Good Behavior

by Donald E. Westlake

  Actually, it had almost worked out. Smith—call him Smith, that’s the only name they had on the son of a bitch so far—had made a run for it out that back door, this door here, and Pickens afterward had counted seven big raggedy holes in this door, meaning he must have missed Smith by no more than inches.

  But by however narrow a margin it might have been, miss Smith he had, and by firing off his weapon in that darkened room he’d set loose some of the worst instincts of the troops in his command. By the time the lights had come back on there were at least half a dozen spontaneous brawls and fistfights and wrestling matches already going on, and maybe ten handguns were out and being waved this way and that. Before Pickens had managed to restore order, the roll call was four broken jaws, three broken arms, nine hands with broken bones, and one fellow who’d been kneed so hard he might never straighten out again. Which reduced Pickens’ forces from sixty men to forty-three, all of whom were right now out and about the seventy-fourth floor, looking for Smith.

  He had to still be here, somewhere on this floor. The security wimps had checked with their comrades in the basement—which is what had brought this white-haired red-faced head security wimp hotfooting it up—and there had been no breach of security to the public stairwell since Smith had disappeared. There was no possible way he could get through Margrave’s interior door to the separate stairway up to seventy-six, but on the other hand it was pretty certain by now he was no longer within these Margrave offices. Windows up here didn’t open, and no elevator had come up to this level for several hours except the one bringing the head security wimp, so that meant Smith must have gone to ground in the territory of one of the other companies with space on this floor. That’s where Pickens’ troops were right now, doing a room-by-room search. It was only a matter of time.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” the head security wimp said.

  “I need my time for other things,” Pickens told him. “And I need to know who that Smith is, who he’s working for. Is he just a newspaper reporter? Is he FBI, or CIA, or Customs? That’s our big worry, you know, Customs.”

  “Customs? What the hell have they got to do with anything?”

  “If you mount an armed insurgency against a nation with which the United States is at peace,” Pickens told him, “and if you gather and provide weapons for your forces on American territory and then transport them to the war zone from American territory, you are committing a Federal crime. And enforcement of that Federal crime comes under the jurisdiction of Customs. I feel you ought to know your situation here,” Pickens finished.

  “Not my situation,” the head security wimp said, but he did look worried.

  “You’re part of it, my friend,” Pickens assured him. “It’s just as important to you as it is to me to catch this Smith and find out who and what he is. Maybe he’s working for the Guerreran government, and they already know we’re on our way. If so, I’d like to know about it.”

  “I suppose you would,” the head security wimp agreed.

  Pickens shook his head, disgusted at himself. “If only I’d winged the son of a bitch,” he said, “so we could have ourselves some blood to follow.”

  “We’ve got plenty of blood already,” the head security wimp said, sounding disapproving. He was still mad about Pickens having let off his weapon in the house like that, but didn’t dare come right out and say so.

  One of the other security wimps now approached them down the hall, his face all blotchy in red and white; angry, or scared, or maybe both. They watched him approach, and the head security wimp said, “You got news, O’Brien?”

  “Some of those guys knocked out O’Toole,” O’Brien said. He wouldn’t look at Pickens.

  “Well, um,” the head security wimp said. He and O’Brien stared fixedly at each other, both waiting for Pickens to say something, but Pickens didn’t feel he had anything to say. He turned instead and studied the raggedy holes in the assembly room door. Nice tight pattern. Good weapon, the Valmet. Pity Smith hadn’t gone through this doorway just a bit farther to the right.

  “Well,” the head security wimp finally said, “how’s O’Toole now?”

  “Laying there,” O’Brien said. His eyebrows were way up high on his forehead, expressing mute outrage, which was the only kind of outrage he was permitting himself to express.

  “Well, there’s probably an explanation,” the head security wimp said.

  Pickens went right on having nothing in particular he wanted to say.

