What's The Worst That Could Happen

by Donald Westlake

  “Very good,” Max said. He was pleased to see someone who took an interest in his work.

  “I’ll be back a little later with the supplies you need,” the fellow said. “For now, I’ll just finish up in here, check the bedrooms and baths, and be out of your way.”

  “There’s someone asleep in the second bedroom.”

  “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” the fellow promised, and flashed that big smile again as he stood over the sinkful of soapy water. “I’ll be in and out of there, he’ll never even know I’m around.”

  Chapter 55

  * * *

  It was such a temptation to make off with the sleeping guard’s handgun, but Herman resisted the impulse. He was here on reconnaissance only, and would be coming back later, so pilfering pistols would not be a good idea.

  Herman Jones, formerly Herman Makanene Stulu’mbnick, formerly Herman X, finished stage one of his reconnaissance, thanked Max Fairbanks for his patience, and was ushered out of the cottage by the same brother who’d admitted him. Two more guards, one a brother and one not, escorted him from the cottage to the main path, where he thanked them for their courtesy, assured them they’d see him later, and moved jauntily away, toward the main building of the hotel.

  For Herman Jones, subterfuge at this level was child’s play, was barely deception at all. Back in the old days when he’d been actively an activist, when he’d been X and most of his jobs had been selfless heists to raise money for the Movement, so that he barely had time left to steal enough to keep his own body and soul together, he’d constructed an entirely false cover life to live within, full of nice middle–class friends of all races who believed he was something important and well–paid in “communications,” a word that, when he used it, sometimes seemed to suggest book publishing, sometimes the movies or television, and sometimes possibly government work.

  Later, when he’d been in politics in central Africa, vice president of Talabwo, a nation where your Swiss bank account was almost as important as your Mercedes–Benz and where the only even half–educated person within five hundred miles who was not trying to overthrow the president was the president, and where if the president went down the vice president could expect to share with him the same shallow unmarked grave, Herman had learned a level of guile and misdirection that Americans, had they been able to observe it, could only have envied.

  So now that he was home, no longer devoted to turning over the proceeds of all his better heists to the Movement (mainly because the Movement seemed to have evaporated while he was away), and no longer having to deal with politicians and army men (most of them certifiably insane) day and night, Herman was ready to turn his hard–earned expertise to for–profit crime.

  Which was why he was here. He’d only worked with John Dortmunder twice before, but he’d enjoyed both jobs. The first time, he’d been brought into the scheme by Andy Kelp, whom he’d met in the course of various non–Movement enterprises, and the scheme was an interesting one, in which they’d stolen an entire bank, which had given him plenty of leisure time to work on the vault. The job hadn’t wound up to be an absolutely perfect success, but the group had been nicely professional and the experience basically a good one. The second time he’d been included into a Dortmunder job, it had been a scam, a little favor like this current one, but with less potential return.

  Pilots say that any landing you walk away from is a good landing, and Herman’s variant on that was, any crime you walk away from unhandcuffed is a good crime. With that criterion, all of Herman’s experiences with John Dortmunder had been good ones.

  So now he was back in the States, and he wanted people in the profession to know he was here, he was available, and that’s why he’d phoned Andy Kelp. Then, when Andy’d told him what was going down here, and why, he could see it was a caper he had to be part of. However large or small the profit on this one, it would get him noticed in the right places. “Herman is back,” people would say to each other after tonight. “As good as ever.”

  No no no. They would say, “Herman is back. Better than ever.”

  • • •

  The night outside the cottages was dark, and very lightly populated. The children among the hotel guests were presumably all tucked into their beds at this point, watching television, while their parents and the other adult customers of the Gaiety roamed the casino or sat around in groups in the coffee shop, telling each other how much fun they were having. Outside, the dry desert air was cooler at night, almost pleasant, but the only human beings to be seen, here and there on the paths and walkways, were hotel employees and extra security personnel. And, of course, a number of robbers.

  Striding away from cottage one in the shadowed darkness, exuding the confidence of a supervisory employee on official business, clipboard prominent, Herman made his way to cottage three, diagonally to the right rear of cottage one, and at the moment — as at most moments since the high rollers left — unoccupied. (Cottages five, six, and seven, even farther back from the Battle–Lake, currently housed the imported extra guards.)

  So many hotels and other such places no longer have actual keys for their many doors. They have electronic locks instead, that respond only to a specific magnetic impulse. All the old skills of the lockman, with picks and slugs and routers and skeleton keys, have gone by the board. But technology is there to be mastered, and mastered it shall be. The card Herman now inserted into the slot of the front door of cottage three had not been supplied by a hotel check–in clerk, but had come from the criminal workshops of New York City. This card was an alien, a wily seducer, a cuckoo in another bird’s nest, and the instant Herman slid it into the slot that little green light went on, and the door fell open before him.

