Bad News Page 4

  Irwin walked briskly, still hoping the air movement would dry the seat of his pants, and went out through the hole in the fence and down the long block of Sunnyside Street to where he’d left the Voyager. He got into it, U-turned, and then, back at the corner, he went left, away from the highway. A hundred yards from the corner, he U-turned again, parked, switched the lights off, and waited for the van to come out. Once again, he would stay well back as they headed out the island to the disposal site. It wouldn’t be a good idea to let the bozos know Guilderpost wasn’t alone out here tonight.

  6

  * * *

  This new coffin smelled a little nastier than the first one, a little more dank, probably because the bits of dirt clinging to it had more recently been underground. Otherwise, it was a very similar coffin, a little timeworn in the same way; nevertheless, Dortmunder found it less appetizing to sit beside, and he tried to scrunch over as far to the left as possible, away from the aura of the thing.

  Up front, as they drove back onto the Long Island Expressway, eastbound, away from the city, Andy said, “So what are we gonna do with Mr. Redcorn, now that we got him?”

  “About half an hour from here,” Fitzroy told him, “there’s a bridge over to Fire Island, the western end of Fire Island. It’s almost never used this time of year, because, mostly, Fire Island is seasonal, summer cottages. There’s a pretty quick channel under the bridge, water from the South Bay going out to sea.”

  “I get it,” Kelp said. “We toss it off the bridge, it floats for a while, and it’s heading out to sea, and then it sinks.”

  “Exactly.”

  And us, Dortmunder thought, we just sink, right there in the channel.

  The Voyager’s headlights hadn’t appeared in the mirrors until they’d gotten back up on the expressway, but they were there now, keeping a certain distance, trying to remain unremarkable in this sparse traffic. After two in the morning, even the Long Island Expressway wasn’t getting much action.

  And the traffic only got sparser as they headed east, so that the Voyager had to hang farther and farther back. They left Queens and crossed Nassau County, all the little bedroom communities asleep, and by the time they got to Sagtikos Parkway, that distant Voyager was the only light at all in the rearview mirrors.

  Fitzroy turned south on Sagtikos Parkway, which was empty in both directions as far as the eye could see. They crossed the Southern State Parkway, and then they came to a very long and elaborate bridge, which couldn’t be the one Fitzroy had in mind.

  No. This one crossed the Great South Bay, the long strip of seawater between the southern shore of Long Island and its line of sandbar beaches. At the end of this bridge, you could turn right and go eventually to Jones Beach, or you could go straight, over a much smaller and shorter bridge crossing a narrow inlet over to Fire Island, a long strip of sand with seasonal communities, no real roads, and very few vehicles, so that this bridge wasn’t used much even in season.

  There had been no headlights in the mirror since they’d reached the first bridge, so the follower must be driving with his lights out. A whole lot of effort these people were putting in, and it seemed to Dortmunder the reason had to be something more than just stiffing a couple guys out of a thousand dollars. They wanted nobody to know Joseph Redcorn was AWOL from his grave, replaced by an alternate. Meaning that when that coffin was dug up again, by somebody else, there would be some publicity in it, something of value connected to it.

  But what? A guy falls off the Empire State Building, and seventy years later he’s important? How can that be? And how can slipping a proxy in there in his place do anything for anybody?

  Well, we’ll find out, Dortmunder thought. Eventually, we’ll find out.

  This smaller bridge was steeply arched, and Fitzroy stopped the van at the top of the hump. “All we have to do now,” he said, “is toss it over. Andy, would you open the doors back there?”

  “Sure,” Kelp said, and got out, and Dortmunder reached forward to give Fitzroy a neck hold in the crook of his left arm while he reached for Fitzroy’s pistol. One crime a fat guy usually can’t commit is carrying a concealed weapon, so Dortmunder had known from the beginning that Fitzroy’s pistol was in the right-side pocket of his suit jacket, handy to his right hand. Handy to Dortmunder’s right hand, too. He pulled it out, a neat little Smith & Wesson .32 six-shot revolver with a cover over the firing pin, so it wouldn’t snag in a pocket.

