Don’t Ask

by Donald Westlake

  It was Dortmunder who pressed the issue, saying to Tiny, ‘Did he say a bone?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tiny said. ‘The femur of Saint Ferghana.’ (Oddly enough, he pronounced femur correctly, with the long e as in female.)

  ‘That’s a bone?’ Dortmunder asked.

  ‘It’s a relic,’ Tiny explained. ‘From a saint. It’s a bone from a saint, so it’s a relic.’ He consulted his cousin. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Dat’s right!’

  ‘Now, the old country,’ Tiny went on, ‘what they—’

  ‘Pardon me, Tiny,’ Dortmunder said, ‘but exactly what old country is this?’

  ‘Well, that’s kind of complicated, Dortmunder,’ Tiny said. ‘It’s a very old country, but, on the other hand, it’s a very new country, too.’

  ‘Does this country have a name?’

  ‘Lately,’ Tiny said.

  Dortmunder frowned. ‘Lately? That’s its name?’

  ‘No no,’ Tiny said. ‘You always complicate things, Dort-munder. It’s called Tsergovia.’ And beside him, his cousin sat to attention at the sound of the sacred syllables.

  ‘Tsergovia,’ Dortmunder said. ‘I never heard of it.’ He glanced at Kelp, who shook his head, and at Stan, who said, ‘If it isn’t in the five boroughs, I never heard of it.’

  Tiny said, ‘This poor little country, it really got screwed around with over the years. It was independent for a long time in the Middle Ages, and then it got to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and one time it was almost a part of Albania, except over the mountains, and later on the Commies put it together with this other crap country, Votskojek—’

  Grijk growled.

  ‘—and called it something else, but now the Commies are out, that whole Eastern European thing is coming apart, and Tsergovia’s becoming its own country again.’

  ‘Free at last,’ Grijk said.

  ‘So it’s gonna be a real different country,’ Tiny said, ‘from when my grandparents decided to get the hell out of …’ He frowned, and turned to his cousin. ‘What was the name of that place again?’

  ‘Styptia,’ Grijk said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Tiny agreed. ‘My ancestral village home.’

  ‘A beautiful little willage,’ Grijk said, ‘nested in da crags a da mountains.’

  ‘My one grandfather was the village blacksmith,’ Tiny told the others, familial pride in his voice. ‘And the other …’ Again he was at a loss; scratching various acres of his forehead, he said, ‘Grijk? What was my other grandfather? You never told me.’

  ‘Oh, vell,’ Grijk said. ‘Such a long time ago.’

  ‘Yeah, but what did he do before he left for the U.S.? One was the village blacksmith, but what was the other one?’

  ‘Vell,’ Grijk said, reluctantly, ‘da willage idiot.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tiny.

  ‘Bud only because,’ Grijk hastened to add, ‘dere veren’t d’opportunities in dot liddle place. Nod like here.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s true,’ Tiny agreed.

  ‘And nod like da vay it’s gonna be, vid your help.’

  ‘Whatever I can do, Grijk, you know that,’ Tiny said.

  Dortmunder said, ‘Tiny? What’s the problem?’

  ‘Well, the problem,’ Tiny said, ‘the problem is the UN.’

  Dortmunder absorbed that. He said, ‘You want us to go up against the United Nations? Us five here?’

  ‘No, we’re not goin up against the UN,’ Tiny said, as though it were Dortmunder who was being ridiculous. ‘We’re goin up against Votskojek—’

  Grijk growled.

  ‘—which is a whole nother thing.’

  ‘Which nother thing?’ Dortmunder wanted to know.

  ‘The bone’s in the mission,’ Tiny explained.

  ‘Well, that makes sense,’ Kelp said. ‘You got a religious relic, you keep it in the mission.’

  ‘Not that kind of mission,’ Tiny said.

  ‘Is this in California?’ Dortmunder asked, expecting the worst.

  ‘It’s not that kind of mission,’ Tiny said, louder. ‘It’s the Votskojek’ – growl – ‘mission to the UN. Or it will be if they get the seat, which they ain’t gonna get, because we’re gonna get the bone.’ He turned to his cousin. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Dat’s right!’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Dortmunder said, ‘I’m seeing some daylight here, I think. Either that or my brain’s on fire. Tsergovia’s a brand-new country, so they aren’t in the UN yet, and in order to get accepted into the UN they’ve got to steal this saint’s bone from this other brand-new country. The bone is like their admission to the UN.’

