The Road To Ruin d-11

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Subarus aren’t that big,” Mark said.

  “But could one be big enough?” Os did a maybe-so-maybe-not hand waggle. “Why don’t you and I,” he said, “do a little window-shopping at a Subaru dealer?”

  “You think—?”

  “Well, I don’t know yet, do I?”

  Mark considered. “It wouldn’t fit five extra people,” he said.

  Os smiled, a thing he didn’t do all that often. “Oh,” he said, “agreements to one side, I don’t believe we need bother our union friends with this concept just yet, do you?”

  Mark returned the smile. Over his left shoulder, the central air-conditioning thumped on.

  14

  “THEY WON’T DO IT,” Mac said.

  Ace looked anguished, agonized, possibly seasick. “But it’s perfect for them,” he insisted. “We couldn’t do it, but they could.”

  “They won’t,” Mac said.

  “But why not?”

  “Because,” Mac said, “they’ll say it’s a harebrained idea.”

  “Why would they say something like that?”

  Mac was about to answer, because it is a harebrained idea, when he realized all he could do with that response was make Ace mad.

  But he had to say something. He and Ace and Buddy were all gathered for late afternoon beers in Buddy’s rec room, in which the finished parts were really quite comfortable, and the unfinished parts, like the bar and the paneling and mounting the dartboard, Buddy would be getting around to pretty soon. In the meantime, the cast-off living room furniture from various of Buddy’s relatives made for a cozy little den that families were guaranteed not to enter, and that was pleasantly cool in the summer, and thoroughly warm—perhaps a tiny bit too warm, given the presence of the furnace three feet away—in the winter.

  It was here that Mac had to find an alternative to the simple truth that what Ace had come up with was a harebrained idea. In its stead, he said, “We don’t even know if one of them can fly a plane.”

  “They don’t have to fly a plane,” Ace said. “Did they drive that stretch limo? That’s what gave me the idea. That limo wasn’t theirs, they rented it, I saw the little sticker on the back.”

  Mac said, “I’m not denying that.”

  “Look, Mac,” Ace said, “these are guys lost a bundle to Monroe Hall, we know that, but these are also guys can go out and rent a stretch limo. You see what that means?”

  “They still think rich,” Mac said.

  “They’re still connected, Mac,” Ace told him. “You and me, we couldn’t go rent a limo like that unless our daughter was getting married, and maybe not even then. These guys, they got corporate accounts, they got little companies and things they can use instead of money. Lines of credit. These guys could rent a plane.”

  Buddy, who had not yet taken sides, said, “They call it charter.”

  “Fine,” Ace said. “These guys could charter a plane.”

  Mac said, “But then what?”

  “There’s no way to get through that electric fence,” Ace said. “But we could go over it, have the pilot land in a field far away from the houses, we go over, grab Hall, stick him in the plane, fly back out again.”

  “Ace,” Mac said, “if you make that suggestion to those two guys, they won’t have anything else to do with us. And we’re not getting anywhere on our own—”

  “I am!”

  “No, you’re not.” Mac spread his hands. “Follow this with me,” he said. “You’re over at Teterboro airport, you’ve got a airplane charter operation, these two upper-class guys come in, say we wanna charter a plane.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Ace said.

  “The guy says, ‘And what’s the flight plan, sir?’ And these two upper-class guys, they say, ‘Oh, we just wanna fly over to Pennsylvania at night and land in a darkened field there, and then the plane waits there a little while, and then we’ll come back with this other passenger in a burlap sack,’ and by that time the charter guy’s already reaching for the phone.”

  “They say they’re going to Atlantic City,” Ace said. “Once we’re all in the sky, we tell the pilot, ‘There’s this change of plans.’”

  “They have radios in the planes,” Mac said. Pointing a finger at Ace, he said, “And don’t tell me you’re gonna point a gun at this pilot, you’re gonna hijack this plane. The whole scheme you shouldn’t tell our Harvard friends, but hijacking you shouldn’t even tell me.”

  Buddy, who still hadn’t taken sides, sighed and got to his feet and said, “More beer.”

