Why Me? d-5

by Donald E. Westlake

  May, hovering like a den mother, said, "Would you like a beer, Andy?"

  Dortmunder told her, "It's too early in the day for him."

  "The hell it is," said Kelp.

  "Better make it two, then," Dortmunder said.

  "Three," said May, and went off to get the beers, trailing cigarette smoke.

  Dortmunder went and sat down in his favorite easy chair, facing the sofa. He watched Kelp watching the Byzantine Fire until May came back, when Kelp's attention was finally distracted by a can of beer. Then Dortmunder said, "So that's it."

  Kelp looked at him over the beer can. "Jeez, John," he said. "How'd it happen?"

  So Dortmunder told him how it had happened; the breaking in, the guys arriving, the guys leaving, the finding of the stone. "Who knew what it was?" Dortmunder finished.

  "Who knew what it was?" Kelp echoed, incredulous. "The Byzantine Fire? Everybody knows what it is!"

  "They do now," Dortmunder pointed out. "Wednesday night, it had just been robbed, it wasn't all over the papers yet, nobody knew any Byzantine Fire."

  "Sure they did. It was too in the papers, the American people were giving it to Turkey, that's how come it came in from Chicago."

  Dortmunder gave Kelp his steadiest look. "Andy," he said, "that's something else you know now, it's part of the robbery story. Tell me the truth: before the heist, did you know all about this American people gift business?"

  Looking a bit uncomfortable, Kelp said, "Well, in a general sort of way."

  "It could of happened to you," Dortmunder told him. "Don't kid yourself. You could of been the one noticed the vacation sign, broke in, opened the safe, saw that big red rock and figured, what the hell, take it along, maybe it's worth something. It could of happened to you."

  "It didn't, John," Kelp said. "That's all I can say, and I'm happy I can say it. It didn't happen to me."

  "It happened to me," Dortmunder said, and was grimly aware that all three people in the room—including, God help him, himself—were thinking about the Dortmunder jinx.

  Kelp shook his head. "Wow," he said. "Whadaya gonna do now, John?"

  "I don't know. I didn't realize I even had the goddam thing till last night, I haven't had much time to think about it."

  "I hate to say this to any man," Kelp said, "but I think you oughta give it back."

  Dortmunder nodded. "I been thinking the same way. But it raises a question."

  "Yeah?"

  "How? How do I give it back? Do I mail it?"

  "Don't be silly, you know you can't trust the mails."

  "Also," Dortmunder said, "I don't feature just leaving it someplace, like one of your abandoned babies in church, because then some kid comes along or some wise guy, and he grabs it, and the heat stays on, and I'm still in trouble."

  "You know what, John?" Kelp sat up straighter on the sofa. "A sudden thought just hit me."

  "Yeah? What's that?"

  "You better not go to the O.J., after all. I don't think you could safely chit-chat with Tiny Bulcher. I mean, face it, you don't have an alibi."

  Dortmunder said nothing. He just looked at Kelp. It was May, seated in her own chair to one side, who said quietly, "John knows that, Andy."

  "Oh, yeah? Yeah, I see what you mean." Kelp grinned and shook his head at himself, saying, "This is still new news to me, you know? I'm still catching up."

  "The thing right now," Dortmunder said, "is how do I give that goddam ruby back."

  "I think you gotta call them," Kelp said.

  "Who, Turkey? Or the American people."

  "The law. Call that cop on the television, Maloney." (Having only heard the name and never having seen it, that's the way Kelp thought it was spelled.)

  "Call the cops," mused Dortmunder. "And then I say, 'Hello, I got it. You want it back? »

  "That's right," Kelp said. He was getting excited. "Then you maybe even dicker a little. John, you could maybe even turn a profit on this thing!"

  "I don't want to turn a profit," Dortmunder told him. "I just want out from under that stone."

  "Well, keep an open mind," Kelp suggested. "See how the conversation goes."

  "I'll tell you how the conversation goes," Dortmunder said. "We dicker back and forth, we keep an open mind, and meantime they're tracing the call, and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by blue uniforms."

  "Not necessarily," Kelp said, looking very thoughtful.

  May said, "Andy? Do you have an idea?"

  "Could be," Kelp said. "Coouuuuld very well be."

  27

  When the little man sidled into the office, ushered by Tony Cappelletti, Mologna gazed sternly across his desk and said, "Benjamin Arthur Klopzik?"