  Kelp said, ‘John, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. The United Nations lets you become a member if you got a bone? That’s too stupid to even be a sentence.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Dortmunder said, ‘I bet that’s the story here. Am I right, Tiny?’

  ‘You’re right, Dortmunder,’ Tiny said.

  Kelp said, ‘He’s right?’

  ‘More or less,’ Tiny said. ‘And if you guys come into this with me, you’ll be doin a wonderful thing for a little country never hurt nobody.’

  Dortmunder nodded. He said, ‘And?’

  Tiny was not a subtle man. He could be seen pretending not to understand what Dortmunder meant. He said, ‘And? That’s it, and. That’s the story.’

  ‘Tiny,’ Dortmunder said, more in sorrow than in anger, ‘if we get this bone and turn it over to your cousin here, Tsergovia gets into the UN, don’t ask me why. What do we get out of it?’

  ‘Heroes!’ Grijk cried. ‘A statue in the main square in the capital at Osigreb! Your pictures on stamps! Your names in children’s schoolbooks!’

  ‘That’s kind of, uh, public,’ Dortmunder pointed out, ‘for a burglary. I mean, Tiny, we’re talking a burglary here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Right up your alley, Dortmunder.’

  ‘What I like out of a burglary, Tiny,’ Dortmunder said, ‘no offense to you or Tsergovia, is not so much publicity as profit.’

  ‘Vot problem ve god in Tsergovia,’ Grijk said very sincerely, ‘is ve god nod enough hard currency.’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel,’ Dortmunder said.

  ‘So vot ve could offer,’ Grijk went on more brightly, ‘is fifty tousand dollars apiece.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice,’ Stan said, and he and Kelp and Dortmunder all smiled.

  ‘In Tsergovia,’ Grijk finished.

  They stopped smiling. Kelp said, ‘What do you mean? We got to go there and bring it back?’

  ‘Vell, it vould be in draffs,’ Grijk explained, ‘nod in dollars, so you vouldn’t bring it back, you know, you couldn’t spend draffs anyvere bud in Tsergovia.’

  ‘That’s what you call your money,’ Dortmunder guessed. ‘Draffs.’

  ‘D’exchange rate is wery good right now,’ Grijk told him. ‘It’s, uh, I tink today it’s two tousand six hundred fifty draffs.’

  ‘To the dollar.’

  ‘To da penny. Tinka all dose draffs! You could stay da best hotels, eat da best restaurants, ski da mountains, water sports da lakes, meet beautiful local girls—’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dortmunder said, regretfully shaking his head. ‘Vacation travel hadn’t actually been part of my plans, May and me, we thought we’d just stick around the city this summer.’

  Kelp said, ‘Tiny? Isn’t there anything we could get for ourselves? Something valuable in this mission we could pick up while we’re in there anyway? Crown jewels? Old master paintings on the wall? You know, Tiny, a little something for our trouble.’

  ‘Gas money,’ Stan said.

  ‘They got a couple electric typewriters in the mission there,’ Tiny suggested doubtfully. ‘And, uh, Andy, you always like phones.’

  ‘Not enough, Tiny,’ Dortmunder said. ‘I can’t speak for Andy and Stan, but—’

  ‘Oh, sure you can,’ Kelp said, and Stan said, ‘Go ahead, be my guest.’

  ‘Okay,�
� Dortmunder said. ‘In that case, Tiny, I got to tell you, we don’t see it. We value your friendship, the nice professional relationship we had in the past, we hope to work with you again in the future—’

  ‘Naturally,’ Tiny said.

  ‘But this time, I’m sorry to say it, Tiny, this time is a pass. You break and enter, you risk arrest and imprisonment—’

  ‘A country’s mission,’ Stan said, ‘probably they got armed guards.’

  ‘They do,’ Tiny conceded.

  ‘Murderers!’ Grijk shouted, thumping the table with his free hand. ‘Scoundrels!’

  ‘So there’s another risk,’ Dortmunder said. ‘And for what? For some guy’s bone that I don’t even know, that—’

  ‘Girl,’ Tiny said. ‘Saint Ferghana was a girl. And it’s her leg bone, the bone from the hip to the knee.’

  Kelp said, ‘Which leg?’

