Watch Your Back

by Donald Westlake

  Where to hide? Nowhere. The bar could not be more open, and both POINTERS and the back room could not be more closed cul–de–sacs.

  Where? Where? Up front, several locks had to be dealt with, which Dortmunder had just recently learned, but time wasn’t the problem; space was. He had to have space in which to disappear.

  The basement! The trapdoor he’d closed. Quickly he hopped onto the duckboards and bent to lift the door, while up front that other door was about to open. Should he close the trapdoor after himself? No, too awkward. Also, there was nothing he could do about the duckboards.

  Hook the trapdoor open, skitter down the stairs, his furrowed brow sinking below bar level just as the street door opened and several guys trooped in. At least several.

  “Dark in here.”

  “There’s lightswitches behind the bar. Hold on a second.”

  The basement was absolutely black. With hands splayed out in front of himself, eyes uselessly staring, Dortmunder inched across the unseen floor into the unseeable black.

  “Jesus Christ! Look at this!”

  Dortmunder froze, fingers twitching at the end of his outstretched arms.

  “What is it? Manny? What’s the problem?”

  “This goddamn trapdoor’s open! I just about dropped myself into the cellar.”

  “Holy shit, close that thing.”

  “How? I can’t see in here.”

  “Wait, don’t move, I think I know where the lightswitch is. That Rollo’s getting too damn careless.”

  “I think he’s lost his job satisfaction.”

  “He can lose all he wants to, we gotta keep him on until we’re done in here, because we don’t want him opening his yap to some of these wholesalers. Here’s the lightswitch!”

  Sudden light flowed down the basement stairs, swaddled Dortmunder, and streamed on to give faint yellow–gray light to his surroundings. A rough stone wall stood directly in front of him, less than a foot from his outstretched fingers, which he now dropped to his sides. A long rectangular room extended to his right, under the main room of the bar. To his left, a doorway in a wooden wall suggested a corridor beyond. Afraid his feet could still be seen from certain angles upstairs, Dortmunder turned left and tiptoed toward that corridor.

  Darkness. Almost as total as before, except that when he looked back, he could see a rectangle of thin yellow lines up above in the black, outlining the trapdoor that had just been lowered.

  A sound of voices came from up there. Saying anything useful? In movies and on television, people are always just happening to be hid someplace when other people have a conversation that explains the whole thing. Could that be happening here?

  Dortmunder tiptoed back to stand beneath that thin yellow rectangle overhead. What were they saying?

  At first, nothing; they seemed to have stopped talking just as he got there. And then all at once there came a painful irritating screech and scrawk, which of course had to be the duckboards being slid back into position — a problem to think about a little later. But then at last, the duckboards were in their proper place, almost the entire yellow line of the rectangle had been blotted out, and people up there began again to speak, muffled but legible:

  “Remember, only the Russian.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “And the gen–u–wine French.”

  “I got some Polish here.”

  “Forget that. We bring back Polish, he’ll hand us our heads.”

  “Well, I’ll take a bottle for myself.”

  “This cash register’s empty.”

  “Sure, they empty it every night.”

  “What’s with this safe here?”

  “Forget that, we’ll take care of that later.”

  “Is this French?”

  “No! What’sa matter with you? What you want is Dom Perig–none.”

  “Dom Perig–none.”

  “There should be more in back.”

  “Remember, when a boss’s daughter marries, only the best Russian vodka, only the best French champagne. Or they’ll find us in the Meadowlands.”

  “Stoli, right?”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  The voices faded, moving into other parts of the bar, but Dortmunder could follow their progress by the dull thuds of their shoes on the floor. From here and there, from everywhere, the feet moved toward the front door and away from it again, as the soldiers up there carried the cases of Russian and French out of the place, to prepare for the celebration of the fact that one of their major scumbags was going to replicate himself.

  Well, it had sort of worked. They hadn’t known he was hiding here, and they had told him certain things. They weren’t the things he wanted to know, but still, the principle had proved out.

  A faint visual memory came back to him, from that brief moment after the upstairs lights had been switched on and before the trapdoor had been shut. The memory told him there was a lightswitch on the wall that had been facing him when he’d stood there at the foot of the stairs. That was the right place for a lightswitch, the foot of the stairs; could he find it again? Would it make so much glare they’d notice it upstairs?

  Dortmunder pondered. He remembered basements from earlier in his life, remembered the lighting arrangement in the back room of this very bar, even remembered another quick visual memory of one single lightbulb in the ceiling of the rectangular room in which he now stood. All in all, it seemed to him worth the risk, to light one little lightbulb rather than curse the darkness.

  He was right. When he found the switch and flipped it on, that forty–watt bulb in the middle of the ceiling created an effect very like the shadowed insubstantiality of the Kasbah at midnight, or a teenagers’ party when the folks are out of town. In its fretful murk, he could see rows of kegs: beer kegs, wine kegs, even kegs handmarked in white chalk, Amsterdam Liquor Store Burben — hmm.

