Watch Your Back! d-13

by Donald E. Westlake

  "Says he can."

  "Good."

  "Day after tomorrow."

  "Not today?"

  "No. Looks like we'll move the smaller one first, take it out there."

  "But," Kelp objected, hunkering over the phone, "what we said, we'd use the big one to pick up the small one."

  "Not the way it's gonna work."

  "Too bad," Kelp said, wondering how they'd get at that alarm without a nice, tall truck to help.

  "So what we've got here," Stan said, "is what Tiny would call another delay."

  "Yes, he would. In fact, he will."

  "I was wondering, could you call him."

  Kelp made a regretful face, which, of course, Stan could not see. "Gee, I don't think I could," he said. "I think of it as your news."

  "Well, it's everybody's news."

  "It was yours first."

  "Well, then, there's the other issue."

  "Other issue?"

  "The location you were gonna find, for the trade."

  "I'm working on that."

  In fact, Kelp was at that moment sharing muffins and eggs with Anne Marie at a neighborhood beanery, but he had actually turned his thoughts once or twice so far to the question of where to stash the truck once it was full of product for Arnie Albright. "But now, turns out," he said, "I got an extra forty-eight hours."

  "Use them well," Stan advised.

  "Thank you."

  Kelp broke the connection, pocketed the cell, kissed Anne Marie on the cheek, the nose, and the lips, and went off to look for a little cranny somewhere. It was such a nice sunny August day, without that humidity that sometimes happens, that he decided to leave the medical profession alone for once and start his search on foot. If I were a truck, he asked himself, where would I want to stash myself?

  The problem is, Manhattan is not only an island, it's crowded. Other places, where people and their civilizations spread out like kudzu, you've got your front lawns, back yards, side driveways, alleys, mewses, cul-de-sacs, empty lots. In Manhattan you've got three things: street, sidewalk, building. Bang bang bang, that's it. (Forget parks; they're watched.)

  There was a cubbyhole in Manhattan once, way downtown, about the size of the original Volkswagen Beetle, and one day an immigrant from Pakistan found it, moved in, and sold CDs and sunglasses from there for years until he retired to Boca Raton. Sent a son through NYU, a daughter through Bard. Is this a wonderful country or what?

  Or what, if you're trying to stash a truck. The upside to this crowded-island thing was that always, somewhere, here and there around town, something that wasn't wanted any more was coming down to make way for something new that would be much more useful, at least for a while. The city is forever pockmarked with construction sites, some of them quite extensive, up to a full city block rectangle (city blocks aren't square; would you expect them to be?).

  It was Kelp's initial idea that he would ankle this way and that around town in the pleasant sunlight and see did he come across a construction site large enough for its workers not necessarily to notice the addition of one extra truck parked in a corner, particularly if it was in with materiel not yet in use or a section they were temporarily finished with. After all, how long would it be before Arnie found some other location for the goods? Just a few days, probably, especially if they insisted. Especially if they sent Tiny to insist.

  It's true the extra two days was a bit of an irritation, but on the other hand, it took the pressure off Kelp in his search. So he ambled along, and when next his cell vibrated against his leg, he took a couple of extra steps to get in the shade of a very nice plane tree before he uncorked the thing, and said, "Yup."

  "Another delay."

  Tiny — so the news had spread. "I've been thinking about that," Kelp told him, "walking around here remembering the three most important things about real estate—"

  "You got your location yet?"

  "I'm not gonna need it till day after tomorrow, you know."

  "Where you looking?"

  "Around and about."

  "I don't like these delays."

  "We just roll with the punches, us guys."

  "Not my punches," Tiny said, and broke the connection.

  Over to the west by the river was where a lot of construction was taking place these days. For many years, New York City ignored its riverfronts, got along somehow without all those esplanades, boardwalks, colonnades, market piers, and waterside restaurants that lesser cities tried to console themselves with, but now the real estate devil-princes, in their aeries on top of the taller buildings, have noticed that gleam of water far below and have devised just the perfect way to deal with it. Put up a Great Wall of separate huge buildings, jammed together, marching for miles up the West Side, with windows. That way, the office workers and residents in those buildings can have terrific river views and then come out and describe them to everybody else.

