Put a Lid on It

by Donald E. Westlake

“Well, that's true,” Meehan said.

  Belatedly, Jeffords looked alarmed. “One of you? One of what?”

  “The criminal enterprise, it's called,” Bernie told him.

  Meehan smiled at Jeffords in honest pleasure. “Welcome aboard,” he said.

  43

  WHILE MEEHAN AND BERNIE put on the limo a set of Massachusetts plates that Bernie had borrowed from somewhere this morning, Bob and Jeffords went over maps spread out on the limo's hood, to be sure Jeffords would know where he was once Bob had left him at the Jag, and would be able to find Bob again once the limo had “broken down,” and would be able to find the rural grange hall they'd all decided would be the best place to dump the Burnstone household, and then would be able to find his way back to this fairgrounds, all without getting lost, arrested, exposed, kidnapped, or infected with Lyme disease. Bob mistrusted Jeffords' sense of direction, for some reason, and kept drilling him over and over until the license plate switch was complete, the limo's original plates now wrapped in burlap on the floor of the truck bed; then Bob said, “You screw up my Jag, mess it up, get the law after it, do anything to it, you're not only gonna hear about it from me, you're gonna hear about it from everybody I know.”

  “Bob,” Jeffords said, with dignified restraint, “this is the sort of thing I do. Arrive in a territory, learn the lay of the land, borrow the vehicle, deliver the speaker to the audience, collect the contributions, go to the airport. The only differences this time are, no contributions, and this isn't an airport, though at that it does look like some I've seen.”

  Once Bob was more or less reassured about Jeffords' competence, he got behind the wheel of the limo, Jeffords took his accustomed place on the back seat, and off they went. Meehan, having collected his bottle from the limo before it left, cut the dust in his throat and said, “We might as well drive somewhere.”

  “Right,” Bernie said, and they climbed aboard.

  This truck had been borrowed in New Jersey last night, and now also was adorned with Massachusetts plates. Both doors featured silver letters reading ZIP DELIVERY over a rending of Mercury's winged cap, without any company address, and it was apparently part of one of the many small fleets that serviced the port area over there. It was a boxy thing, tall but not deep, so you could stand up in the back but feel cramped, and it was kind of tippy on curves, at least when empty, as it was now.

  The hour was not yet ten o'clock, and from here they were less than twenty minutes from Burnstone Trail, but Bob wasn't due to make the limo pickup there until eleven, so they couldn't head that way yet. On the other hand, if they just hung around in an empty fairground parking lot for an hour, in full view of route 7, they just might attract the attention of a bored cop, which they wouldn't like. So they drove north awhile, looking for a gas station.

  As they went, Meehan said, “That car of Bob's surprises me.”

  Bernie said, “Why? Bob's got good taste.”

  “Most guys that work in parking garages,” Meehan said, “can have all the taste they want, they're still not driving around in this year's Jag. Unless they boosted it.”

  Bernie laughed. “Work at that garage? I just found out Bob owns it!”

  “No kidding,” Meehan said, understanding now why Bob could up and walk off the job any time he wanted for some late-night Chinese. “That's pretty good. He could make a lot of cash disappear in a place like that.”

  “Bob knows the tax laws,” Bernie said, “like a child knows his ABCs.”

  “Maybe he could help me with my taxes,” Meehan said, “if I'm out and around next year.” A strange thought; he was not usually somebody in one place long enough to fill out forms.

  “Sure he could,” Bernie said. “For a fee.”

  At ten minutes past eleven, Bernie was driving the truck south on route 7 below Sheffield when here came the limo northbound. “There it is,” Meehan said.

  There it was. Crowded into the front seat with Bob was the couple from the famous Grant Wood painting, minus the pitchfork but plus a lot of woes and grievances. Bob, at the wheel, gave their Zip truck such a glare of malevolent hatred from under his chauffeur cap bill that it was obvious in an instant that the Clendon Burnstone IV charm had already worked its magic.

  They continued to pass one another, and in the back seat, with Miss Lampry crunched up on the far side like a walnut, on the near side reclined Burnstone himself…talking. From the small smile on his face, he was pleased at what he was hearing himself say.

