Watch Your Back! d-13

by Donald E. Westlake

  "We have a lot of luggage, Preston. Maybe we should put the rental car in that garage of yours, run everything up in the elevator."

  Preston looked scornful. "A dreadful idea, Alan," he said. "I think you'd best leave the generaling to me."

  "If you say so."

  "I do say so. A lot of activity around that garage, Alan, and my personal automobile suddenly parked on the street, would be a dead giveaway. I want to be home, Alan, but I do not want every private detective in the employ of my ex-wives to know I am home."

  "Then that's what we'll do, then," Alan agreed.

  Easier said than done. Alan checked Preston out, using his own name and credit card, while Preston prepared an envelope for DeeDee to pass on to Duane, containing, Alan had no doubt, less than Duane would be pleased by, and then Alan, having just driven all the way down here from Miami International, turned around and drove all the way back again.

  Next, at the airport, having just checked out all this luggage, he proceeded, with minimal help from Preston, to check it all back in again. Having rid themselves of baggage and rental car, they did have time for a rather awful dinner with a Spanish overcast before boarding their flight, where, once they were safely seated in first class, Alan was happy to forget dinner with another complimentary Bloody Mary.

  And then, for quite some time, nothing happened. The pilot did occasionally come onto the sound system with that sedated-frog pilot voice to explain the delay — something about traffic backed up at Chicago O'Hare, though what that had to do with a flight between Miami and Philadelphia,

  Alan did not feel competent to say — but the effect was, they left the ground not at 8:13 but at 9:45, more or less, which put them in the sky over Philadelphia not at 10:59 but at nearly one in the morning. Since they had arrived at Philadelphia at the wrong time, throwing everybody's schedule off, they had to spend an additional fifteen minutes circling in the sky above that city until at last a niche was found for them among all those millions and millions of summer travelers, and the plane finally landed.

  Luggage. More luggage. Wait, still more luggage. It was quarter to two when the last of the three carts of luggage reached the car rental desk, where, astonishingly enough, the reservation Preston had made this morning in Alan's name was still good. Not only that, they had another Lexus Enorma, this one in bright yellow.

  Alan had to fight to stay awake on the long drive up through New Jersey, which meant he had to have the radio on loud. Preston also had to stay awake, because of the loud radio but also to monitor Alan's wakefulness, so by a quarter to four, when they at last drove through the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan, both were feeling rather shredded. The only good part of it was that neither had the strength to start a fight, even though both of them wanted with all their hearts to start a fight.

  But a fight very nearly did break out anyway, when Preston insisted, as they were driving through Central Park, that Alan turn the Enorma back in to its owners tonight. "We have to have this trip behind us," he announced, "as though it had never existed. We cannot have this vehicle, in your name, in front of my home until God knows what time tomorrow. It won't be difficult for you at all, Alan."

  Of course it would be difficult, as they both knew, but Preston didn't care. However, they did finally get to the apartment building, where they put most of the on-duty staff to work emptying the car and transporting everything up the regular elevator to the penthouse, once they'd convinced the staff that Preston was really Preston. No one employed here now had been here in that prehistory when Preston had been an actual presence in the building.

  Once everything was in and up, it was established that the doorman would recognize Alan whenever he returned from his Enorma unloading, and would deliver him to the penthouse. So all that was left for Alan to do was get back in the car, drive to the rental agency's office on Eleventh Avenue, turn the car in, roam the streets a while in search of a taxi, find one, ride it back to Fifth Avenue, ride, wilting, up in the elevator to the penthouse, and walk into a place of a million lights, where Preston paced back and forth on the living room floor.

  "Where have you been?"

  "Everywhere," Alan said. "I would like to sleep now, if I may."

  "It's always about you, Alan," Preston said. "I've noticed that. Come along, I'll show you your guest room. That's why I've been waiting up for you, Alan, to be your host. There's the guest room there, it has its own bath, I've had your bags put in there higgledy-piggledy, I shall now turn out every light and go straight to bed and I do not want to know the world again for hours and hours and hours."

