Don't Ask

by Donald E. Westlake

  There's only three residents in the ship, and you've got their photos right there. That's the two clerks, Lusk and Terment, and they're already in for the night; you won't be seeing them anymore.

  That's the ambassador there. His name is Hradec Kralowc; he's a bit of a rake, you know. He'll come rolling in around one in the morning with something very delectable on his arm. Remember her going in, you'll probably see her going out."

  Fenton took the clipboard and said, "What's it all about, then? This is more security than you'd be likely to give an outfit like this."

  "They've got something in there," Edwards said. "Don't ask me what it is; I don't know and I don't care. It's valuable, that's all I know about it."

  "Then that's all I need to know," Fenton said. (Pity; Mulligan would have liked to know more.) "Apparently," Edwards went on, "there was some sort of run at it once before, and they're afraid the same bunch might try again."

  "Not while we're on," Fenton said firmly, and Mulligan fervently hoped he was right.

  "The ambassador's the only one you take orders from," Edwards said.

  "Nobody in or out without him saying yes."

  "I like it simple," Fenton said.

  "Then you're gonna like it here," Edwards told him.

  Mulligan handed over the van keys to his opposite number on the other crew, a tall, bony Jamaican named Kingsbury, and then the four-to-midnight guys drove away back to headquarters uptown while Fenton dished out assignments; Block and Fox out at the watery end of the slip; Morrison and Garfield inside the entrance to the hull; and Mulligan and Dresner on the gate.

  "Keep a sharp eye out," Fenton said, unnecessarily. "Though I don't suppose you'll see much."

  Which, for the first fifteen minutes, was absolutely true. Seated on the folding chairs by the locked gate, Mulligan and Dresner could look up and catch glimpses of the traffic hurtling by up there on the FDR Drive, but no traffic at all came to this dead end down here. Nor was it a spot likely to attract pedestrian traffic after dark. A quiet night, then; exactly what the doctor ordered. Mulligan and Dresner sat at their ease on the folding chairs and whiled away the time with Superghost.

  Headlights. Approaching; stopping. Would this be the ambas sador coming home? Mulligan looked forward to eyeballing the good-looking girl who would allegedly be with him.

  But, no, this was not the ambassador, unless the ambassador moonlighted delivering pizzas. That out there was a white with red trim Dominick's Pizza truck, a famous national brand, and here came a cheerful-looking, narrow-nosed guy in the white Dominick's delivery uniform, carrying what looked like two pizza boxes.

  Careful, Mulligan told himself. This could be a trick. Or a trap. Or trouble. He and Dresner both rose, both stood warily, hands on holstered guns, as the cheerful-looking guy approached and said, 'This the Votskojek embassy?"

  Mulligan and Dresner looked at one another. Votskojek? Was it?

  Temporizing, Mulligan said to the delivery guy, "It's the embassy."

  "Right," said the guy. "And this is the pizza. If s a treat from the ambassador, uh, wait a minute, wait a minute--" He turned the boxes around until he could read the delivery slip taped on top. "What kinda name is that?" he wanted to know. "Hradec Kralowc." Bright-eyed, he looked at them through the fence. 'That's your guy, right?"

  It was indeed. Mulligan remembered the name and remembered looking at a photo of the guy on the clipboard Fenton was now carrying in this direction. 'That's right," Mulligan said, and Fenton arrived to say,

  "What's this?"

  "Pizza," Dresner told him, while Mulligan said to the delivery guy, 'The pizza's for the ambassador?"

  "No no no no no," the guy said. 'The pizza's from the ambassador, for you guys. To welcome you--what's he say?--aboard. Because it's your first night, right?"

  The smell of pizza wafted through the chain-link fence. It smelled great. Dresner said, "Now thafs what I call a boss." 'Things are looking up, boys," Fenton said, and told Mulligan, "Open up, Joe, we'll watch your back."

  "Right." Mulligan unlocked the gate and opened it, while Dresner and Fenton peered into the darkness, alert to any opponent who might suddenly rush the fence, and the delivery guy stepped through all alone, grinning. He put the two boxes on one of the folding chairs, looking brightly at them all, and said, "Enjoy your pizzas."

  "We will," Mulligan assured him, standing there by the open gate.

