Put a Lid on It

by Donald E. Westlake

  So she was the more interesting one, but the more important one was clearly the man on the left. Maybe fifty, gym-trim, almost completely bald except for a low-lying hedge of black, dressed in tassel loafers and knife-edge slacks and a gray-blue sports jacket over a blue-black polo shirt, he looked at the world through pale blue tinted designer spectacles and he gave off, from the first second you looked at him, an air of absolute self-assurance so total your first reaction was to kick him in the nuts just to see what he'd do.

  This fellow offered Meehan a tight unpleasant smile, as though daring him to kick him in the nuts, and said, “I guess you're who we're waiting for.”

  “I guess so,” Meehan said, as Jeffords bounded up and into the plane, saying, “Hi, there,” extending his hand, saying, “Pat Jeffords.”

  “Howie Briggs,” the guy answered, not standing, but accepting the handshake, clearly seeing that Jeffords, like himself, was the more important member of the duo. “And this is Cindy.”

  “Hi,” said Cindy, in the kind of voice she would have.

  “Arthur wanted us to hitch a ride,” Howie Briggs said, “meet him down at Hilton Head.”

  “I envy you,” Jeffords said, with a happy smile. “And this is Frank.”

  “How are you?”

  “Good,” Meehan said.

  Jeffords might be irritating with the “Frank” business, but in some ways he seemed to know what he was doing. For instance, he seated himself behind Howie Briggs and Meehan behind Cindy, so it would be harder for Briggs to engage Meehan in conversation. And Cindy, of course, would know better than to engage anybody but Briggs in conversation, so it was unlikely Meehan would have to demonstrate for anybody his expertise in streaming technology on the Internet.

  The plane jolted forward, to start what would eventually turn out to be a very long taxi, and Meehan settled down, grinning a little, thinking this place was a lot better than the place he'd come from. Also, he discovered, the seat swiveled.

  Keen.

  7

  IN NORFOLK, IT was totally night. Full of macadamia nuts and club soda, Meehan stepped down from the contributor's plane (still had no idea what that meant) in this remote corner of Norfolk International to find two Busters in topcoats and Dick Tracy hats waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. A little way off, Howie Briggs and Cindy were getting into a white limo. Behind Meehan, Jeffords came cheerfully down the stairs and said, “Well, let's go. Where's our transportation?”

  “There, sir,” said one of the Busters, pointing.

  “Good. Let's do it.”

  Without anybody saying anything one way or another, the new Busters walked to either side of Meehan, with Jeffords coming along behind. They moved toward the white limo, which then drove away, to reveal another black sedan parked beyond it, but this one larger and newer-looking than the one in New York. A Buster held the rear door open, and Meehan entered, followed by Jeffords. The Buster shut the door, the two Busters got in front, and the drive began.

  There was very little conversation over the next hour and a half, except when Meehan said, “One thing.”

  Jeffords raised an eyebrow at him. “Mm?”

  “You introduce me to one other person as Frank,” Meehan told him, “whatever it is you want me to do, I won't do it. I'll go back to the MCC first.”

  “I didn't know it was that important to you,” Jeffords said.

  “Neither did I.”

  “Okay, fine.” In pale dashboard light from up front, Jeffords' face looked as innocent as a statue in church. “So what do you prefer?” he asked. “I mean, I can't just introduce you as Meehan.”

  “I'll take Francis,” Meehan said.

  “That's a good name,” Jeffords allowed. “A little more ambiguous, you know what I mean, but good. Okay, it's a deal.”

  Thinking he might be on a roll, Meehan said, “Will you tell me where we're going?”

  “Outer Banks,” Jeffords said, with a blank smile, and looked out his window at blackness, since they'd left Norfolk behind some time ago.

  Outer Banks. That was an answer, and yet it wasn't an answer, so Meehan contented himself with the fact that he wouldn't be Franked any more.

