Watch Your Back

by Donald Westlake

  “Perfect,” Preston said, and some time later he and Porfirio stepped into the Key Largo Holiday Inn, where the temperature was fifty degrees Fahrenheit and the jacketed young man behind the desk was not at all startled to see a fat man in a bikini bottom walk in with a bonefisherman.

  “Gentlemen?”

  “I don’t have any identification on me,” Preston began, “nor money, but I need a room.”

  The young man’s smile was pitying. “Sir —”

  “Just a moment. Paper and pen, please.”

  As usual, the lower orders did Preston’s bidding whether they wanted to or not. Preston took paper and pen, wrote his name in large block letters, and said to the young man, “Image Google me.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your computer,” Preston said, and pointed to it in case it had slipped the young man’s mind. “Go to the Google search engine. Go to their image collection. Type in my name. You will find many news and social page photos of me over the years, all more presentably dressed, but all clearly me. Please do that.”

  The young man shrugged. “Okay.”

  He turned to his computer, and Porfirio gave Preston a grudgingly admiring look. “You’re something else, man,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “Okay,” the young man said. “That’s you, all right. But I don’t see —”

  “Hush,” Preston said. Surprised, the young man stiffened into silence and Preston said, “The reason I am here, process servers attempted to waylay me. This gentleman Porfirio assisted me, for which I very much thank him —”

  “And that ain’t all,” Porfirio said.

  “Of course not.” Preston turned back to the young man. “I need a room. I need to phone an associate of mine in the Caribbean and tell him to fly up here in the morning. I will phone collect, of course. He will bring my wallet and clothing and all the rest of it. In the meantime, I have to hide. Those people are still searching for me.”

  “They are, man,” Porfirio told the young man. “And they are mean sons a bitches, let me tell you.”

  “Check me in,” Preston said, “under my associate’s name. Here, I’ll write it down.” And he wrote Alan Pinkleton beneath his own name, then said, “When he gets here tomorrow, all this will be made right.”

  “Sir, I don’t think I can —”

  “Son,” Preston said, “I happen to know several of the directors on the board of the corporation you are employed by. If you wish to say good–bye to any hope of working for corporate America ever again, just turn me out into the night. I’ll find help elsewhere, but, trust me, you will not.”

  “He’s,” Porfirio told the young man, “as tough as those other guys.”

  Sounding pained, the young man said, “Sir, you don’t have to threaten me.”

  “I’m glad of that.”

  “I can see you are who you say you are, and you’ve had some trouble, I guess, so I think I can take a chance on helping you out here. Will you both be staying?”

  Preston and Porfirio gave a loud “No!” together, and then Preston said, “But before Porfirio goes, we must do something to reward him for his assistance.”

  “I been wondering,” Porfirio said, “when we’d get to that part.”

  “Including,” Preston said, with a nasty smile into Porfirio’s face, “his talking loud while leading those people back to the boat.”

  “Saved your bacon, man.”

  Directing the smile at the young man, Preston said, “Please give Porfirio one hundred dollars in cash, and put it on my bill.”

  Outraged Porfirio cried, “A hundred dollars? I saved you from them people, man! I drove you all the way up here! I bought you a burger and french fries and a Coke! I pulled you outa the ocean, man!”

  The young man said to Preston, “Did he do all that?”

  “In fact, yes,” Preston said.

  Opening his cash drawer, the young man said, “I will add five hundred dollars to your bill, sir,” and started counting it on the desk in front of Porfirio.

  Who grinned broadly at the money and said, “That’s better. That’s more like it.” Scooping up the cash, he gave Preston back his nasty smile in spades and said, “And thank you, my man.”

  Chapter 41

  * * *

  Stan Murch was not above traveling in the actual subway, if circumstances called for that. Thus, at two–fifteen on Thursday morning, Stan, dressed in casual but dark clothing, went upstairs to leave his house.

  This was an entire block of row houses, all attached, all alike, two–family, two–story, brick, with an exterior staircase to the second–floor apartment next to a concrete driveway to the one–car garage downstairs. In most of these houses, as in the one owned by Murch’s Mom — he was just a boarder here — the four–and–a–half–room upstairs apartment was rented out for the income, while the owner’s family lived in the three and a half rooms downstairs, plus a basement room that opened onto the backyard. Most owners turned this basement room into what they called a family room or entertainment center, but which Murch called his bedroom. Leaving this, he went upstairs where one night–light glowed in the kitchen, because his Mom, tired from a day of outrage at the wheel of a medallion New York City taxicab, had long since gone to bed.

  Quietly, he left the house. This house was on East Ninety–ninth Street, a little off Rockaway Parkway, and very close to the Rockaway Parkway station, the last stop on the Canarsie Line, known to officialdom as the L, which would travel from here to Eighth Avenue and West Fourteenth Street in Manhattan.

