The Road To Ruin

by Donald E. Westlake

  “The back? Whadaya want the back for?”

  At the corner of the building, where the large restaurant windows showed mostly empty booths, the blacktop continued on around, and Chester continued with it as he said, “Some friends of mine and me, we’re gonna steal some very big things pretty soon, and we’ll need a place to stash them. If there’s a big enough back door, this place could be fine.”

  Mellon looked at him, a half-smile on his lips. “Chester,” he said, “you’ve got one dry sense of humor.”

  “Yeah, I been told that.”

  Chester took the next corner, and here was a lot more blacktop, because deliveries were made at the rear of the stores. Three big wide segmented iron garage doors were closed in the area where the Speedshop must have been. The doors stopped about three feet up from the ground, at the level of the floor of a big tractor-trailer, but that shouldn’t pose too much of problem.

  “Yeah,” Chester said, looking it over. “That’ll do just fine.” And he made a U-turn to go back around to the restaurant.

  Mellon’s look had turned quizzical. “It is a gag,” he said, not as though it were a question; but it was a question.

  Chester grinned at him. “Sure. You think you’re the only one can tell a joke?”

  Mellon laughed like a fool, all the way to the booth.

  34

  WHEN YOU SPENT LAST night on a kitchen floor, you don’t have that much to pack today. Dortmunder was packing it when Kelp came by to say, “I’ll go promote us a car now.”

  Dortmunder said, “You can’t take one with MD plates, you know.”

  Kelp looked stricken. “Why not?”

  “You’re a private secretary, not a doctor. You got guards at the gate there, they’re gonna have your license number on their list.”

  “Gee, I’m glad you thought of that,” Kelp said. “I’ll grab a couple extra plates, too.”

  He would have left then, but Chester came in and said, “I got it. You wanna see it?”

  Kelp said, “You got what?”

  Dortmunder said, “Why would I wanna see it?”

  “Pretty soon,” Chester pointed out, “you’re gonna have a bunch of hot cars on your hands. You’re gonna want to stash them. I think I got the place. You wanna see it? I’ll drive you there.”

  Kelp said, “Great. And then you can drop me at a mall, I gotta shop for a car.”

  “It is a mall,” Chester said.

  “Okay,” Dortmunder said. “In that case, I gotta see it.”

  •

  It took most of an hour to get there across trackless Pennsylvania. They arrived just before six in the evening, still full daylight at this time of year, though the little anchorless mall somehow seemed darker then the rest of the world. Chester had explained about the loss of the anchor, so Dortmunder was prepared for a mostly empty parking lot, but the reality was still grim. It was like a medieval village after the plague.

  As Chester drove the length of the mall building, the proprietors of most of the satellite shops were just closing after another day of rotten business, leaving only the restaurant and video store open at opposite ends. Chester said, “The restaurant stops serving at nine, so everybody’s outa there before eleven. And the video place shuts at eight.”

  Dortmunder said, “Good. We don’t know yet exactly how it’s gonna go down, but probably at night.”

  “Late at night,” Kelp said.

  “That’s right,” Chester said, as he made the turn around the restaurant. “Most of the cops around here know those cars, because Mrs. Hall drives them a lot, and people like to look at Mrs. Hall. Including the cops. There it is.”

  The rear wall of the building was very blank. The only vehicles in sight were two cars parked together down at the far end, not next to the building but out by the chain-link fence that separated the pavement from the scrubby woods beyond.

  Chester pulled to a stop by the middle of Speedshop’s three loading bay doors, and they got out to see what was what. Immediately, Kelp pointed up at a rectangle of unpainted cinder block wall above the door. “That’s where the alarm used to be.”

  “One of them,” Dortmunder said.

  “No, John,” Kelp said, “I don’t think there’s power in there. Let’s see.” He tugged at the door handle. “Locked, but this is nothing.”

  Dortmunder came over to look. “Can you open it without busting anything?”

  “Sure.”

  Chester said, “What if there is another alarm?”

  “Maybe,” Dortmunder told him, “you should be in the car with the engine running and a couple doors open. Just in case.”

