Round Robin (10 page)

Every boy at St. Malachy’s wanted Manfred’s instruction and cracked the books to get it.

Manfred saw Warner standing in the doorway and knew something was up, but as a measure of his professionalism he finished his class before leading the spy to his tiny cubicle off the weight room.

“You have news,” he said.

“Once we got the names, things went fast,” Warner said. “We’ve pinned them.”

“Where are they?”

“Your old home town, Dresden.”

“Muehlmann is still stealing for a living?”

“No, he’s moved up in the world. He’s the bouncer at a bordello that he and your ex are fronting for the Russian Mafia. Ulrike’s the madam.”

“And Hannelore?”

“She has a room down the hall from where the ladies ply their trade.”

Manfred’s face grew grim.

“This is no place for a little girl. What will become of her living there?”

Warner didn’t tell him that little “Bianca” seemed to like her digs just fine, according to the agent who’d paid his ex a visit. In fact, she was the whores’ pet and seemed to revel in the role.

“Our man talked to Ulrike,” he said “And just as you suspected, she’s perfectly willing to sell your daughter back to you.”

Manfred was not pleased with the accuracy of his prediction. The idea of having to buy his daughter back galled him.

“Could you kidnap her for me?”

Warner shook his head.

“The GDR and the Cold War are both finished. Germany’s united and an allied nation. I’d never get permission for that.”

“I helped you quite a bit,” Manfred pointed out.

“And we’ll help you all we can. But no kidnapping.”

“How much does she want?”

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

Manfred sagged under a weight far greater than any barbell he’d ever lifted. When he’d been freed from prison, the CIA had brought him to America, got him his job, set him up for eventual citizenship and given him fifty thousand dollars to start his new life. Manfred had not spent a penny of that money, knowing he would likely have to ransom his daughter someday. He’d worked at his job, lived as cheaply as he could in a tiny room at a YMCA and added to his savings. He now had sixty thousand dollars to his name. He could save even more now that he was living rent-free, but he couldn’t stand to wait any longer.

“I don’t have enough,” he said.

Warner nodded.

“We’re friends, right?” The question was rhetorical. “And you know how I feel about you winding up in prison. So I’m going to give you some of my own money, a little something I’ve put aside, and you’re not going to argue about it.”

Manfred didn’t.

“How much?” he asked.

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“That’s still not enough.”

“It’s close enough to bargain.”

Manfred nodded, and a look came into his eyes that would have scared the hell out of Warner if it had been directed at him.

“Ja,
bargain. And tell Ulrike and Horst that if they don’t accept the bargain, I will visit them ... and they won’t be happy to see me again.”

Tone Morello was not happy. The moment he set foot in Mimi’s and saw what was waiting for him, he was not a happy chappy at all. He’d have backed right out, and even tried to, except he bumped into his idiot cameraman who was practically stepping on his heels. From that point on, people were shaking his hand, practically pulling him into the room. Everybody was smiling at him, but the smiles were the kind that the big bad wolf had saved for the three little pigs when he was handing out eviction notices.

At the far end of the room Tone saw two lecterns made of stacked cardboard cartons. Somebody had drawn an emblem on each lectern. He had seen enough tapes of sports teams at the White House to recognize the Presidential Seal, but that only confused him further. As he continued to be urged forward, a storm cloud of questions formed in his mind.

What was going on here? Why were all the customers facing this grade school stage set like they were some kind of audience? Why was Robin waiting for him behind one of the lecterns instead of behind the counter where she belonged? And who the hell was the little blonde with the second videocam?

It took a final shove from Mimi to get Tone into position next to Robin. He looked out at the crowd and the two cameras and he started to sweat. He worked in a TV studio, not before a live audience. He wiped his brow. With the cuff of his shirt. Which both cameras caught.

Tone gave a sickly smile.

A thought popped into his head that suddenly made him queasy. He darted a glance at Robin and breathed fractionally easier. She didn’t have her carving knife. Thank God for that. She was sitting on a stool and there was a pair of crutches leaning on the wall behind her.

Then he looked back at the cameras, and he knew they’d seen him peeking at Robin. And he knew that it must’ve made him look as sneaky and nervous as hell.

Off to a helluva start, Tone-boy, he thought. Why prolong the agony? Why not just unzip, hang your schlong out in front of the world and end your life as you know it? Then with a grimace that he hoped he’d kept off his face he thought he probably couldn’t even do that. The way he felt right now, his dick was probably shriveled up so tight it was hiding between his lungs.

The best thing to do, he decided, was to hang tight. Tone might have remained semi-comatose indefinitely had not Mimi addressed the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “As you know, we usually don’t go in for formal debate around here; we ad-lib things. But then we usually don’t record our goings-on for television, either. However, Mr. Morello recently said that he’d like to do an interview with Robin for his sportscast, something about the competition we all face in our everyday lives. When I informed Robin of this, she said she had a few questions for Mr. Morello, too, and would like to have her own cameraperson on hand so she could see if there was a market for the unedited tape at any other TV station in town.”