  Moving up along this serial construction site, Kelp had made it into the upper Fifties when he thought he saw something that might serve. So he swerved that way, but then the cell started vibrating, so he swerved the other way, unleashed the cell, and it was Dortmunder:

  "I understand you're out lookin for the place." I am.

  "Even though we got the delay and all."

  "Well, the weather's nice, so why not take advantage."

  "You want company?"

  "What, to walk?"

  "Well, yeah, to look around, see what's happening."

  What is he up to? Kelp asked himself. "I don't know," he said, deliberately not using any of Dortmunder's names, not out in public like this, "I seem to be doing pretty good as a solo here. You're at kinda loose ends, I guess."

  "Well, kinda. Except, naturally, I gotta go have a word with our friend."

  Kelp immediately saw what was what. "Our friend" was Arnie Albright, and Dortmunder had volunteered to have a word with him, Dortmunder and nobody else. Hence, "Ah hah!" said Kelp.

  "Whadaya mean, 'ah hah'? I just said."

  "You want you should come with me so then I should go with you."

  "Well, it seems kinda the thing, you know, we went there together last time, worked out okay."

  "I don't think so."

  "He'd probly expect us to show up together."

  "He'd be wrong."

  "You said yourself how much he improved."

  "Not that much."

  "Well, anyway."

  "Get it over with," Kelp advised. "It's one of those things better looked back on than forward to."

  "Sure," Dortmunder said, and grumpily hung up.

  By that point, walking and talking, Kelp had almost circled the construction site that had caught his eye, and was being stopped by a tall chain-link fence where there used to be, more than likely, all three of the city's basic elements: street, sidewalk, building. There was quite a dropoff beyond a low metal barrier to his right, with the West Side Highway rushing back and forth below, and the Hudson sparkling all the way from there over to the squat towers of New Jersey.

  The Hudson is a tidal river for up to a hundred miles inland, and the tide at the moment was coming in, which was slightly disorienting. It was a little weird to know that upriver was to your right, and yet the strong flow of water was headed up that way. He knew it didn't actually slop over the sides when it reached the top up in the Adirondacks, but it felt that way.

  Anyway, this chain-link fence. Kelp turned and ambled back alongside it, and here was a broad gate kept open during work hours because cement mixers and other large workhorses were pretty steadily passing in and out. Inside, a temporary dirt road led down to a cellar level, where the work was going on. Far over to the left, down there, half a dozen trailers were set up as site offices. Guys and vehicles moved in constant random motion, like a disturbed anthill.

  Kelp waited while an empty flatbed truck groaned up and out of there; then he entered and walked down the slope, because it seemed to him some unused vehicles were parked behind the office trailers
. Would they like a playmate?

  "Where's your hard hat?"

  A guy called that from over to the right, just as Kelp reached the foot of the slope. With a big smile and wave, Kelp pointed leftward at the trailers. "Just going to get it!" And he moved on, striding pretty fast.

  Yes, as he approached the trailers he could better see the other things parked back there, and they were tow trucks, a couple of pickups, and some other things, including a dump truck with its forward-tilting hood standing up like a parrot's nose.

  "Where's your hard hat?"

  This safety expert was a guy coming out of one of the trailers. "Just going to get it!" Kelp assured him, with a big smile, and pointed the direction he was going.

  Definitely this was the place. The parked vehicles were not all jammed in together like a parking lot, but just left here and there in the empty space behind the trailers as the drivers had no more immediate use for them. The truck Stan would bring here after the visit to the penthouse would fit in perfectly right there, between the hook-nosed dump truck and a red pickup with a see-through Confederate flag covering its entire rear window.

  Having seen enough, Kelp turned about and headed back for the ramp.

  "Where's your hard hat?"

  "Just going to get it!"

