Put a Lid on It

by Donald E. Westlake

  “I know,” he agreed. “Everything they give you in the MCC is healthy. It's crap, but it's healthy crap. My destiny was, I was gonna eat healthy crap and keep regular hours the rest of my life.”

  “Enjoy,” she decided.

  “You know it.”

  Jeffords said, “I thought my destiny was to be shish kebab.” Now that his ordeal and the escape therefrom were over, and he'd cleaned himself up as best he could with no change of clothing, he no longer looked so much terrified as worn down by a long-term but not quite terminal disease. His eyes were wide, and shadowed all around with light gray, like dustings from a tombstone. His lips were pale, mouth wider than before in an unconscious rictus, and twitching from time to time. The tops of his ears seemed to lean closer to his head. His hands moved constantly, and Meehan didn't look forward to watching him try to eat an omelet.

  To calm him, if possible, Meehan said, “Well, it's over.”

  “I don't know about that,” Jeffords said. “I had to make contact with Bruce, of course, tell Bruce to get the word to the president and to stomp on Arthur hard, because everybody in DC”—lowering his voice, looking guiltily around like a conspirator in a silent movie—“is very worried about this situation. This could blow up in everybody's faces, this could be worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-Contra, worse than the little blue dress.”

  Meehan said, “You people kinda specialize in farce down there in DC, don't you?”

  “Not on purpose,” Jeffords said.

  “No, I didn't say you did anything on purpose, down there in DC,” Meehan agreed. “But when you say everybody in DC is worried about this operation, just how many people is everybody? How many people are looking over my shoulder here? The Joint Chiefs of Staff ? The attorney general? The surgeon general?”

  “No, not at all,” Jeffords said, “of course not. At this point, it's still only the president's inner circle—”

  “A hundred thousand big mouths,” Meehan suggested.

  “Certainly not,” Jeffords said. “A small tight group of people, absolutely loyal to the president.”

  “Does this group include your friend Arthur?”

  Jeffords' lips pursed. “The rotten apple in the barrel. Bruce is taking care of that, he tells me Arthur could not be more abashed—”

  “I bet I could make him more abashed.”

  “Possibly. But without you, no, he could not be more abashed. My wallet and watch will be delivered this afternoon.”

  Meehan sat up straighter. “Delivered where?”

  “I'm not an idiot, Meehan,” Jeffords alleged. “It's being delivered to our Manhattan campaign headquarters.”

  “And how do you pick it up?”

  “After lunch, I'll phone a trusted friend—”

  “More trust.”

  Jeffords said, “There has to be trust somewhere, Francis.”

  Meehan nodded. “How you people don't all wind up in the MCC, I'll never know.”

  “Life is unfair,” Goldfarb informed him. “A president said that.”

  “He would know,” Meehan agreed.

  Goldfarb said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, the powder room calls,” and got to her feet.

  This had been prearranged between Goldfarb and Meehan, since she was dead-set against learning any of what she called “details,” some of which Meehan would have to go over with Jeffords at this lunch; besides which, she probably had to go. Anyway, she went, and Meehan said, “Let me change the subject.”

  “I wish you would,” Jeffords said. “I'll just say, I will get my wallet and watch returned without compromising our operation.”

  “Compromising our operation,” Meehan echoed. “I like that.”

  “I know, as Bruce and I agreed at the beginning of all this,” Jeffords said, “that we needed to bring in a professional, but I now see that the downside of bringing in a professional is that he comes with the professional's insufferable arrogance.”

  Meehan said, “Would you rather go back and hang out with Reader?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay, then. Let me tell you what we've got to do now. You wanted to be part of the heist in the first place, and I said no—”

  “More insufferable arrogance, as I recall,” Jeffords said. “Thirty-five dollars an hour if I watch, forty-five if I help.”

  “Oh, good, you remembered,” Meehan said. “But now the situation's different. You're the one guy they can get at who knows where the heist goes down. I can't have you wandering around loose, deciding who you trust.”

