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“Civil code,” said the fourth regular, being civil. “That’s what they call the black lines.”
A quick bzt sound came from the general direction of Rollo, followed by a curse, and the dropping of a lot of tools.
“No,” the first regular said, “it is not the civil code, which is something to do with the subways. It’s called something else. I’d know it if I heard it.”
Still on his knees, Rollo backed away from the window, then stood.
“Area?” suggested the fourth regular.
“No no no,” the first regular said, “area codes is another word for zoning.”
Rollo picked up his tools and the neon sign and headed for the bar.
“Zip?” suggested the fourth regular.
The other regulars all looked down at their pants.
Rollo made his way around the end of the bar, dropping his tools onto the shelf there.
“A zip is a gun,” the first regular said.
Rollo approached Dortmunder and Kelp, dropping the neon sign into the trash barrel along the way. “Nobody likes foreign beers anyway,” he explained. “They’re made with foreign water.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Kelp said.
Rollo nodded. “You want the back room, right?”
“Yeah,” Dortmunder said. “There’ll be five of us.” It had long been a tenet of his that if you couldn’t accomplish a task with five men you shouldn’t try it at all. He’d seen exceptions to that rule, of course, just as there are exceptions to all rules, but as a general guide of thumb, so to speak, he still went with it.
“I’ll send them back,” Rollo said. “Who’s coming?”
Understanding Rollo’s idiosyncracy, that he knew his customers by their drink, which he felt gave him some kind of marketing advantage, Dortmunder said, “There’ll be the vodka and red wine.”
“Big fella,” Rollo said, who was no slouch himself.
“That’s him,” Dortmunder agreed. “And the rye and water.”
Rollo considered. “Lotta ice? Clinks a lot?”
“Right again. And the beer and salt.”
“Him,” Rollo said, with a downturn of the mouth. “What a boon to business he is.”
Kelp explained, “Stan’s a driver, you see, he’s got himself used to not drinking too much.”
“I’d bet my money,” Rollo said, “he’s got a black belt in not drinking too much.”
“So that’s why the salt,” Kelp went on. “He gets a beer, he sips it slow and easy, and when the head’s gone he adds a little salt, pep the head right back up again.”
“What I like to pep up,” Rollo said, “is the cash register. But it takes all kinds. I’ll get your drinks.”
Rollo turned away, and pulled out a tray, while down at the other end of the bar the regulars had segued in a natural progression into consideration of cold cures. At the moment, they were trying to decide if the honey was supposed to be spread on the body or injected into a vein. Before they’d solved this problem, Rollo had put ice into two glasses, put the glasses on the tray, and taken down from the shelf a fresh bottle of some murky dark liquid behind a label reading AMSTERDAM LIQUOR STORE BOURBON — “ OUR OWN BRAND.” With the bottle also on the tray, Rollo turned and slid the whole thing toward Dortmunder, saying, “Happy days.”
“It’s feed a cough,” said the first regular.
“Thanks, Rollo.”
Dortmunder took the tray and followed Kelp past the regulars, who were now all demonstrating various kinds of cough, and on back beyond the bar and down the hall past the two doors marked with dog silhouettes labeled POINTERS and SETTERS and past the phone booth, where the string dangling from the quarter slot was now so grimy you could barely see it, and on through the green door at the very back, which led into a small square room with a concrete floor. All the walls were completely hidden floor to ceiling by beer and liquor cases, leaving a minimal space in the middle for a battered old round table with a stained felt top that had once been pool-table green, plus half a dozen chairs. The room had been dark, but when Kelp hit the switch beside the door the scene was illuminated by a bare bulb under a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire.
Kelp held the door while Dortmunder carried in the tray and brought it around to the far side of the table and put it down. The chairs facing the door were always the most popular ones, and tended to be taken by the earliest arrivals.
Dortmunder sat in the chair facing the door head-on, while Kelp, to his right, stood a moment to pick up the bottle, study its top, and with admiration say, “Boy, they do a good job. Looks just like a government seal, and you could swear the cap was never opened.”
“My ice cubes are melting,” Dortmunder commented.
Kelp looked in both glasses, then said, “Well, John, you know, they would anyway.”
“But not alone. My ice cubes don’t like to melt alone.”
“Gotcha.” Kelp opened the bottle, poured murky liquid over the ice cubes in both glasses, placed the glasses on preexisting circular stain marks on the felt, and put tray and bottle on the floor between their chairs. Then he sat down, as the door opened again, and a stocky open-faced fellow with carroty hair came in, carrying a glass of beer in one hand and wearing a salt shaker in his shirt pocket. He looked at Dortmunder and Kelp, seemed dissatisfied, and said, “You got here ahead of me.”
“Well, we said ten o’clock,” Dortmunder said. “It’s ten o’clock.”
“Hi, Stan,” said Kelp.
“Yeah, hi, Andy,” said the newcomer, who still seemed dissatisfied. His name was Stan Murch, and when things had to be driven, he was the driver. Taking the seat next to Kelp, so he’d have no worse than his profile to the door, he said, “They’re tearin’ up Sixth Avenue again. Would you believe it?”
“Yes,” Dortmunder said.
Stan lived in the depths of Brooklyn, in Canarsie, with his cabdriver mother, so plotting the ramifications and combinations of travel between his place and anywhere in Manhattan was his ongoing problem and passion. Now, sipping in an agitated way at his beer, taking the salt shaker from his pocket and putting it on the table, he said, “So I took the Brooklyn Battery Tu
“Exactly,” Kelp said.
“From there it’s a straight shot,” Stan explained. “Up Sixth Avenue, into the park, out at Seventy-second, over to Amsterdam, wham, bam, I’m here.”
“That’s right,” Dortmunder agreed. “You’re here.”
“But not this time,” Stan said darkly.
Dortmunder looked again, but he’d been right; Stan was definitely here. He decided to let that go.
Stan said, “This time, I get up into the Twenties, there it is again, those big lumber pieces painted white and red, half of Sixth Avenue all torn up, backhoes and bulldozers and who knows what all inside there, we’re down to no lanes. And you know something else?”
“No,” Dortmunder said.
“It’s always the left side! They go along, a year, two years, the left side of Sixth Avenue all tore up, and then finally they repave it, they take all the barriers away, you figure, now they’re go
“Maybe it’s a political statement,” Kelp suggested, and the door opened, and in came a hearty heavyset fellow in a tan check sports jacket and open-collar shirt. He had a wide pleasant mouth and a big round pleasant nose, and he carried a glass full of ice cubes that clinked pleasantly as he moved. This was Ralph Winslow, the lockman, who was taking Wally Whistler’s place this time because Wally, since their work together at the N-Joy, had fallen upon a mischance. He’d been waiting for a crosstown bus and hardly even noticing the armored car parked there, in the bus stop because it was also in front of the bank, and when the armored car’s alarm went off he hadn’t at first realized it had anything to do with him, so he was still standing there when the guards came ru