  "I'll second that," Alan said around a yawn.

  When, a few minutes later, too tired to do anything but wash his face and brush his teeth, Alan turned off his own last light and declined gratefully onto Preston's extremely comfortable guest-room bed, the red LED of the bedside alarm read 04:47.

  43

  THE TRUCK WAS a three-year-old Ford E-450 sixteen-foot diesel cube van, painted white some time ago, without company markings or other writing on its sides, doors, or back. The cab was comfortable, the rear door rolled up easily, and the flat floor interior was broom clean and without the odors of yesteryear. The truck's green license plates were from Vermont, a state about which there has never been a shred of suspicion, unlike some we could mention, and the CD left behind in the deck was Schubert's Trout Quintet.

  Seeing this, Stan said, "The previous owner give up the ministry?"

  "Something like that," Max said.

  Already at eight in the morning, Max's shirtfront was streaked with gray from leaning on cars, talking over their tops at potential customers, of whom a few straggled around the lot at the moment, hoping to find something that could take them to work today. Harriet had a perky nephew who played salesman sometimes, when the customer load backed up, and he was out there now, fetching thrown sticks and talking up the merchandise and otherwise making himself useful, while Max and Stan discussed the trade at issue.

  So Stan took one wary step back from the Ford and said, "Something like what, Max? Does this vehicle blow up?"

  "Nothing like that at all," Max assured him. "I'll tell you the story in the office. For now, I understand you got a free gift for me."

  "Stockbroker's special," Stan said, pointing at the BMW. "It's all yours except the plates."

  "The plates?"

  "I'll switch with the truck. I wouldn't want to drive around New York with Vermont plates. Somebody might stop and ask to borrow a ski."

  "Mm hm." Max walked around the BMW to the other side, leaned on it, looked over its top, and said, "You got any papers with this thing?"

  "Nothing you'd want to hold in your hands."

  "We're talking virgin birth here."

  "It's a miracle, Max. And it's all yours, if the truck's story doesn't scare me too much."

  "I'll wanna hear the BMW story, too," Max said. "Come on in."

  As they stepped into the office building, Harriet was typing and the phone was ringing — nothing new. "We get more privacy inside," Max said, as Harriet at last paused in her typing and grabbed the phone:

  "Maximilian's Used Cars, Miss Caroline speaking. I'm sorry, you want to do what with it? Yes, I remember that vehicle, I typed up the paperwork on it. You're the rubber man in the carnival, aren't you? So amusing, we all — Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Flexo, was it? All sales are final."

  Max and Stan should have been in the other room by now, but both had stopped to listen to how the phone conversation would come out. Harriet listened, smiled pityingly, and said, "Well, 'final' means we don't take them back. There's a forwardness to the story of life, Mr. Flexo. That vehicle came to us, we passed it on to you, if you are finished with it, you pass — Well, it drove off the lot, if you recall. Mr. Flexo, there are strange sounds in the background, just where are you? Setting up the county fair? Where, Mr. Flexo?"

  Harriet's light trilling laughter filled the little office like bouquets of roses. "In Kentucky, Mr. Flexo? I tell you
what. You get that car here, then we'll talk." Hanging up, she shook her head, turned her smile toward Stan and Max, and said, "They know they're scrap iron, and still they rely on them."

  "If buyer's remorse ever accomplished anything in this world," Max said, "we'd all still be living in caves. Come in before Harriet makes any more friends."

  Max's inner office was mostly tall fireproof metal filing cabinets, variously locked with keys and hasps and iron bars, because what they contained was more precious than gold, or anyway on an equal par of preciousness with gold; in those filing cabinets were the customers' signatures. With them in existence, Maximilian's Used Cars could go on forever.

  There was also space in this room grudgingly allowed for furniture other than filing cabinets, in the corner farthest from the door and near a barred window with views of weeds and anonymous vinyl buildings. Here crouched Max's desk, smaller than Harriet's and much messier, with everything on it from empty soda bottles to various newspapers folded open to partly done crossword puzzles, to a V-shaped metal spring-operated object meant to improve the operator's grip. As though Max needed his grip improved.

