Bad News Page 5

  “Neither do I,” Kelp said.

  “—but this year we’ll have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.”

  So apparently, there was even a tradition connected with this. Kelp said, “Okay, I give. What’s a traditional Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Turkey, of course,” she told him, “and cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, brussels sprouts, creamed onions, marshmallow and orange salad, mince pie—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kelp said. “What was that one?”

  “Mince pie.”

  “No, back up one.”

  “Marshmallow and orange salad,” Anne Marie said, and studied his face, and said, “Not in New York, huh?”

  “Not even in New Jersey, Anne Marie.”

  “I don’t know what New Yorkers have against things that taste sweet.”

  “It confuses them,” Kelp suggested.

  “Well, it’s too bad,” Anne Marie said. “Marshmallow and orange salad is a big hit in Lancaster, Kansas”—she being from Lancaster, Kansas—“though, come to think of it,” she added, “I don’t remember ever seeing that much of it in D.C.,” she also being from Washington, D.C., her father having been a congressman until God imposed His own personal term limits.

  “So far as I know,” Kelp told her, “marshmallows aren’t allowed in this neighborhood.”

  “So you probably don’t want them on the sweet potatoes, either.”

  Kelp said, “Tell me you’re joking, Anne Marie.”

  Anne Marie said, “What about oranges?”

  “For breakfast, sometimes,” Kelp told her. “If you get up feeling extra strong and you wanna rassle with something, an orange is good.”

  “I’m glad I asked you,” Anne Marie said. “I don’t want to get this wrong.”

  “You could check with May, maybe,” Kelp advised.

  “Oh, I’m going to,” Anne Marie said, and she went away to make lists, the food list and the seating arrangement list and the beverage list and the phone call list. She also, over the next week and a half, kept reminding Kelp, just about every time she saw him, about Thanksgiving coming up on that Thursday, and about May and John and J.C. and Tiny all being invited to dinner, and the sheer mass of reminders had their effect, because at five minutes past four on that Thursday afternoon, when the apartment doorbell rang, Kelp, in a clean shirt, crossed the living room and pulled open the door.

  Tiny and J.C. were the first arrivals. J.C. (for Josephine Carol) Taylor is a pleasure to describe. A statuesque, pale-skinned, dark-eyed brunette, she’d trained herself to look hard and efficient in her dealings with the world of business, where she ran a number of iffy mail-order outfits and had her own country, Maylohda, somewhere in the Pacific, a place that came in for its share of Third World developmental seed money. Only when around Tiny did the stony surface crumble and another person appear, hardly scary at all.

  Tiny Bulcher is another matter. A man mountain, with a body like an oil truck and a head like an unexploded bomb, he mostly looked like a fairy tale character that eats villages. “Hello, there, Kelp,” this creature rumbled.

  “Whadaya say, Tiny?” Kelp greeted him.

  “I say,” Tiny rumbled, “you got some rude cabdrivers in New York.”

  Kelp raised an eyebrow at J.C., who grinned and shook her head and said, “He’ll be okay. A couple days’ bed rest, he’ll be right back in the cab.”

  “Good,” Kelp said, and shut the door.

  Tiny looked around at the empty living room. “We ain’t early, are we?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Kelp told him, “you’re a few minutes late.”

  Anne Marie, coming in from the kitchen, wearing the apron that Kelp liked when that was all she wore, but also wearing her party slacks and blouse, which was probably just as well, said, “Andy, people are supposed to be a few minutes late, it’s polite.”

  “Oh,” Kelp said, and the doorbell rang. “Here comes more politeness,” he said, and went over to let in May and Dortmunder, while Anne Marie took Tiny’s and J.C.’s coats. “Hey, there,” Kelp said.

  Dortmunder said, “May wouldn’t let me pick the lock.”

  “Not on Thanksgiving,” May said.

  “Feel free,” Kelp told him.

  May went farther into the room to greet the others, while Dortmunder said, “We’d of been here before, but May made me walk around the block.”

