Watch Your Back

by Donald Westlake

  “Yeah, I get that,” the droopy–nosed guy said. “But what happened?”

  “Well, some people,” the second regular said, “think those guys were part of a reality show, where everybody has to be difficult and obnoxious, only then it got canceled.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” the first regular said. “I heard they were hooked up with some Arab sheikhs wanted to buy the place without anybody knowing, so they could get booze without anybody knowing, which is why all those cases of hard stuff kept coming in, but then some of their wives found out about it and made them stop.”

  The second regular frowned like an olive tree. “Arabs? Those guys were Arab sheikhs?”

  “No, the representatives. The sheikhs couldn’t do it theirselves because they’re not supposed to be around booze.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” the first regular announced. “What I heard, they were working for some real estate guy, wanted to buy the whole block, force people out, put up one of those middle–finger towers.”

  The third regular smirked a little. “Force people out,” he asked, “by bringing in all that liquor?”

  The first regular was still marshaling his forces for the rebuttal when the door opened and half a dozen guys tromped in. They were older guys but big and meaty, with close–cropped gray hair and lots of tattoos showing below their white T–shirts. They had a kind of rolling gait in their walk, and they headed for the opposite end of the bar from the regulars, hallooing, “Hey, Rollo! Whadaya say, Rollo? Land ho, Rollo! Permission to board, Rollo!”

  “Pipe yourselves aboard, boys,” Rollo replied, and immediately began dealing out glasses onto the bar, followed by a big bowl of ice, followed by two bottles of nationally–known–brand whiskey.

  The regulars, once again stunned into silence, watched this largesse with unbelieving eyes, until the droopy–nosed guy said, “But what happened? I heard the old owner all of a sudden came up from somewhere —”

  “Mexico.”

  “Puerto Rico, I heard.”

  “Whada you guys know? It was Padre Island, Texas.”

  “But,” the droopy–nosed guy persisted, “what made him come up all of a sudden?”

  “Oh, some crook told him what was goin on,” the first regular said.

  The droopy–nosed guy looked confused. “Some crook?”

  The second regular explained, “There’s these guys, they come in here sometimes, use the back room to do their plotting, their planning.”

  “You mean like robberies, burglaries, like that?”

  “Something like that,” the first regular agreed. “None of our business.”

  “We buttoutski,” explained the second regular.

  “See no hear no speak no,” expanded the third regular.

  “But it was one of those crooks, crook–types,” the droopy–nosed guy said, “that talked to the old owner down south somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” said the first regular, and asked himself, “Now, what’s that guy’s name?”

  “It’s the same as some beer,” the second regular told him. “I know that much.”

  “Ballantine?” hazarded the third regular.

  “No,” said the second regular, as the new arrivals at the other end of the bar started in on some sea chanteys.

  The first regular had to raise his voice but managed: “Budweiser?”

  “No, it’s something foreign.”

  “Molson,” tried the first regular.

  “Molson?” The second regular couldn’t believe it. “That’s not foreign!”

  “It’s Canadian.”

  “Canadian isn’t foreign!” The second regular pointed perhaps north. “It’s right there! They’re part of us, they’re with us, except for ‘oot’ and ‘aboot’ they talk the same language as us.”

  “They’re their own country,” the first regular insisted. “Like Hawaii.”

  “It’s not Molson,” the second regular told him, to put an end to that.

  The droopy–nosed guy said, “Heineken?”

  “No.”

  Everybody took shots at it now: “Beck?”

  “No.”

  “Tsingtau?”

  “What? He’s not Chinese, he’s like one of us, he’s not even Canadian, it’s just his name is —”

  “Amstel?”

  “No!”

  “Dos Equis.”

  “Nobody’s named Dos Equis! Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

  When the second regular put on his thinking cap, it made his entire forehead form grooves, as though somewhere there might be a socket to screw his head into. “Dortmund!” he suddenly cried.

  They all looked at him. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah! That’s his name! Dortmund.”

  “That’s pretty funny,” said the droopy–nosed guy, and took the name with him back to Jersey, where he gave it to Mikey, who didn’t think it was very funny at all.

  Chapter 31

  * * *

  “I don’t like to look a gift headquarters in the mouth,” Tiny said, gazing around without love at the back room of the Twilight Lounge, where they were meeting for the second time in a week, “but I’m not warming up to this place.”

  “It’s better than John’s living room anyway,” Stan said.

  “Hey.”

  There having been general agreement that the O.J. should be left alone until it had completely recovered from its bout with organized crime — and until they were sure there would be no further activity from those people — the only alternative appeared to be Twilight again, so here they were, a little after ten in the evening, Dortmunder and Kelp and Stan and Tiny, hunkered around a table from which Tiny had removed the menu with prejudice, seated on chairs with dust ruffles.

  Tiny called the meeting to order: “Could we get on with it here?”

  “Sure,” everybody said.

