gonna be on the same side?” He smiled goodbye, and went out to look at nothing go by on the tracks outside, and a little later, when he went back in to use the phone, they were gone.

But it was his fifth try on the phone, at quarter to six, when at last she answered: “Goldfarb.”

“Meehan,” he said.

“Well, hello. Where are you?”

“Not in the MCC,” Meehan said, “which is where Jeffords tried to put me.”

“Why, that son of a bitch. Though I'm not surprised, I must say. What, are you hiding out? Headed for Idaho?”

“No, I'm safe,” Meehan said, and couldn't believe it himself. “Free and clear and safe. And I wonder if I should come back to the city and we talk.”

“Meehan,” she said, “I can't ask you to reform.”

“No, I know.”

“So I can't be around you. You understand that.”

“I was thinking.” he said. “I'm gonna be flush for a while, because of today.”

“No details!”

“No, don't worry. But I was thinking, before I'm broke again, with your connections, you could probly set me up with one of those social services outfits, you know, counselors to ex-cons, that kind of thing.”

Sounding extremely suspicious, she said, “Telling them what?”

“How to be rehabilitated,” he said. “How to make the ten thousand rules work
for
you.”

“The what?”

“I never told anybody about those before,” he said. “That's a long conversation. Should I grab a train here, come back to the city?”