Nobody's Perfect

by Donald Westlake

  “Can it be worse than a visit from Chauncey’s friend?”

  Dortmunder sighed.

  “I’ll buy two bottles,” Kelp said.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  “You remember my nephew Victor,” Kelp said.

  “The FBI man,” Dortmunder said.

  “The ex–FBI man,” Kelp corrected him. “It makes a difference.”

  “They threw him out,” Dortmunder said, “because he kept putting a suggestion in the FBI suggestion box that they oughta have a secret handshake, so they’d be able to recognize each other at parties.”

  “That’s not necessarily so,” Kelp said. “That’s just a theory.”

  “It’s good enough for me,” Dortmunder told him. “It helps me remember the guy. What about him?”

  “I was talking to him at Thanksgiving,” Kelp said, “at my grandmother’s. She makes the most fantastic turkey, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  What was there to say to a remark like that? Nothing; so that’s what Dortmunder said. He settled himself more comfortably in his personal easy chair in his warm dry living room — May was out at the Safeway, where she was a cashier — and he sipped a little more bourbon. It was bottled in Kentucky (as opposed to being distilled in Kentucky, shipped north in railroad cars and bottled in Hoboken) and it was pretty good; a firm stride upward from the stuff at the O.J. Bar and Grill, which was probably also distilled in Hoboken, from a combination of Hudson and Raritan waters.

  Kelp was going on with his story. “The point is,” he said, “Victor was telling me about a guy that lives in his neighborhood now, that he’d worked on his case back in the FBI. The guy was a counterfeiter.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Only he didn’t print the money,” Kelp said. “He drew it.” He made vague drawing gestures in the air. “One bill at a time. All twenties.”

  Dortmunder frowned past his glass at Kelp. “This guy drew individual twenty–dollar bills?”

  “Apparently he was terrific at it. He’d take a sheet of paper, he’d paint five or six bills on it, cut them out, paint the other side, pass em all over town.”

  “Strange fella,” Dortmunder decided.

  “But terrific,” Kelp said. “According to Victor, you couldn’t tell his bills from the real thing. Every one of them, a work of art”

  “Then how’d they get him?”

  “Well, a couple ways. First off, he always worked in watercolor. With oils, you get too much build–up on the paper, the texture’s wrong. So his bills, they were fine when he first passed them, but pretty soon they’d begin to run.”

  “This sounds exactly like the kind of guy you’d know,” Dortmunder said.

  “I don’t know him,” Kelp said. “My nephew Victor knows him.”

  “And you know Victor.”

  “Well, he’s my nephew.”

  “I rest my case,” Dortmunder said. “What was the other way they caught this guy?”

  “Well, he usually stayed right there in his own neighborhood,” Kelp said. “He’s a very unworldly sort of guy, he’s really an artist, he just did these twenties to keep himself in potatoes and blue jeans while he did his own art. So like, when all these twenties kept getting traced back to the same Shop–Rite, the same drugstore, the same liquor store, the Feds staked out the neighborhood, and that’s how Victor met this guy Porculey.”

  “Porculey?”

  “Griswold Porculey. That’s his name.”

  “It is, huh?”

  “Absolutely. Anyway, the Feds nailed Porculey, but all he got was a suspended sentence when he promised not to do it any more.”

  “They believed him?”

  “Well, yeah,” Kelp said. “Because it made sense. Once they got him, and they figured out how he was doing those things, they talked to him, and it turned out he was spending five hours just to do one side of one bill. You know, those twenties, they’re all full of tricky little stuff.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen some,” Dortmunder said.

  “Well, anyway, that means ten hours per bill, and not even counting the cost of materials and overhead, paper, paint, depreciation on the brushes, all the rest of it, the most he’s making is two bucks an hour. He could do better than that delivering for the Shop–Rite, part time.”

  Dortmunder nodded. “Crime doesn’t pay,” he said. “I’m gradually coming to that conclusion.”

  “Well, the point is,” Kelp went on, “this guy used to live up in Washington Heights, he had his studio up there and all, but the rent kept going up, they priced him out of the neighborhood and he moved out to Long Island. Victor ran into him in the shopping center.”

  “Passing twenties?”

  “No,” Kelp said, “but he’s thinking about it. He told Victor he was looking for some way to do a bunch of bills all at once. Victor figures he’s about halfway to inventing the printing press, and he’s worried the guy’ll get in trouble. And that’s where we come in.”

  “I was wondering where we came in,” Dortmunder said.

  “We can put a little honest cash his way,” Kelp said, “help him avoid temptation.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “You don’t get it?” Kelp was so pleased with himself he was about to run around in front and kiss himself on both cheeks. Leaning forward, gesturing with his half–full bourbon glass, he said. “We fake the painting!”

  Dortmunder frowned at him past his own half–empty glass. “We what?”

  “This is a famous painting, right, the one we copped from Chauncey? So there’ll be pictures of it, copies of it, all that stuff. Porculey’s a real artist, and he can imitate anything. So he runs up a copy of the painting and that’s the one we give back!”

