Why Me? d-5

by Donald E. Westlake

  Smoothly but promptly Gorsul was on his feet. "I do appreciate, Mister Zachary," he said, "your interpreting me for all these industrious professional persons, but if I may make the slightest correction to the general line of your statement, please permit me to assure all of you ladies and gentlemen that neither in my heart nor on my lips have I ever had the slightest doubt as to your professionalism, your dedication, or your loyalty to your own national government. The questions I intend to raise this afternoon at the United Nations are most certainly not intended to cast doubt upon any of you in this room. No, nor to cast doubt anywhere at all, come to that. I shall wonder, a bit later today at the United Nations, how such a security-conscious nation as this—I was, by the by, impressed with the two layers of security through which I passed on my way in here—how such a security-conscious nation as the United States, so large, so powerful, so experienced in these matters, could have permitted this admittedly minor bauble to slip through its all-powerful fingers in the first place. A small question, a matter of personal curiosity only, which I intend, somewhat later today, to share with my colleagues at the United Nations."

  "Mister Gorsul."

  Gorsul looked toward the voice, seeing a blue-uniformed stout man with a storm-tossed face. "Yes?"

  "I'm Chief Inspector Francis X. Maloney," the stout man said, heaving himself to his feet. (Mologna, Gorsul remembered.)

  "Ah, yes. We were introduced, Chief Inspector Mologna."

  Plodding steadily around the conference table toward the door, his round belly leading the way, Mologna said, "I wonder if you and I could have a word or two in private, if all these other leaders of men would excuse us."

  There was general surprise, some consternation, some murmuring. The FBI man, Zachary, seemed inclined to put his oar in, but Mologna fixed Gorsul with a meaningful stare (but with what meaning?) and said, "It's up to you, Mister Gorsul. I think it's to your own best interest."

  "If it is to my nation's best interest," Gorsul responded, "of course I shall accede to your request."

  "That's all right, then," Mologna said, opened the hall door, and stood to one side.

  It wasn't often that Talat Gorsul faced the unexpected; it was in fact a part of his job never to place himself in a situation where he wasn't reasonably sure what would happen next. It was the piquancy of this development, then, as much as any profit that might ensue from a private conversation with Mologna, that led him to say to the table at large, "If you will all excuse me?" Getting to his feet, he walked to the door and preceded Mologna out to the hall.

  Where Mologna smiled at the two uniformed city policemen on guard duty and genially told them, "That's okay, boys, take a walk down the corridor."

  The boys took a walk down the corridor, and Mologna turned toward Gorsul. "Well, Mister Gorsul," he said, "so you live on Sutton Place."

  This was really unexpected. "Yes, I do."

  "The car in which you're normally chauffeured is license number DPL 767," Mologna went on, "and the car you drive for yourself when you go out of town on weekends, here and there, that's DPL 299."

  "Both are Mission cars, not mine," Gorsul pointed out.

  "That's right. Mister Gorsul, you're a diplomat. I'm not. You're an oily son of a bitch Turk, I'm a blunt Irishman. Don't make any speeches this afternoon."

  Gorsul stared at him in utter astonishment. "Are you threatening me?"

  "You're damn right I am," Mologna said, "and what are you goin to do about it? Over there at that Mission of yours you got a dozen chauffeurs and secretaries and cooks. I got fifteen thousand men, Mister Gorsul, and do you know what those fifteen thousand men think every time they see a car with diplomat plates parked by a fire hydrant or in a tow-away zone? Do you know what my boys think when they see those DPL plates?"

  Gorsul glanced at the two police guards chatting together down at the end of the hall, hands on hips above their guns and gunbelts. He shook his head.

  "They're pissed off, Mister Gorsul," Mologna said. "They can't ticket those cars, they can't tow those cars away, they can't even chew out the owners of those cars like a normal citizen. I wish I could get those sons of bitches, is what my boys think. You ever been burgled, Mister Gorsul, over there on Sutton Place?"

  "No," Gorsul said.

