Nobody's Perfect (dortmunder) Page 15

  So now they had it all. Porculey's copy of Folly Leads Man to Ruin looked terrific thumb tacked over the sofa, and the attaché case full of money looked just as terrific on the table across the room. One hundred thousand dollars, every last dollar of it present and accounted for. The money had to be spread a bit thinner than if the original robbery had worked out, but so what? The point was, they'd done the job at last and they had the money. Ten thousand would go to Porculey for the fake, and the man had earned every penny of it. One thousand each would go to Wally Whistler and Fred Lartz and Herman X as a token payment of appreciation, and one thousand to Alan Greenwood to cover his expenses in coming to town just for this gig. It had been agreed by everybody concerned that May should get a thousand, both to help fix up the new apartment and also as a kind of testimonial to her world-renowned tuna casserole. And that left eighty-five thousand dollars. Split five ways (Kelp would give his nephew Victor a little something as a finder's fee out of his own piece), it left Dortmunder and Kelp and Murch and Chefwick and Bulcher a solid reasonable seventeen thousand dollars each. What was wrong with that? Nothing. (Dortmunder raised his glass to the attaché case. It didn't offer any visible response, but it didn't have to. Its presence was enough.)

  Of course, there was something a little strange about the fact that, when success finally did arrive, it came in the form of a fake robbery of a fake Old Master, but just so long as the money was real – and it was, they'd looked it over very carefully – what the hell. Right?

  And here was Kelp – good old Andy Kelp – back with more bourbon and more ice cubes. Dortmunder was astounded to realize his glass was practically empty; nothing in it but one naked ice cube. He added a second, Kelp filled the glass to the top, and the party went on.

  Dortmunder was never exactly sure afterward when the party did come to an end. After a while May and Thelma brought out the food, and then a while later the money was divvied up – May took her share and Dortmunder's share away to the bedroom, where she'd already worked out this apartment's hiding place – and then a while later Wally Whistler's absentminded fiddling with the catch on the spring-leaf table resulted in a lot of dishes and glasses and peanuts clattering to the floor with a hell of a racket when the table collapsed to Wally's utter embarrassment, and a while after that people started going home, all of them stopping to thank Dortmunder for a nice party and to say a word or two about tonight's success. Dortmunder just smiled at them all, and nodded happily whenever his glass was refilled, and somewhere in through there he must have fallen asleep, because you can't wake up unless you've been asleep, and just like THAT Dortmunder woke up. He stared around an empty room gray with daylight, and he said out loud, "What's going wrong?"

  Then he heard the echo of his own voice, and sat back in his chair. He had the fuzzy mouth and the muzzy headache that come from sleeping sitting up in a chair with your clothes on after you've had just a bit too much to drink. Moving his tongue around inside his head as though it were a sock he was trying to put away somewhere, he silently answered his own question: Nothing's going wrong. Chauncey was cooled out. Zane was certainly not cooled out, but his credibility was destroyed in Chauncey's eyes because Chauncey didn't know Dortmunder knew what Zane looked like, and in any event Dortmunder was going to make himself very hard to find for the next few months. Besides moving their apartment, he and May intended to take some of that money and have a real vacation, a real spree for themselves, and by the time they came back this whole business would have blown over. Why would a professional like Zane spend the rest of his life, with no employer, on a manhunt that had no profit in it? Zane would eventually stop being upset, he'd get back to his own life, and that would be the end of that.

  So what could go wrong? Nothing. This job was done, and it had been a complete success.

  Dortmunder closed his eyes. Ten seconds later, the left eye opened halfway, and watched the empty room.

  THE BRIDGE

  Chapter 1

  Andy Kelp met them at the airport, grinning from ear to ear. "What a great tan," he said.

  "Yeah," Dortmunder said. "Hello."

  May said, "I made him go out on the beach. All he wanted was to sit in the hotel and look at television."

  "I went to the casino," Dortmunder said, defending himself.

  Kelp said, "Yeah? You win?"

  Dortmunder looked around, frowning. "Where do we pick up our stuff?"

