Why Me? d-5

by Donald E. Westlake

  Dortmunder contemplated that idea.

  "Come on," Kelp said. "The bad guys'll show up any minute."

  "Right." Dortmunder stood up from the stack of newspapers he'd been using for a chair—the apartment's only furnishing—then looked at the phone on the floor. "What about that?"

  Kelp shrugged it off. "A standard desk-type black telephone? Who'd want a thing like that? Wipe off your fingerprints and leave it."

  31

  Kenneth ("Call me Ken") Albemarle was a Commissioner, it hardly mattered of what. In his calm but successful career he had been, among other things, Commissioner of Public Sanitation in Buffalo, New York; Fire Commissioner in Houston, Texas; Commissioner of Schools in Bismarck, North Dakota; and Water Commissioner in Muscatine, Iowa. He was well qualified to be a Commissioner, with a B.A. in Municipal Administration, an M.S. in Governmental Studies and an M.A. in Public Relations, plus inherent talent and a deep-grained awareness of what the job of Commissioner actually meant. The Commissioner's purpose, he knew, was to calm people down. With his excellent employment history and fine academic background, plus his appearance—at 41 he was trim, dark-haired, and businesslike, showing the relaxed self-assurance of a high school basketball coach with a winning team—Ken Albemarle could calm down a roomful of orangutans, if necessary, and once or twice he'd proved it.

  At the moment he was employed by the City of New York as, um, um, Police Commissioner, and right now he was being called upon to calm down two irate FBI men named Fracharly and Zeedy, who had entered his office shortly before eleven a.m. and now sat across the desk from him absolutely ruby with rage. That is, Fracharly was ruby with rage; Zeedy appeared to be snowy with shock.

  "Chief Inspector Mologna," Ken Albemarle said, nodding his head judiciously and pronouncing the name right, idly tapping his fingertips on his neat and orderly desktop, "has been a fine police officer for years and years. In fact, he's been here longer than I have." (Ken Albemarle had been New York Police Commissioner for seven months.)

  "Perhaps," Fracharly said through clenched teeth, "no one before this has ever noticed the Chief Inspector's incompetential quotient."

  "He hung up on the man," Zeedy said, hollow-voiced, as though he still couldn't believe it.

  "Just a moment," Ken Albemarle said. Tapping his intercom, he said, "Miss Friday, would you bring me Chief Inspector Francis Mologna's file?"

  "Yes, sir, Commissioner," the intercom replied, in a tinny voice.

  "It won't be in the file," Fracharly said. "It won't be in the fiiiiile—he just did it!"

  "Quite so," Ken Albemarle said, tapping his fingertips together. "If you could give me a little of the background on this, Mister Fracharly, put me in the pic—"

  "Zachary," said Fracharly.

  "Beg pardon?"

  "The name is Zachary, not Fracharly! And it's Agent, not Mister! I am Agent Zachary of the Federal Bureau of Investigation! Here, here—" He clawed for his hip pocket.

  "No need, no need," Ken Albemarle assured him. "I've seen your identification. Sorry to get the name wrong. So you're Zachary and you're…Zeedy?"

  "Freedly," said Zeedy.

  "Oh, my heaven," Ken Albemarle said, chuckling at himself. "A Spoonerism. Well, no harm done, I've got it now. Zachary and Freedly. Agent Zachary and Agent Freedly."

  "That's right," Agent Zachary gritted, still through clenched teeth and rubescent face.

  "My favorite Spoonerism," Ken Albemarle said, smiling reminiscently, "because it's an improvement really on the original, is 'flutterby' for 'butterfly. »

  "Commissioner," said Agent Freedly.

  "Yes?"

  "I don't mean to rush you or anything, Commissioner, but I think Mac here's about to leap at your throat."

