Why Me? d-5

by Donald E. Westlake

  41

  May unlocked the apartment door and walked into a living room full of cops. "For heaven's sake," she said. "If I'd known there was a party I'd have stopped and bought some cookies."

  "Where've you been?" said the biggest, angriest, most rumpled plainclothesman.

  "To the movies."

  "We know that," said another one. "After the movies."

  "I came home." She squinted at the clock on top of the TV set. "The movie got out at twenty to twelve, I took a cab, and now it isn't even midnight."

  The cops looked a bit uncertain, then pretended they hadn't looked uncertain at all. "If you're in contact with John Archibald Dortmunder—" the big angry rumpled plainclothesman started, but May interrupted:

  "He doesn't use his middle name."

  "What?"

  "Archibald. He never uses the Archibald."

  "I don't care," said the cop. "You see what I mean? I don't give a fart."

  Another of the cops said, "Harry, take it easy."

  "It's getting me down, that's all," the big angry rumpled cop said. "Blitzes, stakeouts, crashing around, everybody on double shift. All over one goddam stumblebum with sticky fingers."

  "Everybody," May told him solemnly, "is innocent until proved guilty."

  "The hell they are." The cop moved his shoulders around, then said to the other cops, "All right, let's go." Glaring at May, he said, "If you're in contact with John Archibald Dortmunder, you tell him he'll be a lot better off if he gives himself up."

  "Why should I tell him a thing like that?"

  "Just remember what I said," the cop told her. "You could be in trouble, too, you know."

  "John would be much worse off if he gave himself up."

  "That's all right, that's all right." And the cops all pounded their feet on out of there, leaving the door open behind them.

  May closed it. "Poo," she said, and went away to open an Airwick.

  42

  The jewelry store door said snnnarrrkk. Dortmunder pressed his shoulder against it: "Come on" he muttered.

  snik, responded the door, yawning open. This time, knowing this particular door's wiles and stratagems, Dortmunder already had one hand gripping the frame, so he didn't lose his balance but merely stepped across the threshold into the store, where he stopped to look back at Kelp, standing lookout at the curb in the rain, gazing assiduously up and down empty Rockaway Boulevard. Dortmunder gestured, and Kelp happily squelched across the sidewalk and joined him in the warm interior of the store. "Nice little place," he said, as Dortmunder shut the door.

  "This ski mask itches," Dortmunder said, peeling the thing off.

  Kelp kept his on; his eager eyes sparkled amid gamboling elks on a field of black. "It sure keeps the rain off," he said.

  "It isn't raining in here. The safe's over this way."

  The "Closed For Vacation To Serve You Better" sign was still in the front window, and the mustiness of the air inside the store suggested no one had been in it since the cops had arrived Wednesday night to find the Byzantine Fire missing. The store owner was in jail now, his relatives had things other than his shop to think about, and the law had no more use for the place.

  Or at least that's what they thought.

  "Forty-eight hours," Dortmunder said. "See those clocks?"

  "They all say twenty to one."

  "That's what they said Wednesday night, when I came in. What a forty-eight hours!"

  "Maybe they're stopped," Kelp said, and went over to listen to one.

  "They're not stopped," Dortmunder said, irritated. "It's just one of those coincidences."

  "They're working," Kelp agreed. He came back and watched Dortmunder seat himself cross-legged, tailor-fashion, on the floor in front of the familiar safe, spreading his tools out around himself. "How long, you figure?"

  "Fifteen minutes, last time. Shorter now. Go watch."

  Kelp went over to the door to watch the still-empty street, and twelve minutes later the safe said plok-chunk as its door swung open. Dortmunder shined his pencil flash in at the trays and compartments, now stripped of everything except the junk he'd rejected last time, and saw one tray full of junky pins—gold-plated animals with polished stone eyes. That would do.

  Reaching into his pocket, Dortmunder took out the Byzantine Fire, then spent a long moment just looking at it. The intensity of the thing, the clarity, the purity of the color. The depth—you could look down for miles into that damn stone. "My greatest triumph," Dortmunder whispered.

  Over at the door, Kelp said, "What?"

