What's The Worst That Could Happen

by Donald Westlake

  “This is our room here, that’s somebody else,” Dortmunder pointed out, seeing Wally drift in the direction of the connecting door to some other room.

  “Oh, right,” Wally said.

  Gus said, “Open sesame.”

  They looked at him. Dortmunder said, “What?”

  “We’re going to Aladdin’s Cave, aren’t we?” Gus asked. “So why don’t we do it.”

  Everybody agreed that was a good idea, so they trooped on out of the room. Wally carried a few small tools in his pockets, but none of the others had brought along anything special. They were prepared to wait and see what they found when they got down to the apartment. It was true Max Fairbanks had to be approached with care, since he was known to carry heat — a memory Dortmunder would retain for a good long time — but they expected that the element of surprise, plus their force of numbers, would be able to deal with that problem.

  They took the public elevator down to seventeen, then walked around to that unmarked door in the center section, which Wally went through even more quickly and laconically than Andy had. The four crowded inside — with the maid’s cart already there, it was a tight fit — and Wally hummed a little tune as he hunkered down in front of the control board. “Very nice,” he commented. “The lockmakers are getting smarter and smarter. Look at this stuff.”

  Dortmunder said, “Is it gonna be a problem?”

  For answer, the elevator started down.

  “I guess not,” Andy said.

  The ride was short and smooth, and at the end of it was a closed wood door just like the one up above, except that this one, when Wally tried the knob, wasn’t locked. “Less work for mother,” Wally said, and cautiously opened the door.

  They looked out at hallway, a cream–colored wall decorated with fine Impressionist paintings and faux Roman electric sconces. Wally was about to stick his head out a little farther, look to left and right along this hall, when they all heard the voices.

  “Somebody coming,” Dortmunder hissed, and Wally eased backward into the elevator, allowing the door to close almost completely, leaving just a hair’s breadth through which they could hear the voices as two people walked past the door.

  A woman: “— a good night’s sleep.”

  A man (Max Fairbanks! Dortmunder recognized his irritating voice, here sounding rather bitter): “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Andy whispered, “They’re going to bed.”

  Gus whispered, “Perfect.”

  Dortmunder visualized himself, in half an hour or so, tiptoeing into that bedroom, the ring in sight at last, gleaming on Fairbanks’s sleeping finger, getting closer and closer.

  Meanwhile, the woman, her voice receding down the hallway, was saying, “And in the morning, I’ll go with you to the airport, and then …”

  And then she receded out of hearing range, and Wally slowly pushed the door open once more, and the four of them crept out to the gleaming art–filled hallway, with gleaming rooms visible at both ends.

  They were about to move when the woman’s voice was heard again, distinctly saying, “We’re ready, Arthur.” So she was one of those people who spoke more loudly to servants. And then she was heard saying, “And you can go home now, I won’t be back till tomorrow afternoon.”

  Dortmunder said, “What?” He turned toward the sound of the voice, while the other three reached out to restrain him.

  “Oh, wait,” said the woman’s voice, and then there was a loud single clapping sound and the lights went out.

  Pitch blackness. The sound of an elevator motor, whirring somewhere nearby. “They left!” Dortmunder cried.

  “Hush! Ssshhh! Hush!” everybody cried, and Andy half–whispered, “There could be other people here.”

  “In the dark?” Dortmunder demanded. “They’re gone, goddamit.”

  Gus said, “How do we get these lights on?”

  “Oh, there’s nothing to that,” Dortmunder snapped. “The point is, we got here just too late. The son of a bitch is gone, and you know he’s got my ring on his goddam fat finger.”

  The sound of the elevator stopped. The son of a bitch and his woman had reached street level.

  Gus said, “What do you mean, there’s nothing to that? You know how to turn on the lights?”

  “Sure,” Dortmunder said. “But we should wait until they get away from here, just in case they happen to look up, that son of a bitch with my ring on his finger.”

  There was a little silence at that, until Andy said, “I don’t know how to turn on the lights. You mean there’s some trick?”

  “No, it’s very easy,” Dortmunder said, and clapped his hands together once, and the lights came on.

  Everybody blinked at everybody else. Gus said, “You clap for the lights to go on?”

  “And off,” Dortmunder said. “Didn’t you hear the sound when they left? It’s a stunt kind of electric thing people do, I’ve run into it a few times. You’re going along, minding your own business, you make just the wrong noise, the lights come on. People do it in their living rooms, wow their friends. I never saw it in a whole apartment before.”

  Gus said, “What if they turn on the television, and there’s applause?”

  “Probably,” Dortmunder said, “they get migraine. But the point is, Max Fairbanks and my ring are gone.”

