Nobody's Perfect

by Donald Westlake

  God damn, but it was coming fast.

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  “I wonder if you’ve heard this one, Sheikh,” Prince Elector Otto Orfizzi of Tuscan–Bavaria called across the table, his round–red–apple face thrust out among the candles.

  “I should think I probably had,” Sheikh Rama el–Rama el–Rama El responded, and turned to Laura Bathing to say, “Have you been in London recently?”

  “Not for a year or so. Oops.”

  The Sheikh blandly watched her sop up red wine with her most recent napkin, while the black hand and white–clad arm of their host’s serving boy reached through between them to pick up the shards of wine glass. “I was there two weeks ago,” the Sheikh said.

  “Watch out, you clumsy fool!” Laura shrieked at the servant. “You’ll get glass in my meat!”

  “I was buying a house in Belgravia,” the Sheikh went on, unperturbed. His softly oiled chuckle came and went. “The poor English,” he said pleasantly. “They can’t afford their own capital any more, you know. They’re all living in Woking and Hendon.”

  The Prince Elector, meanwhile, was trying to tell his joke to Lotte deCharraiveuneuirauville, who was ignoring him while grimly watching her husband, MuMu, thrust himself upon cosmetics heiress and frump Martha Whoopley. “What I’ve always felt about St. Louis,” MuMu was saying, “is that it’s somehow more real than most of the places I know. Do you feel that?”

  Martha Whoopley used her tongue to clear brussels sprouts into her cheek pouches, then said, “More real? How d’ya mean?”

  “After all the flitter of New York, Deauville, Paris, Rome —” MuMu gestured gracefully, candlelight sparkling on his rings and bracelets, a fraction of his collection. “All of this,” he summed up. “Isn’t it somehow more, more, oh I don’t know, more real to get back to St. Louis?”

  “I don’t think it’s more real,” Martha said. She shoved a lot of French bread into her mouth and went on talking. “I grew up there. I always thought it stunk.”

  “But you still live there.”

  “I keep a house out by the plant. You’ve got to keep your eye on those manager people.”

  Film star and environmental activist Lance Sheath, a rugged escarpment at Martha’s right, leaned toward her with his virile confidentiality, saying in the deep voice that had thrilled billions, “You oughta spend some time in Los Angeles. Get to know the future.”

  “We have a packaging facility in Los Angeles,” Martha told him. “Out in Encino. I don’t like it much out there. All that white stucco hurts my eyes.”

  Prince Otto was finishing his joke to whoever would listen. It concerned a Jewish woman checking in at the Fountainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, asking for bellboys to get the luggage from the car, and then requesting a wheelchair for her husband. “ ‘Of course,’ said the desk clerk,” concluded the Prince. “ ‘I’m terribly sorry, can’t your husband walk?’ ‘He can,’ said the woman, ‘but thank God he doesn’t have to.’ ”

  While the Prince laughed heartily at his own joke, Chauncey’s mind delivered him, intact, a variant beginning, “A sheikh’s wife enters the Dorchester Hotel in London —” and ending, “ ‘He can,’ said the woman, ‘but thank Allah he doesn’t have to.’ ” Should he wait ten minutes or so, and then straight faced tell that variant? No; revenge enough was already under way.

  Meanwhile, Mavis Orfizzi was clutching her own bony breast in assumed horror at her husband’s gaucherie. “I can’t stand it any more,” she cried, for the benefit of the table at large, and surged to her feet, knocking over her chair, and so upstaging Laura Bathing that one gave off screeching at Thomas Jefferson, the serving boy, and gaped in astonishment. “Otto,” Mavis announced over the other guests’ heads, “you are as clumsy and oafish at table as you are in bed.”

  “In bed?” demanded the Prince Elector, stung out of his raconteur’s role, “I’m afraid to touch you in bed for fear of cutting myself,” he declared.

  “I can’t stand it!” Mavis cried out, but then, apparently realizing she’d become reduced to repeating herself, she clutched her brow with both hands, screamed, “No more!” and fled the room.

  Her intent didn’t occur to Chauncey until, in the astounded hush at the table following her exit, all at once be heard from afar the busy whirr of machinery. Elevator machinery. “No!” he cried, half rising from his seat, arm stretching out toward the doorway through which the damned posturing woman had made her melodramatic exit. But it was too late. Too late. Arm dropping to his side, Chauncey sagged back into his chair, and from the distance the sound of whirring stopped.

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  “I’ve been shafted,” Dortmunder said.

  Well, he had. He’d moved as fast as he could to the metal ladder rungs at the rear of the elevator shaft, but there just hadn’t been time to get up and out of the way. The elevator remorselessly rose, like an engine of destruction in an old Saturday–afternoon serial, and before he could climb a single rung the thing had overtaken him, pinning him to the wall.

  It was those damn bourbon bottles that trapped him. The top of the elevator had a lip around the edge, an overhang which had brushed its way up the back of his legs, shoved his rump aside, grazed his shoulder blades, and bunked him gently on the back of the head before halting just above him. There was a bit more room below the lip, but when he tried to climb the rungs to freedom he discovered that the bottles under his jacket gave him just that much extra thickness, front to back, and he couldn’t clear the goddam lip. Nor did he have enough room to use his hands to open the jacket and remove the bottles. He could sidle up the rungs, bit by bit, until his head and shoulders were above the top of the elevator, but at that point he was stuck.