  “For politeness, I know about that,” Kelp told him. Then, as Dortmunder would have joined the others, Kelp detained him with a hand on his forearm and leaned close to murmur, “Tell me something. Am I getting civilized?”

  Dortmunder looked him up and down, contemplating this idea, then shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “I don’t think you oughta worry about it,” Dortmunder told him, and they started toward the others, and a bell rang.

  For just a second, Kelp thought this was more politeness at the door, but then he realized it was the phone, and he said, loudly enough for Anne Marie to hear, “I’ll get it, I’ll take it in the bedroom,” and hurried into the bedroom. The phone there was cordless, so he picked it up and walked around with it while saying, “Hello?”

  “Andy Kelp?”

  The voice was familiar, but Kelp couldn’t quite place it. “Yeah?”

  “Formerly Andy Kelly?”

  Whoop. What blast from the past was this? A number of potentials crossed his mind. He stopped pacing to hunker over the phone and say, “Possibly.”

  “This is Fitzroy Guilderpost,” said the voice, and then Kelp recognized it, and yes, that was the voice of Fitzroy Guilderpost.

  It had been five weeks now since the night of the switcheroo in the graveyard. Kelp, being the one who’d gotten them involved in this thing in the first place, had been in charge of the van with the coffin in it, taking a train north once a week to move it from one commuter railroad station to another, where they all had free parking, and a vehicle that didn’t stay more than a week would never attract any official body’s attention. So far, the van had been in Dover Plains and Croton Harmon and Poughkeepsie and Peekskill and Pawling, and Kelp had begun to wonder just how much longer he was going to be prepared to go on doing this. There would come a time when he and Dortmunder would have to agree that they were unlikely ever to hear from Guilderpost, and decide it was time to park the van in front of a police station somewhere and the hell with it.

  But here was Guilderpost now, and the man had apparently been a busy little beaver these past five weeks. He knows Kelp’s real name, and he calls him at home. This is not something Kelp found enjoyable; he liked this apartment, especially now that Anne Marie had it all fixed up, and he didn’t want to move. And he also didn’t want to have to explain to Anne Marie why a move would be a good idea. Therefore, all cheerful amiability, he said, “Well, hello there, Fitzroy, I’ve been wondering about you.”

  “I believe we’ve been wondering about each other.”

  “And here it is Thanksgiving,” Kelp said.

  “I wanted to be sure to catch you at home,” Guilderpost told him. “And it was just two days ago I learned how to reach you.”

  “Yeah, I’d love to know how you did that.”

  “The Internet,” Guilderpost explained. “We all leave trails, Andy. I admit yours was fainter than most, but still. It’s no longer really possible to hide, you know.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Which means, more than ever,” Guilderpost said, “we should all strive to compromise, to come to agreements, not to let hostility and bad feelings fester and grow. Not now, when anybody can find anybody.”

  “So I could find you, too,” Kelp pointed out.

  “Of course you could! I’m not exempt, I know that. But Andy, would you have any reason to pursue me?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “No. So I’m comfortable, here in my little home. And how about you, Andy? Can you think of any reason I mi
ght have to pursue you?”

  “Not if we come to an agreement,” Kelp said. “By the way, did you find John, too?”

  “Not yet. Of course, I know less about him. Does John have an E-mail address?”

  Kelp laughed. “John barely has a snail mail address.”

  “Not an enthusiast of the new technologies, I take it.”

  “John’s still dubious about the internal combustion engine.”

  “That’s here to stay,” Guilderpost assured him.

  “That’s why he’s dubious. You want to include him in the conversation now? He’s here.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Kelp said, “Well, it’s Thanksgiving. We thought we’d get together, cut up old jackpots, count our blessings. We were wondering if—Hold on.”

  Kelp walked back into the living room, where Dortmunder and May and J.C. and Tiny were now seated on most of the chairs, with Tiny on most of the sofa, talking away about something or other. Anne Marie must be in the kitchen with the turkey and all that. To Dortmunder, very up and cheerful, Kelp said, “Guess what, John? It’s Fitzroy Guilderpost!”

  “No kidding,” Dortmunder said. “Tell him I said hello.”

