Put a Lid on It

by Donald E. Westlake

  Greedly said, “That your car out by the road?”

  “It's mine,” Bernie told him.

  Grassmore said, “You want a ride back out to it?”

  “That'd be great,” Meehan said, and he and Bernie climbed into the comfy back seat.

  “Happy to help,” Grassmore said, panting as he steered endlessly through a lot of backing and filling to turn the big car around.

  Greedly grinned at them from up front. “After all,” he said, “we're all in the same party, all in the good cause together. It's not like you're with the Other Side.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Meehan said, and they all laughed.

  29

  BACK IN THE Maryland Honda, headed south, having said grateful goodbyes to Grassmore and Greedly, and made sure no one from COP (or whatever they were) would approach Burnstone IV before Friday—when either the caper would already have been pulled or Meehan would be well on his way to Idaho—they discussed the possibilities, of which there didn't seem to be any.

  “We can't go in silent,” Bernie said.

  “I know that,” Meehan agreed. “But you know and I know he's got to have some kind of security there, in the bungalow and in the guest house, too. Phone alarms to the local law, at the very least. I don't want to try busting in, kidnapping everybody, tying everybody up…”

  “I'm with you,” Bernie said. “Always too much chance of violence, things going bad. And an iffy thing to do to an eighty-year-old man, give him a heart attack, then it's murder one.”

  “Kidnapping, now murder.” Meehan shook his head. “All's I want to do is a little burglary.”

  “Not with Burnstone and his staff on the property,” Bernie said. “So either we go in when he's there, and keep him quiet somehow, or we get him off the property somehow.”

  “You're back to kidnapping,” Meehan pointed out.

  They came to an intersection, routes 7 and 44. Bernie stopped and said, “Which way do we go?”

  “That's the question, isn't it?” Meehan said.

  Out of Massachusetts, a dog-ear of Connecticut, down New York's Taconic Parkway. Bernie drove, and Meehan frowned at the autumnal world out there without quite seeing it. He knew the lay of the land now; so how about a way to pull the job?

  He found himself thinking about Sherlock Holmes, whose top number one in his own personal ten thousand rules was, Exclude the impossible, and whatever's left, however improbable, is the answer. Okay, exclude the impossible. Can't go in without being heard, can't confront the household without too much risk of unwanted violence and unknown alarm systems. So what's left? A silent helicopter.

  Fine. Forget Sherlock Holmes, who in any case is really on the Other Side.

  Breaking a silence of nearly an hour's duration, Bernie glowered out at the Taconic Parkway, almost empty on a Monday afternoon, and said, “I really want those guns.”

  “Yes,” Meehan said. “And I really want to not go back to the MCC. And I probably don't want to go to Idaho, either. Everybody wants something, we all want something. Even Burnstone probably—”

  “I guess so,” Bernie said. “Even at his age.”

  “Hush,” Meehan said.

  “You know, we forgot all about lunch?”

  “Hush!”

  Bernie gave him a curious look, then faced front and said, “You've got a scheme.”

  “I've got a thread,” Meehan said. “I'm following it. Does it lead me to a scheme? Turn around, we have to go back. We know what Burnstone wants.”

  “We do?”

  “He wants to make a speech,” Meehan said.

  This time, they drove around the sawhorse and on down Burnstone Trail, taking the blacktop jug handle around to the back of the guest house, where they parked among the Daimler, the Honda, and the Chevy. As they got out of their own (different model) Honda, the guest house rear door opened and a worried-looking woman with two yellow pencils stuck into the gray-and-black bun atop her head as though it were Secretary's Day among the geishas leaned out to say, “May I help you?”

  “We were here before,” Meehan told her. “From the Committee. I'm Owen Grassmore and this is Herb Greedly. Mr. Burnstone still in with the gun collection?”

  “Mr. Burnstone,” she informed them, with a proprietary chill, “is finishing his midday repast.”

  “Well, I think he'll want to see us,” Meehan informed her back. “Tell him it's Grassmore and Greedly, the fellows he showed the gun collection to this morning, and we have a request to make of him.”

