Nobody's Perfect

by Donald Westlake

  Chauncey gave Dortmunder a sharp look, and shook his head. Getting to his feet, he said, “I’m sorry, Dortmunder. I know you’re trying for the human touch, and it may be you’re just the victim of circumstance, but the fact is, I’ve been very badly dealt with. I’d never be able to look myself in the mirror again if I did nothing about it.” He looked uncomfortable but determined. “You’ve been effective to this extent,” he went on. “I no longer want to be present when it happens.” Turning to Zane, he said, “Wait a minute or two after I leave.” And he started for the door, stepping over the array of suitcases and wicker baskets.

  “Uh,” Dortmunder said. “Uh, wait a minute.”

  Chauncey paused, but only just; looking back over his shoulder, his attention clearly already out of the room. Even his voice seemed to come from far away: “Yes?”

  “I might, uh —” Dortmunder spread his hands, shrugging. “I might have an idea,” he said.

  The Final Chorus

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  Ian Macdough (pronounced Macduff: no relation to Macbeth’s friend) was a happy man. He had been unknown, and he would be famous. He had been poor, and he would be rich. He had been an unwilling country squire confined by circumstance to the family manse near Inverness, and he would be a London toff. A bluff, big–boned, red–haired, hearty, freckled gent of forty–odd, Ian Macdough was a happy man, and he wanted the world to know it. “Bring us another bottle of Teacher’s,” he told his floor valet at the Savoy, though it was barely lunch time, “and a little glass for yourself.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Macdoo,” said the floor valet, who was a Portugee or Eyetie or some other sort of swarthy unfortunate, “but I shouldn’t drink on the job. I’ll bring the bottle straight away.”

  “Macduff,” said Macdough, a bit shortly. He didn’t like people who refused to drink with him, nor did he like them to get his name wrong. Most of the people he’d met so far in London would drink with him right enough, but few and far between were those who’d get his name right first crack out of the box. Macdoo indeed. Up north in the Grampians everybody knew his name.

  “Mick–duff,” agreed the Mediterranean, and bowed himself out of the suite.

  Well, what could you expect from a foreigner? Nothing could spoil Macdough’s mood for long these days, so while be waited for the bottle to arrive he stood smiling out of his sitting–room windows at the Thames, gleaming and glistening beneath midsummer sunshine.

  London. All roads elsewhere might lead to Rome, but all roads in the British Isles lead to London. (Which is one of the reasons the traffic is so snarled.) A Scotsman or a Welshman or an Ulsterman might sit at home and think his dour dark thoughts about England, that often bullying big kid of the United Kingdom, but when his thoughts turned to a city, a real city, it wasn’t of Edinburgh or Cardiff or Belfast he thought, but of London. Happy is he who can stand at the window of a suite in a major hotel in one of the world’s queen cities, and smile out at the summer sun.

  Bring bring, went the phone. Bring bring. London calling. The smile still lighting his ruddy face, Macdough turned from the view and replied: “Are you there?”

  An extremely English male voice, one of those voices in which the vocal cords seem determined to strangle each word before it can struggle out to freedom, said, “Mister Macdow?”

  “Macduff,” said Macdough. The combination of the mis–pronounced name and a public–school accent was enough to curdle his smile completely.

  “I’m so sorry,” garbled the voice. “Leamery here, from Parkeby–South.”

  Which put Macdough’s smile right back on his face, redoubled. “Ah, yes,” he said. “They did tell me you’d call.”

  “Praps you could drop over this afternoon? Would four be convenient?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Fine, then. Just ask for me at the cashier’s desk.”

  “At the cashier’s desk? Certainly. At four o’clock.”

  “Till then.”

  As Macdough cradled the receiver, his mind turned idly to the amazing series of events that had led him to this happy moment. The brawl in New York last winter, during the Queen’s Own Caledonian Orchestra’s performance (which he had attended through the generosity of old fellow–officers from the Brigade), his own lucky escape from the swarming police, and his utter astonishment when, in his hotel room next morning, he had awakened (a bit hung over) to find himself in possession of an extremely valuable painting stolen — according to the newspaper brought by room service with his breakfast — just the evening before. The terror he’d felt while smuggling the thing home (concealed inside a great mawkish framed landscape purchased for twenty–five dollars specifically for that purpose, the valuable Old Master undetected behind the dreadful New Monstrosity) was only a dim memory now, as was the utter bewilderment he had felt when faced with the question of how to turn his stroke of luck into actual cash. If Aunt Fiona hadn’t chosen that moment to pass away (not prematurely; she was eighty–seven, as mad as an African general and as incontinent as Atlantis), Macdough would still be at a loss. Blessed Aunt Fiona, nothing became her life like the leaving of it.

  The Macdough clan, which included Ian and his Aunt Fiona among its scores and multitudes, was one of the oldest and least successful families in all of Scottish history. Over the centuries, whenever the Scots fought the English they seemed to do so on Macdough land, and the Macdoughs got the worst of it. If Scot fought Scot, the Macdoughs invariably lined up on the wrong side. The Campbells and MacGregors might ebb and flow, but the Macdoughs immemorially ebbed.

