Watch Your Back

by Donald Westlake

  Then, not long after one in the morning, they drove uptown and through Central Park, then stopped at the curb on the park side of Fifth Avenue in the Seventies, so they could get Judson and the alarm both up on the roof, which was more curving and slippery than it looked. However, Judson held on tight and Kelp drove carefully, and in no time at all they were making the turn — slowly — onto Sixty–eighth Street, where Kelp stopped, then backed around into the driveway indentation and stopped with the rear doors of the van snug up against the garage door.

  Kelp stayed in the van, in case it should be necessary to leave earlier than expected, while Judson knelt in front of the alarm and reached for the toolkit. Windows loomed all around him, but every one of them was dark. He noticed that he had, in fact, more illumination from streetlights out here than he’d had inside the van.

  Proper preparation is all. When he at last did get to the job, it was a snap.

  Chapter 40

  * * *

  The Key Largo Holiday Inn, where the original steamboat the African Queen used in the movie is kept on display in the parking lot, is such a nexus of popular American culture that it practically shimmers all over with irony — an effect less noticeable at just after midnight, when the rattletrap old Chevy pickup truck turned in from U.S. Route 1, Preston Fareweather in the passenger seat, his rescuer at the wheel. Along the way, Preston had lost his white hat with the chinstrap and his flip–flops, but still retained his bright red bikini bathing suit and his Rolex. And his sense of entitlement.

  “I wonder if that’s for sale,” the bonefisherman said, looking at the African Queen.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why not? Why other would you put it out there?”

  “You can ask inside,” Preston said. “Come along with me.”

  “You bet,” said the bonefisherman, whose name was Porfirio.

  Their hours together had not been entirely happy ones.

  Initially, they were being chased, by people, boats, limos, and who knew what all. When Preston had last looked back, after that bridge had spanked him, the three pursuers had stood on the bridge, two of them pointing at him and one talking on a cell phone. Then they were out of sight.

  The ribbon of water Preston and Porfirio moved on snaked this way and that through alternate areas of lush subtropical flora and dank, salty sand. Steering through it, Porfirio said, “You gimme the watch, man, I’ll drop you where you want.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Preston said. He well knew that he was old and fat and out of shape while Porfirio was none of these, but he also knew he was of the class born to lead and Porfirio was emphatically not that, either. The sheer weight of superiority was, it seemed to Preston, all the armament he would need in this situation. “If I give you my watch at this point,” he explained, “you’ll drop me where you want.”

  “Maybe I do that anyway,” Porfirio suggested, with that sneaky grin he occasionally flashed.

  “I think not, my man,” Preston told him.

  “Your whu?”

  “We will come to an accommodation,” Preston promised him, “but not yet. I take it you have a land vehicle somewhere around here.”

  “A wha?”

  “An automobile. A car. A thing with wheels and an engine.”

  “I know what a car is.” The smirk had been wiped from Porfirio’s face.

  “And you must have one.”

  “I got a pickup,” Porfirio said, being sulky.

  “Shall we go to it?”

  The smirk was back, Porfirio having recovered his self–confidence. “Oh, sure,” he said. “It’s back there with that limo and those guys. You want we should turn around and go back there? We could do that. We got a little wide spot up here, we could turn around. That what you want?”

  “You know better than that.” Exasperated, Preston snapped his fingers at the fellow and said, “What’s your name?”

  Suspicious, Porfirio said, “What for you want to know my name?”

  “So that I can call you something other than ‘my man’. I myself am Preston Fareweather.”

  “No shit.”

  “None. And you are …?”

  Shrug. “Porfirio.”

  “Porfirio,” Preston said, “those people back there are in the employ of my ex–wives. They mean me nothing but ill.”

  “Ex–wives, huh?” Full smirk now. “You got a lot of them?”

  “The way this swamp has mosquitoes,” Preston said, slapping at one on his forearm. “The result of their depradations —”

  “Their wha?”

  “Their attacks upon me, Porfirio. The result of those is that I am here with nothing but my bathing suit and my watch and your welcome person.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “You are not a murderer, Porfirio,” Preston told him, “nor are you a violent person.”

  “Oh, you think so, huh?”

  “I do,” Preston said. “I think you might consider assaulting me to take this watch, but then you would consider the fact that you are not a murderer and that after the theft I would still be alive and could identify you.”

  “You gotta find me first.”

  “How difficult would that be, Porfirio? If I put out a reward, how many of your fellow fishermen back there know you and could find you for the police and would be happy to do so?”

  “You talk pretty big,” Porfirio said, blustering now, “for somebody sitting there naked in a little teeny bathing suit.”