  Hour and a half, maybe a little longer, and they stopped in the darkness at a gate and a guard shack, with tall razor-wire-topped chain-link fence stretched away to left and right. A guard in a greenish brown uniform came out of the shack, looking doubtful. The Buster at the wheel slid his window down to show a paper to the guard, who took it and carried it with him to his shack.

  The Buster said over his shoulder to Jeffords, “He's phoning.”

  “They should have put us on the list,” Jeffords said. He sounded annoyed.

  Meehan looked out at the sign on the wall of the shack, under the windows. Something about United States Government, and big block letters N P S.

  The guard returned, less dubious but no more friendly. He gave the Buster back his paper, and went away to electrically open the gate. They drove through, and Meehan felt the guard's intense stare on his cheek on the way by.

  From here, the road, two-lane concrete, meandered along, and Meehan became aware of buildings to both sides, all of them dark. Then there was a lit-up one ahead on the right, a blocky barrackslike place, four stories high, with a few windows lit on all the floors, and that's where they were headed.

  Again the Buster escort as they walked up a concrete path with lawn on both sides to the building entrance, where a young woman in sweater and slacks, looking nervous, held the door open and said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Jeffords, they were supposed to have been informed.”

  “No problem,” Jeffords told her, in a tight-lipped way to let her know it was a lie. “Where's our friend staying?”

  “Four-twelve, sir.”

  Meehan hadn't realized “our friend” meant himself until Jeffords turned, handed him his ditty bag, gave him his usual cheery smile, and said, “I'll see you in the morning, Francis. These fellas will show you to your room.”

  “But—” said Meehan to Jeffords' back, as he walked off down the hall with the worried young woman.

  “We take the stairs,” said a Buster.

  Maybe it actually was a barracks; wide central hall to left and right, wide iron stairs leading up, with a landing halfway. Meehan and the Busters clanged up these stairs to the top and along the hall to a brown metal door bearing a brass 412. A key was stuck into the lock in the knob.

  A Buster pulled open the door and said, “They'll call you when they want you.”

  “I never ate dinner,” Meehan said.

  “They do big breakfasts around here,” the other Buster told him.

  The first Buster said, “I think there's snacks or something in there. Take a look.”

  No choice. Meehan stepped through the doorway, and the door snicked shut behind him. Click-click, went the key out there.

  Room 412 was a plain but good bedroom; a lot better than 9 South. It was like a Holiday Inn room without the television set. The attached bath provided razor, toothbrush and toothpaste, and anything else he might need.

  Also, there was food of a sort, on the metal table against the right wall, the double bed being against the left. The food was a bowl of apples and pears, a basket of different kinds of crackers and processed cheeses in individual clear packaging, and small bottles of apple juice and tomato juice and seltzer.

  Meehan dropped his ditty bag on the bed, grabbed an apple, and went over to look out one of the two wide windows, having to lift a venetian blind out of the way. Down below was the road he'd come in. As he chewed and watched, the Busters came out and got into their car and drove off.

  Okay, what does this door look like? Meehan tossed his apple core in the direction of the wastebasket and walked over to study the egress. Door opens outward, so there's no way to get at the hinges. Lock mounted into the knob on the outside, with no parts visible on the inside. Metal frame with a narrow lip extending over the front edge of the door.

  So w
e are not going out that way. Meehan went into the bathroom instead, where he found the plumbing service panel low on the wall between the sink and the shower stall. A pop-top ring from one of the soda cans on the table opened the four Phillips-head screws, and the panel came off to reveal white plastic piping with blue or green taps and, as he'd hoped, another panel on the far side for access from the next-door bathroom.

  Unfortunately, the space was too small and the pipes too many and too thick. He could get a foot through to kick out that other panel, but he'd never get his body through that twisty little space.

  Discouraged, he got to his feet and went back to look at the main room. The two sheets on the bed were about five too few to reach from here to the ground even if he could get the window open and even if he felt like playing apeman, which he didn't. Walls, floor, and ceiling were featureless except for that impassable door.

  Well, it looked as though he'd be spending the night.

