Catch As Catch Can Read online

  Women, especially women who had been married one time before, liked Michael and lived with him because he was peaceful, understanding, and undemanding, and then they tired of living with him and moved out because he was peaceful, understanding, and undemanding—and unexciting. Yossarian had a respectful suspicion about Michael that in his quiet way, with women as with work, he knew what he was doing.

  When needing money, Michael did free-lance artwork for agencies and magazines or for art studios doing contract assignments, or with clear conscience accepted what he needed from Yossarian.

  And Yossarian was still under surveillance. He could tell from the small white Fiat parked in the no-parking area downstairs outside his building whose driver pulled away after Yossarian met his eye and from the red compact Toyota that arrived about half an hour later in the no-parking area across the avenue about half a block away from the trim, vaguely Asian-looking secret agent from the hospital who was hiding behind a fashion magazine most of the time and was perhaps in cahoots with a French assistant who kept his distance while nibbling croissants and sipping coffee alone at one of the dainty white wrought-iron tables in the green coffee-and-fresh-pasta café at the corner. After a day, there was another newcomer, a husky, raw-boned American with carrot hair and a close-cropped cut that exposed him on first sight as an American foreigner to the city or as one of those undercover operatives got up deliberately to be marked immediately by the sharp-eyed as a plainclothesman for one of the government law enforcement agencies. Then there came a brooding Orthodox Jew who either resided in the neighborhood and went out slowly on long and solitary walks about every two hours with his head low and hands clasped behind him or was also on duty as a secret agent with some kind of ulterior motive that Yossarian could not make head or tail of. By the end of the week, there was a second gangling red-headed detective taking turns with the first and a call on his machine from Melissa with the news that the Belgian patient whose presence in the room next to his had driven him from the hospital was alive but still in pain and that his temperature was back to normal.

  Yossarian would have bet his life that the Belgian would now be dead.

  Of all those tailing him, he could account for only a couple— the ones retained by the lawyer of his estranged wife and those retained by the estranged, impulsive husband of a woman he’d bantered with suggestively once or twice and hoped to see again privately who had detectives shadow every man she knew in his frothing effort to obtain evidence of adultery to balance the evidence of adultery she had earlier obtained against him.

  The idea of the others was annoying, and after another few days of rising embitterment Yossarian took the bull by the horns and telephoned the office.

  “Anything new?” he began with the underling who was also his superior.

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “To the best of my ability.”

  “You’re not holding anything back?”

  “Not as far as I can tell.”

  “Would you tell me if you were?”

  “I would tell you if I could.”

  “When your father calls in today, M2,” he said to Milo Minderbinder II, “tell him I need the name of a good private detective. It’s for something personal.”

  “He’s already phoned,” said the junior Milo. “He recommends a man named Jerry Gaffney at an agency called the Gaffney Agency. Under no circumstances mention that my father suggested him.”

  “He told you that already?” Yossarian was enchanted. “How in the world did he know I was going to ask?”

  “That’s impossible for me to say.”

  “Okay. How are you feeling, M2?”

  “It’s hard to be sure.”

  “I mean personally. Are things all right?”

  “Wouldn’t I want to tell you if they were?”

  “But would you tell me?”

  “That would depend.”

  “On what?”

  “If I could tell you the truth.”

  “Would you tell me the truth?”

  “Do I know what it is?”

  “Could you tell me a lie?”

  “Only if I knew the truth.”

  “Thanks for being honest with me.”

  “My father wants me to be.”

  “Mr. Minderbinder mentioned you were going to call,” said the peppy voice belonging to the man named Jerry Gaffney when Yossarian telephoned him.

  “That’s funny,” said Yossarian. “Which Mr. Minderbinder?”

  “Mr. Minderbinder senior.”

  “That’s very funny then,” said Yossarian in a harder manner.

  “Because Minderbinder senior insisted I not mention his name to you when I phoned.”

  “It was a test to see if you could keep things secret,” Mr. Gaffney said lightly.

  “You gave me no chance to pass it, did you?” said Yossarian.

  “I trust my clients, and I want all of them to know they can always trust me. Without trust, what else is there? I put everything out front. I’ll give you good proof of that right now, so you’ll know what I mean. You should know, if you don’t know, that this telephone line is tapped. Is that news?”

  Yossarian caught his breath in a gasp of anger. “Tapped? It is? How the hell did you find that out so fast?”

  “It’s my telephone line, and I want it tapped,” Mr. Gaffney answered in his very low voice. “There, see? You can trust me. It’s only me who’s recording it.”

  “Is my line tapped?” Yossarian thought he should ask. “I make many business calls.”

  “Let me look it up. Yes, your business is tapping it. Your apartment may be bugged, too.”

  “Mr. Gaffney, how do you know all this?”

  “Call me Jerry, Mr. Yossarian.”

  “How do you know all this, Mr. Gaffney?”

