Put a Lid on It

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Yes, I know,” Jeffords agreed, “you told me so, you're absolutely right. Well, we're learning as we go in this operation.”

  “Are we,” Meehan said.

  Jeffords ignored that, saying, “Thank God the people Arthur talked to don't know what it is that's out there, but now Arthur's other friends do know something's there. Something exists.”

  Goldfarb said, “Do they want to get it so they can release it?”

  “No,” Jeffords said. “They would merely like our president to be deeply in debt to them. Let's say, even more deeply in debt.”

  Meehan said, “So what happened today, and what's gonna happen tomorrow?”

  “After I got your call,” Jeffords said, “Bruce and I did some of our own inquiries, and it didn't take long to learn that two or three people had been indiscreet around Arthur.” Again he sighed. “It's so hard to maintain security,” he told them, “in an organization so full of passionate amateurs and true believers. Some of those people will tell anybody anything, because after all, aren't we all on the same side? Don't we represent beauty and truth?”

  “Security breached,” Meehan said, dredging that phrase up from some spy novel somewhere. “Now what?”

  “Fortunately,” Jeffords said, “we do have some hotheads on call when intimidation is needed, Cuban and Serbian mostly, more recently super-American citizens, and I believe even now”—with a look at his watch—“a few of them are increasing Arthur's cleaning bills, down there at Hilton Head.”

  “That's not gonna keep—” Meehan stopped and frowned. “Wait a minute. Did you say combined Egyptian and Israeli intelligence? I mean, I heard you, but the penny didn't drop. How are you gonna shut them down?”

  Jeffords said, “We can make it very clear to them, Francis, through various channels, that we know what they know, we know what they were trying to do, and we would be very displeased to hear they were still trying to do it. Or let the Other Side know, accidentally or by design, that we know something's up. The only sure way to stop an intelligence operation is to shine a light on it, and that's what you and we have done.”

  Meehan looked at Goldfarb. “Does that fly?”

  “Probably,” she said. “Not necessarily.”

  “Almost guaranteed,” Jeffords said.

  “Great,” Meehan said. “Well, I tell you what, Mr. Jeffords. You tell your guy Arthur and his friends, if these Mostafas and Yehudis come sniffing around any more, I know some Cuban Serbs myself. And they don't use channels. They mostly use cement.”

  The lamb chops, it turned out, were really very good. You could say special.

  When he got back to the room the telephone's message light was blinking again, and this time it was Woody's recorded voice he heard: “Nine in the morning, at the curb outside your place.”

  Okay. We're moving.

  24

  “LET'S HAVE LUNCH first,” Woody said, he being the one driving his cousin's car, a gray Volvo station wagon with the rear third converted to a cage, which Meehan had initially assumed was for inmates, until he got his first, but not last, whiff of dog.

  “Sure,” Meehan said. By now, he'd grown used to the smell of dog, barely noticed it at all, had not the slightest trouble thinking about food. So they drove on by the turnoff to Spring Road, continuing on up US Route 7 to Sheffield, where they found lunch.

  Saturday, October 16, clear pale sky, crisp dry air; they weren't the only people in New York City to decide to drive to New England today, which is why it had taken them three hours to get here. Lunchtime.

  Coming back down, Spring Road was on their right, two-lane blacktop heading westward into thick forest, evergreens and maples and a lot of shrubbery, angling upward along the flank of Mount Washington, named for another president, set like a huge shaggy green dunce cap to mark the conjunction of three states. They drove slowly along, the road shrouded by trees, hard to see anything to either side, and after a couple miles there was a car ahead of them, going the same way.

  “Traffic,” Meehan said.

  Looking in the mirror, Woody said, “Somebody behind us, too.”

  “You wouldn't expect a lot of traffic here,” Meehan commented. “Not good news.”

  Up ahead, the car preceding them signaled for a left. When it then went ahead and made the left, it revealed a guy standing in the middle of Spring Road, wearing a blue blazer, red pants, and a white straw hat. This guy waved for Woody to also turn left.

  “The guy behind me,” Woody said, “is signaling a left.”

  “I think we go with the flow,” Meehan said.

  So they turned left, following the first car, followed by the third. There'd been a sign on a wooden post beside the road where they turned, reading BURNSTONE TRAIL, but it wasn't like a Highway Department sign, the letters being burnt into a rectangle of wood.

  Burnstone Trail was thickly flanked by trees, not in a formal planting but obviously groomed and cared for. They also sported red-white-and-blue bunting looped along both sides from tree to tree. Between the trees, stuck into the ground on thin metal feet, were posters in combinations of red and white and blue for several people whose first name seemed to be Re-elect.

  The car up ahead signaled for another left. “Something,” Woody said.

  There was a clear space between trees along here, un-festooned by bunting and signs, and behind that space was an open grassy field, tilted a bit uphill toward Mount Washington. About thirty cars were parked in that field, in neat rows, with two guys in white straw hats, blue blazers and red pants ushering each arrival into place. And yes, when the car in front made the turn, there was another similar guy standing in the road, waving them to follow.