  Pointing at signs, Kelp said, "Baggage, that way." The three of them set out, along with several million other travelers, following the lit BAGGAGE signs and arrows suspended from the ceiling. This was a Sunday evening in early June, and the terminal was full of people who had not at all terminated; they were insistent, every one of them, on pushing toward some farther destination. Sunday is when most people finish their vacations, and when the disorganized finally get started. Pale faces and vinyl luggage going out, peeling faces and wicker baskets coming back. Walking along through this mob, May told Kelp, "We had beautiful weather. The whole thing was just perfect."

  Kelp was delighted. "You had a good time, huh?"

  Dortmunder nodded, slowly and thoughtfully, as though it had taken much soul-searching to come to this conclusion. "Yeah," he said. "It was okay."

  The trip had been strictly May's doing, from beginning to end. She'd gone to the travel agency, she'd brought back the brochures full of white sand beaches and blue swimming pools, she'd talked it over with Dortmunder, and then she herself had chosen the package tour to Puerto Rico: fourteen days and thirteen nights in a first-class hotel in beautiful San Juan, air fare included, complimentary cocktail with dinner the first night in the hotel. May had done the packing, completed the arrangements with the travel agency, and made a lightning swoop on Korvette's to stock up on dark glasses, suntan oil, floppy hats and clogs.

  Dortmunder had helped by expressing doubts. "If the Puerto Ricans all come here," he'd said, for instance, "how come it's such a hot idea for us to go there?" Another time, he'd expressed the opinion that airplanes were too heavy to fly, and a little later he'd pointed out he didn't have a passport. "You don't need a passport," May told him. "Puerto Rico's part of the US." He stared at her. "The hell it is." But it turned out she was right about that; Puerto Rico wasn't exactly a state, but it was something in the United States of America – maybe it was "of." Anyway, May's accuracy about that one detail had encouraged Dortmunder to trust her with the rest.

  And, as he had gracefully admitted, it had worked out okay. Nice beach, nice casino – they closed it too early, though – nice driving around in a rain forest, nice boat trips to a lot of nice little islands; all in all, nice. Except for an ashtray from the El Conquistador restaurant and a couple towels from the hotel, Dortmunder hadn't boosted a thing the whole trip. A real first class vacation.

  Dortmunder said, "How are things around town?"

  "About the same," Kelp said. "No nice scores, not even a hotel hit. We're still the champs."

  Dortmunder grinned. Over a month after the event, the Chauncey caper could still bring a warm glow to his heart, a sense of a good job well done. "Yeah, that's okay," he said.

  "Chefwick retired," Kelp said.

  Dortmunder showed his surprise. "Retired? How come?"

  "Some guy in California bought a Chinese railroad, and Chefwick's gonna run it. He took his piece from the job, and him and Maude went on out there."

  Dortmunder gave Kelp a wary look. "Is this one of your stories?"

  "It's true."

  "They're always true. A Chinese railroad?"

  "Yeah," Kelp said. "It used to go from someplace to someplace else in China, but now they use planes and buses and–"

  Dortmunder said, "A real railroad? Not a model?"

  "That's right. Apparently, this was a very famous early railroad. It was built with Irish labor, and they–"

  "All right," Dortmunder said.

  "I'm just telling you what Roger told me. This guy in California bought it, that's all. A couple
locomotives, some railroad cars, some of the old switches, even one little railroad station like a pagoda. Same as that guy in Arizona bought the London Bridge and set it up in Arizona. Exactly the same."

  "Fine," Dortmunder said.

  "They're putting down some track," Kelp said, "and building an amusement park around it, like a Disneyland, and Chefwick's gonna run the railroad. Him and Maude, they'll live in the railroad station."

  Smiling, May said, "That's nice."

  Dortmunder also smiled, and nodded his head. "Yeah, that's okay," he said. "Chefwick's got himself a real railroad. That's okay."

  "Of course, he'll still set up his model," Kelp said.

  "Don't tell me," Dortmunder said. "In the railroad station."

  "Where else?"

  "Sure," Dortmunder said.