  “Right,” Chester said, and went to do that while Kelp took two thin metal spatulas from his shirt pocket and bent over the keyhole in the door handle.

  Watching him, Dortmunder said, “I never broke into an empty store before.”

  “Think of it as practice. There we are.”

  The door slid up a foot. They cocked their heads, listening, and heard nothing but Chester’s car engine. Kelp leaned down, stuck his head in through the opening, listened some more, then brought his head out to say, “It’s ours,” and signal to Chester to cut the engine.

  With the door lifted a couple more feet, they climbed up and inside. Kelp lowered the door almost all the way, and they moved forward into the dimness.

  All of the shelving and wall dividers had been removed, but the space wasn’t entirely empty. A few broken clothes racks and a couple wooden chairs and some other miscellany were shoved against one side wall, and the store pattern was still visible on the floor, where the pale rubberized squares marked the main aisles, with different flooring for the different departments, some bare wood, some composition, some industrial carpet. From the inside, they could see that the windows across the front were very dusty. Near the front right corner, two electric panels stood open, their main switches set to OFF.

  The only interior walls still in place were around the rest rooms, at the rear left. Dortmunder went into MEN, turned the faucet at the nearest sink, and nothing happened. Going back out to the others, he said, “They really shut this thing down.”

  “Sure,” Kelp said. “They don’t want electric fires, and they don’t want leaks.”

  Dortmunder looked around the big dusty empty space. “I wish there was something we could use for a ramp.”

  “We’ll need something,” Kelp assured him. “And I’ll leave that door unlocked.”

  Chester, very pleased with himself, said, “I knew this was the place.”

  “It is,” Kelp agreed.

  They went back outside, closing the unlocked door, and Kelp looked over at the parked cars at the other end of the area. “Let’s take a look at those,” he said.

  So they drove over to the parked cars, and both were very dusty, though they were locked. Kelp said, “Chester, tell me you have a couple screwdrivers in the car.”

  “I got a couple screwdrivers in the car,” Chester said.

  “Good, we can take off two plates at a time.”

  “I got one regular screwdriver,” Chester said, “and one Phillips. Which do we need?”

  “Oh.” Kelp looked at the license plate. “Regular.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  As Chester headed for his trunk, Kelp shrugged and said, “So I’ll take off one at a time.”

  Dortmunder looked over toward the building. There were only gray metal fire doors to the different shops back here, no windows. “If somebody opens a door and looks out,” he said, “they might notice no plate on the back of one of the cars.”

  “So we’ll do three, one at time,” Kelp said, “and move the one I don’t need from the front of one car to the back of the other. Nobody’s gonna notice both cars have the same plate number.”

  Chester came around with the screwdriver. “Here you go.”

  “Great.” Taking the screwdriver, Kelp said, “Just gimme a minute here, and then take me to the hospital.”

  35
/>   TINY DIDN’T LIKE TO DRIVE. He didn’t so much sit in an automobile as wear it, and that made it difficult to do things like turn the steering wheel and switch the high beams on and off. Fortunately, there are taxi companies everywhere, so when he got back to the motel after being hired by Monroe Hall, he used the local phone book to make contact with Keystone Kab. “I want a taxi,” he told the dispatcher, “and I need legroom.”

  “We got a station wagon, you want that?”

  “I don’t wanna lie in the back, I want legroom where I’m gonna sit.”

  “Oh, it’s got legroom.”

  “Run it over, then.”

  They did, and it was a huge old relic, manufactured long long ago in a previous century, and driven by a wizened old cracker even older. But it had legroom. And in the back, there was also room for Tiny’s suitcase.

  It wasn’t a long drive to Hall’s compound, but when they got there some confusion and delay developed, because the guards on duty didn’t know what to do about the unauthorized person at the wheel of the cab. Phone calls were made to the main house, and finally it was decided one of the guards would ride along for the round-trip. He thought at first he might get into the back with Tiny, but when he saw how much seat was left he decided to ride with the driver instead.

