Nobody's Perfect

by Donald Westlake

  Kelp said, “This is quite a place. Very clever idea.”

  “Only rent I could afford,” Porculey said, “to get this much space and north light.” He gestured toward the skylight. “They gave me a good rent,” he went on, “because they had so many empty stores, and because I agreed to make one or two turns around the place after the shops all close. Sort of a night watchman. Cheaper for them, cheaper for me. I’m a night bird anyway, and I walk anyway, so it’s no hardship. We took down the partitions in the changing rooms, put our bedroom back there. Only problem’s the lack of a kitchen, but we don’t need much. Couple of hot plates, little refrigerator, use the sink in the lay. Perfect, really. They give more heat than any landlord in my experience, there’s no nosy neighbors to poke and pry, and any shop I want is right outside that door.”

  Cleo returned, with a mismatched pair of white mugs for Dortmunder and Kelp, and an empty jelly glass for Victor.

  Distributing the mugs, she then picked up a gallon jug of Gab Hearty Burgundy from the floor beside the sofa, half filled the jelly glass, gave it to Victor, and said, “Porky? More wine?”

  “Don’t mind if I do. Don’t mind if I do.”

  Porculey drank from a tapered pilsner glass meant for beer, in which the dark red wine looked like something in a laboratory experiment. Cleo’s glass, which she rescued from way under the sofa, was a small glass stein which had originally held mustard. She filled it to the top with hearty burgundy, plopped onto the sofa next to Porculey, raised her stein, and said, “Absent friends.”

  “May they rot,” said Porculey, lifting his pilsner glass in the toast, and took a healthy swig. Then he said, looking at Dortmunder, “I understand you folks have a problem.”

  “We do,” Dortmunder agreed. “We helped a fellow fake an art theft, to get the insurance. He wants the painting back, but we don’t have it any more. It got lost. Kelp seems to think you could run up an imitation and we could give that back to the guy instead of the original.”

  Kelp said, “We’d make it worth your while, of course.”

  Porculey grunted in amusement. “Yes, I should think you would,” he said. The hand not holding the pilsner glass had strayed over to Cleo’s near thigh and was massaging it gently. The girl sipped wine and smiled comfortably to herself. Porculey said, “What painting is this?”

  “It’s called Folly Leads Man to Ruin, by somebody called Veenbes.”

  “Veenbes.” Porculey put his head back, gazing up toward the corner of the ceiling. His hand stroked and stroked. “Veenbes. Folly Leads Man to Ruin. Mm, mm, possibly. Book,” he decided, all at once, and released Cleo’s leg in order to heave himself out of the sofa and onto his feet.

  Book? There were any number of books in sight, though no bookcases. Paperbacks were heaped up in corners and under tables, while large hardcover volumes were stuck between uprights of the railings along platform edges. It was to these that Porculey went, carrying his wine, muttering under his breath as he ran his free hand along their spines. Then he stopped, pulled out one book, set the pilsner glass on the floor, thumbed through the volume, shook his head in annoyance and shoved the book back again.

  This might take some time. While waiting, Dortmunder looked around, absorbing this weird dwelling place and noticing here and there on the dark walls unframed paintings, presumably Porculey’s. They were all different, and yet they were all the same. In the middle foreground of each was a girl, either naked or wearing something minimal like a white scarf, and in the background was a landscape. The girls were mostly seen full length, and they were always very absorbed in what they were doing. One of them, for instance, sitting on the grass with some ruined castles behind her, plus in the distance a couple of trees and a small pond at which two deer drank, was studying a chess set laid out on the grass in front of her. Another showed a girl on a beach, leaning over the gunwale to look inside a large stranded rowboat, with a huge storm way out at sea in the background. (This was the girl with the scarf.)

  The girls were not quite identical. Glancing around, Dortmunder saw maybe four different girls among the paintings, and it was with a sudden shock that he realized one of them was Cleo Marlahy. So that’s what she looks like with her clothes off, he thought, blinking at a picture in which, against a background of an apple orchard white with spring flowers, an unsmiling girl was rather leggily climbing over a rail fence.

  “Ah hah!”

  Porculey had found something. Back he came, lugging a large book, and showed the page to Dortmunder. “That it?”

  “Yes,” said Dortmunder, looking at the small color illustration taking up half the page. The jester pranced, the people followed, the darkness yawned. Below the illustration were the title, the painter’s name and dates, and the words Private Collection.

  “Here,” Porculey said, dumped the book in Dortmunder’s lap, and padded off again.

  Kelp, leaning over from his chair, said, “That’s it, all right.”

  Dortmunder looked at him. “You never even saw the thing.”

  “Well, you described it.”

  Porculey came back with two more books, both also containing reproductions of the painting. He added these to Dortmunder’s lap and returned to the sofa. Cleo, meanwhile, had gone off to rescue the pilsner glass, and now brought it back and handed it to Porculey. “Thank you, my dear,” he said, and she patted his cheek and sat down again beside him.

  Dortmunder’s lap was full of books, all open to illustrations of folly leading man to ruin. He said, “So anyway you know what it looks like.”