  Kelp nodded, and said, "Oh, and Tiny Bulcher's back in jail."

  "What for?"

  "He beat up a gorilla."

  Dortmunder said, "Stop."

  May said, "Did you say he beat–"

  "Don't ask him, May," Dortmunder told her. "He'll only answer."

  "It was in the Daily News and everything," Kelp said, as though that were an adequate defense. "It seems he was–"

  "I said stop," Dortmunder told him.

  "You don't even want to hear about it?"

  "I do," May said.

  "Tell her later," Dortmunder ordered, and they reached the place where they were supposed to pick up their baggage.

  It was a madhouse. Several circular constructions skirted by moving conveyor belts offered an array of luggage from several different airplanes to travelers packed three and four deep in all directions. Dortmunder and May and Kelp at last found the right conveyor belt, struggled their way to the front rank, and spent the next ten minutes watching other people's luggage go by.

  "Boy," Kelp said after a while, "there's sure a lot of goods in the world." Impossible, his expression seemed to say, for anybody to steal it all. Impossible even to scratch the surface.

  After several million alien impedimenta had appeared on the conveyor belt – some of them circling over and over again, apparently having arrived at a destination other than that of their owners – May suddenly said, "That's ours," and Dortmunder obediently plucked the old brown suitcase off the conveyor belt.

  Kelp said, "One more, right?"

  "We bought some stuff," Dortmunder muttered, looking the other way.

  "Oh, yeah?"

  It took another ten minutes for May to feel they'd wrenched the last of their own possessions from the passing parade, and by then she and Dortmunder and Kelp were standing in the middle of a redoubt formed of seven pieces of luggage. In addition to the two lumpy ordinary suitcases they'd had with them on departure, they now claimed: two flimsy-looking wicker baskets, each about the size of a typewriter case, both tied with stout cord; a tennis racket(!); a smallish bright-colored carton announcing in red and yellow letters for all the world to know that the contents were duty-free liquor and duty-free cigarettes; and a scruffy cardboard carton wrapped in length after length of thin string. "Jeepers," Kelp said. "I guess you did buy some stuff."

  "They had some really wonderful bargains," May said, but like most returned travelers her expression suggested that doubt was beginning to set in.

  "Let's get outa here," Dortmunder said.

  "Well," Kelp said, cheerily picking up both wicker baskets and the tennis racket, "wait'll you see what the medical profession has for us this time."

  They pushed their way through the crowd, found the outside world, and then walked endlessly through parking lot No. 4. It was a cool, damp, overcast spring night with a hint of rain in the air, and they just kept walking around in it. "The car's here someplace," Kelp kept saying, looking left and right over the acres of cars glittering in the infrequent floodlights. "It's right around here."

  "What is it?" Dortmunder asked him. "What does it look like?"

  "I want it to be a surprise. I know it's around here someplace." So they walked, and they walked. Dortmunder carried both suitcases, with the string-wrapped carton under one arm. May carried the box of duty-free liquor and cigarettes. And they kept walking.

  Until Dortmunder stopped, put everything down on the blacktop, and said, "That's enough."

  "But it's very close," Kelp said. "I know it's right around here."

  "Unless it's here," Dortmunder told him, "you can forget it." May said, "Here's a car with MD plates." She was gesturing at a dusty Mustang II with crumpled fenders and a metal coat hanger for an antenna.

  Kelp gave the Mustang a look of scorn. "That belongs to some intern."

  "We'll take it," Dortmunder decided. "Get out your keys."

  Kelp was shocked, hurt, distraught. "But I picked one special," he said. "A silver Rolls-Royce, with a TV and a bar! A wonderful car, it must belong to some doctor has his own hospital, I'll bring you home in style."

  "We'll take this one," Dortmunder said, pointing at the Mustang.

  "But–"

  May said, softly but meaningfully, "Andy."

  Kelp stopped, looked at May, looked at Dortmunder, looked with hatred at the Mustang, looked desperately around the endless parking lot, and then sighed, and reached for his bunch of keys.

