9

WHEN DORTMUNDER WALKED into the OJ Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue that Wednesday night at ten, the big low-ceilinged square room was underutilized. The booths along both sides and the tables in the middle were all empty. At the bar, along the rear of the room, Rollo the meaty bartender, off to the right, was slowly carving tomorrow’s specials onto a black blackboard with a stub of white chalk, a gray rag in his other hand. The regulars, as usual, were clustered along the left side of the bar.

It being April, the regulars were discussing taxes. “I might declare my bowling ball as an expense,” one said.

The guy to his right reared back. “Your bowling ball!”

“We wager certain amounts,” the first regular explained. “Only then I’d have to declare how much I won, and then pay tax on that. I asked the guy at the drugstore, which way do I come out ahead, he said he’d get back to me on that.”

As Dortmunder angled toward Rollo, he saw that the barman was groping in the direction of “lasagna,” but hadn’t quite reached it yet. Seeing Dortmunder, he nodded and said, “Long time no see.”

“I been semiretired,” Dortmunder told him. “Not on purpose.”

“That can be a drag.” Rollo pointed his jaw at the black-board. “Whadaya think?”

Dortmunder looked: LUHZANYA. “I don’t know about that H,” he said.

Rollo considered the entire word. “At least I’m sure of the L,” he said, as Andy Kelp joined Dortmunder and said, “How you doin? It isn’t a Z.”

Dortmunder turned to him. “What isn’t a zee?”

Kelp pointed. “That thing there. It’s an S.”

Rollo went akimbo, chalk staining the seam of his apron as he brooded at the blackboard. “It sounds like a Z,” he decided.

“Yeah,” Kelp acknowledged, “but you gotta remember, it’s a foreign tongue.”

“Oh, lasagna,” Dortmunder said, catching up. “I think you’re right. I don’t think those languages even have a Z. Except the English do.”

“And the Polish,” Kelp said. “What they don’t have is vowels. And Rollo, what I don’t have is a drink.”

Rollo at once put down rag and chalk. “You two,” he said, “are bourbon on the rocks.” Reaching for ice and glasses, he said, “Who else we got tonight?”

Understanding that Rollo preferred to know his customers by their drink preferences, as being conducive to good customer relations, Dortmunder said, “Well, we got the beer and the salt, and the vodka and red wine, and I don’t know what the kid drinks.”

“He hasn’t settled down yet,” Rollo said. “He’s still making up his mind.” And he pushed forward toward them a round metal bar tray on which appeared RHEINGOLD WORLD’S FAIR 1939, atop which now stood two glasses containing ice cubes, a white plastic bowl with more ice cubes, and a bottle labeled Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—”Our Own Brand.” “I’ll send them back,” he said.

Picking up the tray, Kelp said, “Good luck with the menu.”

“I’ll need it.” Rollo frowned at the blackboard. “Anyway,” he said, “I know there’s got to be a Y in there somewhere.”

Dortmunder followed Kelp as he carried the tray down along the bar past the regulars, where the third was now saying, “The idea of the flat tax is, you just pay the same as one month’s rent.”

Rounding the turn at the regulars, Dortmunder and Kelp trooped down the dim-lit hall, past the doors marked POINTERS and SETTERS over black dog silhouettes, and past the crammed-full narrow storage space for boxes of deposit bottles that had been a phone booth before the communications revolution and a certain amount of vandalism. At the end, while Kelp waited, Dortmunder pushed open a door on the right to reach in and switch on the light. Then they both entered.

This was a small square room with a concrete floor. Beer and liquor cartons were stacked ceiling-high against all the walls, leaving an area in the middle just big enough for a beat-up old round wooden table with a once-green felt top, surrounded by half a dozen armless wooden chairs. The light Dortmunder had switched on was a single bare bulb under a round tin reflector hanging from a long black wire over the center of the table.

Dortmunder and Kelp went around this furniture to left and right, Kelp putting down the tray as they took the chairs that most directly faced the open door. The first arrivals always took the chairs facing the door, leaving it to the latecomers to be made uneasy by the proximity of an open door behind their backs.

As he poured Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon over the ice in their glasses, Kelp said, “You tell them the story. I like to listen to it.”

“Well, Stan already knows the story,” Dortmunder pointed out. “It’s only Tiny and the kid.”

“So those are the ones you tell.”

The hallway out there abruptly dimmed, as though there’d been a partial eclipse of the hall. Seeing that, Kelp said, “Here comes Tiny now.”

As Dortmunder nodded, the doorway filled with enough person to choke Jonah’s whale. This creature, who was known only to those who felt safe in considering him their friend as Tiny, had the body of a top-of-the-line SUV, in jacket and pants of a neutral gray that made him look like an oncoming low, atop which was a head that didn’t make you think of Easter Island so much as Halloween Island. In his left fist he carried a glass of what looked like, but was not, cherry soda. When he spoke it wasn’t a surprise that bass notes of an organ sounded: “I’m late.”

“Hi, Tiny,” Kelp said. “No, you’re not.”

Ignoring that, Tiny said, “I hadda take the limo driver back.”

“What, to the car service?”

“That’s where I got him. Turns out, he’s from California.” Tiny shook his Halloween Island head and came over to sit at Dortmunder’s right, so at least he had the doorway in profile.

Kelp said, “That could be okay, Tiny. There’s okay people in California.”

“In California,” Tiny said, “he’s also a limo driver.”

“So he knows how,” Kelp said.

“Every year,” Tiny said, “he drives people to the Oscars. Celebrities. He wanted to tell me, every year, every year, the celebrities he drove to the Oscars.”

“Oh,” Kelp said.

“There’s only so many,” Tiny said, “celebrities goin to the Oscars you can put up with. So finally I took him back, dropkicked him through the door, and said, gimme one doesn’t speak English. So how are you people?”

Dortmunder took over the conversational ball: “Just fine, Tiny.”

“I hope you got a good one here,” Tiny said.

“So do we,” Dortmunder said.

“It’s been a while,” Kelp said.

“Oh, I’m doin okay,” Tiny said. “I always do okay. I squeeze out a little livin here and there. But I’d like a little cushion for a while.”

“So would I,” Dortmunder said, and Stan and Judson came in together.

Stan carried a draft beer in one hand and a saltshaker in the other. As a driver, he preferred to limit his alcohol intake to the occasional sip, but beer left to its own devices soon grows flat, which nobody likes. A sparing shimmer of salt over the beer every once in a while causes the head to magically return.

Judson, on the other hand, was carrying a drink nobody recognized. It was in a tall cocktail glass with ice and was a kind of palish rose color, as though it were Tiny’s drink’s anemic sister.

When they came in, while the others were sharing greetings, Stan looked around, made a quick assessment, and said, “We’re late.” Then he homed in on the chair to Kelp’s left, leaving the kid to choose one of the chairs on the vulnerable side. But that was all right; he was a calm sort.

Once they were all seated, Kelp said, “Kid, if you don’t mind a nosy question, what’s that?”

“Campari and soda,” the kid said, with the proud smile of ownership.

“Campa—” Kelp pointed at the glass. “And what’s the yellow thing?”

“Lemon peel.”

“Uh-huh. If you don’t mind, how come?”