The Road To Ruin d-11

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Oh. No, no,” Os said, “we’ll feed him. Soups and things, with plastic spoons and things, so he can’t get any ideas.”

  “He didn’t strike me,” Buddy said, “as a guy who’d get a lot of ideas.”

  “True,” Os said. “But one can never be too careful.”

  “Sure,” Buddy said. “But after we’ve had our dinner and the butler’s had his dinner and Hall hasn’t had his dinner, then what?”

  “At around, say, eleven tonight,” Os said, “we’ll go in, all of us properly masked, and we’ll lay out the situation to Hall—I’m afraid you’ll have to go on doing the talking, Buddy.”

  “Make me out a speech. Write it down.”

  “Mark will do that,” Os said. “Won’t you, Mark?”

  Mark nodded, a bit afraid the gesture would make his head roll off. It didn’t, and he stopped nodding.

  Os said to the others, “My expectation is, Hall will refuse tonight. So we’ll switch off the electricity to that room and let him think it over in pitch black darkness for tonight. Tomorrow morning, we’ll bring up a big breakfast, full of good things to see and smell, like bacon and waffles and maple syrup and orange juice and coffee, and we’ll ask him if he’s ready to cooperate. My guess is, he’ll say no, so we’ll take the breakfast away again.”

  “Good,” Ace said.

  “I’ve got a problem here,” Mac said.

  They all gave him their attention. Mildly, Os said, “Yes, Mac?”

  “I got a home and a family,” Mac said.

  “That’s right,” Buddy said, as though surprised at the reminder.

  “In the first place,” Mac said, “nobody except us in this room knows we’re the ones doing what we’re doing.”

  “As it should be,” Os said, and Mark nodded.

  “So we gotta live normal lives,” Mac pointed out. “We can’t be here twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I see your point,” Os said. “I do think it important we make a show of strength tonight. Could you three phone your families and make excuses, why you won’t be home till midnight?”

  “Eleven,” Ace said. “Henrietta will go along with bowling or whatever, but the curfew’s eleven.”

  “Me, too,” Buddy said.

  Os said, “Then we merely move the schedule forward, talk to Hall at nine, then come back tomorrow. No one needs to stay here overnight, though actually I will. Mark and I will return horse and trailer, then I’ll come back here. In fact, I do have a right to be here, and I can keep watch.”

  Buddy said, “The idea was, Mark was gonna write out the demands for me to read, because Hall recognized his voice, right?”

  “Exactly,” Os said, and Mark shuddered.

  Mac said, “What? Hall knows it’s Mark?”

  “No,” Os said. “He knows he knows the voice, that’s all. That’s why he won’t hear Mark any more, and probably shouldn’t hear me, either.”

  Buddy said, “My idea is, why don’t we just hand him the piece of paper, and he doesn’t hear anybody’s voice? That’d be scarier, wouldn’t it?”

  Mac grinned. “Silent masked men,” he said, “with a note.”

  They all liked that. “I’ll get some more beer,” Ace said, getting to his feet. “Then make my call.”

  51

  THEY SAT AROUND ANOTHER terrific old-country dinner from the kitchens of Tiny, but nobody felt much like eating. “Everything’s completely outa whack,” Tiny commented, frowning at his food.

  “It looks to me,” Stan said, “like we’re gonna find out if these IDs we got from whatsisname are gonna stand up.”

  Kelp said, “I’ve been trying not to think about that.”

  “If only we could get outa here,” Stan said.

  Well, forget that. Not only did the law have the entire compound shut down tight, but the media was out there like seven-year locusts, just waiting to photograph and question anything that moved. Up till now, the only upside was that three reporters so far had been hospitalized after getting a little too close to the electric fence; apparently, it did pack a mean wallop.

  “And tonight,” Tiny grumbled, “we were gonna be outa here. I’m gonna be alone on the gate, the coast is clear, we’re home free. We drive the cars out, we come back and drive the rest of them out, stash them in the place, go home. Josie’s expecting me in the morning.”

  “Well, now she isn’t,” Kelp said. “This kidnapping thing is all over the news.”

  “I’m getting very irritated,” Tiny said.

