He held Manchester while Noelle wheeled herself backward out of the way. Then he stood, picked up Manchester under the armpits and placed him seated on top of Noelle. “So this is what they call a dead weight,” Noelle said.
Carlow wheeled them both across the promenade to the open glass door, where the cool night air now drifted in. He stopped, and she shoved, and Manchester went toppling out and down into the lifeboat. Carlow winced. He’d land on a stack of life preservers, but still. “Goodbye,” Noelle said.
“He’ll have a headache in the morning,” Carlow commented, as he moved the wheelchair to one side so he could shut everything up again.
“Let him take a picture of that,”she said, unsympathetic. “Asshole.”
7
Susan Cahill didn’t really like Morton Kotkind, Lou Sternberg could tell. She smiled at him, she waved her tits at him, she smoothed the way for him as they made their long slow inspection tour of the ship, she even went out of her way to chat with him during dinner at the captain’s table, since the captain himself was making every effort notto be friendly and accommodating but was instead doing a very good impression of an iceberg from his native land; and yet, Sternberg could tell, Susan Cahill didn’t really like Morton Kotkind.
Which was fine with Sternberg, who hadn’t liked Kotkind either, during those days in the lawyers’ bar on Court Street in Brooklyn, getting to know the man, getting to know him so well it was an absolute pleasure to feed him the Mickey Finn yesterday. Probably, Sternberg thought, Cahill would be just as happy to feed a Mickey to me,and the thought made him smile.
Cahill picked up on that, and smiled right back, across the dinner table. “Mister Assemblyman,” she said, “I believe you’re enjoying yourself.”
“I’m not here to enjoy myself,” he snapped at her, and put his pouty brat face on again, which she bravely pretended not to see.
But in fact he was enjoying himself, hugely, which was rare on a heist. For him, pleasure was at home, his little town house in London 2, Montpelier Gardens, SW6 with its little garden in the back enclosed by ancient stone walls, with roses to left and right, cucumbers and brussels sprouts at the back. There he lived, and in that city his friends lived, people who had nothing to do with any kind of criminality, except possibly in the tax forms they filled out for Inland Revenue.
That was an extra bonus in Sternberg’s living arrangements; he filled out no tax forms anywhere. To be resident in the U.K. for more than six months, legally, one had to sign a statement that one will be supported from outside the country, will neither go on the dole nor take a job away from some native-born Englishman. Howthe foreigner supports himself from outside the country doesn’t matter, only that he does. So there was never a reason to deal with Inland Revenue. At the same time, since he didn’t live or work in the U.S., didn’t even pay any bills or credit accounts or mortgages there, he also flew below the IRS’s radar. Which meant there was no one anywhere to say, “Just how doyou support yourself, Mr. Sternberg?” Lovely.
In fact, it was the occasional job with a trusted associate like Parker that took care of his material wants, while the house in Montpelier Gardens saw to his spiritual needs, so except for the occasional soulless transatlantic airplane ride he was a reasonably happy man, though you could never tell that from his face.
The airplane rides were necessitated by his iron rule that he would never work and live in the same territory. London in fact, all of England was out of bounds. Whenever it was time to restock the bank accounts, it was off to America once more, with Lillian the char left behind to see to the roses and the cucumbers; the brussels sprouts took care of themselves.
This particular journey to the land of his birth looked to be a fairly easy one, and profitable. The last time he’d worked with Parker it had been anything but profitable, but that hadn’t been Parker’s fault, and Sternberg didn’t hold it against him. This job looked much more likely to provide another year or two of comfort in SW6.
The problem with the job was that it was taking too long. Sternberg had pretended to be other people before in the course of a heist a telephone repairman, a fire department inspector but never for five hours. From eight P.M. till one A.M., in this confined space on the Spirit of the Hudson,essentially on his own since Parker and Wycza’s job was just to stand around looking tough and competent, Lou Sternberg not only had to be a politician and a Brooklynite, he also had to be a bad-tempered boor. He actually was bad-tempered at times, he had to admit, but he’d never been a politician or a Brooklynite, and he certainly hoped he had never been a boor.
Ah, well. Dinner passed, the turnaround at Poughkeepsie passed, the inspections of the casino and the kitchens and the purser’s office and the promenades and the game room and the laughable library and all the rest of it slowly passed. The engine room was interesting, being more like a windowless control tower than like anything purporting to be a steamship’s engine room Sternberg had ever seen in the movies. And through it all, he maintained this sour and offensive persona.
There were reasons for it. First, the original was like this. Second, bad temper keeps other people off balance, and they never believe the person being difficult is lyingin some way; rudeness is always seen as bona fide. And the third reason was the money room.
There’d been only one real fight so far, the one over the handguns, and Sternberg had won that, as he’d expected to. The money room would be another fight accessto the money room was almost certain to be a fight and by the time they got there Sternberg wanted the entire ship’s complement to be convinced that if they argued with this son of a bitch assemblyman, they lost.
Of course, if Susan Cahill had led them straight to the money room at nine-thirty or ten, it would have been a real waste, because most of the money wouldn’t have arrived yet, but they’d assumed that she wouldn’t want to mention the money room at all, and so far she hadn’t.
Twelve-fifteen, and not a single goddam thing left to look at. The last place they inspected was the nurse’s office, and found she was well equipped in there for first-level treatment of medical emergencies, and also had a direct-line radio to the medevac helicopter at Albany Hospital, probably for when winners had heart attacks. Sternberg stretched the moment by congratulating her on her readiness and enquiring into her previous work history, and unbent so far he could feel the curmudgeon facade start to crack.
So finally they came out of her office, and it was only twelve-fifteen, and Cahill said, “Well, Mister Assemblyman, that’s it. You’ve seen it all. And now, if you wouldn’t consider it a bribe” and she beamed on him, jolly and sexy “the captain would love to buy you a drink.”
Sure he would. Too early, too early. What should he do? This was Sternberg’s call alone, he couldn’t confer with the other two, couldn’t even take time to look at them. Accept a drink? Should he stall another half an hour that way, then all at once remember the money room and demand to see it? Or go with it now, knowing they’d be cutting their take by about forty-five minutes worth of money?