  Taking his bent left arm away from Fitzroy’s Adam’s apple, so the guy could start to breathe again, substituting for it the barrel of the pistol, touching Fitzroy’s head just behind his right ear, Dortmunder said, “Put both hands on the steering wheel, okay? Up high, where I can see them.”

  Obeying, Fitzroy said, “What was—” But he had a little trouble with his throat, had to cough and ahem before he could start again. “What was that for, John? What are you—Why are you doing this? What are you doing?”

  “At the moment,” Dortmunder told him, “I’m waiting for Andy to come back with your pal in the Voyager. Then we’ll see what happens next.”

  Fitzroy kept trying to see Dortmunder in the nonexistent interior mirror. “You—How did you . . .” But then he ran down, had nothing more to say, and merely shook his head.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” Dortmunder said. “Listen, would you like to tell us the scam now?”

  “What? Absolutely not!”

  “Well, later then,” Dortmunder said, and the door behind him opened and a strange voice, talking very fast, said, “Well, I certainly don’t know what this is all about, I mean, a man should be able to park by the side of the road, a little meditation in the, in the darkness, I certainly don’t know what you people want from me.”

  Still watching Fitzroy, Dortmunder said, “Andy, hit him with something.”

  The voice stopped, and Kelp, behind Dortmunder in the doorway, said, “He was wired.”

  That galvanized Fitzroy. He spun about, ignoring the pistol held to his head, and yelled at the people behind Dortmunder, “What?”

  “I have no idea who you are, sir,” the new voice said, “and I would prefer to have nothing to do with whatever’s going on here tonight.”

  “Irwin?” screamed Fitzroy. “You’ve been tape-recording us? You miserable sneak!”

  There was a little pause. Fitzroy’s face was now inches from Dortmunder’s, his eyes focused in wrath toward the people in back. Then the focus shifted, and he and Dortmunder gazed deeply into each other’s eyes. Dortmunder smiled amiably and showed him the pistol. “Just go with the flow, Fitzroy,” he advised.

  From behind him, the new voice said, “One has to protect oneself around you, Fitzroy.”

  “Miserable, miserable sneaking . . .”

  Kelp said, “I think this is what they call a falling-out among thieves.”

  Dortmunder said, “Bring yours around, Andy,” and to Fitzroy, he said, “When they get here, time for you to step out.”

  Fitzroy was doing his best to get his cool back. “My friend,” he said, pretending he’d been calm all along, “John, I have no way of knowing, of course, what misapprehension you have about this evening. Irwin was merely to observe, to be a backup in case there was trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble,” Dortmunder assured him, and the door beside Fitzroy opened, and Kelp said, “Come on out, Fitzroy.”

  Dortmunder clambered past the coffin and stepped out onto the bridge. He shut the door, and when he came around to the front, the pistol easy at his side, Kelp had what must be Irwin’s pistol in his right hand and the other two were standing unhappily together by the rail. Irwin, the new one, was as scraggly as Fitzroy was plump, and no more appetizing.

  Dortmunder said to Kelp, “Do you have the Voyager key?”

  Kelp held up his left hand, to show a chain with a car key dangling from it. “Yes . . .” he said, and tossed the key over the rail, “. . . and no.”

  “No!” cried Irwin.

  “Too late,” Kelp told
him.

  Dortmunder said, “Fitzroy, do you by any chance have our two thousand dollars?”

  Fitzroy actually looked embarrassed. “Not all of it,” he said.

  Dortmunder pocketed Fitzroy’s pistol and held out his hand. “Wallet, Fitzroy.”

  “Can’t we,” Fitzroy said, “can’t we discuss this?”

  “Sure,” Dortmunder said. “What’s the scam?”

  “No.”

  “Wallet, Fitzroy, or I’m gonna shoot you in the knee, which you won’t like at all.”

  Fitzroy didn’t like turning over his wallet at all, either, but grudgingly he did, and Dortmunder counted the bills in it, then gave Kelp a disgusted look. “Four hundred thirty-seven dollars.”

  “I apologize, John,” Kelp said. “I didn’t think he was that much of a jerk.”

