Nobody's Perfect (dortmunder) Read online

  Macdough rubbed a knuckle over his lips and cleared his throat. "You shouldn't have followed us," he said.

  "It's my painting," Chauncey said, "and you're going to have to deal with me."

  "Split the take six ways? Man, man, that doesn't pay my hotel bill!"

  "These two were already paid," Chauncey said, with a gesture toward Dortmunder and Kelp so casual, so dismissing, that Dortmunder understood at once the teams had regrouped, leaving himself and Kelp out in the cold.

  So, speaking just as casually, Dortmunder said, "That's right. We just came along to help Chauncey, so now we'll leave you people to dicker without a lot of outside rs–"

  "No, no, Dortmunder," Zane interrupted, smiling behind his gun. "Don't you hurry away."

  Irritably, Chauncey said, "Why not, Zane? They don't want anything, let them leave."

  "With what they know?" Zane shook his head. "They could still make money, Chauncey. From your insurance company, for instance."

  Chauncey gave Dortmunder a sudden sharp look, and Dortmunder told him, "You know better than that. All we want is our airfare, and we're quits."

  "I can't think about you now, Dortmunder," Chauncey said, shaking his head like a man pestered by gnats.

  "Mr. Chauncey," Kelp said, "I didn't sleep under your dresser for a week and a half to be treated like this."

  But Chauncey wasn't listening. He'd turned back to Macdough, saying, "I want my painting."

  "Buy it at the auction."

  "I've already paid for it. It's mine."

  "I won't give it to you," Macdough said, "and that's that. And I won't give up the lion's share of the money either."

  Dortmunder said, "Why not pull the insurance game again?" Everybody looked at him. Macdough said, "What insurance game?"

  "You go back to Parkeby-South," Dortmunder told him, "and say you're worried because of the robbery, you want the same experts to come back and look at the painting. They do, they see it's a fake, you claim the original was stolen during the robbery–"

  "Which is what happened," Macdough pointed out, sounding bitter.

  "So you aren't even lying. The gallery's insurance company pays you, so you've got your money. You sell Chauncey the original for a few dollars and everybody's happy."

  There was interest in Macdough's face, and also in Chauncey's, but then Zane had to stick his two cents in, saying, "That's cute, Dortmunder, but it won't work."

  "Sure it will."

  "Insurance companies won't pay twice for the same painting," Zane said.

  Which was the flaw in Dortmunder's argument, as Dortmunder had already known, but he could only do his best with the materials at hand. "They'll have to pay," he insisted. "How can the gallery's insurance company refuse to pay Macdough for a painting everybody says is real?"

  "By stalling," Zane said. "That's the way insurance companies operate anyway. There's already a lawsuit between Chauncey and his insurers in the states. The insurance company here would just tell Macdough they won't settle his claim until the lawsuit on the other side is settled. One of those two might get some insurance money, but not both."

  "Chauncey's already had his," Macdough grumbled, and from the lowering expression on his face Dortmunder knew the ploy had failed.

  "I'll give you a hundred thousand for the painting," Chauncey told Macdough. "I can't afford it, but we have to break this deadlock somehow."

  "Not enough," Macdough said. "I signed a paper with these two for half. I'd only get fifty thousand pounds out of it."

  Chauncey shook his head with a rueful smile. "I'm sorry, it's worse than you think," he said. "I meant a hundred thousand dollars."

  "What? Sixty thousand pounds? With thirty for me?"

  "Keep all sixty," Chauncey told him. "Tax free. It's under the table, you don't have to declare it and these two can't take you to court."

  "I wouldn't take him to court," Zane said dryly. "Forget it, Chauncey. Macdough and I – and Porculey, of course – intend to split four hundred thousand dollars. If we get it from you, fine. If not, we'll get it at the auction."

  Dortmunder said, "Not if Chauncey makes an anonymous call and tells the London police to check the copy in Parkeby-South. You don't dare stop Chauncey, but he can stop you. Once the cops know the original was stolen, Macdough doesn't dare show up with it. And you're right back with only one buyer: Chauncey."

  Chauncey smiled at Zane. "He's right, you know."

  "He's not in this conversation," Zane said, angrily.

  "I'm the one took the painting away," Dortmunder told Macdough. "I could put it back."

  "I can put it back!" Zane yelled, glaring at Dortmunder. To the others he said, "We won't talk in front of these people any more. They're out of it."

  Chauncey said, "You can't let them go, and nobody wants you shooting them."

  Kelp said, "I'd just like to mention, today's my birthday."

  "There are rooms here with doors that lock," Zane said mildly. "We'll put them away till the discussion's over."

  Dortmunder said to Macdough, "I could be useful to you." But it wasn't enough; not against Zane's gun. Macdough glanced away, biting the insides of his cheeks, and Zane gestured with the gun barrel, saying, "Come on, you two."