  Stan said, “You know, I’m beginning to realize. That electric fence is just as good at keeping people in as it is keeping people out.”

  “We all noticed that,” Tiny told him.

  Kelp said, “I wonder how John’s doing.”

  Tiny snorted. “Dortmunder? Don’t worry about Dortmunder, worry about us. He’s outa here.”

  52

  I GOTTA GET OUTA HERE, Dortmunder thought. But how? This was a kind of a nice bedroom—guestroom, he figured, with its own small attached bath—but it wasn’t rich with forms of egress, and yet, Dortmunder didn’t want to be in it any more.

  He really needed to get out of here. The car heist was supposed to go down tonight; his life as a butler was supposed to be finished by now. But here he was in this room.

  I should be able to beat this thing, he told himself. What I do is get in and out of places. So this is a place, and I’ve got to get out of it.

  What do we have in here? What are the possibilities? Like most bedrooms, this one had a door that opened inward from the hall, so the hinges were on this side, and that should mean he could pop the pins out of the hinges and yank the door open that way. Worry about what was on the other side of the door when he was on the other side of the door.

  The only trouble was, these hinges had been painted so many times over so many years they were absolutely stuck solid. Maybe if he had pliers, wrenches, hammers, probably a hacksaw, he could make some headway with these hinges, but not with bare fingers. Not after bending one fingernail a little too far back.

  So what else do we have here? Two windows, both good-sized, and one smaller window in the bathroom, and all three of them sealed up with plywood attached on the outside. Push on that plywood, nothing happens. Punch it with the heel of your hand, then you get to walk around the next five minutes saying, “Ow, ow, ow,” with your right hand stuck in your left armpit.

  What else? Anything else? The door is locked, with a kind of ordinary old-fashioned lock, the kind where you can bend down or kneel down and look through the keyhole and see some length of wall and another closed door across the way. Maybe Hall was in there. Anyway, there’s no getting at this lock in this door, just no way.

  And yet, somebody was inserting a key, he could hear it, inserting the key, and turning it.

  Damn! If he’d known somebody was coming, he could have positioned himself behind the door with a chair poised over his head. Now, it was all happening too quick: key in lock, knob turn, door open.

  Oh. Five of them, all in those different kinds of masks. The one with the bandanna around his nose and mouth like a bank robber in the old West must have been the driver on the trip here. Anyway, a chair was not going to deal with all five of these people, no matter how much advance warning he got.

  “Listen,” he said, as they tromped in, “I gotta get outa here.”

  One of them handed him a piece of paper. What? What’s this? A handwritten note? Don’t these people speak English? Well, of course they do, he’d heard them in the trailer.

  Two others were putting things on the low dresser. A sandwich, on a paper plate. Soup in a waxed-paper cup. Ice cream in another waxed-paper cup, with a plastic spoon. They nodded at him, pointed at the food, and turned away.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, wait a minute. I’m not the one you want, what’s the edge in holding on to me like this?”

  They weren’t here to talk. They left, closed the door, turned the key in the lock, took the key away with them.r />
  Damn those people! How could they louse things up so—

  What time was it, anyway? He couldn’t see out, he didn’t have a watch, he had no way to tell if it was day or night or what it was. But the sandwich and the soup and the ice cream suggested—and his stomach was going along with the idea—that it was dinnertime. How long did they figure to keep him in here?

  Maybe the note would give him a clue. Opening it, he read:

  Dear Mr. Butler,

  We’re sorry we had to bring you along. It was not in the original plan. We need your employer’s agreement to a business situation. The discussions may take some little time, and unfortunately we will not be able to release you until their conclusion. In the meantime, we will provide you with food and shelter. We can bring you books or magazines, if you like, or possibly a television set, though the reception in these mountains isn’t very good, and of course we can’t let you have access to the satellite. If you have any requests for items we could bring you, write them on the back of this note and slip it under the door. We feel we should not engage in conversation with you. Again, please accept our apologies for including you in this operation. We all hope it will be over soon. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy your unexpected vacation.