  From above, the harsh whisper of Kelp floated down: “Come on! Dortmunder, come on!”

  He looked up, but couldn’t get his head back far enough to see the top of the shaft. Speaking to the concrete wall, he half whispered back, “I can’t.”

  And then, from somewhere not too far away, a woman screamed.

  “Terrific,” Dortmunder muttered. Louder, he called up to Kelp, “You people go on! Stash the painting!”

  “But what about you?”

  “Go on!” And, to end the argument, Dortmunder crab–crawled his way down the ladder rungs again, putting his head out of Kelp’s sight.

  By now the woman had stopped screaming, but all at once more voices sounded, male and female. Turning his head as far as possible, Dortmunder could just see an air vent, and through it the interior of the elevator, the open elevator door, and a bit of hallway. And as he looked, and listened to the raised male and female voices, one of those goddam private guards — the fat one — suddenly ran by the open elevator door.

  There was only one thing to do, and Dortmunder did it. Down he went, sidling past the back wall of the elevator, down as rapidly as he could into almost impenetrable darkness, lower and lower into the elevator shaft. Because who knew when it would occur to somebody to use the goddam elevator again.

  Whirrrrrrrrr.

  Yike. Zip zip zip zip went Dortmunder, descending and descending, but nowhere near as fast as the elevator, whose cables shushed and binkled near his right elbow, and whose dirty black metal bottom dropped toward him like an anal retentive’s worst nightmare. He could sense it above his head, dropping and dropping, inexorable, closing down and down.

  Whirrrrr–clump.

  It stopped. Dortmunder’s head, withdrawn like a turtle’s into his neck, remained a good clear quarter–inch below the bottom of the elevator as he listened to the doors chunk open and heard the resonance of feet pounding outward; one or more of the private guards, gone to report. Meaning this was not the ground floor, but the main floor above it. Good thing they hadn’t gone all the way down.

  “All right, all right,” Dortmunder whispered to himself, “let’s not panic,” and immediately the question came into his mind, Why not?

  Well. He strug
gled for an answer, and finally found one:

  “Don’t want to fall.”

  Very good. Not panicking, Dortmunder made his way down the rest of the ladder to the bottom of the shaft, which was in such utter blackness that he knew he’d arrived only when he started to reach his left foot down for the next rung, and slammed his toes into something solid at least three inches before he’d expected anything. “Ow!” he said aloud, and the well–like walls gave the word back to him.

  So here he was at the bottom of things. Releasing the rungs, he began to move around this Stygian space and a sudden pain in his knee told him it was occupied. Another Ow went the circuit, and then he began to feel about, this way and that, and finally came to the conclusion that what was at the bottom of this elevator shaft was some sort of huge spring. Could that be right? He visualized it in his mind, like a pink cross–section drawing from The Way Things Work: elevator shaft, elevator, elevator slips its gears and plummets, hits giant spring and goes ba–roooong–a, spring absorbs major portion of impact. By God, it might even work.

  Whirrrrr.

  Oh, no. Here the son of a bitch came again, heading this way. Dortmunder dropped to the oily, cruddy floor, wrapping himself like an open parenthesis around the base of the big spring, while the elevator descended to ground–floor level, the doors opened, male voices engaged in a conference of some kind, the doors closed, and the elevator whirred its way back up to the first floor.

  Dortmunder stood, beginning to get pissed off. That crowd of Scotsmen at the theater, that was one thing, the accidents of life, you learned to roll with punches like that. But what was happening in this house was utter bullshit. He’d been promised no guards on the top floor, and there’d been two of them. He’d been promised the elevator would stay down and out of his way, and now the damn thing was treating him like an apple in a cider press. Was he going to tolerate this?

  Probably.

  Unless he could get the hell out of here. And now that his eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark, he could see breaks in the black, lines of light just over there, indicating a closed door, the bottom of which would be not very far above his head. The ground–floor door. If he could get through that, then somehow he’d manage to clear out of this house. Anyway, it was worth a try. And anything, finally, was better than just sitting forever in the bottom of an elevator shaft.

  Circling the giant spring, Dortmunder approached the lines of light, touched the door, and tried to slide it open. It wouldn’t go. He pushed harder, and it still wouldn’t go.

  Of course not. An electric lock was holding it in place, so long as the elevator was elsewhere. He had to get at that lock, which was about five feet up on the door judging from the one he’d seen at the top level.

  Dortmunder sat on the spring — human beings are quickly adaptable to any environment, which makes them a fine stock for those interested in animal husbandry — to consider his present resources. Aside from his ski mask, clothing and those damned bourbon bottles, what did he have on his person?