  “John says hello,” Kelp told the phone, “and about these blessings we were counting, you know, as a matter of fact, we were just wondering if you were one of those blessings, or if you were the other thing.”

  “I’m prepared to pay—”

  “No, Fitzroy, wait.” To Dortmunder, Kelp said, “I think he wants to talk money, like a payoff.”

  Dortmunder shook his head. “We want in.”

  “I heard that,” Guilderpost said, “and Andy, I’m sorry, but it isn’t possible. There are already people involved—”

  “Well, there’s gonna be more, Fitzroy,” Kelp interrupted. “I know John, when he sets his mind to something. What we’re gonna need from you right now is a rundown on the scam, and then—”

  “I’m not going to do that!”

  “Listen, Fitzroy,” Kelp said. “It’s pretty clear, what you’re doing is gonna go public, you’re expecting some kinda splash, so we’ll know the score then, anyway, so we might as well know it now, see what we think of it, do we wanna help out some way or just take a chunk of cash and leave.”

  There was a brief silence while Guilderpost thought that over, and then he said doubtfully, “I suppose we could meet.”

  “Us and Irwin? And your other partners?”

  “Just one other.”

  “So you’re three.” Kelp thought about his last meeting with Guilderpost and Irwin. He looked at Tiny, then nodded to himself and said, “I think we’re three, too.”

  “Andy!” came the reproving voice from the phone.

  “Well, there’s this other fella here, we hang out sometimes. Hold on.” To Tiny, he said, “Tiny, you want a piece of this?”

  The phone asked, “Tiny?”

  Tiny said, “How much?”

  “That’s a good question. I’ll find out.” Into the phone, Kelp said, “How much are we talking here, Fitzroy?”

  “I’m not going to—What are you—”

  “Just ballpark, Fitzroy. I’m not asking for a guarantee. But roughly how much? In total, how many commas?”

  Another little pause. A sigh shivered down the phone lines. “Two.”

  Kelp nodded, and said to Tiny, “Two.”

  Tiny nodded, and said, “In.”

  Kelp said to Guilderpost, “Tiny’s in, so that’s three of us, and if we make this meeting pretty soon, maybe there won’t be any more.”

  “Good.”

  “So where and when?”

  “I’ll have to make arrangements,” Guilderpost said. “Why don’t I phone you tomorrow, say three o’clock? I’ll tell you then where we’ll meet.”

  “Gee, I’d rather not do that, Fitzroy,” Kelp said, “not after what happened to a friend of mine.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Well, there was this other fella, and he and my friend had a little misunderstanding, bad blood, threats, that kinda thing, and the other fella called and said why don’t we meet someplace neutral and talk it over, and my friend said okay, and the other fella said I’ll call you tomorrow at two o’clock and tell you where we’ll meet so the next day my friend made sure he was home at two o’clock and the phone didn’t ring.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “No. The house blew up instead.”

  “Well, that’s terrible,” Guilderpost said.

  “That’s what my friend thought,” Kelp said. “Or what he would have thought, you know what I mean. So why don’t we just go ahead and meet tomorrow?”

  “So soon? I—”

  “Won’t be able to set anything up. And neither will we. That bridge where we saw each other last?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you don’t go over that little bridge, if you head for Jones Beach, you come to these huge parking lots that fill up in the summer with everybody’s cars that are going to the beach.”

  “Yes, I know them.”

  “This time of year, there’s nobody there,” Kelp said. “A fella in a car in the middle of that parking lot, nobody could sneak up on him or stash anything there ahead of time or anything like that. That fella could feel safe.”

  “You, you mean, Andy,” Guilderpost said.

  “Well, I meant both of us, Fitzroy,” Kelp told him. “How about eleven tomorrow morning in Parking Area Six? Out in the middle of it.”

  “That’s rather early, isn’t it?”

  “Is it? We could make it earlier. Would ten be better?”

  “No, no, I don’t want it earlier.”

  “Let me say this, Fitzroy,” Kelp told him. “I’m glad you called when you did, because I was getting tired of the responsibility of Mr. Redcorn. I figured, next week, I was gonna park the van in front of a police station.”