Other TV stations,
Tone thought aghast. Unedited tape. He’d be the laughingstock of the whole town.

He went ash gray under his sheen of sweat, looking not dissimilar to one of those statues — though hardly the Virgin Mary — that miraculously produce tears and other forms of bodily moisture.

Mimi continued, “Since we don’t care much about manners around here, but we do believe in home-field advantage, Robin, you can go first.”

Robin got to her feet and turned to her opponent, and waited until he finally glanced her way. Tone looked like a condemned man wondering why it was taking so long for the axe to fall.

Robin shook her head sadly.

“Ant-knee, Ant-knee, Ant-knee,” she said, “I really have to ask ... Why can’t you ever play fair?”

The question took Tone by surprise, hit him just the right way to get him mad, light a fire under his backside, make him forget his fear. His shaking knees suddenly firmed up. A healthy flush of red anger swept the death mask from his face. He straightened his spine so he could look down on Robin.

“What kind of a crap question is that?” Tone asked, repeating in a mocking tone. “Why can’t I play fair?” This time Tone shook his head at Robin. “I play to win. Same as every other man.”

“Anything goes? Ends justify the means?” Robin asked.

“Bet your fat—” Tone caught himself when he saw Mimi staring at him like a network censor. “—rear end.”

Robin nodded her head.

“And I suppose this attitude applies to all parts of your life?”

“Like Lombardi said, ‘Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.’ ”

“So, it’s okay to waltz in here one day with your own private cheering section?”

“Right,” Tone said, trying to tough out a memory that still stung.

“And it’s okay to try to nail me with an ambush interview?”

“Sixty Minutes
does it all the time.”

Tone knew he was on solid professional ground here.

“All’s fair on your job, too, I bet.”

“TV’s dog eat dog. Everybody knows that.”

“How about women?”

Now, Tone smiled. Gleefully.

“We’re finally getting to it, aren’t we?” he asked.

“Yeah, we are,” Robin said.

Tone nodded.

“That’s the whole thing between you ‘n me. You can’t stand it that I’d never give you the time of time of day ... that ... ” He stopped to think; he wanted to get these lines right. “... That I think you’re never fully dressed without your flea collar ... That you don’t have a waistline, you have an equator.”

Tone was rolling now, remembering the lines he’d had written for him.

People were laughing. With him. At Robin.

It felt great.

He would have kept going except he saw Robin making check marks on an index card she had in front of her.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” Tone asked.

Robin slipped the card into a pocket, looked at the crowd and said, “In case any of you happened to miss it, Ant-knee here said the other day that I was Miss Piggy’s body double.”

The line got a good laugh, even from those who’d heard it before.

“Now, today, he’s come up with a couple more nice zingers, but the problem is, he doesn’t do his own material. He can’t have many darts left. Two, if my information is correct.”

Robin looked at Tone. “You want to say them, Ant-knee, or should I?”

If looks could kill, Tone’s cameraman would have keeled over on the spot. A true professional, however, the cameraman kept his tape rolling.

“You told, you rat!” Tone accused.

“No, he didn’t,” Robin said.

The crowd watched, mesmerized, as Tone turned his glare on her.

“Then you found that fink kid writer I hired.”

It took Tone a second to realize that he’d just confessed: He didn’t come up with his own putdowns. In Mimi’s, that was worse than admitting you had the hots for your mom.

Robin rubbed salt in the wound.

“I didn’t find anyone.”

She took the index card out of her pocket, held it up for the cameras and then showed it to Tone. All it had on it were check marks, nothing else.

“I was bluffing, Ant-knee. Nobody had to tell me anything. I knew you couldn’t come up with lines like that by yourself. You wouldn’t be the star pupil in a school of fish. No way you got so glib so fast. And why pay for more than the few lines you could memorize? My thinking was, you wouldn’t have more lines than you could count on the fingers of one of your tiny hands.”

Tone couldn’t stand it. It was like this damn broad was inside his head, knew his every move before he made it. He started trembling. Not out of fear or with embarrassment but from rage.

“You gave yourself away, Ant-knee,” Robin needled merrily.

Tone clenched his fists.

Stan Prozanski, sitting in the front row, noticed, and slipped out his billy-club.

Tone saw Mimi’s pet cop, and he knew as bad as things were, they’d be infinitely worse if he got his nose spread out all over his face.

Robin turned toward the cameras and the crowd.

“Now, on occasion, I’ve mentioned that Ant-knee has a teeny wienie. Not subtle, but with a guy like him obvious is the way to go. Today, I’d like to say that Ant-knee’s penis is the size of a redwood compared to his sliver of a conscience. Why do I say that? Well, look at him. He’s a handsome man, I have to admit. And he has a glamorous job that pays him a small fortune. With all that going for him, you’d think he’d be the last guy in the world to be insecure. But I’ve watched him the past few years, since he started coming in here ... and he preys on women.”

“Wait a goddamn minute!” Tone shouted.

He started to make a move, until Stan slapped his billy-club across his palm.