  "You're lucky. Lot of burglaries over there. Rich people need a lot of police protection, Mister Gorsul. They need a lot of police cooperation. Ever have a motor vehicle accident in the City of New York, Mister Gorsul?"

  Gorsul licked thin lips. "No," he said.

  "You're a lucky man," Mologna assured him. Then he leaned forward—Gorsul automatically recoiled, then cursed himself for having done so—and more quietly and confidentially he said, "Mister Gorsul, I put my nuts in the wringer on this one, a little earlier today. Normally, I wouldn't give a fuck what you say, what you do, you or anybody else. But just this minute, just today, I can't afford any more shit hittin the fan. You follow me?"

  "I might," Gorsul said.

  "Good man." Mologna thumped him on the shoulder. "They convinced you in there, right?"

  "Yes."

  "They did, not me. So no speech this afternoon."

  Gorsul's heavy-lidded eyes hated, but his mouth said, "That's right."

  Another shoulder thump from the detested Mologna's disgusting hand. "That's fine," the rotten Mologna said. "Let's go back in and give those assholes the good news."

  36

  When May came home from her job at the supermarket, two sacks of groceries in her arms, the phone was ringing. She didn't particularly like events to pile up like that, so she squinted with some alarm and dislike at the ringing monster through the cigarette smoke rising up past her left eye as she dumped the groceries on the sofa. Plucking the final smoldering ember of cigarette from the corner of her mouth and flicking it into a handy ashtray, she picked up the phone and said, with mistrust, "Yes?"

  A voice whispered, "May."

  "No," she said.

  "May?" The voice was still a whisper.

  "No obscene calls," May said. "No breathers, none of that. I've got three brothers, they're all big, mean men, they're ex-Marines, they—"

  "May!" the voice whispered, shrill and harsh. "It's me! You know!"

  "And they'll come beat you up," May finished. She hung up, with some sense of satisfaction, and lit a new cigarette.

  She was carrying the groceries on into the kitchen when the phone rang again. "Bother," she said, put the sacks on the kitchen table, went back to the living room, picked up the phone, and said, "I warned you once."

  "May, it's me!" whispered the same voice, loud and desperate. "Don't you recognize me?"

  May frowned: "John?"

  "Sssssshhhhh!"

  "Juh—what happened?"

  "Something went wrong. I can't come home."

  "Are you at An—"

  "Sssssshhhhhhh!"

  "Are you at, uh, that place?"

  "No. He can't go home either."

  "Oh, dear," May said. She had hoped against hope, but she had known this was a possibility.

  "We're hiding out," the now-familiar voice whispered.

  "Until it blows over?"

  "This isn't gonna blow over, May," the voice whispered. "We can't wait that long. This thing's got the staying power of the pyramids."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Something," whispered the voice, with a kind of dogged hopelessness.

  "Juh—I brought home steak." She moved the phone to her other hand and the cigarette to the other corner of her mouth. "Can I get in touch with you somewhere?"

  "No, we're—This phone doesn't have a number."

  "Call the operator, she'll tell you."

  "No, I don't mean there isn't a number on it, I mean it doesn't have a number. We plugged into a line. We can dial out, but nobody can call in."

  "Does An—Uh. Does he still have that access?"

  "Not any more. We took a lot of stuff and left. Listen, May, somebody may come around.
Maybe you oughta go visit your sister."

  "I don't really like Cleveland." In truth, May didn't really like her sister.

  "Still," the voice whispered.

  "We'll see what happens," May promised.

  "Still," the voice insisted.

  "I'll think about it. You'll call again?"

  "Sure."

  The doorbell rang.

  "There's somebody at the door," May said. "I better get off now."

  "Don't answer!"

  "They don't want me, Juh—I'll just tell them the truth."

  "Okay," the voice whispered, but sounded very dubious.

  "Be well," May told him, and hung up and went to open the door. Four big burly men—rather similar to May's mental image of her nonexistent ex-Marine brothers—shouldered their way in, saying, "Where is he?"

  May shut the door after them. "I don't know any of you people," she said.

  "We know you," they said. "Where is he?"

  "If you were him," May said, "would you be here?"

  "Where is he?" they demanded.

