Why Me?

by Donald Westlake

  “Oh, yeah, the ruby.” Dortmunder still didn’t make the connection. He sipped at his drink. “What about it?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  Dortmunder stood there, the glass up by his mouth, and looked over it at May. He said, “Say what?”

  “Those men stole the Byzantine Fire,” May told him. “They put it in the safe in that jewelry store. You took it.”

  “I took the — I’ve got the Byzantine Fire?”

  “Yes,” said May.

  “No,” said Dortmunder. “I don’t want it.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  Dortmunder filled his mouth with bourbon — too much bourbon, as it developed, to swallow. May pounded his back for a while, as bourbon dribbled out of his nose and eyes and ears, and then he handed her the glass, said hoarsely, “More” and went away to the bedroom.

  When May left the kitchen with the fresh drink, Dortmunder was just leaving the bedroom with the plastic bag of loot. Silently, solemnly, they walked to the living room and sat next to one another on the sofa. May handed Dortmunder his drink, and he took a normal–sized sip. Then he emptied the plastic bag onto the coffee table, bracelets and watches all a–tumble. “I don’t even know what it looks like,” he said.

  “I do. There was a picture on —” She picked up a ring out of the scrumble of jewelry. “That’s it.”

  Dortmunder took it, held it between thumb and forefinger, turned it this way and that. “I remember this,” he said. “I almost left it behind.”

  “You should have.”

  “At first I figured it was too big to be real. Then I figured, why put glass in the safe? So I brought it along.” Dortmunder turned it over and over, peering at it, seeing the light glint and shimmer in the depths of the stone. “The Byzantine Fire,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  Dortmunder turned to her, his eyes filled with wonder. “The biggest haul of my career,” he said, “and I didn’t even know it.”

  “Congratulations.” There was irony in her voice.

  Dortmunder didn’t notice; he was caught up in this astonishing success. Again he studied the ring. “I wonder what I could get for this,” he said.

  “Twenty years,” May suggested. “Killed. Hunted down like a deer.”

  “Um,” said Dortmunder. “I was forgetting.”

  “There’s a police blitz on,” May reminded him. “Also, according to the TV, a lot of foreign guerrillas and terrorists want that ring.” She pointed at it.

  “And people on the street,” Dortmunder said thoughtfully, “they’re pretty teed off right now at whoever has this thing.”

  “You.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Dortmunder slipped the ring onto the third finger of his left hand, stretched the hand out at arm’s length, and squinted at it. “Jeez, it’s gaudy,” he said.

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Do with it.” That question hadn’t occurred to him. He tugged the ring, to remove it from his finger. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You can’t fence it.”

  “You can’t fence anything, everybody’s shook up by all this cop business.” He kept tugging at the ring.

  “You can’t keep it, John.”

  “I don’t want to keep it.” He twisted the ring this way and that.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It won’t —”

  “You can’t get it off?”

  “My knuckle, it won’t —”

  “I’ll get soap.” She stood as the doorbell rang. “Maybe that’s Andy Kelp,” she said.

  “Why would it be Andy Kelp?”

  “He called, asked you to call back, said he might drop by.”

  “Asked me to call back, huh?” Dortmunder muttered something under his breath, and the doorbell rang again.

  May went out to the vestibule to answer the door while Dortmunder, just to be on the safe side, scooped the rest of the swag back into the plastic bag. From the vestibule came May’s loud voice: “Yes, officers? What can I do for you?”

  Dortmunder tuuuuggggggged at the ring. No good.

  “Ms. May Bellamy?”

  “Maybe,” said May.

  Dortmunder got to his feet, opened the window, dropped the plastic bag into the anonymous darkness.

  “We’re looking for a Mr. John Dortmunder.”

  “Oh. Well, um …”

  Dortmunder turned the ring around so the ruby was on the inside, next to his palm. Only the gold band showed on the back of his hand.

  May and two large policemen walked into the room. Looking very worried, May said, “John, these officers —”

  “John Dortmunder?”

  “Yes,” said Dortmunder.

  “Come along with us, John.”

  Dortmunder closed his left hand into a loose fist. The Byzantine Fire was cold against his fingers. “See you later,” he told May, and kissed her on the cheek away from the cigarette, and picked up his coat, and went away with the policemen.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  When the door to the back room at the O.J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue opened again, about an hour after Dortmunder had left, Tiny Bulcher was just finishing a story: “— so I washed off the ax and put it back at the Girl Scout camp.” Both Ralph Winslow and Jim O’Hara looked toward the door with tremulous hope in their eyes, but it was only Rollo, looking at Tiny and saying, “There’s a sweet–vermouth–straight–up out here, I think he’s looking for you.”

  “Little fella? Looks like a drowned rat?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Kick his ass and send him in here,” Tiny said. Rollo nodded and shut the door behind himself. Tiny said, “That’s my pal, with that cop’s address.” He thudded his right fist into his left palm. “Let the good times roll,” he said. Winslow and O’Hara watched his hands.

