Nobody's Perfect (dortmunder)

by Donald E. Westlake

  "Half," Macdough said bitterly. "You think I'll give you half."

  Half. Two hundred thousand dollars, more or less; enough to start life all over again. This last year had convinced him; no more cold wet northern winters. He would live somewhere warm and dry, become healthy, even happy, make friends, perhaps get a dog, a television set. Life would become possible. Two hundred thousand dollars could buy a lot of warmth.

  Macdough, this orange-haired red-faced bluff of a man, was wasting everybody's time and his own breath with bad temper. "You're either a pair of filthy liars," he was saying, "or you're despicable thieves."

  "Half," Zane said calmly. "If you want the painting back."

  "If you even have it. Show it to me, then."

  "Oh, no," Zane said. "Not before you sign the agreement."

  "How do I know you have it at all?"

  "There's an easy way to check," Zane told him, "and you know it yourself. Go to Parkeby-South, look at the painting there, see if it's the right one."

  Macdough hesitated, and Zane could see his dark little mind working. The man believed them, all right, and was trying to find some way out. But there was none. Zane had it all sewed up. "Well?" he said.

  "All right," Macdough decided. "I'll go to Parkeby-South, and I'll look at my painting, and then I'll more than likely have you two arrested for confidence tricksters."

  "We'll all go together," Zane said, getting to his feet.

  "You'll wait outside," Macdough told him.

  "Of course. Come along, Porculey."

  "One minute. One minute." Porculey put the last of Macdough's uneaten bacon between the last two slices of Macdough's toast, and the three friends left the suite and took a taxi to Parkeby-South, where Macdough ran grim-faced inside while Zane and Porculey waited in the cab.

  Porculey, showing nervousness now that Macdough was out of sight, said, "What if he calls the police?"

  "He won't," Zane said. "Not unless he's an even bigger fool than I think. If he calls the police he loses everything, and he knows it."

  Macdough was less than five minutes inside, and when he emerged he actually hurled himself like a javelin across the sidewalk and into the cab, where he faced the other two with a glower of helpless rage and said, "All right, you bastards. All right."

  "Back to the Savoy, driver," Zane called, and as the cab moved away from the curb he took from his pocket the two-page contract, prepared and typed by himself, and extended it to Macdough, saying, "You'll probably want to read this before you sign it."

  "I shouldn't be surprised," Macdough said, and with their concentration on the contract, none of them in the cab noticed the pale blue Vauxhall that started up from the curb half a block behind them and edged forward in their wake.

  Zane smiled as he watched Macdough read the contract. In simple clear-cut language, it said Macdough was to pay Zane and Porculey "for their assistance in preparing the said painting for sale," one-half his net return "before taxes" from the painting's disposition.

  "…or paid to the survivor–" Macdough read aloud, and gave them a bitter look. "Trust each other, do you?"

  "Certainly," said Zane, ignoring the startled sidelong look he got from Porculey.

  Macdough went on reading, then shook his head and said, "All right. You're a pair of unnatural ghouls, but you have me over a barrel."

  "My pen," Zane suggested, extending it, and watched smiling as Macdough scrawled his name at the bottom of the second page.

  "Now, give me back my painting," Macdough said, handing over the contract and the pen.

  "Of course. But if you have a safe place to hide it, I think you should keep it out of Parkeby-South's hands until just before the sale."

  Macdough looked startled, and worried. "Chauncey might try to get it back?"

  "Of course he will, and so will the men with him."

  "The bastards."

  "Do you have a safe place," Zane asked him, "or should we hold it for you?"

  "You bastards!" Macdough snorted. "I'll hold my own property for my own self, if you don't mind."

  "Not a bit," Zane said, unruffled. "But if you don't mind, Mr. Porculey and I will stay with you while you hide it."

  "It's a long way from here," Macdough said doubtfully, "and my car isn't the world's biggest."

  "We won't mind at all," Zane said. "Will we, Mr. Porculey?" Porculey, who looked like a man rampant with second thoughts, vaguely shook his head, saying, "Not at all, no. Don't mind at all."

  "So we'll all go for a drive together," Zane said. Putting one cold hand on Macdough's knee and the other cold hand on Porculey's knee, he smiled at both unhappy men in turn. "One for all," he said. "And all, of course, for one."

