The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [47]
“Don’t worry.”
“Thing is you don’t want to carry it if you go back to see your Rastafarian friend. He might get the wrong idea.”
“Fuck him,” Eddie said. “I got no time for him. He wants that incense up his ass, he’s gonna have to stick it there himself.”
Lee and Jimmy and Eddie went out, laughing, joking, slapping backs. I started out after them, then doubled back and asked Wally if he had a minute.
“Sure,” he said. “Jesus, I don’t believe this. Look.”
“It’s a Batman shirt.”
“No shit, Sherlock. And look what’s printed right under the Bat signal.”
“The copyright notice.”
“Right, which makes it a legal shirt. We got any more of these? No, no, no, no. Wait a minute, here’s one. Here’s another. Jesus, this is amazing. There any more? I don’t see any others, do you?”
We went through the pile without finding more of the shirts with the copyright notice.
“Three,” he said. “Well, that’s not so bad. A mere fraction.” He balled up the three shirts, dropped them back on the pile. “You want one of these? It’s legit, you can wear it without fear of confiscation.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You got kids? Take something home for your kids.”
“One’s in college and the other’s in the service. I don’t think they’d be interested. ”
“Probably not.” He stepped out from behind his desk. “Well, it went all right out there, don’t you think? We had a good crew, worked well together.”
“I guess.”
“What’s the matter, Matt?”
“Nothing, really. But I don’t think I can make it tomorrow.”
“No? Why’s that?”
“Well, for openers, I’ve got a dentist appointment.”
“Oh, yeah? What time?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“So how long can that take? Half an hour, an hour tops? Meet us here ten-thirty, that’s good enough. The client doesn’t have to know what time we hit the street.”
“It’s not just the dentist appointment, Wally.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t think I want to do this stuff anymore.”
“What stuff? Copyright and trademark protection?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the matter? It’s beneath you? Doesn’t make full use of your talents as a detective?”
“It’s not that.”
“Because it’s not a bad deal for the money, seems to me. Hundred bucks for a short day, ten to four, hour and a half off for lunch with the lunch all paid for. You’re a cheap lunch date, you don’t drink, but even so. Call it a ten-dollar lunch, that’s a hundred and ten dollars for what, four and a half hours’ work?” He punched numbers on a desk top calculator. “That’s $24.44 an hour. That’s not bad wages. You want to take home better than that, you need either burglar’s tools or a law degree, seems to me.”
“The money’s fine, Wally.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I shook my head. “I just haven’t got the heart for it,” I said. “Hassling people who don’t even speak the language, taking their goods from them because we’re stronger than they are and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
“They can quit selling contraband, that’s what they can do.”
“How? They don’t even know what’s contraband.”
“Well, that’s where we come in. We’re giving them an education. How they gonna learn if nobody teaches ‘em?”
I’d loosened my tie earlier. Now I took it off, folded it, put it in my pocket.
He said, “Company owns a copyright, they got a right to control who uses it. Somebody else enters into a licensing agreement, pays money for the right to produce a particular item, they got a right to the exclusivity they paid for.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.”
“So?”
“They don’t even speak the language,” I said.
He stood up straight. “Then who told ‘em to come here?” he wanted to know. “Who fucking invited them? You can’t walk a block in midtown