Nobody's Perfect (dortmunder)

by Donald E. Westlake

  "You're making me unhappy," Dortmunder said.

  Cleo, friendly and sympathetic, was immediately at his elbow, holding up the glass jug of wine. "Have some more," she suggested. "Everything'll work out. Porky's doing you proud."

  "It isn't Pork, uh, Porculey I'm worried about," Dortmunder told her. "I got talked into another Andy Kelp Special, that's what I'm worried about."

  "Seems like a nice fellow, Kelp," Porculey said.

  "Doesn't he," said Dortmunder.

  Porculey stepped back to give his work the critical double-O. "You know," he said, "I really am quite good at this sort of thing. Better even than those twenties. I wonder if there's a future in it."

  "There's ten thousand from us," Dortmunder reminded him, "if the scheme works and we get Chauncey's money. That's the only future I know about."

  "Ah," Porculey said, "but what if I took my knowledge of Veenbes, his subject matter, his palette, his style, and what if I did a Veenbes of my own? Not a copy, but a brand-new painting. Unknown old masters crop up all the time, why not one by me?"

  "I wouldn't know," Dortmunder said.

  Porculey nodded, thinking it over. "A lot better than drawing twenties," he said. "Very dull, that was. No palette at all. A few greens, a black, and that's it. But a Veenbes, now." His eyes were half-closed, no longer seeing the semi-Veenbes in front of him. "A medieval convent," he said. "Stone walls and floor. Candles. The nuns have just removed their habits… ."

  Chapter 9

  Eight days later, Dortmunder entered the main borough office of the Unemployment Insurance Division and waited his turn to be inspected by the guard just inside the door. The guard was examining the purse of a woman client in search of guns or bombs or other expressions of political discontent, and he was in no hurry to finish. Dortmunder was dressed today in dark green work pants, a flannel jacket and a heavy workman's belt festooned with tools, and he was carrying a clipboard.

  The woman client, whose brown skin and surly manner had made her a prima facie subject for official suspicion, had proved too clever for Authority this time, having left all her guns and bombs at home. The guard reluctantly let her through, then turned to Dortmunder, who plunked his clipboard onto the rostrum and said, "Typewriter repair."

  "Which department?" Since Dortmunder was tall and male and white and not a client and not carrying any packages that might conceal guns or bombs, the guard had no reason to suspect him of anything.

  "Beats me," Dortmunder said. Running a finger down the top sheet on his clipboard, he said, "They just give me this address, that's all. The typing pool, it says."

  "We got four typing pools in this building," the guard said.

  "I'm just the guy they send around," Dortmunder told him.

  "Well, how do I know what department?"

  "Beats me," Dortmunder said.

  There's a difference between a client and a workman, and the difference holds true everywhere, not merely in the Unemployment Insurance Division of the Department of Labor of the State of New York. The difference is, the client is there because he wants something, but the workman doesn't give a damn what happens. The workman won't extend himself, won't try to help, won't provide explanations, won't in fact do anything but just stand there. The client wants to be liked, but the workman is just as willing to go back to his boss, shrug, and say, "They wouldn't let me in."

  Everybody knows this, of course, including the guard on the door, who looked unhappily into Dortmunder's unhelpful eyes for a moment, then sighed, and said, "All right. I'll call around." And he picked up his phone from the rostrum, simultaneously scanning his list of interior phone numbers.

  The guard struck gold the first try, which didn't surprise Dortmunder at all. "I'll send him right up," he told the phone, cradled it, and said to Dortmunder, "Osro."

  "What?"

  "Out-of-State Resident Office, upstairs. Go to the end of that hall there, take the elevator to the third floor."

  "Right."

  Dortmunder, following instructions, eventually found himself in Osro, a large room full of desks and clerks and typewriters, semi-separated from one another by clusters of filing cabinets. He went to the nearest desk, bearing the sign INFORMATION, and told the girl there, "Typewriter repair. They just called up from downstairs."

  "Oh, yes." She pointed. "The typing pool. Down past the second bunch of filing cabinets and turn right."