  The road split when it got past the gate, one part going straight up to the main house while the second spur went off to the right. The guard directed the cabby to take that turn, then twisted around to say, “You been hired for security, right?”

  “Right.”

  The guard, a rangy man with a sour weather-beaten face, stuck his hand out toward Tiny: “Mort Pessle.”

  “Judson Swope.”

  They shook hands, and Pessle took his back quickly, nestling it in his armpit as he said, “When you get settled in, come on back to the gate, we can work out your schedule, arrange for your uniform.”

  The guard’s uniform was brown. Tiny nodded at it. “I like how I look in brown.”

  The house, when they got to it, was green and rather small, though not as small as where Chester lived now, off there in Shickshinny. It was about half a mile from the gate, with a lot of untended lawn around it, then other small houses. To the right, past the electric fence, the county road and its traffic could be seen but not heard.

  “See you later,” Pessle said, and Tiny agreed that’s what would happen, then carried his bag into the house.

  He was the first arrival, so he had his choice of rooms, though in fact he would have had his choice of rooms anyway. There were three bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs, one bedroom with its own bathroom downstairs, so Tiny took the one downstairs. The whole place was furnished sparely but neatly. He sat on the bed, which complained loudly, but it was comfortable enough. Comfortable enough for as long as he figured to use it.

  He had unpacked and was inspecting the food that had been put into the kitchen for them—not enough, but not bad—when Dortmunder and Kelp arrived, lugging their luggage. “We found a place for the cars,” Kelp said. “Just came from there, it’s perfect.”

  “Good,” Tiny said. “And you got wheels of your own.”

  “Sure.”

  “You can drive me back to the gate,” Tiny told him, “and I’m in the downstairs bedroom.”

  “Right.” Kelp still hefted his suitcase. “I’ll just pick a room, then take you—”

  “Why not take me now,” Tiny suggested. “Get it over with.”

  “Oh, yeah, okay.”

  So Kelp put his suitcase down while Dortmunder went up to choose the best of the upstairs bedrooms. He and Tiny went out, and here in front of the house was parked a silver Yukon XL, one of the larger General Motors SUVs, approximately the size of a sperm whale.

  “I can always count on you, Kelp,” Tiny said, as he climbed into the roomy rear seat.

  “And I always count on doctors.”

  Back at the gate, Mort Pessle introduced Tiny to the other guard on duty, a heavy-browed sullen-looking guy named Heck Fiedler, then said, “Come on over and meet the boss.”

  The boss, in his own office in the building to one side of the entrance, was an older man, big and bulky, with a completely bald head and a stiff white beard like a clothesbrush. His name was Chuck Yancey, and his handshake was almost as good as Tiny’s. Mort Pessle went away after the introductions, and Yancey said, “You done any policin?”

  “No,” Tiny said, “mostly I bust heads.”

  Yancey chuckled, approving of that. “You may get an opportunity along those lines,” he said. “I’m not promising. Now, in that room through the door there you’ve got a whole rack of uniforms. Somethin oughta fit you. I know you’re a big fellow, but we’ve had a lot of big fellows here. If you don’t find anything good enough, pick out whatever’s the nearest and you’ll take it to our tailor in town.”

  “Good,” Tiny said. “I like to be neat.”

  “I know the feelin. One other thing.”

  Tiny looked alert.

  “The new man,” Yancey said, “which is you, gets the graveyard duty.”

  “Graveyard? You got a graveyard here?”

  “No,” Yancey said, with another chuckle, “I mean the late shift on the gate, midnight to eight in the morning. If you’re a reader, you can bring a book, or listen to the radio. We’d rather you didn’t watch TV.”

  “That’s okay,” Tiny said.

  “There’s nothing ever happens at night,” Yancey told him, “so it’s just you on the gate. You’ll have that the first two weeks, then we’ll switch you into the regular rotation. It’s boring there all night on your own, but you’ll get through it.”

  He would be on duty all by himself at the entrance every night for two weeks, from midnight till eight in the morning. Nobody was ever around, and nothing ever happened. “I’ll make it work for me,” Tiny said, and went off to find a uniform.