  "Nothing." Dortmunder put the Byzantine Fire on the tray with the junky animals; dubious peacocks and lions stared pop-eyed at this aristocrat in their midst. Dortmunder sort of piled the animals around the ruby ring, obscuring it slightly, then slid the tray back into place.

  "How you doing?"

  "Almost done." Chock-whirrr; he shut and locked the safe and spun the dial. His tools went back into their special pockets inside his jacket, and then he got to his feet.

  "Ready to go?"

  "Just one second." From another pocket he took May's watch and pressed the button on the side: 6:10:42:11. Crossing to the display case, he beamed his pocket flash at the watches behind the glass until he found another of the identical kind, in a small felt-lined box with the lid up. Going behind the counter, opening the sliding door in the back of the display case, he took out this new watch and saw that in the box with it was a much-folded paper headlined INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE. Right. 6:10:42:11 went back on the counter display where he'd originally found it, and the new one with its box and its instructions went into his jacket pocket. And the itchy ski mask went back on his face. "Now I'm ready," Dortmunder said.

  43

  Every edition of the paper. From the bulldog edition that had come out last night before Mologna had left the city for Bay Shore and home, right up to the late final that hadn't hit the street until he was already back in his office this morning, every last rotten edition of that rotten paper had carried the same rotten editorial. "The Cost Of Blowing Your Top" it was headed, and the subject matter was Mologna's now-famous incident of hanging up on the guy with the Byzantine Fire.

  Was it those FBI assholes who'd given the story to the paper? Probably, though it had to be admitted Mologna had one or two enemies right here within the sheltering arms of the NYPD. All morning his friends on the force had been calling to commiserate, to tell him the same thing could have happened to them—and they were right, the bastards, it could have—and to assure him all the pressure in the world had been put on the editors of that rag to drop the editorial from the later editions, but in vain. The bastards had known they were safe, Chief Inspector Francis Xavier Mologna was down, they could kick him with impunity now. "There's nothin lower than a newspaperman," Mologna said, and swept the late final edition from his desk onto the floor.

  Where Leon skipped over it on his way in, saying, "Another phone call."

  "Friend or foe?"

  "Hard to say," Leon told him. "It's that man again, with the Byzantine Fire."

  Mologna stared. "Leon," he said, "are you havin fun at my expense?"

  "Oh, Chief Inspector!" Leon's eyes fluttered.

  Mologna shook his head. "I'm not in the mood today, Leon. Go away."

  "He insists on talking with you," Leon said. "I quote—" he made his voice a kind of deep falsetto " — 'for our mutual advantage. That's what he said."

  Wait a minute. Was it possible to recoup after all, to make a comeback, to shove that editorial down those craven editors' throats? Mutual advantage, huh? Reaching for the phone, Mologna said, "Which line?"

  "Two."

  "Record it and trace it and track it," Mologna ordered. His own voice deepening, he said, "I'll keep him on the line." Then, as Leon skipped from the room, Mologna said into line two, "Who's this?"

  "You know," said the voice.

  It was the same voice. "John Archibald Dortmunder," Mologna said.

  "I'm not Dor
tmunder," Dortmunder said.

  "Is that right," Mologna said comfortably, settling into his seat for a good long chat.

  "The frame won't hold," the voice said. "You'll find out Dortmunder isn't the guy, and you'll keep looking till you find me."

  "Interestin theory."

  "I'm in trouble," said the voice.

  "That's the understatement of the year."

  "But you're in trouble, too."

  Mologna stiffened. "Meanin what?"

  "I read the paper."

  "Every son of a bitch reads the paper," opined Mologna.

  "We could maybe help each other," the voice said.

  Mologna glowered, from deep within his soul. "What are you suggestin?"

  "We both have a problem," said the tired, weary, pessimistic and yet self-confident voice. "Maybe together we got a solution."

  Leon tiptoed in, hopped over the newspaper on the floor, and put a note on Mologna's desk, reading, "Phone company says untraceable, no such phone." Mologna glared at that, and said to the voice, "Hold it a second." Pushing the hold button, he glared at Leon and said, "What the fuck is this?"

  "The phone company's bewildered," Leon told him. "They say the call's coming from somewhere south of 96th Street, but they can't track it down. It's just there, in their relays."

  "That's too fuckin stupid to be believed," Mologna said.