  "Fine," Dortmunder said, and went to the typing pool, where the woman in charge, a tall gray-haired person with a face and body the texture of concrete, frowned at him, and said, "Do you know it's been nearly three weeks since we put in our Form Two-Eighty-B?"

  "I just do my job, lady," Dortmunder said. "Where is it?"

  "Over here," she said, grumping, and led the way.

  Of course, every large bureaucracy has many typing pools, and every typing pool's typewriters break down from time to time, and no request for repairs ever takes less than four months to filter through that particular bureaucracy, so the woman in charge should have been grateful to Dortmunder for being so prompt, instead of complaining; but there's too little gratitude in this world.

  The woman left Dortmunder alone at the typewriter, a large Royal electric. He plugged it in and turned it on and the thing buzzed at him. He hit a few keys in his normal terrible typing style, and found that the machine's problem was a refusal to automatically return when the automatic return button was pushed. He spent another two or three minutes fiddling with it, then unplugged it, picked it up – the thing weighed a ton – carried it over to the ungrateful woman's desk, and said, "I'll have to take it to the shop."

  "We never get machines back that go to the shop," the woman said, which was probably true. It was certainly true of the last machine Dortmunder had taken from this building, about two years ago.

  Dortmunder said, "I'll leave it if you want, but it needs work in the shop."

  "Oh, very well," she said.

  "Do I need a pass or something with the guard on the door?"

  "I'll phone down."

  "Okay."

  Dortmunder carried the typewriter downstairs, where the guard nodded hello and waved him through. Outside, he put the machine on the passenger seat of the Plymouth he'd stolen for this trip, then drove back to Manhattan and to a friend of his who ran a pawn shop off Third Avenue. This man had never been known to ask anybody any question other than, "How much?" Dortmunder handed him the machine, accepted forty dollars, and went out to the street.

  It was a pleasant day late in the month of April, one of the few days all month without rain, so Dortmunder decided to leave the Plymouth where he'd parked it and walk home. He'd gone about half a block when he suddenly realized he was looking at Stan Murch through the windshield of a car parked next to a fire hydrant. He started to grin and wave a big hello, but Stan made a tiny negative gesture with his head and the hand on the steering wheel, so Dortmunder converted his own movement into a cough, and walked on.

  May wasn't at home, since she had the afternoon shift down at the Safeway, but a note was Scotch-taped to the front of the TV set: Call Chauncey.

  "Oog," said Dortmunder, and went out to the kitchen to pop open a can of beer. He stayed in the kitchen, not wanting to be reminded of that message on the TV, and was working on his second beer when the doorbell rang.

  It was Stan Murch. "Yeah, I'd love one," he said, looking at the beer in Dortmunder's hand.

  "Sure. Sit down."

  Dortmunder brought a beer from the kitchen to the living room, where Murch was now seated, looking at the TV. "You call yet?"

  "He wasn't home," Dortmunder lied. "How come you give me the office out there?"

  "I was following Zane," Murch said, and swigged some beer. "Oh." Since they believed that so far Zane hadn't positively identified any of Dortmunder's partners in the robbery, the group had been taking turns occasionally trailing Leo Zane around, trying to find the right handle to use on him later.

  Then Dortmunder frowned. "W
hat was he doing down around there?"

  "Following you," Murch said. "Someday you'll have to tell me how you do that typewriter bit."

  "Following me?"

  "Yeah." Murch drank beer and said, "I'm following him and he's following you. Pretty funny, in a way."

  "Hysterical," Dortmunder said, and went to the phone to call Chauncey.

  Chapter 10

  Chauncey had called Zane first, upon arrival in New York:

  "Chauncey here."

  "You got it, did you?" Zane's rather weedy voice, empty of strength or emphasis, suggested a kind of wasting menace that Chauncey found thrilling; like a Brueghel allegory.

  "Yes, I did." This time, apparently, the robbery had been so unreproachably real that the insurance investigation had been barely a formality, bringing settlement much sooner than anticipated. "And your pet?" Chauncey asked. "How has he been keeping?"

  "In his cage. He doesn't even want to fly away."