  “Then I’m glad we chatted this week,” Guilderpost said.

  “Me, too, Fitzroy. See you eleven tomorrow morning, Parking Area Six.” And he hung up and carried the phone back to the bedroom.

  When he came out, J.C. pointed a dark red–nailed finger at him and said, “Andy, if you don’t tell what that was all about, I’m going to have to throw you out the window.”

  “No need,” Kelp said. “I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  But then Anne Marie appeared in the doorway and said, “Dinner. Andy, help me carry things to the table.”

  So that was a delay, not Kelp’s fault, and now everything had to come out to the other table, next to the dining room table, and Anne Marie had to consult her seating list, and then she had to change her seating list, because it was clear that Tiny couldn’t sit with somebody else on the side of the table, but had to sit by himself at the end. But then that worked out another way, because when Anne Marie looked at Kelp and said, “So now the question is, who’s going to carve?” and Kelp gave her the blankest look anybody’s ever seen outside an opium den, Tiny said, “I can be pretty handy with a knife,” and there he was, already at the head of the table.

  So while Tiny carved and Anne Marie filled the plates that Dortmunder shuttled from the table, Kelp explained to the others the story till now. Then Tiny moved the turkey remnant to the side table and everybody sat down, and J.C. said, “Why did they do it?”

  “First,” Anne Marie said, “the toast. Andy?”

  She’d made him buy a bunch of bottles of red wine with corks in them, so everybody now had a glass of wine in front of their place. Kelp picked up his and said, “Well, Thanksgiving tradition. I think maybe we got us something going here.”

  “Hear hear,” everybody said, and tasted the wine, and agreed it was very good stuff, and picked up their knives and forks, and J.C. said, “All right. So why did they do it?”

  “If you mean the switch,” Kelp told her, “that’s what John and me keep asking them and they keep not wanting to tell us. If you mean anything else, they don’t want anybody to know what they’re
up to, and we figure that’s because it’s gonna go public and they don’t want anybody around that might tip the word on them.”

  J.C. shook her head. “I’ve done some cons,” she said. “I’ve done some scams. I tell myself I oughta be able to figure this out.”

  May said, “Anne Marie, this stuffing is so moist, it’s wonderful.”

  “It’s the apples, I think,” Anne Marie said.

  Dortmunder said to J.C., “I don’t think we got enough information yet.” To Kelp, he said, “There’s another partner, right?”

  “That’s what he says,” Kelp said, and to Anne Marie, he said, “This stuff is really great, hon, we oughta eat like this every night.”

  “We do, Andy,” Anne Marie said.

  J.C. said, “So maybe the other partner is what’ll tell you.”

  Dortmunder said to Anne Marie, “Great gravy, really great gravy, goes with the turkey like they were meant for each other.” Then he said to J.C., “We’ll find out tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock.”

  “Speaking of which,” Tiny said, “that’s a very tight schedule, Kelp.”

  “I didn’t want to give them a chance to booby-trap us.”

  “Tight for us.”

  Dortmunder said, “No, I think Andy’s right. We’re not trying to blow them up, just talk to them. Doesn’t take that much preparation.”

  “Maybe,” Tiny said, and patted Anne Marie, to his right, on the arm—she flinched—and said, “This is a great meal, Anne Marie. Every bit of it. I’m gonna be around for seconds.”

  “Good,” Anne Marie said, smiling at him and favoring her other arm.

  Kelp said, “It would be nice if we had a car with a remote control. And a bomb, you know? Send it out there, see what happens. If nothing happens, then we go out there with the other car.”

  J.C. said, “You’re going to have to give me the recipe for these creamed onions, Anne Marie. Isn’t she, Tiny?”

  “Yes,” Tiny said, and turned to Kelp to say, “Hand grenade and duct tape.”

  Kelp looked at him. “You’d be willing to do that?”

  “I done it before,” Tiny said. “It always makes people switch over to Plan B, every time.”

  “Okay, good,” Kelp said. “You got the grenade?”