  “Because I’m the one who tapped it, and I’m the one who may have bugged it, Mr. Yossarian. Let me give you a tip. All of the walls may have ears. Talk only in the presence of running water if you want to talk privately. Have sex only in the bathroom or kitchen if you want to make love or under the air conditioner with the fan setting turned up to—that’s it!” he cheered after Yossarian had walked into the kitchen with his portable phone and turned on both faucets full pressure in order to talk secretly. “We’re picking up nothing. I can barely hear you.”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “Learn to read lips.”

  “Mr. Gaffney—”

  “Call me Jerry.”

  “Mr. Gaffney, you tapped my telephone and you bugged my apartment?”

  “I may have bugged it. I’ll have one of my staff investigators check. I keep nothing back. That’s the only way to work confidentially. Now you know you can trust me. I thought you knew that your telephone was tapped and that your apartment might be bugged and your mail, travel, and bank accounts monitored.”

  “Holy shit, I don’t know what I know.” Yossarian soaked up all this disagreeable intelligence with a prolonged groan.

  “Look on the bright side, Mr. Yossarian, if you can find one. Always do that. You’ll soon be party to a matrimonial action, I believe, won’t you? You can pretty much always take all of that for granted even before the suit begins if the principals have the wherewithal to pay us.”

  “You do that too?”

  “I do a lot of that too. But this is only the company. Why should you care what the company hears if you never say anything you wouldn’t want the company to know? It’s beneficial for M&M E&A to know everything, isn’t it? You believe that much, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “No? You said no? Keep in mind, Mr. Yossarian, that I’m getting all of this down, although I’ll be pleased to erase any of it you wish if that will make you feel better. How can you have any

  reservations about M&M E&A? You have a share in its progress, don’t you? Doesn’t everybody have a share?”

  “I have never gone on record
with that, Mr. Gaffney, and I’m not going to do that now. When can you and I meet to begin?”

  “I’ve already begun, Mr. Yossarian. Grass doesn’t grow under Signor Gaffney’s feet. I don’t waste time. You’ll soon find that out. I’ve sent for all your government files under the Freedom of Information Act, and I’m getting your credit record from one of the best private consumer-credit bureaus. Like it so far?”

  “I am not hiring you to investigate me!”

  “I want to find out what they know about you before I try to find out who all of them are. How many did you say there were?”

  “I count at least six, but two or four may be working in pairs. I notice they seem to drive cheap cars.”

  “Economy cars,” Gaffney corrected and explained punctiliously, “to escape being noticed.” He seemed to Yossarian to be extremely exact. “Six, you say? Six is a good number to start with,” Gaffney continued happily. “Yes, a very good number. Forget about meeting me yet—I’m often followed, too. I wouldn’t want any of them to pick up my scent yet and figure out that I’m working for you unless it turns out that they’re working for me. I like to get the solutions before I find out the problems. Please turn off that water now if you can bring yourself to do that, will you? It doesn’t make it easy for me. I’m making myself hoarse trying to shout above it, and I can hardly hear you. You really don’t need it when you’re talking to me. Your friends call you Yo-Yo? Some call you John?”

  “Only my close ones, Mr. Gaffney.”

  “Mine call me Jerry.”

  “I must tell you, Mr. Gaffney, that I find talking to you exasperating.”

  “I hope that will change, Mr. Yossarian. If you’ll pardon my saying so, it was good to get that report from your nurse.”

  “What nurse?” said Yossarian. “I have no nurse.”

  “Miss Melissa Wedenmuller, sir,” corrected Gaffney courteously, dropping his voice and clearing his throat softly with a sound that was reproving.

  “You heard that too?”

  “We monitor them all. The patient is surviving. There’s no sign of infection.”

  “I think it’s phenomenal.”

  “We’re happy you’re pleased.”

  And the chaplain was still out of sight: in detention somewhere secret for examination and interrogation by persons unknown after tracking Yossarian down in his hospital four months before through the Freedom of Information Act and popping back into his life with a problem he could not grapple with and had nobody else in the world to whom he felt he could bring it in confidence. Without warning—Yossarian had attempted to alert him by telephone but was half a day late—the chaplain had been apprehended at his home in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and snatched away into custody by agents on a matter of such sensitivity and national importance that these agents said they could not even say who they were without compromising their secrecy or the security of the agency of high national importance for which they said they worked. They were nicely dressed and seemed like upstanding men who would not lie. They were big, they were several, they spoke and moved with commanding authority.

  The local police of Kenosha would be lame in contention against them, and they had taken the chaplain away.

  The day the chaplain came, Yossarian was lying on his back with the rear section of his hospital bed raised, and he waited with a

  look of outraged hostility as the door to his room inched open after he’d given no response to the timid tapping he’d heard. He saw an equine, bland face with a knobby forehead and thinning strands of hay-colored hair come leaning in shyly to peer at him. It was a slender, angular face with high and delicate cheekbones and pink-lidded eyes that flared with brightness the instant they alighted upon him and widened enormously into an ecstasy of amazement.

  “I knew it!” the man bearing that face burst right out with joy. “I wanted to see you again anyway! I knew I would recognize you anywhere the minute I saw you!”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Yossarian demanded austerely, without altering in the least his rigid stare.