  The food arrived then, and Jeffords' lips remained pursed throughout the delivery, unpursing when they were once again alone, saying, “What are you suggesting?”

  “You come along,” Meehan told him. “Tomorrow morning, early. We gotta leave here at seven.”

  “That is early.”

  “Crime never sleeps,” Meehan said.

  Jeffords frowned. “I thought that was rust.”

  “It was. Here's the other thing. By seven in the morning, I need you to have us a limo.”

  Jeffords blinked. “A limo?”

  “Like the one we were in today,” Meehan explained. “I don't know if you rent it, or what. But without a driver.”

  “Why? Who's going to be the driver?”

  “First me, then somebody else,” Meehan told him. “Never you.”

  “There you go again,” Jeffords said.

  Meehan said, “Tell me you can get me this limo.”

  “Of course I can get you the limo,” Jeffords said, showing a trace of his own insufferable arrogance. “The Manhattan campaign office has several vehicles on loan or lease, including I believe two limousines. They usually have drivers assigned, but I could certainly sign one out for myself.”

  “Do,” Meehan told him. “Have them deliver it to the hotel at seven tomorrow morning. They can bring you your watch and wallet at the same time.”

  “Good idea,” Jeffords said, nodding, then all at once he frowned and said, “Will this vehicle be used in the burglary?”

  “Of course,” Meehan told him.

  Jeffords agonized, was torn. “I am getting deeper into this,” he said. “It sucks you in, you can't help yourself.”

  “You have to help yourself to some extent,” Meehan told him. “I've got to bring you along, I got no choice there, but when we're on the job you just do what I say and stay out of the way. Don't help, don't argue, don't ask questions. Just pretend you aren't there, because God knows I don't want you there.”

  “I understand,” Jeffords said, and looked bitter. “This is all Arthur's fault,” he said.

  Meehan said, “Because we were on his plane, and a guy named Howie was on the plane that you didn't know was gonna be there, and he had a curious nose and a big mouth.”

  Jeffords looked at him. “You mean it's all my fault,” he said.

  “I mean,” Meehan told him, “there's fault enough to go around,” and Goldfarb came back and said, “Oh, good. Food.”

  They ate awhile, and then Jeffords said, “I'll have to find us a different kind of place for dinner.”

  Goldfarb looked at Meehan, who said to Jeffords, “Goldfarb and I have an appointment for dinner, we gotta do some lawyer-client stuff.”

  Jeffords looked bewildered. “Lawyer-client? But didn't you finish all that?”

  Goldfarb said, “There's always final particulars, a case like this, things to be wrapped up.”

  “Well…” Jeffords was lost. “What do I do tonight?”

  “Watch television,” Goldfarb suggested.

  “Eat in,” Meehan told him. “You don't want to show yourself on the street.”

  Jeffords looked stricken.

  Meehan said, “Besides, you've got to get up early.”

  Which brightened Jeffords up a little, the prospect of tomorrow. “That's right,” he said, and told Goldfarb, “We're leaving at seven in the morning.”

  She reared back, wide-eyed. “Was that a detail?”

 
; “Nah,” Meehan said.

  38

  THIS TIME, THEY chose a little old-fashioned French restaurant in the West Forties, walking distance from the Crowne Royale, the kind of place that features coq au vin on the menu and red-and-white check cloths on the tables. They ordered some stuff, including red wine, and clinked glasses, and then she said, “Let me tell you the problem, right up front.”

  “I'm the problem,” Meehan said.

  “Truer words were never spoken.” Looking at the wine in her glass, the glass on the red-and-white check cloth, she said, “I've seen your dossier, you know.”

  “Sure, you're my lawyer.”

