Watch Your Back! d-13

by Donald E. Westlake

  "It isn't the tourists that bother me," his Mom informed him. "It isn't the horses, the carriages. It's the cop on my tailpipe. Don't look around!"

  "Why not?" Stan asked, twisting all the way around to gaze at the patrol car that was, indeed, traveling so close behind their cab he could see a bit of spinach caught in its grill. "I can rubberneck just as well as anybody else out for a mosey through the park." Facing front again, he said, "How did you let that happen?"

  "I was committed to the turn into the park," she said, "nobody behind me, and all of a sudden he was there. I think maybe he U-turned. Believe me, Stanley, I do not choose to be followed through the city of New York by a cop."

  "Bad luck," Stan said, which was probably meant to make peace.

  Accepting the offer, at least a little, his Mom said, "These horses and carriages and tourists aren't going to get in my way, Stanley, not if I can use my horn. But with that cop behind me? They love to hassle the cabbies, especially when there's tourists around to watch."

  "Well, here comes Seventy-second Street," Stan said, "slower than I've ever seen it arrive before—"

  "Enough."

  "When we do get outa the park, I think you oughta go—"

  "I'll pick my own route, Stanley."

  "Fine," Stan said.

  "Good."

  "You're the driver."

  "That's right."

  "The professional driver."

  "That's right."

  "Years of experience behind the—"

  "Shut up, Stanley."

  So he shut up, and when they finally got shut of the park, the horses, the tourists and the cop, he didn't even tell her she was making a mistake when she took the right onto Central Park West. He didn't mention that the better way was to run west past Amsterdam to Columbus, then make your right, so you're on a one-way street with staggered lights, and to get back to Amsterdam it's all right turns. No, fine, let her do it her way, up a two-way street, no staggered lights, and all left turns at the end of it. Great.

  Eventually, though, they did get onto Amsterdam, but just as Murch's Mom was pulling in next to the fire hydrant down the block from the O.J., out the door of the place came Dortmunder and Kelp, Dortmunder carrying a bottle. Surprised, Stan said, "The meeting's over already? We can't be that late."

  "Watch it, Stanley."

  "I'm only saying," Stan said, and got out of the cab to say, "John? Andy? Whassup?"

  Dortmunder gestured with the bottle. "Something screwy at the O.J."

  "What, it's closed?"

  "There's some guys there," Kelp said, "they seem to want privacy right now."

  Murch's Mom, joining them on the sidewalk, said, "Closed for a private party?"

  "Kinda," Kelp said, and a horn sounded.

  They turned to look, and Tiny was just buttoning open the rear window of a stretch limousine. Since he found regular taxis too form-fitting, Tiny tended to whistle up a limo when it was necessary to go somewhere. Now, window open, he said, "Everybody's on the sidewalk."

  Dortmunder, walking toward him, said, "We can't use the back room tonight, we gotta go somewhere else."

  Stan said, "Somewhere else? There isn't anywhere else."

  Kelp said, "John, is May at the movies?" because usually that's what she did when Dortmunder was out and about for one reason or another.

  Lowering a suspicious brow, Dortmunder said, "So what?"

  "So it looks," Kelp said, "like we gotta convene at your place."

  "Why my place? Why not your place?"

  "Anne Marie's home, and she wouldn't go for it, John."

  From the limo, Tiny said, "Josey wouldn't go for it in spades."

  Stan said, "You don't want to come all the way down to Canarsie," that being where he and his Mom lived.

  Dortmunder muttered and growled and scuffed his feet around. "I don't see why everything's gotta get screwed up."

  "John," Kelp said, "it's hot out here on the sidewalk. You got a nice air-conditioned living room."

  Stan called, "Tiny, we'll meet you there. The rest of us will take Mom's cab."

  "Done," Tiny said, and spoke to his driver as he buttoned the window back up.

  "Come on, John," Kelp said. "You know it's the only answer."

  "All right, all right," Dortmunder said, still surly, but then he said, "At least I got this bottle."

  "Sure," Kelp said. "Climb aboard."

  As they all did, Murch's Mom said, "You know I gotta throw the meter, I wouldn't wanna get stopped by a cop."