  "If you were him," May said, "would you tell me where you were?"

  They looked at each other, stymied by the truth, and the doorbell rang. "Don't answer it!" they said.

  "I answered for you," she pointed out. "This is open house."

  The new arrivals were plainclothes detectives, three of them. "Police," they said, showing unnecessary identification.

  "Come on in," May said.

  The three detectives and the four tough guys looked at each other in the living room. "Well well well," said the detectives. "We're waiting for a friend," said the tough guys. "I've got to unpack my groceries," said May, leaving them to work it out among themselves.

  37

  "It seems," Mologna said, unsmilingly gazing at Zachary and Freedly, "I was right."

  "That may well be," Zachary acknowledged, as brisk and alert as though he'd been right. "We'll know more, of course, once we've interrogated this individual."

  "Dortmunder," Mologna said, tapping the dossier Leon had lovingly placed in the exact center of his desk. "John Archibald Dortmunder. Born in Dead Indian, Illinois, raised in the Bleedin Heart Sisters of Eternal Misery Orphanage, thousands of arrests on suspicion of robbery, two jail terms. Hasn't been heard from recently, but that doesn't mean he isn't active. An ordinary, home-grown, minor-league, light-fingered crook. Not an international spy, not a terrorist, not a freedom fighter, not a political in any way." A quick glance at Freedly: "Not even an Armenian." Back to Zachary, the chief asshole: "A small-time crook, all on his own. Pulled a smalltime jewelry store burglary, got the Byzantine Fire by mistake. Like I said all along."

  "It's very possible you're right," Zachary said. "Of course, under interrogation it may well turn out this man Dortmunder has been recruited by some other element."

  Freedly said, "And then there's his partner, Kelp."

  "Andrew Octavian Kelp," Mologna said, his fingertips sensing that second dossier beneath the first. "Dortmunder's partner in his alibi, but not in the heist. I assume Dortmunder has somethin on Kelp and forced him into supportin that alibi. Kelp himself is absolutely clean the night of the robbery."

  "Could be the link," Freedly said.

  Zachary frowned at him: "What?"

  "If there is a link," Mologna acknowledged, "which I very much doubt."

  Zachary said, "What?"

  "It's Kelp's foreign associations we'll have to check into," Freedly said, making a note.

  Zachary said, "Goddam it."

  "Link between Dortmunder and international aspect," Freedly explained.

  "Oh, Kelp!" Zachary said, and immediately leaped on the idea and rode madly off in all directions. "Excellent concept! 'Kelp, Kelp'—the name is obviously shortened. He'll have relatives in the old country. He's establishing the alibi while Dortmunder's out pulling the actual job. Ruby-Oswald!"

  "They weren't linked," Mologna pointed out.

  "Concept," Zachary explained. "In the theorizational stage, many linkages were postulated between those two. While they all turned out to be inappropriate in that instance, some of the same theories could very well come into play in this situation."

  "Why not," Mologna said. "They'll work just as well as last time." He looked up as the door opened: "Yes, Leon?"

  "Captain Cappelletti," Leon announced. "With that cute little tattletale."

  "Let's see them," Mologna said, and Leon ushered in Tony Cappelletti, shooing ahead of himself Benjamin Arthur Klopzik.

  Who was a changed man. Absolute terror had made him even thinner than before, but with a wiry, tensile strength that was very new. He was still scrawny but, on looking at him, one felt he might be able, like an ant, to lift and carry a crumb seven times his weight. His huge hollow eyes darted this way and that, as though expecting Mologna's office to be full of his former comrades; they lit with horror and wild surmise when they met the curious gazes of Zachary and Freedly. "Ak!" he said, recoiling into Tony Cappelletti's chest.

  "These are FBI men, Klopzik," Mologna said. "Agents Zachary and Freedly. Come on in here and quit foolin around."

  Hesitantly, Klopzik advanced far enough into the room for Cappelletti also to enter and Leon to shut the door behind them. Then Klopzik stopped and merely waited, blinking.