  They did what all the waving guys suggested, with Meehan noticing that the people getting out of the other cars were all dressed pretty good, but not great, so he and Woody would fit in. He himself was wearing his shirt from last night, and the other new pants, and the new shoes, and his regular zippered cotton jacket that he'd worn into and out of the MCC. Woody was dressed at the same socioeconomic level, so they'd both be all right.

  “I don't think there's any point locking,” Woody said, as they got out.

  When people left their cars, they walked up the gradual slope to the end of the field, where there were more red-white-and-blue people, some of these girls, driving electric golf carts, with one seat beside the driver and two more behind, facing backward.

  “You know what this is,” Woody said. “This is a political rally. Three weeks before the election, Saturday, no rain, it's a political rally.”

  “Gets us onto the property,” Meehan said.

  They rode backward in the cart, along a dirt trail in the woods, which was exactly like life, in that you never knew what was coming, and when they got off at the other end they turned around and there was the house.

  Hell of a house. Big and sprawling, it was three stories high, plus attics, all white clapboard, dark green awnings and trim, big porch across the front, big curving porch on the left side. A blacktop road that was no doubt the continuation of Burnstone Trail curled in from the right past the front of the house and continued on into woods on the left, where other structures could just barely be made out.

  “Our stuff is gonna be over there,” Meehan muttered, as they walked toward the house.

  “We shouldn't have had lunch,” Woody said.

  He was right. Ahead of them, before the road, under tents without sides, were long counters where you could get for free hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken legs, cole slaw, ice cream, soft drinks, wine, and beer. Every one of these counters carried a sign saying what business had donated them, so a whole lot of people were going to have little tax discounts in their future after this day.

  It was an outdoor party, that was clear enough, even to the portable toilets discreetly to one side in among the trees. So the area in front of the house was already pretty full of families and couples, everybody trying to deal with a paper plate full of food, a paper napkin, and som
ething to drink, all at once. Some of them were doing this while holding the hand of a child who wanted to go in a different direction.

  “Maybe I'll have a hot dog,” Woody said, so they both did.

  With just a hot dog and a can of beer, and with the paper napkin in your shirt pocket, it wasn't that hard to operate. Meehan and Woody ambled through the people, trending generally leftward, toward where those other structures had been glimpsed off in the woods, and Meehan said, “I don't think with this crowd we could—”

  “Is this on?”

  “Yes!” came a ragged cry from several people.

  Woody tapped Meehan's arm and made a head gesture meaning, Let's get farther away from that. So they did.

  “Folks. I'm glad to see this turnout today, and I know Mr. Burnstone is just as glad as I am, and really sorry he couldn't get here for this occasion….”

  They were far enough away now that they didn't actually have to listen if they didn't want to, though some words did creep into their brains unbidden. Meehan said, “All's I know is the stuff isn't in the main house. Looked like there were two, three buildings over this way.”

  “—to restore the confidence of the people—”

  They were on the road now, most of the milling partygoers on the grass to their left, the house looming to their right, the speaker some distance behind them up on the front porch, with a lectern in front of him covered with an American flag, the gooseneck microphone on top of that.

  “Be nice if we could look in a couple windows,” Woody said.

  “—too long in the grip of people playing fast and loose—”

  A bunch of red-white-blue guys on the side porch were un-limbering musical instruments. That they included banjo and clarinet suggested some Dixieland was headed their way. Some saints would soon be marching in.

  Beyond the house, Burnstone Trail curved gently rightward among maple and pine trees. At least two buildings were visible back there, one a pocket version of the big house, also in white clapboard, probably a guest house, the other barn-red, therefore a barn. And there might be other structures as well, farther back.

  And here, stretched across the trail between big maples, was a golden rope, from which dangled a small metal sign: PRIVATE. And over to the right, seated on a folding chair, big arms folded across big chest, was a guy whose red-white-blue costume did not at all disguise the fact he was a rent-a-cop. He was also looking at Meehan and Woody.

  “Let's mosey on back,” Meehan said, and so they did.

  “—the protection of the American family against the purveyors of smut and—”

  Yup; When the Saints Go Marching In. Leaning closer to Woody, Meehan said, “I wanna see more of this road.”

  “And less of that band,” Woody said.

  They made a wide arc away from the house and back toward the food, picking up another hot dog and beer before angling toward the trail again.

  “—our sons and daughters in uniform—”

  More mixed pine and maple forest, out of which the Trail came a-winding, and across which was another golden rope bearing another go-to-hell sign. “Crowd control,” Meehan said.

  “Maybe we've seen enough,” Woody suggested.

  “I know I ate enough,” Meehan said, and they headed back toward the house.

  “—the sacred Stars and Stripes!”

  At the beginning, the speaker had been up against people who were already involved in other things, their own conversations, their food, their families, but by sheer doggedness he'd gotten more and more of the crowd to shut up and pay attention—a splinter group was around the corner, paying attention to the band—and even to applaud now and again. Also, more people kept on arriving, so that when Meehan and Woody made their way through they were slowed by quite a crowd between themselves and the route out of here. They quartered slowly through the mob, stitching against the grain.

  “We must build more and better prisons!”