  The place was also cluttered with broken barstools and tables, open tall metal lockers in which hung the remnants of waiters’ uniforms from some era of O.J. history before Dortmunder’s time, and many cartons of empty bottles, some of them bearing the logos of long–extinct bottlers.

  And halfway down one side wall, close to that overhead light source, which was a blessing, there stood a battered old gray metal desk, with an equally battered gray metal swivel chair in front of it. The kneehole was on the left of the desk, while on the right were two tall file drawers.

  Okay, that’s more like it. Dortmunder settled himself into the squeaking chair with his left elbow on the desktop, opened the upper squeaking drawer, and let his fingers do the walking among the folder tags in there, stopping when he came to “SLA.”

  SLA. The State Liquor Authority, the god of the taverner, whose rules are the closest thing in their world to Holy Writ, because they have the ultimate power of life and death: they can shut you down.

  The SLA folder was more than an inch thick. When Dortmunder opened it on the desk and bent low to read it in the uncertain light, he saw that the papers were roughly in chronological order from front (old) to back (new), and that the earliest documents were forty–seven years old. That was when Jerome Hulve and Otto Medrick, d/b/a Jerrick Associates, applied for and eventually received a liquor license for the O.J. Bar & Grill at this address. (Why the reverse of initials? Maybe the J.O. Bar & Grill didn’t sound as melodic to them.)

  Thirty–one years ago, Otto Medrick, now d/b/a O.J. Partners, bought out the half–interest from the bar now in the possession of the estate of Jerome Hulve and had to go through a whole lot of paperwork all over again, as though he were a brand–new guy. And six months ago, Otto Medrick, whose address was now given as 131 — 58 Elfin Dr., Coral Acres, FL, sold O.J. Partners to Raphael Medrick of 161 — 63 63rd Point, Queens, NY, for no cash down and a percentage of profit over the next twenty years.

  Raphael Medrick, when taking the reins, also had to present the SLA with a bushel of paperwork, even more than Otto thirty–one years before, and some of the extra paper was in
teresting. Letters attesting to Raphael Medrick’s rehabilitation had been proffered by his attorney, by a judge from Queens County Court, and by Raphael’s former probation officer. All wrote that Raphael’s previous (brief) life of crime had been nonviolent, totally repudiated by Raphael himself, and caused by association with bad companions from whom Raphael was now forsworn. A letter from Otto Medrick further assured the SLA that Otto had complete confidence in his nephew Raphael, or he would certainly not turn over to Raphael his every asset in this world.

  When Dortmunder at last lifted his head from this family saga, nearly an hour had gone by since he’d first switched on the basement light, and he realized it had been quite a while since he’d heard movement from the troops upstairs. Aware of a new stiffness in his back caused by the need to bend so close over the papers in this uncertain light, he creakily straightened himself, cocked an ear, and listened.

  Nothing. When he looked over toward the stairs, he could see no lines of yellow light in the ceiling.

  He stood, did a couple deep knee bends, regretted them, and walked over to look more closely up the stairs at the unbroken ceiling. No light. He stepped to the wall, switched off the basement light, and still no illumination from upstairs. So he flipped the light back on and started up the stairs to see if it would be possible to get out of here.

  All by itself the trapdoor was pretty heavy, being made of wood thick enough to walk on. When you put lengths of duckboard on top of it, what would that do?

  Nothing good. Dortmunder went up the stairs, bending forward, until his back was against the bottom of the trapdoor and his knees were bent. He was on the side away from the hinges. He braced himself, pressed upward with legs and back, and nothing happened except that little bolts of pain shot here and there through his body.

  Not good. Not at all good. In order to get on with his life, which he very much wanted to do, he had to get out of this basement. Come on, it can’t be that heavy.

  Going back down the stairs, he rooted among the broken bits of furniture till he found a cracked–off wooden barstool leg, tapered like a simplified bowling pin. Grasping this, he went back up the stairs, leaned up to the farthest corner he could reach, and insisted that it lift, just insisted and insisted, and then it did lift, and immediately he slid the leg into the new narrow space. A beginning.

  Next it was an entire barstool he brought, carried it up the stairs horizontally, and forced the curved back of the seat into the narrow opening he’d made. He levered the stool downward, pushing the trapdoor minimally upward, until the broken leg fell out, which he immediately wedged upright between trapdoor and the second step from the top. Freeing the barstool, he jammed it in, standing up, between the trapdoor and the fourth step, causing the leg to fall over.

  It was slow work, and tiring, but with every move, using different pieces of furniture, he made the trapdoor infinitesimally lift, until eventually there was a wedge of space at the top of the stairs just large enough for a person to squirm through, being very sure he didn’t kick any props out of the way behind himself as he went.

  He was very tired. It was almost daylight. Still, if he didn’t put everything back the way it was supposed to be, they would know they’d had a visitor, and that wouldn’t be a good thing for them to learn.

