Chapter Fifty-Three
Mifkin met up with Aloysius in a cramped space in the dark beneath the service stairs.
“Let us say,” whispered Mifkin, “what we are not supposed to say.”
“I certainly don’t fancy you, if that’s what you mean,” Aloysius replied.
“No. That is most certainly not what I meant.” Mifkin cleared his throat. “I know you hate Voot, and have hated him for always. Now go on. Admit it.”
“I admit it,” Aloysius answered. “What of it?”
“Very good. We’re being honest with each other, don’t you see? That’s the first step to getting things done!”
“Get on with it. What do you want, Mifkin?”
“I’m getting to that. Just, you know, hold your horses, will you? Without patience, how can we ever get anything done?”
“Cut the claptrap, will you, you buffoon?”
Mifkin stiffened. “May I remind you that I am still deputy manager of this hotel?”
“I’m sorry, are we still in a hotel? I’d been under the impression we were now in a prison. No, strike that—a looney-bin!”
Consciously refraining from mentioning the precise subject of his speech, Mifkin countered: “On the contrary. I feel more free than ever before.”
“That’s just fine. And if I liked the taste of dick, I might be swooning over the moon right along with you. But as it so happens, in case you haven’t noticed, the guests are going gaga, we’re running out of food and there’s a killer on the loose. So you’ll have to forgive me, Deputy Manager Mifkin, if I’m somewhat lacking in patience just now. And if you think you could see your way to hurrying up and explaining why you and I are chattering here in the dark under the stairs, why, I’d be the most grateful waiter in the hotel.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re implying.”
“By what?”
“By that—you know.”
“What?”
“That reference you made. . .about the taste of. . .”
“Dick?”
“Richard, yes. I mean, I hardly know any Richard. In fact, now that I’ve had the leisure to count, I can tell you quite definitively that I’ve never known any man named ‘Richard’ at all! Ever! At all!”
“Look, Mifkin—”
“Not even by hearsay! In fact, I’m sure I wouldn’t even be able to sound out the letters, if you presented the name in question, if you handed me a card on which it were very neatly and formally embossed, yet sparse and with a real sense of ornamental self-restraint, with merely the most casual upturned letter-tails to recall a more elegant time, and if you demanded, even by gunpoint, that I render that word into sounds of which a fellow human being with a pair of tolerably working ears could make head or tails, I fear that I’d just have to lie down and die, right there, in the street, in the middle of the God-damned road—”
“Mifkin!”
“I want to know if you’ll join me in a coup to overthrow Voot.”
Aloysius shrugged, though Mifkin couldn’t see it. “Sure. Why not?”
“Very good. Now let’s go find others.”