Don't Ask

by Donald E. Westlake

  "I was hoping," Dortmunder said, "for something a little more clear."

  "Looka dee udders."

  Kelp said, "Wait a minute, I'm not done."

  Kelp and Dortmunder were both standing bent over Grijk's desk in the Tsergovian storefront, looking at diis fourth-rate pic ture. To their left, Drava Votskonia, on the telephone, extolled the virtues of Tsergovian rock to an unvisionary new world. Now Dortmunder looked at Kelp's profile and said, "Not done›. What's there to look at?"

  "Okay," Kelp said. "I just wanted to get the picture clear, that3s all."

  "Too bad the photographer didn't have your attitude," Dortmunder said, and moved that photo out of the way to see what was next.

  Another, but closer to the subject. The lighting still washed out some details while making others stand out like 3-D. But at least now anybody who'd ever seen the bone before could recognize it, in there inside the panes of glass and the extraneous highlights and reflections. (The camera itself was faintly visible, reflected in the front of the box.) Okay, this was at least useful. "That5s gold, huh?" Dortmunder said, drawing his finger over the perimeters of the box.

  "Oh, sure," Grijk said.

  "That's a ruby?"

  "Dod one, doo."

  "Emeralds here? What are these, sapphires?"

  "You know your chools, Chon."

  "I've seen a few in my time," Dortmunder said, and looked at the next picture, which was a kng shot of the cathedral interior, severely underlighted. Grijk pointed at a darkish clump and said, "In dod abse."

  "It isn't there now" Dortmunder pointed out. "I don't need to see this."

  Lowering an eyebrow at Kelp, he said, "And you don't need to see it, either."

  "I'm not even looking at it," Kelp said.

  "Good."

  Dortmunder continued through the photos, and the next three were also useless and irrelevant. Then there came a picture of the bone, all by itself, on black velvet.

  'There it is, all right," Kelp said.

  "Uh-huh." Dortmunder moved on to the next, which showed the glass box all by itself, open, on top of the same or a similar piece of black velvet, the missing bone's indentation visible as a shadow on the rich blue velvet lining the bottom. This was a better picture than most; the old, small, delicate but strong hinges and slender leather straps holding the top open were clearly visible.

  "At last," Dortmunder said, bending closer for a better look. But then he frowned, studying the picture. "Where was this taken?"

  "In da storage waults a da cathedral. Before da sacred relic come to New York."

  Dortmunder said, "But where's the box now? Isn't it here, with the bone?"

  "No, no, Chon," Grijk said. "Glass is, you know…"

  "Breakable," Kelp suggested.

  "Wery."

  "Well, hell and damn," Dortmunder said. "I can't do it without the box.

  Now if s three jobs. I don't know, maybe I should just forget the whole thing."

  Grijk looked unhappy. "You can'd," he said.

  Dortmunder looked at him. "What do you mean, I can't?"

  "Zara Kotor," Grijk explained, "she faxed whad you're doing do da government in Osigreb. Only, you know, she made id like id vasn'd our fault da first--"

  "Wait a minute," Dortmunder said. "I'm doing this because I feel responsible, is that the idea?"

  "Dod's id. Nod my idea, Chon, you know dod."

  "But if I don't pull this off…"

  "You god a whole country mad ad you," Grijk said, with a sympathetic nod. "I'm sorry, Chon, but you know Zara Kotor, she's a bureaucrad, she prodects herself."

  Kelp said, "A whole country mad at Chon, but so what? I mean, Chon, if you don't ever go there--"

  "Nod juss Chon," Grijk said. "D'all of you."

  "Aw, hey," Kelp said, finding it a little more serious, after all.

  "And we god, you know, in da Carpathians, a long history of blood feud."

  "Now, look," Dortmunder said. "Already we've got two jobs to pull at the same time, one in New York and the other in Vermont. Now we got to also pull one in VotskojeW "Chon," Grijk said, "you don'd need dod box."

  "I need dod box," Dortmunder corrected him. "If I don't get dod box, you don't get dod UN seat. You follow me?"

  "No," Grijk said.

  Dortmunder thought. His cheeks twitched, his eyes went in and out of focus; his knees sagged a little. He said, "Okay. You got people over there in Tsergovia, they can get into this vault, get this box, get it here?"

