“No,” he said with certainty, sounding like the Schultz of old. “If he’s got a new mission, it’s something bigger than houses.”
“I just thought I’d bring it up,” I said, “because I’m in a house.”
“You could be the exception,” he admitted. “Do you want protection?”
“Oh, sure. Protect me from the west wind. This is a guy who could smell junk when he was twelve. He can smell cops the way you can smell an anxiety neurosis.”
“Junk? Are we talking about dope?”
“No,” I said, “we’re talking about inferior interior decor. We’re talking about glass grapes. I’ll explain it all in time for your article. Unless, of course, you think it would be better for posterity if I were to explain it right now.”
“Don’t you know anybody,” Schultz asked, sounding anxious, “who isn’t a cop? Somebody who could keep an eye out?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking. “I do. When do you want me to call you next?”
“When something happens.”
“After something happens, I may not be able to call.”
“You’ll be fine,” Schultz said. Doctors are among the world’s champion liars. “Call your friend, then call me every three hours. Here are the numbers for today.”
“What is this, a one-time code?”
“I have office hours,” he said, clearly affronted. “I have business at Parker Center today-nothing about you, don’t worry. Do you want the numbers or don’t you?”
I took them down and then called Billy Pinnace.
“Consciousness control,” Billy said, answering the line his customers used. His parents, although they spent Billy’s money, didn’t want to talk to his clientele.
“How they growing, Billy?”
“High as an elephant’s eye,” he said. “No mail.”
“I know. I’m home. Have you still got your rabbi?”
“My piece?” Billy said proudly. The rabbi was a semiautomatic from Israel. “I sleep with it under the mattress.”
“Must make a lump.”
“Other side of the bed, doofus.”
“Lend it to me,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, sounding a lot less eager. “A guy and his piece, you know?”
“A man is only as tall,” I said, “as he is in his stocking feet.” Billy, who was financing a future at Harvard that would lead to a career either as a corporate lawyer or an international terrorist, was a fool for quotes.
“Where’d you read that?” Billy demanded.
“I’ll tell you when you bring me the gun.”
“Is it Zen?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s from Now and Zen by the French multiple murderer Maurice Chevalier. Every aspiring terrorist should read it, even though it’s written in phonetics.”
“You got a copy?”
“I sleep with it under the mattress. Trade you for the gun, one lump for another, and when you’re finished with it, I’ll give the gun back. What do you say?”
“A book for a gun?” Billy was a capitalist to his toenails.
“Ah, Billy,” I said. “The revolution will be won with books, not bullets.”
“Chairman Mao?” he guessed.
I was suddenly dizzy with fatigue, and my mouth refused to do anything more complicated than breathe. I could hear the sigh whistling in the earpiece of the phone.
“You in big trouble?” Billy asked.
“Billy,” I said, “bring every bullet you own.”
I was making coffee when the phone rang for the first time. I let it ring, concentrating on pouring. It didn’t stop. On ring twelve or thirteen, I picked it up.
“Hello,” I said.
Someone exhaled.
“I already said hello,” I said, sipping. “Your move.”
Nothing. But no hang-up either.
“Hey, Wilton,” I said. My pulse was trying to beat its way through the skin on my wrists. “How you doing?”
He might have cleared his throat. The sound in the earpiece was raspy enough.
“Mommy says hi,” I said, watching my heart bump in the thin blue line leading down to the hand with the cup in it.
He hung up. The dial tone snored in my ear.
I was still sitting there, staring at the phone, twenty minutes later, when I heard someone climb the driveway. I was caught flat-footed; all I could do was pick up the heaviest thing in sight, my copy of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, hoist it two-handed over one shoulder, National League style, and stand behind the door opening into the kitchen. I’d already popped the door to make turning the knob unnecessary.
It flew open and hit me in the forehead, and I retaliated by bashing it with the book. “ Rat-a-tat-a-tat,” Billy Pinnace said, throwing the barrel of the semi right and left in the approved Rambo manner. Then he looked at me and lowered it.
“You’re reading Dreiser?” he asked, looking at the book. “You know, you’re bleeding.”
“You don’t know,” I said, wadding up a paper towel and pressing it to my eyebrow, “how grateful I am for that information. Your disquisition has enabled me to pursue that Hippocratic succor without which this injury might have dimmed, even truncated, my life. Is that thing loaded?”
“Are you? ” Billy asked. As always, he looked like the kid you hope will ask your daughter to the prom.
“No. That’s the way you talk when you’re reading Dreiser.”
“Lemme borrow it.”
I checked the cut in the mirror over the sink. Still bleeding. “I pause,” I said, “because there is in it such matter that, I fear, would not nourish the vigorous development of the young mind but might, rather, turn it in strange and dark directions.”
“Hot shit,” Billy said. “It’s a swap.” He handed me the gun, and I gave him Sister Carrie. Pound for pound, he got the better deal.
“How do you work it?” I asked.
“What do you mean? You point it and pull the trigger.”
“Have you ever fired it?”
“At beer cans,” Billy said grudgingly. Billy’s father drank a lot of beer.
“How do you load it?”
“You should take care of that cut,” Billy said, and the phone rang.
I took care of the cut by ignoring it. I swallowed some coffee and wiped the blood and perspiration from my face before I picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” I said.
“Simeon,” said a male voice.
“You got it right out of the box,” I said. “What’s happening, Wilton?”
“You’re there,” Wilton Hoxley said. Then he hung up.
“Billy,” I said, the telephone still in my hand, “tell me how to work this thing and then get out of here.”
The phone rang on the hour, every hour, thereafter. I answered it with the semi cradled between my knees, but it might as well have been a papoose for all the use I got out of it. Every time I picked up the phone, Wilton Hoxley hung up. Between the fourth and the fifth calls, I took a shower, the semi leaning against the shower stall, and when I was finished I made a butterfly bandage on the cut over my eye. Then I cleaned the house. Doing the everyday drudgery seemed to lessen the menace, but I cleaned with one hand, the other arm locked over the semi. Cleaning took a long time. Cleaning had always seemed to take a long time, which was perhaps one reason why I
