“Sorry to hear that,” Dortmunder said.
“In the first place, sun.” Arnie scratched an ecru arm reminiscently. “It’s overrated,” he assured them. “You can’t look at it, you can’t get away from it, and it makes you itch. Or anyway, me. Then there’s the ocean.”
Kelp said, “You were on an island, I hear.”
“Boy, was I. Any direction you go, ten feet, splash. But the thing I never got about the ocean, you think it’s water, it isn’t.”
Kelp, interested, curious, said, “It isn’t?”
“Looks like water, sounds like water.” Leaning in close, Arnie half–whispered the secret: “It’s salt.”
“Sure,” Kelp said. “Salt water.”
“Forget the water, it’s salt.” Arnie made a face that did not improve his looks. “Yuk. I couldn’t believe how much beer I had to drink to get that taste outa my mouth. Then somebody said, ‘You don’t want all that beer in the sun, you want a margarita,’ so I took a margarita and that’s salt. Come on. All the salt down there, you could curl up like a mummy.”
“This is a lotta background, Arnie,” Dortmunder said.
“You’re right,” Arnie said. “Now that I’m not so obnoxious any more, I’m garrulous instead. You know, like an old uncle after he goes straight. So let me cut to the chase, and the chase is a guy called Preston Fareweather.”
Dortmunder repeated the name: “Never heard of him.”
“Well, he isn’t a movie star,” Arnie said, “he’s a venture capitalist. He’s got more money than the mint, he invests in your up–and–coming operation, when the dust settles, hey, look, you got a partner, he’s even richer. The reason he’s down there, he’s hiding out from lawyers and process servers.”
“From the people he screwed?” Kelp asked.
“In a way,” Arnie said. “But not the businesspeople. Seems, one way or another, Preston Fareweather married most of the really good–looking women in North America, and they banded together to get revenge. So he went to this island where nobody can get at him, waiting for the wives to get over their mad, which is not likely. But the thing about him is, his personality’s even worse than mine used to be. Everybody down there hates him because he’s so snotty and in your face, but he has all this money, so people put up with him. He insulted me a couple times, and I shrugged it off, he’s just another bad taste, like ocean, but then a couple people there told me about this place he has.”
“A place,” Dortmunder echoed. “I have the feeling we’re getting somewhere.”
“We are,” Arnie agreed. “Preston Fareweather has a big luxury duplex penthouse apartment on top of a building on Fifth Avenue, views of the park, all that, and in that apartment he’s got his art collection and his Spanish silver and all this stuff. Well, you know, I’m interested in stuff, that’s been the basis of our relationship over the years, so I went back to this guy. I hung around with this guy, I drank with him, pretended I was drunk, pretended his snotty little remarks got under my skin, and all along I’m getting the details of this apartment, because it occurs to me I know some people — namely, you people — who might be interested in this apartment.”
“It sounds possible,” Dortmunder agreed.
Kelp said, “Depending on this and that. Like getting in and getting out, for instance.”
“Which is why I hung around the bastard so much,” Arnie said. “He has this guy with him, personal secretary or assistant or something, I dunno, named Alan Pinkleton, and he’s actually pretty sharp, I thought once or twice he might have piped to what I was doing, but it turned out okay. And by the time I had everything I needed to know, I realized this Preston son of a bitch had cured me, can you believe it?”
Kelp said, “Preston cured you?”
“I watched him,” Arnie said. “I watched the people around him, how they acted, and I suddenly got it, those are the expressions I used to see on the faces of people looking at me. I was never obnoxious in the same way as Preston, on purpose to hurt and embarrass other people, but it all comes down to the same place. ‘I don’t wanna be Preston Fareweather’, I told myself, ‘not even by accident’, so that was it. I was cured and I come home, and I called you, John Dortmunder, because here’s my proposition.”
“I’m ready,” Dortmunder allowed.
“I’m sure you are. I despise that Preston so much, I put up with so much crap from that guy while I’m casing his apartment long–distance, that my reward is the thought of the expression on his face the next time he walks into his house. So what I’m offering is this: Anything you take outa there, I’ll give you seventy per cent of whatever I get for it, which is way up, you gotta know, from the well, uh, twenty–five, thirty per —”
“Ten,” Kelp said.
“Well, even if,” Arnie said. “Seventy this time. And not only that, the thing’s a piece a cake. Lemme show you.”
Arnie jumped to his feet and left the room, and Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a glance. Kelp whispered, “He is less obnoxious. I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“But this place does smell,” Dortmunder whispered, and Arnie returned, with a kid’s black–and–white composition book.
“I did all this on the plane coming back,” he told them, and sat down to open the book, which was full of crabbed handwriting in ink. Following his route with a stubby fingertip, he said, “The building’s eighteen stories high, at Fifth and Sixty–eighth. There’s two duplex penthouses on top, north side and south side, both front to back. He’s got the south side, views of the park, midtown Manhattan, the east side. His neighbor’s probably got just as much money, what’s his view? Spanish Harlem. And don’t think Preston didn’t chortle over that.”