  So it was with low expectations that Macdough, as Aunt Fiona’s sole heir, had first learned of her demise. The old lady had never owned anything in her life except rubbish bequeathed her by prior indigent Macdoughs. Several sheets of the inventory attached to the will were actually in scrabbly spidery eighteenth–century handwriting, describing pikestaffs and saddles and pewter plates which, while theoretically passing from hand to hand down the generations, had actually remained untouched and unwanted in various barns and basements and in the still–enclosed portion of the uninhabitable Castle Macdough high in the grim Monadhliath Mountains. However, the rituals had to be observed, and so Macdough had sat in a cluttered musty solicitor’s office in Edinburgh and listened to the reading of the will, which included an endless droning recital of the inventory — what rubbish was here being gallantly preserved! — and was very nearly asleep when he suddenly sat bolt upright and stared at the solicitor, who, startled, stared right back. “What?” said Macdough.

  The solicitor blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “What was that? What you just read there.”

  The solicitor found his place in the list: “Mead barrels, oak, six, with bungs.”

  “No, before that.”

  “Wounded stag with two rabbits, bronze, height sixteen inches, broken antler, one.”

  “Good God, man, before that.”

  “Frame, wood, gilt, ornate, with painting, oil, comic figures.”

  “Frame, wood,” Macdough muttered. “Painting, oil. Comic figures?”

  “So it says.”

  “Where is this, er, frame?”

  “Mmm, mmmm.” The solicitor had to leaf back through two pages of inventory to the nearest heading. “Castle Macdough.”

  “Ah,” Macdough said. “I might find a use for a good wood frame.” And he napped through the rest of the inventory, then drove his venerable Mini at high speed (well, its highest speed) north from Edinburgh, through Perth and Pitlochry on the A 9, turning off beyond Kingussie on the old road not even on the maps. More trail than road, and more gully than either, it climbed into the inhospitable mountains and arrived at last at Castle Macdough, a ravaged ruin covered with mildew. Some of the ground floor remained, windows broken and floors buckled, while below were fairly weather–tight storerooms strewn with rubbish, all of it carefully recorded in that everlasting inventory which now nestled against Ian Macdough’s own will.
(Macdough being a confirmed bachelor of a bluff, hearty, masculine yet asexual, peculiarly northern type, the next recipient of all this muck was slated to be a nephew of his, one Bruce Macdough, currently nine years of age.)

  Stumbling over a baton used in relay races, Macdough struggled his way by flashlight from room to room until one bit of debris glittered back at him. Gilt? Yes. Frame, wood? Indubitably. Ornate? Good heavens, yes. Macdough pulled the object from its recess and found it to be almost exclusively frame; nearly four feet square, it was runnel and channel and riband and curlicue of gilded wood vastly surrounding a murky little picture possibly sixteen inches by eighteen. Dragging the thing into the light of day, Macdough found the tiny illustration thus so sumptuously engarbed was in fact an awkward amateurish comic drawing in oil of three drunken kilted men staggering on a road, trying to hold one another up. The moon in the sky was lopsided, though not by apparent intent.

  Hadn’t the inventory mentioned a double–bladed battle–axe? Descending into the depths, Macdough found the thing, carried it with some difficulty — it was damned heavy — up the slimy stone stairs, and proceeded to reduce the frame, wood, gilt, ornate, with its painting, oil, comic figures, to several zillion slivers. These were packed into the Mini and distributed into the air a few at a time over the next fifty miles.

  It took another trip to Edinburgh to find an appropriately old frame which would match both the inventory’s description and the stolen masterpiece’s dimensions. This frame, happily, already contained an old painting — of a grandmotherly lady asleep in a rocker by the fire, a kitten and a ball of wool in her lap — so Macdough could use the same tacks to put the valuable Veenbes in its place. Another solitary trip to Castle Macdough was necessary, to seed the Veenbes there, and then Macdough awaited the right moment to introduce the subject of his inheritance into a conversation with a pair of old drinking pals, Cuffy and Tooth (both of whom had, as a matter of fact, been along on the night of the New York concert). Was it Cuffy who finally said, “Damn it, man, there could be something of value there. Why not have a look–see?” It might have been Tooth. In any event, it wasn’t Macdough; he’d steered the conversation, but he’d let the others make the decisions, and when he asked them to join him for the projected look–see they fell in with the idea at once.

  Neither of them, however, turned out to have the brains or the taste of a donkey, and after they’d both stumbled past the Veenbes without a second look Macdough had finally to discover the thing himself. “Now, look at this picture. Might be worth something, don’t you think?”

  “Not a bit of it,” Cuffy said. “It’s a mere daub, anyone can see that.”

  “The frame might be worth something,” Tooth suggested.

  “I’ll take it along for the frame, then,” Macdough decided, and so he did, and was subsequently astounded and delighted when word came from the Edinburgh art dealer that what he had was, in point of fact, a masterpiece of incredible value.