  Kelp kept moving, kept smiling, kept looking around at everything there was to be seen. They wouldn't be able to move their truck in or out at night, because that big gate would be locked and there would be night watchmen in here, but that was okay. The penthouse was a day job, and they could finish it up and get the truck over here long before the end of the workday. Then, once again, when Arnie was ready, they could move the thing out during the day. No problem.

  The only thing was, before he came back here, he'd really have to get a hard hat.

  36

  PRESTON DIDN'T APPEAR for lunch. That never happened; Preston was not a man to miss a meal. Alan looked around the half-full dining hall, and Pam, this week's tootsie, was also not present. Had they chosen to lunch together, in his room or hers? Not entirely like him, but not impossible, either. Still, Alan didn't like this nonappearance, so after lunch he went looking.

  Nobody home at Preston's place. Door locked, shades drawn, nobody home. Alan called through the glass door just to be certain, calling Preston's name and his own, but no response.

  At Pam Broussard's place, though, the situation was quite different. Alan knocked on her door, and when almost immediately she opened it, he reacted first to her clothing — she was wearing clothing, all over, even shoes — and then to what she said: "They're on — Oh." Surprised, but not awkwardly or guiltily so. "I thought you were the bellboy," she explained.

  In the dimness of her room, he could see two rather large suitcases on the bed, closed and ready to go. The less a woman wears, the more luggage she needs to carry it in. Feeling a sudden apprehension, he said, "You're leaving us?"

  "The office here got an e-mail for me," she said. "My mother just died, very unexpectedly." Said with no more emotion than if she were saying, "I'll have the fish."

  She doesn't care if I believe her or not, he thought. "That's terrible," he said, matching her emotional level. "I was wondering if you knew where Preston was." She does know, he thought, she does know, and something has gone dreadfully wrong.

  But she said, "I have no idea, I haven't seen Pres since breakfast. I went sailing, and you know how he never wants to go sailing. Then I came back from my sail, and there was the message about my poor mother."

  "Of course." There would actually be such an e-mail message — he had no doubt of that — but if this ice statue had ever possessed a mother, that mother had not unexpectedly fallen down dead today. What has she done? Alan thought. Where is Preston? What on earth can I do about it?

  "Oh, good, here's the bellboy now. Very nice to have met you, Alan," she said, and extended a steady hand.

  What else could he do? He shook her hand, a cold hard thing like a falconer's glove. "We'll miss you," he said, and gave her back her hand.

  The bellboy, young, thin, French, and leering, stripped the clothing from Pam with his eyes, then went on inside to get the luggage, while Alan's brain spun madly, searching for something to grasp onto, something to make sense. They wouldn't kill him; no one would kill him; everybody wanted Preston Fareweather alive. He was the goose that lays the golden eggs, safe here on this remote island in the Caribbean, so where was he?

  "I'm so sorry not to say good-bye to Pres," Pam said, already turning away. "Would you say it for me?"

  What has she done? "The next time I see him."

  She smiled; something about that amused her. "Yes, that's when I meant," she said. "Good-bye, Alan." And she followed the bellboy away, down the curving path.

  37

  "YAR?"

  "Arnie, you know who this is. You don't have to shout out my name."

  "Well, naturally, I know who this is! And is this also the best news in the world?"

  "Well, no."

  "So soon? The whole thing done, every—"

  "No, Arnie, it isn't done."

  "It isn't done. Is this bad news you're calling me with?"

  "No, Arnie, no bad news. In fact, no news, nothing."

  "That's why you're calling? To tell me no news?"

  "The reason I'm calling, I want to come over, have a conversation. On the same subject, you know what I mean."

  "You wanna come here? You wanna come here?"

  "I thought I'd come over now, if that's okay."

  "This never happened to me, you know, back when I was obnoxious. This is a whole new world opening up before me here."

  "I'll come right over."

  "Yeah!"

  Dortmunder rang the bell, and a voice trying very hard to be musical rasped from the speaker: "Is that you-oo?"