  "Oh, sure," Grijk said.

  "You said that too easy," Dortmunder told him.

  "No, no, id is easy." Grijk promised. "Dad old cathedral, hundreds of years, rewolts, peasant uprisings, vars, anticlerical riods, all dese clings. Whad you god under dod cathedral, you god so many dunnels, secred endrances, hiding places, false vails, you could pud a whole subway sysdem in dere and lose id. We can ged in any time."

  "Good," Dortmunder said. "This is Thursday. Can your people get in today, get that box here by Saturday morning?"

  "Sure ding, Chon," Grijk aid. "You van em boad?"

  Dortmunder and Kelp both looked alert. Kelp said, "Uh-oh."

  "You're right," Dortmunder told him, and turned back to Grijk. "There's two of these? Two boxes?"

  "Hundred and fifty years ago," Grijk explained, "dey made a fake box, looks just like da real one. For securidy. Bud dey don't use id for fifdy years."

  "Is it the same place as the other one?"

  "Under da cathedral, ya, bud in a different storage place, you know. Nod so much locked up. Nobody cares aboud dod one, id's all fake chools."

  "Okay," Dortmunder said. "I hate to delegate authority, Grijk, because most people don't know how to do anything, but in this case I got to.

  What I want is, I want your people to sneak in there, put the fake one where the real one is, and bring the real one here, and not get caught, and nobody should know what they did. Okay?"

  "Sure," Grijk said.

  'The real one here," Dortmunder said.

  Kelp said, "That's right, Grijk, that's very important. I don't know personally what Chon has in mind, but if he says he wants the real one, he means he can't use the other one."

  "Without the real one," Dortmunder said, "we don't pull the job. Have Zara Kotor fax that."

  "Then it's her fault," Kelp added. "And yours. And your whole country."

  "I'm making a node," Grijk said. "Look." And they watched him do so, in ballpoint ink on a white memo pad, and they noticed the Tsergovian alphabet was just close enough to the American alphabet to be maddening.

  "Okay?" Grijk asked, holding up the memo pad, showing his cipher.

  "Good," Dortmunder said. "Now about the spy stuff."

  "Sure, Chon."

  "It's for the chateau, up in Vermont. I need to see inside, and I need to hear inside, before go inside."

  "Oh, sure, we god all dad stuff."

  "Fine," Dortmunder said. "And you're head of security around here, so you know how to use it all."

  Grijk looked belatedly alert, as though he'd just been blind sided.

  "Sure, Chon," he said, but a little less forcefully than before.

  Dortmunder was not here to take pity on anybody. He said, "Tomorrow, we're going up to Vermont. You're bringing all your spy stuff."

  "Okay, Chon," Grijk said, and managed a brave smile, saying, "Be kind of an adventure, huh? Being spies."

  "That's right," Dortmunder said. He pointed at the phone. "Okay if I make a call? Local."

  "Oh, sure."

  Dortmunder made his call, and soon heard Arnie Albright's unpleasant voice saying, "Now what?"

  "John Dortmunder."

  "Whadaya calling me for?"

  "I wondered did you have any plastic."

  "Oh, sure, a business deal. Nobody calls Arnie Albright just to chat."

  Dortmunder rolled his eyes. "I would chat, Arnie," he lied, "only I'm in kind of a rush. Maybe I'll chat when I come over, if you got any plastic."

&nbs
p; "You'll be in an even bigger rush when you're here," Arnie said. 'To listen to me is bad enough. To look at me, you'll run out the door.

  Sure, I got what you want. Dash by." 'Thanks, Arnie."

  Hanging up, Dortmunder said to Kelp, "I know it isn't nice of me, but I wish I didn't have to do business with Arnie Albright."

  Kelp said, "So you'll go see Arnie by yourself, right? And I'll meet you at one o'clock at the other guy's place."

  "Not a chance," Dortmunder said.

  In the subway heading uptown, Kelp said, "What do you think the odds are they'll steal the wrong box?"

  Dortmunder thought it over. "Fifty-fifty," he said.

  Kelp beamed. "There, see? You're not such a pessimist, after all."

  33

  T–l^w . we of you," Arnie Albright said when he opened the door and saw Dortmunder and Kelp both standing there, unnatural smiles on both their faces. "So, Dortmunder, you brought somebody along to talk to so you don't have to talk to me."