  Aggravated, disconsolate, he turned away and went down to the end of the hall and turned right, and there was the door to the other elevator, over there across the reception room.

  Two minutes. Two minutes earlier, and he’d have had Max Fairbanks in his grip, he’d have gotten his ring back, no question. No question.

  No, not even two minutes. Step out of the elevator when the son of a bitch is going by, grab him right then, yank the goddam ring off his finger, and then let the scene play out however it wants. But, no. Cautious, that was his problem. Too goddam cautious, hide in the elevator until it’s too late.

  “John.”

  Dortmunder turned, glowering, and there was Gus, who didn’t even notice the expression on Dortmunder’s face. The expression on Gus’s face was one huge beaming smile. In his right hand he held a gold bracelet, and in his left a small but exquisite Impressionist drawing. “John,” he said, “about that Carrport deal. I just want you to know. We’re square.”

  “I’m happy for you,” Dortmunder said.

  Chapter 26

  * * *

  The maid’s cart. Its original cargo of linen and cleaning supplies having been left in a heap on the apartment hallway floor, it was loaded with paintings, jewelry, and other nice tchotchkas, then rolled back into the elevator, and ridden up to the hotel.

  Floor seventeen. Gus and Andy went off to snag a regular public elevator, while Dortmunder and Wally waited with the loot. Andy then held that elevator while Gus went back to the turning in the hall to signal that the coast was clear. Then Dortmunder and Wally pushed the very heavy cart down the hall, around the corner and to Andy in the elevator. Then they all went up to twenty–six, where once again Gus stood chickee while the others trundled the cart down to Dortmunder’s room. He unlocked them in, Gus joined them, and they emptied the cart onto the bed. Then they reversed the route, took the cart back down to the apartment and loaded it up a second time.

  If anybody in the public halls had noticed them on any of their several journeys, things might have gotten somewhat sticky, since none of them actually looked very much like a hotel maid, despite the cart they were pushing, nor were they even in hotel maid uniform, but the N–Joy Broadway Hotel was not a lively place at two and three in the morning, so they remained undisturbed.

  Once everything was transferred to Dortmunder’s room, they were all quite pleased by their harvest; except Dortmunder, of course. But the other three had stars in their eyes as they looked around at all this treasure, or possibly dollar signs in their eyes. Sparkly, anyway.

  The plan now was, Andy and Gus and Wally would leave, one at a time, each carrying a single small bag plus as m
uch extra little stuff as their pockets would hold. Dortmunder had already put in a wake–up call for 6:00 A.M., at which time he would rise and check out, with these four large suitcases here. “Kennedy Airport,” he would loudly tell the cabdriver who took him away from the N–Joy, but a few blocks later he would change the destination to the address of Stoon the fence, about twenty blocks north of the N–Joy on the West Side, where the other three would meet up with him, and where the night’s takings would be swapped for cash.

  They did their packing, made their preparations, and then Wally left first, fumbling with the room’s doorknob as he grinned around at them, saying, “Call me any time, fellas.”

  “Leave the door alone,” Dortmunder said.

  “Sorry,” Wally said, and left.

  Gus was next. “It’s true what they say,” he announced. “You do good for somebody, it comes right back atcha.”

  “Mm,” said Dortmunder.

  “See you around,” Gus said, and left, jingling.

  Then Andy. Hefting his little bag, he said, “John, don’t be so downhearted. Look at all the stuff we got.”

  “Not the ring,” Dortmunder said. “The point was to get the ring back. As far as I’m concerned, the son of a bitch can have all this other stuff right now, as long as I get my ring.”

  “The rest of us don’t feel that way, John.”

  “The rest of you didn’t get your ring stolen.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So you know what this means,” Dortmunder said.

  “No,” Andy admitted. “What does it mean?”

  “Washington,” Dortmunder said, as gloomy as a man can be in a room full of treasure. “I gotta go to Washington, DC. What do I know about Washington, DC?”

  Andy considered, then nodded. “Use your phone?”

  Dortmunder shrugged, but couldn’t help saying, “Local call?”

  “Very local. In the hotel.” Andy nodded again and said, “It’s time you met Anne Marie.”

  Chapter 27

  * * *

  Anne Marie Carpinaw, née Anne Marie Hurst, didn’t know what to make of the fellow she knew as Andy Kelly. In fact, she wasn’t sure he was somebody you could make into a thing at all. Maybe he was already made and set, and unalterable.

  Different, anyway. In Anne Marie’s experience, men were sweaty creatures, harried and hurried, hustling all the time, tiptoeing over quicksand ever, never comfortable in their own minds, in their own skins, in their own circumstances. Her recently decamped husband, Howard Carpinaw, the computer salesman, was definitely of that breed, scrambling from sale to sale, always talking big, always producing little. Her father, the fourteen–term congressman from Kansas, had been the same, had spent twenty–seven years running for reelection, had never devoted a minute of his life to actually calmly occupying the position he kept running for, and finally ended his career with a heart attack at yet another rubber chicken Kiwanis luncheon down on the hustings.