  "They're still working on it," Leon said, not with much display of hope. "They said please keep him on the line as long as you possibly can."

  "Are you insultin me, Leon?" Mologna demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he pushed the two-line button, and heard a dial tone. The son of a bitch was gone. "Oh, Jesus," Mologna said.

  "He hung up?" Leon asked.

  "I lost him again." Mologna stared at infinity as the phone on Leon's desk outside began ringing. Leon trotted away, and Mologna leaned forward, elbows on desk, head in hands, thinking the unthinkable: Maybe I should retire, like the fuckin paper said.

  Leon was back. "It's him again. This time he's on one."

  Mologna moved so fast he almost ate the phone. "Dortmunder!"

  "I'm not Dortmunder."

  "Where'd you go?" Mologna demanded, while Leon danced back out to contact the phone company once more.

  "You put me on hold," the voice said. "Don't put me on hold, all right?"

  "It was only a second."

  "I've had a lot of trouble with phones," the voice said. (Perhaps another voice in the background made a complaining noise.) "So just don't put me on hold. No gizmos."

  "No gizmos?" Honest rage and accumulated frustration bubbled up within Mologna. "You're one to talk, you've been makin a mental case out of me with your telephones."

  "I just—"

  "Never mind that, never mind that. I call you at a pay phone, right out on the street in the sunshine, you answer the phone, and there's nobody there! Right now, right this minute, you're talkin to me big as life, the phone company can't trace the call! Is that honest? Is that playin the game?"

  "I just don't like to be on hold," the voice said, sounding sullen.

  Which brought Mologna back down out of his luxurious bad temper. "Don't hang up again," he said, squeezing the receiver hard, as though it were his caller's wrist.

  "I won't hang up," the voice agreed. "Just so you don't put me on hold."

  "You've got a deal," Mologna told him. "No hold. I'll just sit here and you'll tell me your story."

  "My story is," said the voice, "I don't want this ruby thing."

  "And?"

  "And you do. It'll make you the big man again around Headquarters, never mind what they say in the papers. So what I want, I want to propose a trade."

  "You'll give me the ring? For what, immunity?"

  The mirthless voice said, "You can't give me immunity, nobody can."

  "I hate to say it, pal," Mologna told him, "but you're right." And yet, the strange thing was, he felt within himself a desire to help this poor son of a bitch. Some echo in that world-weary voice reached out to him, called out to their common humanity. Maybe it was just because he was depressed after that stinking editorial, but he knew in his heart he was closer to this fourth-rate burglar, in some cockamamie way, than to anybody else involved in the whole case. He pictured FBI Agent Zachary in an interrogation with this clown, and despite himself, his heart just reached out. "So what do you want?" he said.

  "What I want," said the voice, "is another burglar."

  "I don't follow."

  "You're the cops," the voice explained. "You can make up a name, make up a guy, some guy that doesn't exist. Frank Smith, say. Then you announce you got the burglar and his name is Frank Smith and you got the ring back and it's all over. Then nobody's mad at me any more."

  "Nice try, Dortmunder," Mologna said.

  "I'm not Dortmunder."

  "The problem is," Mologna went on, "where is this Frank Smith? If we set up a make-believe guy, we've got nobody to show the press. If we set up a real guy, maybe the frame doesn't stick."

  "Maybe Frank Smith commits suicide in the House of Detention," the voice suggested. "Such things have been known to happen."

  "Too many people involved," Mologna said. "I'm sorry, but there's no way we could work it." He laid out the parameters of the problem: "It would have to be a real guy, with a record, somebody known to the courts and to the underworld. But at the same time, it would have to be a guy nobody's ever goin to find, he'll never come back with an alibi or a—Holy Jesus!"

  In sudden hope, the voice said, "Yeah? Yeah?"

  "Craig Fitzgibbons," Mologna said, an almost religious awe trembling in his voice.

  "Who the hell is that?"

  "A guy who will never come around to call us liars, Dortmunder."

  "I'm not Dortmunder."

  "Sure, sure. I can do your setup for you, that's all. I sit here astonished at myself. Now, what about the quo?"

  "The what?"

  "The Byzantine Fire," Mologna explained.

  "Oh, that. You get it back," the voice said, "as soon as you make the announcement."