  “No doubt you do,” she said. “You political fellows always do have a request to make, don't you?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” Meehan agreed.

  “One moment.”

  She went back inside and Bernie said, “I like her as much as I like him.”

  “We won't be dating much,” Meehan said, and the door opened again so Burnstone himself could come out, his LIVE FREE OR DIE glass in his hand and a rather stained white napkin tucked into his shirt at the neck. “Hello, again,” Meehan said.

  Burnstone came down the two cement steps to the blacktop, saying, “You fellows forget something?”

  “No, sir,” Meehan said. “A situation just came up, and we wondered if you could help us out.”

  “For the party?” Burnstone stood straighter. “Anything I can do,” he said.

  “Well, sir,” Meehan explained, “there's going to be a big lunchtime rally on Wednesday over in Bellwether, and Senator Windsor was gonna give the main speech there, but we just got word he came down with bronchitis. And I remembered, this morning, you said you'd be willing to speak if the need should arise, and—”

  “Speak?” Burnstone's eyes glittered, but then the glitter faded, and he said, “You mean, read some twaddle already done up, equality for housemaids, all that.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Meehan said. “There's nothing prepared, and no time to prepare anything. Mr. Greedly and I talked it over, and you're such a patriot, with such a grounding in American history, it just seemed natural you could talk about whatever you wanted, and the crowd would eat it right up.”

  “Particularly,” Bernie said, “this particular crowd.”

  “Oh?” Alert, Burnstone said, “And who are these folks?”

  “The F A R,” Bernie said.

  Burnstone, doubtful, repeated the initials. “I'm not sure I know them.”

  Bernie said, “They're the Friends of the American Revolution. It's an organization for people whose ancestors would have fought in the Revolution—”

  “On our side,” Meehan interpolated.

  “Well, sure,” Bernie said. “Would have fought on our side in the Revolution if they'd got here on time. It's for people who, because of the accident of birth—”

  “And geography,” Meehan interpolated.

  “—don't qualify for the DAR or the SAR. So for them there's the FAR.”

  “Well, that sounds damn decent,” Burnstone said. “They sound like good folks.”

  “Landed, mostly,” Bernie said. “Good northern European stock, mostly.” He leaned closer. “Our sort,” he said, with a wink.

  “I get you,” Burnstone said, and tapped his finger to the side of his nose. “I look forward to meeting these people.”

  Meehan said, “Then you'll do it? You'll be a real lifesaver.”

  “I can see it's my duty,” Burnstone assured him. “Tell me where to be, and when, and I'll be there.”

  “It's probably an hour's drive from here,” Meehan told him. “You know, over in Bellwether.”

  “Don't think I know the place.”

  “We'll send a limo for you,” Meehan promised. “Pick you up about eleven, give you a good lunch while you're there. How many folks you got on the property here?”

  “Just the three,” Burnstone said. “Miss Lampry you already met, is my personal assistant. Then the Joads do the cleaning and cooking and so on.”

  “Bring them along,” Meehan urged him. “There'll be plenty of room in the limo, and the
bigger a showing we can make at the event, the bigger a showing we'll get in the media.”

  “Bring them?” Burnstone looked uncertain.

  Bernie said, “The Joads can ride up front with the chauffeur; plenty of room.”

  The skies cleared; Burnstone smiled broadly on them both and said, “It sounds like a wonderful outing. I've a number of issues I could talk about.”

  “I'm sure you have,” Meehan said.

  “The limo,” Bernie said, “will be here Wednesday morning at eleven.”

  “I'll be raring to go,” Burnstone told them, and toasted them with LIVE FREE OR DIE.

  Friendly goodbyes were said all around. Then, back in the car, headed away from the houses, Bernie said, “Meehan, enough is enough. I just got to have lunch. It's almost three o'clock. I'm so hungry I was about ready, back there, to eat his napkin.”