  Dortmunder shook his head at his friend. ‘I don’t think that matters, Andy,’ he said. ‘In the first place, she’s dead. And in the second place, we’re turning the job down.’

  ‘Well, that’s true,’ Kelp agreed.

  Tiny turned to his cousin and performed a massive shrug, like tectonic plates moving. ‘I’m sorry, Grijk,’ he said, ‘but there it is. I told you I’d give it my best shot, present the thing with the best spin on it, but the truth is, if I didn’t have this feeling for the old country, if it was just a professional question, me, too, I’d give it a no.’

  Fiercely glaring into the middle distance, Grijk raised his glass of noncherry soda, drained it, threw the glass across the room, where it hit a wooden wine case and shattered (Rollo wouldn’t like that), and cried, ‘Ve must nod stop!’

  ‘We’re not gonna stop, Grijk,’ Tiny assured him, ‘not you and me. But these fellas here, they’re gonna stop. And I don’t blame them.’

  Kelp said, ‘Thank you, Tiny.’

  ‘It’s just that I have to keep in mind,’ Dortmunder explained, ‘what it says across the bottom of my family crest.’

  Tiny lowered an eyebrow; in fact, half an entire forehead. ‘And what’s that, Dortmunder?’

  ‘“Quid lucrum istic mihi est?”’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘“What’s in it for me?”’

  2A*

  Saint Ferghana Karanovich (1200?–1217) was born into a family of murdering and robbing innkeepers in Varnic, a then-important stop for wayfarers to and from the HOLY LAND (qv), who had to cross the Carpathians from Karnolia to Transylvania through the Feoda Pass (much later to become the site of a significant tank engagement during the Battle of the Crevasses in WORLD WAR TWO [qv]).

  For generations, the Karanovich family had operated an inn some little way off the beaten path, high in the mountains just north of the primary route (the beaten path) through the pass. Customers for the inn were few and far between as a result of this poor location, and for decades the Karanoviches, whose unrelented interbreeding had made them nasty, brutish, and not very tall, supplemented their meager income by murdering and robbing the unwariest of the passing wayfarers.

  By the age of eleven, young Ferghana, too, had become an active participant in these activities, which, even by the community standards of the time (early 13C), were generally considered unacceptable. Having no knowledge of the world beyond that imparted to her by her ungentlemanly uncles, Ferghana could not have known that in normal society it was deemed wrong for ladies of her tender years to introduce themselves into the beds of male strangers late at night so as to distract them until an uncle could surreptitiously enter the room with a club. Though eventually she would, with time and wisdom and patient instruction, renounce these activities, there are reasons to believe that until the age of seventeen she played her role in the family enterprise with unfeigned zest.

  Ferghana’s transmogrification from murderous accomplice to saint began when the family inn was chosen as a stopover by Archbishop Scheissekopf, an Ulm prelate on a pilgrimage to the HOLY LAND (qv). Though even the benighted Karanovich clan knew better than to try to rob and murder an archbishop by luring him to destruction with the wiles of a depraved NYMPHET (qv), there was a spontaneous nocturnal discussion between young Ferghana and the holy priest, in which the child’s eyes were opened to the possibilities (and responsibilities) of a wider world.

  When, the following morning, the archbishop departed the inn, he had no idea that hidden within a burlap sack putatively containing potatoes and lashed to his packhorse with hairy ropes there huddled concealed, in fact, Ferghana. Imagine the worthy gentleman’s surprise at the end of that first day when, in lieu of potatoes, out from the sack rolled the innkeeper’s daughter!

  For six days, Ferghana traveled with this excellent ecclesiastic, during which time the good father instructed the child in diverse matters, ranging from the mundane (personal hygiene) to the transcendentally moral (killing people is wrong). Ferghana, undergoing an ecstasy of conversion, confessed to God’s shepherd her unseemly part in the nefarious goings-on at the inn, and vowed henceforth to lead a cleaner – in every sense of the term – life.

