Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“What? What?” he asked a bit wildly.

“She's much better-looking than that. I should have fixed her ribbons. God, she hates having her ribbons messed up. Of course, that's not news to you.”

“Who are you?” he asked. “Oh, God. Where are you? Is she all right?”

I looked down at my watch. Barely ten-fifteen. “How do you like it?” I could barely restrain myself from taking a bite out of the mouthpiece.

He paused. “How do I like what?” He sounded simultaneously frantic and careful.

“Getting the picture for a change, you dreadful little half-pint. Instead of sending it.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he said slowly. He wasn't about to rise to anything as trivial as an insult.

“Well, cutie,” I said, “aren't we cautious? Is someone there?”

“No. What do you want? How much? Damn you, is she alive?”

“Ah-ah,” I said, “not so fast. Let's consider the implications.”

It took him a few seconds to gather his bravado. “What implications?” he asked. “You've got my dog, that's all.”

“Please. Don't insult my intelligence, it makes me nervous. I've got a lot more than your dog. What about the cigar?”

He didn't say anything, but I could hear him breathing. It sounded like a blacksmith's bellows.

“And where did we take the picture?” I said, mimicking Mrs. Brussels' imitation of a third-grade teacher.

“My house,” he said after a moment. “You broke into my house. You took it in the basement.”

“I took it in obedience school,” I said.

Some clown on a Harley roared by, but it didn't matter: Birdie wasn't talking. The silence on the other end of the line lasted so long that I thought the line had gone dead. “Remember obedience school?” I asked. “The cigars in the belly buttons? Tsssss?”

“Oh, heavens,” he said at last. He said it very faintly.

“I don't think heaven's on your itinerary. Even if it is, we have to talk first.”

He swallowed twice. I heard him lick his lips. Then he said, “Skip it.” He hung up.

The man needed a little more time. I walked up the block and loitered skillfully in front of Mrs. Brussels' building for a few minutes. A lady with unattractive identical twin girls went in. Forty-five seconds later she came back out, hauling them behind her. Her face was white with anger. Birdie must have scorched her to the roots of her hair.

Well and good. I strolled back down to Ben Frank's and ordered another orange juice from the same waitress. I'd tipped her before, so she brought the juice with a cheerful good-morning grimace that would have frightened a pumpkin. She even asked if I'd like a cup of coffee on the house. I declined more hastily than was strictly polite. The place was full of out-of-work actors and screenwriters wishfully discussing deal memos. Many of them wore long knit scarves carelessly knotted around their necks. When I'd drained the juice I went back to the booth and dialed him again.

“Brussels'-” he began.

“Hey, Birdie,” I interrupted. “Do you want Woofers back?”

“Not enough to talk to you,” he said. But he didn't hang up.

“Give me thirty seconds,” I said. “You can count out loud if you like. Let's see if I can't come up with some things you might want. In fact, I'll count for you. One, obedience school. Two, ransom letters. Three, twenty thousand dollars. Four, Kansas City. Five, cigar burns. And, six, how about no cops or FBI?”

“FBI?” he said.

“As in using the mail to commit a crime. Remember that?”

“I never did.” He didn't sound very sure of himself.

“You mailed the note and the cassette. Nice cassette, by the way. Terrific fidelity. Leonard Bernstein quality. Burn-stein,” I added. “That's a pun.”

“Fuck you,” he said weakly.

“Only if you'll print my picture in the Actors'Directory .” He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. “Birdie,” I said, “I've got it all.”

“I still don't know what you're talking about,” he said with an edge of desperation.

“Think about it,” I said. “It'll come to you.” I hung up the phone.

In Ben Frank's, the maitresse d’, a spidery young woman with deep-black-dyed hair and fingernails she could have pruned fruit trees with, dug two talons into my arm as I walked past her and said, “Table, sir?”

“Just the bathroom.”

“Sorry,” she said with virtuous satisfaction. “Rest rooms are for customers only.”

“I'm a customer. Ask Martha.” Martha was the waitress I'd come to think of as mine.

Martha cut no ice with her. She gave me something that would have been a smile if it had happened an inch or two lower. As it was, it flared her nostrils. “I'm afraid you'll have to order something.”

“Okay,” I said. “I order you to remove your hand from my arm. I'm full up on your poisonous coffee, and I'm either going to unload it in the men's room or right here. Want to bet a buck I can't hit the counter?”

She pulled her hand back and gave me a reptilian blink. There weren't any rules to cover this. “I'll make a deal,” I said. “I use the bathroom and you drink the coffee. My kidneys will be eternally grateful.” I put a dollar into her hand for the coffee and threaded my way through the genteel unemployed of Hollywood to the men's room.

“Yeah?” Birdie said into the phone five minutes later. He'd given up on playing secretary.

“To pick up where we left off,” I said, ‘let's try the Mann Act. Let's try interstate transport of minors for immoral purposes. Let's try Cap'n Cluckbucket’s.”

“Ahhh,” he said. “I knew it. Sooner or later, I knew it. It was such a dumb idea.”

“Whose idea was it?”

“My dog,” he said, mustering his strength. The little creep was tough. “Let's talk about my dog.”

“The topics aren't mutually exclusive,” I said. “If you do everything exactly right in the next two minutes you can get your dog back and you can maybe avoid going to jail for the rest of your life too.”

“It's all her fault,” he said bitterly. “It was her idea. I told her it was stupid.”

“That means you're ready to talk?”

“Depends,” he said, trying for cagey.

“On what?”

“Talk about what, precisely?” In some part of his soul he was counting his change.

I thought about obedience school and clutched the receiver a little more tightly. “Remember what you said to me last time I called?”

“Refresh my memory,” he said.

“Fuck you,” I said, hanging up.

Wishing I had the Rolaids concession at the Thai market down the street from Mrs. Brussels, I walked back up the block and worked on my loitering. Nothing happened for the thirty minutes I skulked there. I couldn't tap the phone line, so I couldn't know who he might be talking to, but at least he wasn't going anywhere. Anyway, as far as I could figure, there wasn't anyone he could be talking to.

At one-thirty I called him back. By then I was home and Woofers was chewing happily on one of the shoes I'd kicked off. My answering machine had told me that Mrs. Sorrell had called once and Aurora twice. Mockingbirds were exercising their vocal cords outside the windows, and the sun had finally muscled through the clouds to create the fourth false spring in as many days.

“In addition to the Mann Act, how about white slavery and pandering in minors?” I said when he picked up the phone. “And let's not forget that we're also talking about this.” I gave one of Woofers' ribbon-wrapped ears a mean tweak. She yelped gratifyingly, gave me a token snap, and regarded me with an expression that was pregnant with betrayal.

“ Yiiiiiy ,” Birdie exclaimed in anguish. He had a longer rope than most, but he sounded like he was at the end of it.