Watch Your Back

by Donald Westlake

  * * *

  The truck was a three–year–old Ford E–450 sixteen–foot diesel cube van, painted white some time ago, without company markings or other writing on its sides, doors, or back. The cab was comfortable, the rear door rolled up easily, and the flat floor interior was broom clean and without the odors of yesteryear. The truck’s green license plates were from Vermont, a state about which there has never been a shred of suspicion, unlike some we could mention, and the CD left behind in the deck was Schubert’s Trout Quintet.

  Seeing this, Stan said, “The previous owner give up the ministry?”

  “Something like that,” Max said.

  Already at eight in the morning, Max’s shirtfront was streaked with gray from leaning on cars, talking over their tops at potential customers, of whom a few straggled around the lot at the moment, hoping to find something that could take them to work today. Harriet had a perky nephew who played salesman sometimes, when the customer load backed up, and he was out there now, fetching thrown sticks and talking up the merchandise and otherwise making himself useful, while Max and Stan discussed the trade at issue.

  So Stan took one wary step back from the Ford and said, “Something like what, Max? Does this vehicle blow up?”

  “Nothing like that at all,” Max assured him. “I’ll tell you the story in the office. For now, I understand you got a free gift for me.”

  “Stockbroker’s special,” Stan said, pointing at the BMW. “It’s all yours except the plates.”

  “The plates?”

  “I’ll switch with the truck. I wouldn’t want to drive around New York with Vermont plates. Somebody might stop and ask to borrow a ski.”

  “Mm hm.” Max walked around the BMW to the other side, leaned on it, looked over its top, and said, “You got any papers with this thing?”

  “Nothing you’d want to hold in your hands.”

  “We’re talking virgin birth here.”

  “It’s a miracle, Max. And it’s all yours, if the truck’s story doesn’t scare me too much.”

  “I’ll wanna hear the BMW story, too,” Max said. “Come on in.”

  As they stepped into the office building, Harriet was typing and the phone was ringing — nothing new. “We get more privacy inside,” Max said, as Harriet at last paused in her typing and grabbed the phone:

  “Maximilian’s Used Cars, Miss Caroline speaking. I’m sorry, you want to do what with it? Yes, I remember that vehicle, I typed up the paperwork on it. You’re the rubber man in the carnival, aren’t you? So amusing, we all — Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Flexo, was it? All sales are final.”

  Max and Stan should have been in the other room by now, but both had stopped to listen to how the phone conversation would come out. Harriet listened, smiled pityingly, and said, “Well, ‘final’ means we don’t take them back. There’s a forwardness to the story of life, Mr. Flexo. That vehicle came to us, we passed it on to you, if you are finished with it, you pass — Well, it drove off the lot, if you recall. Mr. Flexo, there are strange sounds in the background, just where are you? Setting up the county fair? Where, Mr. Flexo?”

  Harriet’s light trilling laughter filled the little office like bouquets of roses. “In Kentucky, Mr. Flexo? I tell you what. You get that car here, then we’ll talk.” Hanging up, she shook her head, turned her smile toward Stan and Max, and said, “They know they’re scrap iron, and still they rely on them.”

  “If buyer’s remorse ever accomplished anything in this world,” Max said, “we’d all still be living in caves. Come in before Harriet makes any more friends.”

  Max’s inner office was mostly tall fireproof metal filing cabinets, variously locked with keys and hasps and iron bars, because what they contained was more precious than gold, or anyway on an equal par of preciousness with gold; in those filing cabinets were the customers’ signatures. With them in existence, Maximilian’s Used Cars could go on forever.

  There was also space in this room grudgingly allowed for furniture other than filing cabinets, in the corner farthest from the door and near a barred window with views of weeds and anonymous vinyl buildings. Here crouched Max’s desk, smaller than Harriet’s and much messier, with everything on it from empty soda bottles to various newspapers folded open to partly done crossword puzzles, to a V–shaped metal spring–operated object meant to improve the operator’s grip. As though Max needed his grip improved.

  “Siddown,” Max said, involving the last of the room’s furniture, being his own wooden swivel desk chair and the small, sagging brown mohair sofa facing it.

  Stan sat on the sofa arm, that being as much of that sofa as he cared to know, and said, “The truck had a life in Vermont.”

  “It did. It was an undercover for the feds.”

  This was a surprise. “The feds had that truck.”

  “And here’s a fact you may not have considered before this, Stan,” Max said, raising a pedagogical finger. “At all levels of law enforcement, they take very good care of their vehicles. I’ve had undercover narc cars come through here, look on the outside like they been run off cliffs, but the insides and the wheels are better than when they came out of the factory.”

  “When they need to drive, I guess,” Stan said, “they really need to drive.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “But why do the feds need to drive in Vermont?”

  “Smuggling.”

  “Oh. Canada. What, whiskey?”

  “Chinamen,” Max told him. “And also Chinawomen. And I believe sometimes Chinachildren, too.”

  Stan said, “Chinese? From Canada?”

