‘Doing better?’ Mr Yellow asked, and when Rothstein nodded: ‘Come on, then.’
Rothstein allowed himself to be led into the small living room, escorted by Mr Blue on his left and Mr Yellow on his right. In his study the rummaging went on. Soon Mr Red would open the closet and push back his two jackets and three sweaters, exposing the safe. It was inevitable.
All right. As long as they leave the notebooks, and why would they take them? Thugs like these are only interested in money. They probably can’t even read anything more challenging than the letters in Penthouse.
Only he wasn’t sure about the man in the yellow mask. That one sounded educated.
All the lamps were on in the living room, and the shades weren’t drawn. Wakeful neighbors might have wondered what was going on in the old writer’s house … if he had neighbors. The closest ones were two miles away, on the main highway. He had no friends, no visitors. The occasional salesman was sent packing. Rothstein was just that peculiar old fella. The retired writer. The hermit. He paid his taxes and was left alone.
Blue and Yellow led him to the easy chair facing the seldom-watched TV, and when he didn’t immediately sit, Mr Blue pushed him into it.
‘Easy!’ Yellow said sharply, and Blue stepped back a bit, muttering. Mr Yellow was the one in charge, all right. Mr Yellow was the wheeldog.
He bent over Rothstein, hands on the knees of his corduroys. ‘Do you want a little splash of something to settle you?’
‘If you mean alcohol, I quit twenty years ago. Doctor’s orders.’
‘Good for you. Go to meetings?’
‘I wasn’t an alcoholic,’ Rothstein said, nettled. Crazy to be nettled in such a situation … or was it? Who knew how one was supposed to react after being yanked out of bed in the middle of the night by men in colorful ski masks? He wondered how he might write such a scene and had no idea; he did not write about situations like this. ‘People assume any twentieth-century white male writer must be an alcoholic.’
‘All right, all right,’ Mr Yellow said. It was as if he were placating a grumpy child. ‘Water?’
‘No, thank you. What I want is for you three to leave, so I’m going to be honest with you.’ He wondered if Mr Yellow understood the most basic rule of human discourse: when someone says they’re going to be honest with you, they are in most cases preparing to lie faster than a horse can trot. ‘My wallet is on the dresser in the bedroom. There’s a little over eighty dollars in it. There’s a ceramic teapot on the mantel …’
He pointed. Mr Blue turned to look, but Mr Yellow did not. Mr Yellow continued to study Rothstein, the eyes behind the mask almost amused. It’s not working, Rothstein thought, but he persevered. Now that he was awake, he was pissed off as well as scared, although he knew he’d do well not to show that.
‘It’s where I keep the housekeeping money. Fifty or sixty dollars. That’s all there is in the house. Take it and go.’
‘Fucking liar,’ Mr Blue said. ‘You got a lot more than that, guy. We know. Believe me.’
As if this were a stage play and that line his cue, Mr Red yelled from the study. ‘Bingo! Found a safe! Big one!’
Rothstein had known the man in the red mask would find it, but his heart sank anyway. Stupid to keep cash, there was no reason for it other than his dislike of credit cards and checks and stocks and instruments of transfer, all the tempting chains that tied people to America’s overwhelming and ultimately destructive debt-and-spend machine. But the cash might be his salvation. Cash could be replaced. The notebooks, over a hundred and fifty of them, could not.
‘Now the combo,’ said Mr Blue. He snapped his gloved fingers. ‘Give it up.’
Rothstein was almost angry enough to refuse, according to Yolande anger had been his lifelong default position (‘Probably even in your goddam cradle,’ she had said), but he was also tired and frightened. If he balked, they’d beat it out of him. He might even have another heart attack, and one more would almost certainly finish him.
‘If I give you the combination to the safe, will you take the money inside and go?’
‘Mr Rothstein,’ Mr Yellow said with a kindliness that seemed genuine (and thus grotesque), ‘you’re in no position to bargain. Freddy, go get the bags.’
Rothstein felt a huff of chilly air as Mr Blue, also known as Freddy, went out through the kitchen door. Mr Yellow, meanwhile, was smiling again. Rothstein already detested that smile. Those red lips.
‘Come on, genius – give. Soonest begun, soonest done.’
Rothstein sighed and recited the combination of the Gardall in his study closet. ‘Three left two turns, thirty-one right two turns, eighteen left one turn, ninety-nine right one turn, then back to zero.’