Nocturne

The technician was glaring at him.

'I go off at a quarter to twelve,' Ollie said. 'I want to know before then.'

The technician was still glaring at him.

'You got it?' Ollie said, glaring back.

'I've got it,' the technician snapped. 'You fat tub of shit,' he muttered, which he was lucky Ollie didn't hear.

Along about then, Steve Carella was just waking up.

Georgie and Tony had a serious problem on their hands.

'The thing is,' Georgie said, 'the old lady probably didn't even remember putting that money in the locker.'

'An old lady, how old?' Tony asked. 'How could she remember?'

'You see the envelope it's in?'

The envelope was in the inside pocket on the right-hand side of his jacket. It bulged out the jacket as if he was packing, which he was not. Georgie only carried a gun when he was at the club protecting Priscilla. Carrying a gun was too dangerous otherwise. People would think you were an armed robber or something. Georgie preferred subtler ways of beating the System. Beating the System was what it was all about. But now, Priss Stetson had in some strange mysterious way become the System.

'Even the envelope looks ancient,' Georgie said, lowering his voice.

The men were in the bus terminal restaurant, eating an early dinner and trying to figure out what to do about this large sum of money that had come their way. The place wasn't too crowded at a little past seven. Maybe a dozen people in all. Black guy and what looked like his mother sitting at a nearby table. Three kids in blue parkas, looked like college boys, sitting at another table across the room. Old guy in his sixties holding hands with a young blonde maybe thirty or forty, she was either his daughter or a bimbo. Two guys hunched over racing forms, trying to dope out tomorrow's ponies.

It had been snowing since two this afternoon. Beyond the restaurant's high windows, sharp tiny flakes, the kind that stuck, swirled dizzily on the air, caught in the light of the streetlamps. There had to be six inches on the ground already, and the snow showed no sign of letting up. Inside the restaurant, there was the snug, cozy feel of people hunched over good food in a safe, warm place. Outside, buses came and

The hundred thou in the yellowing envelope was burning a hole in Georgie's pocket.

'The question here,' he said, 'is what is our obligation?'

'Our moral obligation,' Tony said, nodding. 'If the old lady forgot the money was there.' 'My grandmother forgets things all the time.' 'Mine, too.'

'She says it, too. I mean, she knows it, Georgie. says if her head wasn't on her shoulders she'd forget where she put it.'

'They forget things. They get old, they forget things.'

'You know the story about the old guy in the nursing home?'

'Yeah, you told us.' 'No, not that one.' 'Parkinson's? You told us.'

'No, this is another one. This old guy is in a nursing home, the doctor comes in his room, he says, 'I've got bad news for you.' The old guy says, 'What is it?' The doctor says, 'First, you've got cancer, and second, you've got Alzheimer's.' The old guy goes, 'Phew,

thank God I don't have cancer.' ' Georgie looked at him. 'I don't get it,' he said.

'The old guy already forgot,' Tony explained. -'Forgot what?'

'That he has cancer.'

'How can a person forget he has cancer?' 'Cause he has Alzheimer's.'

'Then how come he didn't forget he has Alzheimer's?'

'Forget it,' Tony said.

'No, you raised the question. If he can forget he has one disease, how come he doesn't forget he's got the other disease?'

'Cause then it wouldn't be a joke.'

'It isn't a joke, anyway.'

'A lot of people think it's a joke.'

'If it isn't funny, how can it be a joke?'

'A lot of people think it's funny.'

'A lot of people are pretty fuckin weird, too,'

Georgie said, and nodded in dismissal.

Both men sipped at their coffee.

'So what do you want to do here?' Tony asked.

'About the envelope?' Georgie asked, lowering his voice.

'Yeah.'

Both of them whispering now.

'Let's say the old lady put it there ten years ago, forgot it was there.'

'Then why did she send Priss the key?'

'Who knows why old ladies do things? Maybe she had an apparition she was about to get knocked off.'

'Anyway, it doesn't matter either way. The old lady's dead, how can she tell Priss what was in that locker?'

'Her note didn't say anything about what was in the locker. All it said was go to the locker, that's all.'

'What it said exactly was go to locker number thirty-six at the Rendell Road Bus Terminal.' 'Exactly.'

'What I'm saying,' Georgie said, 'As if Priss knew there was a hundred large ones in that locker, you think she'd have trusted us to come for it?'

'Us? She'd have to be out of her mind.'

'Exactly the point.'

'What you're saying is she didn't know.' 'What I'm saying is she doesn't know.' Silence. The clink of silverware against coffee and saucers. The trill of the black woman's laughter at the nearby table. The buzz of conversation from the college boys on the other side of the room. Other voices. And the loudspeaker announcing the arrival of a bus from Philadelphia at gate number seven. At the center of all this, the core of Tony's and Georgie's thoughtful silence.

'We're the only ones who know,' Tony said at last.

'So why should we turn it over to her?' Georgie asked.

Tony merely smiled.

The next bus back to school wouldn't be leaving for an hour yet. This gave them plenty of time to work out what in the film industry was called a back story..

What seemed perfectly apparent to them was that the only people with whom they'd had any contact after the bouncer tossed them out of the Jammer were all now dead. This was definitely in their favor. If they hadn't even talked to anyone after telling the bouncer to go fuck himself, then there wasn't anyone alive who

could say they were uptown in Diamondback getting involved with three people who would later cause trouble for each other, the girl by refusing to mention she was suffocating, the two black drunks getting into a fight over her money and her stash, one of them ending up drowned, the other stabbed, boy.

'What about the cabdriver?' Richard the Second asked.

'Uh-oh, the cabbie,' Richard the Third said. 'What about him?' Richard the First said. 'He picked us up downtown, he dropped us off uptown. So what?'

Two guys who looked like gangsters in a Martin Scorsese movie were walking past the table, on their way out of the restaurant. The boys lowered, their voices, averted their eyes. In this city, it was best to be circumspect. Witness what had happened uptown when they'd got too chummily careless with three people who'd turned out to be unwholesome types.

'See that bulge under his coat?' Richard the Third whispered as soon as the men pushed through the door into the terminal proper. Outside, despite the snow, buses kept coming and going. The two men disappeared in the swirling flakes.

'How'd you like to meet one of those guys in a dark alley?' Richard the Second said.

None of the Richards seemed to realize that they themselves were now prime candidates for guys you