  “You’re right,” Mac told him.

  Buddy went over to the refrigerator, which still worked almost as well as when it had been made, sometime in the Korean War, and brought out three more cans of beer. Meanwhile, Ace had gone back to looking anguished and agonized and even more seasick. “There’s gotta be a way,” he said. “You just cannot get through that electric fence, so how else you gonna do it but go over it?”

  “Maybe you wanna charter a catapult,” Mac suggested.

  “Jeesis, Mac,” Ace said. “You don’t have to insult me. I’m trying to come up with an idea here.”

  “Yeah, I know you are,” Mac said. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be a wise guy. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Okay, then.” Ace folded his arms. “So you come up with an idea,” he said.

  “I’ve been trying to,” Mac assured him. “So far, nada.”

  Buddy, who maybe by now wasn’t going to have to choose sides, delivered the beers, settled back into his very low armchair, and said, “You know what I keep thinking about?”

  They both gave him their full attention. Mac said, “No, Buddy. What?”

  “That green Subaru station wagon,” Buddy said.

  They both considered that. Mac said, “You mean, the one that the guy drives it looks like an action toy.”

  “Like the hero of a video game,” Buddy agreed. “Only shorter.”

  Ace said, “Shorter? How do you know he’s shorter? You only seen him sitting down, inside his car.”

  “All that chin of his,” Buddy said, “it’s the same level as the top of the steering wheel.”

  Mac said, “All right, he’s probably short. So what? What about him?”

  “He’s in and out of there all the time,” Buddy said. “It’s almost every day he’s in and out, just him and all that station wagon.”

  “Hmm,” Mac said.

  Ace said, “Whadaya think he does? I mean, that he goes in and out all the time.”

  “Maybe we should follow him,” Buddy said. “Not goin in, we couldn’t do that, I mean comin out. Find out who he is. Find out if he’d like some undercover passengers some day.”

  “Buddy,” Mac said, “you just might have an idea there.”

  “And this one,” Ace said, “we don’t need to share with Harvard.”

  “Ace,” Mac said, “now you’re right.”

  Buddy said, “You guys both think they’re Harvard? They seemed more like Dartmouth to me.”

  15

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Dortmunder was in the can, reading an illustrated book about classic cars. Apparently, some of these cars really were very valuable, but on the other hand, it seemed to Dortmunder, the people who valued these cars were maybe a little strange.

  “John?”

  “Yar?”

  “It’s Andy. Shall I tell him you’ll call him back?”

  “No, I’ll be right there,” Dortmunder said, and was. Holding his place in the book with the first finger of his left hand, he took the phone in his right, said, “Thanks, May,” then said, “Yar.”

  “Chester gave me the list,” Kelp said.

  List. For a second, Dortmunder couldn’t figure out what Kelp was talking about. A list of classic cars? He said, “List?”

  “Remember? You asked him for a list of the other things Hall collects, so we could find out what’s useful to bring along as cargo
.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “So he gave me the list, that you were gonna take to Arnie Albright.”

  Dortmunder’s heart sank. “Oh, right,” he said, in tones of deepest gloom, because Arnie Albright, the fence with whom it was occasionally necessary for Dortmunder to deal, was a fellow with a distinct personality problem. His personality problem, in short, was his personality. He’d said so himself, one time: “It’s my personality. Don’t tell me different, Dortmunder, I happen to know. I rub people the wrong way. Don’t argue with me.”

  This was the person, or the personality, that somebody was going to have to show Chester’s list, and then stick around in order to discuss it.

  Wait a minute; was there an out? “Chester gave you the list,” Dortmunder said. “So why don’t you take it on over to Arnie.”

  “John, he’s your friend.”

  “Oh, no,” Dortmunder said. “Nobody is Arnie’s friend. I’m his acquaintance, and so are you.”

  “You’re more of an acquaintance than I am,” Kelp said. “Listen, you want me to drop the list off at your place, or would you rather pick it up over here?”

  “Why me? You’ve got the list.”