  8

  THE PHONE HAD a British sound—bzzt-bzzt—rather than the American braaang. It startled Meehan awake, and he had no idea where he was or what that sound was or why he was seeing daylight through venetian blinds or why the bzzt-bzzt wouldn't stop. But then it did stop, when he found the phone on the metal bedside table, and put the receiver to his face, and said, “Whuzz.”

  “Oh eight hundred, sir,” said a chipper female voice. “You'll be called for at oh eight-thirty.”

  “Uhh,” Meehan said, and the phone answered with a dial tone, so he hung up.

  By oh eight-thirty, he was showered and dressed and had eaten a pear. Nobody in his entire life before had ever said anything like “oh eight hundred” or “oh eight-thirty” in his presence, and he found he didn't like it. It made him nervous.

  Click-click, went a key outside the door, which then opened, to show Jeffords himself, in different shirt and jacket but the same smile. Meehan looked past him, saw Jeffords was alone, but then realized he wasn't up to an escape attempt at this moment. Maybe after breakfast.

  “Sleep well, Francis?”

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

  Clang-clang down the stairs they went, to the first floor, and down the hall to the very last door at the end, which opened to a very large office, extending from front to back across the end of the building, windows on three sides. The office was in segments, a desk segment to the left, a conference table segment to the right, a couches-and-armchairs conversation segment in the middle. A tall distinguished silver-haired man who looked like a Shakespearean actor or possibly a stock swindler stood up from the sweeping broad desk in the desk segment and said, “Ah, good morning. Just in time for breakfast. Sit down, you two, I'll make the call.”

  “Thanks, Bruce,” Jeffords said, with a little wave, and told Meehan, “We'll sit here.”

  So they sat on couches in the conversation segment while Bruce murmured into his phone at his desk, and then Bruce came over to join them, so they stood up again and Jeffords said, “Francis Meehan, may I present Bruce Benjamin.”

  “How are you,” Meehan said, and Bruce Benjamin said, “Delighted. Do sit down,” so they all sat down again.

  Benjamin had an avuncular smile that really cared about you, and really wanted to sell you some stock. “Good flight?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “They treating you well here at—Oh, good,” he said, and popped up again, because two black waiters in white had just wheeled in a table full of breakfast things: hot things like pancakes and scrambled eggs with Sterno cans under them, cold things like sliced melon and little corn flakes boxes, plus two kinds of coffee.

  “Lovely,” Benjamin told the waiters, who went away, and Benjamin said, “Why don't we eat while we chat?”

  That seemed like a good idea. They filled plates and cups, sat again, and Benjamin said, “I suppose you're wondering what this is all about.”

  “Most people would,” Meehan suggested.

  “Of course they would. It's quite simple,” Benjamin assured him, which was what Meehan had been afraid of. “You are, if you don't mind my saying so, a thief.”

  “I don't mind you saying so here,” Meehan told him.

  “Of course.” Benjamin had a store of meaningless smiles, like Halloween masks. He showed another from the collection and said, “Except for the occasional misfortune to which we are all heir—”

  “Amen,” said Jeffords.

  “—it would seem you are quite an accomplished thief.”

  “Thank you,” Meehan said. His jaws chewed toast while his mind worked like mad but went nowhere, like a squirrel in a wheel-shaped cage. What did these people want, and what could Meehan give them instead?

  “As you have no doubt presumed,” Benjamin went on, “we find ourselves in need of your skills.”

  “Talents,” Jeffords said, around omelet. “Expertise.”

  “That, too,” Benjamin said. “There is a certain place we wish you to enter,” he explained, “and a certain object we wish you to collect, and turn over to us. You understand, there is much about this affair that must remain sub rosa.”

  “From me, you mean,” Meehan said.

  “Well, yes.”

  Spreading jam on toast, Jeffords said, “It's what we call a need-to-know basis.”

  “What you need to know,” Benjamin told Meehan, “is that we are sufficiently connected to your government, in one way or another, that we can guarantee, if you accomplish this retrieval for us, your current troubles with the law will disappear.”