  Borrowing on his prospects — the Parkeby–South valuation was security enough for Macdough’s Inverness bankers — he had come here to London in July, two months before the auction that would make him rich, and was staying at the Savoy while looking about for a more permanent London abode; some flat, maisonette, pied–a–terre, some little somewhere to stay from now on, whenever he was “in town.” Oh, by glory, but life was turning good!

  A knock at the door. Macdough turned from his views — the outer view of London and the inner view of well–deserved success — and called, “Come in.”

  It was the floor valet, with a bottle of Scotch on a silver salver. And, Macdough noted at once, two glasses. “Ah hah,” he said, with an amiable smile. “You will join me after all.”

  The man’s own smile was both sheepish and conspiratorial. “You’re very kind, sir. If you’ll permit me to change my mind?”

  “Certainly, certainly.” Macdough came forward to pour with his own hands. “Take your opportunities, that’s my advice,” he told the fellow. “In this life, never let your opportunities slip you by.”

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  To Dortmunder’s surprise, he could get a passport. He’d paid his debts to society — at least the ones society knew about — and the privileges of citizenship were his for the asking. With the other necessary preparations, it was already July before everything was ready, but by God here he was, on a 747, leaving the United States of America, bound for London. In England.

  And beside him was Kelp, who was grumpy. “I don’t see why we can’t ride in first class,” he said, for about the fifteenth time.

  “Chauncey’s paying,” Dortmunder answered, for maybe the seventh time. “So we do it his way.”

  Chauncey’s way, as it happened, was that he and Leo Zane would travel beyond the maroon curtain in first class, with the free liquor and wine and champagne, and the prettier stewardesses, and the wider seats with more legroom, and the spiral staircase to a bar and lounge on an upper level, while Dortmunder and Kelp would travel in economy: the cattle car, here in back. Dortmunder had an aisle seat, so at least he could stretch his feet out when nobody was walking by, but Kelp had the middle seat, and a stout elderly Indian lady in a sari, with a red dot on her forehead, had the window seat. Kelp was sort of squeezed in there and — particularly since Dortmunder had won the struggle over whose elbow would have the armrest — Kelp was apparently pretty uncomfortable.

  Well, it would only last seven hours, and when the plane landed they would be in London, and it would then be up to Dortmunder to make good on his latest brainchild. He’d be hampered in more ways than one — by not knowing the city at all, for instance, and by having to limit himself to a string consisting of one Kelp and two amateurs (Chauncey and Zane) — but there really hadn’t been much choice. It was either find some way to help Chauncey or become fresh notches on Zane’s gun. If that cold son of a bitch ever did anything as human as notching a gun.

  The plan, as with others of Dortmunder’s, combined the simple with the unusual. In this one he proposed to switch the copy and the original before the sale took place in September. Chauncey could then, in defending himself against the insurance–company lawsuit, insist the version at the auctioneers be reappraised. It would be denounced as a fake, the lawsuit would stop, and Chauncey would retire with his painting and money intact.

  All Dortmunder had to do was figure out the details of that one simple act, in a foreign city, with a half–amateur crew, while a gun was held at his head.

  As far as he was concerned, this plane could stay up here in the sky forever.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  Chauncey loved London, but not like this. In the first place, this was July. Nobody ever came to London in July, that’s when the place was crammed with Americans and foreigners. In the second place, Chauncey’s companions on this trip left much — in fact, everything — to be desired. In the cab from Heathrow, he and Zane occupied the rear seat, with Dortmunder and Kelp facing them on the jump seats, and while Chauncey noticed that Kelp very carefully made sure his knees were not annoying Zane in any way, Dortmunder wasn’t controlling his own knees at all. Chauncey’s legs were crammed over against the door, his view was of nothing but Dortmunder’s lugubrious pan, and the damp English air blowing in through the open side windows was absolutely hot.

  Still, it was all in a good cause. Beyond Dortmunder’s beetled brow, and beyond the meter ticking away just past Dortmunder’s right ear, Chauncey could see the mound of their luggage piled up in the space beside the driver, and prominent among his own Hermes and Zane’s American Touristers and Kelp’s six canvas ditty bags and Dortmunder’s anonymous brown elephant–skin two–suiter with the straps loomed the golf bag behind the lining of which lurked the Griswold Porculey imitation of Folly Leads Man to Ruin. Sometime soon — very soon, please God — the imitation would go away and the original would slip into its place in the golf bag, and Chauncey would leave this city of teeming millions and fly
away to Antibes, where everybody sensible was spending the summer.

  In the meantime, the only thing to do was make the best of a bad situation. Oppressed by the continuing silence in the cab, these four large bodies sweating lightly in the hot July London air, Chauncey made a desperate stab at small talk:

  “This your first trip to London, Dortmunder?”

  “Yeah.” Dortmunder turned his head slightly to look out the window. The cab, having come in the M 4 from Heathrow, was now inching through the normal traffic jam on Cromwell Road. “Looks like Queens,” Dortmunder said.

  Chauncey came automatically to the city’s defense. “Well, this is hardly the center of town.”

  “Neither is Queens.”

  Cromwell Road became Brompton Road before Chauncey tried again: “Have you traveled much outside the United States?”

  “I went to Mexico once,” Dortmunder told him. “It didn’t work out.”