  O’Brien, voice trembling with unexpressed outrage, said, “They just knocked him out, that’s all.”

  “Call downstairs,” the head security wimp said. “Tell, uhhhh, tell O’Leary to come on up and take his place. Then tell O’Toole to go on down—”

  “He’s unconscious! I told you that!”

  “When he gets conscious again!” the head security wimp snapped, getting mad at the messenger. “When he can listen, you tell him to go on downstairs, have a cup of coffee. Tell him to have O’Marra take a look at him.”

  O’Brien nodded, then shook his head. He was growing calmer, but still ached with an unresolved need for satisfaction. “I’m telling you, Chief,” he said, man to man, “they just up and knocked him down.”

  “Message received, O’Brien,” the head security wimp said, being very stern about it because he had no intention of taking any action. “But the message I want to receive,” he went on, “is that you found that fella Smith.”

  “Oh, we’ll find him,” O’Brien said, “if we’re let alone to do it,” and at last sneaked an angry look at Pickens, who gazed at him mildly. After a few seconds, O’Brien snorted and shook his head and marched away, very stiff-backed.

  The head security wimp gave Pickens a sidelong glance. “Doesn’t appear to be such good discipline in that bunch of yours,” he said.

  “Oh, I’ve got no complaints,” Pickens said amiably. “Do you?”

  The head security wimp thought about that. “I’ll see how my boys are getting along,” he decided, frowned at Pickens as though he might deliver himself of an exit line, thought better of it, and went stumping away toward the exit from Margrave to the public hall.

  Which was, Pickens realized, off to the right from here. But if Smith went out the left side of this doorway here, pushing open a door that opens from left to right, with 62 millimeter slugs chunking into the wood just next to him on his right side, and if he was going out to a hallway just as pitch black as the room he was leaving, would he turn and go around that door and into the line of fire and off to the right? Or would his natural tendency be to go to the left? And if he went to the left, what would he find down there and how would he get himself back to the Margrave exit?

  Pickens’ troops and the security wimps had gone all over Margrave first, keeping a guard on the only exit, and had found nothing. Still, what would be lost by Pickens himself trying to reconstruct the route taken by Mr. Smith?

  Nothing.

  Right hand casually resting on the butt of the Belgian Browning 9mm automatic in the open holster at his waist, Pickens strolled on down the hall. At the end, another hall went off to the left, with doors on both sides and a double door at the very end. Pickens went along there, opening the doors on the right, seeing a line of small square offices with windows looking out at a blue-gray pre-dawn sky. None of the offices had second exits or led to anywhere else. The door at the end of the hall opened to a three-room suite, including a large and elaborate corner office, but this too was self-contained, leading only back to its own entrance.

  Now Pickens worked back down the hall, opening the doors on the other side. Smaller offices, windowless. The third of these had a door on its far side, which Pickens opened, and which led him into a large dark space. He found light switches, clicked them on, and looked at a very large rectangle divided into a lot of tiny cubicle offices, with windows down the right wall. If he had the geography of this place worked out, the left wall of this space would have the stage of the ass
embly room on its other side.

  A straight central aisle led down through the labyrinth of cubicles, and at the end were three doors, one leading to a storage room full of stationery supplies, one to a small room containing two copying machines, and one to a narrow room, barely more than a closet, with the door to the interior staircase on its other side.

  Pickens frowned. So far, he had seen no trail, no spoor, no indication that Smith had come this way at all. On the other hand, he had seen no circular route that would get Smith back to the Margrave exit once he’d turned left from the assembly room. If he turned left.

  The door to the interior staircase was supposed to be kept locked. Pickens went over and tried it, and the lock was firm. There was no sign of forced entry. The keypad beside the door showed no indication of tampering. Pickens keyed in the four-digit number that unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped through to the bottom of a simple stairwell with carpeted steps and dark paneled walls and round ceiling globes kept permanently lit. Still no spoor.