  "Yeah, Arnie, it's me."

  Buzz, slam, smell of wet newspapers, Arnie at the head of the stairs. Dortmunder plodded up, and Arnie said, "Wait'll you see. I made a change like you wouldn't believe."

  Dortmunder looked at what appeared to be the same actual Arnie, and said, "A change in the apartment, you mean."

  "It's the new me, John Dortmunder," Arnie said, ushering him over the threshold. "I dunno, I just gotta pat myself on the back. What a terrific guy I'm turning out to be!"

  "Uh huh."

  Arnie closed the door, Dortmunder started across the room, and all at once he was struck by any number of sensations. Sound, for instance — a rather loud, continuing whoosh, as though your neighbor were warming up his jet plane. Smell, for a second instance — there was none, not a whiff, not as much as you'd smell in a museum at midnight. Touch — there's another one, a feeling of coldness all over his body. And finally, sight — a big black, hulking box now filled the airshaft window, vibrating all over and giving off both the sound and the cold.

  Dortmunder said, "Arnie? Is that an air conditioner?"

  "It's August out there, John Dortmunder," Arnie said, "and yes, to answer your question, that is an air conditioner. All these years I didn't have an air conditioner, because I didn't have nothing, because I didn't think I deserved nothing, I was such a hopeless scumbag, the clerks at Gristede's would pay me to shop at Sloan's."

  "I heard that."

  "But this is the new me, John Dortmunder, and I deserve, I deserve, I deserve… the best! Of everything! So it happened, this air conditioner moved into my life along with a few other odds and ends, I looked at it, I said to myself, why don't I break a link in the chain of commerce just for once and keep the goddamn thing? And the extra reward is, the smell is gone! Even from the bedroom!"

  "That's great, Arnie."

  "I am a changed man," Arnie explained. "I tell you, John Dortmunder, the next toaster comes into this place, it's mine. "

  "I think you're right about that," Dortmunder said. "But the reason I wanted to come over, and this is even before I know about the air conditioner—"

  "It's brand-new. I mean, to me."

/>   "So maybe we could sit and talk?"

  "Absolutely," Arnie said, but then he frowned and looked around, betraying a little uncertainty. "The one little problem I got to admit to you," he said, "is, it's a little tough to sit at that table now. I mean, the air conditioner's great, but it does give you a little Mount Everest feeling if you get too close to it. I almost got frostbite at breakfast before I figured out what was going on."

  Dortmunder looked around. "There's space on that wall if you move that other chair over," he said. "You and me, we could drag the table and chairs over there. You wouldn't have your view, but you don't have it any more anyway."

  "It wasn't that much of a view to begin with. Let's do it."

  So they did some furniture rearranging, and Dortmunder got just a glancing shot of the arctic blast up close, just enough to let him know there are worse things in life than heat and smells, and then they sat down in the new location, and Arnie looked around to say, "I never seen the room from this angle before."

  "Yeah, I guess not."

  "Maybe somebody'll move me some paint."

  "Probably not Preston Fareweather," Dortmunder said, hoping to segue into the real topic.

  Arnie laughed. "No, all his paint's on canvas, signed 'Picasso, signed 'Monet. You want to be sure you get some of those."

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," Dortmunder allowed.

  Arnie looked alert. "Yeah?"

  "We figure we're going in Friday."

  "Friday's good."

  "It's when we'll get the truck, that morning. We figure to do it all day, as long as it takes, get out of there long before dark."

  "That sounds like a good plan."

  "But from what you said about the place, it's got to be just jam-packed with goodies."

  "It is, John Dortmunder, you'll have a ball."

  "It's gonna be too much stuff for one truck, and we can only make the one trip."

  "So choose the best," Arnie said, and grinned from ear to ear. "I can hardly wait."

  "But that's what we're afraid of," Dortmunder told him. "What if we leave some really good stuff behind, and take same other stuff that's maybe okay, but not so good as the stuff we didn't take? We'd all feel bad about that. You'd feel bad about that."