  "Good. I'll see him soon. You'll keep an eye out?"

  "I'll follow him," Zane said, "until you're finished. You won't see me, but I'll be there."

  "Exactly right."

  "When do you do it?"

  "As soon as possible," Chauncey said. "I'll call you back." And he phoned Dortmunder, leaving a message with the rather dry-voiced woman who answered the phone.

  It was nearly three hours before the man called back, and then his voice had such a grudging surly quality that Chauncey became at once suspicious, despite Zane's assurances. "The painting's all right?"

  "Sure it is," Dortmunder said. "Why wouldn't it be?"

  "Then you'll bring it here. I have the money."

  "In cash?"

  Chauncey grimaced. Nobody uses cash any more, unless buying a newspaper, so Chauncey hadn't thought at all about the actual physical transfer of funds from himself to Dortmunder. But of course he couldn't very well offer the man a check, could he? And even if he could, Dortmunder certainly couldn't accept it. Nor was Dortmunder likely to be on Diners Club or Master Charge.

  "Chauncey?"

  "I'm thinking," Chauncey told him. "Wait there, Dortmunder, I'll have to call you back." But when he tried, half an hour later, the line was busy, and this was why:

  "I'm telling you, Dortmunder, it isn't finished."

  "And I'm telling you, Porculey, the goddam man is in New York and he wants his goddam picture back."

  "You can't give it to him unfinished."

  "I have to turn it over, period."

  "You told me I had till May."

  "He's here now, and he wants his painting."

  "It isn't ready."

  (And so on, for several minutes, more and more of the same, while Chauncey kept dialing Dortmunder's number and getting the same infuriating busy signal, until Dortmunder finally asked the following question:)

  "How long?"

  "What?"

  "How long to get it done?"

  "To do it right. Two weeks. Two weeks minimum."

  "Not to do it right. Come on, Porculey, help me on this."

  There was a brief pause. The faint slobby sound in Dortmunder's ear was Porculey sucking on his lower lip, as an aid to thought. Finally Porculey sighed, another distasteful sound, arid said, "Friday. It won't be perfect, but–"

  "This is Tuesday."

  "I know what day it is, Dortmunder."

  "Three days?"

  "I have to bake it, antique it, it has to dry. Do you want it to smell of fresh paint?"

  "Three days," Dortmunder insisted. "You can't make it shorter."

  "Shorter? Dortmunder, d-d-d-d-do you ree-ree-ree–"

  "Okay, okay. I'll take your word for it."

  "I mean, after all."

  "I believe you," Dortmunder said.

  "Friday."

  "Friday night."

  "Aw, come on."

  "Friday night."

  "Eight o'clock."

  "Ten o'clock."

  "Eight-thirty."

  "Avoid the rush-hour traffic, Dortmunder. Ten o'clock."

  "The rush hour doesn't go that late. Nine o'clock."

  "Make it nine-thirty."

  "Nine," Dortmunder said, and slammed the phone down, and it rang at him.

  It was of course Chauncey, dialing yet again, ready to bite the receiver in half if he got a busy signal one more time, and being so astonished when he got the ring sound instead that at first he didn't say anything at all when Dortmunder said, "Hello?" Then, when Dortmunder said it again – "Hello?" – even though Chauncey recognized the voice and knew it was the person he was trying to call, his surprise made him say, "Dortmunder?"

  "Chauncey."

  "You've been on the phone."

  "It's a friend's birthday," Dortmunder said. Chauncey was again surprised, this time pleasantly. Sentimental comradeship in the criminal classes; how charming. "That's nice," he said.

  "About the money," Dortmunder said. Apparently sentiment didn't leave much of an afterglow with the man.

  "Yes." Chauncey cleared his throat and said, "It turns out cash is a difficult thing to acquire, at least without creating questions."

  Dortmunder, sounding exasperated, said, "Chauncey, after all this, are you saying you don't have the money?"

  Chauncey was too concerned with his own problems to wonder what after all this referred to. "Not at all," he said. "I have the money, but I don't yet have the cash."

  "Money and cash are the same thing," said Dortmunder, who apparently lived in a much simpler world.