  “Too many distractions,” Tiny said. “So let’s just do it.”

  “Exactly,” everybody said.

  Tiny looked around. “So what’s the first step?”

  “Open the garage,” Kelp said. “Take out the BMW, put in the truck.”

  Stan said, “What truck?”

  Surprised, Kelp said, “The truck we’re gonna use to take stuff outa there.”

  “Yeah, fine,” Stan said, “but where is this truck? What truck are we talking about?”

  “I dunno,” Kelp said. “I figure, we take one off the street.”

  Both Stan and Dortmunder shook their heads at that. “No,” Stan said, while Dortmunder said, “Not a good idea.”

  Kelp nodded at them both. “Why not?”

  With a graceful gesture to Dortmunder, Stan said, “You go first.”

  “Okay. We don’t know,” Dortmunder told Kelp, “is it empty, this truck. You can’t go around back, figure out the locks, open it up, see is it empty, takes too much time, people looking at you. So whadaya do, just jump in and drive it outa there? Then we get where we’re going, it’s full of lawn furniture.”

  “That’s another reason,” Stan allowed. “My own reason,” he said, “is that this is a truck we can’t buy, because we can’t afford it, but it’s a truck we don’t want the cops looking for, because first thing you know they’ll find it, and I don’t wanna be driving in it when that happens, so I got a suggestion.”

  “Tell it to us,” Tiny said.

  “I will.” Stan spread his hands. “My automotive contact,” he said, “where I will bring this BMW, and let’s hope it’s a little too old to have Global Positioning System, is Maximilian of Maximilian’s Used Cars out in Queens.”

  Kelp said, “I know you’ve had a satisfactory relationship with him for some time.”

  “I have,” Stan agreed. “So here’s my suggestion. I drive out to see Max, I offer him a swap. We’ll give him the BMW, straight up, flat out, and he gives me a truck clean enough we could drive it to the St. Patrick’s Day parade. But what this means, first I go out to Max, we discuss, we agree, then I come back, you g
uys work your magic on the garage door, I take the BMW to Max, pick up the truck, bring it back.”

  Kelp said, “John and I had this idea, one of us —”

  “One of us,” Dortmunder said.

  “— was gonna be on top of the truck to get at the alarm out there. But what you’re saying, we don’t get the truck until after we get at the alarm.”

  “That’s right,” Stan said.

  Tiny said, “I like Stan’s idea. It introduces a note of caution into the thing, and it’s a good use of resources, the BMW for the truck.”

  “Elegance,” Stan suggested.

  “Like that,” Tiny said. “Only the problem is, this means we’re not doing this tonight.”

  “Well, I don’t think we’re ever doing it tonight,” Stan said. “We don’t wanna have to light up that penthouse all night, run that elevator up and down all night, when people got nothing else to see and hear.”

  Dortmunder said, “So how do you see the timing?”

  “Tomorrow,” Stan told him, “I go see Max, make sure we can get a deal. If we can get a deal, I bring back the truck, then late tomorrow night, because this first part we really gotta do at night, when there’s less likely to be pedestrians all over the place, we do the alarm —”

  “So we can do it with the truck,” Kelp said.

  “Yes, we can,” Stan agreed. “We go in, and I take out the BMW and stash it down out of sight at my place in Canarsie, and then the next day —”

  “Already we’re at Thursday here,” Tiny pointed out.

  “Rome wasn’t built in a day, Tiny,” Stan told him.

  “It was robbed in a day,” Tiny said, “but I see the problem here, so okay. We’re at Thursday.”

  “I take the BMW to Max, I make my way back, I meet you at the place, we go in, spend the day moving goods, then wait for night, drive away from there, turn it all over to Arnie.”

  Dortmunder said, “I think I see two more things we need.”

  Tiny lowered a brow at him. “Delay–type things?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dortmunder said, “But one of them is, we need a long–term stash for that truck afterward. Arnie can’t take delivery on everything the minute we show up.”

  “A garage, you mean,” Stan suggested. “Another garage.”

  “Someplace we can keep the truck,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t know where, we have to think about that. And I think the other thing we need is Arnie.”

  Nobody liked that idea. Kelp said, “John? Now you wanna hang out with Arnie?”

  “No, I don’t,” Dortmunder said. “But from what he says, this penthouse is full of valuable whatnots, a lot more than we can put in one truck down one elevator in one day. So if he comes along, he can point, and we take what he wants, and it’s more profit for everybody.”

  “He won’t do it,” Tiny said. “Fences do not set foot on properties where the burglary is going on. It’s like a rule they got.”

  “That’s true,” Kelp said. “I’ve known other fences, and it’s always the same. We go, they stay home, wait for our call.”

  “Well,” Dortmunder said, “I think it would be better if we brought Arnie with us, so if it’s okay with you guys, I’ll at least propose it to him.”

  “I’ve met Arnie,” Stan said, and drank more than his usual amount of beer.

