Part 27 (1/2)

Ned still stood, drinking Bud from a bottle. ”Well, yes, you can. I mean I think so.” Why had these two been in Pittsburgh, really? Ned wondered. There was something wonderfully old-fas.h.i.+oned about them, like Kennedy fifty-cent coins.

Karl kicked back a chair in a way that suggested he was used to kicking back chairs and said, ”Sit down,” in a way he was used to telling people to sit down. But he did not mean to give offense, which was pretty much what he said, together with ”Please (sit down).”

So Ned sat.

Candy said, ”You were saying?”

”About nostalgia? That it might not have to do with a particular time and place.”

They squinted at him as if compressing the field of vision might leave another faculty free to play around.

”I don't get it,” Candy said. ”You?” He turned to Karl, who was thinking and didn't answer.

Ned said, ”You might be attaching a feeling to somewhere that wasn't ever the source of it. Maybe you don't recall the source because remembering it's too painful.”

They c.o.c.ked their heads like big birds, listening carefully.

”Anyway, it's what the book I'm writing is about.”

Was it? It gave Ned a jolt. He thought of Nathalie and thought she had been sorely used and not just by Patric but by Ned himself. He saw her there in the Jardin des Plantes, waiting for Patric, who wasn't going to come. He'd left Paris for his house in l'Herault. Why was she waiting if she knew he wasn't coming? Hope against hope, a strange way, thought Ned, of denoting hopelessness. She thought:He will walk toward me, turning in from the Rue Linne, carrying roses. He will not have gone, after all; he will have sent his wife and children off without him to Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Now they could be together for two weeks, two weeks uninterrupted. They would sit in cafes along the Boulevard St.-Germain, in Deux Magots, or along the Rue de la Paix, the cafe jammed with Americans who remembered it from the old song.

Nathalie imagined Patric with the same ferocious intensity with which he, Ned, imagined Nathalie.

She watched the path with such an intensity that Patric might actually materialize there, holding flowers . . .

He only half heard the question asked of him and looked up. ”Sorry, you said-”

The taller one nodded, then asked, ”What's your book called?”

”Separation.” Ned said, ”Why were you guys in Pittsburgh anyway?”

”Oh . . . yeah . . . we got business in Pittsburgh. Accounts, you know.”

”No kidding?”

”Coincidence. Listen, we're just on our way over to Mackenzie-Haack. We want to see Mackenzie before he leaves town. He's one of our accounts.”

”Yeah,” said Candy. ”Before he leaves town.” He grinned.

FORTY-ONE.

Candy and Karl walked into the enormous lobby of the Mackenzie-Haack Building. The lobby looked like a marble sepulchre with its black floor tiles reflecting upward and white Doric columns on either side. The floor looked slippery slick and icy black enough to skate on.

They walked up to a black marble half-moon structure with RECEPTION on a small bra.s.s plaque. Behind the counter sat a guard. Another guard stood by him. Both looked bored. On the wall behind them were the huge intertwined initials MH.

”Bobby Mackenzie,” said Candy, rolling his wad of gum from the left side of his mouth to the right. He had worn his black fedora.

Karl had worn his, too. Both of them also wore their mirror Ray-Bans.

The guard looked them slowly up and down, obviously not caring much for what he saw. ”Names?”

”Mr. Black and Mr. White.”

The second guard stopped yawning, narrowed his eyes at them, and adjusted his Sam Brown gun belt.

The first one scoured a big book of names, dates, and times, looked almost happy that he didn't find Mr. Black and Mr. White. ”You got an appointment? Because here it says you don't.”

Karl reached over the marble surface of the desk, picked up the phone, and held it out. ”Call him and say we're friends of Mr. Zito's. Danny Zito's.”

The guard looked increasingly unhappy and, now, fearful. He buzzed a number, spoke into the phone, waited a few seconds, and was given an instruction. He hung up and wrote ”Black” and ”White” on two identification tags. He handed these over to them. ”S'posed to keep this on at all times you're in the building.”

The tags had little metal clips that they used to fasten them to their lapels; they were directed to a bank of elevators that would whisk them to the twentieth floor. Nonstop. As soon as they entered the elevator, Candy and Karl jerked off the tags. They didn't think much of wearing identification.

Out of the elevator, past another receptionist, down a carpeted hall, blowups of book jackets lining the walls right and left.

”These guys are really into books,” said Candy.

Bobby Mackenzie was seated at his desk, feet planted on top of it. He appeared to be editing some pages. Clive was standing by the window that gave out on a panoramic view of Manhattan. Bobby did not rise. He did not invite them to sit down in the two leather chairs on the other side of the desk.

Clive did.

”Clive, my man!” Candy gave him a high five.

Clive rather enjoyed returning it. He offered them chairs on the other side of the desk.

Bobby looked displeased. After all, he hadn't arranged this meeting and he didn't want them sitting down. ”So why are you here? There wasn't supposed to be any further meeting until the job was done. Far as I know, it isn't. I saw Ned Isaly this morning walking into Tom Kidd's office, unmistakably alive.”

”Don't be testy, Bobby. This ain't as public as Michael's. Nice office.” Candy looked around.

”The job is finished, as far as we're concerned.” Karl drew an envelope from an inside pocket; he was sitting near enough to the desk that he could skid it across the polished mahogany. ”The advance. It's all there except expenses incurred. Pittsburgh Hilton, that kind of thing.”

Bobby looked at the envelope as if it were a package of vipers that he'd dearly love to toss back. ”So you can't do it? That's what you're saying?” Bobby sneered, or at least tried to; a sneer in this company wasn't easy. ”Clive?” He turned then to Clive as if offering him the job.

Clive shrugged. If a shrug could look happy, this was it.

”But that ain't all, Bobby,” said Karl. ”We got a couple things to take up with you, things we want done.”

Bobby stared at them in genuine disbelief. ”Things you want-done?” He laughed abruptly and turned to Clive again.

The happy shrug returned, even happier.

”Things you want done,” Bobby said it again, shaking his head. ”I don't think so. Now why don't you just get out of here. f.u.c.k off.” He fluttered his fingers toward the office door.

Clive looked from Bobby to Karl and Candy, this time a trifle nervously. Was Bobby so totally unaware of life going on outside of himself and his little publis.h.i.+ng fiefdom that he thought he controlled everything? Including these two? Hadn't he, for G.o.d's sakes, read Danny Zito's book while leafing through it?

Karl and Candy looked at each other as if questioning the wisdom of the term: ” 'f.u.c.k off.' Bobby says 'f.u.c.k off,' K. Does he really mean us?”