She shook her head.
'You sure don't look like it,' Mickey blurted.
Her face flushed, and she smiled shyly.
Then she picked up a telephone. She spoke the Bull's room number so softly he couldn't hear it.
The phone rang a long time before the Bull's wife answered it.
'Good morning, Mrs. Bolinski,' she said. 'This is Miss Travis at the front desk. I hope I haven't disturbed you. Mr. O'Hara is here.'
Travis, huh? It figures she would have a nice name like that.
'May I send him up?' Miss Travis said, glancing at Mickey. Then she said, 'Thank you, madam,' and hung up. 'Mr. Bolinski is in the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, Mr. O'Hara. That's on ten. Turn to your right when you exit the elevator.'
'Thanks.'
'My pleasure.'
Mickey turned and started to walk to the bank of elevators. Then he turned again.
'You get yourself some sleep,' he commanded.
The remark startled her for long enough to give Mickey the opportunity to conclude that whenever it came to saying exactly the right thing to a woman he really liked, he ranked right along with Jackie Gleason playing the bus driver on TV. Or maybe the Marquis de Sade.
But she smiled. 'Thank you. I'll try,' she said. 'I should be relieved any minute now.'
Mickey nodded at her, and walked to the elevator. When he got inside and turned around and looked at her, she was looking at him. She waved as the elevator door closed.
It doesn't mean a fucking thing. She was smiling at the old bluehaired broad last night, too.
Mickey had no trouble finding the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, and when he did the door was open, and he could hear Antoinette's voice. He rapped on the door, and pushed it open.
Antoinette was sitting on one of the two couches in front of a fireplace, in a fancy bathrobe, her legs tucked under her, talking on the telephone. She waved him inside, covered the mouthpiece with her hand, and said, 'Come in, Michael. Casimir's in the shower.'
Then she resumed her conversation. Mickey picked up that she was talking to her mother and at least one of the kids.
Casimir Bolinski entered the room. He was wearing a towel around his waist. It was an average-sized towel around an enormous waist, which did little to preserve Mr. Bolinski's modesty.
'I can't find my teeth, sweetie,' he mumbled.
Mrs. Bolinski covered the mouthpiece again.
'They're in that blue jar I bought you in Vegas,' Mrs. Bolinski said.
'Be with you in a jiff, Michael,' the Bull mumbled, adding, 'You're early.'
He walked out of the sitting room. Mickey saw that his back, and the backs of his legs, especially behind the knees, were laced with surgical scars.
'Kiss, kiss,' Antoinette said to the telephone and hung up. 'We left the kids with my mother,' she said. 'Casimir and I have to really work at getting a little time alone together. So I came with him.'
'Good for you,' Mickey said.
'I didn't know we were coming here,' Antoinette said, 'until we got to the airport.'
Mickey wondered if he was getting some kind of complaint, so he just smiled, instead of saying anything.
'How's your mother, Michael?' Antoinette asked.
'I had dinner with her yesterday.'
'That's nice,' Antoinette said. Then she picked up the telephone again, dialed a number, identified herself as Mrs. Casimir Bolinski, and said they could serve breakfast now.
The Bull returned to the room, now wearing a shirt and trousers, in the act of hooking his suspender strap over his shoulder.
'I told them to come at ten,' he announced, now, with his teeth in, speaking clearly. 'We'll have time to eat breakfast. How's your mother?'
'I had dinner with her yesterday. Who's coming at ten?'
'She still think the other people are robbing her blind?'
'Yeah, when they're not… making whoopee,' Mickey said. 'Who's coming at ten?'
'Who do you think?' the Bull said. 'I told them we were sick of fucking around with them.'
'Clean up your language,' Antoinette said, 'there's a lady present.'
'Sorry, sweetie,' the Bull said, sounding genuinely contrite. 'Ain't there any coffee?'
'On that roll-around cart in the bedroom,' Antoinette said.
The Bull went back into the bedroom and came out pushing a cart holding a coffee service. He poured a cupful and handed it to Mickey, then poured one for himself.
'What am I, the family orphan?' Antoinette asked. 'I thought you had yours,' the Bull said. 'I did, but you should have asked.'
'You want a cup of coffee, or not?'
'No, thank you, I've got to get dressed,' Antoinette said, snippily, and left the sitting room.
'She's a little pissed,' the Bull said. 'She didn't know I was coming here. She thought I was going to Palm Beach.'
'Palm Beach?'
'Lenny Moskowitz is marrying Martha Bethune,' the Bull explained. 'We got to get the premarital agreement finalized.'
Mickey knew Lenny Moskowitz. Or knew of him. He had damned near been the Most Valuable Player in the American League.
'Who's Martha Whateveryousaid?'
'Long-legged blonde with a gorgeous set of knockers,' the Bull explained. 'She's damned near as tall as Lenny. Her family makes hub caps.'
'Makes what?'
'Hub caps. For cars? They have a pisspot full of dough, and they're afraid Lenny's marrying her for her dough. Jesus, I got him five big ones for three years. He don't need any of her goddamned dough.'
Mickey smiled uneasily, as he thought again of the enormous difference between negotiating a contract for the professional services of someone who was damned near the Most Valuable Player in the American League and a police reporter for thePhiladelphia Bulletin .
A few minutes later, two waiters rolled into the suite with a cart and a folding table and set up breakfast.
'I told you, I think,' the Bull said, as he shoveled food onto his plate, 'that you can't get either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?' Scrapple, a mush made with pork by-products, which was probably introduced into Eastern Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Dutch (actually Hessians) was sometimes referred to as 'poor people's bacon.'
'Yeah, you told me,' Mickey said. 'How do you think we stand, Casimir?'
'What do you mean, stand? Oh, you mean with those bastards from theBulletin? '
'Yeah,' Mickey said, as Antoinette came back into the room, and Casimir stood up and politely held her chair for her.
'Thank you, darling,' Antoinette said. 'Has Casimir told you, Michael, that they don't have either Taylor ham or scrapple on the West Coast?'
'I could mail you some, if you like,' Mickey said.
'It would probably go bad before the goddamned post office got it there,' the Bull said, 'but it's a thought, Michael.'
'I never heard of either before I met Casimir,' Antoinette said, 'but now I'm just about as crazy about it as he is.'
'Casimir was just about to tell me how he thinks we stand with theBulletin,' Mickey said.
'Maybe you could send it Special Delivery or something,' the Bull said. 'If we wasn't going from here to