  Since this was the end of the line, there was usually a train in the station, doors open, waiting for the moment to depart, and there was one such this time. Stan became the fourth person to board that particular car, all seated far from one another. Finding a Daily News on a seat, he settled beside it, started to read, and an hour and forty minutes later stepped off another subway car under Lexington Avenue and Sixty–eighth Street.

  His only objection to the subway, really, was that you couldn’t choose your own route. On the other hand, when you got where you were going, you didn’t have any parking headaches.

  It was a quiet walk over to Fifth Avenue. A few empty cabs looked at him hopefully, and a couple of lone walkers looked at him warily, but otherwise he had the city to himself.

  The story was, this garage door was supposed to be unlocked and unarmed at this point; just turn the handle and lift. So he did, and it lifted, but heavily, so that he had to use both hands on it. This was a door meant for the electric motor and remote control, so there wasn’t much thought given to its weight, which was considerable.

  However, starting to lift the door meant that a light immediately switched on inside the garage, so he only raised it to waist height and then slid through under it and eased it back down again.

  And here it was, a recent BMW 1 Series in banker black, furred all over with pale gray dust. Starting at the rear, which was closest to the door, Stan made a slow eyes–only inspection of the vehicle, approving of its pearl gray leather seats and the key stuck in the ignition and especially approving of its lack of GPS.

  And what else did he have in here? On the right side of the garage, facing the front passenger seat, was a metal door with a small rectangular window in it, and beyond that a set of metal shelves, and beyond that, in the corner, a closed upright metal locker.

  Stan looked at the door first, and could see nothing but blackness through the little window. Would this be the elevator? Experimentally, he pulled on the door handle, and it opened, and yes, that was the elevator. It was down here, at this level, and as soon as the door opened, a light in there switched on.

  A small elevator, but luxurious, with a red cushioned armless wooden chair at the back, soft indirect lighting from above, and flocked wallpaper on the walls. Pretty good.

  The shelves were next. They contained cleaning and maintenance supplies for the car, including a chamois cloth, which was good; he’d use that on the ca
r before he took it out. There was also on one shelf a remote control for the garage door, an extra one; Stan tossed it into the BMW, on the front passenger seat.

  The locker was unlocked and contained only a chauffeur’s uniform. It had the tired look that every suit gets when it’s been hanging in one place too long.

  Stan shut the locker, reached for the chamois, and the light went out.

  Oh, on a timer. Fortunately, the elevator light was still on, and gleaming through the window, so by that shine Stan made his way back to the garage door and lifted it just enough to cause the light to come on again.

  Okay, enough inspections; let’s get on with it. He took the chamois and briskly rubbed the car down, removing the gray dust, letting it sparkle in the light the way it wanted to. While he was doing that, the elevator light switched off, but that was okay.

  He was just finishing with the chamois, at the rear bumper, when the garage light went off again. This time, he pushed the door up all the way, then got behind the wheel of the BMW, twisted the key, and the engine coughed, but then started. The sound was ragged, the car not having been driven for so long, but it was ready to roll.

  Stan backed the BMW out to the sidewalk, stopped, got out of the car, and pushed the garage door closed by hand, because the electric motor would be too loud at this quiet time of night.

  Also, at this time of night, he figured, the long way home would be quickest — over to the FDR, down to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, through to the Belt, and all around the hem of Brooklyn to Canarsie. No traffic, no delays, home much quicker than doing the Manhattan Bridge and Flatbush Avenue and all that. Too bad that wasn’t true in the daytime.

  But it was certainly true now. At the end, getting out of the BMW in front of his house, he unlocked his way in, stepped through the side interior door into the garage, and backed his Mom’s cab out to the street. Then the BMW went in, the garage door was closed, and the cab was placed on the driveway, nose against the garage.

  Stan went into his house again, left the cab key on the kitchen table, had a beer, and went to bed. Nice car. Better than Max deserved.

  Chapter 42

  * * *

  From the moment Preston phoned him, a little after midnight, waking him from what he had to admit was in any case a troubled sleep, Alan found that Thursday, the nineteenth of August, was the most hellish day of his entire life, as well as the longest, and only partly because so much of the day consisted of travel, which, in addition to the normal irritations implicit in the very word “travel,” was chockablock with extra aggravations, due both to the unforeseen nature of the travel involved and to its abnormalities — leaving a Club Med on a weekday, for instance, just to begin with.

