Lawrence Block - Tanner’s Tiger

“Arlette!”

“Something is wrong? Evan, what is the matter?”

I inhaled and exhaled, very slowly, very solemnly. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m on edge, that’s all it is.” Inhale, exhale. “I have to send you out again. This time you’ll have to go to the fairgrounds.”

“I will go.”

“You will have to find a certain man and make arrangements for later this evening.”

“Who is this man?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to arrange to meet with him in a certain place-”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. In a certain place and at a certain time.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. This is terrible. Is there any more coffee?”

She peered into my eyes. I don’t guess she saw much. I was still wearing the sunglasses. She said, “Evan, I think you should sleep for an hour.”

“No.”

“You have had very little sleep, Evan, and-”

“I’m all right. Coffee.” She brought it. I drank it. “Okay,” I said, ignoring the busy little rumble in the back of my head. “Okay, just let me think for a moment. All right. This is what you’ll do.”

I explained it to her. I guess it registered, because she repeated it all back to me, and it sounded all right when she said it. She was a little leery of leaving me all alone, though.

“I’ll be all right,” I said.

“At least take a nap.”

“If I can. I have things to do.” She went away. And I have promises to keep, said the rotten little voice, and miles to go before I sleep. And I have promises to break and miles to go before I wake. And I have Thomases to peep and smiles to look before I leap. And I have –

I went to the mirror and glowered at it. “You are probably going mad,” I told my reflection aloud. “Do you realize what you’re doing? You’re having verbal hallucinations. That’s what you’re doing. Do you realize that this may mean your mind is going? And if so, the competence of your whole brilliant plan is called to question. And since you haven’t told anyone what your plan is, nobody can check it to make sure it makes sense. Maybe this is an aftereffect of the pot. Maybe you’re actually still lying on the floor stoned out of your bird and it’s only six in the morning and none of this has happened yet. Maybe it never will. Why do you just stand there, you schmuck in the mirror? Why don’t you say something? Oh, Jesus God, what would I do if you did?”

I returned to the other room, sat on the floor, and folded up my legs in the full lotus posture. I began chanting the multiplication tables, first in English, then in French, then in Spanish and Portuguese and German and Dutch and Serbo-Croat and on and on, switching from language to language, babbling inanely onward and waiting for whatever was happening to either improve or deteriorate.

Very weird it was, believe me. I was in several minds at once, one of them chanting polylingual gibberish, one punning endlessly, one terrified that I was going crazy, one not giving a damn, and one little spark of sense somewhere in the background shaking its head at all the others. If I can just get control, it was saying, everything will be all right again. Let all the other fellows burn themselves out. I’m still here, fellow. I’ll take care of you.

We left Arlette’splace at a quarter to seven. I sat beside her in the little Renault. She drove. She had suggested that I might huddle on the floor of the back seat, but there wasn’t room, and I had the feeling that it might provoke comment if someone saw me doing that. It felt odd being outside in daylight. I wasn’t especially nervous about it, though, until Arlette advised me to be calm. “Because if you perspire, the putty will run from your nose and ears,” she said.

I wished she hadn’t mentioned it. Trying not to perspire is the surest way to do it. I didn’t let it bother me, though, nor did I say anything. Talking wasn’t much fun anymore. Just before we left the apartment, I put the finishing touches to my disguise, lodging little gobs of cotton batten between my lips and teeth. This was supposed to change the shape of my mouth. I don’t know if it looked different, but it certainly felt different.

While Arlette contended with the traffic, I made sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. The heroin was in my clothes, which I was wearing. The Japanese automatic was in one pocket, the spare clip in another. Arlette’s false ID would go in her purse eventually, but I didn’t want to give her the chance to lose it before then; it was in yet another of my pockets. She had the clear glasses in her purse. I was wearing my sunglasses and didn’t really care if she lost the others. The mike and the receiving unit were locked in the trunk.

Seth and Randy had called in at six, at which time we had synchronized our watches. I told them to meet me at the Lost Children booth at Expo at 2100 hours. They didn’t know what that meant – it was kind of a dumb thing to tell a draft-dodger – so I translated it as nine o’clock. They said they would be there. I said, “Give ’em hell, men,” and Seth said, “Keep the faith, baby,” which sums up the generation gap fairly well.

“Emile and the rest are supposed to be at their posts by seven,” I told Arlette now. “Figure they’ll be there by seven fifteen at the outside. We should be ready to move in almost anytime after that.”

“We have time.”

“Good. Nine o’clock at the fairgrounds? Is that right? The Lost and Found booth?”

“Yes.”

“Just checking. I hope he’ll be there.”

“So do I. Evan, I am a little worried about that man. I believe he is a drunkard.”

“I’m positive of it.”

“Is he reliable?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you selected him-”

“He’s crazy enough to do what I want him to do,” I said. “We gain in courage what we lose in dependability.”

“He was very drunk when I saw him.”

“Good. That means you found the right man.”

“It was difficult. I did not know his name.”

“I never learned it. What is it, by the way?”

“Oh. I did not think to ask. Does it matter?”

“Probably not. Don’t worry about it.”

“If I knew what it was you wished him to do-”

“You told him what I would pay him?”

“Yes. He said for that much money he would fly through hell on a broomstick.”

“I may hold him to that.”

For the rest of the ride I went over the procedure with her. She checked out all the way down the line. She wasn’t a stupid girl, I decided. Not by any means. It was just unnerving to have a conversation with her, that was all.

We drove out of the city and through a wasteland of suburbs to Point X. She had no trouble finding it. The road came to within two hundred yards of the river. The terrain between the two was hilly, with a lot of shrubbery and deep ground cover. From the road we could just make out the crest of the hill where Claude would be poised with his rifle and binoculars.

I walked part of the way through the field, my ears cocked, putty and all. I stopped when I heard conversation. Claude’s voice, then Jean Berton’s. They had arrived at Point X, then. Soon the Bertons would move off to their spot and set up the machine gun in the brush clump.

I checked my watch. We were early. I went back to the car and told Arlette to head back to the gas station we had passed half a mile back. We had time to spare, and I figured that every smoke screen we could create would do us that much more good. I took a fistful of dimes into the outdoor phone booth and spent every last one of them on terrifying phone calls. I called the British Consulate and told them there was a bomb in the basement. I called three different police stations and reported crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder. I turned in a variety of false fire alarms. I threw bomb scares at several downtown movie houses, advising them to clear the building and call the police. I behaved, in short, in a thoroughly antisocial manner. By the time I was through, someone could have called in to announce the imminent assassination of the Queen and no one would have paid the slightest attention to him. They would just write it off as another message from the Telephone Maniac.