Don't Ask Page 10

  "But you're in his boat," the interrogators said.

  "It was a nice day," Kelp and Murch both responded, but then their answers veered. Murch explained he knew his wife's cousin had a little boat, and he'd asked could he make a borrow and Pepper said sure. And Kelp said his pal Stan had told him he was borrowing for the first time this other guy Pepper's boat and would Kelp like to go along and Kelp said sure.

  It went on like that. They didn't know anything, they hadn't done anything, and they were more than happy to be of any assistance they could, which was none. And would they object to a frisk? Certainly not.

  All of this was so neatly choreographed that Kelp and Murch emerged from their unmarked cars within a minute of one another, assumed the lean-forward, legs-spread position against the unmarked cars, got frisked, and were found clean. Just like that. Simple.

  At that point, the two watermen were permitted back in each other's presence, while one of the interrogators--Murch's-- joined them to say,

  "It could be we'll want to talk to you fellas again, but at this point you're free to go."

  And he himself at that point would have gone, except Murch said, "Excuse me. If you don't mind, my wife's gonna want to know what this is all about, that if s her cousin and all. Is there anything I can tell her?"

  "Well," the interrogator said, "we're DBA, and your wife's cousin is now in custody, and the boat has been impounded. What do you think is going on?"

  "It's beginning to look," Murch said, "as though Pepper was using that boat to move illegal drugs from one place to another."

  "Very good," the interrogator said. Then he thawed a little and leaned close to speak a bit more confidentially. "Just between us, Pepper's claiming he doesn't even know you guys. He's claiming you stole his boat."

  "Why, that nasty person," Murch said. "Wait'111 tell my wife."

  "What he's claiming," the interrogator said, "is that he never did any dope smuggling or dope dealing at all, it was always you two guys stealing his boat."

  Kelp looked astounded. "Can you believe there are people like that?" he demanded.

  "Yes, I can," the interrogator answered. "Fortunately, we've got the goods on Pepper; we've got videotape; we've got witnesses; we've got him cold. Otherwise, I'll be honest with you, you two guys could maybe of had a couple bad weeks."

  Murch and Kelp looked at one another. "Just for a boat ride," Murch said.

  "Go know," Kelp said. "Go figure."

  "Here's a tip for you," the interrogator said. "Your wife's cousin isn't necessarily your friend."

  "I'll remember that," Murch said.

  "He isn't even my wife's cousin," Kelp said.

  "You're free to go," the interrogator said, and turned away.

  Kelp said, "Uh."

  The interrogator turned back. "You want to be driven someplace?"

  "No, no, that's okay. It's only--I left some personal property in that boat."

  The interrogator looked troubled. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said.

  "You should have taken your property with you when you debarked."

  "Well, it was all kind of nervous and exciting," Kelp explained.

  "I suppose so." The interrogator thought it over. "What you'll have to do," he said, "you'll have to come down to our offices in the Federal Building, fill out a form, describe the articles that are yours. Because that boat and everything in it has been impounded."

  "Well, if I could just go get the stuff," Kelp said, imagining himself writing the word bone on a form down at the Federal Building.

  "Sorry," the interrogator said. "It's impounded."

  "Where?"

  "Impounded."

  "No, I mean where is it impounded?"

  The interrogator gave Kelp a less friendly look. "You just go on down to the Federal Building," he said coolly. "They'll fix you up."

  I'll just bet they will, Kelp thought. "Thanks," he said, with a nice smile, and the interrogator stalked off, and Kelp and Murch slunk on around the onetime mailbox factory and down the block and into the stolen car and drove away from there.

  When Dortmunder woke up, he was in a dungeon. His bruised eye hurt, his head hurt, his stomach hurt, his shoulderbiades hurt, his… Well. He hurt.

  Recent history passed before his eyes like an atrocity reenactment on television. Diversion, delay, capture. Interrogation by Hradec Kralowc.

  "Time for Dr. Zorn."

  When Kralowc had said that, Dortmunder had really started to worry.

  Thoughts of truth serum flashed through his mind. How would his system react to truth serum? Wouldn't it be like an antibody inside him? Would his vital parts survive such an invasion?