  “There are also larger reproductions available,” Porculey said. “Prints. Photographs of the original.”

  Kelp said, eagerly, “So you can do it?”

  “Not a chance,” Porculey said.

  Even Dortmunder was surprised at that. Not that he’d ever believed, really believed, there was anything in Kelp’s idea, but the suddenness with which it had been shot down left Dortmunder for just a second without a reaction.

  But not Kelp. Sounding almost outraged, he said, “Not a chance? Why not? You’ve got the copies, the reproductions, you’re the guy can do endless perfect twenty dollar bills!”

  “Not from photographs,” Porculey said. “Look at those three illustrations. There isn’t one color reproduced the same in all three. Which is the original color, or is the original something entirely different? And even if we could be absolutely sure we had every one of Veenbes’ dozens of colors right, what about the brush–strokes? How is the paint laid on the surface, how does it reflect light, where is it thick, where thin? The man who owns that painting must have looked at it from time to time, he must know what his painting looks like. I might be able to do something that would fool a buyer, maybe even a gallery operator or a museum curator, but the owner of the painting? I’m afraid not.”

  Cleo, her smile sympathetic, said, “Porky really does know about art. If he says it can’t be done, it can’t be done.”

  “So that’s that,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp was frowning so hard he looked like a crumpled piece of paper. “But that can’t be that,” he insisted. “There has to be a way.”

  “Sorry,” Porculey said.

  Dortmunder slugged down the rest of his coffee. “Maybe I will have some wine after all, he said.”

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  ’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house floated the aroma of May’s tuna casserole. The apartment was filling up with guests, and Dortmunder, a cup of bourbon–spiked eggnog in his hand, sat in his personal chair in the living room — partly because he felt like sitting there, but mostly because if he stood up somebody else would be sure to cop his seat — and contemplated the Christmas tree. He wasn’t sure about that tree. He’d been dubious about it from the beginning, and he was still dubious about it.

  He’d been dubious, in fact, from before he’d actually seen the thing. Two days ago, when May had walked in with a cardboard carton the right size an
d shape to hold maybe four rolled–up window shades, and had said, “I bought us a Christmas tree at the hardware store,” Dortmunder had been dubious at once. “At the hardware store?” he’d said. “And it’s in that box?”

  “Yes and yes. Help me set it up.”

  So then she’d opened the box and taken out a lot of fuzzy silver sticks. “That’s no tree,” Dortmunder’s said. “That’s a lot of imitation corncobs.”

  “We have to put it together,” she’d told him, but when they did all they wound up with was a tapering fuzzy silver thing that didn’t look at all like a Christmas tree. “There, now,” May said. “What does that look like?”

  “A man from Mars.”

  “Wait till we put the ornaments on.”

  Well, now it had the ornaments on, and a lot of gift–wrapped presents underneath, but it still didn’t look like a Christmas tree. In the first place — and this is just the first place, mind, this isn’t the whole objection — in the first place, Christmas trees are green.

  Still, whatever the thing was it did give off a kind of cheerful glitter, and it made May happy, so what the hell. Dortmunder kept his doubts to himself and his feet up on his old battered hassock, and he grinned and nodded at his guests. A funny thing to have, guests. Not people in to talk about setting up a score, or splitting the take afterward, or anything else in the way of business. Just people to come over and eat your food and drink your liquor and then go home again. Strange sort of idea, when you thought about it. It had been May’s idea, like the Christmas tree, intended to cheer Dortmunder up.

  One thing about throwing a party; you offer people free food and free drink, they’re very likely to show. Astonishing number of familiar faces here, some of them people Dortmunder hadn’t seen in years. Like Alan Greenwood over there, a fellow he’d worked with a bunch of times until all of a sudden it turned out Greenwood had been leading a double life; all the time Dortmunder had thought of him simply as a good utility–infielder–type heist man, Greenwood had had this secret life as an actor. Boom, he got discovered, he got his own television series, he didn’t need to run around on fire escapes any more. And here he was, in his blue denim leisure suit and his string tie and his lace–frilled shirt, with this incredible gaunt blond beauty named Doreen on his arm. “Nice to see ya, Greenwood.”

  “What’s happening, baby,” Greenwood said, and shook hands with his left.

  Then there was Wally Whistler, one of the best lock men in the business, just out of prison, having got sent up for absentmindedly unlocking a lock while he was at the zoo with his kids; it had taken hours to get the lion back in his cage. And Fred Lartz, a onetime driver who had given up driving after an experience he had one time when he got drunk at a cousin’s wedding out on Long Island, took a wrong turn off the Van Wyck Expressway, wound up on Taxiway Seventeen out at Kennedy Airport, and got run down by Eastern Airlines flight two–oh–eight, just in from Miami. Fred’s wife Thelma — the lady out in the kitchen with May, with the funny hat — did all the driving for the family these days.

  Also present, and scoffing down the eggnog pretty good, was Herman X, a black man whose other life as a radical political activist in no way interfered with his primary career as a lock–man. The lady he’d brought with him, and introduced as Foxy, was another stunner, tall and skinny and stylish and gleaming black. Foxy and Alan Greenwood’s Doreen tended to stalk in slow circles around one another, remote and wary.

