Joseph Heller - Closing Time

"That's not your business either."

"I always dream of sex my first night out when I travel alone. It's a reason I don't mind going out of town."

"Mr. Gaffney, that's lovely. But it's none of my business."

"When I go with Mrs. Gaffney, there's no need to dream. Fortunately, she too likes to perform the sex act immediately in every new setting."

"That's lovely too, but I don't want to hear it, and I don't want you to hear about mine."

"You should be more guarded."

"It's the reason I hired you, damn it. I'm followed by you and followed by others I don't know a fucking thing about, and I want it to stop. I want my privacy back."

"Then give up the chaplain."

"I don't have the chaplain."

"I know that, Yo-Yo, but they don't."

"I'm too old for Yo-Yo."

"Your friends call you Yo-Yo."

"Name one, you jackass."

"I will check. But you came to the right man when you came to the Gaff. I can tell you the ways they keep you under surveillance, and I can teach you to avoid surveillance, and then I can give you the measures they employ to thwart someone like you who has learned to thwart their surveillance."

"Aren't you contradicting yourself?"

"Yes. But meanwhile I've spotted four following you who've disguised themselves cleverly. Look, there goes the gentleman we know as our Jewish G-man, trying to get on a plane to New York. He was in Keposha yesterday."

"I saw him somewhere but wasn't sure."

"Possibly in your dream. Pacing in the motel parking lot and saying his evening prayers. How many do you recognize?"

"At least one," said Yossarian, warming to the counterintelligence business in which they now seemed to be conspiring. "And I don't even have to look. A tall man in seersucker with freckles and orange hair. It's almost winter and he's still wearing seersucker. Right? I'll bet he's there, against a wall or column, drinking soda from a paper cup."

"It's an Orange Julius. He wants to be spotted."

"By whom?"

"I'll check."

"No, let me do it!" Yossarian declared. "I'm going to talk to that bastard, once and for all. You keep watch."

"I have a gun in my ankle holster."

"You too?"

"Who else?"

"McBride, a friend of mine."

"At PABT?"

"You know him?"

"I've been there," said Gaffney. "You'll be going again soon now that the wedding has been set."

"It has?" This was news to Yossarian.

Gaffney again looked pleased. "Even Milo doesn't know that yet, but I do. You can order the caviar. Please let me tell him. The SEC has to approve. Do you find that one funny?"

"I've heard it before."

"Don't say much to that agent. He might be CIA."

Yossarian was displeased with himself because he felt no real anger as he strode up to his quarry.

"Hi," said the man, curiously. "What's up?"

Yossarian spoke gruffly. "Didn't I see you following me in New York yesterday?"

"No."

And that was going to be all.

"Were you in New York?" Yossarian was now much less peremptory.

"I was in Florida." His mannerly bearing seemed an immutable mask. "I have a brother in New York."

"Does he look like you?"

"We're twins."

"Is he a federal agent?"

"I don't have to answer that one."

"Are you?"

"I don't know who you are."

"I'm Yossarian. John Yossarian.'w "Let me see your credentials."

"You've both been following me, haven't you?"

"Why would we follow you?"

"That's what I want to find out."

"I don't have to tell you. You've got no credentials."

"I don't have credentials," Yossarian, crestfallen, reported back to Gaffney.

"I've got credentials. Let me go try."

And in less than a minute, Jerry Gaffney and the man in the seersucker suit were chatting away in untroubled affinity like very old friends. Gaffney showed a billfold and gave him what looked to Yossarian like a business card, and when a policeman and four or five other people in plain clothes who might have been policemen also drew close briskly, Gaffney distributed a similar card to each, and then to everyone in the small crowd of bystanders who had paused to watch, and finally to the two young black women behind the food counter serving hot dogs, prepackaged sandwiches, soft pretzels with large grains of kosher salt, and soft drinks like Orange Julius. Gaffney returned eventually, immensely satisfied with himself. He spoke softly, but only Yossarian would know, for his demeanor appeared as serene as before.

"He isn't following you, John," he said, and could have been talking about the weather as far as anyone watching could tell. "He's following someone else who's following you. He wants to find out how much they find out about you."

"Who?" demanded Yossarian. "Which one?"

"He hasn't found out yet," answered Gaffney. "It might be me. That would be funny to somebody else, but I see you're not laughing. John, he thinks you might be CIA."

"That's libelous. I hope you told him I'm not."

"I don't know yet that you're not. But I won't tell him anything until he becomes a client. I only told him this much." Gaffney pushed another one of his business cards across the table. "You should have one too."

Yossarian scanned the card with knitted brow, for the words identified the donor as the proprietor of a Gaffney Real Estate Agency, with offices in the city and on the New York and Connecticut seashores and in the coastal municipalities of Santa Monica and San Diego in lower California.

"I'm not sure I get it," said Yossarian.

"It's a front," said Gaffney. "A come-on."

"Now I do." Yossarian grinned. "It's a screen for your detective agency. Right?"

"You've got it backwards. The agency is a front for my real estate business. There's more money in real estate."

"I'm not sure I can believe you."

"Am I trying to be funny?"

"It's impossible to tell."

"I'm luring him on," Jerry Gaffney explained. "Right into one of my offices pretending he's a prospect looking for a house, while he tries to find out who I really am."

"To find out what he's up to?"

"To sell him a house, John. That's where my real income is. This should interest you. We have choice rentals in East Hampton for next summer, for the season, the year, and the short term. And some excellent waterfront properties too, if you're thinking of buying."

"Mr. Gaffney," said Yossarian.

"Are we back to that?"

"I know less about you now than I did before. You said I'd be making this trip, and here I am making it. You predicted there'd be blizzards, and now there are blizzards."

"Meteorology is easy."

"You seem to know all that's happening on the face of the earth. You know enough to be God."

"There's more money in real estate," answered Gaffney. "That's how I know we have no God. He'd be active in real estate too. That's not a bad one, is it?"

"I've heard worse."

"I have one that may be better. I also know much that goes on under the earth. I've been beneath PABT too, you know."

"You've heard the dogs?"

"Oh, sure," said Gaffney. "And seen the Kilroy material. I have connections in MASSPOB too, electronic connections," he appended, and his thin, sensual lips, which were almost liverish in a rich tinge, spread wide again in that smile of his that was cryptic and somehow incomplete. "I've even," he continued, with some pride, "met Mr. Tilyou."

"Mr. Tilyou?" echoed Yossarian. "Which Mr. Tilyou?"

"Mr. George C. Tilyou," Gaffney explained. "The man who built the old Steeplechase amusement park in Coney Island."

"I thought he was dead."

"He is."

"Is that your joke?"

"Does it give you a laugh?"

"Only a smile."

"You can't say I'm not trying," said Gaffney. "Let's go now. Look back if you wish. That will keep them coming. They won't know whether to stick with Yossarian or follow me. You'll have a smooth trip. Think of this episode as an entr'acte, an intermezzo between Kenosha and your business with Milo and Noodles Cook. Like Wagner's music for Siegfried's Rhine Journey and the Funeral Music in the Gotterddmmerung, or that interlude of clinking anvils in Das Rheingold."