  "Fine," Dortmunder said. "Stan can pay the fare."

  "No meter, Mom," Stan said.

  She sulked all the way downtown.

  11

  EVERYBODY HATED DORTMUNDER'S living room. Dortmunder hated it himself, under the circumstances. They couldn't sit all together around a table, everybody at the same height, the same distance from one another. There was nobody to bring drinks, and not that much variety of drink anyway. The only thing Tiny could find to mix with his vodka was cranberry juice, which was a comedown from the red wine he was used to. Stan and his Mom did have the beer they preferred to harder stuff when driving (and backseat driving), but neither of them liked Dortmunder's salt shaker. "It comes out too fast!"

  The first ten minutes were spent going back and forth to the kitchen, which was actually quite far from the living room, a fact Dortmunder had never noticed before. Finally, though, they all settled down, Dortmunder in his regular chair, Murch's Mom in May's regular chair, Tiny on much of the sofa with Kelp on the sliver of sofa that was left, and Stan on a wooden chair he'd brought from the kitchen.

  "Now," Tiny said, "I know we're here because you people got something, but first I gotta know, what's with the O.J.?"

  Dortmunder said, "Rollo wouldn't let us use the back room. He didn't look happy."

  "He looked morose," Kelp said.

  Dortmunder nodded at him. "The very word I was thinking."

  "Also," Kelp said, "the regulars weren't saying anything."

  Stan said, "What? The loudmouths at the bar?"

  "Not a peep," Kelp told him. "They looked like they didn't wanna attract attention."

  "That's the only thing they ever want to attract," Stan said, and his Mom said, "When Stan is right, he's right," and Stan said, "Thanks, Mom."

  "Also," Dortmunder said, "there were two guys in the place, throwing their weight around."

  With a little purr in his voice, Tiny said, "Oh, yeah?"

  Kelp said, "Those were mob guys, John. You could smell it on them."

  Tiny shook his head. "Mob guys in the O.J. Why don't they stick to the Copacabana?"

  Dortmunder said, "I think something's going on in there that's linked up with the mob."

  Kelp said, "You know how they like to kill one another in restaurants and bars? Maybe those guys were in there waiting for Mickey Banana Nose to walk in, and bang-bang."

  "Then I'd like them to get it over with," Dortmunder said. "And not do any stray bullets into Rollo."

  "That could be why he was morose," Kelp said, then held up the jelly glass into which he had poured from Dortmunder's freebie bottle. "You know, John?" he said. "Not to badmouth your apartment, but this stuff doesn't taste as good here as it does at the O.J."

  "I noticed that myself," Dortmunder admitted. "I guess it doesn't travel."

  Tiny said, "Whadawe gonna do about the O.J.?"

  "Tomorrow afternoon," Kelp told him, "John and me, we'll go over, see what the story is, are they finished whatever they're doing over there. Right, John?"

  "Sure," Dortmunder said. "Could we get to the actual topic now? The reason we're here?"

  "If I'm gonna get back to Canarsie before my bedtime," Murch's Mom said, "we better."

  "Good," Dortmunder said. "This opportunity comes to us courtesy of Arnie Albright."

  "He's off in rehab," Stan said.

  Dortmunder sighed. "No," he said, "he's back." And he then related, with footnotes from Kelp, everything Arnie had said to them
in his apartment.

  When he finished, Stan said, "This elevator goes up the outside of the apartment building?"

  "Right," Dortmunder said. "And it's only got doors at the top and bottom."

  "Something goes wrong up top," Stan said, "that sounds like maybe you're trapped."

  Kelp said, "Stan, that's not the only way in and out. That's the best way, for us. But the apartment's got a front door, too, and a hall, and other elevators, and even staircases."

  Murch's Mom said, "That part's okay, Stanley. What I wonder about is this seventy percent."

  "That's not natural," Tiny said. "For a fence to take the light end of the seesaw."

  Murch's Mom appealed to Dortmunder: "So what do you think, John? Did he mean it?"

  "Well, in a way," Dortmunder said. "I think he meant he was that mad at the guy owns the apartment. He's still that mad at the guy, so that right now what he thinks he wants is revenge."