  Was there a story he could tell? Was there any gloss on events, any spin-doctoring he could do before the real doctor got here? He cast his aching mind back over recent events, and was appalled at the sight.

  Something had delayed Kelp--that much was clear--so that he hadn't been in position when he should have been in position. If ever Dortmunder managed to get his hands on Kelp--that is, if he ever in the future found himself in a position to have an opportunity for a quiet chat with Kelp, it would turn out not to be Kelp's fault, and yet, as Dortmunder already knew without a doubt, at some deeper level, at some more totally true level (far below the level truth serum could possibly reach), it was Kelp's fault1.

  Why do I do it? Dortmunder asked himself, not for the first time. Why do I associate with bad companions, by which I do mean Andrew Octavian Kelp? But answer came there none.

  It was too late to claim mistaken identity. Seated there in Kralowc's office on the Pride of Votskcyek, handcuffed to a chair, Dortmunder studied again that moment when he'd been lying supine on the ferry slip as the bone-wielding Kelp shouted, "Run, John!" Followed--click-click, the slide show--by that moment when he'd been somehow on his feet, everyone intensely aware of his existence, and Kelp whispering, "You weren't blown?"

  Oh, is there no story to cover this? Let's see:

  "I'm an undercover CIA agent, infiltrating the Tsergovian secret police, and…"

  "I had amnesia! Wait a minute, my past life is coming back to me! The year is 1977, and I live in Roslyn, Long Island, with my dear wife, Andreotta, and our two charming children, uh…"

  "FBI! You're all under arrest!"

  "Thank God you understood those signals I was sending. Those bloodthirsty fiends kidnapped my mother and forced me to help them in their evil…"

  "My left leg is artificial, and filled with dynamite. If you don't release me at the count…"

  "Whu-- Where am I? Who are all you people?"

  That last one was almost worth a try. Dortmunder was still trying to work out exactly the facial expression that went with it-- and where this particular ploy might likely lead--when Dr. Zorn entered the office.

  No question. You could see this person anywhere, the supermarket even, and you'd say, "Thafs Dr. Zorn." And not just because of the floppy black leather doctor's bag with stainless steel locks that he carried in his big white thick-knuckled, hairy backed, scrubbed fist, either.

  The strangest thing about him was, he didn't look old. Or parts of him didn't. He was tall and slender, with a lithe and youthful body like a long-distance runner, but on top of that body was the absolute Dr. Zorn head: round, bald, without eyebrows, gleaming, with jug-handle ears, like an old chamber pot. The manically glittering eyes shone from the bottoms of deep crystal-cave eyeglasses, eyeglasses with hypnotic spirals etched in the lenses, eyeglasses with clear plastic frames hooked over the big pale ears, so there was no color at all above Dr. Zorn's neck except for those eyes deep inside the eyeglass lenses, which were: red.

  Was Dr. Zorn twenty-five, or sixty-five? Was he really an old guy, a successful mad scientist who'd managed to graft his own head onto a young and virile body? That would have been some operation to watch.

  Dr. Zorn and Hradec Kralowc proceeded to engage in a conversation together in some language that sounded mostly like crickets in armor jousting,
in which Kralowc made detailed explanations of something or other while pointing at Dortmunder, and Dr. Zorn cackled maniacally a lot while looking at Dortmunder. None of this was reassuring.

  Nor was the lethal-looking hypodermic syringe when it made its inevitable appearance from Dr. Zorn's black bag. "I'm allergic!"

  Dortmunder cried out at the sight of the thing.

  Kralowc and Dr. Zorn stared at him. Even Lusk and Terment gazed in his direction. Dr. Zorn spoke in English for the first time, a rubbery, feltish kind of English, best suited to obscene phone calls: "You are allergic? To what?"

  "Truth serum!"

  Dr. Zorn gave him the simpering, condescending chuckle of the scientist for the layman. "This is not truth serum, you pathetic creature," he said. "Truth serum does not work." His smile turned toward Kralowc, becoming conspiratorial. "We have learned that, have we not?"

  Kralowc shrugged, uncomfortable and nervous. "Let's just get on with it."

  "But of course." Turning back to Dortmunder, Dr. Zorn said, "Someone roll up his sleeve."