  Dortmunder studied Kelp’s words one by one. “There’s something wrong with that,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just hope I find it before it’s too late.”

  “Dortmunder, it’s better than getting shot in the head.”

  Dortmunder winced. “Don’t talk like that,” he said. Already in anticipation, the last few weeks, he was getting headaches every time he passed a window.

  “You gotta do something,” Kelp told him. “And this is the only something in town.”

  Was that true? Dortmunder considered again his dream of escaping to some South American seacoast town with May, opening a little restaurant–saloon — May’s famous tuna casserole would make them an instant success — he himself would run the bar; he wasn’t sure whether to call it May’s Place or The Hideaway. But as he visualized the dream once more, himself behind a gleaming black bar with bamboo fittings — somehow South America was very South Pacific in his imagination — in walks a tall narrow fellow with a bad limp. He ups to the bar and he says, “Hello, Dortmunder,” and his hand comes out of his topcoat pocket.

  “Un,” said Dortmunder.

  Kelp looked at him, concerned. “Something wrong? Bourbon no good?”

  “Bourbon’s fine,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp said, “Listen, why don’t I call Victor, have him set up the meet? Dortmunder? I’ll do that, right? Why don’t I?”

  May’s Place faded, with its unwelcome customer. “Okay,” Dortmunder said.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  “I don’t see why we had to meet him at a shopping center,” Dortmunder grumbled, watching the windshield wipers push snow back and forth on the glass. Today’s doctor’s car was a silver gray Cadillac Seville, with a tape deck and a selection of tapes by Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Gary Puckett & The Union Gap. (The Seville was Cadillac’s response to the oil crisis and the need for smaller cars; dan de was removed from the middle of the Cadillac Sedan de Ville, resulting obviously in a shorter lighter car: the Seville.)

  “What difference does it make?” Kelp said, slithering through the erratic traffic on the Southern State. “We meet Victor at the shopping center, he takes us on to Porculey’s place.”

  “It’
s Christmastime,” Dortmunder pointed out. “That’s what difference it makes. We’re going out to Long Island in a snowstorm to a shopping center a week before Christmas, that’s what difference it makes.”

  “Well, it’s too late to change it now,” Kelp said. “It won’t be that bad.”

  As a matter of fact, it was that bad. When they left the parkway, they immediately found themselves in endless clogged traffic, windshield wipers slap–slapping in the headlight–lit darkness all around them, auto windows all steamed up, smeary child–faces peering out every side and back window, people honking furiously and pointlessly at one another, and the same people revving like mad and spinning their wheels when they found themselves on a bit of ice, instead of gently accelerating. And the huge sprawling parking lot of the Merrick Mall, when they reached it, was if possible even worse; in addition to at least as much stalled traffic, there were also millions of pedestrians slipping and sliding around, some of them pushing shopping carts full of Christmas packages and some of them pushing baby carriages full of Christmas packages and babies. “This is terrific,” Dortmunder said. “Your nephew Victor is still the same giant brain he always was.”

  “The Dunkin’ Donuts,” Kelp said, peering through the windshield and pretending he hadn’t heard Dortmunder’s comment. “We’re supposed to meet him at the Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  The Merrick Mall, in the manner of most shopping centers, was designed like a barbell, with a branch of a major department store at one end, a branch of a major supermarket at the other end, and several zillion smaller stores in between. As Kelp inched along amid the shoppers, the familiar electric logos gleamed out at them from the darkness: Woolworth’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Thom McAn, Rexall, Gino’s, Waldenbooks, Baskin–Robbins, Western Auto, Capitalists & Immigrants Trust. Then the record stores, the shoe stores, the ladies’ clothing stores, the Chinese restaurants. However, inflation and unemployment have affected the shopping centers at least as much as the rest of the economy, so that here and there among the brave enticements stood a storefront dark, silent, its windows black, its forehead nameless, its prospects bleak. The survivors seemed to beam the more brightly in their efforts to distract attention from their fallen comrades, but Dortmunder could see them. Dortmunder and a failed enterprise could always recognize one another.

  “There it is,” Kelp said, and there it was: Dunkin’ Donuts, with its steamy window full of do(ugh)nuts. Kelp pootled around a while longer, found a parking place at the far end of a nearby row, and he and Dortmunder squelched through the slush and the hopeless vehicles to find Victor seated at a tiny formica table in the Dunkin’ Donuts, actually dunking a do(ugh) nut into a cup of coffee.

  Kelp’s nephew Victor, a small neat dark–haired man who dressed as though he were applying for a job as a bank teller, was more than thirty years of age but looked barely out of his teens. His slenderness and boyishly unlined face helped to give that impression, confirmed by the eager anticipatory quality of his every expression. What he most looked like was a puppy seen through a pet–store window, except he didn’t have a tail to wag.

  “Mr. Dortmunder!” he said, hopping to his feet and sticking out the hand with the dunked do(ugh)nut in it. “Nice to see you again.” Then be realized he was still holding the do(ugh)nut, chuckled sheepishly, stuck the whole thing out of sight in his mouth, wiped his hand on his trousers, stuck it out again, and said, “Muf nur muf.”