  36

  WHEN HALL CAME DOWN his main staircase to the main floor on Thursday morning, not yet sure how he felt about the day—his digestion, the weather, his level of irritation, how much his assets had appreciated during the night in their quiet seedbeds in foreign lands—somebody he’d never seen before came striding out of a side door, said, “Murnen,” and opened the front door.

  Hall gaped. The man simply stood there, in profile, like one of the royal guards at Buckminster Palace, at what his sloping body apparently took to be attention, and continued to hold the knob of the wide-open door as he glared straight across the open doorway. He wore an ill-fitting but expensive black suit, narrow black tie, white dress shirt, and black shoes like gunboats. He was some lunatic who had—

  The butler! The new servants. One of four new servants, the incredible beginning of a new era, a new and much much better era.

  And his name was … Rumpled, Rambo, Rasputin, er, Rumsey! “Ah, good morning, Rumsey!”

  “Murnen, Mr. Hall.” Rumsey went on glaring across the doorway, and went on holding the open door.

  “Very good, Rumsey,” Hall said, “but actually, I wasn’t going out.”

  Rumsey took a second to digest that. Then, with a robotic nod so brisk it was a miracle he didn’t break his neck, he efficiently slammed the door. “Sur.”

  “Actually,” Hall said, feeling obscurely he had an ongoing part to play in this conversation, “I was on my way to the breakfast room.”

  “Sur.”

  “That’s where I usually have breakfast.”

  “Sur.”

  “Well…” Hall would have turned away, but then he thought of something. Two somethings. “When Mrs. Hall comes down, in a few minutes,” he said, “she won’t want to go out, either.”

  “She’ll be off to the breakfast room, sur.”

  “Exactly so. And would you send Blanchard and Gillette to see me in my office, just to the left there, at ten?”

  There was a blankness in Rumsey’s blinking. “Sur?”

  “Blanchard and Gillette.”

  “Blan …” The man was compl
etely at a loss.

  “For heaven’s sake, man,” Hall said, “you and Fred Blanchard have worked together for years!”

  “Oh, Fred!” Rumsey cried. “Fred Blanchard. Oh, sorry, right about that.” Now, leaning unexpectedly close as for a confidence, he said, “Out of context, you see what I mean?”

  “Yes, well,” Hall said, automatically taking a backward step that bumped him into the staircase he’d just left, “this is rather new for us all.”

  “Blanchard and Gillette,” Rumsey said, morphing back to near-erectness. “He’ll be the driver. The other one. Ten o’clock. Will do, sur.”

  •

  “Well, my dear,” Alicia said, over crustless toast and coddled eggs and strawberry jam and well-creamed coffee, “what do you think of our new people?”

  “They’re perfect,” Hall told her. “Of course, I’ve barely seen them so far, and I must say Rumsey the butler’s an odd duck. But then, so many servants are, really.”

  “America doesn’t know how to breed servants,” Alicia said.

  “That’s perfectly true.”

  “The problem,” she suggested, “is that the Inquisition had ended, or at least its really active years had ended, before the founding of the United States, so on this side of the Atlantic there was never that drilled-in terror over generations to make people eager to obey orders.”

  “I like your insights, Alicia,” Hall said, patting his lips with damask, “but now I must go have a word with two more of our new acquisitions.”

  •

  Monroe Hall’s office, in the front right corner of the main floor, with large windows that offered ego-supportive views down toward his guardhouse and leftward toward his village and outbuildings, had been designed and furnished by one of the finest teams of nostalgic re-creators in America. Did you want a keeping room? Did you want a bread oven? Did you want gaslight to supplement your electric bulbs? Did you want, along a waist-high dado cap around the room, to tastefully display your collection of iron nineteenth-century mechanical banks? Call Pioton & Fone, and watch your dreams come true. Monroe Hall had, and he couldn’t enter his office, as a result, without smiling. Didn’t it look just like Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne’s office, just before Yorktown? Yes, it did. Mm, it did.