  “Asians, anyway,” Max said. “And yes, from Canada. The same like you got all these Hispanics coming up to the border down south, you got these other people coming down from Canada. A Chinaman can go to Toronto and you’ll never notice him, they already got a Chinatown. That same Chinaman in Guadalajara? Not your best idea.”

  “So they used this truck,” Stan said, “to infiltrate the smugglers.”

  “Worked like a charm,” Max told him. “From what I understand, they used this truck to send a whole lot of people back where they didn’t wanna go, and even put some of the coyotes, you know, the smugglers, in the can in Canada.”

  “So now the truck is retired. Why?”

  “Well, it got burned. The word got around up there, you do business with this truck, all of a sudden you meet a lotta people that don’t smile.”

  “Not good,” Stan suggested.

  “You’re okay if you stay away from that border,” Max assured him. “But the thing is, the way it got outed, the feds can’t do the normal way to get it back into civilian life. It still has some of its previous life on it.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “The truth is,” Max said, “it has very strange papers. The fella had it, he deals in big trucks mostly, sends em overseas so nobody ever tries to bring them back, I envy that guy, he tells me, you get a cop, he runs a check on the registration on this truck, he gets like an asterisk, says, don’t worry, keep your nose clean, good–bye.”

  “Pretty good.”

  “For you, Stan,” Max said, “it couldn’t be better. For a furniture dealer, maybe, somebody in the legit world, a little freaky. So my friend and I worked out a deal, and now, depending on this BMW, you and me are gonna work out a deal, and what I think, Stan, whatever you want that truck for, afterward you might as well keep it. You’ll never find a better mace. Now, about your offering.”

  Stan told him about the owner of the BMW, off for years now in a Club Med, hiding out from process servers, nobody checking the garage where the BMW’s stored. Just give it a new christening, it’s gold.

  “This sounds good,” Max admitted.

  “It is good.”

  “I would say, Stan, you and me, we’ve done a good morning’s work.”

  “No, you have,” Stan said, getting up from the sofa arm. “My work starts now. I gotta meet my guys at nine–thirty in the city.”

  A small
amount of paperwork adjustment, and Stan was on his way, the nephew waving bye–bye. The truck felt fine. And keep it around after the job, eh? Hmmm.

  And who knew the feds listened to Schubert?

  Chapter 44

  * * *

  “Come on up,” Arnie said.

  Dortmunder, at the foot of the stairs, having just been buzzed into the building by Arnie, looked up at him and said, “Arnie, the idea is, you’re coming down, I’m taking you to the place.”

  “I’ve been having second thoughts about that,” Arnie said. “Come on up.”

  Not going on up, Dortmunder said, “Don’t do that, Arnie. Never have second thoughts, they just ball you up. Come on, we don’t wanna be late, Stan’s gonna be there with the truck nine–thirty, got the remote opener and everything, he zaps the opener, zip, zip, everybody’s in.”

  “This is where I’m having second thoughts,” Arnie said. “What am I doing in? Come to that, what am I doing out? Look at me, I’m still the color of a roll of burlap.”

  This was true, but Dortmunder said, “Arnie, don’t even think like that, it’s fading away to nothing.”

  “And we got more sun today, I heard the warning on the radio.”

  “You’ll be indoors, in an entire penthouse. Come on, Arnie, we can’t stand here in the stairwell forever, some neighbor’s gonna call the cops.”

  “So come up, we’ll discuss it.”

  Dortmunder well knew, if he were to go up these stairs, he would never get Arnie down them, so, without moving, he said, “Arnie, come down, we’ll talk it over while we walk through the park, you’ll see where —”

  “Walk?” Astonished, Arnie said, “I don’t walk, Dortmunder! I don’t even walk anyway, and you’re talking through the park? It’s all sun out there.”

  “Okay,” Dortmunder said, “I’ll meet you halfway. No walking, we’ll take a cab. I’ll buy.”

  “A cab. Over to the place, you mean, with the thing and the thing and everybody zips in.”

  “Sure. Come on.”

  “How’s this meeting me halfway? You want the cab to go halfway there and come back?”

  “Arnie,” Dortmunder said, “I’m not coming up.”

  “I just don’t see —”

  “Preston Fareweather, Arnie.”

  Arnie shook all over and looked agonized. His hand clutched to the banister in front of him.

  Dortmunder pressed his advantage. “Those guys were so brilliant, they even got the Seersucker.”

  “The what?”

  Dortmunder said, “Didn’t you say he had one of those?”

  “I don’t even know what the hell it is!”

  “Well, we’ll go look for it. Come on, Arnie, Preston Fareweather. Broadway’s out there, Arnie, it’s full of taxicabs, and every one of them has a roof. Don’t let Preston Fareweather think we’re bozos, Arnie.”

  “Preston Fareweather thinks everybody’s bozos,” Arnie said with disgust.

  “Including you,” Dortmunder reminded him. “And that’s the mistake he made, that he’s gonna find out what a mistake it is. That’s the whole point here, isn’t it? We’re not gonna let Preston Fareweather forget what happens when he messes around with you.”