  Ken Albemarle looked at Agent Zachary and saw it was indeed probable. Time to buckle down and do some major calming. "I see," he said, took a deep breath, and proceeded: "I certainly understand and sympathize with your position, gentlemen, and before we do anything else, please let me assure you right here and now that if there has been the slightest breach of proper police procedure, if Chief Inspector Mologna, whether deliberately or through inadvertence, in any way materially harmed or damaged the case upon which you are all engaged, I will personally not rest until a thorough and painstaking investigation has been made of the entire affair. When I became, uh, Police Commissioner of this fine city, I vowed then, at the time of my investiture in the Mayor's office—that's a photo of the occasion framed there on the wall, with the light glinting off the Mayor's head—that any carelessness or improper procedure or unacceptable behavior which might have been tolerated in the past—I'm not saying it was, I'm not competent to judge my predecessors in any way, I'm merely saying if there may have been any slackening of standards at any time for whatever reason, that slackening, if it occurred, shall stop and cease and desist as from now. Then. As from then, when I became Commissioner. And if you care to look at the record I have established since that day, gentlemen, I honestly believe you will feel much more relieved in your own minds, convinced that under my charge fairness and competency and a thorough airing of all disputes without fear or favor is the hallmark of—"

  Talat Gorsul!" screamed Agent Zachary. Ken Albemarle halted and blinked. Was that a war cry?

  Were these even FBI men? "I beg your pardon?"

  "Talat Gorsul," repeated Agent Zachary, more quietly but panting a bit.

  "What Mac means," Agent Freedly explained, reaching over to reassuringly pat his co-agent's near forearm, "is the Turkish Chargé d'Affaires at the United Nations. His name is Talat Gorsul."

  "Oh, I see," Ken Albemarle said, though he didn't see at all.

  "And he intends," Agent Freedly went on, "according to our information, to give a speech before the UN General Assembly at four o'clock this afternoon, in which he's going to suggest that the United States Government itself engineered the theft of the Byzantine Fire."

  Ken Albemarle was completely at sea. "Why?"

  "Because he wants to."

  "But why, why would the United States Government—"

  Agent Freedly shook his head. "Do you want Talat Gorsul's reasoning, Commissioner?"

  "On loan only."

  "We never intended to give Turkey the Byzantine Fire, and this is our way of reneging on the deal."

  "But that's ridiculous," Ken Albemarle said.

  "If you'll take a look at the speeches made at the United Nations," Agent Freedly said, "I think you'll find they're mostly ridiculous. But that never stops them from being delivered, translated, printed, and very often believed."

  "But we didn't have to make the offer in the first place."

  "I don't believe," Agent Freedly said, "Mister Gorsul intends to emphasize that fact in his speech."

  "I see. It's simple anti-Americanism."

  "Anti-Americanism is never actually simple" Agent Freedly said. "When their throats grow parched from calling us names, they pause to drink Coke. But the point is, Gorsul intends to make that speech, and the State Department has informed us it doesn't want the speech made. In the old days, of course, we'd merely have poisoned Gorsul at lunch, but—"

  "Poisoned!"

  "Not fatally," Agent Freedly said. "We're not barbarians. Just give him a tummyache for a few days. In the current climate, of course, we can't do that. So four o'clock becomes our deadline for recovery of the Byzantine Fire."

  "Mo-log-na," said Agent Zachary, slowly and distinctly through those apparently glued-together teeth.

  "Exactly," Agent Freedly said. Looking four-square at the Commissioner, he lined it out: "An individual claiming to be in possession of the Byzantine Fire arranged for a telephone call for the purpose of negotiation. He asked to speak specifically to the Chief Inspector. Early in the conversation the Chief Inspector lost his temper and hung up."

  "I see," said Ken Albemarle. He was getting a headache. "Did the, um, negotiator call back?"

  "No."

  "Did he appear to be genu
ine?"

  "From the little bit we have of him on tape, yes."

  "I see." Ken Albemarle fiddled with the corner of his desk blotter. "Of course, I haven't as yet heard all sides of the matter, but from what you tell me there certainly—"

  An interruption entered at that point, in the person of a young woman dressed in black ballet slippers, extremely baggy men's trousers, a very wrinkled white shirt, a narrow maroon necktie, an off-white bandleader's jacket six sizes too large for her, and a pair of blue-framed harlequin glasses with rhinestones. This maiden placed a thick dossier on Ken Albemarle's desk, saying, "I'm sorry it took so long, Commissioner, but his name, the spelling, we just…"

  "That's perfectly all right, Miss Friday. Better late than never. Thank you very much."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Miss Friday, successfully calmed, returned to her own office, while Ken Albemarle leafed quickly through Chief Inspector Francis Mologna's files, picking up a few of the highlights, getting a general impression of the man. And what a lot of skating on thin ice the old boy'd done over the years! Right to the edge here, almost tripped up there. These old bull elephants, Ken Albemarle knew, if they survived at all, they knew all the tricks in the world, plus a few extra all their own. He visualized himself trying, seven months into this job, to bring down Chief Inspector Mologna at the behest of two out-of-town FBI men. "Well, well, well," he said. Giving the out-of-towners his most straightforward look, he said, "I want you to know I take this matter with the utmost seriousness, gentlemen. Now, please, I want to hear all the details, and then we'll decide what's best to do for the future."