  “I am big, Porfirio,” Preston said, using the man’s name constantly both to belittle him and to remind him that Preston did know his name. “And I am big enough,” he went on, “to wish to thank you for your aid back there and to offer the reward to you.”

  “That watch.”

  “I think not. But something very nice just the same. Substantial.”

  They had reached Porfirio’s wide spot, a sort of inland salt pond. It reeked a bit, and salt didn’t seem to deter mosquitoes, but Porfirio stopped anyway and said, “You makin me an offer?”

  “I am.”

  “Then go ahead and make it.”

  “You will help me,” Preston said. “I need to be gotten out of this swamp before I am eaten alive. I need to be hidden until after dark. And then I need to be transported to a place of safety where I may regroup.”

  “You got a lotta needs for a naked fat man in a little teeny bathing suit.”

  “I shall not be asking you to clothe me, Porfirio,” Preston said, “though it is possible, eventually, I may ask you to feed me. But at the moment, my need is merely to remove myself from this swamp.”

  “It ain’t bad here,” Porfirio said. “I seen worse.”

  “I am sorry to hear that. Porfirio, why are we just sitting here in this brackish water?”

  “I’m tryin to decide what to do about you.”

  “If you wish me to leave you now,” Preston said, “I can only accede to your decision. I take it I should swim in that direction until I find a road or habitations or some such.”

  Snorting, Porfirio said, “You ain’t gonna swim nowhere.”

  “Why not? I swam to you, if you recall.”

  Porfirio said, “Just wait a damn minute, Preskill, Presley — wha’d you say your damn name was?”

  “Preston.”

  “Where’d you get a name like that?”

  “From my mother. It’s a family name, the Prestons go back to the Mayflower.” That last detail was a lie, but he felt it important to establish the gulf of class between them, the better to keep Porfirio under control.

  It seemed to work, which is to say, Porfirio tried very hard not to look impressed. “Mayflower. What’s that supposed to be?”

  “Just a boat. A bit larger than this one. Porfirio, are you going to assist me or shall I swim?”

  “Let me think a minute,” Porfirio said. “My pickup’s back where we come from. So what I think, we go back partway, there’s a trail back there, I’ll tie the boat up, walk back the rest of the
way, see is those fellas still there, figure out how to get you and the pickup together. Is that okay with you?”

  “It sounds like a fine plan,” Preston told him.

  So Porfirio ran the boat in a little half circle and took them back most of the way to the cove where they’d started. Then he steered the boat leftward and ran it up onto the sandy ground and said, “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  Preston was sorry to see the man take the outboard motor’s ignition key. He scrinched over to the side so Porfirio could climb past him to the prow and over onto the land, where he tied the boat’s rope to a root and said, “Just keep low,” and walked away.

  Preston knew what was going on in Porfirio’s mind, of course. The fellow would look for the trio from the limo to find out if he could make a better deal by turning Preston over to them. If only he’d left the key, Preston would steal the boat and get himself well away from here.

  As it was, with the combination of treachery in the air and many mosquitoes also in the air, what he did was go over the side and swim away upstream, away from the bridge and the cove. The water was barely chest–deep, but he could make better progress swimming than walking.

  When he’d made it around a curve and out of sight of the boat, he found a spot where greenery hung down low over the bank, and the bottom fell away gradually, so that he could He mainly in water, with only his head out, resting back on what he preferred to think of as mulch. When too many mosquitoes found his head worth a detour, he covered it with mud, and that was better. And so, completely unexpectedly, he fell asleep.

  “Prescott! Damn it, Prescott! Where the hell you at?”

  Preston awoke, startled, floundering, swallowing salt water. Dried mud itched his head, and many branches scratched him as he jolted upward, crying, “Ow! Ow! Oof!”

  “Prescott? That you?”

  It was pitch black. He was seated on mud, up to his armpits in tepid water. Memory returned, and the voice became identifiable.

  “Porfirio! I’m here!”

  “And where the hell is that?”

  “Don’t you have a light? Can’t you follow my voice?”

  And then, preceded by the putt–putt of the outboard motor, here came a darker darkness out of the dark, and Porfirio’s voice much closer, saying, “Prescott, that you down there?”

  “It’s Preston. Yes. Wait, let me stand. No, I need to hold on to the boat. Yes, all right, where is it? Can’t you hold this boat still?”

  “Get in the damn boat, Prescott.”

  Preston did manage to get into the boat, not gracefully, and Porfirio drove them away from there. Preston tried to see but couldn’t. He itched all over. He said, “Where are we going?”

  “To my vee–hicle. We’ll talk when we get there. You shut up now. And get down.”

