Don’t Ask

by Donald Westlake

  The waiter came back with the wine then, giving Kelp’s eyes a rest. Bernard went through the tasting ritual, found the wine acceptable, and said, ‘Andy? You want some?’

  ‘Oh, I might as well,’ Kelp said, since after all he was paying for it. He finished his beer and the waiter filled his wineglass and went away.

  ‘So,’ Bernard said. ‘Is this another problem with your cousin?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Kelp said, hiding his blinking by holding the wineglass up to the light, ‘that’s just what it is. What he did this time, he went for a ride in a guy’s boat. A little outboard motorboat. And he left his reading glasses in the boat.’

  ‘Relax, Andy,’ Bernard said. ‘You’re right, everybody blinks.’

  Grateful, Kelp put the glass down, blinked fiercely at Bernard, and said, ‘After he was in it, the DEA impounded the boat. Now, my cousin has nothing to do with drugs, okay?’ Not blinking at all, he said, ‘What I’m asking you about has nothing to do with drugs.’

  ‘Good,’ Bernard said.

  ‘Only what it is,’ Kelp said, ‘my cousin’s afraid to go to the DEA and ask for his reading glasses back, because maybe they’ll think he does have something to do with drugs, being he was in that boat that one time. So he just wants to go over and get his glasses back, so he can read the Racing Form again, and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Bernard.

  ‘The problem is,’ Kelp explained as a smell of peanut butter wafted over him, ‘he doesn’t know where the DEA keeps impounded boats.’ And the waiter put down a lot of plates in front of them, all covered with mysterious foods. Delicious aromas came from the plates in front of Kelp. So much peanut butter smell drifted over from Bernard’s side of the table that you automatically looked around for the jelly.

  ‘Let’s eat for a while,’ Bernard said, ‘then we can talk.’

  ‘Sure, Bernard.’

  So they ate for a while. Kelp recognized chicken and shrimp and some vegetables and a couple other things, but he didn’t recognize anything that had been done to them. It was good stuff, and it was absolutely free of peanut butter.

  ‘Ah,’ Bernard said, smacking his stomach again, which now made a padded whum kind of sound. ‘A little brandy on top, and it’s good to be alive.’ And he waggled his hand over his head, looking past Kelp’s shoulder. Which is why he hadn’t minded sitting with his back to the window; it put his front to the waiter.

  Who was here again, at Kelp’s elbow, looking as content as Bernard, ‘After-dinner drink?’

  ‘Some of that nice Hennessy you have back there,’ Bernard suggested, and raised an eyebrow at Kelp, ‘Andy?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Kelp said. ‘I’m watching my weight.’

  ‘More clean living,’ Bernard said, and grinned as the waiter went away, carrying their emptied plates. Bernard then rested his forearms on the glass tabletop where his food used to be, nodded thoughtfully at Kelp, and said, ‘Your cousin – let’s say your cousin – your cousin left something in a boat the DEA impounded.’

  ‘His reading glasses.’

  ‘Let’s not worry about details,’ Bernard said. ‘It’s something, and it’s in a boat, and the DEA impounded the boat, which means the boat was involved in the drug trade, but your cousin is not involved in the drug trade. Oh, don’t worry, I believe that part. We’re just doing the parts I believe.’

  ‘You’re a hard man, Bernard,’ Kelp said.

  ‘Oh, not really,’ Bernard said, comfortable in his persona. ‘Anyway, this something in the boat is not something that would let your cousin just go over to the DEA and say, “Excuse me, I left my reading glasses in that boat over there, can I have them back, please.” So—’

  ‘Because my cousin,’ Kelp said patiently, ‘doesn’t want the DEA to think he’s connected with that boat.’

  ‘Sure. Fine. So your cousin wants to know where the DEA’s got the boat right now. This happened – what? Yesterday sometime, that’s when you first called.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So your cousin,’ Bernard said, ‘plans to go over a fence or through a locked door or under a wall or whatever it takes to get those special reading glasses of his. In other words, Andy, you are asking me to point my finger at where the burglary should take place. Is that nice?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Kelp said, blinking hard enough to blow out candles, ‘nobody’s gonna commit any burglary.’