  "I agree," Kelp said. "But this is before Arnie has paper money in his hand."

  "Green beats revenge," Tiny said, "every time."

  "The thing is," Stan said, "seventy percent of what? We give him, I dunno, a silver ashtray, he says I got a hundred bucks for it, here's your seventy. Whadawe know what he got for it? He doesn't deal with people where you're gonna have invoices, receipts."

  "If Arnie ever saw a paper trail," Dortmunder said, "he'd set fire to it."

  "So what it comes down to," Murch's Mom said, "we do the work, we take the risks, he gives us whatever he wants to give us."

  "Like always," Kelp said. "It's trust makes the world go round."

  "Tomorrow," Tiny said, "I'll go look at this place." To Stan and his Mom he said, "You wanna be there?"

  They looked at each other and both shook their heads. "We just drive," Stan said. "You guys say it's good, we'll show up."

  "Right," his Mom said.

  "Fine." Tiny looked at Dortmunder and Kelp. "You two are going to check on the O.J.?"

  "That's the plan," Kelp said.

  "So where do we meet after?"

  "Not the O.J., I don't think," Dortmunder said. "Not until we know for sure what's what." He looked around his crowded living room. "And maybe not here."

  "It's daytime," Tiny said. "We'll meet at the fountain in the park. Three o'clock?"

  "Fine," Dortmunder said, and they all heard the apartment door open. The others looked at their host, who stood and called, "May?"

  "You're home?"

  May appeared in the doorway, gazed around the room, and said, "You're all home."

  Everybody else got to their feet to say hello to May and get likewise back, and then she said, "How come you didn't go to the O.J.?"

  "It's a long story," Dortmunder said.

  "We've all heard it," Tiny said, moving toward the door. "Night, May. Three o'clock tomorrow, Dortmunder."

  12

  JUDSON BLINT ENTERED names and addresses into the computer. He printed out labels and affixed them to the small cardboard boxes of books, along with appropriate postage from the Pitney Bowes stamp machine. He stacked the labeled boxes on the tall-handled metal cart and, when it was full, wheeled it out of the office to the elevator, then on down to the postal substation on the Avalon State Bank Tower lobby level. After turning the boxes over to the United States Postal Service, he used the tagged keys J. C. Taylor had given him to open Box 88, Super Star Music Co.; Box 13, Allied Commissioners' Courses, Inc.; Box 69, Intertherapeutic Research Service; and Box 222, Commercial Attaché, Republic of Maylohda. Back upstairs, he put all the mail on his desk except the few items for Maylohda, which appeared to come from real countries and official organizations connected with the United Nations. After a discreet knock on the door to the inner office, he then brought the Maylohda mail in and placed it on the desk in front of J. C. herself, who was usually on the phone, sounding very official and occasionally foreign. Back at his own desk, he next entered the newly hooked customers into the database and prepared a deposit of their just-received checks into one of J. C.'s three bank accounts in the Avalon Bank branch, also on the lobby level, having first forged J. C. Taylor on each check, a skill he had picked up in no time.

  If everything he did didn't happen to be breaking some law or another — mail fraud, misuse of bulk rate, identity theft of the endorsements, plagiarism, sale of inappropriate material to minors, on and on — all of this activity would be very like a job. But it was better than a job. It was a world, a world he'd always believed had to exist somewhere, but hadn't known how to find. So it had found him.

  When he had assembled his fake job resume out on Long Island, he'd thought he was being brilliant, and in a way he was, though not in the manner he'd thought.

  No wonder J. C. had caught on so immediately. When Judson, with his eyes freshly opened, studied J. C. Taylor's businesses, she had done exactly the same thing for references. The police chiefs and district attorneys who'd endorsed the detective course, all dead or retired or otherwise unavailable. And the same for the music publishers, disc jockeys, and songwriters boosting Super Star, and likewise the psychiatrists, "medical professionals," and marriage counselors urging the purchase of Intertherapeutic's book of dirty pictures. (Was that J. C. herself in some of those pictures? Couldn't be.)