  Chapter 12

  It's difficult to wait unobtrusively in a car on the Strand in the middle of London's horrible traffic jam, but that's what Chauncey was doing, clinging grimly to his bit of curb despite the honking of taxis, the yelling of lorry drivers or the dirty looks of pedestrians. Dortmunder had crossed the street and disappeared into the Savoy, following Zane and Porculey and Macdough, leaving Chauncey and Kelp to wait here in this clogged artery for whatever would happen next.

  It was Dortmunder who'd figured it out that Zane would have to go to Macdough, as his only logical customer for the painting, and that Macdough would be bound to check the authenticity of the painting currently held by Parkeby-South. Which was why they'd rented this Vauxhall and taken up a position across the street from the auction gallery. ("By God," Dortmunder had said, with something like awe in his voice, "I'm returning to the scene of the crime.") But even Dortmunder hadn't been able to explain why that despicable trio in the taxi had led them back to the Savoy rather than on to wherever the painting was stashed. Which was why Dortmunder was in there now, trying to find out what was going on without being seen.

  Kelp, who had been quietly thinking his own thoughts in the back seat, now leaned forward and said, "You know? I'm getting so I kind of like this town."

  "Glad to hear it," Chauncey said. His eye was on the lane leading to the Savoy's entrance.

  "It's a lot like New York," Kelp said, "only goofier. You know what I mean?"

  "Here comes Dortmunder."

  Here came Dortmunder. He trotted across the street, slid in next to Chauncey, and said, "He's checking out, and he ordered his car. A white Mini, license W-A-X three six one A. You owe me five pounds, for bribes."

  "Where are they going?" It made no sense to Chauncey that Macdough should suddenly check out of his hotel.

  Apparently, it didn't make sense to Dortmunder either. "I suppose they'll go pick up the painting," he said. "After that, I don't know. We'll just stick with them."

  "Mini coming," Kelp said.

  Out of Savoy Court came an absolutely jam packed white Mini. Macdough was driving, hunched over the steering wheel like a bear riding a tricycle, with Zane a stiff rigor-mortis figure in the passenger seat beside him and Porculey expanding like bread dough all over the back. The Mini's springs were nowhere near able to deal with such a load; burr-rong, it bottomed out, as Macdough turned into the viscosity of traffic on the Strand.

  "Keep well back," Dortmunder advised.

  "I will. I will."

  The Strand, Fleet Street, around Ludgate Circus and up Farringdon Street and Farringdon Road and a right turn onto Rosebery Avenue, in the drab disrepair of Finsbury. Just short of St. John Street the Mini stopped and Zane got out to permit Porculey to emerge, panting and wheezing, like a champagne cork out of a bottle that's gone fiat. Zane waited on the sidewalk, glancing warily about, while Porculey trotted into a nearby Bed & Breakfast establishment. Chauncey and Dortmunder and Kelp ducked their heads and waited, half a block away.

  "There it is!" Chauncey was peeking through his fingers, and his whole body vibrated when he saw Porculey crossing the street toward the Mini, carrying a long tubular object wrapped in brown paper. "Let's get it now! We'll go there right now! What could they do on a public street?"

&nbs
p; "Kill us," Dortmunder told him. "I'm sure Zane has a gun, and I know I don't."

  Porculey handed the package to Zane while he reinserted himself into the Mini's back seat – exactly like putting a champagne cork back into the bottle – then Zane handed the package in to Porculey, settled again in the front passenger seat, pulled the Mini's door shut, and the car moved off, the Vauxhall once again half a block behind.

  St. John Street, Upper Street, Holloway Road, Archway Road – "Where are they going?" cried Chauncey. Their helplessness was infuriating.

  "Beats me," Dortmunder said. "I don't know this town."

  "But they're heading out of town! They're heading for the M1!"

  "Just stay with them."

  Lyttleton Road, the Great North Way, the on-ramp for the M1. Up on the highway went the Mini, struggling up to sixty miles per hour, bottoming out at every dip, with the Vauxhall nearly a quarter of a mile back.

  Dortmunder said, "Where's this road go?"

  "Everywhere," Chauncey told him. "Manchester, Liverpool, it's the main road north out of London, it goes up–" He stopped, struck by a sudden realization.