  “Wow,” said Bernie, continuing to watch the limo in his driver's side mirror.

  Meehan said, “They'll be lucky Bob doesn't burn the limo to the ground before they make the rendezvous.”

  “Oh, Bob's pretty much a professional,” Bernie said, as he made the turn onto Spring Road. “But I'd hate to work for him in the garage tonight.”

  Once again, in this new vehicle, they drove around the NO ACCESS sawhorse and on down to the end of Burnstone Trail. The usual three cars were in position behind the guest house, with no extra vehicles anywhere to be seen. Bernie swung the truck around in a U that didn't worry too much about lawns or plantings, and backed up to the bungalow door.

  Bernie was the lock and alarm man, so Meehan sat in the truck, took another swig from his bottle, and watched nothing happen back down Burnstone Trail while Bernie prowled around the outside of the bungalow, looking for defenses. He took only five minutes, and then he came around to Meehan's side of the truck and said, “Okay, come on.”

  Climbing down to the ground, leaving the bottle behind, Meehan said, “That was quick.”

  “We're out in the boondocks,” Bernie said, “and the stuff in there isn't that valuable. They got tape on the doors and windows, alarm to a phone line, probably goes to some state trooper barracks somewhere. I bypassed the phone line, double-checked, there's nothing else.”

  Meehan walked with Bernie back along the side of the truck to the bungalow. Frowning at the front door, not yet opened, he said, “It just seems too easy.”

  “There's nothing else,” Bernie assured him. “See that silver tape, along the edge of the glass? Way out here, that's high tech.”

  The ten thousand rules said, Never believe this is your lucky day. Meehan said, “You got a phone line tester?”

  “Sure.” He had a canvas bag of tools on the floor just inside the truck. “Not a bad idea,” he admitted, opening the bag, handing Meehan the tester, a little black machine shaped like a crab, with a dial on its back. “The line comes out in the corner over there. You should be able to reach it.”

  Walking toward the corner, Meehan said, “That's the only line?”

  “The only one.”

  Black phone line came out of the building at the corner, about seven feet from the ground. Leaning against the building, standing on tiptoe, Meehan reached up and straddled the crab onto the line, holding it so he could see the dial. “Okay, open it.”

  Bernie hit the glass in the door with a wrench, reached through the opening, and opened the door. The dial on the crab didn't flutter. Bernie walked inside, and a minute later Meehan heard another window shatter, this one in the door to the gun room. Still the crab couldn't care less.

  Nevertheless, straining, Meehan held the crab up there in place and called, “Bust one of the cases.”

  Crash; tinkle-tinkle. Nothing from the crab.

  Here and there among the ten thousand rules, there was a positive one: When you're hot, you're hot. Meehan relaxed, returned the crab to Bernie's bag, and went into the bungalow to the sweet sound of more shattering glass.

  44

  THE PACKAGE WASN'T there. They'd done everything right, and yet the package wasn't there.

  To protect all these ancient firearms, they'd first spread on the truck floor Indian blankets from the bungalow's living room, then distributed a layer of rifles and muskets on top, then more Indian blankets, and so on. When they ran out of Indian blankets they used curtains from the windows and towels from the bathroom. When they ra
n out of guns to steal they looked at one another, and Bernie said, “So where is it?”

  “In here some place.”

  Bernie gestured at the gun room, with its smashed cabinets, shards of glass and chunks of wood all over the floor, upended drawers, a couple of empty bottles that used to contain Burn-stone's bourbon and now didn't even contain the drinkers' fingerprints. “Where?” he asked.

  “Somewhere in here.”

  Feeling increasing frustration bordering on panic, mixed with a certain amount of worry about time, Meehan kicked and picked his way around the wrecked room, and the goddam package just kept on refusing to be there. It wasn't until he cut himself on a small narrow obtuse triangle of broken glass that he suddenly saw the light: “God damn it!” he cried, and put the bleeding finger in his mouth. Since, like Bernie, he was wearing pink kitchen rubber gloves, this didn't taste good, so he took the finger out of his mouth again.