  The door opened just a bit, and a narrow, pointy–nosed, gray–skinned face peered uncertainly around the edge. The little beady eyes were blinking, and from the bloodless, down–curving mouth came a raspy whining voice: “You gonna be mad, Tiny?”

  “Yes,” said Tiny.

  “It wasn’t my fault, Tiny.” The little eyes flickered at Winslow and O’Hara, found no help there, and blinked at Tiny some more. “Honest, it wasn’t.”

  Tiny brooded at the little nervous face in the doorway. At last he said, “Benjy, you remember the time that fella told me nobody could kiss their own elbow, and then I showed him how he could?”

  Winslow and O’Hara looked at one another.

  “Yeah, Tiny,” said the little face. Below the sharp chin a gnarled Adam’s apple kept appearing and disappearing, like a pump in an oilfield.

  “If I have to get up from here, Benjy,” Tiny said, “and come after you, you’re gonna kiss your elbow.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to get up, Tiny,” Benjy said, and he sort of spurted into the room, closing the door behind himself and revealing himself to be a skinny little stick figure of a man, all in gray, with a few strands of dead hair pasted to his narrow gray scalp. In his trembling hand he carried a glass in which the maroon vermouth made rippling wavelets. He took the chair Dortmunder had once occupied, directly across the table from Tiny.

  “Comere, Benjy,” Tiny said, and whumped his palm onto the chairseat beside himself.

  “Okay, Tiny.” Benjy sidled around the table, flashing Winslow and O’Hara quick despairing smiles, like semaphores for help from a desert island. Slipping into the chair next to Tiny, he put his glass on the table and vermouth slopped onto the felt — not its first stain.

  Tiny rested his hand on the back of Benjy’s neck, in a gesture that almost looked friendly. “This is Benjy Klopzik,” he told the others. “A pal of mine up till now.”

  “I’m still your pal, Tiny.”

  Tiny shook Benjy’s neck gently, and the little man’s head flopped from side to side. “Shut up for the introductions, Benjy,” he said, and pointed at the other two, wh
o now were blinking almost as much as Benjy. “That’s Ralph Winslow, and that’s Jim O’Hara. O’Hara just got outa the can.”

  “How are ya?” Benjy said, with a ghastly smile.

  O’Hara responded with an exercise–yard nod: small, focused, almost invisible. Winslow, in a macabre parody of his former heartiness, raised his glass, in which the tinkling ice cubes had long since melted, and said, “Nice to know you. We’ve all just been talking here, telling stories. Tiny’s been telling us very interesting stories.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Benjy licked gray lips with a gray tongue. “I’d like to hear some a them, Tiny.”

  “I’d like to hear your story, Benjy.” Tiny gave him another gentle shake. “You didn’t get that address, did you?”

  “I got arrested!”

  Tiny observed the little man, who blinked back at him in desperate sincerity. Mildly, like far–off thunder, Tiny said, “Tell me about it.”

  “I hung around outside the precinct, just like you told me,” Benjy said, “and all night the cops keep comin in with people. It’s like a revolvin door. And then this cop comes over to me, and he goes, ‘You look like you wanna join us. Come on in.’ So they took me in and shook me down and asked me a lotta dumb questions about this big jewel — I mean,” he said, appealing to Winslow and O’Hara, “do I look like a guy with a big jewel on his person?”

  Winslow and O’Hara both shook their heads. Tiny shook Benjy’s head. “Benjy, Benjy, Benjy,” he said, more in sorrow than in anger, “I give you a simple job to do.”

  “Listen, I seen the guy,” Benjy said. “The redheaded cop you told me about. I’ll get him tomorrow, sure thing.” Trying for a palsy smile, he added, “And you were sure right about him, Tiny. He kicked me in the knee.”

  Tiny looked interested. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Then he told the other cops his tour was over, and he split. And before they let me go, he was gone.”

  Winslow, cranking up his heartiness, said, “Could have happened to anybody. Tough luck, Benjy.”

  “I’ll get him tomorrow, Tiny,” Benjy promised.

  “It’s that ruby,” O’Hara said. “Nobody can do nothing. I finally hit the street and nobody can do thing one.”

  Tiny, almost reluctantly, released Benjy’s neck — Benjy blinked like sixty in appreciation — and placed both tree–trunk forearms on the table. “That’s right,” he said, his voice ominous, like nearby thunder. “There’s too much agitation. It’s making me irritable.”

  Winslow said, “You’d think the law would have found the damn stone by now.”

  “The law,” Tiny said, in disgust. “You wanna count on the law?”

  “We oughta do it ourselves,” Benjy piped up, then immediately looked embarrassed and terrified at having spoken. He gulped down vermouth.

  They all looked at him. Tiny said, “Whadaya mean, do it ourselves?”

  “Well —” Benjy, seeing retreat was impossible, rushed forward. “It’s some guy in town did it, right? I mean, I know you and I know some other fellas, and you know these fellas —” with a wave at Winslow and O’Hara “— and they know some other fellas. I bet you could start here, with who else everybody knew, and draw lines, and this fella knows that fella, and by the time you’re done everybody knows everybody.”

