Don't Lie to Me

by Donald E. Westlake

  That was a weird thing to say. Was this merely a crank, nothing more? But for years and years on the force a part of my job had been answering the phone, and after a while you begin to develop a sense of which callers are cranks, which ones are straight. This girl sounded as though she were wilting even as we spoke, but I still didn’t think she was a crank. I said, “Well, if you don’t want to go to the police, what about coming to see me?” Kate, I thought, would be a calming influence on the girl, if I could get her to come out here. “We could talk,” I said. “I could tell you what I remember, and you could try to prod my memory.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Well, it’s up to you,” I said. “You say you don’t want to go to the police, so I thought this would be an alternative.”

  “Yes, I suppose, I suppose …”

  Today was Wednesday. John Doe had been killed last Thursday, and had made the papers and television on Friday. If it had taken this girl five days to make her move, and if it was then a move so indirect as to call the person who’d found the body and ask about birthmarks, her fragility quotient had to be incredibly high, and I would have to treat her with a great deal of care. I said, “We can do this any way you want. You pick the time and place, and that’s where we’ll meet.”

  “Well …”

  “Miss, really,” I said, “you’ll have to make up your mind.” I wouldn’t have displayed so much impatience, but my mind was full of Willie Vigevano.

  “All right,” she said. “The paper said you’re the guard at night at the museum. That’s where I’ll meet you.”

  “But—”

  “No, I couldn’t go anyplace else. I’ll come to the museum tonight. But not if there’s anyone else around.”

  “What time tonight?” I could still maybe take care of Vigevano, organize things to include this girl.

  But she said, “No, I won’t tell you. Just sometime tonight. I don’t want to talk to anybody else, just you.”

  I remembered Inspector Stanton, whose good will had protected me from Hargerson; up to a point. For some strange reason I won’t try to explain, it was because of Stanton that I let an anonymous telephone call turn my plans inside out. “All right,” I said. “I’ll be there tonight. But you heard about the policeman who was blinded by acid?”

  “Yes, I did. That was terrible.”

  “Yes. When you come, knock three times, then pause, then knock twice more. If I don’t come after a minute or two, knock the same way again, because the first time I might be on my rounds upstairs and not hear you.”

  “All right, I will. Three times, and then twice.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll be there tonight,” she said, and hung up.

  Dunworthy was not happy when I called back. I told him I felt I could go in to work after all, and he said, “Do you realize what you just put me through?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I want to do right by the company. Before, I didn’t feel well enough to go in to work, but now I feel a lot better. I don’t want to let the company down.”

  “You don’t want to lose the day’s pay,” he said petulantly. “I know you people.”

  “I’m sorry to cause you trouble,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he said savagely, and banged the phone down in my ear.

  11

  I KNEW HARGERSON WAS probably somewhere in the vicinity if he wasn’t on duty, and I wanted to talk to him, so I walked slowly from the house to my subway stop, looking for him. I would have walked slowly in any case, because of the stiffness of my body; I would have preferred to have spent tonight lying flat on my back under several blankets. As it was, my mind was full of Hargerson and Willie Vigevano and the girl on the telephone, and my body had to trail along in the wake of my thoughts.

  It wasn’t Hargerson I saw, however, half a block from the subway, nor was it Vigevano. It was Marty Kengelberg, leaning against the fender of a fairly new Pontiac. When I saw him, I smiled at first and started to hurry toward him, but two things erased the smile and slowed me down again: my own body and his expression. He looked grim and wary and uncomfortable, and neither friendly nor unfriendly.

  And what was Marty doing here anyway? I didn’t know yet what the trouble was, but it was something. Approaching him, I said, “Hi. What are you doing around here?”

  “Waiting for you,” he said. He pushed away from the fender and gestured at the car. “Get in, I’ll drive you to the museum.”

  Was he still worried that I’d started up again with Linda? If he was going to lecture me on the subject, it would be a very embarrassing ride for both of us. Still, he hadn’t left me much choice. “Thanks,” I said, trying to act as though everything was fine, and the two of us got into the Pontiac.

  Marty is big and dark-haired and slow-moving, with an air of quiet, unhurried strength. He was agitated now, but agitation only made him slower, more solid and stolid. He didn’t say anything until we were rolling along in traffic, and then he said, “It’s the Museum of American Graphic Art, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You didn’t tell me when you called that night.”

  “I’ve only been there a month,” I said.

  “I got it out of the paper,” he said.

  So had the girl on the telephone. I wasn’t sure where Marty was going, what these flat statements were leading toward, so this time I said nothing.

  After a minute he said, “That’s the place had the killing.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The same night you called me.”

  Then I understood. He was the only one in the position to put two and two together, and he’d done it. “Oh,” I said.

  He glanced at me without expression and looked back at the road. “The detectives are looking for a woman in the case.”

  “Yes, it’s her.”

  “Linda.”

  “Yes. I didn’t want her involved in—”

  “I know,” he said, nodding. Even his impatience was slow. “I know what you wanted to do.”