  "You did fine," Mologna told him. "We picked up every word. It wasn't your fault about that goddam CB. You may be happy to hear we towed that son of a bitch's car away and slapped a reckless drivin charge on him, just to relieve our feelins."

  "They're gonna kill me." Klopzik's voice sounded like a zipper opening.

  "No, they won't, Benjy," Cappelletti said, and told Mologna, "I promised him the protection of the Department."

  "Well, sure," Mologna said.

  "But this time," Cappelletti said, "we really got to do it."

  Mologna frowned. "What are you tellin me, Tony?"

  "This time," Cappelletti explained, "we don't have just one mob or half a dozen ex-partners looking for a guy. Every professional crook in New York is looking for Benjy Klopzik." (Klopzik groaned.) "If they find him, they'll never trust the Police Department again."

  "Ah," Mologna said. "I see what you mean."

  Zachary, sitting firmly like an FBI man, said, "Of course, the Bureau has considerable experiential knowledge in this sort of area: new identities, jobs, a new life in a completely different part of the country. We could—"

  "No!" cried Klopzik.

  Mologna looked at him. "You don't want help?"

  "Not from the FBI! That program of theirs, that's just a delay of sentence! Everybody the FBI gives a new identity, the first thing you know the guy's been buried under the new name."

  "Oh, now," Zachary said, offended on the Bureau's behalf. "I'll admit we've had a few problems from time to time, but there's no point overstating the case."

  Mologna shook his head, seeing from Klopzik's anguished face that the little man would not be dissuaded. "All right, Klopzik," he said. "What do you want?"

  "I don't wanna move out of New York," Klopzik said, his terror receding. "What are all those other places to me? They don't even have the subway."

  "What do you want?"

  "Plastic surgery," Klopzik said, so promptly that it was clear he'd been thinking about this rather intently. "And a new name, a new identity—driver's license and all that. And a nice soft job with decent money and not much to do—maybe in the Parks Department. And I can't go back to my old place, so I need a nice rent-controlled apartment and new furniture and a color TV…and a dishwasher!"

  "Klopzik," Mologna said, "you want to stay in New York? Right here where they're lookin for you?"

  "Sure, Francis," Cappelletti said. "I think it's an okay idea. This is the last place in the world they'll expect to find him. Anywhere else, he'll stick out like a sore thumb."

  "He is a sore thumb," Mologna said.

  "I was kinda thinking about making a change anyway," Klopzik confided to the room at large. "Thing
s were kinda getting out of hand."

  Mologna considered him. "Is that all?"

  "Yeah," Klopzik said. "Only, I don't wanna be a Benjy any more."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. I wanna be a, a…Craig!"

  Mologna sighed. "Craig," he said.

  "Yeah." Klopzik actually grinned. "Craig Fitzgibbons," he said.

  Mologna looked at Tony Cappelletti. "Take Mister Fitzgibbons outa here," he said.

  "Come along, Benjy."

  "And, and," Klopzik said, resisting Cappelletti's tugging hand, staring with wild-eyed hope at Mologna, getting it all out, the whole big, beautiful, suddenly-realizable dream, "and tell the plastic surgeon I wanna look like, like Dustin Hoffman!"

  "Get it outa here," Mologna told Tony Cappelletti, "or I'll start the plastic surgery right now."

  But that was all; Klopzik had shot his wad. Exhausted, satiated, happy, he allowed himself to be led away.

  In the silence following upon Klopzik/Fitzgibbons' departure, Mologna looked bleakly at Zachary and Freedly and said, "That Dortmunder's got a lot to answer for."

  "I'm looking forward to questioning him," Zachary said, getting the implication wrong.

  "Oh, so am I," Mologna said.

  Freedly said, "There isn't any doubt, is there, Chief Inspector?"

  Mologna frowned at him. "Doubt? Dortmunder did it, all right. There's no doubt."

  "No, I mean that we'll get him."

  Mologna's heavy mouth opened in a slow smile. "At a rough estimate," he said, "I would guess there are currently four hundred thousand men, women, and children in the City of New York looking for John Archibald Dortmunder. Don't worry, Mister Freedly, we'll get him."