  Weary, Dortmunder dragged the duckboard out of the way, opened the trapdoor and hooked it, then went back to the basement, took documents from the SLA folder containing uncle and nephew Medrick’s most recent addresses, put everything in the basement back where it had been, switched off the light down there, and went back up by the amber light over the cash register.

  Weary. On the way out, he grabbed a bottle of Stoli the wedding guests had left behind. You kidding? He deserved it.

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  It was called the Twilight Lounge, and it was east on Forty–third Street, between a wholesale to–the–trade–only plastic flower showroom and a store that called itself “Sickroom & Party Supplies,” with an unfortunate display window. Looking at that sign, Kelp said, “Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”

  “Shouldn’t what?” Dortmunder asked. He was feeling skeptical and unobservant.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kelp said, and pushed through the swinging door into the Twilight Lounge, where they were at once drenched in the crooning of Dean Martin, his voice morphine–laced molasses.

  It was J.C. Taylor who’d come up with this joint for their meeting ground, now that the O.J. was becoming increasingly unlikely. “Josey doesn’t know the place herself,” Tiny had explained to everybody, in various phone calls earlier today, Friday, after Dortmunder had dragged himself out of bed to make his own phone calls to say they needed a place to meet and discuss his discoveries of last night. “A guy down in the post office substation in her building says he goes there; it’s quiet, they mind their own business, there’s a back room we could use, just say Eddie told us about it.”

  Well, it was worth a try. Anything, they all agreed, rather than gather in Dortmunder’s living room again. So, four o’clock Friday afternoon, here they were in the Twilight Lounge, a sprawling, lowlit joint half full of wage earners taking an indirect route to their suburban homes for the weekend, the whole scene suffused by the umber gurgle of Dean Martin.

  There were two bartenders at work: one hardworking, blank–faced guy with his sleeves rolled up, one friendly girl with all the time in the world. Rather than break into the three conversations the girl already had under way, Kelp leaned over the bar and said to the guy en passant, “Eddie sent me.”

  “Right.” The guy never made eye contact, but just kept watching what his busy hands were doing with various objects on the backbar as he said, “Eddie’s pal is already back there.”

  Dortmunder wondered who that might be, but the busy barman was still talking: “Order your drinks, you can carry them back, you can run a tab until you’re done.”

  “Thanks,” Kelp said. “I’ll have bourbon and ice, two glasses.”

  “Same,” Dortmunder said, and the bartender snapped an efficient nod and went off with what looked like a trayful of piña coladas. True, it was August outside, but where were these commuters going?

  As they waited for their drinks, Kelp said, “Well, it’s more efficient than the O.J.”

  Dortmunder thought, is that what we wanted? But he knew he was just in a bad mood, irritated by change simply because it was change, so all he said was, “I wonder who Eddie’s pal is.”

  Kelp shrugged. “We’ll find out.”

  That was wisdom, and Dortmunder nodded to it. Take it as it comes. What the hell. More efficient than the O.J.; maybe that’d be okay.

  Efficiently the barman slapped four glasses onto the gleaming wood in front of them. “Around the bar to your left,” he said, not looking at them, watching instead the next job his busy hands were concerned with, “then past the rest–rooms, it’s on your right.”

  They thanked his departing back, picked up their glasses, and followed instructions. Past the end of the bar they found themselves in a quietly lit, neat corridor with carpet on the floor and wall sconces and gay–nineties scenes in frames on the walls. The first door on the right said LADIES. The second door on the right said GENTLEMEN. The third door on the right was open, and seated in there, looking irritable, was Tiny.

  This was a larger back room than the one at the O.J., and more elaborate. The wall–sconce–and–gay–nineties theme continued in here, and there were four small round tables geometrically placed on the maroon carpet, each containing a tablecloth and a stand–up triangular menu of, on one side, our specialty drinks, and on the other, our specialty snacks. Tiny had already tossed onto the floor behind him the menu from his table.

  “Hey, Tiny,” Kelp said as they entered. “Different here, huh?”

  Tiny held up a tall glass of red liquid that looked like, but was not, cherry pop. “They wanted,” he said, “to put the vodka and the wine in separate glasses. I told them, t
hey could give me as many glasses as they want, they get one back.”

  As Kelp put his two glasses at the place to Tiny’s right, he said, “We made a kind of a different deal.”

  “The customer,” Tiny informed him, “is always right.”

  Putting his own store of glasses at the place to Tiny’s left, Dortmunder said, “Is Murch’s Mom coming? If so, we’re five, and this is a table for four.”

  “I only talked to the son,” Tiny said, and Stan Murch himself walked in, a glass of beer in one hand, and a little shallow bowl with wavy blue designs on it in the other. “I’m glad my Mom isn’t coming,” he informed them. “If she could see the traffic in Manhattan. What’s this, I got to sit with my back to the door?”

  “You get to close the door,” Tiny suggested.