  "Gee!" the little man said, with a sudden huge beaming smile. "Is that me?"

  Mologna frowned and tried again: "You are Benjamin Arthur Klopzik?"

  "I am?"

  "Siddown," Tony Cappelletti told the little man, giving him a shove toward the chair in front of Mologna's desk. "This is Klopzik, all right. You trying to pull something, Benjy?"

  "Oh, no, sir, Captain," Benjamin Arthur Klopzik said, and turned an appealing little smile in the direction of Mologna. "Good morning, Chief Inspector."

  "Go to hell," Mologna told him.

  "Yes, sir." Klopzik placed his dirty-nailed hands between his bony knees and sat very alertly, like a dog who can do tricks.

  "So," Mologna said, "a lot of you social misfits, penny-ante heisters, cheapjack four-flushers, and miserable hopeless losers figure you'll help the Police Department of the City of New York find the Byzantine Fire, is that it?"

  "Yes, sir, Chief Inspector."

  "Not to mention the FBI."

  Klopzik looked confused. "Chief Inspector?"

  "Not that I want to mention the FBI," Mologna went on, and looked past Klopzik to toss a wintry smile at the still-standing Tony Cappelletti, who gave nothing back at all; it was like telling a joke to a horse. Mologna wished Leon wouldn't spend so much time in the outer office, doing his crochet. Was there an excuse to buzz for Leon? Frowning severely at Klopzik, Mologna said, "So you'll make a statement, is that right? And sign it?"

  But Klopzik looked terrified: "Statement? Sign?" Twisting around in his chair, he stared mutely at Cappelletti, as though at his trainer.

  Who shook his heavy hairy head. "We don't want to blow Benjy in the underworld, Francis."

  No statement, then, and therefore no Leon. "All right," Mologna said. "Klopzik, there's no deal involved in this, you understand that. If you bums and parasites and miserable scum decide to help the authorities in their investigations into this heinous crime, it's strictly public spiritedness on your side, you got that?"

  "Oh, sure, Chief Inspector," Klopzik said, happy again. "And in the meantime, the blitz is off, isn't that right?"

  This time, the full frigid force of Mologna's wintry smile was directed at Klopzik, who blinked under it as though he'd developed immediate frostbite of the nose. "You call that a blitz, Klopzik?" Mologna demanded. "You think that little exercise we've had up till now deserves the word blitz?"

  Mologna stopped there, waiting for an answer, but he might as well have saved saving his breath. The mind of Benjamin Arthur Klopzik was nowhere near intricate enough to figure out whether the right answer was yes or no. Mologna waited, and Klopzik sat blinking at him, alert for an order to roll over or fetch a stick, and at last Mologna answered the question himself: "It does not," he said. "Tomorrow, if we're still lookin for that blessed ruby, you and all your riffraff ne'er-do-well friends will have a golden opportunity to see what a real blitz looks like. Do you want that, Klopzik?"

  Klopzik knew that answer: "No, Chief Inspector!"

  "You go back and tell that gang of ruffians what I said."

  "Yes, Chief Inspector."

  "And you can also tell those hooligans and boyos, as far as I'm concerned they aren't doin me or the Police Department or the City of New York any favors."

  "Oh, no, Chief Inspector."
r />   "Their civic duty is all they're performin, and the sweet Virgin knows it's overdue."

  "Yes, Chief Inspector."

  "They'll get no thanks if they succeed, and they'll feel the wrath of my fist if they fail."

  "Yes, Chief Inspector. Thank you, Chief Inspector."

  "And when I say—"

  The door opened and Leon drifted in, like Venus toward shore. "You'll never believe this one," he announced, while Tony Cappelletti surveyed him with the gloomy frustration of a muzzled St. Bernard studying a cat.

  "Hold it, Leon," Mologna said, and went on with his sentence: "When I say tomorrow, Klopzik, do you know what I mean?"

  Wrinkles of bewilderment further marred the little man's features. "Yes, Chief Inspector?"

  "I'll tell you what I mean," Mologna warned him. "I do not mean whenever it is you drag your miserable carcass out of your vermin-infested bed."

  "No, Chief Inspector."

  "I mean one second after midnight, Klopzik. That's tomorrow."

  Klopzik nodded, extremely alert and receptive. "Midnight," he echoed.