  ‘You’ve been known to do some of that sort of thing yourself,’ Bernard pointed out.

  ‘That’s before I got on to clean living,’ Kelp said. ‘What my cousin figures, there’ll be like some sort of property clerk or something, he could maybe slip him a bribe, I don’t know, maybe give him dinner, a bottle of wine—’

  The waiter brought the brandy, set it before Bernard, went away again.

  ‘—a glass of brandy,’ Kelp went on, ‘something like that, just to go get those reading glasses and see for himself they don’t have anything to do with drugs or crimes like that at all, and hand them to him. See what I mean?’

  Bernard nodded, thinking things over. ‘I couldn’t help watching your eyes, Andy,’ he said. ‘I apologize. I know it’s unfair, but I couldn’t help it, and that there you just told me was such a crazy mix-up of lies and truth, I don’t know where the heck I am.’

  ‘Oh, Bernard. Come on, will ya?’

  ‘Andy,’ Bernard said, ‘there’s a fine line we walk, you and me, and you know it.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I will not aid or abet a felony, Andy, and you know better than to ask me. I hope you know better.’

  ‘Okay, Bernard,’ Kelp said, and his eyes stopped blinking. He said, ‘What my cousin wants to get is property that he feels he’s got a claim to, that the DEA doesn’t even know it has, that has nothing to do with their case or anything like it, but that could maybe cause complications in my cousin’s life if he doesn’t get it back quickly. It was a dumb slipup that the reading glasses got in that boat in the first place. Now if it does turn out, and I’m not saying it will or it won’t, but if it does turn out that my cousin has to maybe sneak in somewhere and take something on the sly and sneak back out again, he is not going to be taking anything except what he left in the boat, that’s his anyway. Is that a crime? I know, I know, technically it is a crime, because technically everything is a crime, but is it a crime?’

  Bernard thought that one over for a long time, and finally he said, ‘I’ll see what I can do to help you on this one, Andy.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll do it because I more or less believe whatever it was you said the last time, but I’ll do it only on one provision.’

  ‘If I can, I will,’ Kelp promised.

  ‘Someday,’ Bernard said, ‘when the statute of limitations runs out, you’ll tell me the whole story on this thing.’

  ‘Done,’ said Kelp.

  ‘Okay. The DEA impounded this boat in the five boroughs?’

  ‘Well, on water.’

  ‘But the water’s in the five boroughs. It’s New York City water.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll make a phone call.’ Bernard got to his feet.

  ‘You want anything else?’

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Andy,’ Bernard said, ‘but I think maybe not. I don’t want to break you, and drive you back off that clean living.’

  Bernard went away to make his phone call, and Kelp signaled for and paid the check, which wasn’t as bad as he’d feared nor as good as he’d hoped. Then Bernard came back and sat down and said, ‘Governor’s Island.’

  ‘That’s out in the harbor someplace,’ Kelp guessed.

  ‘There’s a Coast Guard station out there,’ Bernard told him. ‘That’s where the federals have their marina, and that’s where the impounded boat would go, until it’s sold or some federal agency takes it over for their own use.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Kelp said, deadpan.

  Bernard grinned at him, but not without
sympathy. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Andy,’ he said. ‘The Coast Guard, an armed force of the United States. A fortified island in the middle of New York Bay. You’re thinking maybe your cousin oughta go buy another pair of reading glasses.’

  20

  When Tiny walked into the storefront Tsergovian embassy the next morning at 10:30, Khodeen, the receptionist, was listening to a Walkman, turning the pages of a comic book about a black woman astronaut saving a rain forest, and sipping through a straw something white, sweet, dead, and wet from a nearby junk-food store. All of this activity left her no opportunity to acknowledge Tiny’s presence, so he just walked on by, back to where Grijk Krugnk slumped pathetically at his desk, as mournful as an unfed basset hound.

  This air of gloom was pervasive, in fact, except for the infidel Khodeen. Drava Votskonia, the commercial attaché at the other desk, sat in a cloud of misery, dabbing at her eyes, not even trying to sell anybody Tsergovian rocks.

  Grijk Krugnk, too, still suffered from the recent unhappy turn taken by events, but at least he was no longer doing foghorn imitations. He roused himself when he saw Tiny approach, and with a hopeless look in his eye he said, ‘You god id back?’

