The Road To Ruin

by Donald E. Westlake

  Passing right over the blatant attempt to suck up to the uncommitted Buddy, “One of them’s arrested,” Mac pointed out, “which is how smart he is. And the other one skipped because Mark knows him and can identify him, and according to the TV, Mark even gave the cops Osbourne Faulk’s name.”

  Buddy, distributing cans of beer and resuming his seat, said, “Not a good way to treat a pal.”

  “And the point is,” Mac said, “if he’d give them Faulk, he’d give them us twice as fast but he didn’t. And you know why?”

  “They didn’t get around to it yet,” Ace said.

  “Oh, they got around to it,” Mac said. “Little is known of us, that’s what the guy said, except we’re in the same union together.”

  “Which means,” Ace said, “they know enough that they’re probably already on the way. Canada, Mac, we could disappear in Canada.”

  “They’re not on the way,” Mac insisted, “because Mark doesn’t know our names.”

  “Sure he does,” Ace said.

  Pointing at each of them, and then at himself, Mac said, “Ace, Buddy, Mac. That’s not name enough to lead anybody to us.”

  Buddy said, “Mac, they knew my name, from the registration on the car.”

  “Faulk did,” Mac said, “and he’s fled. Ace, if you make a move, you’ll just draw attention to us.”

  Looking around, Buddy said, “Come to think of it, you know, I can’t go anywhere until I finish this room.”

  “Exactly,” Mac said, and that took care of that.

  66

  DORTMUNDER WAS DRINKING COFFEE, though what he would rather be drinking was anything that started with “B.” But tonight was when, at long last, the heist would go down, and he should be at his quick-witted best for the occasion. Some time after midnight, with Tiny alone on guard duty at the entrance to the compound and with the cops gone from the place because the kidnapping was over and solved and done with, at last they could go in and get the goddamn cars and deliver them to the Speedshop. And then Dortmunder could get out of Pennsylvania, back to New York, back to a cozy living room with his faithful companion, May, and drink everything in the house that started with “B.” Something to look forward to. In the meantime, he was seated here in Chester’s living room, with Chester and his faithful companion, Grace, all of them drinking coffee and waiting for Dortmunder’s clothes to get here. Chester’s overcoat wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really fit all that well, and it was uncomfortable having to worry about your coat tails all the time.

  They’d stopped watching television, because it was obvious the story was over, even though the newspeople were prepared to go on beating it into the ground for several hours yet. Monroe Hall had been kidnapped, then found, then found to have lost his memory. His butler had been kidnapped with him, and was now disappeared. One of the five kidnappers had been nabbed, one had skipped the country, and the other three would never be rounded up unless they put signs on their backs saying, “I did it.” So it was over, all except the swiping of the cars.

  Ding-dong. Ten minutes to six, and Dortmunder watched eagerly as Grace Fallon went over to open the door, though he didn’t stand yet, just in case this was somebody other than somebody with his clothes.

  But, no, here came Andy Kelp, with two suitcases, only one of them Dortmunder’s. And behind him Stan, with a suitcase. And behind him Tiny, with a duffel bag.

  Dortmunder stood, coattails forgotten. “Everybody?” he asked. “And packed?”

  “It’s over, John,” Kelp said, and handed Dortmunder his suitcase.

  Dortmunder wanted to go to some other room and change into actual clothing, but he had to know: “Over? What’s over?”

  Stan answered, “Forget the cars.”

  Dortmunder shook his head. “Forget the cars? After all this? Why?”

  Stan said, “Because they aren’t there any more.”

  Kelp said, “It was awful, John. We stood there and watched them go.”

  “On trucks,” Tiny said. He sounded as though the trucks themselves were an insult.

  Dortmunder said, “I don’t get it.”

  Chester said, “John, do us all a favor. Get dressed. Use our bedroom.”

  “Don’t say anything till I get back,” Dortmunder warned them, and was gone a very short period of time, to come back dressed like a person, not like either a refugee or a butler. He said, “Okay, now what?”

  Kelp said, “Because Monroe Hall lost his memory, his wife can’t get at the money he had stashed, so she’s selling everything.”

  “Starting with the cars?”

