Put a Lid on It Read Online Free PDF

and Bruce Benjamin said, “Delighted. Do sit down,” so they all sat down again.
    Benjamin had an avuncular smile that really cared about
you
, and really wanted to sell you some stock. “Good flight?” he asked.
    “Sure.”
    “They treating you well here at—Oh, good,” he said, and popped up again, because two black waiters in white had just wheeled in a table full of breakfast things: hot things like pancakes and scrambled eggs with Sterno cans under them, cold things like sliced melon and little corn flakes boxes, plus two kinds of coffee.
    “Lovely,” Benjamin told the waiters, who went away, and Benjamin said, “Why don't we eat while we chat?”
    That seemed like a good idea. They filled plates and cups, sat again, and Benjamin said, “I suppose you're wondering what this is all about.”
    “Most people would,” Meehan suggested.
    “Of course they would. It's quite simple,” Benjamin assured him, which was what Meehan had been afraid of. “You are, if you don't mind my saying so, a thief.”
    “I don't mind you saying so
here
,” Meehan told him.
    “Of course.” Benjamin had a store of meaningless smiles, like Halloween masks. He showed another from the collection and said, “Except for the occasional misfortune to which we are all heir—”
    “Amen,” said Jeffords.
    “—it would seem you are quite an accomplished thief.”
    “Thank you,” Meehan said. His jaws chewed toast while his mind worked like mad but went nowhere, like a squirrel in a wheel-shaped cage. What did these people want, and what could Meehan give them instead?
    “As you have no doubt presumed,” Benjamin went on, “we find ourselves in need of your skills.”
    “Talents,” Jeffords said, around omelet. “Expertise.”
    “That, too,” Benjamin said. “There is a certain place we wish you to enter,” he explained, “and a certain object we wish you to collect, and turn over to us. You understand, there is much about this affair that must remain sub rosa.”
    “From me, you mean,” Meehan said.
    “Well, yes.”
    Spreading jam on toast, Jeffords said, “It's what we call a need-to-know basis.”
    “What
you
need to know,” Benjamin told Meehan, “is that we are sufficiently connected to your government, in one way or another, that we can guarantee, if you accomplish this retrieval for us, your current troubles with the law will disappear.”
    “Never to return,” Jeffords added.
    “Well,
those
never to return,” Benjamin cautioned. “Your future activities are out of our purview.”
    “So it's easy, isn't it?” Jeffords said. “We'll give you maps, we'll drive you to the place—”
    “Near the place,” Benjamin corrected.
    “Well, sure,” Jeffords agreed. “You go in, you get it, you bring it out, you give it to us, you're home free.”
    Meehan said, “Where is it, what is it, who's protecting it, what do you want with it, and who else wants it?”
    “Sorry,” Jeffords said, not sounding sorry at all. “Those are not within your need to know. The
where
, of course, you'll learn when we go there. But the point is, Francis, once you've done this simple little task, your days in the MCC are
over
.”
    A big beaming smile on his face, the most impressive in his entire Halloween mask collection, Benjamin said, “So there you are. What do you say?”
    “No,” Meehan said.

9
    T HEY GAPED AT him. They couldn't believe it. “But,” Benjamin said, “we're offering you your freedom.”
    “I doubt that all to hell,” Meehan told him. “The way you birds operate, all you're offering me is additional charges.”
    Benjamin appealed to Jeffords. “You've talked to the man before,” he said. “You recommended him. What's wrong? What does he want?”
    “I don't know.” A piece of bacon held forgotten in his upraised hand, like a baton, Jeffords mused at Meehan. Finally he said, “Do you
want
to go back to the MCC?”
    “Yes.”
    “I can't believe that,” Jeffords said. “It's a terrible