  The crew from the painting fiasco were present, in force. Roger Chefwick had showed up with his round, pleasant, motherly wife, Maude. Tiny Bulcher was there with a small, sweet–faced, rather plain girl named Eileen, who looked terrified; Dortmunder kept expecting her to slip somebody a note reading, “Rescue me from this man.” Stan Murch was there with his Morn, who had come direct from work and so was still in her taxi–driving duds: checked slacks, leather jacket, soft cap. And Andy Kelp was there, of course, with his nephew Victor.

  Oh, it was quite a party. Besides the eggnog, there was straight bourbon, or beer in the refrigerator, and a big jug of Gab Hearty Burgundy exactly like the stuff Dortmunder had drunk at the shopping center the other night. Christmas music played on the phonograph, Herman X and Foxy and Greenwood and Doreen danced from time to time, and Stan Murch and Fred Lartz and Wally Whistler sang along with some of the more well–known songs, such as “Jingle Bells” and “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” and “Rudolph, the Red–Nosed Reindeer.” May and Thelma Lartz and Maude Chefwick were putting together a nice buffet supper in the kitchen, and generally people were having a real nice time. Also, most of the guests had showed up with a gift, and from the size and shape of those gifts, now under the poor excuse for a tree, Dortmunder suspected most of them were bottles of bourbon, so the party couldn’t be considered a dead loss. All in all, Dortmunder would have to describe the occasion, and even himself, as damn near cheerful.

  Over came Munch and Fred Lartz and Wally Whistler, grouping themselves around Dortmunder in his chair, Murch explaining, “We need a fourth, and you’re it. All together now. Good King Wen–ces–las —”

  Dortmunder knew about half the words, but it hardly mattered. He mumbled along in his throat, his usual singing style, and the other three belted the tune back and forth among them like a medicine ball, occasionally fumbling it enough to make nearby conversations falter. Joy and good cheer flowed like floodwaters through the apartment, and Dortmunder grinned around his eggnog cup and let the flood float him away.

  The next album was orchestral music, so the glee club wandered off to refresh its drinks. Kelp came by with a new cup of eggnog for Dortmunder, then hunkered down next to his chair and said, “Nice party.”

  “Not bad,” Dortmunder agreed.

  “Listen, do you mind a little discussion for a minute?”

  Dortmunder looked at him, uncomprehending. “A little discussion? About what?”

  “Chauncey,” Kelp said.

  Dortmunder closed his eyes. “And just when I was sort of feeling good,” he said.

  Kelp patted his arm. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t break in on the party spirit and all that, but I got an idea, and it means Porculey doing a copy after all, and if you think it’s as good an idea as I do then he ought to start right away.”

  Dortmunder’s eyes opened, the better for frowning. “A copy? Porculey said it wouldn’t work.”

  “It’ll work with my idea,” Kelp told him. “Can I give it to you?”

  “You might as well,” Dortmunder said, “but my guess is it stinks.”

  “Just wait,” Kelp said, and leaned close to murmur in Dortmunder’s ear. Dortmunder listened, his head cocked a bit, his eyes watching his guests moving and talking and dancing and singing all over his apartment, his left hand holding his eggnog cup and his feet up on the old hassock in front of his chair.

  At first he seemed pessimistic, but then he looked a bit surprised, and then almost amused, and finally he seemed to be considering the situation, thinking it over. Kelp finished, rocked back on his heels, grinned at Dortmunder’s profile, and said, “Well? Whadaya think?”

  “Jesus,” Dortmunder said. “It’s almost dumb enough to work.”

  “Do I tell Porculey go ahead?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Think about it, Dortmunder.” Kelp’s excitement was so intense his fingers were jittering.

  “I am thinking about it.”

  “Do I tell him go ahead?”

  Slowly Dortmunder nodded, then slowly nodded again. “Yes,” he decided. “Let’s give it a shot.”

  “Way to talk!” Kelp told him, and jumped to his feet. “I got a feeling about this one,” he said. “Something tells me this is gonna be our finest hour.”

  Second thoughts could be seen gathering on Dortmunder’s face, but at that point May called from the dining–room doorway, “Feedbag’s on!” Pointing across the room at Dortmunder, she said, “You stay right there, John, I’ll bring you a plate.”

  “And anothe
r eggnog,” Kelp said, his hand out for the cup. “Swig that down.”

  So Dortmunder swigged it down, and he was brought a plate heaped high with steaming food, plus a fresh cup of eggnog, and the living room filled up with people holding plates of food in one hand and drinks in the other, trying to figure out how to pick up their fork.

  “To the founder of the feast!” Kelp suddenly cried out. “John Dortmunder!”

  “Aw, come on,” Dortmunder said, but a full–bodied cheer drowned him out. And then goddam Stan Murch had to start singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” despite “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem” currently emanating from the phonograph, and everybody else had to join in, and Dortmunder had to sit there like a fool, the hot dish burning his lap, and get sung at.