  When, on their sixth day together in the wilderness, the revered patriarch explained to the child the general situation of women – and particularly girls of her own age – at that time in the HOLY LAND (qv), Ferghana decided her wisest course was to return to her family in the role of missionary, dedicated to the conversion of her relatives from their evil ways and the turning of them onto the paths of righteousness. Chancing upon a traveling troupe of acrobats from KLOPSTOCKIA (qv) who were heading northwestward toward the Feoda Pass, Ferghana made her emotional farewells with the learned reverend and joined the acrobats for the return journey, with further education and discoveries along the way. (Scholars differ as to whether the leathern purse of shekels she carried with her on the return was a gift from Archbishop Scheissekopf or had been filched by her in a light-fingered or lighthearted, certainly distracted, reversion to her previous ways.)

  Though the exact circumstances of Ferghana’s martyrdom can never be precisely known, it would appear the young saint-to-be lost some of her missionary zeal when face-to-face with her family once more, and did not at first make any of the impassioned pleas in favor of sobriety, decency, humanity, and godliness (see under ‘cleanliness’) which she had rehearsed so fervently en route while performing pyramids and other architectural edifices with the acrobats. It was not until the child’s refusal to enter the room (and the bed) of a musk-ox merchant named Mulmp that the family first discovered that the archbishop’s influence extended beyond the leathern purse of shekels that she had, as a dutiful daughter, presented to her parents on her return from her travels.

  That a reconversion, or deprogramming, effort was made, to rid the child of ‘furrin’ influences and restore her as a useful family member, is known. That this reconversion attempt involved imprisonment, starvation, beatings, and other degradations can be inferred from family histories. That the attempt ended in murder and, regrettably, cannibalism, is known only because the saintly archbishop, some months later, on his return from the HOLY LAND (qv), stopped again at the Karanoviches’ inn and quite naturally inquired after the fair Ferghana. Being informed by the wretched child’s mother that there was not nor never had been anyone of that name at the inn, the archbishop grew fearful that foul play might have overtaken the missing miss, and he made haste to the nearby castle of BARON LUNCH (qv), who held sway over the land where the inn was situate.

  The Baron’s stewards, investigating the activities at the inn and persuading by a variety of means several family members to divulge everything they knew about the case, soon dug up a number of bodies from shallow graves in ravines and arroyos all around the neighborhood, but nothing was found of Ferghana except her upper left leg, from knee to hip, which, having become gangrenous as a result of the family’s deprogramming effort, had been left uneaten. Archbishop Scheissekopf was enabled to make a positive identification of the leg on the basis of a peculiar heart-shaped mole high on the i
nside of the thigh.

  Returning to his cathedral in Ulm, armed with statements drawn – along with their teeth – from various family members concerning the conversion and martyrdom of the late Ferghana, Archbishop Scheissekopf recommended to the HOLY SEE (qv) at the VATICAN (qv) in ROME (qv), which was not then the capital of the not-then-existent ITALY (qv), the canonization of the poor mistreated child, and in due course Ferghana became beatified (1489) and ultimately sainted (1762).

  Prayers to Saint Ferghana are said to have proved efficacious in a number of areas, particularly for those seeking inexpensive lodging. The hawthorne is associated with the saint, God knows why.

  3

  Stan Murch took a cab from the Long Island Railroad station to the Westbury Music Fair, but he didn’t join the late arrivals rushing into the theater to see the superstars who would perform there this evening. All spring and summer every year, the superstars – the really important stars that play Las Vegas and Atlantic City and the Sydney (Australia) Opera House and even Sun City in South Africa – can be found at the Westbury Music Fair, less than an hour east of New York City. All of Long Island’s most prosperous dentists and accountants and shag-rug dealers grab their wives and go to the Westbury Music Fair to be entertained, and some of them are too cheap to park in the Music Fair’s parking areas, so they leave their cars on nearby streets. In fact, a lot of them do.

  In a way, Stan Murch was a fisherman, and this time of year the Westbury Music Fair was one of his favorite fishing holes. He could go out there, wander around a bit, and in no time at all reel in a nice Rolls, pick up a Porsche, catch a Caddy, sometimes even land a Lamborghini. The catch of the day would then be driven to Maximilian’s Used Cars, just across the Nassau County line into New York City, where grouchy old Max would pay a lot less than the car was really worth but, on the other hand, a lot more than it had cost Stan. A pleasant transaction for all concerned. Almost all.

  Tonight’s catch was a brand-new four-door Mercedes, a rich dark green in color, with fawn-colored leather upholstery. It took no time at all for Stan to enter the car, luxuriate in the feel of the upholstery, discover which of his keys would ignite the ignition, and drive away from there.