  “There's nothing much hopeful in there,” she told him. “In fact, it's all mostly hopeless.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You're a recidivist,” she said, “you're an autodidact, no degrees, no marketable—”

  “Wait a second,” he said. “What was that one? The second one. I know recidivist, that's what's going on my tombstone, Francis Xavier Meehan, Recidivist. But what was the other?”

  She grinned at him. “That's funny,” she said. “The one word every autodidact doesn't know is autodidact. It means self-taught.”

  “Self-taught.”

  “You dropped out of high school, but you're a reader, and you've picked up a lot of stuff. And, given the amount of time you've spent behind bars,” she added drily, “you've had plenty of time for reading.”

  “A little more than absolutely necessary,” he said.

  “If your country hadn't called you,” she said, “you'd have nothing but reading time for the rest of your life.”

  “We call that a close call,” he said.

  “No,” she told him, “we call it deus ex machina.”

  “I know that one,” he said. “God from the machine, the way they'd end the old Greek plays.”

  “A miracle, in other words,” she summed up. “So here you are out, doing what you do. The way the drummer boy drummed his drum for the infant baby Jesus, you burgle for the USA.”

  “For my president,” he corrected. “Whoever he is.”

  “And the question is,” she said, “once you've done this patriotic breaking and entering, what then? Do you even know where the straight and narrow is?”

  He felt awful about this, and said so: “I feel awful about this. I don't know what else I'm gonna do. There'll be a little profit out of tomorrow's event—”

  “No details!”

  “No details,” he agreed. “But then what? I sit around the house, or wherever I am, and after a while I'm bored, and somebody I know calls me and says, ‘I happen to know there's a load of eight BMWs on a truck in New Jersey with nobody watching it, wanna come along?’ And I reach for my hat. I mean, that's true, that's who I am.”

  “And yet,” she said, “you were married once, you at least thought you were gonna settle down.”

  “You don't think when you get married,” he told her, “or you wouldn't do it. I didn't know so much who I was then, that's all. It lasted three years, and when Barbara threw me out I was ready to go. Not because there was anything wrong with her, she was fine, she and her next husband are great together.”

  “You never see your children—”

  “That's my gift to them,” he said. “And to myself, to be honest. If I showed up every once in a while, say, with some dumb little gift, hang out for a weekend, then some day I get sent up for five to fifteen, then what? The only pleasure I can give my kids is stay out of their way. They're fifteen and thirteen now, and when they're in their twenties, if I'm out and about, I'll give them a call, we can have a reunion. Up to this point, I could only be trouble for everybody concerned. Way back when we split, I talked this all over with Barbara, and it was mostly her idea, but I had to say then, and I still do, she was right.”

  “Not such a great solution,” she said.

  “I agree,” he said. “But there we are. And now we come to you, and here you've got the advantage on me, because I don't have a dossier that says on the tab, Elaine Goldfarb.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

  “You're not married now.”

  “No.”

  “Were you ever?”

  “I was engaged once,” she said.

  “Oh oh. He didn't leave you at the altar or something, did he?”

  “No, it all just sort of faded out,” she said. “We were in law school together, we talked about our classes a lot, we helped each other with the work—”

  “You helped him more, I bet.”

  “No, Doug is very smart,” she said. “He's in one of the big corporate New York firms right now, he's married for…I think the second time, maybe the third, he's got kids.”

  “How come you aren't in a big corporate New York firm?”

  She looked at him over her wineglass. “Can you see me in one of those places?”

  “No,” he said honestly. “So the question is, what's wrong with you? We know what's wrong with me. What's wrong with you?”

  “I'm not sure I approve of that question,” she said.

  “That's okay,” he said. “We don't want the food to get cold, it's very good stuff, we can eat awhile, you think it over.”

  “Hmmmmm,” she said.

  So they ate awhile, and decided not to have another bottle of wine, not to have dessert or coffee, and not to have any more conversation in the restaurant. Walking back toward the hotel, she said, “I didn't answer your question.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Well, it can wait, anyway,” she said. “I mean, we can defer it.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “What I'm saying is,” she said, looking where she was walking and not looking at him, “and this is awkward for me, but you are not coming to my room tonight, and I am not coming to yours. So we don't have to make any decisions yet.”

