Firebreak

In Parker's ear, the ringing began.

Lloyd said, 'You're showing her where the phone is.'

'She'll find it anyway,' Parker said. The ringing kept on. Turning, he extended the receiver to Arthur, saying, 'When she picks up, talk to her.'

'I will.' Arthur listened to the earpiece.

Lloyd said, 'What if she picks it up just for a second, then breaks the connection so she can make her own call?'

'Arthur talks fast,' Parker said.

Parker and Lloyd watched Arthur, whose forehead now showed a whole new array of creases. They waited, and Lloyd said, 'Maybe I should—' and Arthur yelled, 'Joyce!'

He blinked. He looked at Parker. 'She hung up.'

Parker turned to push the cutoff, then redial, then turned back. Arthur listened, and listened, and sagged. Lowering the phone, he said, 'Busy.'

Parker took a step backward, away from the phone. Lloyd looked at Parker as though he thought some instructions would be coming now. Arthur put the receiver back in its cradle, then looked at it. 'What did I hang it up for?' he asked.

They waited, listening to nothing. Arthur took his glasses off, folded the wings, put the glasses in his shirt pocket. He rubbed his eyes with thumb and first finger of his right hand. He looked tired.

'I saw this movie,' Lloyd said. 'I didn't like it much.'

Nobody answered.

When the phone rang, all three jumped. Arthur grabbed for it, yelled into it, 'Joyce!'

'I started to dial that other number,' Joyce Hem-bridge explained, sitting on the sofa in her bathrobe and slippers. 'I got about halfway through it, but then I realized it was Arthur's voice I'd just heard, so I should talk to him first. I could always make that other the second call.'

After Arthur had talked to her on the phone, Lloyd had taken the Volvo to go bring her back, while Parker talked with Arthur, saying, 'Tell me about this Frank Meany.'

'He came there a few years before I retired,' Arthur said.

'To Cosmopolitan?'

'He was supposed to be a salesman.' Arthur shrugged. 'Cosmopolitan has a lot of under-the-counter stuff. Like me with the cigarettes and whiskey. Other fellas in the company didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't know what they were doing, and that was fine with everybody.'

'But you got to know Meany.'

'There was always somebody I was supposed to call,' Arthur explained, 'if there was any trouble on the routes. A bent cop coming unbent, a driver dipping in for himself, any of the little things that can happen. I'd call the guy and he'd take care of it. The last few years I was there, the guy was Meany. We took a couple trips together, Plattsburgh once, Bangor once, we got along. I knew he was muscle, but that was the job, and he was pleasant with me, liked to talk sports, and he never made me know anything I didn't want to know.'

'Where does he live?'

'That I don't know,' Arthur said. He glanced over at the phone. 'At this point, I wish I did.'

'You've got a way to get in touch with him, though,' Parker suggested. 'Other than that phone number.'

'But I don't,' Arthur said. 'The way it worked, he called me, we met at a diner on route forty-six, he told me about this place, the setup, the story he was telling. He gave me the real estate agent's card and the cigar box and some cash, and I went and signed the lease, and it was as easy as that.' Arthur looked surprised, then smiled. 'They were setting me up, weren't they? From the get-go. No name on the lease but mine. And I never had a bit of trouble with anybody on the job.'

'They didn't need you.'

Arthur nodded. 'I think I need them,' he said. 'You have it in mind to go talk with Frank?'

'Yes.'

'I'd like to talk to him, too,' Arthur said, and Lloyd returned then with Joyce, a rangy woman not many years younger than her husband, with a depleted paleness in the flesh of her face that she would normally hide with makeup. She'd thrown a bandana over her head before going out the window here, but steel-gray swatches of wiry hair stuck out from underneath.

When Arthur told her what was going on, she looked around at them, a faint flush on her face, and said, 'They were going to kill us. Just like that.'

'Explosions are very good,' Lloyd told her, 'for getting rid of evidence. And you two were going to be evidence, I'm afraid.'

She said, 'Arthur? What are you going to do about it?'

'Mr. Parker and I were talking about that,' Arthur said, and turned to Parker. 'I don't know how to find Meany myself, but I've been thinking about it and there's another guy I can reach who'll know where he is.'

'Who?'

'Fella named Rafe Hargetty. He took my place when I left there, I broke him in. We talked on the phone sometimes, the first few years. I could still find him.'