  "Siddown," Max said, involving the last of the room's furniture, being his own wooden swivel desk chair and the small, sagging brown mohair sofa facing it.

  Stan sat on the sofa arm, that being as much of that sofa as he cared to know, and said, "The truck had a life in Vermont."

  "It did. It was an undercover for the feds."

  This was a surprise. "The feds had that truck."

  "And here's a fact you may not have considered before this, Stan," Max said, raising a pedagogical finger. "At all levels of law enforcement, they take very good care of their vehicles. I've had undercover narc cars come through here, look on the outside like they been run off cliffs, but the insides and the wheels are better than when they came out of the factory."

  "When they need to drive, I guess," Stan said, "they really need to drive."

  "You've got it."

  "But why do the feds need to drive in Vermont?"

  "Smuggling."

  "Oh. Canada. What, whiskey?"

  "Chinamen," Max told him. "And also Chinawomen. And I believe sometimes Chinachildren, too."

  Stan said, "Chinese? From Canada?"

  "Asians, anyway," Max said. "And yes, from Canada. The same like you got all these Hispanics coming up to the border down south, you got these other people coming down from Canada. A Chinaman can go to Toronto and you'll never notice him, they already got a Chinatown. That same Chinaman in Guadalajara? Not your best idea."

  "So they used this truck," Stan said, "to infiltrate the smugglers."

  "Worked like a charm," Max told him. "From what I understand, they used this truck to send a whole lot of people back where they didn't wanna go, and even put some of the coyotes, you know, the smugglers, in the can in Canada."

  "So now the truck is retired. Why?"

  "Well, it got burned. The word got around up there, you do business with this truck, all of a sudden you meet a lotta people that don't smile."

  "Not good," Stan suggested.

  "You're okay if you stay away from that border," Max assured him. "But the thing is, the way it got outed, the feds can't do the normal way to get it back into civilian life. It still has some of its previous life on it."

  "Meaning what?"

  "The truth is," Max said, "it has very strange papers. The fella had it, he deals in big trucks mostly, sends em overseas so nobody ever tries to bring them back, I envy that guy, he tells me, you get a cop, he runs a check on the registration on this truck, he gets like an asterisk, says, don't worry, keep your nose clean, good-bye."

  "Pretty good."

  "For you, Stan," Max said, "it couldn't be better. For a furniture dealer, maybe, somebody in the legit world, a little freaky. So my friend and I worked out a deal, and now, depending on this BMW, you and me are gonna work out a deal, and what I think, Stan, whatever you want that truck for, afterward you might as well keep it. You'll never find a better mace. Now, about your offering."

  Stan told him about the owner of the BMW, off for years now in a Club Med, hiding out from process servers, nobody checking the garage where the BMW's stored. Just give it a new christening, it's gold.

  "This sounds good," Max admitted.

  "It is good."

  "I would say, Stan, you and me, we've done a good morning's work."

  "No, you have," Stan said, getting up from the sofa arm. "My work starts now. I gotta meet my guys at nine-thirty in the city."

  A small amount of paperwork adjustment, and Stan was on his way, the nephew waving bye-bye. The truck felt fine. And keep it around after the job, eh? Hmmm.

  And who knew the feds listened to Schubert?

  44

  "COME ON UP," Arnie said.

  Dortmunder, at the foot of the stairs, having just been buzzed into the building by Arnie, looked up at him and said, "Arnie, the idea is, you're coming down, I'm taking you to the place."

  "I've been having second thoughts about that," Arnie said. "Come on up."

  Not going on up, Dortmunder said, "Don't do that, Arnie. Never have second thoughts, they just ball you up. Come on, we don't wanna be late, Stan's gonna be there with the truck nine-thirty, got the remote opener and everything, he zaps the opener, zip, zip, everybody's in."

  "This is where I'm having second thoughts," Arnie said. "What am I doing in? Come to that, what am I doing out? Look at me, I'm still the color of a roll of burlap."

  This was true, but Dortmunder said, "Arnie, don't even think like that, it's fading away to nothing."

