Don’t Ask

by Donald Westlake

  ‘I agree,’ Dortmunder said.

  ‘So what I’m saying to you now,’ Tiny said, ‘is what you said to me before, when I first brought you this bone thing. You remember?’

  ‘My family crest, you mean.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Tiny said. ‘How did that go again?’

  ‘Quid lucrum istic mihi est?’

  ‘Yeah, that was it,’ Tiny agreed. ‘“What’s in it for me?” Sorry, Dortmunder, I gotta go along with your forebears.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry, Tiny,’ Dortmunder said. ‘Just listen to this.’ And he bowed his head, to read from the magazine pages on his lap: ‘“Into its own windowless and climate-controlled gallery space beneath the main building, cut dramatically into the volume of the rock-walled mountain itself on which the château stands, the Hochmans have moved the bulk of their extensive collection of modern and ancient art. Here Matisses and other Impressionists rub shoulders comfortably with Cretan statuary and early Italian church art. In the low-ceilinged and gently lighted volume of this intricate space, far from the prying eyes of the maddening crowd, the Hochmans can be alone with their beloved art, conservatively valued at more than six million dollars.”’

  ‘Holy shit,’ Tiny said, and Kelp looked extremely happy.

  Dortmunder lifted his eyes from the pages. The expression around his mouth was almost a smile. ‘Turns out,’ he said, ‘there’s a profit in this thing, after all. My ancestors would be proud.’

  31

  The meeting this time was at Dortmunder’s place, which meant May’s two grocery bags of fringe benefits from the Safeway this evening had assayed out 90 percent beer, 10 percent potato chips. Squatted around the living room, filling it to overflowing, swigging and chomping, May and Kelp and Tiny and Stan Murch all waited for Dortmunder to say something, but Dortmunder was in a brown study, slumped in his favorite chair, brooding at his beer can, eyes clouded. While waiting for Dortmunder to talk, therefore, everybody else talked.

  ‘I was about ready, with that crowd,’ Tiny announced, ‘to see if blood is thicker than water, but maybe this way is better. You got a friend at the UN, it could maybe come in helpful sometimes. With airline tickets or like that.’

  ‘For myself,’ Kelp said, ‘I feel I’ve got a kind of a personal relationship with that bone now, like I knew the kid, whatser-name.’

  ‘Ferghana,’ Tiny reminded him.

  ‘That’s her.’ Kelp raised his palms, as though hefting a watermelon. ‘I held that bone,’ he said. ‘I moved it from place to place. I rescued it from the DEA. I feel involved with it.’

  ‘What I’m thinking about,’ Stan said, ‘is those Vermont mountains. I understand, the quickest way down those things is, you kick it out of gear and shoot down in neutral.’

  May said, ‘Why not just turn the engine off?’

  ‘You could,’ allowed Stan. ‘Of course, now and again, you might want your brakes. Power brakes, you know, they need the engine. Of course, maybe not, if you don’t have any real sharp curves in the real steep—’

  ‘The problem is …’ Dortmunder said.

  Everybody shut up and looked at him. But then he didn’t say anything else, just sat there and frowned across the room at Kelp’s left knee.

  The problem was: time. Dortmunder wasn’t used to thinking under pressure like this. Usually, you’d decide what you wanted to take, you’d think about where it was and what security you’d find around it, you’d consider the personnel and the geography and maybe the weather and whatever other factors might be involved, and after a while you’d come up with the way to go in and get it and come back out again without stepping in anything. But here in this situation, he’d become annoyed, he’d become irritated at having been treated with such dismissive disdain, and in front of everybody he’d vowed vengeance, and he’d included Tsergovia and their goddam sparerib in the equation, partly for the tactical support they damn well better provide, and that meant a deadline. If this thing were gonna get done, it was better that it got itself done soonest. So that was the problem; anybody can think fast, it’s how to think fast when you have to.

  Dortmunder not expressing any of this aloud – how could he, when it was more mood and feeling than coherent thought? – the others gave up waiting and started to chat again among themselves.

  ‘The nice thing,’ May said, ‘is that we don’t have to go to Vermont in the winter. I understand it can get brutal up there.’