  "Well, not exactly," Chauncey told him. "The thing is, it'll take me a while to get the cash together. I'm sorry, I hadn't really thought about the problem before."

  "Meaning you'll have it when?"

  "This isn't a stall, Dortmunder, I do have the money."

  "When do I get it?"

  "Not till Friday, I'm afraid."

  "This is Tuesday."

  "I realize that. I apologize, and I've started on it, but the fact is I can't take that much cash from any one source. I'll need several business days to do it. I've made a beginning, and by Friday I'll have it all."

  "Make it Friday night."

  "Fine. You remember the passage from my back yard to the next street?"

  "Sure."

  "You come there Friday at midnight, and I'll let you in."

  "Good." Then Dortmunder said, "I won't be alone."

  "You won't? Why not?"

  "We're talking about a lot of cash," Dortmunder reminded him. "The rest of my string'll be with me."

  Chauncey wasn't sure he liked that idea, his house filling up with crooks. "How many?"

  "The driver stays outside. Me and three others come in."

  "Four of you? Dortmunder, don't misunderstand me, I trust you but how can I be sure of these other people?"

  "I vouch for them," Dortmunder told him. "You can trust them completely."

  Chapter 11

  Friday night. Leo Zane, in his own car, his only permanent possession, a black Mercury Cougar with a special stirrup-like accelerator so he could drive without too much pain in his right foot, was following Dortmunder and an unidentified man in a bright red Volkswagen Rabbit through the rain-splashed streets of Manhattan. The windshield wipers splashed back and forth, the cold damp spread through the metal frame of the car, and Zane peered steadily at the Rabbit taillights out ahead.

  Presumably, Dortmunder was on his way to the meeting with Chauncey at midnight, half an hour from now, but in that case why was the Rabbit aiming itself so completely downtown? Appropriately enough, the Rabbit was heading for that warren of streets south of 14th and over by the Hudson River known as the West Village. The westernmost part of Greenwich Village, this area is almost nothing but trucking companies and warehouses, because of the proximity of the docks and the Holland Tunnel.

  The Rabbit traveled south on Washington Street, ever deeper into this maze, the streets lined with parked trucks, no pedestrians out in the rain except the occasionally lonely gay hoping to meet a ne
w friend; in the gay world this neighborhood was known as The Trucks, and with no local residents to complain, a certain vibrant street life often took place here after dark. But not on a chilly wet night like this; the few solitary strollers slogging along with their hands in their jacket pockets looked more like homeless cats than liberated swingers.

  At last the Rabbit turned off Washington Street, but in the rainy dark Zane couldn't make out exactly what street he was following it onto. Was it somewhere near Charles Lane, or Weehawken Street? Or farther south around Morton or Leroy Streets? For all he knew, in this poor visibility, with his eyes so exclusively on the taillights of the Rabbit ahead of him, they were south of Canal Street by now, down around Desbrosses or Vestry Streets.

  And not every trucker or shipper or warehouse, apparently, was completely closed for the weekend; ahead of Zane, a large tractor-trailer was backing and filling, taking up most of the width of the street, facing from left to right, trying to back into position somewhere on the left. A great bulky monster of a man, in a rain-slick poncho and knit cap, was standing in the middle of the street, directing the tractor-trailer in its movements, and he'd flagged down the Rabbit, stopping it so the big truck could keep juggling itself left and right across the cobblestones.

  Drat. Not wanting to be too close to the Rabbit, Zane slowed the Cougar, stopped several car lengths back, and waited for the jam-up to end. But the burly man in the street came trotting through the puddles, waving at Zane to move forward. With mighty gestures he informed Zane to get farther over to the left, where a large delivery van was parked half up on the sidewalk. Following directions, Zane tucked in beside the parked van, his door handle almost touching the van's olive-green side.

  Next, the big man motioned for the Rabbit to back up, urging it also to move in close against the side of the van. Zane ducked his head, shielding his face with one hand as the Rabbit approached, its white reversing lights gleaming. When those lights clicked off, the Rabbit was still perhaps a car length ahead, but too close for Zane's comfort.