  Dortmunder pocketed the money and gave back the wallet, then turned to Irwin: “Hand it over.”

  Irwin looked astonished and outraged. “Me? Why me? I didn’t promise you any money!”

  Dortmunder leaned closer to him. “Irwin,” he said, “you remember the threat with the knee?”

  Irwin, grousing and complaining, throwing Fitzroy angry looks as though it were all his fault, pulled out his shabby wallet and handed it over. Dortmunder counted, gave the wallet back, pocketed the cash, and said to Kelp, “Another high roller. Two thirty-eight.”

  Fitzroy said, “I can get you the rest of the money. Absolutely.”

  “No, Fitzroy,” Dortmunder said. “The way it stands right now, you can’t pull your scam without us, because if you try to pull it without us, we’ll blow the whistle on you.”

  “Pull the plug,” Kelp said.

  “Point the finger,” Dortmunder finished. “So what it is, we’re your partners now. So all you have to do is tell us the scam.”

  “Never,” Fitzroy said.

  “Never’s a long time,” Dortmunder commented. “Let’s go, Andy.”

  Fitzroy called, “What are you doing?” But since it was obvious what they were doing, they didn’t bother to answer him. What they were doing was, they were getting into the van, Dortmunder behind the wheel. Then they were making a K-turn on the bridge, while Fitzroy and Irwin stood staring at them. Then Dortmunder was lowering his window, so he could say, “When you want to talk to us, you know how to get in touch with Andy. On the Internet.” He closed the window, then drove back toward Long Island, saying, with deep scorn, “On the Internet.”

  “There’s bad apples everywhere, John,” Kelp said.

  “I’m a bad apple,” Dortmunder pointed out, “but you won’t find me on the Internet.”

  “Oh, I know,” Kelp agreed. “I can barely get you to use a telephone. What are we gonna do with this vehicle?”

  “Long-term parking at La Guardia for tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll move it. Or maybe you will, you got us into this.”

  Kelp sighed. “Okay, John.”

  Dortmunder shook his head. “I can’t wait,” he said, “to tell May how the thousand dollars worked out.”

  7

  * * *

  Guilderpost was too furious to speak. He watched his van drive away, over the bridge toward Long Island, with Joseph Redcorn aboard, and when he could no longer see those departing taillights, he turned to glare at the indefensible Irwin. There were lights on this little bridge, enough for Irwin to feel the full extent of that glare, which he at first ignored and then returned with as much force as a miserable, cowardly little sneak could muster.

  It was Irwin who spoke first: “How did you screw up?”

  Guilderpost restrained himself from leaping at that bony throat. “I? How did I screw up?”

  “You did something that tipped them off.”

  “They saw you following! You! From the beginning!”

  Irwin tried to look scornful: “Those bozos?”

  Beginning to calm down—that’s the trouble with speech, it drains some of the heat out of rage—Guilderpost looked toward Long Island and the disappeared Andy and John and the gone van. “I don’t think, Irwin,” he said, “those were quite the bozos we took them for.”

  “They’re digging a grave! They’re not rocket scientists!”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Guilderpost agreed. “We had every reason to expect brainpower equivalent to our late assistants in Nevada. But somehow we wound up with people who were rather more than that.”

  “When that son of a bitch came out of the dark,” Irwin said through clenched teeth, “to where I was standing beside the car, and stuck his fingers in my nose, I goddamn well couldn’t believe it.”

  Guilderpost frowned. “Stuck his fingers in your nose?”

  “It’s painful as hell, let me tell you,” Irwin said. “All of a sudden, he was there, brought his hand up, you know, palm toward himself, first two fingers right into my nose, and kept lifting.”

  “Lifting.”

  “I’m on tiptoe,” Irwin said, patting his nose in pained remembrance, “and he’s still lifting, and with his other hand, he’s frisking me, and found my gun.”

  “And,” Guilderpost added, remembering, getting furious all over again, “your goddamn wire! Irwin, are you taping this?”

  “He took the tape,” Irwin said. “But there’s nothing on it, I don’t tape myself sitting alone in a car.”