  Kelp nodded soberly. ‘Slipping and sliding down mountains with paintings in our arms,’ he said. ‘Not a pretty picture.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Tiny said. ‘Some of them modern things are okay. We could use something in our living room, Josie and me, over the sofa. Something in, you know, different shades of green. That’s what Josie says. Maybe I’ll take part of my piece in a painting.’

  May said, ‘You’d better have J.C. pick out the painting herself.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Tiny agreed. ‘I know that much.’

  Stan said, ‘I don’t know how my Mom’s gonna take to Vermont, should she has to go there. You know how she gets, outside the city. You think we’ll need her?’

  ‘No telling,’ May said.

  Kelp said, ‘If she could look on it like a vacation, maybe—’

  ‘The other problem is,’ Dortmunder said, and stopped, staring sightlessly at a stain on the opposite wall where an intrusive policeman had once rested the palm of his hand, at a moment when May had been explaining that she had no suggestion to make concerning her consort’s then-whereabouts.

  The other problem was, this was two jobs in one, and they were two hundred miles apart. Security around the bone was gonna be a lot tighter now than the last time, and who knew what kind of security Harry Hochman had at his château in Vermont? Wasn’t there something in history about not opening a war on two fronts? Where’s the manpower coming from, just to begin with? And how do you keep control over what’s happening in New York and Vermont at the same time?

  Do you do them at different times?

  Is there any way to tie them together?

  The observers waited, and waited, wondering not only what the other problem was but also what the first problem had been, but Dortmunder seemed to have nothing else to say. Then he was seen to sigh, and to drink from his beer can – but not. It was empty. He gave the thing a reproachful look, shook it – no slosh – and got to his feet. He left the room, and Kelp said, ‘I don’t know, May, could be this time John bit off—’

  Dortmunder stuck his head back into the room. ‘Tiny,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Call your people over there, ask them, can they get us a helicopter.’ And Dortmunder’s head retracted from the room again.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Tiny said, but he reached for the phone.

  With a happy smile, Kelp said, ‘We haven’t been in a helicopter in a long time. Remember that, Stan?’

  Stan looked a little grumpy. ‘Probably,’ he said, ‘these people would have their own driver.’

  In the kitchen, Dortmunder stood in front of the open refrigerator, thinking. ‘And the other other problem is,’ he said aloud, ‘the UN,’ finishing a sentence for once.

  The problem with the UN was, if the Tsergovians got their bone with any kind of cloud on it, questions about how they happened to have it in their possession, stuff like that, it could make things worse for them instead of better, when it came to influencing people over at the United Nations to give them that seat. So, however the heist was pulled, it had to wind up with the bone clean. Like a stolen car where you’ve got beautiful paper. Somehow they had to find the equivalent of beautiful paper for a bone.

  Dortmunder began to shiver; it was damn cold in here. Then he realized he was still standing in front of the open refrigerator, so he closed the door, turned away, turned back, opened the door, took out a beer, closed the door, opened the beer (bending his thumbnail back so it hurt), and, sucking his thumb, walked thoughtfully back to the living room, w
here Tiny said, ‘No helicopter.’

  ‘What?’

  Tiny shook his head, having expected something like this. ‘You forgot, huh?’

  ‘Oh, the helicopter,’ Dortmunder said, and spilled beer on himself while sitting down. Ignoring that, he drank some of the brew and said, ‘Okay, no helicopter.’

  Kelp said, ‘That doesn’t louse up your plan?’ ‘What plan?’ Dortmunder asked him; he was really interested.

  ‘I just thought you had something,’ Kelp explained.

  Dortmunder nodded, understanding. Then he went on nodding a while, so the others went back to their conversation, Stan saying to Tiny, ‘If this country doesn’t have any helicopters, what about their boats? Maybe we could disguise an aircraft carrier or something, probably something smaller, sneak up the East River, grapple onto their boat, do it that way.’

  Tiny shook his head. ‘They don’t have a navy,’ he said.

  Kelp said, ‘Tiny, everybody has a navy. Every country, I mean.’

  ‘Not Tsergovia,’ Tiny said. ‘Or the other one, either. Votskojek. They don’t have any seacoast, so they don’t have a navy.’

  Disappointed, Stan said, ‘So they won’t have any boats, then.’

  ‘Well,’ Tiny said, ‘they’d have a hell of a time getting them into the water.’