“Nice guy,” Dortmunder said.
“In every way. Now, here’s the wrinkle that makes the difference. Behind this building, on Sixty–eighth street, there’s a four–story town house converted to apartments. Preston bought that building, rents it out, keeps getting richer. In the bottom of that building, where it’s against the back of the big corner building, he put in a garage. Out of the garage, going up the outside of the bigger building, he put an elevator shaft and an elevator. His own elevator, just from his garage to his apartment.”
“Not bad,” Dortmunder acknowledged.
“Not bad for you guys,” Arnie assured him. “Everybody else in that building, they’ve got this high–tech security stuff, doormen, closed–circuit TV. What Preston’s got is a private entrance, a private garage, a private elevator.”
Dortmunder said, “Who’s in this apartment now?”
“Twice a month,” Arnie said, “on the first and the fifteenth, building security does a sweep, spends maybe two hours. Twice a month, on the tenth and the twenty–fifth, a cleaning service comes in, spends seven hours. The other twenty–seven days of every month, the place is empty.”
Dortmunder said, “Arnie, you’re sure of all these details.”
“I paid for them, John Dortmunder,” Arnie assured him. “With emotional distress.”
Kelp said, “You know, I gotta admit it, it does sound possible. But we’ll have to look it over.”
“Of course you gotta look it over,” Arnie said. “Now, if I was you guys, I know what I’d do. I’d ease into that garage — there’s alarms, but you know how to do with that —”
“Sure,” Kelp agreed.
“In there now,” Arnie said, “is Preston’s BMW, top of the line. If I was you, I’d go in there, take out that car, sell it, put a truck in there, take a ride up in the elevator.”
Dortmunder had been interested in the story, but now it was over, and he was beginning to realize that the smell Arnie had mentioned was more insidious than he’d thought. It really was not to be borne, not for very long. Maybe it was the last lingering trace of Arnie’s former obnoxiousness, or maybe it was just August, but the time had come to leave. Pushing his chair back from the table, he said, “Is that it, then? Any more details?”
“What more details co
uld there be?”
Kelp stood, so Dortmunder stood, so Arnie stood. Kelp said, “We’ll look it over.”
“Sure,” Arnie said. “But it looks like we’ve got a deal, right?”
Kelp said, “You wanna know, should you offer this to any other of your clients, I’d say, not yet.”
“We’ll call you,” Dortmunder promised.
“I’m looking forward,” Arnie said, “to your call.”
Chapter 6
* * *
Walking through Central Park, away from Arnie’s place and toward the potential harvest on Fifth, Dortmunder said, “Did you ever hear from Ralph Winslow again?”
“What, after the non–meet?” Kelp shrugged. “Believe it or not, I was three blocks from the O.J. when Stan called.”
“There was no reason to hang around.”
“I know that.” Kelp ducked a passing Frisbee and said, “A couple days later, Ralph’s brother called, he said Ralph talked himself out of the problem later that night, but then he decided to take his attorney’s advice, which was to move to a location for his health, which happens to be not in New York State.”
“So whatever Ralph had,” Dortmunder said, “it’s gone now.”
“Seems that way. The brother didn’t know what it was.” This time, Kelp caught the Frisbee and tossed it back, then called, “Whoops. Sorry.”
“The brother didn’t know what it was.”
“Well, the brother’s a civilian,” Kelp said, and nodded toward Fifth Avenue. “Maybe this’ll make up for it.”
“Let’s hope.”
The building, up ahead, taller than its neighbors, built in the real–estate flush of the 1950s, when details and ornamentation and style and grace were considered old–fashioned and unprofitable, hulked like a stalker over the park, a pale gray stone structure pocked with balconies. Dortmunder and Kelp studied it as they waited at the light, then crossed over to it and walked down the side street, past its hugeness. Then they stopped, in front of the smaller town house back there, and looked up at the tall black box running up the back of the apartment building.
“You can’t get up the outside,” Dortmunder pointed out. “No ladder rungs or anything.”
“John,” Kelp said, “would you want to go up seventeen flights of ladder rungs?”
“I’m just saying.”
Deciding to let that go, Kelp turned his attention to the smaller building behind the big apartment house, the one either from which the elevator shaft rose like a postmodern tree trunk or into which it was sunk like a sword hilt, depending on your general view of life. This twenty–five–foot–wide building, on the wide side for New York City town houses, was four stories high, with large windows and with the lowest floor halfway below sidewalk level. It was faced with the tannish–gray limestone New Yorkers call brown–stone, and was probably older than the monster on the corner. In fact, the monster on the corner had probably replaced another half–dozen town houses just like this, from a lower–horizoned age.
The facade of this structure had a broad staircase centered, flanked by wrought–iron railings and leading up half a flight to an elaborate dark wood front door with beveled windows.
