Watch Your Back

by Donald Westlake

  “I think you’re right about that,” Dortmunder said. “But the reason I wanted to come over, and this is even before I know about the air conditioner —”

  “It’s brand–new. I mean, to me.”

  “So maybe we could sit and talk?”

  “Absolutely,” Arnie said, but then he frowned and looked around, betraying a little uncertainty. “The one little problem I got to admit to you,” he said, “is, it’s a little tough to sit at that table now. I mean, the air conditioner’s great, but it does give you a little Mount Everest feeling if you get too close to it. I almost got frostbite at breakfast before I figured out what was going on.”

  Dortmunder looked around. “There’s space on that wall if you move that other chair over,” he said. “You and me, we could drag the table and chairs over there. You wouldn’t have your view, but you don’t have it any more anyway.”

  “It wasn’t that much of a view to begin with. Let’s do it.”

  So they did some furniture rearranging, and Dortmunder got just a glancing shot of the arctic blast up close, just enough to let him know there are worse things in life than heat and smells, and then they sat down in the new location, and Arnie looked around to say, “I never seen the room from this angle before.”

  “Yeah, I guess not.”

  “Maybe somebody’ll move me some paint.”

  “Probably not Preston Fareweather,” Dortmunder said, hoping to segue into the real topic.

  Arnie laughed. “No, all his paint’s on canvas, signed ‘Picasso’, signed ‘Monet’. You want to be sure you get some of those.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dortmunder allowed.

  Arnie looked alert. “Yeah?”

  “We figure we’re going in Friday.”

  “Friday’s good.”

  “It’s when we’ll get the truck, that morning. We figure to do it all day, as long as it takes, get out of there long before dark.”

  “That sounds like a good plan.”

  “But from what you said about the place, it’s got to be just jam–packed with goodies.”

  “It is, John Dortmunder, you’ll have a ball.”

  “It’s gonna be too much stuff for one truck, and we can only make the one trip.”

  “So choose the best,” Arnie said, and grinned from ear to ear. “I can hardly wait.”

  “But that’s what we’re afraid of,” Dortmunder told him. “What if we leave some really good stuff behind, and take same other stuff that’s maybe okay, but not so good as the stuff we didn’t take? We’d all feel bad about that. You’d feel bad about that.”

  “Come on,” Arnie said, pooh–poohing the idea. “Don’t sell yourself short. You know value, and I bet those other guys do, too.”

  “We’re just uncertain,” Dortmunder said, “and that’s why we decided, we want to ask you to help.”

  Arnie looked pained. “I don’t see how,” he said. “I can’t make a list, you know. I never seen the place.”

  “Exactly,” Dortmunder said. “That’s the problem.”

  Arnie looked at him, waiting for him to go on, but Dortmunder didn’t go on; he just sat there, expectant, so finally Arnie had to say,“ What’s the problem?”

  “You never seen the place.”

  “That’s right.” Arnie shrugged. “Even if I knew the guy back when he was in New York, I don’t think he’d of invited me over.”

  “So you need to see the place,” Dortmunder said.

  Annie shook his head. “I don’t get how I could do that.”

  Dortmunder shrugged as though it were nothing: “You come with us.”

  Annie frowned. “Come where?”

  “The penthouse. You can point and say, ‘Take this, take —’ ”

  “The penthouse? While you’re robbing it?”

  “You wouldn’t even have to carry anything, just point and —”

  “John Dortmunder! I don’t even leave the apartment! Especially not now, when I’m — Look at me,” he demanded, poking a finger of his right hand onto his left forearm, “I’m still olive drab.”

  He was. “I noticed,” Dortmunder said, “and it’s very becoming —”

  “It isn’t becoming anything! It is! Even if I was a person went out on the street, I couldn’t do it now. And to participate? I don’t participate!”

  “This is a special case, Arnie. Just remember Preston Fareweather. Just remember the kinds of things he’d say to you.”

  “Those are the things I’m trying not to remember.”

  “Well, remember anyway. This isn’t just another job, Arnie, not for you. This is a matter of pride. This is self–respect.”

  “Well …”

  “You’ve got those things, now, Arnie, the new you is worth standing up for.”

  Arnie looked thoughtful. “I didn’t even feel bad keeping the air conditioner,” he said. “I felt it was okay to do something nice for me.”

  “And you were right. The new you wants comfort, dignity, the best of everything, you said so yourself.”

  “It’s true, I did,” Arnie said, and looked solemn as he contemplated his new self.

  “So,” Dortmunder said, “when the new you wants revenge, he wants the best revenge.”

  Arnie cocked his head. “He does?”

  “He doesn’t want to read in the paper,” Dortmunder said, “ ‘Preston Fareweather says thank God they didn’t get the Beethoven.’ ”

  “He’s a songwriter.”