  When the delivery guy made no move to leave, when he went on standing there, bright-eyed, expectantly smiling, Mulligan tensed up for a second, thinking, It is a trap! But then Fenton caught on, and dug into his hip pocket. Dragging out his skinny old wallet, he slipped a couple bucks out of it and passed them to the delivery guy, saying, "Thanks, pal."

  "Anytime, sport," the delivery guy said, and went grinning through the gate. While Mulligan relocked, the delivery guy hopped in his truck and drove away, and Fenton and Dresner checked out the boxes. "Both the same," Dresner announced. "Sausage and cheese."

  "Not a bad thing, sausage and cheese," Mulligan allowed.

  Fenton picked up one of the boxes. "I'll distribute this one," He said.

  "You guys start on that. Don't eat the whole thing, though, the two of you."

  "Who, us?" Mulligan said, and chortled, because he could probably get through that entire pizza all by himself with no help from Dresner at all.

  It was nice, though, a nice way to start the job. Mulligan put the pizza box on the ground between himself and Dresner, and they each pulled out slices and started to eat. It was excellent. They had no reason to be suspicious at all. he fourth time Hradec saw Nana: The Musical, it still didn't make any sense, but by now he was used to that. The British import was a Broadway sellout, in more ways than one, but who knew what the Broadway audience was anymore or what that audience thought made sense? The green-tinged lighting, the smoke and mirrors, the gritty evocation of low Parisian dives, the all-singing, all-dancing, all-gyrating sansculottes, the coloratura climaxes, the utter Technicolor despair at the curtain, it was all loud and spectacular and expensive, with every penny of expense visible right there on stage in the whirling sets and lunatic effects, and that's what it presumably was all about. The audience applauded the sets and came out humming nothing, and seemed to believe it was having a good time.

  As for Hradec, he contented himself with watching the fourth sansculottes from the left. Krystal Kerrin, she klaimed her name to be, and what shapely yet powerful legs she possessed! To think that, in just a few hours, those legs would be wrapped around him. While Nana's bleak history was baroquely told, Hradec Kralowc sat in the house seat his pony Krystal had obtained for him-- fourth row, a bit to the left of center--and watched her trot.

  And then it was over, and like legions of stage-door johnnies before him Hradec trooped around to the stage-door alley, where very quickly Krystal came tripping into view, powerful legs twinkling silver below a short black skirt. Soon, over lobster and pouillyfuisse at Bernardin, she was bubbling on about her recent activities --tryouts, costumings, classes (sword fighting was going particular well), hairstylists, agent troubles, backbiting backstage at Nana: The Musical--through all of which Hradec sat in shadows across from her, a half-smile of inattention on his face. Her mouth was lovely, and had its uses, but what he mostly thought about was her legs.

  And then the taxi to the embassy, arriving a bit after one in the morning, to find all was well. There was a new team of guards on tonight, confidence-inspiring in their policelike getups. The pair at the gate were Laurel and Hardyish, in that they were fat and thin, but otherwise appeared not to have much of a bent for the comical, unless one counted the length of time it took Hardy to compare Hradec's self with the photo of himself on the man's clipboard. But Hradec didn't mind; total security may take a little longer, but if s worth it in the long run. Yes indeed.

  When Hardy at last felt he could live with the idea that the man before him and the photograph were both references to the same individual, and Laurel a
t his instructions unlocked the gate, it was Hardy who offered an oily smile and gestured to some trash on the ground as he said,

  "Appreciate it, sir."

  Whatever that might mean. Hradec's thoughts were all of Krystal's nether pins. "Very good," he responded, and took his lady of this evening by the elbow and steered her toward the embassy.

  En route, they passed this team's sergeant, a skinny little geezer who walked with them briefly, started to say, "Even--" then had to stifle a mammoth yawn. Eyes watering, he tried again. "Evening, Ambassador. I'm Fenton. Everything's quiet."

  "Good," Hradec said. "Carry on."

  "The boys appreciated the thoughtfulness, sir," Fenton said, stopping in Hradec's wake and tossing off a semiofficial kind of salute.

  "Yes, yes," Hradec said, not listening, moving on. Those silver legs whipsawed along beside him in the soft darkness toward the ship.