  “Never to return,” Jeffords added.

  “Well, those never to return,” Benjamin cautioned. “Your future activities are out of our purview.”

  “So it's easy, isn't it?” Jeffords said. “We'll give you maps, we'll drive you to the place—”

  “Near the place,” Benjamin corrected.

  “Well, sure,” Jeffords agreed. “You go in, you get it, you bring it out, you give it to us, you're home free.”

  Meehan said, “Where is it, what is it, who's protecting it, what do you want with it, and who else wants it?”

  “Sorry,” Jeffords said, not sounding sorry at all. “Those are not within your need to know. The where, of course, you'll learn when we go there. But the point is, Francis, once you've done this simple little task, your days in the MCC are over.”

  A big beaming smile on his face, the most impressive in his entire Halloween mask collection, Benjamin said, “So there you are. What do you say?”

  “No,” Meehan said.

  9

  THEY GAPED AT him. They couldn't believe it. “But,” Benjamin said, “we're offering you your freedom.”

  “I doubt that all to hell,” Meehan told him. “The way you birds operate, all you're offering me is additional charges.”

  Benjamin appealed to Jeffords. “You've talked to the man before,” he said. “You recommended him. What's wrong? What does he want?”

  “I don't know.” A piece of bacon held forgotten in his upraised hand, like a baton, Jeffords mused at Meehan. Finally he said, “Do you want to go back to the MCC?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can't believe that,” Jeffords said. “It's a terrible place. You've said so yourself.”

  “It's a chrome cesspit,” Meehan said. That was another of the ten thousand rules: Write poetry, but not down.

  “Very good,” Benjamin said; an aesthete, with a good ear.

  “So,” Jeffords insisted, “given it's…what you said, why would you want to go back there?”

  “Because,” Meehan explained, “they know what they're doing.”

  That stopped them both for a few seconds, while they gave one another bleak looks; no more smiles out of the Halloween trunk. Then Jeffords sighed and said, “You don't think we know what we're doing.”

  “Right.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Meehan shrugged. “If you want to be insulted,” he said, “that's up to you.”

  “Fire away,” Jeffords said, but he looked a little p
ale.

  Meehan nodded at him. “When you first showed up, you claimed you were a lawyer, and you couldn't make that one fly for five seconds. Do you think I was the only one in that building made you for a ringer?”

  Stiffly, Jeffords said, “I wouldn't know.”

  “I would,” Meehan said. “Then the next thing, you take me out of the MCC like it's a treat or something, but nobody thought about the key for the shackles. Then—”

  Benjamin, taken aback, said, “Shackles?”

  “There was a mix-up about the key,” Jeffords mumbled. “We had to go back for it.”

  “I see.” Benjamin nodded at Meehan. “Go on,” he said.

  “The next thing that happens,” Meehan went on, “you got people on the plane that shouldn't be on the plane and shouldn't know there's anything funny going on, but they're on the plane because it's a contributor's plane, whatever that is, but whatever it is it means you don't control the situation. But if you're going to pull something with legal consequences, which is what you're talking about here, you've got to be able to control the situation.”

  Sounding frosty, Benjamin said, “I couldn't agree more, Mr. Meehan. Anything else?”

  “Yes,” Meehan said, marking that “Mr.” “We get to the gate to this place out there last night and the guard doesn't know we're coming, so once again a whole lot of people who aren't supposed to know I'm here do know, because they have to be alerted before we can get in. I won't even talk about how I never got dinner. All I'll say is, you people tell me you picked me in particular to go into this caper with you, whatever it is, and I'm supposed to feel all honored and plucked-from-the-crowd, but what I tell you is, I wouldn't pick you to go to the deli with. So just take me back to the MCC.”

  Jeffords shook his head. “I never expected anything like this for a second,” he said. He gazed at Meehan more in sorrow than in anger, a man whose pet dog won't do his great trick in front of company.