  32

  When Dortmunder got back to the apartment, trailed by Kelp, May was still there. "I thought," Dortmunder said, "you had work today."

  "I called in semisick."

  "Semisick?"

  "I said if I felt better later I'd come in. I wanted to know how things went—so how'd things go?"

  Dortmunder said, "Is it too early to drink bourbon?"

  "It isn't even noon."

  "Add a little water."

  Kelp said, "May, things didn't go so good. Whyn't I get us all some beers while John tells you the story?"

  "Bourbon," Dortmunder said.

  "You don't want bourbon," Kelp told him. "It'd just depress you."

  Dortmunder looked at him. "Bourbon would depress me? Bourbon would depress me?" But Kelp, as though Dortmunder hadn't spoken at all, walked on out of the room, toward the kitchen.

  May said, "Sit down, John, tell me about it."

  Dortmunder sat down, his knobby elbows on his knobby knees. "What happened was," he said, "they won't negotiate."

  "But you don't want to negotiate. You just want to give it back."

  "I didn't get a chance to say so. They hung up on me."

  "The police?"

  "They'd rather catch me," Dortmunder said gloomily, and Kelp came back in with three beers.

  May sipped hers through the side of her mouth away from the dangling cigarette, then said, "How did you phrase yourself, John? You weren't arrogant or anything, were you?"

  Dortmunder merely looked at her, while Kelp said, "May, I was right there. John was perfect courtesy. In fact, I thought he went too far. He bent over backward, he said he just wanted to give the thing back."

  "They wouldn't listen," Dortmunder said. "They said they were gonna catch me and I'd fall downstairs for a month."

  "Wow," said May.

  "That's a terrible threat, May, from a cop," Dortmunder said. "You ever see their new building, downtown? Till now, in a precinct, it's at the most down one metal flight in the back of the place, you just keep curled up. That Police Plaza, that's a skyscraper. And it's all brick."

  "It wasn't a real threat," May assured him. "It was just a figure of speech."

  "I heard his voice," Dortmunder said.

  Lighting a new cigarette from the ember of the old, May studied both men, then said, "So what do you do now?"

  "Find some other way to give it back," Dortmunder said. "Maybe call a newspaper or a TV station, something like that. I don't think there's an insurance company."

  "Um," said Kelp.

  Dortmunder looked over at his friend, and Kelp seemed very troubled. "I'm not gonna like this," Dortmunder said.

  "I been thinking." Kelp scoffed down some beer, then said, "The cops turning you down that way, it knocked the scales off my eyes."

  Dortmunder drank beer. "Okay," he said. "Tell me what you see."

  "It isn't enough to give it back."

  "Whadaya talking about? I give it back, the heat's off, it's all over."

  Kelp shook his head. "There's been too much irritation," he said. "Too many noses out of joint, too much commitment. What they want now is you."

  Dortmunder burped. "Don't say that, Andy."

  "I'm sorry, John, it's true."

  "Oh, dear," May said. "I think Andy's right."

  "Sure I am," Kelp said, but not as though he was glad to be right. "That stone gets turned over to the cops, that might satisfy some folk, maybe satisfy Turkey and the American people, but it wouldn't satisfy the cops, and it wouldn't satisfy Tiny Bulcher or a lot of other guys we both know. Also, I heard at the O.J. there's a religious angle now, there's these religious fanatics also on your trail, and not to convert you. Just getting the stone back won't do it for them, either."

  "You're not making me feel better," Dortmunder said.

  "I tell you what you got to do, John," Kelp said. "You got to forget the stone for now and get yourself an alibi."

  "I don't follow."