  Kelp said, “Stan, the funny thing is, I think maybe the Club Med intervention did work after all. When John and I met him, he was less obnoxious than of old. I don’t mean you want him for a roommate, but there was less of an urge to maneuver him toward an open window.”

  Tiny said, “Dortmunder, if you want to lay this on the guy, and he wants to go along with it, fine by me, I can see where it would help. But I still don’t think he’ll do it.”

  “I can only ask,” Dortmunder said.

  Tiny looked around the gay–nineties room and lifted his glass of vodka and red wine. “Next year,” he said, “in the O.J.”

  Chapter 32

  * * *

  The gumshoeing that was a part of Alan’s role as Preston’s — flunky? majordomo? somewhere between the two — was conducted mainly on the net. His iBook was set up in a corner of his room where window glare would not be a problem on the screen, and there, each week, once Preston had settled on this week’s — predator? prey? somewhere between the two — Alan would Google them and otherwise root around in their lives for their marital histories and financial circumstances and whatever other factoid Preston might enjoy knowing or making use of. Evidences of emotional or mental unbalance were always welcome.

  This backgrounding never took more than an hour or two, usually on Sunday morning, and then there was nothing left for Alan to do the rest of the week but amuse Preston whenever the man wasn’t off amusing himself. Alan found his employer detestable, but quite liked him for that. Preston was so smug, so sure of himself, that it would never occur to him that anyone, and certainly not some mere hireling, could twit him.

  Preston, for Alan, was like some great, overstuffed piñata that could be bashed to one’s heart’s content, because the piñata would never even notice. Alan had been private secretary to much worse egotists over the years — though none, admittedly, quite so snide — and so he found this vacation with Preston a true vacation. Hardly any duties at all, except the once–a–week hawkshawing around the World Wide Web, and that was always simple and sort of fun. Except this week.

  Wednesday, and he still hadn’t found a trace of Pamela Broussard anywhere in the ether. How could she not exist, when she so palpably did exist?

  After breakfast Wednesday morning, Alan settled himself yet again at the iBook, but this time he decided to go about the question a different way. The one undeniable fact he knew about Ms. Broussard was that her bill here was being paid by I.T.L. Holdings, a subsidiary of Roper–Hasty Detergent. What if he were to tackle the problem the other way around — study Roper–Hasty to see if he could find any link from the company to our Pam?

  So that was where he spent nearly two hours Wednesday morning, oblivious of the outside sun and sail and balmy breezes, trolling the Net instead, rowboating down the organizational charts of Roper–Hasty Detergent.

  It wasn’t until the third time he came across one particular name that it finally rang a faint, distant bell. A warning bell?

  The name was Hubert Stoneworthy, and his title in the Leather Goods sector of Roper–Hasty was executive vice president, Sales. Hubert Stoneworthy. Why did that name seem to reach up to Alan from the screen? Could it be …

  He wrote the name on a scratch pad before closing out the search engine and bringing up a different file, the one that contained all the pertinent — and some of the impertinent — information about all of the former Mrs. Preston Fareweathers. And all at once there she was, number two on the hit parade, Helene once Fareweather now Stott, nee … Stoneworthy.

  Her brother! It had to be. Helene Stott was using her brother to conceal the true identity of Pam Broussard from Preston. But to what end?

  Pam was up to something — that was certainly true — but what? She couldn’t serve legal papers on Preston, not here. She could certainly make incriminating photos or such things if she wanted, but Alan knew perfectly well that Preston would merely laugh off anything in that line and ask if he could have a set in wallet size. So what was the woman up to?

  If nothing else, this link would have to be shared with Preston right away. Taking the piece of paper with Hubert Stoneworthy’s name on it with him, he went out through his sliding glass door and down off his porch, then over to Preston’s porch next door, which he stepped up on, and knocked on Preston’s glass door, behind which the drapes were firmly drawn.

  No answer. Was Preston off with her? Probably.

  Well, never mind. He would catch up with Preston at lunch, if not before. Returning to his own porch, he settled down there and went back to reading Dostoyevsky.

  Chapter 33

  * * *

  This Buick Broadsword
in glittering goldeny green was not new, nor was it ever likely to be considered a classic, but nevertheless this was what Stan Murch drove, early on that hot sunny Wednesday morning in August, for his visit to Maximilian’s Used Cars, so far out in Brooklyn, or possibly Queens, that the city buses run on firewood.

  And there it was at last, in all its tattered glory. A small pink stucco office structure stood modestly at the back of a black–topped expanse lined with such melancholy, timeworn, mistreated, unloved jalopies, it looked as though a demolition derby were about to start up. Or had just finished. The triangular many–colored plastic pennants strung above these heaps, and the sentiments chalked on their several windshields — !!!Creampuff!!! !!!Ultraspecial!!! and such — did little to lift the aura of hopelessness that was all these vehicles had left.