  Pickens looked up the stairs. He knew there was no entrance on the next floor, at seventy-five, where he himself now slept—whenever he had a chance to sleep—since some sort of religious fellow had been kicked out of there day before yesterday. (Good thing he hadn’t been asleep up there, that religious boy, when the Valmet went off!)

  Two flights up, at the top of the tower, was the private apartment owned by the boss of bosses, Mr. Frank Ritter. Pickens, having tracked down a rumor with his usual thoroughness, now knew that Ritter had a daughter locked away up there, a loony or something, that the religious fellow had been praying over or trying to exorcise the devils out of or some such thing. She was locked away and a couple of private guards were on duty up there at all times; better men than the security wimps, but not as all-out homicidal as Pickens’ boys.

  Was it time to think the unthinkable? If Smith turned left—that’s the key point right there, if the son of a bitch turned left—then the narrow end of the funnel was this stairwell. Did Smith have access to the four-digit lock code? If not, how would he get through this door? And what would happen when he got to the door upstairs? And then what would happen when he got to the private guards up there?

  Was Smith linked to Ritter in some way?

  Double-dealing did always have to be allowed for.

  Pickens stood at the bottom of the stairwell, frowning, thinking it over, and came to a conclusion. All right. If Smith turned right from the assembly room, and went straight out the Margrave exit, there’s a lot of places he could be, all on the seventy-fourth floor, and we’ll look in every one of them. And if he doesn’t turn up …

  Pickens brooded at the carpeted stairs. “I sure wish I’d winged you, friend,” he said aloud. “I could use just one little drop of blood right now. But if we don’t find you back the other way, then you damn well had to come this way, and I don’t care if it’s possible or not. And when I find you, Mr. Smith, you can tell me yourself just how you did it.”

  32

  “I think I’m bleeding,” Dortmunder said. On the right side of his neck, just about where a vampire would get him—remembering that scary moment in the dark hall when Sister Mary Grace’s hand had closed around his wrist—just about at that spot, there was a growing itchiness, and when Dortmunder touched it his fingertip came away with a drop of blood. A tiny, faint, almost invisible drop of blood, but still. Dortmunder held it out for the good Sister to see.

  They were in a bathroom, a strange place to be with a nun, but she’d insisted, pushing and prodding him as though he were a big piece of furniture like a chiffonier she was trying to get through a door, and he supposed she was right. Here was about the only place in this apartment where the guards wouldn’t just knock and walk in.

  The bathroom was very expensive-looking, with brown-flecked white marble everywhere, and a special beige bathtub the size of a Toyota Tercel, plus a walk-in shower larger than Dortmunder’s closet at home, and lots of big fluffy tan towels, and lights all around the mirrors, and a very soft tan terrycloth-covered stool on which Dortmunder sat and looked at a drop of his own blood on his fingertip.

  Sister Mary Grace had led the way up to the top of the tower from Margrave, going ahead at every turn and every door, making sure the guards were nowhere in sight, then motioning him on, and Dortmunder had ducked and skittered and jumped around like people in war movies undergoing sniper fire, and eventually here they were in the bathroom together with the door locked and Sister Mary Grace prowling back and forth on the terrycloth rug over the marble floor, brooding, apparently trying to figure out some way to get out of this tower with her rescuer, who at the moment happened to be bleeding.

  She looked over at him, one eyebrow raised, then crossed to look at the fingertip. Dortmunder tilted his head to the side and pointed with his other hand, saying, “Right around there.”

  She studied his neck, having to get very close to see whatever it was, suggesting it wasn’t really very large. Then she nodded, held one finger up, and abruptly started furiously to run in place.

  “Oh,” Dortmunder said. “Sure, uh … Run. Jog, trot, dash, sprint, gall—Sprint?”