  Dortmunder said, "You mean – ?"

  In a whisper, Chauncey finished his sentence: "–to Scotland," he said.

  Chapter 13

  The trip north: The Mini and the Vauxhall both gassed up at a service area near Northampton, then switched from the M1 to the M6, and stopped for lunch at another service area above Birmingham. (Macdough and Zane and Porculey ate hot meals at a table in the cafeteria, while Chauncey and Dortmunder and Kelp chewed sandwiches and drank coffee out of plastic cups in the car. Porculey carried the painting with him into the restaurant, to the chagrin of Macdough, Chauncey, Dortmunder and Kelp.) Another stop for gasoline north of Manchester was made by both cars, and yet another just south of Carlisle. (These motorway service areas were large and busy places, where the Vauxhall could keep an unobtrusive distance from the Mini.)

  Above Carlisle the motorway ended, and the two cars switched to the A 74 and then the A 73, stopping for gas in Carluke. The Mini chose a small Shell station and the Vauxhall had to go on by, but just ahead there was a Fina station.

  East of Glasgow the two cars picked up the M 8 toward Edinburgh, taking the bypass around the city to the Forth Bridge over the Firth of Forth, then the M 90 and the A 90 north to Perth, where the Mini drove around in circles for a while. (Chauncey became convinced Zane had realized he was being followed and was trying to lose them, but in fact Macdough was looking for a particular restaurant of which he had fond memories. He failed to find it.) The occupants of the Mini ate in an Italian restaurant, while the occupants of the Vauxhall filled their gas tank again and ate takeout food from a Wimpy's.

  After dinner, with night coming on, Macdough bought more gas for the Mini and led the way farther north, taking the A 9 up into the mountains. The road became increasingly curving and narrow, the distances between towns grew longer, and the Vauxhall had to drive practically on top of the Mini to keep it in sight. Up they went, and north, through the Obney Hills and the Craigvinean Forest and the Pass of Killiecrankie and Dalnacardoch Forest and Glen Truim, till up above Kingussie the Vauxhall made a hairpin climbing turn around the pockmarked stone flank of an ancient barn, and the Mini was gone.

  "Now what?" Dortmunder said.

  Ahead in the Vauxhall's lights the road climbed steeply up a rocky broken slope, angling to the right. The Mini could not already have crested the hill. Nevertheless, Chauncey dropped from second gear to first and accelerated at full throttle upward, the back end bouncing and jiggling on the uneven road, the rear tires rattling volleys of stones in their wake.

  And at the crest, the view was of a winding descent through hedgerows and stone walls, with three segments of macadam roadway dimly visible, and no vehicle lights at all on any of them.

  "They turned off," Dortmunder said.

  "But there's no place to turn off."

  "Lights over there," Kelp said, and when they both turned to look at him (because they had no idea where "over there" was) he was pointing off to the left. Out that way, apparently at some distance in the mountainous dark, what looked to be headlights were flickering. They disappeared, appeared again, disappeared.

  "We missed the turnoff," Dortmunder said.

  "Damn." Chauncey twisted sideways to look past Kelp's ear at the downslope, easing his foot cautiously on the brake. He was a shaky driver in reverse, oversteering madly, swinging back and forth in abrupt Vs across the road, but he did make it all the way to the bottom before plowing into the front end of a silver Jensen Interceptor III with stereo t/d, AM/FM, a/c, brown int., calfskin uph., electric windows, all power, immaculate cond., private owner, which was just growling at speed around the corner of the stone barn.

  "Damn it to hell, I've hit him!"

  "The painting," Dortmunder said, and pointed at the faint trail leading upward, next to the barn.

  "The painting." Chauncey looked at Dortmunder, at the rear-view mirror, and made his decision. Into first gear, spin the wheel hard left, and accelerate.

  The initial impact had broken the Vauxhall's left-rear tail light and slightly dented a bit of its rear metalwork, while putting out one of the Jensen's headlights, crumpling its radiator and severely denting both its front fenders. The sudden leap forward by the Vauxhall, just as the Jensen's driver was stepping in horror and astonishment out onto the pavement, jolted the Jensen forward, dumped its driver into the mud and gravel at the verge, and then wrenched the Jensen's front bumper loose. Its gonglike clatter when it hit the pavement served as a kind of announcement for the Department of the Environment highway truck, a big yellow Leyland full of stones and dirt, which at that moment came around the corner of the barn and smacked the Jensen very smartly in the rear.