  Lusk and Terment both dashed forward to do it, the four hands like spiders on Dortmunder's arm, getting in each other's way, delaying the process, but not, unfortunately, forever.

  And while it was going on, Dr. Zorn smiled his smile again at Dortmunder and said, "Some powerful personalities can override the impetus of either amobarbital or thiopental, the so-called truth serums.

  While you probably do not have a powerful personality --just a first impression, of course--the results of such things are too likely to be unreliable."

  "And we don't have a lot of time," Kralowc said, cracking his knuckles.

  Dr. Zorn pointed the needle upward and did that little pumping thing that gets out the deadly air bubbles and puts a tiny, beautiful, brief spray of serum into the light. Then he cupped one hand around Dortmunder's arm and approached it with the needle. "Hold still."

  "Then what is it?" Dortmunder asked, trying and failing to hold still.

  "It will render you unconscious," Dr. Zorn told him, "and therefore malleable for the flight."

  "Flight? Where am I going?"

  "Why, to Votskojek, of course," said Dr. Zorn. "Isn't that where you wanted to go?" And he smiled and jabbed with the needle.

  "But--" Dortmunder said, and woke up in a dungeon. On a rough wool blanket on the cold concrete floor of a low, nasty, dim room with stone walls and the combined smells of hay and mildew. One small window, a rectangular opening in the deep stone wall, was covered on the outside by a thick metal mesh screen; that was the only source of light. Peering through that window, Dortmunder could see a bit of dirt ground under what was apparently a cloudy sky, and across the way another stone wall.

  Nothing else.

  A dungeon. In Votskojek.

  How do I get out of this? Dortmunder asked himself, and as he did so a soldier went by out there, a sentinel on duty, wearing a bulky uniform of a particularly decayed-looking grayish blue, plus mean-looking black boots. And a submachine gun on a leather strap over his shoulder.

  Dortmunder flinched away from the window at the sight of that guy, and when he dared to look again the soldier was gone. But wafting in the window, on the coolish air (colder than New York, he noticed), from far away, thin, attenuated, barely audible but unmistakable, came the sound of a human scream.

  Oh, boy, Dortmunder thought. He looked around his dungeon and there was no furniture at all except that insultingly thin rough brown blanket on the floor on which he'd awakened. So he slid down the wall beneath the window, sat on the cold floor, rested his back against the hard stone wall, and thought it again: Oh, boy.

  There's no way out of here, out of this dungeon in this prison or whatever it is. And if there was a way out, what then? I'd be in Votskojek, that's what then, without a draff to my name. No useful ID, no sensible story to tell, and no language to tell it in.

  Maybe I could trade them the bone for letting me go, he thought, and even as he thought it he also thought, That's what they want me to think. Okay, fine, that's what they want me to think, and I'm thinking it. Maybe I could trade them the bone for letting me go. Because what else do I do?

  But wait a second. If that's what they want me to think, what is it they don't want me to think?

  Well, they don't want me to think there's any way out of here. So that's one for their side, then. I don't think there's any way out of here.

  I hope the guys are taking good care of that bone.

  Tl^m -any said, "You lost it?"

  "And Dortmunder, too," Kelp pointed out. "We also lost Dortmunder." "I don't give a fat rat's ass about Dortmunder,"Tiny explained. "Dortmunder ain't gonna get nobody into the UN."

  "Unless he breaks in," Murch commented.

  "So let him break out," Tiny suggested, "from wherever he is. The question is, What about the fucking femur of Saint Ferghana?"

  "The feds filched it," Kelp said, and Grijk Krugnk, seated over there in what was normally J.C.'s chair but she was still out of town, moaned low.

  This was supposed to have been the triumphant meeting, the celebration, the victory party. There were Tiny and Grijk at Tin^s place, waiting, expectant, eager for the whole experience to be over and done with and accomplished and successful, and here came Kelp and Murch with bad news.

  Which neither Tiny nor Grijk was taking at all well. Tiny was becoming more aggressive and hostile and generally dangerous by the minute, but Grijk had undergone some sort of collapse; perhaps the crash from his high hopes had given him the bends. Anyway, he merely slumped over there in that morris chair like melting ice cream, and from time to time he moaned, and from time to time he muttered what might very well have been imprecations, in Magyar-Croat.