  “Benjy,” Tiny said, leaning toward him, “if you don’t say something soon that I can understand, I’m gonna whop you.”

  “On our side of the law!” Benjy cried desperately. “We all know each other, we all got whatchu call mutual friends. So we ask around, we look around, we find the ruby!”

  “And the guy who copped it,” O’Hara pointed out.

  “Well, we take it away,” Benjy said, with unconvincing bravado. “And we give the ruby to the cops, and they lay off.”

  “And the guy who copped it,” Tiny said, “him you give to me.”

  “Whatever,” said Benjy. “The point is, the heat’s off.”

  Winslow said, “There’s something in that idea. That’s possibly a very good idea. I think I like it.”

  O’Hara said dubiously, “I don’t know, Ralph. It kinda goes against the grain, you know? Turning somebody over to the cops.”

  “Somebody that made all this trouble?” Tiny flexed his fingers. “I’ll turn him inside out and then I’ll turn him over.”

  “Besides,” Winslow said, “let’s face it, Jim, people turn people over every day. That’s what plea bargaining is, right? I give them you, you give them somebody else, right on down the line.”

  “Also,” Benjy said, “there’s regular stoolies. I mean, we all know guys that make a part of their living with their mouth, right? You got a mad against somebody, you go to this fella, that fella, you tell him a secret, and right away the cops know it and the guy you’re mad at is on his way upstate. And the rest of the time, you watch what you tell this fella.”

  Tiny said, “Which fella?” He sounded as though he might be on the way to bad temper.

  “The stoolie,” Benjy explained, blinking. “The guy you know’s a stoolie.”

  “Like you,” Tiny told him.

  “Aw, come on, Tiny,” Benjy said.

  “The stoolie could find out what clues the cops have,” Winslow said.

  Tiny brooded at him. “You mean really do it,” he said.

  Winslow said, “Tiny, it sounds weird, but I think we could. We got the manpower, we got the access, we got the interest.”

  “We’d need a center,” Tiny said. “A headquarters, like. And somebody in charge.”

  Winslow said, “There’s a phone in this room here, over there with those liquor cases. Rollo wouldn’t mind. We could start calling around from here, give this number to call back for anybody has news. Different people man the phone.”

  “It’s possible,” Tiny said.

  Getting to his feet, Winslow said, “I’ll talk to Rollo about it.” And he left the room.

  O’Hara said, “I could stay here a while. Reminds me of my cell, except for no window. And it’s better’n the room I got now.”

  Benjy was as happy as a puppy playing fetch–the–stick. Wagging his tail, he said, “It’s a good idea, huh? Isn’t it? Huh?”

  “Benjy,” Tiny said, “you go ask the cops what clues they got.”

  Benjy looked terribly hurt. “Aw, come on, Tiny.”

  “Okay,” Tiny said. “Go ask a fella to go ask the cops what clues they got.”

  “Sure, Tiny,” Benjy said. Happy again, he knocked back the last of his vermouth and bounced to his feet.

  “And don’t take all night.”

  “Sure, Tiny.”

  Benjy scampered from the room, and Tiny turned his heavy–browed gaze on O’Hara, saying, “What were you up for?”

  “Armed robbery,” O’Hara said. “My partner had a fight with his woman and she turned us in.”

  “A woman talked to somebody about me one time,” Tiny said. “I hung her off a cornice by her pantyhose.” He shook his head. “She shouldn’ta bought such cheap pantyhose,” he said.

  Chapter 20

  * * *

  “And the ring,” said the desk sergeant.

  Dortmunder looked at his left hand. “I can’t,” he said. “It’s stuck, I never take it off.” Gazing hopelessly at the desk sergeant across the little heap of his possessions on the counter — wallet, keys, belt — he said, “It’s a wedding ring.”

  The arresting officer on his left said, “The woman you’re living with doesn’t have any wedding ring.”

  “I’m not married to her,” Dortmunder said.

  The arresting officer on his right said, “What a scamp.” Both arresting officers laughed.

  “Okay,” the desk sergeant said, and extended a form and a pen across the counter. “This is the list of your property. Read it, sign it, you’ll get everything back on release.”

  Dortmunder had to steady the form with his left hand. The ruby tucked in among his fingers felt as big as a potato. He had to keep his hand partially clos
ed at all times, which felt awkward and undoubtedly looked awkward. John A. Dortmunder, he wrote, in a rather shaky hand, and pushed the form back across the counter. His left hand eased down to his side, fingers curled.

  “Come along, John,” said the arresting officer on his left. He walked with them across the big room and through a door with a frosted–glass window, into a long cream corridor with pale green plastic benches lined along the left wall. At least thirty men, none of them well–dressed, sat on these benches, looking glum, or bored, or outraged, or frightened, or fatalistic, or bewildered — but never happy. Down at the far end, two blank–faced cops leaned against the wall. One of them had blue suspenders. “Sit down there, John,” said one of the arresting officers, and Dortmunder took his place on the plastic bench. The arresting officers, without a farewell, departed.