Дональд Уэстлейк - The Fugitive Pigeon

He kept smiling the big smile, looking at me with bright eyes. “Great party!” he said. “What a great party!” Then he blinked again, and the smile slipped, and he looked at the floor. “You slept on the floor,” he said, the way he might have said, “You walked on the water.” Incredulity, but muted by awe. He said it twice, the same way both times. “You slept on the floor. You slept on the floor.”

“Artie,” I said, because I figured now he really was awake, “I’m in a kind of a jam. I need help, Artie.”

He looked up from the floor, and his smile this time was puzzled, his eyes sort of glassy. “Charlie Poole,” he mused. “Little Charlie Poole. Slept on the floor. Got himself in a jam. Little Charlie Poole.”

“I need help,” I repeated.

He spread his hands. “Tell me, baby,” he said, more quietly and sincerely than I’d ever heard him say anything. “Tell me all. Begin.”

Begin. Begin where? Two people were trying to kill me, that was part of it. The whole explanation about Uncle Al and the organization and the bar in Canarsie, that was part of it. Being out with little money and no coat, that was part of it. But where was the beginning of it?

Then I remembered the name I’d heard in the conversation between Uncle Al and the killers last night: Agricola. Agricola was the beginning of it, I supposed, the man who’d ordered the killers to kill me. So I said, “Artie, do you know of anybody named Agricola? In some kind of criminal organization or something.”

“Agricola? The Farmer? Hell, yes.”

“You do know him.”

“Farmer Agricola,” he said. “Everybody knows him. Knows of him, anyway. I never met him myself, of course, he’s too big. Besides, he stays out on his farm on Staten Island most of the time.”

“Staten Island,” I said.

“Sure. I knew about him back when I used to sell the pills, you know? He’s way up in the higher echelons there, maybe he runs the whole thing for all I know. Did you know I quit selling them things? I saw this documentary on television, the evils of narcotic addiction, and let me tell you, baby, it was like a revelation. You’re looking at a new Artie Dexter, a new man, believe it or don’t. I am now so loaded with social conscience you—”

“Agricola,” I said.

“If you’re thinking,” he said, “of making an extra kopek, peddle the pills like at that bar you run out there, take my advice and don’t do it. Some morning you’ll look at yourself in the mirror, you’ll say—”

“No,” I said, “that isn’t it. This guy Agricola sent—”

But then the door opened and the sloe-eyed raven-tressed beauty came in and said, “Time, gentlemen, please.”

Artie shouted, “Chloe!” He threw back the covers and spread out his arms. “Come to Papa!”

“I hope to Christ not,” she said.

Artie didn’t have any pajamas on at all. Feeling that old adolescent blush staining my cheeks like the Sherwin-Williams paint can had just been dumped on my head instead of the globe, I said, “Well, uh, Artie, uh, I’ll, uh, talk to you, uh, later on, uh...” Meanwhile backing up. I left the room by the other door, the one leading to the bathroom, because that way I didn’t have to get closer to Chloe, who was taking off her dungarees and ignoring the dickens out of me.

I felt much better when I had the closed bathroom door between us. I heard Artie shout, “Ah hah!” and then there was silence from in there.

As long as I was in the bathroom anyway, and nothing to do, I washed. I didn’t take any clothing off, because I would have had to put the same dirty clothing on again and I didn’t want to have to do that. I knew, for instance, that my shirt collar must be black by now, but it didn’t bother me as much as it would if I were actually to see it. So I simply washed my face and hands, brushed my teeth with toothpaste and my finger, gargled a little bit on general principles, and left the bathroom by the other door feeling somewhat better.

As I was going out to the living room, I heard the telephone ring. I looked around, but the phone was in the bedroom, and I heard Artie bellow, “Every time! Every goddam time!” The phone didn’t ring any more, so I guess he answered it.

I searched the living-room shelves, found in amid the record albums an old paperback of Charles Addams’ cartoons, and sat down with it to distract myself from thoughts of violence and mayhem.

Somehow, I think I picked the wrong book.

After a while Artie and Chloe came out, both dressed now, both looking bouncy and healthy. Artie rubbed his hands together briskly and said, “Now! Charlie boy, you wanted to talk.”

Chloe said, “Coffee?”

“Right,” said Artie. “A round of coffee. Coffee for me and my troops. Charlie?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Great,” said Artie. He clapped his hands together and came over and sat down in a chair facing me. “We begin,” he said.

“And,” said Chloe from the kitchen-closet, “you can tell your Uncle Al he’s got a rotten sense of timing.”

I said, “My Uncle Al?”

Artie frowned and said to Chloe, “That was supposed to be a surprise, schmo. He didn’t want us to tell him.”

“I forgot,” said Chloe. “Sorry.”

I said, “What is this?”

Artie said, “Let’s talk. You had a problem, you wanted to talk. Something about Farmer Agricola, right?”

“No, wait,” I said. “This is important. What about my Uncle Al?”

Chloe said, “Forget it, will you? I’m sorry I spoke up, I didn’t mean to ruin anything.”

“The bit’s blown,” Artie told her. “It don’t matter any more, idiot, you already opened your big mouth.” But the manner wasn’t as harsh as the words. It was as though he couldn’t really be mad at her right now.

She said, “So sue me,” and went back to making the coffee.

I said, “So tell me.”

“That was your Uncle Al on the phone,” Artie told me. “He wanted to know were you here, and I said yes did he want to talk to you, and he said no he’d come on down and pick you up but don’t tell you because he wanted it to be a surprise. So when he comes in, will you act surprised?”

You read about it in the papers all the time. A city bus driver, bored and bedeviled by years of driving back and forth over the same restricted route, all at once makes a left turn and drives to Columbus, Ohio, instead. Not that he wants to go to Columbus, Ohio, or even knows anyone there. It is only that Columbus, Ohio, is off that damn bus route. You remember reading about things like that, right?

Well, some day it’s going to happen on a Staten Island ferry. Some day the guy at the wheel of the Staten Island ferry is going to get sick of going back and forth between Staten Island and the Battery, and he’s going to turn left and steam to Nantucket instead. It hasn’t happened yet, but you mark my words; some day.

Riding the ferry to Staten Island now, and thinking about it, I was wishing today would be the some day, and this ferry the ferry that would do it. Nantucket, Bermuda, even the Azores. Or, Fidelistas hijack airplanes and take them to Cuba, why not ferryboats?

I don’t know why not, but they don’t. Or didn’t, not the one I rode. The one I rode went to Staten Island, of all places, and I got off and went looking for Farmer Agricola.

I had left Artie’s place, of course, in a hurry. But first there’d been a few more things to say; I’d borrowed a jacket from him, and swore him to secrecy about where I was going and that I knew the name Agricola. “Don’t tell my Uncle Al,” I said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“Baby, tell me what’s going on,” he said.

“No time, no time. I’ll come back when I can, I promise.”