Montezuma’s Revenge

“I’m concealing nothing,” he said in a sort of strangling gasp, forcing the words around his enlarged coronary pump, unconvincing even to himself and a ludicrous prospect to the silent watcher. The water carafe gave a moment’s respite, but only a moment, for when he poured, the glass rattled, and his upper lip was already damp with sweat before the water reached it. You can’t threaten me was what he wanted to say but did not, for he had already been threatened, so instead took refuge in dissimulation.

“Don’t misunderstand, I do respect this signal honor. But I am really not qualified, you see. I am an art historian by choice and a radar repairman by necessity and know nothing about law enforcement. A fish out of water, you wouldn’t want that. So for our mutual benefit ...”

“If He says you can hack it you can hack it.”

“I can hack it, I can hack it,” Tony muttered, cracking his knuckles on the desk before him in quiet despair. It had been so pleasant here in the National Gallery. The George Graham bracket clock on his bookshelf gently chimed the hour and at the very same instant his telephone rang. Before he could take it up Davidson had reached out and removed the receiver and held it to his own ear.

“Yes, sir!” The words were spoken with a warmth of feeling Tony had thought this crag of a man impossible of displaying, and then he had passed the handpiece across the desk. Smiling.

“You can talk now. You are speaking with Him?

Hawkin sighed with resignation and reached for the phone.

Two

“But isn’t it exciting, I mean really exciting?”

Sophie had a way of asking questions in a breathless voice as though she just couldn’t wait for the answer, and then of clarifying her question almost at once. She was Tony’s assistant, the only other employee until the store opened, and he suspected her of being a plant, set to spy on him and report to someone upstairs. Sophie Feinberg, and he also suspected that she wasn’t even Jewish, a fake minority informer to gain his confidence as a co-minorityist. Her Yiddish expressions sounded good but they could have been taught. What he needed was a real Jewish friend who could sound her out. Or was he going mad, drinking in the security-laden atmosphere that daily bathed him?

“Exciting? I suppose it is exciting,” he mumbled into the stale bread of his tuna fish sandwich.

“You really are the cool one, boychik, you really are. I do envy your cool, I really do.”

The sandwich was Dead Sea dust in his mouth and he tried to wash it farther down his throat with some of the ammoniacal and bitter coffee. Sophie was winning this battle too. He wasn’t quite sure how she had begun joining him for lunch, a misunderstood invitation perhaps that turned into a steady companionship, and he had started eating here in The Rumbling Turn in the hopes of driving her away. It was perhaps the worst luncheonette in the city of Washington, which was saying a lot in this city scarcely world famous for the quality of its eateries, but the gambit had failed miserably and produced only a continual smoldering fire in his midriff. Sophie, exulting in the strength of her duty, ate a far heartier meal than he did and held the entire thing down with a sort of rubberized jello and a wedge of desiccated pie.

“Did any shipments come in this morning?” He groped for a neutral topic that did not involve overriding enthusiasm regarding his position.

“Oh, yes indeed. The G-man badges came in from Hong Kong Novelties. The children will really love them, Fm sure, even adults. And I’ve finished framing the tinted photographs of the Director. The gold frames on the rush order.”

“Tinted? I thought they were black and white?”

“They were, but there was a special directive and the first hundred have been hand tinted and come back. They really are lovely.”

“Fm very sure they are. You don’t find that gold frames and hand tinting aren’t, well, a little too much?”

“What on earth do you mean?” The smile was there but it had a certain fixed quality that went with a hint of eagerness to her words. Had he transgressed? Tony was almost too depressed to care.

“Nothing, I guess, nothing. Not feeling so well today, maybe a little schlect” Her eyebrows lifted slightly and she did not answer. Let her look that up in her Yiddish dictionary! Happy in this minor victory of the greater engagement he took a deep swallow of the coffee and felt the acid bite deep into his insides and was instantly back in the depression that possessed him most of the time. He was scarcely aware of the man who passed their table and stopped a moment to strike a match to light his cigarette who, as he sucked in the smoke, produced a whisper that only Tony could hear.

“At once. Report to room 213$. This is cm emergency”