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"I guess"

"I'll talk to people and see what they can tell ether and point soirls'll know it's cool to talk to you"

"That'll help"

"Not that they necessarily know anything, but if they do"

"So they know the they told"

"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 shine 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 fully good coffee I'd had too ood to pass 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 heup 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 ot it right And if you dialed it, nothing would happen"

"Why's that?"

"Because the bells won't ring The phones are to ot telephone service and I put in extensions so I'd never be far froave 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 da I like to jumped It was somebody wanted to know did I want a subscription to the New York Ti nuet rong nu, 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 passes through a particular wire, and I just took the little clapper off each of the phones I dialed the nus 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 lar alarlary 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'e door closes behindtouches ht 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 ofout a lot ofyou for oing to sue you if you don't pay"

"You keep it all very inforht"

"I like that Cash on the line and no receipts I don'tin a lot of o out, too Rent Operating costs Payoffs You got a whore installed in a building, you pay off the building You can't give the dooro at that, same as any other tenant It's more like twenty a month and a hundred for Christ employees It adds up"

"It must"

"But there's a lot left And I don't blow it on coke or waste it ga You said what? Twenty-five hundred? I paid ave you to hold I paid 6,200, plus the auction galleries charge buyers a 10 percent commission these days Comes to what? 6,820 And then there's sales tax"

I didn't say anything He said, "Shit, I don't knohat I'uess Wait here a minute" He came back with a sheaf of hundreds and counted out twenty-five of them Used bills, out of sequence I wondered how much cash he kept around the house, how o I'd known a loan shark who made it a rule never to walk out his door with less than ten thousand dollars in his pocket He didn't keep it a secret, and everybody who knew him knew about the roll he carried

Nobody ever tried to take it off him, either

He drove me hoe into Queens and through the tunnel to Manhattan Neither of us talkedthe way I must have dozed off because he had to put a hand on htened up in my seat We were at the curb in front of my hotel