  The two guards just inside the entrance rose from their folding chairs as Hradec and Krystal boarded. Both smiled and nodded their greetings, and one of them abruptly covered his mouth, segments of a yawn appearing around the perimeter of his hand. Hradec found himself about to yawn in sympathy but forced himself to stop. Can't have any of that. There's much to be done before sleep tonight, much, oh, much to be done.

  And was. The clock read well after two when at last Hradec switched off the light and settled down to a much-needed rest in dear Krystal's arms, and it read not yet three when rough hands switched the lights back on and poked at Hradec's shoulder and head, and a rough voice said, "Rise and shine, you."

  Hradec's eyes popped open. Beside him, Krystal's mouth popped open and a scream began to emerge, but then yet another rough hand clamped down over her face and the scream went back inside. That hand held a white cloth; the tang of chloroform prickled the air, and Krystal's eyes glazed o'er.

  The room was full of men wearing ski masks. In June? Hradec, still fighting free of a silver-legged dream, stared around and saw only one familiar uncovered face. "Karver!" he cried at the cringing figure of Dr. Zorn over by the door.

  Zorn refused to look up. His hands miserably washed one another at his waist. He twitched all over.

  "Karver!" Hradec cried, to his onetime classmate at Osigreb Polytechnic.

  "What's going on?"

  But it wasn't his old friend Karver Zorn who answered his plea. No, Zorn was now blinking pathetically at the array of hypodermic syringes in the small carrying case being presented to him by the largest and meanest-looking of the invaders. No, it was another one, the nearest of the interlopers, a slope-shouldered fellow whose features were hidden behind a ghastly purple ski mask blotched with hideous green snowflakes, who said, "We've taken over the ship."

  Diddums! Hradec had sense enough not to blurt the name out loud.

  Instead, staring at the syringe as it approached, "This is piracy!" he cried.

  "Good," said the phlegmatic Diddums, behind his mask. "I never did that before."

  By Saturday night, when Stan Murch and the burglar team of Harry Matlock and Ralph Demrovsky arrived in Vermont, the chateau was as ready as a fifteen-year-old boy after two hours of fbreplay. The chateau had had two nights of foreplay, and was just begging to be robbed.

  Grijk Krugnk was having an awful lot of fun here. He'd driven up yesterday, Friday, leading the driver team of Fred Lartz and, at the wheel, his wife, Thelma, plus lockman Ralph Winslow, who even carried a glass with tinkling ice cubes in the car, and heavy mustached utility man Gus Brock. Fred and Thelma stayed in the Dortmunder room at Kinohaha, Grijk reclaimed his room at the bed-and-breakfast place, and Ralph and Gus made arrangements at a motel down the mountain, using the other one of Arnie Albright's ticking credit cards. Friday night at the chateau, while they'd triggered alarms and watched reactions, they'd also installed a lot of Grijk's spy stuff, both in the chateau and in the other house, and had done some of the preliminary work on removing alarm systems entirely.

  While this group was thus hard at work up in New England, back in New York Dr. Zorn had been strapped to a bench in his church, studying hydrodynamics. Around the time Andy Kelp was testing the doctor and declaring him ready, Grijk and Fred and Thelma and Ralph and Gus were settling into their beds in Vermont for a good day's sleep.

  With dark on Saturday came more fun at the chateau. The telephone lines they'd tapped into were blue with the smoke of furious phone calls. The TV monitors they'd installed in both buildings showed the protectors of the estate running in increasingly smaller circles, going out of their minds. The alarm systems that had already been removed now rusted quietly at the bottom of Harry Hoch man's illegal dump. Total and productive quiet would soon arrive.

  Meanwhile, down in New York City, Dr. Zorn doctored pizza, and Andy Kelp delivered it. Then Kelp searched several hospital parking lots and parking buildings before he found what he wanted: a large van with fold-down seats and M.D. plates. Firmly believing that doctors understand comfort and discomfort better than anyone else, Kelp always based his automotive choices on medical opinion. And as usual, he was right; the van drove well, its interior was soft and well appointed, and it would very easily transport eight, three of them unconscious.

