“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
”Hang up!”
Calesian hung up, and Buenadella depressed the cradle again, once more breaking the connection. As he did so, a voice from the French doors behind him said, “Now you hang up.”
“Cock
Twenty-six
As he stepped through the open French doors behind Parker, Grofield thought,
The room was a disaster, a combination of so many misunderstandings and misconceptions that it practically became a work of art all in itself, like the Watts Towers. It was a den, or studio, or office-away-from-office; called by the family “Daddy’s room,” no doubt.
The walnut-veneer paneling, very dark, made the already small square room even smaller and squarer, darkening it to the point where even a white ceiling and a white rug would have had a hard time getting some light into the room. Instead of which, the ceiling was crisscrossed with styrofoam artificial wooden beams, a la restaurants trying for an English-country-inn effect, and the two-foot-by-four-foot rectangles between the beams had been painted in a kind of peach or coral color; Consumptive’s Upchuck was the color description that came to Grofield’s mind. While the floor was covered with an oriental rug featuring dark red figures on a black background, with a dark red fringe buzzing away all the way around.
Would there be a kerosene lamp with green glass shade, converted to electricity? Yes, there would, on the mahogany table to the right, along with the clock built into the side of a wooden cannon; above these on the wall were the full-color photographs of The Guns That Won the West lying on beds of red or green velvet.
The man in the middle of the room, hurling his telephone at the opposite wall, went with the room so totally that Grofield was almost ready to believe he and Parker had come to the wrong house. This was a businessman, a Kiwanian, a blunt Tuscan pillar of the community, a property holder and a taxpayer, a man with proctological problems. If Grofield hadn’t heard Buenadella’s conversation on the phone, and if he wasn’t watching the man throw the telephone with such force that the wire ripped from the wall and the cradle smashed that sloppy watercolor of Avenue Junot, he’d think they must have made a mistake, this couldn’t be a hood named Buenadella, the one wresting control from Lozini.
But then Buenadella turned around to face them, and Grofield revised his opinion. There was a heaviness in the jaw, a coldness in the eyes, a hulking in the shoulders, none of them attributes a legitimate businessman would have permitted himself. This was a man who was used to getting his own way, not through argument or money, but through intimidation. He reminded Grofield of a mobster named Danamato he’d met once in Puerto Rico. There’d been trouble when Danamato had convinced himself that Grofield had killed Mrs. Danamato, and talking sense to him had been like explaining algebra to a brick.
Grofield wondered if Buenadella would be equally thick. He was starting off dumb enough; pointing a thick finger at them, he yelled, “All right, you bastards, you’ve fucked things up enough around here! You get out of town in the next forty-five minutes and you just may get to live a little longer.”
Neither Parker nor Grofield was showing any guns, but they both had them available if necessary. Once inside the room, Parker moved to the left while Grofield pulled the French doors closed and then moved to the right. Parker said, “Sit down, Buenadella. It’s time for us to talk.”
“I don’t talk to punks! Get out of here and keep going!”
Casually, Grofield took from his pocket Abadandi’s wallet and tossed it on the desk. “You’ll probably want to send that to Abadandi’s next of kin,” he said.
Buenadella frowned, massively, his whole face shifting downward. “What?”
“With a nice letter,” Grofield added. “Proud of your boy, first-class soldier, died saving his platoon, great loss, will be missed. They can frame it, hang it over the mantelpiece.”
Buenadella stepped closer to the desk, picked up the wallet, opened it, and looked at a couple of the documents within. Parker and Grofield waited him out, till at last he lifted his head and glared at Grofield. “Where’d you get this?”
“Off a dead man.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Grofield shrugged.
Buenadella studied him, thinking it over, and then tossed the wallet contemptuously back onto the desk. ‘There’s more men where he came from,” he said.
Grofield smiled. “Are they just as good?”
“We’ll try them ten at a time,” Buenadella said.
Parker took a step closer to him. “You won’t try them at all,” he said. “We’re here with you, all by yourself. We can finish it right now.”
Buenadella moved his heavy look from Grofield to Parker. “I don’t have anything to finish with you.”
“Seventy-three thousand dollars.”
“Stolen goods,” Buenadella said. “You don’t have any claim on the money, and there’s no proof I ever saw or touched or spent a dollar of it. You want to take me to court?”
“You’re in court right now,” Parker said.
Grofield, sincerely trying to be helpful, said, “Mr. Buenadella, a little piece of advice. My friend is a very impatient man. I don’t know anybody who handles frustration worse than he does. He’s been very calm up till now, he hasn’t made any trouble, but I think—”