  "Nah," Dortmunder said, and Kelp said, "I asked to come along, Arnie, I hadn't seen you for such a long time."

  "You're lucky you got a nose doesn't grow," Arnie told Kelp, and stepped back to usher them into his smelly apartment.

  Arnie's apartment was much like the grizzled, gnarly Arnie himself. Its small rooms had big windows looking out past a black metal fire escape at the stained brown brick back of a parking garage no more than four feet away. For decoration, the walls were covered with part of Arnie's calendar collection. Pretty pictures, sexy pictures, dumb pictures, all over an infinity of Januaries, Januaries starting on every possible day of the week, under pictures of automobiles from every automotive era, pinups from every era of permissiveness, plus enough cuddly puppies, kittens, foals, and ducklings to induce diabetes. Just to keep interest alive, the occasional calendar began with October or March.

  In front of the parking garage-view windows was an old library table, on the surface of which Arnie had laminated several of his less valuable half-year calendars--duplicates and drugstore displays and those on which pencil additions graced the girls. On this table now was also a small brown paper bag, toward which Arnie gestured, saying, "That's what you came here for. Not to see me. People don't ever want to see me, you can take my word on that."

  "You're too hard on yourself, Arnie," Dortmunder assured him as he moved toward the table and the paper bag.

  Seating himself at the table, Arnie said, "Save your breath, Dortmunder, I know what a scumbag I am. People in this town, they call a restaurant, before they make the reservation they say, 'Is Arnie Albright gonna be there?' I know these things, Dortmunder."

  It was so hard to talk with Arnie. How could you agree with him, but on the other hand how could you not agree with him? Avoiding the issue entirely, Dortmunder said, "So you've got plastic, huh?"

  "Sit down, Dortmunder," Arnie offered. "If you can bear to be that close to me, with the smell."

  Dortmunder and Kelp took the other two chairs at the table, Dortmunder trying to look nothing but businesslike, Kelp with a manic bright expression of camaraderie and fellow-feeling. "Okay," Dortmunder said,

  "here we are."

  "It's my stomach," Arnie said. "My own stomach hates me; it's so aggravated it gives me this breath. Well, you can smell it for yourself;

  I smell like a toilet."

  "It's not that bad, Arnie," Dortmunder said. It was, in fact, worse.

  Kelp, talking through that Kabuki mask of palship, said, "You got some cards for us, huh, Arnie?"

  "That's why you're here," Arnie said, and dumped out of the paper bag half a dozen batches of credit cards, each held by a rubber band, each with its own scrawled note on a scrap of paper on top. "There you are," he said.

  Dortmunder said, "How much?"

  "Depends how long you need it, and for what," Arnie said. "You need a card you can go on using for six months, rock-solid, take it overseas, that gets expensive."

  "Don't need anything that good."

  "Three months is--"

  "Not that long, either."

  Arnie nodded. "The big deals don't come to me," he said. "All I get's the penny-ante stuff. People know I gotta carry junk, because otherwise who'd come to a shithole like this to see a shithole like me? Anything decent, they go right to Stoon. To buy, to sell, Stoon's their man."

  Dortmunder said, "Oh? Is he out of jail?" And he couldn't keep the interest out of his voice.

  "You, too, Dortmunder," Arnie said. "Don't tell me different. You, too, would rather deal with Stoon than put up with the piece of crap I am."

  "Arnie," Dortmunder said, "you know I always come straight to you first.

  What have you got for me here, Arnie?"

  "So what are you talking? Just a dirty weekend?"

  "This weekend."

  "Well, sure, what other weekend?" Arnie scooped all but one of the stacks of credit cards back into the bag, then pointed at the remaining stack. "These are good until Tuesday."

  "Fine. That's all we need."

  "But I mean Tuesday," Arnie said. "Up till then, they're fine, give you no trouble. Tuesday, you try to pass one of these, sparks are gonna come from it, smoke, a stink worse than this joint here."

  "By Tuesday, I'm done with them," Dortmunder said. "How much?"

  "How many you need?"

  "Two."

  Arnie nodded. "Fifty apiece," he said.