  "For the boys at the O.J.," Kelp explained. "That gets the specific personal heat off you."

  Dortmunder shook his head. "No way. We're not talking about the cops here, we're talking about Tiny Bulcher. We're talking about a lot of street people."

  "I realize that," Kelp said. "But we can still do an alibi that'll hold up."

  Dortmunder frowned at him. " We?"

  "Sure we," Kelp said, apparently surprised. "We're in this together, aren't we?"

  Dortmunder found himself deeply and surprisingly touched. "Andy," he said, "I don't know what to say."

  "That's right," Kelp said, misunderstanding. "So we'll work out what you say."

  "No, I mean—I mean that's a terrific offer, but you shouldn't stick your neck out for me."

  "Why not? You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you?"

  Dortmunder blinked a lot.

  Kelp laughed, a trifle shakily. "Sure you would. And the thing of it is, if the three of us all tell the same story—"

  "Not May," Dortmunder said.

  May said, "John, this is no time for chivalry."

  "No," Dortmunder said. "May, in my mind's eye I see Tiny Bulcher biting your nose off, and I don't like it."

  "He won't have any reason to bite my nose off," May said, although she did sort of absently touch the part in question. "If we all tell the same story, you won't be under suspicion."

  "I won't do it," Dortmunder said. "Not if you're a part of it."

  "That's okay," Kelp said. "Two is fine. You and me, we tell the same story, we alibi one another, it works out the same."

  Dortmunder considered being chivalrous in re Andy as well, but decided one noble gesture per customer per day was enough. "What alibi?" he asked.

  "Well," Kelp said, "I've already mentioned to some of the guys my own alibi, in a general kind of way, so we just fit you in with me."

  "What's your alibi?"

  "The funny thing is, it's the truth. I was at home all that night, doing things with telephones."

  "Alone?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then how does that alibi you?"

  "Well," Kelp said, "I made and received a lot of calls. You know? I'd put some gizmo on, I'd want to try it, I'd call somebody. If it was my answering machine or my call-waiting gadget or something like that, I'd call somebody and have them call me back."

  "Right," Dortmunder said. "So all night you're cover
ed, on account of these phone calls."

  "Sure. And now I say you were with me, helping me like with the wiring, and now we're both covered."

  Dortmunder said, "How come you didn't mention before about me being there? Like when you told people your alibi. Or like when you were making all these calls Wednesday night."

  "The question didn't come up."

  "I don't know," Dortmunder said.

  May said, "John, this is a wonderful gesture on Andy's part, and the fact of the matter is, you're in no position to look wonderful gestures in the mouth."

  Dortmunder drank beer.

  Kelp said, "We'll go back to my place, I'll give you half an hour instruction on telephones, you'll know as much as I do. Then it's our hobby together."

  "If it goes wrong," Dortmunder pointed out, "Tiny won't like you any more either."

  Kelp waved that away with an airy sweep of his beer can: "How could it go wrong?" he asked.

  33

  "He annoyed me," Mologna said to Leon. "I was gettin all this shit about telephones—he is there, he isn't there, it's goin through, it isn't goin through—and I just forgot myself."

  "This too will pass," Leon said, his face a woodcut entitled Sympathy. He was feeling so bad on Mologna's account that he wasn't even dancing in place.

  Mologna sat slumped at his desk, forearms sprawled among his papers. "The static I'm goin to take," he said, shaking his heavy head. "The static I am goin to take."

  It had already started. The Commissioner—Mologna could never remember the man's name, and didn't see any real reason to make the effort—had called to chew him out in that discreet, distant, with-gloves-on manner of upper-echelon bureaucrats everywhere. The point, as Mologna well knew, was not what the Commissioner said, or what he himself said in response; the point was that in the Commissioner's phone log and in his day book and in Mologna's personal file there would now be a notation to the effect that the Commissioner had demonstrated leadership. The son of a bitch.

  Well, maybe not entirely a son of a bitch at that, since the Commissioner had in the same phone call made it very clear where Mologna's true enemies were: "FBI Agents Zachary and Freedly are in my office at this very moment, discussing the situation with me," the Commissioner had said, and the background gasp of outraged betrayal behind the Commissioner's voice had been the only bright spot in that entire fumigated conversation.