  That got a big hand, and even a shout from somebody: “What's a better prison?”

  With horror, Meehan realized the shout had come from Woody.

  “One that keeps them longer!”

  Which got both applause and laughter, and another response. As Meehan looked on, aghast, Woody called out, “Don't you believe in rehabilitation?” He was no longer moving toward the dirt path out of here, but toward the speaker on the porch.

  Error. Meehan faded back into the crowd, never quite stopping but not giving in to panic either. Woody was in the process over there of breaking about a dozen of the ten thousand rules. Maybe more.

  “We're talking about hardened criminals here.”

  “But isn't it prison that hardened them?”

  There was the path, just a little farther ahead, just beyond the outermost cluster of listeners. Three or four of the golf carts waited there, with their drivers, but Meehan thought it would be more discreet to walk away at this moment, particularly since everybody, including the golf cart drivers, was enthralled by the debate between Woody and the guy with the microphone.

  “If they weren't criminals, they wouldn't be in prison in the first place.”

  “You mean they were criminals when they were born?”

  Amazing how Woody's voice carried, even past the golf carts, which Meehan passed now, galloping on the inside but strolling on the outside. Since he well knew that Woody's most usual fashion accessory was the outstanding warrant—don't leave home without one—there was no way that scene could end other than badly.

  “They became criminals when they committed a crime!”

  “Isn't that when they could be wised up, taught how to live right?”

  The dirt path angled gently downslope through the trees, the nearest parked cars already visible. Woody hadn't locked the station wagon, but he had the keys with him. It would not be a good idea to go ask for the keys.

  “Don't waste sympathy on those animals! We've got to be tough on them!”

  “Tough? You think you're tough? The joints I've been in, you wouldn't last five minutes! You talk tough out here with all these soft civilians, but—What? What do you people want?”

  Meehan was in among the parked cars now, and by golly some of them still had the keys in the ignition. The staff people were all down at the far end, waiting for late arrivals. Meehan wasn't being closely observed, but he was certainly being seen, so he couldn't backtrack or stop to study different cars or do anything but just keep walking, throwing quick glances through car windows along the way.

  Here. A nice black Infiniti, a black leather key-holder dangling from the ignition. Without breaking his pace, Meehan opened the driver's door, slid behind the wheel, started the engine.

  What a lovely purr this engine made. And when Meehan put it in gear and moved slowly forward, how like a really good powerboat it was, rolling gracefully over the uneven field.

  Meehan grinned and waved to the red-white-blues, and they grinned and waved back. At moderate speed, he headed back down Spring Road.

  And it didn't smell of dog, either.

  25

  MEEHAN GOT BACK to room 318 a little after nine the next morning to find, yet again, the message light blinking on the telephone. This time, he let it go on blinking while he showered and shaved and brushed teeth. Then, wrapped in a towel, he listened to the message, which was Goldfarb: “Call me.”

  Well, that was succinct. Meehan hadn't had to memorize Goldfarb's number, since it was okay within the ten thousand rules for him to know it, but it did mean he had to remember where he'd put the piece of paper with the number and address.

  In the bedside table drawer, is where, next to the Gideon Bible. He dialed it.

  She picked up on the first ring, sounding paranoid: “Who's this?”

  “Meehan. You said call.”

  “Where were you?”

  Tricky question. “What do you mean?”

  “I left that message four o'clock yesterday.”

  “I was working,” he said. “You know wh
at I mean.”

  Which was at least partly true. Up to the point he'd driven away from Burnstone Trail in that clean black Infiniti, he'd been working. After that, the thirty-five miles to the nearest New York City commuter line at Dover Plains, New York, where he'd abandoned the Infiniti without a fingerprint on it, he'd been fleeing. But when he started to chat with the angry woman on the platform, the only other person beside himself headed toward the city on a Saturday afternoon (because she'd broken up with her controlling boyfriend yet again, whose house the country house was, as it turned out), he was on his own time, about which Goldfarb need not concern herself, although in fact the angry woman's—Rosalie, less angry later—apartment was in Goldfarb's general neighborhood.

  These irrelevancies, the ten thousand rules suggested, could be left out of the official record; thus: “I was working. You know what I mean.”

  “Oh,” she said, suddenly hushed. “Is it done?”

  “No no,” he assured her, “that was just to have a looksee. What's up?”

  “I need you to come here,” she said. “Can you come up here now?”

  Lawyer-work on a Sunday? What the hell; stay on her good side. “Sure,” he said.

  “Okay, listen,” she said.

  He listened, but she didn't say anything else, so finally he said, “Yeah?”

  “Just come up,” she said, and broke the connection.

  She looked worried. She wore black jeans and a black cashmere sweater and the same monster black-rimmed glasses. She held the door open to say, “Wait, let me get my key,” then shut the door in his face and he cooled his heels in the hall a minute till she came back, clutching her keys. She stepped into the hall, pulling the door shut, and he moved toward the elevator, saying, “Where we going?”

  “Nowhere. Just stand there.”

  He looked at her. “In the hall?”

  Looking at the key ring in her hand, she said, “The button to unlock the door doesn't work. It's stuck.”