  Somehow, Andy Kelly wasn’t like that. Not that he was disinterested or turned off or bored, he just didn’t try too hard. For instance, he’d made it plain in their first meeting that he’d like to go to bed with her, but it had also been plain he wouldn’t kill himself if she turned him down, whereas most men, in her experience, claimed they would kill themselves if she turned them down, and then reneged.

  It was sensing something of that difference that had first attracted her attention in the cocktail lounge. She’d already rebuffed three husbands — obvious husbands, their wives asleep upstairs reflected in their guilty eyes — and when this other fellow had come in she’d been prepared to rebuff him, too. But then he didn’t sit too close to her, didn’t smile at her, didn’t say harya, didn’t acknowledge her existence in any way. And then he got into some amusing conversation — amusing for them, apparently — with the bartender, so it was somewhat in the manner of a person shaking a birthday present to try to guess what’s inside the giftwrap that she’d poked out that first word: “Hello.” And the rest was becoming history.

  So, despite the laconic manner, she knew he was definitely interested in her, but it was plain she wasn’t the end of the world. So far, he acted as though nothing was the end of the world. To be around a man for whom life was not perpetually at third down and long yardage; what a relief.

  On the other hand, she couldn’t figure out what he did for a living, and it’s still important to know what a man does for a living, because economic and social class are both determined by occupation, and Anne Marie, free spirit though she might be, was not free spirit enough to want to spend time with a man from the wrong economic and social class. Andy seemed to have all the money he needed, and not to worry about it (but then, he didn’t worry about anything up till now, that was the charm of the guy). Still, his clothing and manner didn’t suggest inherited wealth; this was not some main stem pillar slumming in the N–Joy. She’d hinted around, hoping some occupation would emerge, some category, but nothing yet.

  Not a lawyer, certainly not a doctor, even more certainly not an accountant or banker. An airline pilot? Unlikely. Not a businessman, they’re the sweatiest of them all. Maybe an inventor; was that possible?

  She was afraid, the more she thought about it, that what Andy Kelly was most like was a cabdriver who’d learned not to get aggravated by bad traffic. But would a cabdriver be this cool, in this situation? Intrigued, more so than she’d expected to be, she awaited his return tonight from another “appointment.”

  Appointments after midnight, two nights in a row. Was that a clue? To what? They weren’t appointments with some other woman, she was pretty sure of that, based on his behavior with her afterward. But what appointment could you have that late at night, lasting an hour or two?

  Maybe he’s a spy, she thought. But who is there to spy on any more? All the spies are retired now, writing books, reading each other’s books, and beginning to wonder what the point had been, all those years, chasing each other around in their slot–car racers while the real world went on without them. More of the desperate men, those were, hustling to keep up, falling a little farther behind every day. Nope, not Andy Kelly.

  So here it was Thursday night, becoming Friday morning, and on Saturday she was supposed to fly back to KC and then drive across the state on home to Lancaster, and of course that’s what she was going to do, it was part of the package, but Andy Kelly was suddenly the wild card in the deck, and she couldn’t help asking herself the question: What if he says don’t go?

  Well, most likely he wouldn’t say any such thing, why should he? And whoever or whatever he might turn out to be, she did already know for certain he was definitely a New Yorker and never a Lancastrian, so he wouldn’t be coming home with her, so either he asked the question or he didn’t. And however unlikely it was that he’d ask, she felt she ought to be ready with the answer just in case, so what was the answer?

  She didn’t know. She was still thinking about it, and she still didn’t know, at ten minutes to three in the morning when the phone rang.

  She was seated on the bed at the time, back against the headboard, watching an old movie on television with the sound turned off, as an aid to thought, so now she reached out to the phone on the bedside table, kept looking at the people on horseback on the television screen, and said, “Hello.”

  “Hi, Anne Marie, it’s Andy.”

  “It better be,” she said, “or I don’t answer the phone at this hour.”

  “I’m a little late. My appointment took longer than I thought.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “But that was okay, because it was very successful.”

  “Good,” she said, wondering, what are we talking about?

  “But here’s the thing,” he said. “There’s a friend of mine.”

  Uh oh, she thought. “Uh huh,” she said. Group gropes, is this where we’re headed?

  “He’s got a problem,” Andy said, “and I think you’re the perfect person to talk to him.”

&nbs
p; Her voice very cold, Anne Marie said, “And you want to bring him over now.”