  "What announcement?"

  "Police breakthrough. Proof positive the thief with the Byzantine Fire is this fella Craig Whoever. Arrest expected any minute."

  "All right. Then what?"

  "I get the ring back to you, my own way. Indirect like."

  "When?"

  "Today."

  "And if you don't?"

  "Another police breakthrough. Proof positive it isn't Craig Thingummy."

  "Okay," Mologna said, nodding. Leon came in and made the world's most expressive shrug of incredulity, representing in himself all of the thousands and thousands of employees of the New York Bell Telephone Company. Mologna nodded, waving him away, not caring any more. "I'm in a good mood today," he told the phone. "You've got yourself a deal, Dortmunder."

  "Call me Craig," said Dortmunder.

  44

  Every half hour Dortmunder phoned May, who was staying home from work so she could listen to an all-news radio station ("You give us twenty-two minutes, we'll give you the world," they threatened). Dortmunder would have preferred to be his own listening post, but down here in the telephone company conduit, far beneath the mighty metropolis, there was no such thing as radio reception. As for TV, forget it.

  "There's trouble in Southeast Asia," May told him at ten-thirty.

  "Uh-huh," Dortmunder said.

  "There's trouble in the Middle East," she said at eleven o'clock.

  "That figures," he said.

  "There's trouble in the Cuban part of Miami," she announced at eleven-thirty.

  "Well, there's trouble everywhere," Dortmunder pointed out. "There's even a little right here."

  "They have positively identified the thief who stole the Byzantine Fire," she said at noon. "It was just a bulletin, interrupted the trouble in baseball."

  Dortmunder's throat was dry. "Hold it," he said, and swigged some beer. "Now tell me," he said.

  "Benja
min Arthur Klopzik."

  Dortmunder stared across the conduit at Kelp, as though it was his fault. (Kelp stared back, expectant, alert.) Into the phone, Dortmunder said, "Who?"

  "Benjamin Arthur Klopzik," May repeated. "They said it twice, and I wrote it down."

  "Not Craig Anybody?"

  "Who?"

  "Benjamin—" Then he got it. "Benjy!"

  Kelp could stand no more. "Tell me, John," he said, leaning forward. "Tell me, tell me."

  "Thanks, May," Dortmunder said. It took him a second to realize the unfamiliar, uncomfortable feeling in his cheeks was caused by a smile. "I hate to sound really optimistic, May," he said, "but I have this feeling. I just think maybe it might be almost possible that pretty soon I'll be able to come up out of here."

  "I'll take the steaks out of the freezer," May said.

  Dortmunder hung up and just sat there for a minute, nodding thoughtfully to himself. "That Mologna," he said. "He's pretty smart."

  "Wha'd he do? John?" Kelp was bouncing up and down in his eagerness and frustration, slopping beer out of the can onto his knees. "Tell me, John!"

  "Benjy," Dortmunder said. "The little guy the cops wired."

  "What about him?"

  "He's the guy Mologna says boosted the ring."

  "Benjy Klopzik?" Kelp was astonished. "That little jerk couldn't steal a paper bag in a supermarket."

  "Nevertheless," Dortmunder said. "Everybody's after him now, right? Because of being wired."

  "They want him almost as bad as they want you," Kelp agreed.

  "So the cops announce he's the guy lifted the ruby ring. He won't come back and say no, it wasn't me. So that's the end of it."

  "But where is he?"

  "Who cares?" Dortmunder said. "The Middle East, maybe. The Cuban part of Miami, maybe. Maybe the cops killed him and buried him under Headquarters. Wherever he is, Mologna's pretty damn sure nobody's gonna find him. And that's good enough for me." Reaching for the phone, grinning from ear to ear, Dortmunder said, "That's plenty good enough for me."

  45

  Life is unfair, as Tony Costello well knew. He was on the very brink of losing his job as police-beat reporter on the six o'clock news, and it was all because nobody knew he was Irish. It was bad enough that "Costello," though Irish, sounded Italian; but then his mother had had to go and compound the problem by naming him Anthony. Sure there were lots of micks named Anthony, but you go ahead and combine «Anthony» with «Costello» and you might just as well forget the wearin' o' the green altogether.