  “It was your idea.”

  Dortmunder sighed. In his agitation, he now realized, his finger had slid out of the book and he’d lost his place. Would he ever get back to the right spot, in among all those cars? He said, “I tell you what. I’ll come over there—”

  “Good, that’ll work.”

  “And we’ll go see Arnie together.”

  “John, it’s just a piece of paper, it doesn’t weigh that much.”

  “Andy, that’s the only way it’s gonna happen.”

  Now it was Kelp’s turn to sigh. “Misery loves company, huh?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dortmunder said. “Arnie Albright is misery. He doesn’t love company.”

  •

  So it was that, a little later that day, Dortmunder and Kelp both approached the apartment house on West Eighty-ninth Street, between Broadway and West End Avenue, where Arnie Albright lurked. Chester’s list was now in Dortmunder’s pocket, Kelp having insisted on making the transfer before he’d leave home, to remove himself, however slightly, from the center of the conversation to come.

  There was a shopfront on the ground floor of Arnie’s building, currently selling cell phones and yoga meditation tapes, with a tiny vestibule beside it. Entering the vestibule, Dortmunder said, “He always yells my name out. Through the intercom. You can hear him in New Jersey. I hate it.”

  “Put your hand over the grid,” Kelp suggested.

  Surprised and grateful, Dortmunder said, “I never thought of that.” Feeling slightly better about the situation, he pushed the button next to Albright, then pressed his palm against the metal grid where the squawking yelling voice would come out. They waited thirty seconds, and then a moderate voice said something that was muffled by Dortmunder’s hand. Hurriedly removing the hand, he said, “What?”

  “I said,” said the voice, an ordinary plain moderate voice, “who’s there?”

  This did not sound like Arnie. Dortmunder said, “Arnie?”

  “Arnie who?”

  “No,” Dortmunder said. “You. Isn’t that Arnie Albright’s place?”

  “Oh, I get it,” said the voice. “Would you be a customer?”

  Dortmunder wasn’t sure how to answer that. He looked helplessly at Kelp, who leaned closer to the grid and said, “Would you be a cop?”

  “Ha ha,” said the voice. “That’s funny. I’m a cousin.”

  Dortmunder said, “Whose cousin?”

  “Arnie’s. Oh, come on up, let’s not shout at each other over the intercom.”

  As the buzzer sounded and Dortmunder pushed open the door, he said to Kelp, “That sure doesn’t sound like any cousin of Arnie’s.”

  “Well,” Kelp said, “Cain and Abel were related, too.”

  Inside, the narrow hall smelled, as always, of old newspapers, probably damp. The steep stairs led up to the second floor, where there was no one in sight, not Arnie, not a cousin, not a cop. Dortmunder and Kelp thudded up the stairs and at the top, on the right, there was Arnie’s door open, and standing in the doorway with a friendly smile of greeting was a short skinny guy with a frizz of wiry pepper-and-salt hair draped over his ears below a round bald dome. He did have Arnie’s treeroot nose, so maybe he truly was a cousin, but otherwise he looked completely human, dressed in tan polo shirt and jeans. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Archie Albright.”

  “John.”

  “Andy.”

  “Well, come on in.”

  The apartment looked different without Arnie’s presence, like a place where a curse has been lifted. Small underfurnished rooms with big dirty windows with no views, the apartment was decorated mainly with Arnie’s calendar collection, walls spread with many of the Januarys of history under illustrations variously patriotic, historical, winsome, and erotic, with here and there a May or November (incompletes).

  Closing the door behind them, Archie Albright waved at the few uncomfortable chairs and said, “Have a seat. John, huh? I bet John Dortmunder.”

  Dortmunder, about to sit warily on an armless kitchen chair next to the last rabbit-eared television set in Manhattan, lurched and remained on his feet. “Arnie told you about me?”

  “Oh, sure,” Archie Albright said, still smiling, very much at his ease. “The only way we let him come to the family get-togethers is if he’ll tell us stories.” Nodding at Kelp, he said, “I don’t know which Andy you are, but I’ll get it.”