  "Plus one second."

  "Oh, yes, Chief Inspector. I'll tell Tuh-my friends. I'll tell them just what you said."

  "You do that." To Cappelletti, Mologna said, "Take it away, Tony, before I forget myself and polish my shoes with it."

  "Right, Francis." Cappelletti cuffed Klopzik almost amiably across the top of the head. "Come along, Benjy."

  "Yes, sir, Captain," Klopzik said, spurting to his feet. "Good morning, Chief Inspector."

  "Go fuck yourself."

  "Yes, sir!" Klopzik turned his happy face toward Leon: "Good mor, morn, uh…"

  "Out, Benjy," Cappelletti said.

  "You're cute," Leon told Klopzik, who left the room looking suddenly glazed and uncertain.

  When they were alone, Mologna said, "Leon, don't you overstep the bounds of good taste."

  "Oh, I couldn't."

  "That's good. Now, tell me what it is I won't believe."

  "The thief just called," Leon said, with the kind of little smirk that means there's more than that to the story.

  "The thief. The thief?"

  "The man with the ruby in his bellybutton," Leon agreed. "The very one."

  "But that's not the part I'll not believe."

  "Oh, no," Leon said, and actually giggled. "See, he called asking for you—he got the pronunciation right and everything—so they put him through to me."

  "How'd he sound?"

  "Nervous."

  "He damn well oughta be. So what happened?"

  "I said you were in conference and could you call him back at ten-thirty, and he said yes."

  Leon stopped there, swaying, dancing in place to some inner rhythm, grinning with barely repressed mirth. Mologna frowned at him, feeling stupid, not getting it. "So? What happened next?"

  "Nothing," Leon said. "He hung up. But don't you see? I said you'd call him back. He gave me his phone number!"

  28

  When Dortmunder got off the phone with Chief Inspector Maloney's (he also thought it was spelled that way) secretary—an odd-sounding guy for a cop—he was so drenched in perspiration that he took a shower in Andy Kelp's bathroom, emerging clad in Andy's robe (too short) to find a note on the kitchen table: "Out for lunch. Back in 10 min." So he sat with the Daily News and read about the manhunt for himself until Kelp came back with Kentucky Fried Chicken and a six-pack. "You're looking more relaxed already," Kelp said.

  "I am not," Dortmunder told him. "I look like somebody with a disease. I look like somebody's been in a dungeon for a hundred years. I've seen myself in your mirror, and I know what I look like, which is exactly what I am: a man that made Tiny Bulcher mad."

  "Look on the bright side," Kelp advised, distributing beer and chicken legs here and there on the kitchen table. "We're fighting back. We're working on a plan."

  "If that's the bright side," Dortmunder said, cutting his thumb as he opened a beer can, "there's no point looking at it."

  "While I was out," Kelp said, touching all the chicken legs in the bucket before making his choice, "I set things up for the phone call."

  "I don't even like to think about it."

  Kelp ate chicken. "It's a piece of cake."

  Dortmunder frowned at the kitchen clock. "Half an hour." He picked up a chicken leg, studied it, put it down again. "I can't eat." Standing, he said, "I'll go get dressed."

  "Drink your beer," Kelp suggested. "It's got food value."

  So Dortmunder took his beer away and got dressed, and when he came back Kelp had eaten all the chicken legs but one. "I saved that for you," he said, pointing at the thing, "in case you changed your mind."

  "Thanks a lot." Dortmunder opened another beer without cutting himself and gnawed a bit on the chicken leg.

  Getting to his feet, Kelp said, "Lemme show you my access. Bring the leg."

  Kelp's bedroom was behind the kitchen. Carrying the chicken leg and the new beer, Dortmunder followed him back there and into the closet, which turned out to have a false rear wall made of a single piece of Sheetrock. Removing this, revealing a brick wall with an irregular opening about five feet high and a foot and a half wide, Kelp grasped two suction-cup handles attached to a piece of wallboard beyond the bricks and did a complicated little lift-tug-twist-push which made that wallboard recede, exposing a dim, crowded-looking space beyond.

  Kelp took a step through the hole into this space, still grasping the wallboard by the suction-cup handles, and twisted his body sidewise to get through the narrow opening in the bricks. Dortmunder watched him, dubious, but when Kelp was all the way through with no alarms or shouts or other hooraw, Dortmunder followed, slithering through into an obvious warehouse, lined with rows of rough-plank shelves and bins, all piled high with large or small cardboard cartons. Gray light hovered in the air from distant grimy windows.