  Your Friends

  Meatheads. Eating the sandwich—ham and swiss on sourdough, with honey mustard and mayo, not bad—Dortmunder brooded at the room, this solid cube he was shut inside.

  How?

  53

  WHEN HE HEARD THE clink of his pen as it hit the floor, Monroe Hall immediately dropped the metal rod onto the windowsill against the plywood, slid the window shut, and was halfway across the room, glaring, when the door opened and the five buffoons in their varied masks marched in.

  “What now?” he demanded, hoping one of them would talk. He needed to hear that voice again, the one he knew damn well he’d heard somewhere in the past. Some unpleasant association, but that didn’t help much; most of his conversations the last few years had involved unpleasant associations.

  But they didn’t speak, none of them. The one wearing a Frankenstein head carried a laptop, and the one in the green ski mask with the elks carried a folded sheet of paper, which he extended toward Hall.

  Hall backed away, not taking the paper. “You people are in a great deal of trouble,” he said. “You can make it easier for yourselves if you release me now. The longer this goes on—”

  Ski Mask moved forward, waving the piece of paper in his face, insisting he take it. Hall folded his arms. “If you want to talk to me,” he said, “talk to me.”

  In the background, Frankenstein had started a whispered conversation with Bandit’s Bandanna, who nodded. So did Paper Bag and the Lone Ranger. Hall, trying to keep an eye on everybody at once while ignoring the sheet of paper, watched Frankenstein and Bandit come this way, passing to either side of Ski Mask. Abruptly, they grabbed Hall’s arms, ran him backward, and forced him to sit down hard on the bed.

  “What are you—What are you doing?”

  Frankenstein and Bandit stood to each side of him, to hold him in place. Ski Mask stepped forward, opened the piece of paper, and held it in front of Hall’s face.

  Hall knew when to quit. “All right,” he said. “All right, I’ll read it. You can let me go, I’ll read it by myself.”

  So they let him go. Ski Mask handed him the paper, and he read:

  You will access your offshore accounts. You will transfer cash to other accounts we will describe to you. When the transactions are complete, we will release you.

  “Not a chance.”

  He glared at them, and they stood in a semicircle, observing him, waiting to see what he would do. He said, “I will not, now or ever, while you people hold on to me, access anything except nine-one-one. You people must have a very low opinion of me, I must say.”

  They looked at one another. A couple of them shrugged, and then they all turned away and moved toward the door.

  Hall popped to his feet. “Make your own money!” he shouted at their backs. “Don’t come sniveling to me!”

  Out the door they went, carrying the laptop, shut the door, and the key turned in the lock.

  Immediately Hall went looking for his pen, which he found against the baseboard, where the door had pushed it when they came in. It was his warning system. Once again, the same as last time, he inserted the end of the pen into the keyhole, balancing it there just far enough inside not to fall back out again, and also far enough inside to be nudged by a key as it was inserted from the other side. The idea had served him well already, and he was sure it would serve him well again.

  Alarm system in place, he turned back to the window he’d been working at, and all at once the lights went out.

  Oh, yes? In the dark, he made his way around the bed and found the bathroom doorway, and tried the light switch there, and that was also out.

  It was really pitch black in here, and of course it would go on being pitch black, night and day. He could see their idea. They had no intention of feeding him, of course, and they would leave him alone here in the dark, making their demands until hunger and sense deprivation should force him to go along.

  Well, it wasn’t going to happen. Hall had triumphed over tougher adversaries than these amateurs. He didn’t need light, not for what he had to do.

  In the dark, he moved along the wall until he found the window he wanted. He opened it, reached in, and found the rod where he’d dropped it. This was a strong piece of metal about eight inches long, one inch wide, and a quarter inch thick. It had been part of the flushing system in his toilet. He’d have to flush by hand now, but that wouldn’t be a problem. Not for as long as he intended to be in this place.

  He’d be happier with a larger tougher prybar, but this one would do. Slowly, patiently, relentlesly, he prodded the space between the window frame and the plywood sheeting. Infinitesimally, he could feel it give way. He had no idea how much longer he worked on it, but then all at once he became aware of a difference in the air, a hint of smell, a sense of movement.

  Outside air. It was a start.