  "And we got more sun today, I heard the warning on the radio."

  "You'll be indoors, in an entire penthouse. Come on, Arnie, we can't stand here in the stairwell forever, some neighbor's gonna call the cops."

  "So come up, we'll discuss it."

  Dortmunder well knew, if he were to go up these stairs, he would never get Arnie down them, so, without moving, he said, "Arnie, come down, we'll talk it over while we walk through the park, you'll see where—"

  "Walk?" Astonished, Arnie said, "I don't walk, Dortmunder! I don't even walk anyway, and you're talking through the park? It's all sun out there."

  "Okay," Dortmunder said, "I'll meet you halfway. No walking, we'll take a cab. I'll buy."

  "A cab. Over to the place, you mean, with the thing and the thing and everybody zips in."

  "Sure. Come on."

  "How's this meeting me halfway? You want the cab to go halfway there and come back?"

  "Arnie," Dortmunder said, "I'm not coming up."

  "I just don't see—"

  "Preston Fareweather, Arnie."

  Arnie shook all over and looked agonized. His hand clutched to the banister in front of him.

  Dortmunder pressed his advantage. "Those guys were so brilliant, they even got the Seersucker."

  "The what?"

  Dortmunder said, "Didn't you say he had one of those?"

  "I don't even know what the hell it is!"

  "Well, we'll go look for it. Come on, Arnie, Preston Fareweather. Broadway's out there, Arnie, it's full of taxicabs, and every one of them has a roof. Don't let Preston Fareweather think we're bozos, Arnie."

  "Preston Fareweather thinks everybody's bozos," Arnie said with disgust.

  "Including you," Dortmunder reminded him. "And that's the mistake he made, that he's gonna find out what a mistake it is. That's the whole point here, isn't it? We're not gonna let Preston Fareweather forget what happens when he messes around with you."

  Alarmed, Arnie said, "Wait a minute, I don't want him to know I had anything to do with it."

  "Of course not, Arnie. Just some unnamed, unknowable genius he mistreated in the past. Can you see his face, Arnie? Picture it in your mind, Preston Fareweather's face, the next time he walks into that penthouse."

  Arnie thought. "Let me get my hat," he said.

  45

  WHERE KELP GOT THE hard hats was a theatric
al costumer in the west Forties, a place he'd patronized before, always very late at night, when the prices were better but you had to serve yourself, mostly in the dark.

  It was a deep, broad shop full of crannies and nooks and little rooms, two stories of costumes and props, anything you might want in a stage show or on a movie set or shooting a commercial or running another day of a soap opera — all things that happen in that neighborhood just about every day. Kelp was always careful not to harm any locks here or otherwise be intrusive, and since they had so much and he took so little, he doubted they were even aware of his visits. Which was nice — he liked the opportunity to be a loyal customer, and wouldn't like them to feel the need to increase their security.

  Ordinary yellow hard hats without logos were harder to find than cowboy hats and Nazi officer hats and football helmets and graduation caps, but eventually, on a low shelf upstairs near the rear, he came across a cluster of them, looking like the world's largest canary eggs. He put two in the plastic bag he'd brought for the purpose, let himself gently out of the place, took a cab home, had a brief pleasant chat with Anne Marie, slept peacefully, and at nine-thirty in the morning was crossing Fifth Avenue at Sixty-eighth Street when Tiny called to him, "Kelp!"

  Kelp looked, and Tiny was waving from a limo waiting for the light to change so it could make the left turn onto Sixty-eighth Street. Kelp waved back, and Tiny called, "Come wait in the limo."

  "Will do."

  Kelp finished crossing Fifth and turned left to cross Sixty-eighth, because the driver of the limo was stopping it at the fire hydrant across the street from the garage entrance they'd be aiming at, but before he could step off the curb, a cab stopped at his feet, and out of it, astonishingly, stepped Arnie Albright, wearing the kind of cloth cap with a soft brim all around it that really terrible golfers wear, except without the comical pins.

  Kelp said, "Arnie? You sprang for a cab?"