  May said, ‘Maybe that’s why the Votskojeks put their embassy on a boat. Maybe to them it’s romantic, something different.’

  ‘Could be,’ Tiny said without much interest.

  Dortmunder said, ‘Andy.’

  Everybody looked at him. Kelp said, ‘Yes, John?’

  ‘You know a lot of people,’ Dortmunder told him.

  Kelp grinned. ‘I don’t know everybody,’ he said, ‘but I do know a lot, you’re right.’

  ‘I’m thinking about fences,’ Dortmunder said.

  Kelp said, ‘John? That you sell to, or climb over?’

  Dortmunder struggled for an answer. ‘The one with money,’ he decided.

  ‘Okay.’

  Tiny said, ‘Dortmunder, isn’t this a little early? Shouldn’t we go get the stuff first?’

  ‘Not this time.’ Dortmunder reached out in front of himself and made little feeble clutching gestures with the fingertips of his right hand. ‘What I’ve got,’ he said, ‘is I got a corner of something, I think I got a corner of something, and if I’m right we got to know we got the fence ahead of time. A very special fence.’

  Kelp said, ‘You know the same guys I do, John.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Dortmunder said. ‘What I hope, I hope you know a guy we wouldn’t normally use, that you’d only use if you had a big, major, important big-league haul, a guy that wouldn’t be interested in just some little jewelry store.’

  Nodding, Kelp said, ‘A conservative estimate six million dollar value fine art collection kind of fence, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dortmunder said simply.

  ‘Well, John,’ Kelp said, ‘I haven’t had that much call in my life for guys like that, but it could happen that I might know guys that know guys. Let me look around, okay?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Dortmunder said.

  ‘It’s not the kind of question you ask on the phone,’ Kelp pointed out. ‘I’d have to go talk to people.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dortmunder said, and sat there looking at him.

  Kelp gazed around the room, and now they were all looking at him. He met Dortmunder’s eyes again and said, ‘Oh, you mean now?’

  ‘Couldn’t hurt,’ Dortmunder said.

  Kelp had been enjoying the party, sitting with the others around Dortmunder’s burning brain, chatting about things. Oh, well. ‘Sure, John,’ he said, and got to his feet. ‘If it won’t be too late, I’ll come back here.’

  ‘It won’t be too late,’ Dortmunder assured him.

  ‘So that’s what I’ll do,’ Kelp said, and Dortmunder nodded. But then Dortmunder’s head kept slowly bobbing, up and down, up and down, so Kelp knew this latest contact between John Dortmunder and Planet Earth had come to an end for now, so he said so long to the others and left, and six minutes later Dortmunder interrupted general conversation again to say, ‘Stan.’

  ‘Here,’ Stan announced.

  Dortmunder gazed piercingly at him. ‘Who’s a good driver?’

  Stan reared up a little. ‘What kind of question is that? I’m a good driver!’

  ‘Another one.’

  ‘My Mom!’

  Dortmunder sighed a little. He said, ‘Could we move out beyond you and your family a little?’

  Stan said, ‘How many drivers you gonna need?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Who’s good?’

  ‘Well, there’s always Fred Lartz,’ Stan said, and grudgingly added, ‘He’s pretty good.’

  Dortmunder said, ‘I thought he gave up driving.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ Stan said, ‘but now his wife, Thelma, drives. He kind of just sits beside her.’

  ‘So Thelma’s the driver.’

  ‘In a way. I thought you knew that.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Good, John,’ Stan said with an air of some surprise. ‘You know, she’s better than Fred ever was.’

  May said, ‘I never did understand why Fred Lartz gave up driving.’

  Stan did the explanation, since Dortmunder was getting that faraway look in his eyes again. ‘Seems like, coming home from a wedding, he took a wrong turn off the Van Wyck, out by Kennedy airport, he wound up on taxiway seventeen, ran into an Eastern Airlines plane out of Miami, spent a couple of months in the hospital, doesn’t trust his instincts anymore. So Thelma drives, and Fred sits beside her.’

  Dortmunder focused again. ‘Can we get him?’

  ‘Her, you mean,’ May said.

  ‘Well, both of them.’

  Stan said, ‘For when?’

