“AW, NO,” BOOG SAID WHEN HE SAW US. “CORNERT AGAIN.” He had an orange tie in his hand and looked content enough to have just completed a Double Bubble Brunch.
Full of fun though they were, the girls seemed a little ticked at Boog. Lolly went over and tried to kick him in the shins, while Janie Lee moved in from the other side.
Boog backed up against his Lincoln and made his tie into a garrote, daring the girls to come and get him, an invitation they declined.
“It’s just ’cause he spent the whole morning with Ginger when he could have spent it with us,” Lolly explained. “Just ’cause she’s from Texas don’t mean she knows everything.”
They looked at me significantly again, but the spell of the totally unexpected had already been broken.
“I guess I’ll have to miss the special,” I said. “I gotta see Boog for a minute.”
“Well, there’s six days in a week,” Lolly said. “You just come anytime.”
“Ain’t they sweet?” Boog said, once they had gone into the Bubble Bath. “I love ’em like daughters.”
“Let me ask you something,” I said. “Is the Smithsonian for sale?”
“Yeah, they’re tryin’ to sell it, but the deal ain’t set,” Boog said. “Let’s go find a barbecue palace.”
We got in my car and drove on out Wilson Boulevard, a street so seedy it gave me déjà vu. I kept thinking I was back on Little York Road, in Houston. It was at a flea market on Little York Road that I first met Boog, seconds after I beat him to a narwhal tusk. Shortly after that, I sold it to him and we became friends.
Boog tied his orange tie and put on some wraparound sunglasses, which he immediately took off in order to examine the fine Armenian icon propped in the back seat.
“I meant to buy that thang and hang it in the Winkler County courthouse,” he said. “It’d give some of them old dirt farmers a pretty good scare.”
Then he took out a little inhaler and squirted an antihistaminic substance up his nose, a noisy process that sounded like somebody trying to start a worn-out car.
“If you was to offer me a fair deal on that icon I’d tell you about the Smithsonian,” he said.
“I might,” I said. “I’ll let you know in a day or two.”
Boog looked at me closely. He was a hard man to fool.
“There must be a new woman in the picture,” he said. “One with the hots for icons.
“It’s a hard life,” he sighed. “I was thanking your passion for Cindy would last till at least nine-forty-five. If it had you wouldn’t have got there in time to bid. You’re a fucking lost generation. Can’t even fuck till nine-forty-five.”
Soon we left Arlington behind and were in Falls Church, not that it was easy to tell them apart. Falls Church had fewer massage parlors and more TV repair shops, but that was the only appreciable difference.
The barbecue palace Boog had in mind was called The Cover-Up, and was about as covertly located as any barbecue palace in the land. It was in a little warren of run-down shops behind a construction site in a more than normally depressed part of Falls Church.
Nonetheless, it was packed with men, most of them with their security clearances hanging around their necks or clipped to their shirt pockets. A couple of sullen Pakistanis were slicing barbecue as fast as they could slice, and a grinning Chinaman who was built not unlike Boog slapped it onto plates, splashed a little sauce over it, and handed it to whoever was at the head of the line.
“Wall-to-wall spooks,” Boog said. “Only place in town where it’s safe to talk. See that Chinaman? Best spy in town.”
“Who does he spy for?” I asked.
“The Israelis,” Boog said. The line was moving virtually at a trot.
“Hello, Freddy,” Boog said, when we got to the counter. “Hit us with a little of that goat.”
“Booger-man,” Freddy said, in an accent that might have been Princetonian. His eyes scanned me from head to foot, like a radar beam. Then he handed us our barbecue, which in fact was goat.
“Yeah, all these spooks eat goat,” Boog said. “They get used to it while they’re overseas in the Third World, performing covert acts.”
“What’s Freddy’s last name?”
“Fu,” Boog said.
“There was a woman at the auction named Mrs. Lump,” I said. “Ever heard of her?”
“Bessie Lump,” Boog said. “Sure. Only she ain’t the one you’re saving that icon for. Too old for you.
“These booths must have been meant for midgets to fuck in,” he commented, trying to arrange a napkin so as to protect his orange tie. Then he nodded at the eagle-eyed Freddy Fu and a moment later a Pakistani teenager appeared with two bottles of Tasmanian beer.
“I allus drink Tasmanian beer when I eat goat,” Boog explained.
“Bessie Lump is Cyrus Folmsbee’s girl friend,” he added, swabbing up a puddle of sauce with a bit of goat. “Cyrus happens to be the richest man between Upperville, Virginia, and Riyadh, Sau-ou-dee Arabia. His family started up the Smithsonian to begin with. The Folmsbees own just about everythang in America that’s worth havin’ except Winkler County.”
“How can he own the Smithsonian?” I asked.
“Well, he don’t, exactly,” Boog said. “But ownership might just be a state of mind. I thank it’s safe to say Cyrus has the mind of an owner. I thank he thanks his family just kind of lent it to the nation.”
“What does Mrs. Lump have to do with it?” I asked.
The second I said it Boog kicked me in the shins. I looked up, he nodded at the carry-out line, and there was Bessie Lump herself, quietly waiting to get some barbecued goat.