  They sure sounded like imprecations.

  Tiny said, "We gotta get it back."

  "I thought you'd feel that way," Kelp admitted.

  Murch said, "They impounded it, Tiny. The DBA. You don't get a thing back when the DBA impounds it. Everything they impound, they use later on in their task forces."

  Tiny gave him a look. "How are the narcs gonna use a bone in a task force?"

  "Maybe they feed it to their drug-sniffer dogs," Murch suggested, which wasn't a very tactful thing to say in the presence of Grijk Krugnk, who made that clear by leaping to his feet and bellowing out several short sharp statements in MagyarCroat.

  Tiny nodded. He didn't speak Magyar-Croat, but he understood the general idea behind Grijk's distress. "We can't lose that bone," he said. "It's a relic; it's a sacred Catholic relic and a important historical whatchathing."

  "Artifact?" Kelp suggested.

  "That's it," Tiny agreed. "One side or the other, they got it, they fight over it, that's one thing, but at least they know it's still somewhere on display, it exists. But if it disappears--"

  Grijk groaned.

  "If it's destroyed--"

  Grijk groaned louder.

  "If it isn't around anymore," Tiny shouted over Grijk's whale music, "if nobody's got it, there's gonna be blood in the streets. These people will kill each other to the last baby, believe me they will. There's things that these people got no sense of humor. I mean, look at Grijk for yourself."

  They did. They nodded. They saw what Tiny meant.

  Tiny spread big hands. "I'm telling you two guys," he said, "and I'm telling you now. You went out to get that bone. You're gonna come back with it. Or you're gonna answer to me."

  "I thought you'd feel that way," Kelp said again.

  Tiny glowered. "So you thought I'd feel that way, did you? So what are you doing here›"

  "Well, these things take time," Kelp said.

  Tiny lowered an eyebrow at him. "What things take time?"

  "Well," Kelp explained, "the first question is, When the DBA impounds something, what do they do with it? Where do they put it? The guy at the place wouldn't tell me, so I gotta ask another guy, so I called him, and we're gonna do lunch."

  Tiny lowered the other eyebrow. Now he looke
d like an angry shag rug.

  "You're gonna do lunch? What is this guy, in the movie business?"

  "No," Kelp said. "As a matter of fact, he's a cop."

  When May got back to the apartment early that evening from her cashier job at the Safeway, carrying the bag of groceries that she thought of as a fringe benefit the company just hadn't happened to think of offering on their own, John wasn't yet home. She knew he and Andy Kelp and Tiny Bulcher and Stan Murch had gone off to retrieve something or other for a friend of Tiny's today, and such retrievals sometimes took a little longer than expected, so she didn't worry overly but merely planned a dinner menu that would make maximum use of the new microwave once John did walk in. A tall, thin woman with slightly graying black hair, who still had many of the twitchy mannerisms of smoking even though she'd given up the filthy habit some time ago, she carried her fringe benefits to the kitchen, put them away, opened a beer for herself, put on her after-work gray cardigan, and went to the living room to relax and watch TV until John got home.

  Also to look at the mail, which was mostly magazines--May subscribed to everything--but which today also included a long, chatty letter from her sister, that she couldn't stand, in Cleveland. Thank God she was in Cleveland.

  May was just finishing this letter--tonsillectomy, pregnancy, and second-prize essay award were prominently featured-- when the phone at her elbow rang and she picked it up. "Hello?"

  "Hi, May." It was Andy Kelp, sounding as chipper as ever, but with maybe a bit of an unfamiliar edge in his voice. "John there?"

  May knew. Don't ask how she knew, she just knew, that's all. The literature is full of such instances, anybody can tell you. She knew.

  She didn't know exactly what she knew, but she knew. Something in Andy's voice maybe. "No, he isn't," she said. "Why? Should he be?"

  "Well, May," Andy said, "maybe I better come over," and before May could point out that that was no way to leave the conversation, he'd hung up.

  Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. Not the outside bell by the street door, the upstairs bell by the apartment door. Could this be Andy? Usually, Andy just picked the lock and walked on in. If this was Andy, and he was standing on ceremony enough to ring the doorbell, having only picked his way in through the street door downstairs, this was anything but a good sign.