  Cottage three was a bit smaller than cottage one, and had the faint chemical smell of a place with wall–to–wall carpet after it’s been shut up for a while. Herman moved briskly through the place, turning on lights, making notes on his clipboard, doing small adjustments here and there. At the end, he left the small light on in the kitchen, the one under the upper cabinet that merely illuminated a bit of the white Formica counter beside the sink.

  At the door, because he wasn’t going to give his magic card away, Herman paused to take a roll of duct tape from inside his tuxedo jacket, tear off a length, and attach it to the edge of the door over the striker to keep it from locking. Spies, political agents, and other amateurs put such tape on a door horizontally, so that it shows on both front and back, and can be noticed by a passing security person. Herman ran the tape vertically, which did the job just as well while remaining invisible when the door was shut.

  Having made cottage three ready, Herman marched off and this time made his way around the Battle–Lake along the path illuminated by low–wattage knee–high flower–shaped fixtures. Beyond the lake, he approached a guard standing next to the walkway with his hands clasped behind him, observing the late–night stillness with the satisfied look of a man who likes peace and quiet for their own sake. This guard, however, was not actually a guard at all, but was another associate of John Dortmunder’s, named Ralph Demrovsky; he too wore a uniform copped earlier this evening from Finest Fancy Linen Service.

  When Herman approached, Ralph smiled and held his right hand out. Herman took no notice of him, but somehow, as he strode by, the clipboard left his hand and wound up in Ralph’s. And then, as Herman moved on through tree shadows between lighted areas toward the main building, his right hand brushed across the front of his tux jacket, and when next he moved into the light the nametag was gone from there, and he was now merely a handsome black man in a tux, surely a guest of the hotel, though better dressed than most these days. Still, there are always some well–dressed hotel guests in Las Vegas, even in these latter times, people who maintain the standards and joie de vivre of the good old days of mob bosses and Arab sheiks.

  Herman entered the hotel not as though he owned it, but as though he were thinking of buying it. He strode past the open coffee sho
p and the closed boutiques and around the check–in desk, where things were very quiet at the moment, with only one clerk on duty. To get to the elevators, he had to skirt the edge of the slot machine area, and surreptitiously he sniffed a little, to see if he could tell anything about the air, but of course he couldn’t. And from the look of the few people he could see in among the slot machines, it hadn’t started to take effect as yet.

  Well, there was plenty of time.

  Herman took an elevator to the fourteenth floor, and walked down a hallway chirping with the chatter of many television sets behind many closed doors. He was on his way to Anne Marie’s room. A nice lady, he thought, he being a connoisseur in that area. If Andy Kelp needed a lady, then that was probably the one he needed. However, Herman would keep his opinion to himself. He did not intrude into other people’s love lives unless he had hopes of becoming a participant therein, and neither Andy Kelp nor Anne Marie Carpinaw interested him in that way, which was probably just as well.

  Rap–a–de–rap; rap, rap. The agreed–upon signal. The door opened, and it was Anne Marie standing there, giving him a skeptical look. “Room service,” he suggested.

  “Come on in,” she said, and he did, and she shut the door behind him, saying, “Took you long enough.”

  “Well, you know how it is, ma’am,” he said, playing along. “We get awful busy down there in the kitchen.”

  “That’s all well and good,” she said. “But there’s no telling how upset I’d be, if it happened I’d ordered anything.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, I’ll tell the manager you said so,” Herman said, grinning at her. Then he turned away to see Dortmunder and Kelp both in chairs over by the window, looking out at the night. Dortmunder was in a guard uniform, Kelp dressed like a bank examiner in black suit, round–lensed black–framed eyeglasses, and navy blue bow tie with white polka dots. Herman could see their backs in the room and their fronts reflected in the window they were looking out. He said, “There’s nothing out there.”

  They turned at last to look at him, with glazed eyes, like people who’ve been at the aquarium too long. Dortmunder said, “That’s what I’m hoping for.”

  “Nothing out there,” Kelp explained.

  “A quiet night,” Herman assured them, and went over to also look out the window.

  Fascinating. By night, the hotel grounds became a sketch outline drawing of itself, the little flower–shaped lights becoming dots of amber against the black, defining the paths, drawing a pointillist line around the Battle–Lake, marking off the cottages. The only truly illuminated area was the pool; its underwater lights were kept on all night, creating a strange blue–green bouillon down there, its surface shadowed, its depths cool and crystal clear. Being the only center of light made the pool look much closer than it really was, as though you could open this window here and jump right in.

  Herman looked until he realized he was about to become as mesmerized as Dortmunder and Kelp, and then he backed away from it, shook his head, grinned at the other two, and said, “What are you trying to see out there, anyway?”

  “Trouble,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp explained, “If anything goes wrong in the caper, we’ll know it from up here.”

  “And,” Anne Marie said, “they’ll get out of here.”

  “Absolutely,” Kelp assured her.

  Dortmunder said, “Red lights coming from out there,” and waved in the general direction of employee parking and Paradise Road, the parallel street behind the Strip.