  Kelp, sliding the wallboard segment back into its slot, whispered, "We got to be quiet now. There's workers down at the front of the building."

  "You mean now? There's people in here now?"

  "Well, sure," Kelp said. "It's Friday, right? A working day. C'mon."

  Kelp led the way down the nearest aisle, Dortmunder tiptoeing after. Kelp moved with absolute assurance even when the echoing sound of semidistant voices was heard, and eventually Dortmunder followed him through a windowed door into a smallish room where telephones and telephone equipment were displayed on tiny walnutish shelves on orange pegboard fronting all four walls. "Here we go," Kelp said, the compleat salesman. "Phones here, add-ons there, recording and playback equipment over there."

  "Andy," Dortmunder said, "let's do it and get it over with."

  "Well, make your selection," Kelp told him. "Whadaya want? Here we got a nice pink Princess, light in the dial, remember the Princess?"

  "I remember the Princess," Dortmunder agreed. "You couldn't dial it, and you couldn't hang it up."

  "Not one of our best designs," Kelp admitted. "Now, over here we got something Swedish. I notice this particular model is avocado, but you're not limited in color, we got every color you want. Here, give this a heft."

  Dortmunder, having put down his beer can with the chicken leg balanced atop it, found himself holding the avocado something Swedish. It looked like minimalist modern sculpture, shaped somewhat like a horse's neck, curving and narrowing up from a not-quite-round base, then arcing at the top into what was apparently the part you listened to. And the little black holes down near the base were probably where you talked. Turning this object upside down, Dortmunder saw the dial on the bottom, surrounding a large red button. He pushed the button, then released it.

  "Very popular," Kelp said, "with the trendy set. One little warning, though—if you put it down to like get a pencil, light a cigarette, you break the connection."

  "Break the connection? I don't follow."

  "It's like hanging up," Kelp explained. "That red button on the bottom hangs it up."

  "So if I'm ta
lking on this thing," Dortmunder said, "I can't put it down because then I'll hang up."

  "You have to put it down on its side."

  Dortmunder put the thing down on its side. It rolled off the shelf and fell on the floor.

  "Then," Kelp said, turning away from the Swedish something, "we've got this little number from England. Very lightweight, very advanced design."

  Dortmunder frowned at this new option, sitting like a praying mantis on its shelf. It was shaped more or less like a real phone, but it was smaller and colored two shades of avocado and made from the same kind of plastic as model Stukas and Stutzes. Also, it didn't have any rounded surfaces, just flat surfaces that met at funny angles. Dortmunder picked up the receiver and closed his hand around it and the receiver disappeared; a little bit of plastic stuck out of Dortmunder's mitt at each end, like segments of a mouse on both sides of a cat's smile. He opened his hand and looked at how close the ear-part and the mouth-part were, then held it tentatively to his cheek, then frowned at Kelp and said, "This is for people with tiny heads."

  "You get used to it," Kelp assured him. "I've got one of those in the hall closet."

  "In case you're hanging up your coat when the phone rings."

  "Sure."

  Dortmunder poked the other part of this English number with his finger, planning to dial it, but the phone jittered away as though ticklish. He pursued it as far as the wall, where he got halfway through dialing a «6» when the phone loused him up by turning with him. "You need two hands to dial it," he objected. "Just like the Princess."

  "It is better," Kelp conceded, "on incoming calls."

  "From the Munchkins. Andy, all I want's a phone."

  "How about this one shaped like Mickey Mouse?"

  "A phone," Dortmunder said.

  "We haven't even talked push buttons."

  "Andy," Dortmunder said, "do you know what a phone looks like?"

  "Sure. But take a look at this one in its own briefcase, built right in. Carry it anywhere, plug it in. Here's one with a blackboard on it, you can take messages, write them down with chalk."

  While Kelp continued to point this way and that, calling Dortmunder's attention to things of no interest, Dortmunder picked up his chicken leg and beer, chewed and drank, and scanned the orange wall, searching, searching…until finally, on the lowest shelf way over to the right, he saw a phone. A real phone. Black, with a dial. Shaped like a phone. "That," Dortmunder said.