  “That goes for me, too,” Dortmunder told him, and shook his sticky hand.

  Victor gestured for them to sit at his table, while he hurriedly and noisily swallowed, then said, “Coffee? Donuts? Uncle?”

  “Not for me,” Dortmunder said. Neither he nor Kelp had taken the invitation to sit.

  “Victor,” Kelp said, “I think we’d just rather go see this fellow Porculey, okay?” Kelp tended to get a little nervous when in the presence simultaneously of Dortmunder and Victor.

  “Oh, sure,” Victor said. Standing beside the table, he gulped his coffee down, patted his mouth with a paper napkin, and said, “All set.”

  “Fine,” Kelp said.

  Victor led the way outside, and turned right, to walk along the semi–protected sidewalk. The few other pedestrians slogging past weren’t even trying to look imbued with Christmas cheer. A roof extended over the walk, but a gusty cold breeze shot little clumps of wet snow in under it from time to time. Kelp, his uneasiness expressing itself in a fitful desire to keep some sort of conversation going, said, “Well, Victor. Still got your old Packard?”

  “Oh, yes,” Victor said, with his modest little chuckle. “It’s a fine car. Ask the man who owns one.”

  “Do you want us to follow you, or should we all ride in the Packard?”

  They were just passing one of the empty stores; black windows, a bit of trash in the doorway. “We’re here,” Victor said, and stopped.

  This was so unexpected that Kelp and Dortmunder kept going, until they realized they’d left Victor behind. When they looked back, Victor was knocking on the glass door of the empty store.

  Now what? The door was opening and light was spilling out into the snowy dark. A voice was speaking, Victor was grinning and replying, Victor was crossing the threshold, smiling and gesturing for Dortmunder and Kelp to follow. They did, and entered another world.

  The stocky man who shut the door behind them remarked, genially, “Terrible out there tonight,” but Dortmunder paid no attention, absorbing the interior of the store. In its most recent commercial manifestation it had apparently been a women’s clothing boutique, the long narrow space separated into sections by platforms of various heights, all edged with elbow–high black wrought–iron railings, each platform covered in carpeting of another color, all shades of blue or gray. With the walls covered in burlap painted dark blue and the plate glass windows painted black, the final effect was somewhere between a garden and a garret, flooded in moonlight.

  Probably when the platforms had borne racks of skirts and sweaters and jumpsuits the garden effect had been predominant, but now the feeling was much more of a garret, helped by the bits of clothing and old rags draped carelessly over most of the railings. The nearest couple of platforms featured ratty pieces of living–room furniture, while a platform toward the middle bore several plain wooden kitchen chairs and an old trencher table. Toward the rear were two easels, a high stool, and a library table covered with the impedimenta of painting: tubes of color, water glasses full of slender brushes, rags, palette knives. Unframed canvases were stacked in corners and hung on the walls. Above the easels, the standard shop ceiling gave way to a recess containing a domed skylight.

  The store was warm after the snowy night outside, and despite its narrow length and endlessly shifting levels, it was somehow cozy. People lived here, you could see that, and had made a place of their own in what had once been a desert of impersonality.

  People. Two of them, one a girl of about twenty curled up on the sofa, with an old plaid throw rug draped across her legs. She was slender, but with roundness and softness, like the world’s tastiest peach, and her smile made her cheeks plump and delectable. Dortmunder could have gone on looking at her for thirty or forty years, but he forced himself to give some attention to the other person as well.

  This was the man who had let them in. He was a roly–poly sloppy man of about fifty, wearing bedroom slippers, paint–stained dark corduroy trousers, a mostly–green plaid shirt and a dark green ratty cardigan sweater with leather elbow patches. He hadn’t shaved today, and it was possible he hadn’t shaved yesterday.

  Victor was making the introductions, announcing each name as though that person were a particular discovery of Victor’s own: “Griswold Porculey, I’d like you to meet my uncle, Andy Kelp, and his friend, Mister John Dortmunder.”

  “W’r’ya,” Dortmunder said, shaking Porculey’s extended hand.

  “How do you do. How do you do. Victor’s uncle, eh?”

  “His mother is my older sister,” Kelp explained. />
  Porculey gestured at the girl on the sofa, saying, “And this is my friend, Cleo Marlahy, an ever–present comfort.”

  Throwing off the throw, Cleo Marlahy uncurled her legs and sprang to her feet, saying, “Coffee? Tea? Wine?” Then doubtfully, to Porculey, “Do we have any liquor?”

  “We might have vermouth.”

  “I’d love some coffee,” Kelp said. Dortmunder said, “Me, too.”

  Victor said, “May I have wine? I’m older than I look.”

  Porculey said, “Red or white?” “Red, please.”

  “Done,” said Porculey. “We don’t have any white.”

  The girl was wearing black velvet pants and a white blouse. She was barefoot, and her toenails were painted an extremely dark red; the color of drying blood. She bounded away on these feet like the little mermaid, while Porculey directed his guests into chairs and himself dropped with a grunt into the sofa.