  54

  IT WAS PANIC THAT saved Flip’s bacon, panic and nothing more.

  The trouble was, it had never occurred to him that once “Jay Gilly” kidnapped Monroe Hall, the person who had recommended Jay Gilly to Monroe Hall would attract the attention of the police. After all, he wouldn’t be anywhere around the Hall compound when the deed was done, but would have a solid alibi, being miles away with a client. Thus, it had come as a real shock when the police came beating on his office door at seven that evening. A shock that should have ruined him but that ultimately saved his bacon.

  He was in his office at that hour to videotape his step-board routine for the exercise DVD he planned eventually to release. All at once, a pounding at the door to the front office threw him off his stride, and initially just made him angry. Switching off the camera, fuming, ready to give somebody a good tongue-lashing, he stomped through from the gym to the office, yanked open the door, glared at the two men in suits and ties standing there, and barked, “Now what?”

  They both held up small leather folders with shiny things inside. “Police,” one of them said. “Alphonse Morriscone?”

  He almost fainted. He nearly fell down in an absolute swoon. He never sweat while doing his routines, but now great beads of perspiration popped out all over him like a tapioca pudding, and he said, “Puh-puh-puh—”

  “We’d like a moment of your time,” the same man said, but he said it in a very disagreeable threatening manner, as though what he really were saying was, “You’re under arrest and you’ll never be a free man again.”

  “Well, I–I don’t see—I mean, why would—”

  “If we could step inside, Mr. Morriscone.”

  “I, I, I—”

  Somehow, they were inside. Somehow, they were all seated in his office, the talking policeman behind the desk, Flip in the client’s chair facing him, the other policeman
in the folding chair from the closet. The talking policeman said, “Tell me about Jay Gilly, Mr. Morriscone.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  They both looked alert. “Yes, Mr. Morriscone?”

  “I–I—who?”

  “You heard us, Mr. Morriscone.”

  Deny everything. No, it’s too late, they already know. Deny everything anyway. “I don’t, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what, Mr. Morriscone?”

  “Jay Gilly.” Sweat ran into Flip’s eyes, but he was afraid to blink.

  “Is that so?” The talking policeman smirked. “And yet somehow,” he said, “you introduced Jay Gilly to a client of yours, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “Oh, my God.” Too late to deny everything. “Oh, Mr. Hall.”

  “You remember now, do you? You don’t know Jay Gilly, and yet somehow you introduced him to Monroe Hall, didn’t you? Didn’t you, Mr. Morriscone?”

  “I–I—forget.”

  “You forget?”

  “Where I met him,” Flip blurted, as though that’s the question he’d been asked, because in the shaken kaleidoscope that his brain had become, he knew that was the question he would be asked, and that he didn’t have an answer for it. In his mind, he skittered back and forth like a rabbit trying to elude an oncoming truck, trying to figure out how it was that he knew Jay Gilly, and failing to find an answer he could present. Not through a client—the client would deny it. Not through anybody. So, in his panic and desperation, he answered the question that would destroy him before they got around to asking it.

  “You forget where you met him?”

  “He was just—I mean, I don’t know, we just talked, and when it was on the news, Mr. Hall, I thought, Oh, the police are gonna get me!”

  Both policemen looked very interested at that. “Get you, Mr. Morriscone?”

  “Because I forget where I met him.” Flip waved arms around, to indicate just how large the planet Earth actually was, with so many places in it where a person might meet a person. “I mean, we just talked, he just talked to me, he told me he trained people to ride horses, and I said, Oh, I know somebody who needs somebody to teach him how to ride a horse, and he said he could do it but he’d bring his own horse, and I said I’ll call Mr. Hall, and he said fine, and I called Mr. Hall, and he said fine, I mean Mr. Hall said fine, and I told this Mr. Gilly, and he said fine, and I thought no more about it, and then it was on the news, and I thought, Oh, they’ll want to know why I talked to Mr. Hall about that man, and where did I meet him, and everything about him, and I don’t know anything, and they’re going to find out I’m mad at Mr. Hall, and they’ll think I did it on purpose, and they’ll lock me up—”