Why Me?

by Donald Westlake

  Dortmunder hadn’t been ready for that one. In the millionth of a second which was the only delay he dared offer, he considered the alternatives: Say no, and they’ll wonder why he got rid of a perfectly ordinary jewelry haul which could be hidden a thousand different places until the blitz was over. Say yes, and they’ll want to see it. “Yes,” Dortmunder said.

  Tiny said, “Dortmunder, we know each other a while.”

  “Sure.”

  “There’s a stink coming off you, Dortmunder. I never smelled it before.”

  “I’m nervous, Tiny.”

  “We’ll look at your stash,” Tiny said. “We’ll send six guys with you, and —”

  “Breaker! Breaker?” said a loud metallic voice, everywhere in the room.

  Tiny frowned around, this way and that: “What?”

  “I don’t care about that,” said the loud metallic voice.

  Seven or eight people in the room spoke at once. Then the loud metallic voice spoke over all of them, saying, “Well, I’m stuck here on West End Avenue with a busted transmission and I want to talk to my wife in Englewood, New Jersey.”

  “A radio,” said a terrorist.

  “CB,” said one of Tiny’s co–judges.

  “Wire,” Tiny said. His eyebrows were lowering practically to his upper lip. “Some dirty son of a bitch bastard in this room is wired, is bugging us, is —”

  “Because” said the loud metallic voice in deep exasperation, “my wife is listening on this channel.”

  A terrorist said, “His equipment is picking up these CB signals. A similar terrible thing happened to a late acquaintance of mine in Basra.”

  “I’ll report you,” yelled the loud metallic voice, “to the FCC, that’s what I’ll do, you filthy air–hog!”

  “Who,” said Tiny, flexing many of his muscles. “Who.”

  People looked this way and that, wide–eyed, listening for the return of the loud metallic voice.

  “If I could get my hands on you —”

  “BENJY!”

  The little man was already halfway to the door. Bouncing off a terrorist’s chest, ducking under a tough guy’s clutching hands, he shot from the room like a freed parakeet.

  Naturally, Dortmunder and Kelp joined in the chase.

  Chapter 35

  * * *

  Talat Gorsul, Turkish Chargé d’Affaires at the United Nations, a sleek, smooth, swarthy, heavy–lidded man with a nose like a coat hanger, emerged from his limousine and paused, his opaque eyes taking in the upright brick finger of Police Headquarters in Police Plaza. “Only a nation with no sense of history,” he said, in his velvety uninflected voice, “would build a police headquarters that looks like the Bastille.”

  His aide, a stocky spy named Sanli, a man who perspired a lot and never shaved very well, snickered. It was a major part of his job at the UN to snicker at Talat Gorsul’s asides.

  “Ah, well,” Gorsul said. “Wait,” he told the driver, and, “Come,” he told Sanli. He that he told to wait, waited, and he that he told to come, came. They crossed the brick forecourt to the brick building, went through the security check in the main lobby, and rode up in the elevator to a high floor, where they passed a second security check and at last entered a conference room packed with people, half of them in uniform.

  At the last such meeting of these people in this room, Gorsul had sent Sanli. Now, he nodded noncommittally as Sanli introduced him to a man named Zachary, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who in turn introduced him to everybody else: police officials, government officials, even an assistant district attorney, though there was hardly anyone at this point to prosecute.

  The introductions complete, Talat Gorsul sat for the next fifteen minutes at the foot of the conference table, smoothfaced, heavy–lidded, and unemotional, while he listened to several reams of platitude, jargon, and cant from one after the other of those present: the steps that were being taken, the plans for recovery of the Byzantine Fire, the increased security already laid on for after the Byzantine Fire had been found, on and on and on. At the end of it all, Zachary from the FBI rose to say, “Mister Gorsul, I hope and trust this display of our determinativeness has convinced you of our sincerability.” To the room at large, Zachary explained (as though it were necessary), “Mister Gorsul has been consid–erating an address to the United Nations with the implicatory thrust that we might for some reason be in a foot–dragging posture on this investigatory situation.”

  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’r
e 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.”

  Chapter 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.

  Chapter 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?”