  30

  OVER LUNCH AT a place in Sheffield, Mass., they discussed what they had and what they needed to get. “First, a limo,” Meehan said, “and a chauffeur.” Bernie, trying to eat an entire double cheeseburger all at once, nodded.

  “Then we also need a truck,” Meehan said, and Bernie nodded.

  “Now, neither of us can be the chauffeur,” Meehan said, “because Burnstone's already seen us,” and Bernie nodded.

  “So you and me are in the truck, which I guess one of us is driving,” Meehan said, and Bernie nodded and pointed at him.

  “So I'm driving the truck,” Meehan said, “and you're dealing with locks and alarms,” and Bernie made a doorknob-twisting gesture.

  “I'm wondering,” Meehan said, “if we try to wheel the cabinets out or just bust the glass and take the guns,” and Bernie swung an imaginary hammer.

  “Yeah, okay, we got no use for the cabinets,” Meehan said, “since Leroy's gonna break the set up anyway, so the next question is, do we carry all that stuff ourselves or do we bring in more muscle?” and Bernie pointed at Meehan and then at himself.

  “Well, I understand your saying that,” Meehan agreed, “because that means there's more in it for us if we've just got us two and the chauffeur, but that's a lot of heavy guns there,” and Bernie tapped the face of his wristwatch.

  Meehan nodded. “Sure, we got time, at least an hour, maybe more. So okay, it'll just be the two of us at the place, with the truck. So now what we need is the chauffeur,” and Bernie raised a hand, palm outward, for Meehan to pause.

  Meehan paused, and watched Bernie gulp down a big swig of diet soda. Then Bernie said, “I got the chauffeur.”

  “You do? Why didn't you say?”

  “I just did,” Bernie said. “Bob Clarence. You know him?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “He's a driver,” Bernie said. “Terrific. Nerves of steel. Never drives away from the bank without the people he brought there.”

  “Good man.”

  “And the thing about him is,” Bernie said, “he's already got a chauffeur suit. See, that's the way he sets up, a lot of the time, to do the job. You see a car in front of the jewelry store, motor running, you say, ‘Hey, what's goin' on?’ Then you see the guy in the chauffeur suit at the wheel, you say, ‘Oh.’ Like you know something.”

  “This guy sounds great,” Meehan said.

  “He is,” Bernie said. “I'll call him when we get back to the city, see if he's available Wednesday.”

  “Then call me at the motel.”

  “Will do.” Bernie grinned. “And here's the best part, given who we're dealing with here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bob's black,” Bernie said.

  Meehan grinned like a carp. “You are gonna make Clendon Burnstone IV very happy,” he said. “For a little while,” Bernie said.

  31

  EVERY TIME MEEHAN entered room 318 the telephone message light blinked at him. This time, when he pushed the button, there was first a spectral voice to tell him he had three messages, and then all three of them were from Goldfarb:

  1) “Our hearing is set for eleven o'clock Tuesday morning in chambers at Family Court in Queens. We should go over the situation together ahead of time. Give me a call.”

  2) “Meehan, we really have to make contact here, before we go to court. Call me, will you?”

  3) “Where are you? I left one message yesterday, one message this morning, you're still not anywhere, where do you go all the time? Or did you decide to take off to Idaho after all? There's no point my going out to court tomorrow if you aren't with me, since the whole point is, you're supposed to be in my custody. Where are you?”

  So he called her, and when she said an irritable, “Hello?” he said, “Well, I was about my employer's business, and you don't want to know about that. So I'm here now.”

  “I had just about given up on you,” she said.

  “Most people do,” Meehan said. He was used to it.

  She sighed, but stayed on message: “Can you come with me to court tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure. Eleven A.M.? No problem.”

  “We should get there early, probably leave the city nine-thirty.” (The boroughs outside Manhattan are technically parts of New York City, but every New Yorker going out there describes it as “leaving the city,” which in fact it is.)

  “Fine,” Meehan said. “Subway again?”

  “You've been on the subway.”

  “That part was legal,” he told her. “In fact, almost everything I did today was legal.”