  “Don't leave that glass,” Bernie said. “DNA.”

  “God damn, you're right.” Finding the culprit, carefully picking it up, he said, “Bernie, we gotta get into the guest house.”

  “Why? You think it's there?”

  “I know it's there. Come on.”

  Bernie followed him back outside, where Meehan dropped the glass onto the blacktop, breaking it some more, then ground it into powder beneath his heel, all the while Bernie was saying, “I don't know, Meehan, that's another whole proposition, they got an office in there plus living quarters, there's gonna be more than one phone line, maybe some different security for the office, and anyway, if the package isn't where it's supposed to be, what makes you think it's in there, when it could be anywhere in the world? Maybe they turned it over to CNN just last night.”

  “It's in the guest house,” Meehan said, peeling off that glove so he could suck his finger. It wasn't a bad cut, but he didn't want to leave a lot of blood around. Or even a little.

  Bernie grabbed his tool bag, sighed, and said, “Well, let's take a look.”

  Time. How long could Jeffords stall before dumping Burn-stone? How long after that before Burnstone—or more likely Miss Lampry—realized the whole exercise had been faked up for the sole purpose of getting them away from this property? How long after that until they were on the phone with the state police, and how long after that until this lovely bucolic landscape filled up with sirens and red flashing lights?

  As Bernie had predicted, there was more than one phone line into the guest house. There were, in fact, three lines, which were probably for phone, fax, and computer, and maybe Burnstone and Company had gone all modern, even though they were way out here in the boonies, and maybe they had burglar-alarmed themselves through the computer, which would be impossible to tell until you'd already tripped it.

  “Okay,” Bernie said at last, while Meehan tried not to think about his own bottle in the truck and how time was fleeting by, “here's the best I can do.”

  “Good. Let's do it.”

  But Bernie needed to describe it first. “I can get all these phone lines busy talking to each other,” he said. “Then I can unplug the computer right away, once we're in. But even so, I would say, get in and get out fast.”

  “I intend to,” Meehan assured him, and jittered for another three minutes while Bernie did everything he'd said he was going to do, ending by taking his wrench to the window in the guest house's front door. Then he reached through, opened the door, looked back at Meehan, and said, “So far, so good.”

  “Upstairs, I need upstairs,” Meehan said, rushing into the house, seeing the staircase, pounding up to the second floor as Bernie went off to off the computer.

  All the rooms up here opened from a central hall. Meehan spun in a circle, found Burnstone's room—red-white-and-blue bedspread, framed antique battle flags mounted on the walls—rushed in there, and went straight to the television set on the dresser facing the bed. Atop the TV was a VCR, and atop the VCR a padded manila mailer envelope, and atop the envelope an empty videotape box with no label on it.

  As Bernie, following, came into the room, Meehan was glaring at the VCR, muttering, “Every goddam one of these things is different. Here.” Power; thumb it; green light; okay. Eject; thumb it, grunchgrunchgrunch said the machine, and stuck a tape out at him.

  As Meehan stuffed tape into box and box into mailer next to the folded-over sheaf of papers already in there, Bernie said, “He's been watching it?”

  “Sure,” Meehan said, and pawed among the other tapes stacked in their boxes beside the television set. “Deathbed confession, great video entertainment, better than 101 Dalmatians.” He chose a tape, headed for the stairs. “I need the office, and then we're outa here.”

  45

  THEY GOT TO the fairgrounds parking lot first, and Meehan said, “I could wish we'd picked a little more secluded meeting place.”

  “Nah, we're fine, it won't be long,” Bernie told him, and here came the limo.

  Bob came boiling out from behind the wheel with his chauffeur cap still on, ran to where Meehan and Bernie stood beside the truck, waved his arms like a maniac, and cried, “I'm gonna go there, burn the house down! Where's my goddam Jag, I wanna go there now!”

  “You don't want to do that, Bob,” Bernie said.

  Bob yelled, “I never wanted to do nothing more—more—more more in my entire life!”

  Meehan said, “No, Bob, what Bernie meant was, you don't wanna fill up our getaway route with fire engines.”