  “Whatever. You get the idea. The new Arnie wants revenge. He wants to be part of it, he wants to watch it going down, he wants to read in the paper Preston Fareweather says, ‘They were so brilliant, those guys, they even got the Le Corbusier.’ ”

  Arnie squinted. “The what?”

  “Whatever.” Dortmunder brushed that away. “The point is, this is a special case. You are gonna show that guy what your pride looks like. He can’t talk to you that way.”

  “No, he can’t,” Arnie agreed. A bit of rosy flush had appeared on his cheeks, beneath the dun.

  “You’re gonna step right up to that son of a bitch,” Dortmunder said, “and you’re gonna rob him blind!”

  The sudden smile on Arnie’s face was like nothing ever seen on earth before. “John Dortmunder,” he said, “what time you gonna pick me up?”

  Chapter 38

  * * *

  Preston never did get used to the ride. When the cigarette boat crashed across the sea, if you were down in the forward cabin, you felt it.

  And the forward cabin is where he’d been put. The two hard men running this boat, Australians or New Zealanders or some such from their accent, had reached out strong, tough hands and taken him off the sailboat with Pam’s mocking laugh loud in his ears. They’d hustled him down the steps beside the wheel — “Watch yer ‘ead” — and into this front cabin, which in motion reminded him mostly of the machine at the hardware store that mixes the paint. They’d made it clear this is where he would remain. “Ye’ll stay ere,” one of them told him, “an make no trouble, an that way we don’t have to bop ye.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  That made the fellow laugh. “Where do ye think, mate?”

  Florida. No question in his mind. That was the scheme, damn their eyes. They’d inveigled him off the island — Pam had been just the perfect Judas ewe, hadn’t she? — so they could grab him and deliver him somewhere on the south Florida coast, directly into the arms of the process server. Years of thumbing his nose at them all, and now how they’d laugh.

  No. He had to stop it, keep it from happening, somehow turn the laugh back at them. But how?

  The two men who’d kidnapped him — were they bribable? He had no money with him, no wallet, not even clothing. He had nothing on his person but flip–flops, a bathing suit, a Rolex, and a floppy brimmed white hat with a chin–strap. But they had to know who he was, or at least something about him, enough to know he was wealthy, that if they took him to a bank instead of to
the process server — No ID. No ATM card, no driver’s license, nothing.

  Well, let’s say. Let’s say it’s possible somehow to get one’s hands on cash; would these fellows accept cash? Or would they bop him if he made the offer?

  From the bunk where he sat braced against the sidewall in a vain effort to resist the endless pounding of their passage through the sea, he could look up diagonally and see the lower half of the one seated at the wheel. Occasionally, the other one moved in and out of view, sure–footed on the bucking deck.

  Hard, methodical men in their forties, they were, with deep tans and leathery skin. They both wore battered old deck shoes, cutoff jeans, pale T–shirts that said nothing but had the sleeves torn off, and baseball caps without logos. Anonymous to a fault. Blond hair was visible around the edges of their caps, shaggy and unwashed, and their blue eyes contained no more warmth than the ocean.

  They would bop him. He had to acknowledge that, that his money wasn’t any good on this boat, even if he had his money on this boat. Those two were tough, methodical professionals with long careers behind them and in front of them, and he was one day’s delivery.

  What would they do on their other days? Smuggle people, smuggle drugs without taking any, smuggle whatever would pay. Today they were smuggling him, and they would concern themselves with his affairs no more than if he were a plastic bag of heroin.

  How could he get around them, get away from them, spoil the delivery? He knew how to swim, and God knew he was dressed for swimming, but even if he could get past those two to the ocean, which he knew damn well he could not, where was land? Not to be seen outside the round window next to which he jounced.

  When we get there, he thought. Somewhere in Florida. When we get there, we’ll see what we can do.

  Six fifty–seven p.m. in this time zone by the Rolex, when the quality of their thumping progress across the sea abruptly shifted. The August sun, God’s blood blister, hung midway down the sky, and all at once the cigarette boat wasn’t lunging any more. It had come to a canter, a trot; its nose was lowering as though to graze. They had arrived.

  Where? Preston looked out the round window beside him and saw nothing but sea, the same old sea, if perhaps a trifle less serrated than before. So he leaned forward, no longer having to hold himself tense against the pounding motion of the boat, and there it was: land. Very low land, pale tan, with what looked like mangrove here and there against the water.

  Where was this? Not Miami, certainly. Somewhere very low and undeveloped, with shallow water now beneath the boat, though they were still some way from shore, which was probably why they’d slowed so soon.

  Florida is almost nothing but coastline, but most of it is very heavily patrolled, because of drug smugglers and potential terrorists and illegals from Cuba and Haiti. The two men operating this boat would know the safe places to land, where there would be no one around to ask the awkward questions, and this would be one of them.

  The Keys — that’s where they must be, the hundred–mile line of islands dangling south of Florida like a Fu Manchu beard. Much of it was developed and overdeveloped, but some was deserted, like this section here.