  ‘We know where it is,’ Tiny said. ‘We think we know where it is. If they didn’t toss it and toss it, we know where it is.’

  Grijk’s despair became mixed with perplexity: ‘If dey didn’d vad and vad?’

  ‘Toss it and toss it,’ Tiny repeated. ‘Toss the boat, see.’

  ‘Toss da boad?’

  ‘That means to search it.’

  ‘Id does?’

  ‘Sure. And if they did, and they found the femur, maybe they didn’t know what it is, so they tossed it.’

  ‘Search da femur? How do you search a femur?’

  ‘No, no,’ Tiny said. Funny how foreigners couldn’t dope out the simplest thing in English. ‘Toss it like throw it away.’

  Grijk groaned. ‘Id vas bedder,’ he said, ‘ven I didn’d unnerstand.’ With a sigh like a paddle wheeler venting, he rose to his feet. ‘Zara Kotor vands do dalk do you.’

  ‘I guess I owe her that,’ Tiny acknowledged. ‘But don’t leave me alone with her.’ Then, at Grijk’s look of incomprehension – a favorite look of his – Tiny said, ‘Never mind, just do it.’

  ‘Okay, Diny.’

  Grijk led the way through the door at the rear of the shop area to the office in back, which today was empty. He then crossed to a door in the side wall and opened that, saying, ‘Vad ve also god is d’apartmend upstairs.’

  ‘That’s handy,’ Tiny said.

  ‘And a nize prize, doo.’

  This door led to a narrow, steep staircase. They went up it, and at the top was a long, narrow hall. Tiny followed Grijk toward the front of the building, where he knocked on a door, and at a bark from within opened it. He and Tiny went inside.

  This was a Tsergovian living room of the upper-middle class, transported intact to this heathen land. Heavy dark wood predominated, slathered with mohair. A narrow shelf at waist height all around the room displayed commemorative plates, many of them cracked or broken, repaired with glue that had yellowed over time. All lamps had pink or amber shades, dripping with balls and tassels. The windows were covered with dark brocade drapes. On the floor were carpets on carpets. Huge, ornate gilded frames on the walls presented small, dark night scenes behind dirty glass, but at least hid some of the flocked maroon wallpaper. If bears had a designer cave for hibernation, it would look like this.

  Standing in the middle of all this ursine splendor was Zara Kotor, in the same uniform as the first time they’d met, but with some sort of ineffable difference about her, which at first Tiny couldn’t figure out. Then he got it; a halo of perfume surrounded Zara Kotor, like a sprinkling of rose dust in the air. Uh-oh.

  On the other hand, her facial expression was in the form of a rebuttal to that hint of scent. She was looking as stern as that hibernating bear itself, disturbed in January. ‘I have a lot of trouble believing, Tchotchkus,’ she said, ‘what Grijk tells me.’

  ‘Everybody calls me Tiny,’ Tiny told her.

  ‘Not everybody, Tchotchkus. So you’ve lost the relic, have you?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Tiny said.

  She nodded, emphatic, her darkest suspicions confirmed. ‘No, I see, not exactly, of course, as I suspected, there was always the possibility, I’d hoped against hope, but you can’t change a cat with a cabbage leaf, character will out—’

  She might have gone on talking like a person in a Russian novel indefinitely, except that Tiny cut through the crap, saying, ‘What’s this all about? We dropped it; we’ll go back and pick it up.’

  ‘Yes, of course you will,’ she said, and would have narrowed her eyes if the roundness of her face had permitted. ‘And how much more will it cost us?’

  ‘Oh, is that your beef,’ Tiny said. (Grijk looked around for a steer.)

  ‘It is,’ Zara Kotor said. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  ‘It was our screwup,’ Tiny told her. ‘The guys agree to that. It was our screwup, so we’ll throw in the repair for free. It’s on us.’

  The sun abruptly broke through on that stormy face; now Zara looked like a gold-leaf icon in a Russian church. ‘It is? Tiny? You aren’t holding us up for more money?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful news,’ she said, and then just as abruptly the sun went back behind the clouds. ‘But that means,’ she said slowly, ‘the relic really is lost. If it isn’t a ploy, then you really and truly did fuck up.’