  Alarmed, Arnie said, “Wait a minute, I don’t want him to know I had anything to do with it.”

  “Of course not, Arnie. Just some unnamed, unknowable genius he mistreated in the past. Can you see his face, Arnie? Picture it in your mind, Preston Fareweather’s face, the next time he walks into that penthouse.”

  Arnie thought. “Let me get my hat,” he said.

  Chapter 45

  * * *

  Where Kelp got the hard hats was a theatrical costumer in the west Forties, a place he’d patronized before, always very late at night, when the prices were better but you had to serve yourself, mostly in the dark.

  It was a deep, broad shop full of crannies and nooks and little rooms, two stories of costumes and props, anything you might want in a stage show or on a movie set or shooting a commercial or running another day of a soap opera — all things that happen in that neighborhood just about every day. Kelp was always careful not to harm any locks here or otherwise be intrusive, and since they had so much and he took so little, he doubted they were even aware of his visits. Which was nice — he liked the opportunity to be a loyal customer, and wouldn’t like them to feel the need to increase their security.

  Ordinary yellow hard hats without logos were harder to find than cowboy hats and Nazi officer hats and football helmets and graduation caps, but eventually, on a low shelf upstairs near the rear, he came across a cluster of them, looking like the world’s largest canary eggs. He put two in the plastic bag he’d brought for the purpose, let himself gently out of the place, took a cab home, had a brief pleasant chat with Anne Marie, slept peacefully, and at nine–thirty in the morning was crossing Fifth Avenue at Sixty–eighth Street when Tiny called to him, “Kelp!”

  Kelp looked, and Tiny was waving from a limo waiting for the light to change so it could make the left turn onto Sixty–eighth Street. Kelp waved back, and Tiny called, “Come wait in the limo.”

  “Will do.”

  Kelp finished crossing Fifth and turned left to cross Sixty–eighth, because the driver of the limo was stopping it at the fire hydrant across the street from the garage entrance they’d be aiming at, but before he could step off the curb, a cab stopped at his feet, and out of it, astonishingly, stepped Arnie Albright, wearing the kind of cloth cap with a soft brim all around it that really terrible golfers wear, except without the comical pins.

  Kelp said, “Arnie? You sprang for a cab?”

  “Not on your life,” Arnie said, and from behind him, putting his wallet away, out crawled Dortmunder, looking nettled and saying, “I paid for the cab. It was the only way to get him here.”

  “Though I still got my doubts,” Arnie said as the cab hurtled away.

  “Well,” Kelp said, “let’s go over there and wait in the limo with Tiny.”

  Arnie said, “Limo?” but then a white truck, sneaking around the corner just as the light turned red, made the left, then a right toward the garage door, which began to lift. Stan could be seen in the truck cab, putting the remote back down on the seat.

  So instead of everybody getting into the limo, Tiny got out of it, and it drove away. Now that all the traffic had stopped, Tiny crossed the street to join them, and everybody followed the truck into the garage, where Stan thumbed the door shut again.

  Stan was the only one who’d been in this place before, so everybody else had to look it over for a minute. They also had to study the truck. Kelp put the bag of hard hats on the passenger seat, and Tiny said, “Very clean. Better than I figured. What did it used to carry?”

  “People,” Stan said, and when they all looked at him, he said, “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later, over a beer. The elevator’s over there.”

  “We’ll have to do a little alarm stuff first,” Kelp said, “before we ride it anywhere.”

  Turned out, the alarm system for the elevator was a simpler problem than switching on the motor to run the elevator, which wanted a key they didn’t have, which would fit in a slot to the right of the two buttons lined up vertically on the control panel and marked Top and Bot. Looking at those buttons, Stan said, “Did the manufacturer think the customer was gonna get confused?”

  “Their lawyer made them add that,” Kelp explained.

  The problem with the key meant that both Dortmunder and Kelp produced leather toolkit bags and took the metal cover off the control panel, then found the way to bypass the ignition. When they checked it, it worked fine, but Dortmunder and Kelp were the only ones aboard, and the elevator just went up to the top without waiting for anybody else.

  “We’ll send it back down,” Dortmunder said as they rose.

  “And have the alarms taken care of by the time they get here,” Kelp agreed.

  Which they did. The second time the elevator opened at the t
op level, it was very full, mostly with Tiny, who seemed to be wearing Stan and Arnie as earmuffs. (The three long rumbles of the elevator motor had not reached Preston in the master bedroom but had made a faint drone in the guest room, causing Alan to frown and shift position and have a brief, pointless dream about being in a submarine.)

  “We’ll just walk it through the first time,” Dortmunder said, “and, Arnie, then you can tell us which things to take.”

  “I brung red dots,” Arnie said. When everybody gave him blank looks, he said, “I got the idea from art galleries. When they have a show, if somebody buys a painting they don’t get to take it home until the show is over, so the gallery has these little red dot stickers that they put on, to say, ‘this one already sold.’ ” Taking a sheet of such stickers from his pants pocket, he said, “That’s what I figured I’d do here. When I see something good, I slap a red dot on it, you guys take it away.”