  There wasn't any choice. Dortmunder and Kelp went, out the door and farther down the hall to a closed door with a thick wooden bar across it. "Take off the bar and lean it against the wall," Zane ordered, standing back too far for Dortmunder to swing it at him. Then he had them enter the room, which they saw in the flashlight's beam to be filled with the same massed clutter as the room they'd just left.

  "There's no light in here," Kelp said, crossing the threshold. "There's nothing interesting to see," Zane assured him. "Step back from the door." When Dortmunder stood facing him, just barely inside the room, Zane smiled at him and said, "Relax. You know they won't let me shoot you."

  "They'll let you leave us here. Is that a better way to die?"

  Zane shrugged. "Where there's life, I understand," he said, "there's hope." And he shut and barred the door.

  Chapter 14

  "He's crazy, you know," Chauncey told Macdough, the instant Zane had led his prisoners out the door. "He wants all the money, and he'll kill every one of us before he's done."

  "He's my partner," Macdough said. "You're just trying to split us up."

  "He's a killer. That's what attracted me to him in the first place."

  Porculey, stepping toward the two men, said, "Mr. Chauncey, I agree with you, and I want you to know I am heartily sorry I ever got involved with the man."

  "I can handle myself with Zane," Macdough insisted, rather too forcefully. "And with you." Both he and Chauncey ignored Porculey, as though he hadn't spoken, as though he weren't there.

  "You're out of your depth," Chauncey said. "I will queer your pitch, Macdough, and even Zane knows he doesn't dare stop me."

  "We'll find another buyer. We'll get just as much on the black market. Some Arab sheikh."

  Porculey, seeing he'd get cold comfort from both these two, and also seeing how absorbed they were in their argument, sidled as unobtrusively as a stout terrified man can sidle toward the door, picking up the still-wrapped painting on the way by. Quietly, without fuss, he departed the room.

  Meanwhile, Chauncey pointed out Macdough's lack of expertise in selling paintings on the black market, and Macdough stated he had nothing but time and could probably sell the painting and collect on Parkeby-South's insurance, and Chauncey said, "And the minute you get your hands on the money, you're a dead man."

  Which was when Zane entered, saying "Talking against me, Chauncey?"

  "Telling him the truth."

  "Macdough knows better than that," Zane said, though from the way Macdough looked at Zane maybe he didn't know better than that. Still, Zane went blithely on, saying, "Porculey and I have no–" Then he stopped, frowned, looked left and right. "Where is my little friend?"

  "Porculey?"

  "The painting!" Macd
ough pointed at the table on which it had lain.

  "He – he wouldn't dare!"

  The three men turned toward the door, about to race in pursuit, Zane already waving his pistol over his head, when Porculey himself came backing in and turned to give their astonished faces a sheepish smile. The tubular package was held at port arms across his chest.

  "You!" Macdough shrieked, and led the charge, closely followed by Chauncey and Zane. Porculey, his smile panicky, yelped and ran away into the piles of junk, the other three pursuing, Zane actually firing a shot in the air, a vast blast of explosion which deafened them all in that confined stone room, so that nobody, not even Zane himself, heard his own voice shout, "Stop!"

  Porculey wouldn't have stopped anyway. He was climbing an upended mohair sofa, scrambling over pillows and library tables and candelabra up toward the ceiling, with half a dozen hands clutching at his ankles. They were dragging him back, dragging him down, and Porculey was shrieking a babble of absurd explanation, when all at once a voice from behind them all said:

  "Ullo ullo ullo, what's this, then?"

  They looked back, all of them draped on the stored goods like a quartet of mountain climbers who've just heard a rumble, and coming through the doorway was a tall-helmeted young police constable in uniform, pushing his bicycle.

  Chapter 15

  The fact was, the driver of that Jensen Interceptor III was locally a Very Important Person. Sir Francis Monvich, his name was, he was fifty-six and very rich, and when his eighty-three-year-old father died he would become the 14th Viscount Glengorn, which in that neighborhood was pretty good. When Sir Francis Monvich's Jensen was hit both front and rear, and when the hooligan who hit it in front promptly ran away into the surrounding countryside, the local constabulary could be expected to take a very serious view of the situation. They would consider their position. They would proceed at once to find some individuals who would assist the police in their enquiries.

  "That way," Sir Francis informed the first pair of constables to arrive on the scene, and pointed dramatically toward the winding track leading uphill next to the barn. These constables were on bicycles, which were more a hindrance than a help on the path they were now required to take, though they did get the odd terrifying downhill plunge between the uphill plods. They had reached Castle Macdough, and were studying the empty Vauxhall and Mini, when another pair of constables arrived, these in a white police car. All four spread out, shining their flashlights this way and that, the first two keeping their bicycles with them to prevent their being stolen by concealed miscreants, and thus it was that Porculey, having been forced to hide in another doorway while Zane walked back to the main room from locking up Dortmunder and Kelp, stepped out of his hiding place to see a police officer with a bicycle coming this way, flashing his light from side to side. In panic, Porculey ran on tippy-toe back to the room with the others, and realized just one second too late what a mistake he'd made.