Under the staircase a more modest staircase led from left to right, down half a flight to the ground–floor apartment.
On the right front of the building, the symmetry was destroyed by a recent addition, a featureless metal overhead garage door, painted a little darker tan–gray than the building. A driveway indentation lay in the curb fronting this door, and there appeared to be two locks above the simple brass handle at waist height in the middle. Above the right corner of the door was an unobtrusive dark green metal box, one foot high, six inches wide, three inches deep.
“Pipe the alarm box,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder said, “I see it. We seen boxes like that before.”
“You just have to be a little careful, is all,” Kelp said.
“On the other hand,” Dortmunder said, “an alarm like that, you gotta get in there with foam, if you’re gonna muffle the bell and short the wires.”
“Naturally.”
“Which means a ladder.”
“Not necessarily,” Kelp said.
“Well, let’s just say necessarily,” Dortmunder said. “A ladder, in this neighborhood, whadawe gonna do? Wear Con Edison coveralls and helmets? To lean on an alarm box?”
“What I was thinking, John,” Kelp said, “instead of a ladder —”
“You’ll fly.”
“No, John,” Kelp said, not losing his patience. “I think Arnie’s right, what we should do to begin with, and that’s take the BMW outa there and put a truck in. Now, this truck’s gonna be a little tall.”
“Oh,” Dortmunder said. “I get it.”
“Drive around the corner with one of us on the roof —”
“One of us.”
“We’ll figure that out later,” Kelp said, and did hand gestures to demonstrate his thought. “Back it up to the garage door, do the alarm box. Truck drives away, around the corner, time he’s back, the BMW’s outa there, truck goes in.”
“Maybe,” Dortmunder said.
“Everything’s a maybe,” Kelp told him, “until you do it.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“Have we seen enough?”
Dortmunder looked up at the long elevator shaft one last time. “For now.”
For protective coloration, by tacit agreement they walked to the corner and back across Fifth Avenue and into the park, this time strolling southward instead of back toward Arnie’s place. In the park you were anonymous, just two other guys among all the other citizens enjoying the summer air: the joggers, the skateboarders, the bicyclists, the stroller pushers, the dog walkers, the Frisbee tossers, the unicyclists, the tree worshippers, the Hare Krishnas, and the lost Boy Scout troops. But back on Fifth Avenue in the Sixties, they couldn’t have been anything but what they were, which was not a good fact to advertise.
Strolling along southward, they both contemplated what they had heard and seen today, until Kelp said, “So we need two drivers.”
“You can be one of them.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Kelp said. “How about we call Stan Murch?”
“He isn’t two drivers. He’s good, but he isn’t that good.”
“He has a mom,” Kelp reminded him, “and she’s been known to drive.”
“Mostly that cab of hers.”
“But for us, too, sometimes. Anyway, I feel my own talents, with locks and suchlike, would be better availed of inside the building.”
“You may be right,” Dortmunder said. “So us two and Stan and his mom. There’s gonna be heavy lifting.”
“You’re talking about Tiny.”
“I am.”
Kelp said, “You wanna call everybody? We’ll make a meet at the O.J., tomorrow night.”
“Good.”
They walked a bit more in the sunshine, among the happy crowds, and then Dortmunder said, “Who knew? That Arnie’s intervention would turn out to have an upside.”
Chapter 7
* * *
It was just simple woolgathering, that’s all. Stan Murch had been driving for twenty minutes across the original–equipment neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, enjoying the massive delicacy of this dark green Lincoln Navigator, equipped with everything, when it suddenly occurred to him that if this vehicle came with everything, that meant it came with everything.
Yes. Unobtrusive on the dashboard, because it wasn’t at the moment in use, was the little screen of the Global Positioning System. This was a car, unfortunately, that knew where it was. And would tell.
That was the snag lately. If you grabbed some old clunker, it didn’t have enough resale value to be worth the risk involved in taking it away from its former owner, but a shiny new, valuable piece of tin was more than likely to be leashed to a satellite. And there was no known way to jam a satellite.
That’s the problem, Stan thought.
The law’s got all the labs.
How long had he been in possession of this bigmouth? Twenty minutes by the dashboard clock — no, twenty–one.
He’d picked up this untrustworthy beauty at a seafood restaurant in Sea Gate at 1:27, and it was now 1:48. Was the original purchaser of this vehicle an early luncher or a late luncher? Once he completed his piscatory blowout and moved from restaurant to parking lot to find an empty space where his wheels were supposed to be, how long would it take to get the law on the case? And then how long before that nosy satellite up in the sky, the one whose weight on the top of his head was now giving Stan a migraine, would be telling every cop in the five boroughs that the dark green Lincoln Navigator they all so much wanted to meet was at this very instant east–bound on the Belt Parkway, just past Aqueduct racetrack, with JFK Airport coming up on the right? Thirty seconds.
Watch Your Back Page 3