  “I still do,” I said.

  Again he glanced at me, and this time there was something in his face. Not hostility; combativeness. We were still friends, but he was going to disagree with me. He said, “Other things have happened.”

  “I know. I know they have.”

  “I’m talking about the officer who was blinded.”

  “Marty, I—”

  “Let me finish.” He was facing front again, and I could see how difficult this was for him. But just because it was so difficult, I knew he would be unchangeable.

  One more complication. Hargerson, Vigevano, the John Doe killing, and now Marty. What was I going to do about Marty?

  He said, “The detectives on the case think the two things are tied in. The killing and the acid.”

  “Hargerson doesn’t,” I said.

  He frowned. “Who?”

  “Grinella’s partner. The blinded man’s partner. His name is Hargerson, and he’s figured it out that I was the target. He leaned on me today to tell him the story.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  He gave me an interested look. “Is that why you were walking like that? You looked stiff.”

  “That’s why.”

  He faced front and gave the world in general a sour smile. “Now I’m asking the same question,” he said.

  I said, “Willie Vigevano threw the acid. Mort Livingston drove. They stole the car for that purpose and ditched it later.”

  The look he gave me this time was full of astonishment. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.” I told him about my meeting with Dink, and Dink’s phone call.

  He said, “You wouldn’t tell Hargerson. Why tell me?”

  “You’re my friend. I can ask you to let me do it my way. I can show you I’m not going to let it slide, that I’ve already worked on it enough to know which ones did it.”

  He said, “You can’t get them
charged for the acid-throwing without the whole story of Linda coming out.”

  “We’ll see. Will you give me time?”

  “How much?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  He frowned, not liking it very much, then looked at me and said, “I’ll give you my help if you want it.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Say the word.”

  “Maybe later on. Not yet.”

  “What I’m saying is,” he pointed out, “that I’ll be glad to help you do it yourself, but that in any case it’s going to get done. If you can’t do it, the whole thing is just going to have to come out.”

  “I know. I’m already prepared for that.”

  “You are, really?”

  “I am.”

  He nodded, satisfied, and changed the subject, asking me about Kate. We spent the rest of the trip making small talk about families, and didn’t mention the blinding again.

  The street with the museum on it was one-way, the wrong way. Marty offered to drive around the block, but I said, “No, I’m early anyway. Let me walk a little. I have to work the stiffness out.”

  “If you say so.” He pulled to the curb and said, “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” I got out of the car, and he waved and drove off, and I headed for the museum. I had stiffened up some more on the long ride in, and walked very slowly.

  Midway between corner and museum I saw the black Ford, engine idling, sitting by a fire hydrant. Hargerson. I stepped painfully out into the street between two cars farther back, and walked up to the Ford on the driver’s side. I could see him through the rear window, alone in the car, a heavy stolid shape: Marty, without the humanity.

  He had his side window rolled down. I stopped there and leaned against the top of the car and said, “Hargerson.”

  He had been looking toward the museum and hadn’t seen me approach. He looked up at me with neither surprise nor pleasure, and said nothing at all.

  I said, “Now that we’re past the tough-guy stage, let me tell you something.”

  “Don’t get the idea we’re past anything, Tobin,” he said. “Not if you want to get to work tonight.”

  “Listen,” I said, “we both want the same thing, whether you believe it or not. If you leave me alone, I’ll give you the people who blinded Grinella, I promise I will. But you have to let me do it my way, you have to trust me that much.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve already proved to yourself that you won’t get it out of me any other way.”

  He frowned, studying me. I knew he wanted more than anything else to open up my head and spend some time looking around inside. I could understand and sympathize with his feelings, but that didn’t change the fact that I had to defuse him if I was going to accomplish anything on my own.

  In a small way, Hargerson was facing now the same kind of thing I’d had in front of me when Jock was killed: he was feeling responsible for what had happened to his partner, and he was frustrated in his desire for revenge. I couldn’t dislike or condemn him for what he was doing, because it wasn’t that different from what I would do in the same circumstances myself; but I could try to get him to stop.

  I said, “Look. Give me some time. If I don’t come through, you can always change tactics.”

  “How much time?” He asked the question heavily, as though any amount I might ask for would turn out to be too much.

  Today was Wednesday, most of it gone. “Till the weekend,” I said.

  “Saturday.”

  “Give me the whole weekend.”

  He frowned, not liking it. “What can you do then that you can’t do now?”

  “Just give me the time.”

  He gave an angry shrug and said, “All right, Monday morning. If nothing happens before then, on Monday morning you will find yourself being booked for two or three felonies.”

  I knew he meant that, and I knew he could make it stick. Find heroin in my car. Shake me down and find policy slips. Put me in a line-up and have some hooker identify me as the guy who mugged her. There were a lot of felonies Hargerson could pull out of the sack and throw at me, and every one of them would stick. He was talking about sending me to prison for five or ten years, and he meant it.

  “Monday morning,” I said. “That’s all the time I need.” Which I hoped was the truth.