  “Are you going to volunteer information?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Good. We should discuss ahead of time.”

  “On the subway?”

  “You can't have a discussion on the subway,” she told him. “Buy me dinner.”

  “Me? You're the one with the six thou.”

  “I've been carrying you, Meehan,” she said. “It's your turn.”

  He shrugged, though she wouldn't be able to see him do it. “Yeah, sure, okay,” he said. “But not the place Jeffords took us.”

  “I realize that. You pick it, some crappy greasy spoon somewhere. I'll bring the Tums.”

  “I know a great Caribbean place downtown,” he said, “got goat elbow.”

  “Goat—You're putting me on.”

  “No, I'm not. It's the part of the goat leg that bends, I don't know what you call it, I call it the elbow. With the spices and everything, it's terrific.”

  “Everything I hear about downtown,” she said, “reminds me why I live uptown.”

  “So slum a little,” he said.

  “What time you want to meet?”

  The restaurant, on a side street in the West Village, with its happy crowd of multilingual uninhibited diners shouting over the reggae that blared from speakers in every corner of the ceiling, was only slightly louder than a subway car taking a curve, but the goat elbow was as Meehan had described it, and the margaritas weren't bad either. For slumming, Goldfarb wore black ankle boots, black wool slacks, and a bulky plum-colored sweater. The monster eyeglasses were the same. Meehan was in his usual zippered jacket and stuff.

  “We can't discuss in here!” she yelled, after they'd yelled their order to the tall skinny Jamaican waiter.

  “What?” he yelled.

  “We can't discuss in here!”

  “Later!”

  “What?”

  He used his fingers to show two people walking, and pointed out to the street. She nodded, and they had dinner, and he paid with cash, because that was what he had. Then they went out to the cool night, the quiet Village streets, and Goldfarb said, “Okay, goat elbow is very good, but we were supposed to have a discussion.”

  “We can walk a ways,” he said.

  They walked, and she said, “There's already been a lot done on the case, but that was just paperwork. For this last step, you have to be physically present in front of the judge and that's the tricky part, because she's a juvenile court judge.”

  Meehan said, “But she's in on the scam, isn't she?”

  “Not exac
tly,” Goldfarb said.

  The night was cool, but not bad. Trees dimmed much of the illumination from the streetlights, traffic was light, and other people, in couples or groups, also strolled through the calm darkness. The West Village is an oddly peaceful corner of Manhattan, without the normal traffic and crowds and neon, its narrow maze of streets too much of a challenge for tourists and cabbies alike. The Caribbean restaurant they'd just left was probably the loudest spot within a mile.

  Given the shadowed streetlights and muffled traffic and strolling people and crisp air, Meehan knew this was a situation to be considered generically romantic, but he also knew it was a moment wasted. In any other circumstance, strolling with an okay woman after dinner, he'd probably put the moves on, but this was none of those circumstances. To begin with, Goldfarb was a lawyer, and between the felon and the attorney there were lines not to be crossed. In the second place, his first relationship with her had been in the MCC, and there was still something of the MCC lawyer-client conference in all of their meetings, which would put a chill on any kind of warm inclination. Also, there were those monster glasses. And, over and above all the rest, she was Goldfarb.

  And talking. “This judge,” she was saying, “T. Joyce Foote, only knows what the paperwork says as it comes across her desk. And what it's going to say is, on Friday, while we were flying up from Norfolk and my apartment was filling up with spies, for God's sake, Bruce Benjamin's people went to the district attorney upstate in New York, and got her to move to have your case put under her jurisdiction, meaning state instead of federal, using your own argument that there was no external evidence of government involvement with the truck and its contents on the truck itself.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Like you said,” she agreed. “Now, normally the federal prosecutor would fight such an encroachment, but this time the word had gone out.”

  “The fix was in,” Meehan suggested.

  “Whatever,” she said. “The point is, he didn't object, and the change went through. That done, the upstate DA graciously consented to pass you on to an outer borough New York City DA, since you were already physically incarcerated within the city limits.”