  One of the keys opened the Mustang's doors and started the engine, but none of them would open the trunk, so they went to Manhattan with May in the front seat next to Kelp, while Dortmunder rode in back with the two suitcases, the cardboard carton, the two wicker baskets, the duty-free carton and the tennis racket.

  They left the Mustang a block from home, carried everything to the building and up the stairs, and May unlocked the front door to let them in. They walked inside, May first and then Dortmunder and then Kelp, and in the living room Leo Zane limped forward with a cold smile while Arnold Chauncey turned from the fake painting thumb tacked to the wall and said, "Dortmunder." He gestured at the painting. "Before Leo shoots you people," he said, "would you mind telling me what in hell that's all about?"

  Chapter 2

  "It's a fake," Dortmunder said.

  "I know it's a fake," Chauncey answered. "What's it for?" Before Dortmunder could work out an answer – a memento? I've been practicing? – Kelp stuck an oar in, crying, "Say! Isn't that the guy highjacked us? You remember, Dortmunder? The guy outside with the limp."

  It was a nice try, but Dortmunder knew from the cold smile on Zane's face and the cold frown on Chauncey's that it wasn't going to work. Nevertheless, having nothing better to do, he went along with the gag: "Could be him, I don't know. I only got a quick look."

  Chauncey shook his head in irritation, saying, "Don't waste everybody's time, Dortmunder. I know everything. I know Leo disobeyed my orders and made contact with you last November. I know you tied him up in a cocoon of trucks downtown while you had some stooge imitate him in front of my apartment. I know you staged that robbery, and I know you turned the painting over to another buyer, and I know–" with an angry gesture at the luggage all over the floor "–you've just been away on a nice vacation on my money. The only thing I don't know," Chauncey finished, flinging his arm out toward the painting on the wall, "is what that goddam thing is for."

  "Listen," Dortmunder said.

  "Don't tell me lies," Chauncey warned him.

  "Why would I lie to you?" Dortmunder asked, but hurried along without waiting for an answer. "Just because this guy sold you a bill of goods, you blame me. I think he was in on that highjack. It sure looked like him outside the window. What makes you believe him instead of me?"

  Chauncey seemed to give that question more consideration than it actually deserved. Everybody watched him think it over (except May, who was frowning uncertainly at Dortmunder), and finally Chauncey nodded and said, "All right, I'll make you a trade. A story for a story. I'll tell you why I know Leo's telling the truth, and then you'll tell me what in hell you're doing with a grade-A imitation of the painting you stole."

  "It's a deal," Dortmunder said.
/>   Leo Zane said, "Mr. Chauncey, you're the employer, so it's up to you, but aren't we wasting time? Why don't I just pop these three, and we go home?"

  "Because I'm curious," Chauncey told him. "I'm fascinated. I want to know what's going on." To Dortmunder he said, "My story first. No more than a minute or two after you people left my house that night of the so-called robbery, the phone rang. It was Leo, calling from a phone booth down in Greenwich Village."

  Dortmunder shrugged. "So he said."

  "And so he proved. He told me how you people had blocked him in, and how he'd smashed the rear window of his car so he could crawl out and get away. He gave me the phone number at the booth where he was, and I called back, and he was there. I drove downtown to meet him, and that phone booth did have that number, and his car was boxed in as he'd described."

  "Hmmm," Dortmunder said.

  "Leo went looking for you," Chauncey went on, "but of course you'd moved, and it took a while to find the trail."

  Kelp suddenly broke in, saying, "Wait a minute. Listen; how about this? What if Zane himself set up a fake Zane, so then when he proved he was someplace else you'd naturally think somebody else was trying to frame him? How about that?"

  While Dortmunder and May both looked embarrassed, Chauncey gave Kelp a look of scorn, then said to Zane, "If that one says anything else, shoot him right away."

  "Absolutely," said Zane.

  Kelp looked hurt and unappreciated, but kept his mouth shut.

  Chauncey returned his attention to Dortmunder. "All of which is annoying enough," he said, "but now it's even worse. There's been another development."

  Dortmunder's expression was wary. "Oh, yeah?"