  Alan had gone to bed early Wednesday evening, having no one to talk with after Preston’s mysterious disappearance, and in fact no one to talk with about Preston’s mysterious disappearance except himself, which he could do just as well in bed in the dark, brooding on the dark person of Pamela Broussard and what sirenic thing she might have done with poor Preston, until fitful sleep had taken him, only to be shattered by that firecracker phone call:

  “You know who this is.”

  “What? What?”

  “For God’s sake, Alan, you fell asleep? With me God knows where? What kind of paid companion do you call yourself?”

  “It’s not that easy to be a paid companion, you know,” Alan said, having come to full consciousness by now, “to someone who isn’t present. In any event, I take it you yourself know where you are.”

  “I am at the Holiday Inn on Key Largo.”

  Was that a joke? Would Preston make a joke like that? “I suppose there is one,” Alan said doubtfully.

  “I need everything,” Preston went on. “I am standing here in nothing but my swim trunks.”

  “In Florida? Preston, you didn’t swim — Oh, my God, she got you sailing!”

  “Yes, she did, damn her eyes. If there are any policemen on that island, Alan, I want you to have her arrested, at once, for kidnapping, and —”

  “She’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone? How could she be gone?”

  “The resort office here got an e–mail saying her mother had died. Quite unexpectedly.”

  “And long ago, I should think,” Preston said grimly, “from the shock of having given birth to Pam.”

  “Who works for your ex–wife Helene’s brother Hubert.”

  “Aaaarrrghh!”

  “Exactly. Did you get away from your kidnappers? Is that what this is all about?”

  “What this is all about, Alan, is that I am here with nothing. No identification, no credit cards, no clothing — I’m like a Dickens orphan.”

  “Well, not quite.”

  “Very like. I want you, Alan, to pack up everything of mine, everything.”

  “You’re not coming back?”

  “They’re looking for me, Alan, they want to press papers on me. They’ll be watching every possible route for me to take back out of the country. No, I have a better idea. Don’t check out of there, but do come here, by the fastest, soonest means of transportation known to man.”

  “I think I know what that is.”

  “Bring everything of mine, bring everything of yours, but do not check out.”

  “I understand that.”

  “I’ll be here waiting for you. I’m checked in under your name. What name do you want to use here?”

  “Preston, I would rather use my own.”

  “I told you, I’ve taken it. This young man here, this desk clerk, I’ve taken him into my confidence —”

  “Mm hm.”

  Away from the phone, Preston was heard to say, “What is your name, by the by? Duane? Very good. You will be recompensed for this good deed, Duane. Not as lavishly as Porfirio, you understand, but well.”

  Alan, feeling left out, said, “Preston?”

  Returning to the phone, Preston said, “Duane needed a name to check me in under, which could not be my own. So I gave him yours.”

  “I see.”

  “So now you have to have a nom de guerre as well. Come on, Alan, it’s late. I want to get to my new room in this place and have a long warm shower and a long warm sleep. Come along, Alan, whom do you wish to be?”

  “Duane,” Alan said. “Smith.”

  “Ever the comedian. You will find me when you get here, Alan, in my room, next to naked.”

  Not an appetizing image, but Alan was used to it. “I’ll get there when I can,” he promised, and hung up.

  Which was not going to be as soon as one might like. Alan, dressed, teeth brushed, presented himself at the office, where the young woman on duty found it hard to believe she was expected to have a conversation with a guest at this hour. Being alone here on the graveyard shift meant, to her, being alone, surrounded by bright paperback examples of chick–lit, each with its cover featuring a perky, smirky girl whose face needed to be slapped.

  As did this one’s. Trying to be patient at nearly one in the morning after not only troubled sleep but rudely disturbed sleep, Alan said, yet again, “I am not checking out, but I do have to leave for a few days. On an airplane. To Miami.”

  “Okay,” she said, her eyes drifting toward the scatter of books on the table behind her.

  “Arrange it,” he said.

  She blinked at him, slowly. “You want to check out? At this hour?”

  “I do not want to check out. I will continue to pay for the room, but I just have to leave for a few days. On that airplane we were discussing. To Miami.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Having that circular feeling, Alan said, “When is the next flight to Miami?”

  “There’s one on Saturday.”

  “No, dear,” he said. “Today. This morning. As early as possible.”

  “I only know about the one on Saturday.”

  “A woman left here yesterday,” Alan pointed out, “due to family tragedy. She didn’t wave her arms all the way to Amer
ica, so there must be a plane.”

  “Not to Miami,” she said.

  “Where to, then?”

  “I dunno.” Wrinkling her face up like a washcloth, she said, “You want to know where Ms. Broussard went?”

  “I do not. There’s an airport on this island. There are planes leaving it every day. Where do they go?”

  “Other islands, I think.”

  “Do you have flight schedules in the desk there? Anything like that?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You want to look at one? Which airline?”