  Kelp showed a walkie–talkie. “Any problem,” he said, “I warn the guys, and John goes to get his ring.”

  “And I turn off the light,” Anne Marie said, “and I was asleep in bed here, all by myself, the whole time.”

  “Poor you,” Herman said, with a little smile.

  She gave him an oh–come–on look.

  “Plan two,” Dortmunder explained.

  “Plan six or seven, actually,” Kelp said. “And how are you doing, Herman?”

  “Just fine,” Herman assured them. “John,” he said, “you got that rich man extremely worried. He’s like a cat on a hot tin pan alley.”

  Dortmunder, interested, said, “You got in there all right?”

  Herman did his big toothy yassuh–boss smile: “Jess as easy,” he said, “as fallin’ off a scaffold.” Reverting to his former persona, he said, “I rigged one kitchen window and one bedroom window so they look locked but you just give them a tug. I sussed out the circuit breaker box; it’s in the kitchen, the line goes straight down. There’s no basement under those buildings, just concrete slabs, so the line must go through conduit inside the slab. Give me pen and paper and I’ll do you a drawing of the layout inside there.”

  “Good,” Dortmunder said.

  The room’s furnishings included a round fake–wood table under a hanging swag lamp — some styles are so good, they never go away — which Dortmunder and Kelp had moved to make it easier for them to see out the window and hit their heads on the lamp. Now, while Kelp turned his chair and pushed it close to that table, Anne Marie produced sheets of hotel stationery and a hotel pen. Herman sat at the table, hit his head on the lamp, stood up, moved the chair, sat at the table, and did a very good schematic drawing of the cottage, using the proper architectural symbols for door, window, closet, and built–in furniture pieces, like toilet and stove.

  As he drew, Herman described the look of the place, and as he finished he said, “There’s four uniformed guards inside, four outside, but they’re not from the hotel, they’re imported.”

  “Extra security,” Dortmunder commented.

  “Extra, yeah, but they don’t know the lay of the land.” Herman put down his pen. “I got cottage three ready,” he said. “Door’s open, one little light in the kitchen so’s you can find your way around.”

  “I should go there now,” Dortmunder decided. “You John the Baptist me,” meaning Herman, looking more presentable, should go first, to be sure the coast was clear.

  “Fine,” Herman said, and got to his feet, not hitting his head.

  “And I’ll keep watch here,” Kelp said. “Anne Marie and me.”

  Dortmunder looked one last time out the window. “Gonna get exciting out there,” he said.

  Herman grinned at the outer darkness. “I’d like to be here to watch it,” he said.

  “No way,” said Anne Marie.

  Chapter 56

  * * *

  There are no actual slow times in Las Vegas, not even in August, when the climate in and around the Las Vegas desert is similar to that of the planet Mercury, but the closest the city and its casinos come to a slow period is very late on a Monday night, into Tuesday morning. The weekenders have gotten back into their pickup trucks and campers and station wagons and vans and gone home. The people who’d spent a week or two weeks left the hotel last night. The people who are just starting their week or two weeks in funland didn’t get here until late this afternoon and they’re exhausted; not even extra oxygen in the air will keep them up their first night in town. Conventions and business conferences, which last three or four days, start in midweek and end by Sunday.

  So on Monday night, particularly into Tuesday morning, is when the casinos are at their emptiest, with the fewest tables open, the fewest dealers and croupiers and security people around, the fewest players. On this particular Monday night, Tuesday morning, by 3:00 A.M., there were barely a hundred people in the whole casino area of the Gaiety Hotel, Battle–Lake and Casino, and they were all giggling.

  None of the Dortmunder crew were in with the gigglers, not yet. Tiny Bulcher and Jim O’Hara and Gus Brock, cause of the giggling, remained on duty near the air room. Not inside it; the air room was also on the sweetened air line. Tiny and Jim and Gus hung around the basement corridors, keeping out of other people’s way — not that many other people wandered around down here late at night — and from time to time checked on the equipment in the air room, where the technicians were now all fast a
sleep, with smiles on their faces.

  In cottage three, Dortmunder sat in the dark living room, looking out at the lights behind drapes of cottage one; Max Fairbanks hadn’t gone to bed yet. In their fourteenth–floor crow’s nest, Kelp and Anne Marie looked out the window at the night and discussed the future. Herman Jones, now in chauffeur’s cap, sat at the wheel of a borrowed stretch limo near the front entrance of the Gaiety, ready to be part of the general exodus should trouble arise.

  Across town, on a dark industrial street near the railroad tracks, Stan Murch napped in the cab of the big garbage truck borrowed from Southern Nevada Disposal Service. Out of town, up by Apex, in a wilderness area off a dirt road leading up into the mountainous desert, Fred and Thelma Lartz had parked the Invidia, in which at the moment Thelma was asleep in the main bedroom, lockman Wally Whistler was asleep in another bedroom, and Fred and the other lockman, Ralph Winslow, and the four other guys aboard were playing poker in the living room, for markers; they’d settle up after the caper.