  ‘Screw up,’ Tiny corrected her. ‘It was just one of those things. We also lost a guy from the crew, we got no idea where he is. At least with the femur, we think we know where we can lay hands on it.’

  ‘Reverent hands, of course,’ Zara suggested.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Tiny said.

  The sun peeped through drifting clouds, and she said, ‘You really think you can get it back?’

  ‘We’ll give it a try,’ Tiny promised. ‘It’s a kind of a tricky place, where we think it is, but the guys are casing it right now, and we’ll give it the old try.’ And he noticed she didn’t even ask about the missing member of the crew; sic transit gloria Dortmunder.

  She smiled; it was damn near girlish. ‘You’ll stay for lunch,’ she said. ‘You’ll tell me all about it.’

  21

  I’m sorry, May,’ Murch’s Mom said, ‘but I’ll have to throw the meter on you. Otherwise, I’ll get a ticket, for sure I’ll get another goddam suspension.’

  ‘Oh, you can throw the meter if you want,’ May said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I really pay you any money, does it?’

  Murch’s Mom’s hand froze in the act of flipping down the flag. She gazed into the rearview mirror at May. She said, ‘Why? What else?’

  ‘It isn’t that far,’ May said. ‘We could walk it.’

  Reluctantly, but acknowledging defeat, Murch’s Mom dropped her hand instead of the meter. ‘Okay,’ she said, being heroic, ‘I’ll chance it,’ and she drove May up and over to the Votskojek embassy, all on the arm.

  There was only one car in the parking area in front of the chain-link fence, and it didn’t have the red-white-blue diplomat plates, so it probably belonged to the two uniformed private guards standing around behind the gate like Immigration detainees. Murch’s Mom parked beside it, and May got out of the cab, while Murch’s Mom stayed in it with the engine running, ready to make whatever move the situation might demand.

  May walked over to the gate. The guards looked through it at her like cows. She said, ‘Is this the Votskojek embassy?’

  They looked at each other. Either they weren’t sure or they weren’t sure they should admit it, but finally one of them did look back at May and nod and say, ‘It’s closed.’

  ‘I’m here to get a visa,’ May said.

  ‘It’s closed.’

  ‘Well, where do I get my visa?’

  ‘It’s closed.’

  ‘I
have to see somebody to get my visa.’

  ‘It’s closed.’

  May looked at the other one. She said, ‘Do you think you should take your friend here to a doctor? He’s stuck or something.’

  ‘Lady,’ said guard number two, whose tape loop was already more complex, ‘he told you the story. The place is closed.’

  ‘How can an embassy be closed?’

  ‘Like this,’ the guard said, waving around.

  ‘Isn’t there anybody here?’

  ‘No,’ said the guard, the functioning guard, ‘they all left. Got into their diplomat cars, used to be parked right there, the whole bunch of them, said don’t let anybody in, and left.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Didn’t say.’

  The first guard reactivated himself: ‘It’s closed.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ May told him. ‘You already did your part. Just stand there.’ To the sentient guard, she said, ‘Did they take anybody with them.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anybody who wasn’t like one of them. Like not a Votskojekareeny, or whatever they call themselves.’

  ‘Votskojeks,’ said the sentient guard. ‘That’s what they call themselves, and to tell you the truth, lady, they all look alike to me. All I know is, they come out here with their uniforms on and their suitcases in their hands and said keep it locked, and they drove away. My partner and me just come on duty then, and I guess there was some kind of hassle just before that, only the guys what was on duty then wouldn’t say. Maybe they took a couple bucks to keep quiet, the lucky stiffs, I don’t know.’

  ‘Unconscious,’ said the unconscious guard.

  ‘That’s right,’ said his livelier pal. ‘So maybe it’s a communicable disease or something. They had a doctor with them, too, or anyway he looked like a doctor in old movies, or anyway—’

  ‘You said unconscious,’ May broke in. This, she knew, was a John sighting.

  ‘Yeah. He was in the uniform like the others, with the hat pulled down, but he was out like a light. Two of them carried him out, you know, holding him up on each side like he was walking, but he wasn’t walking. They carried him right by me, and he wasn’t walking. He was snoring.’