Дональд Уэстлейк - The Spy in the Ointment

“Certainly,” I said. “If you’ll excuse me...”

“Of course.”

I went inside, where Mrs. Bodkin tried to urge spaghetti on me. When I promised her I would eat six breakfasts in the morning, she reluctantly let me go.

Upstairs, I found my bedroom on the first try. There was a key in the lock on the inside, and when I shut the door I studied the key thoughtfully for a minute, then decided no, it would be more in character to leave the door unlocked, as though challenging the world to catch me off-guard.

When I awoke the next morning, still in one piece, my blood still all in its accustomed veins and arteries, no spare lead or steel in any part of me, that entire homecoming scene from the night before left me shaken in retrospect, but nothing else shook me quite so much as the sight of that unlocked door.

Never underestimate the power of a sleepy idiot.

Two days now passed, and the word for their passing — after the rash of activity just preceding — is elephantine. I spent all my time indoors (everyone assured me, each time I tried to go out “for a walk,” that inasmuch as I was a hunted man, it was far too dangerous for me to go outside, though no one had minded me going along on the trip to get the explosives), and not once was I securely and safely and usefully alone. I didn’t dare use the telephone; the house was full of violent people, most of them prowling around. There was just no way to contact the Feds.

Still, I appeared to be in no immediate danger. It was a kind of vacation; I had a bedroom to myself, good food, and nothing to do. Ten Eyck nodded cordially whenever we met, but had nothing further to say to me, and I had nothing at all to say to him. Once I was rested and in full control of my senses, I was incapable of the kind of bland effrontery I’d used so successfully on Ten Eyck immediately after the trip.

Friday afternoon a rested Armstrong and a few of his bully boys drove up in a rent-a-truck truck, which they cheerfully announced they’d stolen on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn that morning. The truck from Canada was long gone, having been picked up while I was asleep Thursday night, the load of explosives now being stored in the sagging barn out behind the house. The stolen truck was now stashed in there, was inspected, and proved to be full of huge cardboard cartons of toilet paper. For the next half hour, as I watched from the kitchen window, the boys of the National Fascist Reclamation Commission unloaded cartons of toilet paper, carried them from the barn to the cellar stairs behind the house, and there turned them over to several white American-born workingman members of the American Sons’ Militia, Louis Labotski’s group. The American Sons stowed the cartons in the no-longer-used coalbin. Mrs. Bodkin was delighted. Toward the end, though, some of the Fascists began to get skittish, laughing and running around the backyard, throwing rolls of toilet paper at one another, the rolls unrolling as they flew like streamers through the air or bounced in lengthening white ribbons across the yard. Mrs. Bodkin had to go out and tell them to stop it; it was unseemly. Chastened, they quieted down, cleaned up, and finished their work in a more sober mood.

(I was imagining the cold fury of Tyrone Ten Eyck, hidden away upstairs, surely watching the backyard from a second floor window. [He never showed himself to the rank and file, only to the leaders who’d attended the first meeting of the League for New Beginnings; he was limiting the number of people who had seen his face and who would therefore have to be dispatched. I’m not sure if that was the result of thought-fulness or merely the desire to avoid an overbusy schedule.] At any rate, he was not particularly humorous, and his reactions to the puppy Nazis must have been something to see. Something I’m glad I didn’t see.)

When the truck was empty, the Fascists and Sons worked together to refill it, this time with explosives, working under the fussy direction of our demolition experts, Eli Zlott and his assistant for the occasion Sun Kut Fu. Before they were done, darkness had fallen, and since there was no light in the barn, it was determined to finish the job the next day.

Once or twice during this time I suggested contacting my own membership and telling them to come join us (the dozen undercover federal agents, remember?), but it had been decided that would be too dangerous; the police, in their continuing search for me, would surely, be watching the members of my organization. Besides, as Mrs. Bodkin accurately pointed out, there were already more people here than could possibly be needed. And I had to admit it was true. The yard between house and barn was crawling with terrorists; at times it looked like the staging area for a bonus march.

Friday evening Mrs. Bodkin and Eli Zlott played Russian Bank at the dining-room table, Tyrone Ten Eyck continued to leaf through Mrs. Bodkin’s library of book-club art books, Sun Kut Fu closeted himself with a lot of wires and miniature electrical components — something or other to do with bombs — which made him seem somehow Japanese rather than Chinese, and I prowled around like a man with a strong case of itchy foot, which was true.

Not just itchy foot, also itchy quarter. From time to time I would take from my pocket the quarter Duff had given me, the one which, when placed in water, would beam a directional signal to bring the federal agents ascurrying, and I would wonder, Should I? But I still knew nothing of value, really. It was true the Feds stood a good chance of arriving here unobserved and thus capturing the whole crew, explosives and all. But on the other hand, there was no assurance that Ten Eyck himself would be caught; his career was rich in narrow escapes, and it seemed to me if anyone would manage to slip through the net, he’d be the one. Each time I held the magic quarter in my hand, therefore, I finally decided to wait yet a while, yet a while.

Saturday, Eli Zlott and Sun closed themselves in the barn and went to work in earnest on turning the truck into one huge traveling bomb. The hordes of terrorists were all gone now, nobody left but us Captains, and Tyrone Ten Eyck moved about freely, puffing one of his tiny twisty cigars, favoring everyone with doses of aromatic blue smoke and that glinting self-confident smile.

Zlott and Sun emerged toward sundown, just in time for dinner. Mrs. Bodkin cooked as though we were an army and had a lot of traveling to do: a huge roast for this particular meal, and corn on the cob, peas, mashed potatoes, hot rolls, and the sort of rich brown gravy which is the Anglo-Saxons one true contribution to the world’s cuisine. Zlott and Sun and Ten Eyck and I were the participants; Mrs. Bodkin maintained the good old American tradition by being in constant fussy flux between dining-room table and kitchen, sitting down at her place only rarely and then merely to pass a bowl to somebody.

There was little talk at the table, until Ten Eyck began to ask our demolition men if everything was in order at the truck. He mentioned something about a “timer,” and Zlott answered in a sudden burst of irritation, “I never got near that. Fu here wanted to do it all himself, wouldn’t let me help a bit.”

“Sun,” said Sun quietly.

“I’ll call you by your first name when I know you better,” Zlott snapped. To Ten Eyck he said, “If that timer’s wrong, don’t blame me. I never got near it.”

“I’m sure everything will work perfectly,” said Ten Eyck, spreading a bit of oil, “just as I’m sure you’re being modest about your own contribution.”

But Zlott was impervious to oil. “Fu wanted to do it all himself,” he insisted, “so I let him. He wants to do the whole thing, go ahead, I don’t care.”