  Very quiet, Kelp said, “We didn’t know we were features in Arnie’s stories.” They were all still on their feet.

  “Come on, it’s just in the family,” Archie assured them. “And we’re all in the business, one way or another.”

  “Fencing?” Dortmunder asked.

  “No, that’s just Arnie. Siddown, siddown.”

  So they all sat, and Archie said, “Most of us, as a matter of fact, we’re in counterfeiting. We got a big printing plant out in Bay Shore, Long Island.”

  “Counterfeiting,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp said, “What do you do mostly? Twenties?”

  “Nah, we gave up on American paper,” Archie told him. “Too many headaches. We mostly do South American stuff, sell it to drug dealers, ten cents on the dollar.”

  “Drug dealers,” Dortmunder said.

  “It’s great for everybody,” Archie said. “We get real greenbacks, they get bogus purplebacks good enough to pass. But if you guys are here, it’s not for the funny papers, it’s you got something to sell.”

  “Well, this time,” Dortmunder said, “what we got is something to discuss. When is Arnie gonna be back?”

  “Nobody knows,” Archie said. “The fact is, we did an intervention.”

  Dortmunder said, “Intervention?” He realized his conversation was consisting mainly of repeating things other people said, which irritated him but which he seemed unable to stop.

  Kelp said, “Intervention is where a guy is too much of a drunk, right? Then his family and friends get together and make him go off for rehab, and they won’t like him any more if he doesn’t shape up.”

  “Well, Arnie doesn’t have friends,” Archie pointed out, “so it was just family.”

  Kelp said, “Arnie had a drinking problem? In addition to everything else? I didn’t know that.”

  “No,” Archie said, “Arnie doesn’t hardly drink much of anything at all. And absolutely no hard drugs.”

  Dortmunder, happy to hear himself come up with an original sentence, said, “Then how come you intervented?”

  “For his obnoxiousness,” Archie said. “You know Arnie, you know what he’s like.”

  “To see him,” Kelp said, “is to wanna not see him.”

  “Right.” Archie spread his hands. “You know, you get to choose your friends, but your family chooses you, so we’ve all been stuck with Arnie all these years. So
finally the family got together for a powwow, out at the printing plant, without Arnie, and we decided the time had come for an intervention. It took place right in this room.”

  Dortmunder looked around the room, trying to imagine it full of an entire family that had had enough of Arnie Albright. “That must have been something,” he said.

  “Very emotional,” Archie agreed. “Weeping and promises and even a threat here and there. But at last he agreed he had to do it, he had to go get his personality cleaned up.”

  Dortmunder said, “Where do you send a guy like Arnie to rehab?”

  “Club Med,” Archie told him. “He’s down there right now, on one of them islands, and the deal is, he has to stay there until the manager says he’s improved enough for the family to meet him without having to immediately put him to death. So nobody knows how long he’s gonna be gone.”

  “And the manager’s in on it,” Kelp said.

  Archie said, “He says it’s the first intervention like this he ever seen, but if it works out it could be a whole new market. He’s very excited about it.”

  Kelp shook his head. “A rehabilitated Arnie. I can hardly wait.”

  “Well, you’ll have to,” Archie said. “The manager agrees, Arnie’s a tough case. That’s how they know, if they can fix him, they got a market with legs. In the meantime, maybe I could do something for you guys myself.”

  Feeling he had nothing to lose, Dortmunder pulled Chester’s list out of his pocket and said, “What we were gonna ask Arnie, which of these collections of collectibles would it be worth our while to bring him some?”

  Archie accepted the list, glanced at it, and said, “I’m not in that business myself, but I tell you what I could do. I could fax this to Arnie, he could fax back the answer.”

  Dortmunder said, “Isn’t that a little open?”

  “We got a code going,” Archie said. “Phone and fax, both. Arnie’s paying for his own intervention down there, because none of us would give a dime for the son of a bitch, so his business has to keep going. We take turns hanging out here for when the customers show up. I’ll send him the list; tomorrow, the next day, you’ll have your answer.”