  Timing is all. The guards were sleepy, but not yet asleep, when Hradec Kralowc and his lady friend returned to the embassy a little after one in the morning, just around the same time that Stan Murch was backing his borrowed truck down the curving driveway beside the chateau and halting at the wide door that led to the Hochmans's art gallery. Ralph Winslow, one-handed, sipping from his drink, opened that door just a short time before, down in New York, the other expert lockman in the crew, Wally Whistler, passed his hand over the gate leading to Votskojek territory, and the gate sagged open with a little sigh.

  Wally, Dortmunder, Kelp, Tiny, Jim O'Hara, and the subdued Dr. Zorn entered that sovereignty, strolled past the guards all of a heap in their folding chairs, and made their presence known--and felt--to the ambassador and his friend. Zorn put up no resistance when they had him inoculate against consciousness first Kralowc and then the already-chloroformed young lady. Since Zorn was giving no trouble, they permitted him to walk to the van under his own power, where he made absolutely no complaint about dosing himself with the same sleepy juice.

  Up in the Green Mountains, certain adjustments of placement and position had been made to the treasures of Harry Hochman's art collection. Grijk Krugnk, walking as delicately as an elephant in a room full of mice, carried into the gallery the jewel-encrusted glass box that had been flown across the Atlantic from the Rivers of Blood Cathedral and placed it on the pedestal that had been made available for it when a Brancusi torso was relegated to a lesser position.

  Moving quietly but efficiently, Thelma Lartz, still wearing her hat, started taking Polaroid pictures of the collection in situ; so far, the glass box either didn't appear in the pictures or was merely a small feature of the background. In any case, as Thelma finished exhaustive pictorial documentation of each section of the gallery, Harry Matlock and Ralph Demrovsky and Ralph Winslow and Gus Brock and Grijk Krugnk carried the pieces out and stowed them carefully in the truck. (Drivers don't do heavy lifting.) At each stage of the operation, Thelma would also take a couple of pictures of the interior of the truck, being careful not to show any human beings or license plates.

  Back on the Pride of Votskojek, Wally Whistler moved like a ghost through several locks, leaving no traces, and making it possible for Andy Kelp once more to lay felonious hands on the femur of St. Ferghana.

  Gotcha.

  Galse dawn haloed the mountains, and still they were driving north. "I don't see why," Dortmunder groused, "they couldn't put their ski hotels and their chateaus down by the city." 'There aren't any mountains down by the city, John," Kelp explained. He was doing all the driving, because he liked to do all the driving, when it was a doctor's car. "It's all flat down there," he explained further.

  "Near the coast."

  "Better," Dortmunder said. "Safer skiing that
way."

  Kelp nodded. "I never thought about it in exactly that light," he admitted.

  These two shared the bench-style front seat of the doctor's car, with the magic bone seat-belted into place between them. Tiny basked in spread-out splendor alone on the seat behind them, with Jim O'Hara and Wally Whistler on the seat back of that, and the three sleeping travelers stretched out on the padded surface at the rear that had been created when the rear seat was folded down. These sleepers bounced sometimes, when there was a rough spot on the road, but mostly the road was a good smooth one, and they lay as quietly back there as the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers--the real one, the first one.

  There's always traffic in the vicinity of New York City, but once they got about a half hour north that all thinned out and they mostly had the road to themselves. Kelp stayed within a few miles of the speed limit, not wanting to have to explain to any inquiring state trooper that those three passengers in the back were not drunk or stoned, merely sleeping.

  Sleeping hard. Kelp drove sanely and sensibly.

  South of Rutland, north of Bennington, in the general vicinity of Mount Tabor and Weston and Peru (no, a different Peru), sprawling into the Green Mountain National Forest from a base just outside the forest perimeter, stands the Mount Kinohaha Happy Hour Inns ski resort. The nearest town is Middleville, but what Middleville might be in the middle of nobody any longer knows. Nowhere, basically.

  But it was in Middleville that Dortmunder told Kelp to make the turn; not the well-marked, well-signed come-on-over turn toward Kinohaha, but the other way, up a steep dark asphalt road that quartered and strayed and goofed around but kept more or less tending upward until Dortmunder pointed out the next turn, which was the dead-end road up to the chateau. "From here on," Dortmunder said, "we gotta be silent, and we gotta be dark."

  Kelp switched off the headlights and came to a complete stop, and he and Dortmunder peered through the windshield at the world. At first, neither of them could see a thing, until their eyes adjusted to life without headlights, and then Kelp said, "There it is."