  “You so mistrust me—”

  Irwin looked scornful. “Fitzroy,” he said, “everybody on earth mistrusts you, and every one of them is right.”

  “And you’re telling me,” Guilderpost said, “if you were to go out and be run over by a city bus, nothing to do with me, those tapes would go to the authorities?”

  “If I’m dead,” Irwin pointed out, “what do I care?”

  “I thought,” Guilderpost said, more in sorrow than in anger, “we had attained some level of trust between us.”

  “You’re not that stupid,” Irwin said, and looked around. “Do we live here now, or are we gonna get off this bridge?”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Over there,” Irwin said, waving vaguely. “And you know where the key is.”

  “You don’t have a spare key in the car?”

  “No.”

  “But you could start it anyway, Irwin, you’re a scientist, you’ll know how to jump wires, or whatever that is.”

  “The doors are locked.”

  “Well, we’ll have to break into the car, then,” Guilderpost said, and firmly started to walk off the bridge, saying, “Come along.”

  Irwin came along. As they walked toward the car, he said, “Can you find that guy Andy again? Not in the computer, I mean, but in the world. Can you find where he lives?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  Guilderpost glowered at the darkness all around them. He still didn’t see the Voyager. He said, “Then we’ll have to make them partners, won’t we?”

  “Temporary partners, you mean.”

  “Naturally.” Guilderpost stopped. “But, Irwin,” he said, “I must insist you stop taping our activities and destroy all the tapes you’ve already made.”

  “Not on your life,” Irwin said, and looked back at him. “Now you want to stand there, in the middle of the road?”

  Grumpy, Guilderpost started walking again. “Where did you leave the car, Irwin?”

  “Out of sight.”

  “Irwin, those tapes are too dangerous.”

  “You’re damn right they are,” Irwin agreed.

  “You won’t destroy them?”

  “Not a chance. But I tell you what,” Irwin said. “Now that you know they exist, I won’t make any more. Nevada and New York are both death-penalty states, there’s enough on tape already to have them fighting over you.”

  “What a nasty piece of work you are, Irwin. And I recall how little you’ve tended to say, at certain moments. Ah, there’s the car, at last.”

  They had walked some distance down the road toward Jones Beach, and there was the Voyager, dimly g
leaming beside the road. Guilderpost began walking around it, looking at the ground, as Irwin said, “What do we tell Little Feather?”

  Guilderpost stopped. “I think, for the moment,” he said, “Little Feather needn’t know about tonight’s minor setback. No need to upset the poor girl. After all, the right body is in the grave, there’s that. And there’s still a chance I can lay my hands on Andy.” And he started walking and looking at the ground again.

  Irwin said, “Do you know his last name?”

  “I doubt it,” Guilderpost said. “He said it was Kelly. The other one didn’t give a last name at all.”

  Irwin said, “Fitzroy, what are you looking for?”

  “A rock,” Guilderpost said.

  Irwin recoiled. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  Guilderpost gave him an exasperated look. “To get into the car,” he said.

  Irwin liked that idea almost as little. “You’re going to smash my car window? With a rock?”

  “If I don’t find one soon, I’ll use your head,” Guilderpost told him. “Help me look, Irwin.”

  8

  * * *

  Until Anne Marie Carpinaw, an extremely attractive semidivorcée in her late thirties, became his fairly significant other, Andy Kelp had never had much dealings with holidays. He pretty much did what he felt like each day, regardless. But now, in addition to curtains on the windows and place mats on the tables, there were these dates on the calendar to think about.

  The latest one was Thanksgiving, which would be on a Thursday this year, or so Anne Marie said. “We’ll have some people in,” she said.

  Kelp had no idea what that phrase meant. “People in? What, like, to fix something?”

  “For dinner, Andy,” she said. “You know what Thanksgiving dinner is.”

  “I know what dinner is,” Kelp said.

  “Well, I’m going to invite May and John, and J.C. and Tiny.”

  Kelp said, “Wait a minute. To eat here, you mean. Come eat dinner with us.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I don’t know what you used to do for Thanksgiving—”