  Once again the bridge gave him a welcoming slap, and then they were back out in the cove, where there was nobody any more — no fishermen, no limo, and no cigarette boat. Porfirio sped them across the cove and around the point of land, and down the other side were a few dim lights, red and green and white, where they came upon a teetering old wooden pier with many boats like Porfirio’s chained along its length.

  Porfirio seemed to have his own slot, which he headed straight for, then eased in, the prow bumping the pier as he said, “Hold on to that there. Can you climb up on it? You see the rope, down there by your foot? Take the end of the rope up with you.”

  Preston did all that, and thought for one second of legging it away down the pier, illuminated enough by these dim lights so he probably wouldn’t kill himself. But why? If he had a Sancho Panza, why not hold on to him?

  So Preston held on to the rope, and Porfirio shut off his motor, climbed out, chained his boat like the others, and said, “My vee–hicle’s down this way.” Apparently, that was going to be his joke from now on.

  As they walked, Preston looked at the Rolex he had no intention of giving up. In this time zone, 10:13. Good God, he must have slept two hours! In salt water, surrounded by mosquitoes. No wonder his body felt like a loofah.

  It also felt hungry. What with one thing and another, events had conspired to keep him from thinking much of his need for sustenance for some little time, but now all at once he remembered he hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, and he was starving.

  “Porfirio,” he said as they walked along toward the end of the pier, “the first thing I am going to need is food. I can’t go into a restaurant, I know that, not like this, but surely we can find a hamburger somewhere.”

  “How you figure to pay for it?”

  “You will pay for it, of course, and I will reimburse you.”

  “We gotta talk about that reimburse,” Porfirio said, trying to sound tough. “It’s down this way.”

  The ground was stony and not kind to bare feet. Hopping along, Preston said, “Why were you gone so long? You were gone two hours, Porfirio.”

  “They had me out on that boat.” He sounded bitter, as though his memories were more than usually unpleasant. “They wanted to know all about you.”

  “The cigarette boat?”

  “Yeah, that drug boat. Here it is, get in. I don’t lock the damn thing.”

  Neither would Preston. The passenger door squeaked loudly when he opened it, and again when he closed it.

  “Food, Porfirio,” he reminded him.

  “You know,” Porfirio said, as he started the asthmatic engine, “for a man ain’t got shit on him, you bossy as hell.”

  “I’m just very hungry. Why did they have you on their boat?”

  This was a parking lot of some sort. Driving out of it, the headlights sweeping over the unlovely scrub flora of southern Florida, Porfirio said, “They want to know where I let you off, what you say to me, all kinds a shit. When you’re not in the boat, they got real pissed off.”

  So the rotten man had tried to sell Preston out, as anticipated. “So you took them to the boat, did you?”

  “I had to, man, they were leanin on me. You heard me talking loud, didn’t you? That’s why you got outa the boat.”

  “No, Porfirio, I did not hear you talking loud.”

  “Well, I did,” Porfirio said, sounding sulky again. “To warn you. Shit, man, it was me they was givin kidney punches.”

  Good, Preston thought, but didn’t say. In fact, for the moment he decided to say nothing. They had come out onto a serious road and turned right, which would be south. Traffic was thin. They passed stores, marinas, gas stations, all closed, even the gas stations. Then up ahead on the other side, a Burger King appeared, brightly lit and sparsely patronized.

  “Burger King! There!”

  “I see the damn thing, that’s where I’m headed for.”

  They pulled in and Preston said, “I’ll have to wait here. I’ll want a hamburger.”

  “You already said that.”

  “And a Coke.”

  “Is that right? You want dessert, too?”

  “No, just a hamburger and french fries and a Coke.”

  “Fries. Son of a bitch.”

  Porfirio slammed the pickup door on his way out, but he did come back with the burger, the Coke, and the fries, with a similar assortment for himself.

  It was the first time in his life Preston had ingested a fast–food hamburger — something else his ex–wives would pay for, someday. Talking around a mouthful of food, he said, “What I need now is a Holiday Inn.”

  “A Holiday Inn? How come a Holiday Inn? There’s places around here.”

  “I need a chain,” Preston explained. “I need an organization with a computer system large enough to verify me. Where can we find a Holiday Inn?”

  “I dunno, man, maybe there’s something like that down in Key West.”

  Preston bit off more burger and talked around it. “I better not go to Key West,” he said. “They’ll probably be looking for me down there, looking in cars going by, with streetlights. It’s too small and too brightly lit. Porfirio, there’s got to be a Holiday I
nn around here somewhere.”

  “I know there’s one up at Key Largo,” Porfirio said, “but that’s gotta be eighty miles from here, way up at the top of the Keys.”