Lemons Never Lie

did appear.

A member of an increasingly disappearing breed of professionals, Alan Grofield was an actor who limited himself to live performances before live audiences. Movies and television were for mannequins, not actors. An actor who stepped before a camera was in the process of rotting his own talent. Instead of learning to build a performance through three acts – or five, if the season is classical – he learns facile reactions in snippets of make believe.

No purist can hope to do well financially, whatever his field, and Grofield was no exception. Not only did he limit his acting to the live theater, where the demand for actors declines still further every year, but he insisted on running his own theaters, usually summer stock, frequently in out-of-the-way places and invariably at a loss. To support himself, therefore, he from time to time turned to his second profession, as he was doing now.

He stepped into the second room, closing the door after him, and looked around at the three men already in the room. He knew none of them. 'I'm Grofield,' he said.

The florid-faced man in the ascot and madras jacket came over from the window, hand outstretched, saying, 'I'm Myers.' He had an Eastern-boarding-school accent, the sort that sounds affected but isn't. 'So glad you could come.'

Grofield, not entirely believing the situation, shook the hand of the man who was supposed to be masterminding the robbery. Everything was wrong so far, the lemons had not lied.

Who was Myers? He couldn't be a professional. He now took Grofield around and introduced him to the other two. 'This is Cathcart, he'll be driving one of the cars. George Cathcart, Alan Grofield.'

In Cathcart's eyes, Grofield detected a guarded echo of his own bewilderment, and by an infinitesimal measure he relaxed. At least there were some professionals here. He took Cathcart's hand in honest pleasure, and they nodded at one another.

Cathcart was a stocky man, short, with the broad low tugboat build that most good getaway drivers seem to have. He had obviously tried to dress himself to match his surroundings, but that brown suit wouldn't have belonged in this hotel even when it was new. And wherever it was Cathcart usually lived, did men really wear black shoes and white socks with brown suits? Possibly Newark, New Jersey.

Myers was pushing on, like a garden party hostess. 'And this is Matt Hanto, our explosives man.'

Explosives men tend to be built like a stick of dynamite, long and lean, and Matt Hanto was no exception. He would probably have been a state finalist in a national Gary Cooper Lookalike Contest. He peered at Grofield as though squinting at him across miles of sun-blasted desert, and solemnly shook hands.

'Only two to go,' Myers said. 'While we're waiting, would you care for anything?' He gestured like a sales manager at a table loaded with an assortment of bottles and glasses and two of the hotel's plastic ice buckets.

'No, thanks,' Grofield said. 'Not on duty.' And the connecting door to the wrestler's room opened and Dan Leach came in. Grofield looked at him, pleased to see a face he knew, and at the same time wishing there were some way to take Dan aside and ask for a briefing on all this. He was here by Dan's invitation, after all, and on the phone Dan hadn't said anything about this being other than a normal gig. Of course, nobody ever said much on the phone in any event, but still.

Dan was tall like Matt Hanto and broad like George Cathcart and utterly without a sense of humor. He came in now, leaving the intervening door open, and said to Myers, 'Your friend is taking a nap.'

Myers looked blank. 'I beg your pardon?'

Dan jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and walked away from the open door. While Myers hurried over in bewilderment to look through the doorway, Dan walked up to Grofield and said, 'How've you been?'

'Fine.' They didn't bother to shake hands, they already knew each other.

Dan said, 'You put up with that?'

'With what? The frisk?' Grofield shrugged. 'I figured, what the hell.'

'You're more easygoing than I am.' Dan said, and Myers popped back into the room to say, loudly, 'You knocked him out!'

Dan turned and looked at him. 'I came here to listen to a project,' he said. 'Not to get shaken down.'

'Dan, I've got to protect myself. I know you, but I don't know these other boys.'

'If that's the best help you can find,' Dan said, 'you might as well surrender. What's that, booze?' He walked over to the bar-table.

Myers stood there, near the doorway, watching Dan go and trying to figure out what to say or do next. Grofield, watching him, was more than ever sure the lemons had told him the truth. He should never have left the airport. Fourteen nickels – he could have killed the time until another plane was ready to leave, going anywhere.

Before Myers could come up with a response, a sixth man walked in, saying, 'There's a gent bleeding from the nose in the other room. I'm Frith, Bob Frith. The gent seems to be alive.'

Myers was playing out of his class, but he had fairly good recuperative powers. He grabbed the interruption and ran with it. 'That's another problem, Bob,' he said, 'and nothing for us to worry about. Come on in, I'm Andrew Myers.' Taking Frith's hand in one of his hands, he used the other to swing the connecting door shut. 'Now we're all here,' Myers said, pulling Frith farther into the room, away from the door and the implications of what lay beyond it. 'Now, we'll just introduce ourselves, and we can get started.'

There was very little introducing left to be done. While Myers did it, Dan came back across the room to stand beside Grofield again, this time with a glass in his hand. Dan seemed casual and easygoing, but in fact he was rigid and unshakable. His total self-confidence came across as blandness, and frequently led people to underestimate him.