  Money. Keys. He would have had cigarettes and matches, but somehow May’s chain–smoking had discouraged him, and about four months ago, after nearly thirty years of smoking Camels, he’d simply stopped. There’d been none of the usual withdrawal symptoms, no nervousness or bad temper, in fact not even much desire to quit. He’d simply awakened one morning, looked at the Everest of matches and butts in the ashtray on May’s side of the bed, and decided not to have a cigarette just yet. Habit had kept him carrying his crumpled Camels another two weeks, but finally he’d realized he simply wasn’t smoking any more, and that was the end of it. So he didn’t have cigarettes, but more importantly under the circumstances, he also didn’t have matches.

  Yes, but what did be have? He had his wallet, with driver’s license, money, blood–type card (you never know), a couple of credit cards he didn’t dare use and a library card May had got him for obscure reasons of her own. In other pockets he had several cufflinks and tiepins belonging to Arnold Chauncey. He had — Credit cards. Credit cards are tough plastic, they can be slipped between door and jamb to force open a latch. Could a credit card be inserted between the electric lock box and the metal plate on the elevator door, unlocking it?

  There was only one way to find out. Clutching a credit card between his teeth like a pirate’s sword, Dortmunder scrambled up the ladder and around the horizontal beams to the door. Credit card in position. Credit card pushed forward. Credit card pushed harder, pushed, pushed, wriggled, edged, pushed, sidled, pushed into the goddam space between box and plate, shoved in there until all at once it went, and there was a tiny click.

  Yes? Holding on to the credit card — he didn’t want to lose that into the darkness below, covered with his fingerprints — Dortmunder leaned forward against the concrete wall and used his other hand to push on the door.

  Which slid open.

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  Arnold Chauncey sipped bourbon, stared at the spot on the wall where Folly Leads Man to Ruin had so lately hung, and tried not to look as pleased as he felt. The house was full of policemen, guests were shrieking in every corner, and somehow or other the plot seemed to have gone simultaneously completely wrong and completely right.

  The dismay Chauncey had felt when Mavis Orfizzi had taken off in that elevator had been nothing to the cold acid–bath of doom that had washed o’er him when he’d discovered that two private guards, in direct contradiction of his express orders, had taken up posts on the top floor. As for his own behavior, he had to give himself low marks and consider himself extremely lucky that in the clatter of events nobody seemed to have noticed any of the false notes in his performance. His crying out, “No!” for instance, when Mavis entered the elevator. Then there’d been his reaction on seeing the guards come down from upstairs: an angry cry of, “What were you doing up there?”

  Fortunately, after that last clinker Chauncey had finally got hold of himself and settled down to more or less appropriate behavior: initial shock and outrage, commiseration and apology toward his guests, helpful determination toward the policemen when they arrived, and stoic fortitude when counting up his own “losses” from his bedroom (Dortmunder & Co. had been damned efficient in there, by God). Statements had been taken from the dinner guests first, after which they’d been allowed to leave: Laura Bathing so startled she forgot to tip over a vase on the way out, Major General (Ret.) and Mrs. Homer Biggott limping out to be stacked into their Lincoln by their chauffeur, Sheikh Rama el–Rama el–Rama El departing with a smiling comment about “petty crime increasing as civilizations decline,” Martha Whoopley the only one in the household to eat her portion of baked Alaska before departure, Lance Sheath helping her into her fur and leaving with her, chuckling mannishly deep in his throat. Chauncey himself had given the authorities a brief statement — the truth, that he had been at dinner with his guests until the screaming started.

  And now the police were dealing with the houseguests, one by one, while the staff awaited their turn in the kitchen and the shamefaced private guards cooled their heels in the first floor lounge next to the dining room in which the interviews were being held.

  There was nothing left for Chauncey to do but wait for the dust to settle, and in the morning to call his insurance agent. Nobody could claim this was a faked theft; the closeting of the private guards, in fact, dangerous though their presence had been, adding yet another touch of verisimilitude to the affair. The first bourbon on the rocks he’d given himself had been medicinal in nature, a prescription for his jangled nerves, but the second had been in acknowledgment of a sense of relief, and the third was a toast to a dangerous crossing successfully accomplished. Cheers!

  Chauncey was just draining this congratulatory tot when Prince Elector Otto Orfizzi wandered in, fresh from his interview with the police, saying, “Ah, there you are.”

  “Here I am,” Chauncey agreed. His mood was becoming agreeably mellow.

  “Bad timing, that,�
�� Orfizzi said, gesturing upwards with his thumb.

  Not sure what the man meant, Chauncey said, “Was it?”

  “If the damned woman had gone up there ten minutes earlier,” the Prince explained, “the blighters might have shot her.” He shrugged, evidently irritated at his wife’s perverse insistence on remaining alive, then rallied himself and changed the subject. “I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw those policemen.”

  Now what? “I’m not sure I follow,” Chauncey admitted. “The man in charge.” Prince Otto leaned forward, dropping his voice confidentially. “Black as the ace of spades.”

  “Ah, yes,” Chauncey said, and the combination of nerves and liquor made him add, “Well, at least he isn’t Jewish.”

  The Prince considered that. “I don’t know,” he mused. “With a Jew, you’d be certain in any event the fellow wasn’t in league with the thieves.”