  That was the question, wasn’t it? Dortmunder looked in absolute agony, as though undergoing some sort of anesthetic-free operation in the area of the lower torso. Finally, he said, ‘Today is, uhhhhhh …’

  ‘Wednesday,’ May told him.

  Dortmunder sighed. Now he looked as though he had a toothache, probably an abscess. ‘Saturday,’ he decided.

  Everybody was surprised. May said, ‘That soon?’

  ‘Saturday isn’t soon,’ Dortmunder said. ‘They’ve got, uh … Is Wednesday the day just finished, or the day just starting?’

  ‘What, today?’ May had to think a second. ‘The day just finished.’

  ‘So that gives them two more full days with the bone,’ Dortmunder said. ‘To take pictures, measurements, X rays, all this stuff, all this record. It’d be better if we could do it tomorrow, but we can’t.’

  Tiny said, ‘There you’re right.’

  Stan said, ‘So, do you want me to get ahold of Fred?’

  ‘Thelma, you mean,’ May said.

  ‘Well,’ Stan said, ‘Fred does the bookings.’

  ‘Go see them,’ Dortmunder said, with unexpected tact, ‘and ask are they ready Saturday for a maybe.’

  Stan sat back to think it over. ‘They moved up to the Bronx to get away from the airport,’ he mused. ‘So, with the construction on the Bruckner, I think I’ll stay on the Henry Hudson. It’s a toll across Spuyten Duyvil, but it’s worth it.’

  ‘Good,’ Dortmunder said. He watched Stan, waiting for him to go away.

  Stan finished his beer at his leisure, and looked around. ‘Anybody want a lift?’

  ‘You’re the only one going,’ Dortmunder said.

  ‘Be back,’ Stan decided, and got to his feet, and left.

  Tiny said, ‘Dortmunder, don’t send me nowhere.’

  But Dortmunder wasn’t listening. Instead, spilling a little more beer, he pawed around on the floor beside his chair and came up at last with the torn-out magazine pages he’d borrowed from Zara Kotor. (‘Tiny can bring them back,’ she’d suggested, ‘when you’re done.’) Beetling his brow at the pretty color pictures of the interior of Harry Hochman’s Vermont châtea
u, he said, ‘Call them, see do they have any spy stuff.’

  Tiny and May were the only others left in the room, and both guessed it was Tiny that Dortmunder was talking to. Tiny was on much of the sofa, with the phone on the end table perilously close to his right elbow. Picking up the receiver, dialing, he said, ‘If you had a phone with redial, this would be easier.’

  ‘Don’t talk like Andy,’ Dortmunder said.

  Apparently, the phone rang a long time. Then Tiny began to talk, and at one point they heard him say, ‘No, I didn’t know it was that late,’ but not as though he cared. Then he asked his question, and turned to say to Dortmunder, ‘Grijk says, sure. They got all kinds of spy stuff. What kind of stuff do you need?’

  Dortmunder shrugged. ‘Telephoto lenses,’ he suggested. ‘Microphone bugs that you can shoot with arrows. All that James Bond stuff.’

  James Bond stuff, Tiny said into the phone, and then reported to Dortmunder, ‘He says they got a ton of that kind of crap. The only thing is, it’s thirdhand. They bought it from Pakistan and Cyprus, and they bought it from Mexico and Australia and Kuwait.’

  ‘Does it still work?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Usually. Except it’s long off the warranty, you know.’

  Dortmunder looked at May. ‘It’s discouraging, sometimes,’ he said. ‘Not working with the best equipment. I feel like it’s holding me back.’

  ‘You’ll do the best you can,’ May assured him.

  ‘Well, yeah, sure.’ To Tiny, Dortmunder said, ‘Tell him we’ll come around tomorrow – I don’t know, eleven o’clock – see what he’s got.’

  ‘Morning or night?’

  ‘What?’ Dortmunder worked his way back through the conversation, found the area that matched the question, and said, ‘Morning. Eleven tomorrow morning.’

  While Tiny spoke into the phone again, Dortmunder frowned massively at May, and eventually said, ‘Do we have a map?’

  May, used to his behavior under these circumstances, and not fazed by it, said reassuringly, ‘I’m sure we do. Anything in particular you want to see on it?’

  He gestured with both hands, the magazine pages flapping. ‘You know, here and, uh, there. Vermont.’