  That caught Bob's attention. “Shit,” he said. “Still gotta get home, you're right.”

  Bernie extended what was left of his bottle. “Have a drink.”

  “Yes,” Bob said, and drank deep, and said, “I could come back tomorrow.”

  “Or next week,” Meehan said, “even better.”

  “I wouldn't want that sonofabitch to die before I got here,” Bob said.

  “You've seen him,” Meehan said.

  “I have.”

  “He's healthy as a moose, he'll live forever.”

  “We'll see about that,” Bob said darkly.

  Bernie said, “You know, I should take off now, you two can wait in the limo.”

  Meehan said, “You going direct to Leroy at Cargo?”

  “Sure,” Bernie said. “Then get rid of the truck.”

  “Tell Leroy, Bob and me'll call him soon, get an update.”

  “Right.”

  “Let me get my stuff,” Meehan said, and got his stuff from the truck; the package, a big white envelope from the Burn-stone office with a Betsy Ross flag next to the Burnstone Trail return address, the original limo license plates, and his bottle, now half empty; or possibly half full.

  Bernie climbed back up into the truck, waved, and drove away from there. They watched him go, and then Meehan said, “We should switch these plates.”

  “Done.”

  They walked over to the limo, Meehan put the rest of his stuff on the back seat, and then they reswitched the license plates, Meehan doing the one on the back while Bob was doing the one on the front. Both finished, they met in the roomy back seat of the limo, shared a little more bourbon, and Bob said, “I read somewheres once, revenge is a dish best served cold. I'll be good and cold when I get back up here.”

  Meehan knew the ten thousand rules disagreed with that idea, that the ten thousand rules said, If you don't strike when you're hot, you'll forget about it. But everybody has their own belief systems, and he wasn't about to get into a theological discussion with Bob, so he merely said, “Good,” and then said, “You know, Bob, if you're willing, you could do me a favor.”

  Bob gave him a Judge T. Joyce Foote fish-eye. “I ain't known you that long,” he said.

  “It's not that deep a favor,” Meehan said.

  Bob nodded, reserving judgment. “I'll listen,” he agreed.

  “In that garage of yours,” Meehan said, “I bet you got some places you could stash stuff, nobody'd ever find it.”

  “Well, sure,” Bob said. “That's my home b
ase.”

  Meehan picked up the white Burnstone Trail envelope and showed it to Bob. “You take this,” he said. “When Jeffords gets here, tuck it away somewhere he won't notice, under your coat or whatever, and when you get to that garage of yours tuck it where nobody's gonna notice it.”

  Bob took the envelope and considered it. He raised an eyebrow at Meehan and then at the envelope. “For how long?”

  “Maybe a couple hours, maybe forever.”

  Bob shook the envelope, but it didn't do anything interesting. “Is this thing gonna blow up?”

  “Not in your garage.”

  Bob thought about that. “But somewhere, it might,” he said.

  “We never know,” Meehan told him, quoting from another important section of the ten thousand rules, “what tomorrow may bring.”

  46

  IT WAS NEARLY an hour before Jeffords showed up in the Jag, and by then Meehan and Bob had grown more than ready to part company for a while. They didn't really know each other, they didn't have a lot in common, there weren't many topics they could chat about together, and the bourbon bottle was empty.

  “It would help,” Meehan said at one point, “if one of us was the kind of guy told all kinds of amusing and whimsical anecdotes about his past history, and capers, and marriages, and all that.”

  “I hate those kinds of people,” Bob said.

  “So do I,” Meehan agreed, “but we could use one right now.”

  “What I could use is my Jag,” Bob said. “I keep seeing it in a ditch somewhere, totaled, fucked over, and Jeffords not even scratched.”

  “The Jeffords not being scratched part I can buy,” Meehan said.

  But then, at long last, here came the silver beauty, growling in contentment, gliding like a cloud over the rough gravel parking lot. When Jeffords climbed out of the car, he had the slightly zonked look of somebody who's just had a really long and satisfying massage. He kept looking at the Jag, there beside him, and patting it with his fingertips.