  Well, no, not completely deserted. As they rolled closer, he could see, off to the left, that the low land curved outward toward the sea, and in the elbow thus created, half a dozen small boats idly bobbed, one or two people standing in each, fishing.

  Bonefish. That’s what people tried for down here. Those would be bonefishermen, standing in the bright, hot August Florida sun, its heat and glare and cancer–enhancing qualities redoubled by the bounce from the water all around them, the air very nearly as wet as the sea, and they were here to prove they were smarter than some skinny, inedible fish.

  A thumping sounded on the cabin roof. One of his captors had climbed up to toss a rope to whoever was waiting on shore. The other had to concentrate now on maneuvering the big boat in as close as possible to land.

  Could he reach the fishermen? He could only try, and this was surely his last chance. It was now or never.

  His heart was pounding. What would they do if they caught him? Surely something more than just bop him, if only to relieve their feelings.

  As he sat there, wanting to, afraid to, the image of his ex–wives rose unbidden into his mind. The four of them, laughing, and goddamn Pam with them, and by God, they all looked alike! Laughing at him for how easy he was to lead around, and not even by the hand.

  A sudden embarrassed rage overtook fear, and Preston was on his feet, up the steps, watching his head, stomp, stomp, over the side like a hippopotamus into a swamp, but away, down, stroking, kicking, away, up, bright day, roar of motor far too near, bonefishermen over there.

  It was the crawl he’d learned in college, and it was the crawl he did now, arms pinwheeling, legs kicking, trying not to hear that goddamn boat. Thrusting, thrusting, then realizing the roar of the motor had not gotten louder, it was less, it was fading.

  He was swimming faster than the boat? Impossible. He dared a quick look back, a break in the rhythm of the crawl, and the cigarette boat had stopped back there, was glaring at him like an attack dog on a leash, while both men in the boat were pointing at him and yelling toward shore.

  Shore. He couldn’t stay floating in place out here; he had to keep swimming and somehow try to see the shore at the same time. He did it, panting, straining, and yes, there it was over there, a white limousine moving leftward beside the water, someone in the backseat yelling at the men in the boat.

  Well, at least they’d sent a limo for him.

  It was too shallow here for the cigarette boat — that’s what had happened — so he no longer had them to worry about. Now all he had to concern him was whoever was in that white limousine.

  The fishermen had realized something was up, and one of them now put down his pole, sat, and started his little outboard. Putt–putt, it came toward him as the limo stopped, unable to continue along the deep sand and wet mangrove swamp along the shore. Three men clambered from the limo, all in shorts and light shirts and sunglasses, and began fighting their way through the vegetation, waving their arms around as though mosquitoes were happy to welcome them to their island.

  The little boat came to a bobbing stop beside Preston, and the man in it called, “Come on up here!”

  “Right! Thank you! Right you are!”

  Preston flung his arms over the gunwale but could do no more. His legs kept drifting, under the boat, and he couldn’t lever his body up out of the water.

  Finally, his rescuer grabbed Preston under both armpits from behind, pulled, and scraped his chest up and over the splintery wooden edge of the boat, until he could reach the top of Preston’s bathing suit and yank on that, at which point Preston found it was possible to help, thrashing and lunging and kicking and beating until he landed himself on the wet, dirty bottom of the boat.

  The man gazed down at him with a grin. He said, “I like that watch.”

  Gasping, Preston cried, “Get me out of here!”

  “Oh, maybe you wanna see your friends, man,” the fisherman said, with a snotty little grin. He was Hispanic, heroically mustached, unshaven, dressed in a hopeless straw hat, a Budweiser T–shirt, and ratty green work pants. He was barefoot, and his toenails did not bear thinking about. Still grinning at Preston, he said, “Maybe we wait for them. That’s some nice limo.”

  Preston sat up. No time for nonsense. “If those people capture me again,” he said, “they’ll kill you. You’re a witness.”

  Abruptly the smile went away, and the fisherman gave a worried look toward the running men. He would know the stories about what sometimes happened in this part of the world. He said, “I don’t want none a this shit, man.”

  “You’re already in it,” Preston told him. “Get me away from here, and this watch is yours.”

  “Oh, it’s mine, man, I know that,” the fisherman said. “Okay, get down now.” And at last he turned back to his outboard motor.

  Ge
t down? Preston was already seated on the bottom of the boat. “What are you doing?” he wanted to know, and twisted around to look forward.

  The fisherman was steering them directly toward the shore. The trio from the limo had found some sort of path and were running much more strongly than before, their arms pumping. The boat and the three, it seemed to Preston, were all going to meet at the same spot, on the shoreline. “What are you doing?”

  “Get down, man!”

  Then he saw it. A tiny inlet curved away into the mangroves, and just visible way back in there, a footbridge stood barely above the water.