Free Put a Lid on It by Donald E. Westlake Page B

himself, scrunching through all the hanging coats, getting behind them, standing with shoulder blades against the inner wall, face in a lot of wool shoulders.
    “Yehudi?” It sounded like the same gruff voice Meehan had heard on the phone. Now it was in the living room, headed this way. “Yehudi?”
    Pause. Do I want to sneeze, Meehan wondered, and decided no, he didn't. That was a relief.
    The closet door opened. Meehan didn't move a corpuscle. The closet door closed.
    Meehan waited a good long time, what seemed like hours but was probably forty seconds, then very slowly and quietly pushed the closet door open. Nobody in the vestibule. Unfortunately, the door opened toward the living room, so he had to keep opening it until he could lean out and see around it, but then fortunately the living room was empty. He took a step from the closet, and the hall door to his left pushed open toward him, and Meehan teleported himself back into the closed closet, shoulder blades against the inner wall.
    Somebody in the vestibule. A nearby voice called, “Mostafa?” Then the closet door opened, and Meehan stopped breathing.
    “
There
you are,” said the original gruff voice, from some distance away.
    The new one—must be Yehudi—pawed around in the closet looking for a hanger while Meehan's cheekbones shriveled, then found one, as he said, “I got here as soon as I could. I take it he didn't show up yet.”
    “No. The doorman will have to announce him. And who knows where he's coming from?”
    Listening to them now, this close, it seemed to Meehan they both had faint accents, maybe the same, maybe not.
    Yehudi shoved the hanger back into the closet, now with a zippered vinyl jacket on it, and said, “Do we need a ladder? There's one in the elevator.”
    “For what? No, leave it.”
    “What I'd really like right now,” Yehudi said, “is a glass of tea.”
    “I have some brewed,” Mostafa told him. “Oh, take that tape off the door, now you're back.”
    “Right.” Yehudi laughed. “Wouldn't look good if our boy noticed
that
, would it?”
    They went away then, chuckling together. Meehan waited until he couldn't stand the silence any more, then moved forward through the coats, reaching for the door, feeling something hard and heavy in the inner pocket of the vinyl jacket Yehudi had just parked here. Knowing what it was, but having to verify the knowledge anyway, he felt around to the opening of the jacket, reached inside, and stuck fingers down into the pocket. It was pitch black in here, but his fingers knew a gun when they felt one; a small flat automatic. Afraid he might accidentally touch the trigger and shoot himself in the chest, he slowly inched his fingers back outa there.
    Who were these people? Foreign, and violent, or at least armed. Meehan thought Yehudi was a Jewish name. Was Mostafa?
    And what should he do about them? He himself was not a violent person, never had been. Sometimes, on a job, it would be a good idea for somebody to carry heat, but that somebody was never Meehan, and he preferred it when the heat remained implicit. So he wasn't going to lay hold of Yehudi's automatic now, brace the two guys over their glasses of tea, and demand to know what was going on around here.
    Still, he wanted to know. Today was Friday, October 15, and he had only until next Thursday, October 21, to put together a crew, case the Burnstone gun collection, plot and execute the job, and deliver the package to Jeffords. Not much time, and he didn't want to spend great stretches of it hanging around in Goldfarb's closet.
    So it was time to get out of here, figure out the situation, find out if he was going to need a new lawyer; for instance, if Goldfarb was lying dead in the bedroom, certainly a possibility. That happy thought having given him a slightly queasy feeling, he swallowed noisily, then silently pushed open the closet door.
    Voices, probably two rooms away. Casual, chatting voices. Meehan eased out of the closet and