  In the Vauxhall, bucketing up the unpaved side road, Chauncey clung grimly to the steering wheel and Dortmunder hung desperately to everything he could find on the dashboard, while Kelp jounced backwards in the rear seat, gazing down the hill toward the road and saying, "He just got it again. Some truck hit him."

  Neither Chauncey nor Dortmunder cared what was going on back there. A half moon and several million stars in a cloudless sky showed even more clearly than their headlights a scrub-filled up-and-down landscape virtually as wild as when Hadrian built his wall. The Picts and Celts might no longer be about (except on football weekends), but the countryside which had formed their rough bad-tempered natures was still as it had been, scarred more by nature than by man. Driving through this scrag, not once did anyone in the Vauxhall see a light, nor any other indication of the Mini, till all at once, as they crawled up over rocks and roots between two gnarled and stumpy pines, Porculey appeared in their headlights, blinking nervously and gesturing for them to turn right.

  Chauncey lifted his foot from the accelerator in surprise, and the car, barely moving anyway, promptly stalled.

  And now Chauncey's door opened, and Leo Zane's voice said, "Out you come. Dortmunder? Kelp? You weren't silly enough to bring guns, were you?"

  No; they were silly enough not to bring guns. All three emerged from the Vauxhall, Chauncey looking tense but not frightened, Dortmunder grimly annoyed, Kelp disgusted. Zane said, "Walk up the hill to the right. Griswold, follow with their car. Keep the lights on us."

  The three prisoners, followed by Zane, and then by Porculey driving their car, went up the hill, their black shadows long dark charcoal lines lengthening ahead of them. Turning right again at Zane's direction, they found themselves in the battered moss-grown remnant of what had once apparently been a good-sized castle. A few boulderish bits of stone wall, like an early draft for Stonehenge, was all they could see at first, but then Porculey cut the Vauxhall's lights, and in the softer illumination of moon and starlight they could make out still-standing segments of the building clustered across the way.

  Zane now used a flashlight to guide them over a gorse-grown former courtyard to a gray stone wall shielding a flight of w
orn steps leading down. At the bottom, a heavy door shaped like an inverted shield stood open, and they entered upon a clammy empty stone corridor, its distant end obscured by shadow. Zane's flashlight told them to walk down this corridor and then to enter a doorway on the left, while behind them they could hear the heavy groaning of hinges as Porculey closed the stairway door.

  They were now in a large cluttered stone room. Barred windows were spaced along one wall, up near the ceiling. To the left and straight ahead the room was filled with decaying old furniture, piles of wooden boxes and cardboard cartons, stacks of newspapers, bits and pieces of armor and old weaponry, clusters of mugs and jugs and bottles, massed decaying flags, mantel clocks, candlesticks, and in every chink some further bric-a-brac. To the right, an area had been cleared, a kind of half circle before a huge deep fireplace. Here the stone floor was covered with a faded old carpet, on which stood a few massive uncomfortable-looking chairs and tables. Three candles burned on the high mantelpiece, and before the unlit fireplace stood Ian Macdough, looking worried. "So it's true," he said, as they all walked in.

  "As I told you," Zane said, limping to one side while Porculey closed the door.

  "Nice place you got here," Kelp said, with his chipper smile. "Must be tough on the cleaning lady, though."

  Dortmunder had turned an accusatory eye on Porculey, saying, "I'm disappointed in you. I knew these other two were no good, but I thought you were an honest man."

  "It's that ten thousand you gave me," Porculey said, avoiding Dortmunder's eye. "Money's a strange thing," he added, sounding a bit surprised at himself. "As soon as you have some, it wants you to get more. I never knew I wanted a hundred thousand dollars until I got the ten thousand."

  Meanwhile, Macdough was still looking worried, saying to Zane, "Now we've got them, what do we do with them?"

  "Nothing," Chauncey said. "There's a public controversy over that painting Macdough, between you and me and the insurance company. What happens to your sale if I disappear before it's straightened out?"