  “Turns out,” Kelp said, “Hall really didn’t own those cars. A museum does.”

  “That was a scam,” Chester said, “so he could keep the cars and not have to turn them over to the bankruptcy court.”

  Kelp said, “Well, it was a scam and it wasn’t a scam. This car museum in Florida really does own them all, but Hall got to keep them at his place. Now, with the situation like it is, the museum wants their cars. So today, they left.”

  Dortmunder said, “So that’s it? We plan, we prepare, we do everything right, and it’s over? Just like that?”

  Stan said, “There’s still some of that other stuff Arnie Albright said he’d take.”

  Dortmunder shook his head. “I did not come here to load a car with music boxes,” he said. “I am not a pilferer, I got my dignity. If there’s no cars there, there’s no reason to go there.”

  Kelp said, “That’s why we all packed up and came over.”

  Tiny said, “I’m not going back to that place. If I did, I’d break something.”

  Dortmunder sat down on the sofa, where he’d been for so long in the overcoat. “I’ve been drinking coffee,” he said.

  Grace Fallon said, “I believe we have some bourbon.”

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  After getting concurring nods from everybody else, she left the room and Stan said, “One drink, and we might as well drive back to the city.”

  “Forever,” Chester said. “That’s how long I’m gonna listen to Hal Mellon’s jokes.”

  Dortmunder said, “You know, I’m beginning to realize what the worst of it is.”

  Kelp looked interested, but apprehensive. “There’s a worst of it?”

  “If we’re not pulling a heist here tonight,” Dortmunder told him, “you know what we’ve been doing the last three days? We’ve been having jobs.”

  67

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON. Chuck Yancey had never had to stand guard duty himself at the gate before, and he didn’t like it. It was demeaning. It was beneath him. And it was only necessary because Judson Swope had pulled a bunk. Out of here some time yesterday afternoon, never showed up for his midnight tour on the gate. Frantic last-minute calls in all directions, and finally they got Mort Pessle to fill in, but that meant Mort wasn’t available for his normal tour today. Shorthanded without Swope, Chuck Yancey found himself doing gate duty with Heck Fiedler. At least it gave him an opportunity to make Heck’s life miserable, but it was still a comedown.

  Also boring. There’d never been much traffic through this entrance on weekends, and now that Mrs. H was shutting the place down, laying off everybody but Yancey and his crew, there was no traffic at all, not for the first six hours.

  But then, at five minutes to two, an unremarkable sedan turned in and stopped at the bar, and Yancey’s spirits rose for just a second, until he saw the occupants; the two plainclothesmen from CID, making such pests of themselves on Friday. Lieutenant Orville, who was driving, and the other one.

  Yancey stepped out of the shack to see what these two wanted—the case was over, wasn’t it?—and Orville said, “We want to talk to Fred Blanchard.”

  “I’ll see if he’s around,” Yancey said, because in truth he hadn’t seen anybody from the main house today. Back inside the shack, he called the main house and got no answer at all, then tried the house where Blanchard and Swope and a couple others were living and got the same resul
t.

  Back outside the shack, he reported as much: “Nobody around.”

  Orville nodded as though some deep suspicion had been confirmed. “He’s been living here, hasn’t he?”

  “Until tomorrow, that’s right.”

  “We’ll want to see his place.”

  “I’ll have to escort you,” Yancey said, and called in to Heck, “Be right back.”

  Heck smiled and nodded, glad to see him go, and Yancey got into the backseat of the cops’ car to direct them to the green house, and along the way Orville, looking too often at Yancey in the mirror for somebody supposed to be steering a car, said, “You may wonder why I’m still after Fred Blanchard, what with Hall being found and the case over.”

  “I may,” Yancey agreed.

  “You may say,” Orville said, “that Lieutenant Orville, he’s just got his nose out of joint because he didn’t catch up with that Mark Sterling fella, but that would not be the case, would it, Bob?”

  “Absolutely not,” said the other one.

  “Mark Sterling just fell into their laps,” Orville explained. “I never even got a look at him. So that’s one of the kidnappers, but there’s at least four more. And don’t forget the butler.”

  “I won’t,” Yancey promised.