  She nodded, then made a gesture like pulling taffy, with both hands. Dortmunder observed this, then said, “Stretch it?” She nodded. “Spriiiiiiinnnnnttt,” he said, and she shook her head and looked at him more in sorrow than in anger. “Oh,” he said. “You mean, add parts to it or something.” She nodded. He thought. “Sprint-ing. Sprint-able. Sprint-er. Yeah? Sprinter?”

  Now she did the earlobe thing: Sounds like.

  “Oh, sure,” Dortmunder said. He was getting so good at this, he amazed himself. “Splinter! I got a splinter in my neck!”

  She beamed at him. He beamed back. They both beamed happily about his having a splinter in his neck, until he frowned and said, “How do you get a splinter in your neck?”

  She shrugged.

  “Oh, I know how. When the guy was shooting, and I was going out, some bullets hit the door.”

  Stiff-fingered, she jabbed the side of her own neck.

  “That’s just what happened,” Dortmunder agreed.

  She went away, and pulled on one section of the mirror, which opened to a medicine chest. Back she came with Mercurochrome and a Band-Aid, and Dortmunder said, “That isn’t going to sting, is it?”

  She grimaced at him: Big baby. Then she tilted her head to one side to show him how he should do it, and he did it, and the Mercurochrome didn’t sting at all. She put the Band-Aid on, and he looked at himself in the mirror, and now instead of vampires he reminded himself of Frankenstein’s monster. Meantime, the Sister put her tools of mercy away, closed the medicine chest, and turned to spread her hands, point at him, point at herself, and make a gesture like diving over the side of something.

  “Sure,” Dortmunder said. “I’d love to get us both out of here, but things aren’t—Well, this wasn’t the plan.”

  She pantomimed shooting a machine gun.

  “Yeah, those guys,” he agreed. “I didn’t know they were there, I figured I’d just come up through Margrave late at night, pick you up, go back down.”

  She folded her arms and very slowly shook her head.

  “Well, I know that now,” he said. “Who are those guys?”

  She marched in place, saluting.

  “An army. They’re going down to South America somewhere, overthrow a country or something?”

  She nodded.

  “For your father?”

  She pretended to throw up, quite realistically, over the toilet.

  Dortmunder said, “Well, they’re between us and getting out of here. Plus the regular security guys, plus the guards up here.”

  She nodded, accepting the grimness of the outlook.

  “They’re all gonna be looking for me,” Dortmunder said, “and—” Struck by a sudden thought, he said, “Oh, boy! I hope they don’t find my friends.”

  Question?

  “Well,” he said, “some pe
ople I’m working with.”

  She looked hopeful and eager and pointed at herself.

  “Well, not exactly,” he said. “I’m the only one actually coming up here to, uh, rescue you.”

  Quizzical frown, pointed downward.

  “Well, what they’re doing,” Dortmunder said, hemming and hawing, “they’re kind of—Well, they’re doing other parts of it.”

  She frowned, not getting the picture, then all at once gave a big knowing nod. Holding one finger up for him to attend, she tiptoed over to the sink, sneakily looked in both directions, picked up the soapdish, held it tucked in under her armpit, and sneaked away, then stopped to give him a raised-eyebrow question.

  “Well, yeah,” Dortmunder admitted. “They are, uh, stealing. I mean, it’s what we do. And I needed help to get into the building and all.”

  She waggled a naughty-naughty finger at him.

  Dortmunder said, “Anyway, everybody’s insured these days, right?”

  She thought about that, then suddenly smiled all over.

  “What’s up?”

  She pantomimed throwing up in the toilet, then pantomimed dealing out dollar bills.

  “You mean, your father has to make good on losses in this building?”

  Emphatic nod.

  Relieved, Dortmunder said, “So it’s okay, then.”

  She thought that over and did a teeter-totter motion with one hand; morally ambiguous.

  Dortmunder would accept that. For him, morally ambiguous was a lot better rating than usual.

  She looked alert, pointed to her own head: Idea. Pointed downward, then with both hands did fingers walking up steps.