  The constable – PC Quillin by name – failed to see Porculey run ahead of him down the corridor, but he did hear the yelling that followed, and he certainly heard the shot. So did the other three constables searching the vicinity, and so did two more constables, just arriving in another police car.

  PC Quillin entered the room. Zane thought briefly of shooting him, shooting everybody else, taking the painting, and starting all over again in a new location with an entirely different crowd.

  Three more constables entered the room. Zane decided not to shoot anybody. In fact, he tucked his pistol away in among the hassocks and halberds.

  Macdough and Chauncey started telling different lies to the constables.

  More constables entered the room.

  Porculey started telling every truth he could think of.

  Zane didn't speak at all, but smiled amiably (as he thought) at all the constables.

  PC Quillin, having noticed that the long tubular package seemed to be of general interest to these babbling crooks, took it from Porculey's willing hands and opened it.

  Chauncey tried to bribe a constable.

  The constable – PC Baligil – gave him a rough unfriendly glower. "American, are you?"

  "Canadian," said Chauncey.

  "We'll sort this out at the station," PC Baligil decided. "And which of you has the firearm?"

  Firearm? Firearm? After the general denials, PC Quillin made a quick search and within thirty seconds found the thing hanging from a halberd. "Careful about fingerprints," PC Baligil told him.

  Macdough turned an embittered eye on Chauncey. "I blame you for this entire thing," he said.

  "And I blame you," Chauncey responded. "You cheap opportunist crook."

  "Blame each other at the station," PC Baligil suggested, "where we can take it all down. Come along."

  They were reluctant, but they went along, complaining at one another and trying out new lies on the constables, who paid very little attention. "We might as well see are there any more," PC Baligil said to a young constable called PC Tarvy. "We'll just have a look at these other rooms along here."

  So PC Tarvy took one side of the corridor and PC Baligil the other, flashing their lights around one debris-packed interior after another. "It's nothin but lumber rooms," PC Tarvy said.

  "Oh, they'll have a deal to tell us, that lot," PC Baligil answered. "All stolen goods, this, I shouldn't be surprised." And he turned to see PC Tarvy removing the bar from a locked room. "Now, then," he said. "Who'd be in a room locked on the outside?"

  "I just thought I'd look." And PC Tarvy pulled open the door and shone his light on nothing but more of the same: furniture, old trunks, a cluttered pile of armor on the floor. (In truth, there was no reason these days to keep that door barred; but where else would you keep the bar?)

  "Come along, Tarvy," said PC Baligil, and PC Tarvy turned away, leaving that door not only unbarred but open (which is how bars get lost), as he and PC Baligil went up to join the other constables and their prisoners.

  Dawn comes early in the highlands in the summer. It had been well after midnight when the Mini had turned off the A 9 and the Vauxhall had ricocheted off that Jensen, and now it was after two in the morning, and the first faint lines of color outlined the mountains to the east as the constables distributed themselves and their bicycles and their prisoners into the four cars and went away.

  For several minutes, there was only silence in the moonlit ruin of Castle Macdough. The orange line defining the eastern mountains grew a bit broader, lightening toward a pinkish yellow. Then a kind of clanking sound was heard from deep within the bowels of the castle, and heavily, thud by thud, a suit of armor came up the steps. It stopped when it reached the courtyard, looking left and right, creaking and squeaking with every movement. Then it called, in Dortmunder's voice, "They're gone."

  And up came a second suit of armor, slow and clanking like the first. (These two complete sets had been lying on the floor, sprinkled over with stray additional bits and pieces of armor, when PC Tarvy had shone his light into the room.) The second suit of armor, speaking in Kelp's voice, said, "That was a close one."

  "It was more than close," the first suit said. "There goes Chauncey with the ten grand he promised us, and the jewels and stuff still in his house, and us with no money for airplane tickets."

  "I was thinking about that," the second suit said. "While we were lying on the floor down there. And I think I got a terrific idea."

  "Oh?"

  "Listen to this. We fake a skyjacking, but what we really do–" And at that point the eager voice faltered to a stop, because the first suit had turned its blank metal face and was gazing fixedly at the second suit. "Dortmunder?" said the second suit. "Something wrong?"

  Instead of answering, the first suit raised a mailed fist and swung it in a great half circle, but the second suit jumped (clank!) backward out of the way, so that the first, following the momentum around, nearly but not quite fell down the steps. Balance regained, it advanced on the second suit, which backed away, sayi
ng "Dortmunder? Don't be like this. You'll regret it when you're calm."

  The first suit kept moving forward, swinging the right arm again and this time striking a spark from a slight knick against the second suit's nose.

  "No! cried the second suit. "Dortmunder!" But then it turned and ran, out of the courtyard and down the steep stony hill in the moonlight, the first suit blundering and thundering after, both yelling now, up crag and down glen, clanking and crashing eastward toward the sunrise, one suit of armor chasing another, a thing that hasn't been seen in that neighborhood for years and years. And years.

  The End

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