  “How come?” he said.

  Shaking her head, speaking as though it should be obvious, she said, “Not with Jeffords under the same roof.”

  “What?” he said. “It's a hotel, it isn't a house or something.”

  “I don't care, it just wouldn't feel right,” she said. “Not with Jeffords there.”

  “I get it,” he said. “We avoid the decision.”

  She gave him a sharp look. “And I get it,” she said. “You've decided, that's what's wrong with her.”

  “Well, it starts the list,” he said.

  39

  THE RED LIGHT wasn't blinking on the phone, but that was all right; they were already in the room. Two guys, in the uncomfortable chairs to either side of the oval table by the window. The one writing in a notepad on the table wore a plaid bowtie, blue button-down shirt buttoned down, tan sports jacket, tan chinos, speckle-framed eyeglasses, and receding hair-colored hair. The one leaning back, legs straight out, ankles crossed as he gazed meditatively at the ceiling, wore black tassel loafers, designer blue jeans with a crease, dark gray sports jacket, black turtleneck shirt, Josef Stalin's moustache, and Josef Stalin's hair. Both smiled when Meehan entered the room, and got to their feet. In an amiable, welcoming way, Bowtie said, “Mr. Meehan.”

  There were so many conflicting signals coming off these guys that Meehan, try as he might, could not find a thing in the ten thousand rules to guide him here. Smiling? But in the room? But a bowtie?

  They continued to smile at him, Moustache stepping to the side, offering the chair he'd been in, saying, “Have a seat.”

  Then the appropriate rule did at last surface in his brain: If you don't understand where you are, go somewhere else. “I'll be back in five minutes,” he told them, “after you guys leave.”

  They both raised objections, urging him to stay, but since neither flashed a firearm and one of them did wear a bowtie, Meehan ignored them, left the room, went down to the lobby, found the house phone, called Jeffords' room, and got goddam voice mail. “Goddam it,” he told it, “I told you to stay in tonight. I got two guys in my room, I need to know who th
ey are.”

  He hung up, went over to one of the two skimpy sofas in the lobby's seating area, sat in the one where he could look across the other one toward the street, and tried to figure out who the players were, without a scorecard. Not cops, definitely. Not linked to Yehudi and Mostafa, just as definitely. Not menacing, but on the other hand untroubled by breaking into somebody else's hotel room.

  Well, but, they didn't actually break in, did they? If they had, Meehan would have noticed scars on the door. So they used some sort of key. Did they walk around with universal keys, or bribe a desk clerk, or what?

  Were they from the Other Side, the crowd that wanted to replace the present president with their own president, so Clendon Burnstone IV could get some private bill through Congress? They had the right bland look, but that still didn't seem to explain them.

  And here they came, out of the elevator, talking earnestly at one another, then beaming with pleasure when they saw Meehan, veering to move straight toward him.

  And he got it. Standing, pointing at the belly beneath the bowtie, he said, “Press.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Bowtie.

  “We tried to identify ourselves,” said Moustache, “but you simply turned around and left.” With which, he and Bowtie extended business cards, which Meehan took without looking at, but kept in his right hand.

  “We understand,” Bowtie said soothingly, “that you were startled by our appearance in your room, but we meant nothing threatening at all, I assure you.”

  Meehan already knew that much. And that they would pull a stunt like that on him meant they knew his background, knew he was one of the people they could walk on. He said, “Get it over with.”

  Moustache gestured to the sofas. “Shall we sit? Unless you'd rather we talked up in your room.”

  “I wouldn't rather we talked anywhere,” Meehan said. “I'd rather you got to it and got it over with.” He almost said, “because I have to get up early,” but he didn't want them to know that, did he?