  "Arnie," Dortmunder said, "you yourself just said these things die on Tuesday. How many customers you gonna get between now and then?"

  Arnie considered that. Then he said, "Dortmunder, let me put it to you this way. Would you rather spend half an hour here, arguing with me, being around me, being around this septic tank of an apartment, all to save twenty bucks, or would you rather pay the hundred dollars?" a hundred bucks isn't bad for a weekend in the mountains," Kelp said as they walked through Central Park, watching each other's back.

  "Everything considered."

  "Arnie Albright considered," Dortmunder said.

  "Well, that."

  "Tell me about this guy we're going to see," Dortmunder said.

  "Well, I heard about him from a guy that knew a guy," Kelp began.

  "I figured it was something like that."

  "This guy," Kelp said, "will not touch anything that Interpol isn't looking for. This guy deals only with what you call your major commissions."

  "That's what I need, all right," Dortmunder agreed. "Will he deal with us?"

  "That's what the meeting's about. Eyeball each other, see do we call the preacher or forget it."

  "What about the guy personally?"

  "That I don't know," Kelp said. "On the phone, he sounded like an actor."

  "An actor."

  "You know, those English actors, come on the talk shows late at night cause they got a movie out you never heard of."

  "I don't know them," Dortmunder said. It wasn't that he didn't watch television; it was that television didn't stick in his brain; it washed through like sterile water through a chrome pipe, leaving nothing and taking nothing away. It kept his eyes open till bedtime.

  "Anyway," Kelp went on, "the arrangement is, we're pretending to be the carpenters."

  "With the guy?" This made no sense that Dortmunder could see. "He thinks we're carpenters? How we gonna talk to him about a robbery if he thinks we're carpenters?"

  "No, no, his office thinks we're carpenters. You know, on account of how we look, there's got to be an explanation why we're there."

  "I don't even know this guy," Dortmunder said, "already he's insulting me."

  "John, you want a careful guy, am I right? So this guy is a careful guy.

  So for the moment we can be carpenters."

  Dortmunder held up his right hand as they walked through the dogs off leashes, the infants off leashes, the maniacs off leashes, all rollicking together in the park in the bright spring sun. He studied his palm. It had a pleasing softness and smoothness to it. The tools a burglar holds are delicat
e tools, gentlemanly tools; they leave the operator's hands pleasant to be around. Nothing like carpenters and their tools. "Well," he decided, "I'll do my best. But I won't do any demonstrations."

  "No, no, this is just the cover story for the staff."

  Dortmunder said, "This is a fence with a staff?" The kind of fence he was used to was more of a fella like Arnie Albright, or a guy named Morris Morrison who scratched himself all the time and had a big warehouse building full of dubious goods over in Long Island City before he retired to jail in Florida.

  "John," Kelp said, "this is a fence with an eight hundred number. This is a fence with offices in London and Paris. This is a fence with the Getty Museum's unlisted number."

  "I dunno, then," Dortmunder said. "Maybe he won't deal with us."

  "All we can do is present ourselves, honestly and straightforward."

  "Oh, we don't have to go that far," Dortmunder said. "What's the guy's name?"

  "Guy."

  "Yeah. What's his name?"

  "Guy Claverack," Kelp expanded.

  Dortmunder said, "The guy's name is Gwjy?"

  "It happens," Kelp said. "There's also guys named Hugh."

  "Like me, for instance," Dortmunder said.

  "No, I-- Never mind. Don't get hit by that bus," Kelp suggested and, having left the park, they now successfully crossed Fifth Avenue.

  "Funny to be in this neighborhood in the daytime," Dortmunder commented. i am afraid I will have to interrupt lunch at one point," Guy Claverack apologized to his guests as they placed themselves at table. "Carpenters are coming to discuss some renovations back in the storage area."

  "Not at all."

  "Quite understand."

  "Poor Guy."

  This was, of course, not just any lunch. This was lunch with Guy Claverack, premier art dealer to what is left of the aristocracy in this plebeian world. Guy Claverack was the man to see if the exigencies of fate required you to sell off that fourteen-foot-byfortythree-foot arras portraying the Battle of Tronfahrt that had been in your family since 1486 and in which your own forebear Murphyn the Unrepentant is clearly visible in the center right, just beyond those massed bowmen.