  The response to his question was instantaneous.

  “Chaplain, Tappman, Tappman, Chaplain Tappman, Albert Tappman,” chattered Chaplain Tappman. “Chaplain Albert Tappman. Pianosa. Pianosa? The air force? World War II? Remember?”

  Yossarian, responding slowly, at last let out an exclamation of recognition and afterward bestowed on him cautiously a good-natured smile. “Who the hell would have thought it? Come in, come on in. Sit down, for God’s sake. How are you?”

  The chaplain sat down submissively and looked worried suddenly and answered softly. “Not good, I’m beginning to think, no, maybe not so good.”

  “Not good? That’s bad then,” said Yossarian, who felt grateful that the time to come right to the point was already at hand.

  “Well, then, tell me, Chaplain, what brings you here?”

  “Trouble,” the chaplain said simply.

  “That’s a much better reason than I usually get from my visitors.”

  “I think it may be serious. I don’t understand it.”

  When none in the continuing stream of intimidating newcomers materializing in Kenosha on official missions to question

  him about his problem seemed inclined to help him understand what the problem was, he’d remembered Yossarian and thought of the Freedom of Information Act. With Yossarian’s personal history, Social Security number, and address in his possession, he had come from Wisconsin to the home in Manhattan with the cleaning woman from Haiti who informed him that Yossarian was no longer living there and directed him to the high-rise apartment building on the West Side of Manhattan with the uniformed doorman who referred him to the hospital on the East Side into which Yossarian had earlier committed himself with insomnia, intestinal cramps, tremors, nausea, chills, and diarrhea at the disquieting news that President Bush intended to resign and that Quayle would succeed him.

  Arriving outside Yossarian’s room, the chaplain was stunned for a minute by the notice on the door stating without waste of words that no visitors were allowed and that violators would be shot.

  “Go right in,” urged the blond heavyset nurse who had guided him there. “It’s his idea of a joke.”

  He was back in Wisconsin no more than one day or two when the detachment of sturdy secret agents in dark suits, white shirts with midget collars, and low-key solid neckties descended upon him without notice to spirit him away. They had no arrest warrant. They said they did not need one. They had no search warrant either but proceeded to search the house anyway, and they had been back many times since to search it some more from ridgepole to foundation, turning up on occasion with crews of technicians with badges and white robes, gloves, and surgical masks, who took away samples of soil, paint, wood, and water. The neighborhood wondered.

  The chaplain’s problem was heavy water. He was passing it.

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” Leon Shumacher confided to Yossarian one week later, when he had the full urinalysis report from the hospital laboratory. “Where did you get that specimen?”

  “From that friend who was here last week. You saw him once when you dropped by.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “From his bladder, I guess. Why?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “How sure can I be?” said Yossarian. “He closed the door when he went into the bathroom. I didn’t watch him. Where the hell else would he get it?”

  “Grenoble. Georgia or South Carolina, I think. That’s where most of it is made.”

  “Most of what?”

  “Heavy water.”

  “What the hell does all of this mean, Leon?” Yossarian wanted to know. “Are they absolutely sure downstairs? There’s no mistake?”

  “Not from what I’m reading here. They could tell it was heavy almost immediately. It took two people to lift the eye-dropper. Of course they’re sure. There’s an extra atom of hydrogen in each molecule of water. Do you know how many molecules there are in just a few ou
nces? That friend of yours must weigh fifty pounds more than he looks.”

  “Listen, Leon,” Yossarian said, bending close and speaking in a voice lowered warily. “You’ll keep this secret, won’t you?”

  “Of course we will. This is a hospital. We’ll tell no one but the federal government.”

  “The government? They’re the ones that’ve been bothering him! They’re the ones he’s most afraid of!”

  “We have to, John,” Leon Shumacher intoned with practiced penitence in a faultless bedside manner. “The lab sent it to radiology to make sure that it’s safe, and radiology had to notify the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. John, there’s not a country in the whole world that allows anyone to manufacture heavy water without a license, and this guy

  is producing it by the quart several times a day. This deuterium is dynamite, John.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Medically? Who knows? I tell you I never heard of anything like this before. But he ought to find out. He might be turning into an atom bomb. You ought to alert him immediately.”

  By the time Yossarian telephoned Chaplain Albert O. Tappman, USAF, Retired, to warn him, there was only Mrs. Tappman at home, in hysteria and in tears. The chaplain had been disappeared only hours before, and he was in the custody still of some undisclosed authority in some undisclosed location. She had not heard from him since, although punctually each week Mrs. Karen Tappman was assured he was well and given cash approximating on the generous side the amount he would have brought in weekly were he still at liberty.

  “I’ll keep trying to find out what I can, Mrs. Tappman,” Yossarian promised every time they spoke. The lawyers she’d consulted did not believe her. The police in Kenosha filed a missing-persons report and were skeptical also. She had three grown children and they were doubtful, too, although they could give no currency to the hypothesis of the police that the chaplain had eloped with another woman. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to find out much.”

  “Thank you again, Mr. Yossarian. Please call me Karen. I feel I know you so well.”