  “And who did the butler used to work with, down in Washington, D.C.?”

  “Blanchard,” Yancey told him.

  “Exactly! I didn’t trust Blanchard from the second I saw him. I knew he was hiding something, and I am going to find it.”

  When they stopped in front of the green house, it had an empty look to it even before they got out, hammered on the door, opened the door, stood in the living room, and yelled, “Hello?”

  “Nobody here,” Yancey said.

  “Which is Blanchard’s room?”

  “I would have no idea.”

  “Well, Bob, I guess we’ll search the whole place.”

  Yancey thought of mentioning warrants, but it was no skin off his nose. Nor, as it turned out, was it to be much of a search. The house had been stripped of all personal possessions. Nothing left but rumpled sheets and open closet doors.

  “So they all went,” Yancey said, as they trooped back down the stairs.

  Orville said, “All?”

  “The new hires.”

  “The new hires!”

  “My security guy Swope, Blanchard, the new chauffeur, and the butler. Of course, the butler was already gone.”

  Orville said, “With his personal property?”

  “Well, somebody packed it up and took it away,” Yancey said, and the phone rang, echoing in the empty house. “I’ll get it,” Yancey said. “Probably Heck at the gate.”

  It was. “Got a guy here,” Heck said. “Old friend of Blanchard’s, wants to talk to him.”

  “We’ll be right there.”

  •

  The old friend of Blanchard’s didn’t look like anybody’s old friend. Tall and bony, he had yellow hair close-cropped like Yancey’s, but somehow looking more menacing on this bozo, and mean blue eyes that studied them as though they were meat and this was lunchtime.

  Before anybody else could speak, the bozo turned those eyes on Orville and the other one and said, “Fred Blanchard?” Yancey wondered why his right hand was up by his jacket lapel.

  It had seemed to Yancey the bozo had been asking which of the plainclothesmen was Blanchard, but maybe not. Orville hadn’t taken it that way, anyway, because he said, “So you’re an old friend of Blanchard’s, are you?”

  “Oh, yes,” the bozo said. He had some kind of accent that made him sound like a knife sharpener. “It has been too long since we have met.”

  Yancey said, “Lieutenant, he’s got a weapon under that jacket. Heck, stay behind him.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  The bozo looked startled. “I have done nothing.”

  Orville might be slow, but he could catch up eventually, because all at once his own pistol was in his hand and he was saying, “Lieutenant Orville, CID. Put your hands on top of your head.”

  “I have done—”

  “Now!”

  “I shall go away,” the bozo suggested, but he did put his hands on his head. “I shall come back another time.”

  “Bob, frisk him.”

  “No, I go away.”

  “Heck, shoot him in the leg if he takes a step toward the door.”

  “You bet!”

  So the other one frisked the bozo, and he turned out to have two loaded Glocks on him. Also three wallets, each with different ID, but all showing photos of this same guy.

  Orville could not have been happier. He was practically kissing himself on both cheeks. “I knew we’d get to the bottom of it,” he chortled. “And I knew, when we did get to the bottom of it, we would find Fred Blanchard.”

  “I have diplomatic immunity,” the bozo said.

  “Not here you don’t,” Orville told him. “But you’re a diplomat, are you? Bob, it’s that foreign embassy again.”

  “I think you’re right,” the other one said.

  Orville, suddenly even more excited, jabbed a finger at the bozo and said, “You and Fred Blanchard and the butler and your whole crowd, you probably killed the ambassador, too!”

  From the flinch the bozo gave, and the sudden skittery look in his eyes, Yancey guessed that, whether they were thinking of the same ambassador or not, in some way or another Orville was right.

  “All right, my friend,” Orville told the bozo, “I’m taking you in for questioning, and before I’m done with you, you’ll spill everything you know about Fred Blanchard. Put the cuffs on him, Bob.”

  As the other one put the cuffs on the bozo, Orville looked out the guardshack window at the county road, but he was clearly seeing much farther. “I knew I was gonna get you, Fred Blanchard! You won’t hide from me! Nowhere on Earth, Fred Blanchard, will you be safe from Lieutenant Wilbur Orville! Let’s go, Bob. This is a wrap.”