  12

  MULLER WAS ON THE DOOR, as usual. “Better stay out of the office,” he said. “They’re having a fight in there.”

  “Who?”

  “Ramsey and Crane.”

  “What are they fighting about?”

  He shrugged, shaking his head; the internal politics of the museum didn’t interest him in the least. “Who knows,” he said. “They’re just fighting, that’s all.”

  So instead of going into the office, I went off into the first display room on the right, planning to leave my lunchbag on a bench in there. I’d intended to drift on down toward the office after that, on the chance that the fight included raised voices—I was interested in everything having to do with the museum these days—but I was distracted by Dan Tynebourne, sitting alone and fretful in a corner of the display room. Wearing his Phil-Crane-Style clothing, but sitting there with an Ernest-Ramsey-like air of discomfort, he seemed most like a tall child dressed up for a masquerade party he doesn’t really want to attend.

  He looked up at my entrance, and then got quickly to his feet, and I was surprised at how agitated he was. “Mr. Tobin,” he said, with a peculiarly strong emphasis, making my name sound like a cross between a command and a cry for help.

  “Good evening,” I said. I put my lunchbag down on a bench to my right.

  He was walking toward me, his limbs slightly uncoordinated. “Give me your opinion,” he said, and this time the phrase was entirely command.

  I understood that it wasn’t my opinion he wanted, but simply an opinion. He’d been sitting alone in here—waiting for the fight to end?—his mind full of some problem, and bursting to verbalize it with the next person he saw, whoever it might be. Had he tried talking with Muller? If so, I could imagine how frustrating Muller’s blank wall of indifference must have been.

  As for myself, the museum interested me, and so did the people connected with it. I said, “I’d be happy to. What’s the problem?”

  “The question is,” he said, frowning past me at the wall as he carefully phrased his thoughts, “should the museum open to the public or shouldn’t it?”

  The same problem as before. Could that be what Ramsey and Crane were fighting about? It seemed impossible. I said, “Well, what are the arguments on both sides?”

  “Oh, hell,” he said, suddenly angry, “I suppose it’s elitism, I suppose it really is, but so what? Egalitarianism can go too damn far. Woodstock was a hype, as far as I’m concerned.”

  None of which made any sense to me at all, so I asked a more direct question: “Is that what Ramsey and Crane are fighting about?”

  He gave me an agonized look. “I can understand both sides,” he said. “That’s what makes it such a down for me.”

  “Ramsey wants to keep it closed, is that it?”

  “Phil says that’s elitism,” Tynebourne said. “He says it’s antidemocratic, and of course it is, isn’t it? But Jesus Christ, the public never gave a damn whether this place was open or not!”

  Tynebourne’s position was both comic and sad. He had miscast himself, it was as simple as that. His personality and attitudes fitted him thoroughly to be in Ernest Ramsey’s camp, but he had chosen to make Phil Crane his hero. The contradiction could continue unresolved so long as Ramsey and Crane were in overall agreement, but once a dispute arose between them, the same dispute had to take place, in more concentrated and perhaps more painful form, within Dan Tynebourne. His natural instincts now sided with Ramsey’s the-public-be-damned attitude, but his acquired convictions made him wish to favor Crane’s egalitarianism.

  I said, “Well, does Crane want the museum open with th
e forgeries on the walls or taken down?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t care about forgeries,” Tynebourne said, with such impatience that I could see this element was really not a part of the dispute. “Real or fake, it doesn’t matter to Phil.”

  “Or you?” I asked the question because his instinctive pedantry, it seemed to me, should make him very sensitive to the question of real versus fake.

  But he said, “Why should it? A copy of a copy, what difference does it make? None of these things are original artworks, they’re all copies from magazines or newspapers.”

  “Then why close the museum?”

  He gave me a sudden sharp look, opened his mouth, paused, then looked away and said, “Oh, yes. I see what you mean.”

  I suspected he was seeing more than I’d meant. Not wanting to disabuse him of his belief, I said nothing, but waited for him to explain to me what revelation I’d just given him.

  Which he did. “You mean,” he said, “that the forgeries really aren’t a legitimate reason to close the museum, since they’re only copies from copies anyway. So that means the only reason to want to close the museum is elitism. The forgeries are just an excuse.”

  Which was well beyond anything I’d had in mind with my small question, but I could only agree with his conclusions. I said, “It does seem as though people who come here will enjoy the copies just as much as the originals.”

  “Right on!” he said, in real delight, and as usual the slang phrase seemed terribly awkward when he delivered it.

  He stood smiling around the room at the displays, and I watched him, amused at how animated he had become when the conflict in him had been resolved. If it really had.

  “We open,” he said, talking to himself more than me, and nodded emphatically. Then he turned back to me again, saying, “Phil was right. That’s the amazing thing, he’s always right. He comes up with some wild things sometimes, he’ll really blow your mind with some of his ideas, but he’s always right. I’ve got to remember that.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “I’d better go talk to them,” he said, and abruptly left the room.