Part 21 (1/2)

'That's true, too.'

He stood up, put his hands on his hips. 'You know,' he said, 'I didn't figure to bring you here. I didn't figure you needed to know about this house. And I brought you without you even asking.'

'It's quite a house.'

'Thank you.'

'Was Kim impressed with it?'

'She never saw it. None of 'em ever did. There's an old German woman comes here once a week to clean. Makes the whole place s.h.i.+ne. She's the only woman's ever been inside of this house. Since I owned it, anyway, and the architects who used to live here didn't have much use for women. Here's the last of the coffee.'

It was awfully good coffee. I'd had too much of it already but it was too good to pa.s.s up. When I complimented it earlier he'd told me it was a mixture of Jamaica Blue Mountain and a dark roast Colombian bean. He'd offered me a pound of it, and I'd told him it wouldn't be much use to me in a hotel room.

I sipped the coffee while he made yet another call to his service. When he hung up I said, 'You want to give me the number here? Or is that one secret you want to keep?'

He laughed. 'I'm not here that much. It's easier if you just call the service.'

'All right.'

'And this number wouldn't do you much. I don't know it myself. I'd have to look at an old phone bill to make sure I got it right. And if you dialed it, nothing would happen.'

'Why's that?'

'Because the bells won't ring. The phones are to make calls out. When I set this place up I got telephone service and I put in extensions so I'd never be far from a phone, but I never gave the number to anybody. Not even my service, not anybody.'

'And?'

'And I was here one night, I think I was playing pool, and the d.a.m.n phone rang. I like to jumped. It was somebody wanted to know did I want a subscription to the New York Times. Then two days later I got another call and it was a wrong number, and I realized the only calls I was ever going to get were wrong numbers and somebody selling something, and I took a screwdriver and went around and opened up each of the phones, and there's this little clapper that rings the bell when a current pa.s.ses through a particular wire, and I just took the little clapper off each of the phones. I dialed the number once from another phone, and you think it rings because there's no telling the clapper's gone, but there's no bell going off in this house.'

'Clever.'

'No doorbell, either. There's a thing you ring by the door outside, but it's not connected to anything. That door's never been opened since I moved in, and you can't see in the windows, and there's burglar alarms on everything. Not that you get much burglary in Greenpoint, a nice settled Polish neighborhood like this, but old Dr. Levandowski, he likes his security and he likes his privacy.'

'I guess he does.'

'I'm not here much, Matthew, but when that garage door closes behind me it keeps the whole world out. Nothing touches me here. Nothing.'

'I'm surprised you brought me here.'

'So am I.'

We saved the money for last. He asked how much I wanted. I told him I wanted twenty-five hundred dollars.

He asked what that bought.

'I don't know,' I said. 'I don't charge by the hour and I don't keep track of my expenses. If I wind up laying out a lot of money or if the thing goes on too long, I might wind up asking you for more money. But I'm not going to send you a bill and I'm not going to sue you if you don't pay.'

'You keep it all very informal.'