  Ultimately, though, what made the routine in office 712 of the Avalon State Bank tower so much better than an actual job was that the job hadn't existed until he'd come along. J. C. had planned to shut down all three of these operations and had changed her mind only when she'd seen his brilliant résumé — seen through his brilliant resume, in a New York minute — and realized he was the perfect person to pick up the torch.

  He would not fail her. She has faith in me as a con artist and a crook, he told himself, and I will not let her down.

  At just after ten in the morning on the second day of his illicit employment, he was at his desk, busy with labels and Pitney Bowes, when the hall door opened. This was the first such occurrence, but he'd already been told what to say in such a circumstance — J. C. Taylor isn't here, did you make an appointment, leave your name, go away — so he was already opening his mouth before the door was fully open, but then it turned out to be the man improbably called Tiny, who was presumably J. C.'s boyfriend, though the word had never seemed more inadequate.

  "Oh, hello," Judson said, since his mouth was open anyway.

  "That's a better getup, kid," Tiny said, closing the door and waving a hand at Judson's polo shirt and slacks, which were, in fact, a much better getup than the costume he'd worn while job hunting.

  "Thank you," Judson said, pleased. "Am I supposed to tell J. C. you're here?"

  "I'll tell her myself." Tiny seemed to consider for a minute, then said, "You got a credit card?"

  Surprised, Judson said, "Sure. A couple."

  "One will do. This afternoon, rent a car. A full-size one, you know?"

  "For you, you mean."

  "That's right. Two o'clock, meet me at Lex and Seventy-second, northwest corner. When you get your credit card bill, I'll pay you back in cash."

  "Oh, sure. No problem."

  "Don't be too trusting, kid," Tiny advised him. "I'll square your absence with Josey. Two o'clock."

  "Seventy-second and Lex. I'll be there."

  "So will I," Tiny said, and advanced into the inner office, closing the door behind himself.

  Whatever it is that's happening, Judson thought, I'm getting in deeper. The thought made him smile.

  13

  SILENT AS THE tomb. When Dortmunder and Kelp walked into the O.J. a little before two that afternoon, even the floor didn't creak. There seemed to be fewer regulars than usual, huddled together at the left end of the bar, as silent and miserable as kittens in a sack with the bridge getting close. The two watchful guys in the booth on the right were not the same as the two from last night, but they weren't that different, either. Rollo had a newspaper folded open on the bar at the right end, far from the immobile regulars, and was bent over it with
a red Flair pen in his hand.

  Approaching the bar, Dortmunder felt the eyes of the guys in the booth on him, but ignored them. Then he saw that Rollo was not reading the Daily News, like a regular person, but the larger paper, the New York Times. And then he saw that what Rollo was reading in the New York Times was the want ads.

  Rollo didn't raise his eyes from the columns of jobs awaiting the qualified when Dortmunder and Kelp bellied up to the bar in front of him, but he was not unmindful of their presence. "Sorry, fellas," he said, eyes down, pen poised. "Still no go."

  "Rollo," Dortmunder said, "all's we want's a beer."

  "Two beers, in fact," Kelp said.

  Now Rollo did look up. He seemed wary. "Nothing else in mind?"

  "What else?" Kelp asked him. "It's a hot August day, the time seems right for a nice beer."

  Rollo shrugged. "Coming up," he said, and went away to draw two.

  While they waited, Kelp said, "I think it's my round, John."

  Dortmunder looked at him. "What are you up to?"

  "What up to? I feel like I wanna buy you a beer. It happens, we have another one, then you buy for me. That's how it works, John."

  Dortmunder said, "What if we only have the one?"

  "My feeling is," Kelp said, whipping out his wallet and putting cash money on the bar next to the glasses Rollo was putting down in front of them, "some day we'll be in a bar again."

  Dortmunder could only agree with that. "You'll keep track, I guess," he said, as Rollo took Kelp's money away to his open cash register and rummaged around in there a while.

  "No problem," Kelp assured him, and lifted his glass. "To crime."

  "Without punishment," Dortmunder amended, and they both drank.

  Rollo came back to put crumpled bills on the bar in front of Kelp, who took a few, left one, and said, "Thanks, Rollo."