Closing Time (Catch-22 2)

"Am I trying to be funny?"

"It's impossible to tell."

"I'm luring him on," Jerry Gaffney explained. "Right into one of my offices pretending he's a prospect looking for a house, while he tries to find out who I really am."

"To find out what he's up to?"

"To sell him a house, John. That's where my real income is. This should interest you. We have choice rentals in East Hampton for next summer, for the season, the year, and the short term. And some excellent waterfront properties too, if you're thinking of buying."

"Mr. Gaffney," said Yossarian.

"Are we back to that?"

"I know less about you now than I did before. You said I'd be making this trip, and here I am making it. You predicted there'd be blizzards, and now there are blizzards."

"Meteorology is easy."

"You seem to know all that's happening on the face of the earth. You know enough to be God."

"There's more money in real estate," answered Gaffney. "That's how I know we have no God. He'd be active in real estate too. That's not a bad one, is it?"

"I've heard worse."

"I have one that may be better. I also know much that goes on under the earth. I've been beneath PABT too, you know."

"You've heard the dogs?"

"Oh, sure," said Gaffney. "And seen the Kilroy material. I have connections in MASSPOB too, electronic connections," he appended, and his thin, sensual lips, which were almost liverish in a rich tinge, spread wide again in that smile of his that was cryptic and somehow incomplete. "I've even," he continued, with some pride, "met Mr. Tilyou."

"Mr. Tilyou?" echoed Yossarian. "Which Mr. Tilyou?"

"Mr. George C. Tilyou," Gaffney explained. "The man who built the old Steeplechase amusement park in Coney Island."

"I thought he was dead."

"He is."

"Is that your joke?"

"Does it give you a laugh?"

"Only a smile."

"You can't say I'm not trying," said Gaffney. "Let's go now. Look back if you wish. That will keep them coming. They won't know whether to stick with Yossarian or follow me. You'll have a smooth trip. Think of this episode as an entr'acte, an intermezzo between Kenosha and your business with Milo and Noodles Cook. Like Wagner's music for Siegfried's Rhine Journey and the Funeral Music in the Gotterdammerung, or that interlude of clinking anvils in Das Rheingold."

"I heard that one last night, in my room in Kenosha."

"I know."

"And I learned something new that might help the chaplain. His wife thinks he's already had one miracle."

"That's already old, John," belittled Gaffney. "Everything in Kenosha is bugged. But here is something that might be good. To Milo, you might suggest a shoe."

"What kind of shoe?"

"A military shoe. Perhaps an official U.S. Government shoe. He was too late for cigarettes. But the military will always need shoes. For ladies too. And perhaps brassieres. Please give my best to your fiancee."

"What fiancee?" Yossarian shot back.