The Road To Ruin

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Right.”

  Now that he was facing the bar, Dortmunder noticed, on the backbar, some kind of strange glittering machine that seemed to be half cash register and half television set, except the program showing was simply a set of squares and rectangles in different shiny colors. He pointed his forehead at this thing and said, “What’s that?”

  “That?” Rollo turned to look at the machine, considering his answer. “That,” he decided, putting the bitters bottle in pride of place next to the grenadine, “is the new computerized cash register. The owner put it in, for the efficiency.”

  “Computerized?”

  “Yeah. Let’s say, for instance,” Rollo said, “you asked for a beer. I know you didn’t, but let’s just say.”

  “Fine,” Dortmunder agreed.

  “What it does,” Rollo said, turning to the machine and not quite touching its glittery screen, “it reads your order, depending where I touch the screen.”

  “You touch the screen?”

  “Not unless you actually order the beer,” Rollo said. “But say you did.”

  “I got that part,” Dortmunder said.

  “Right.” Rollo demonstrated, his meaty forefinger never quite making actual contact with the multicolored screen as he said, “I press beer, I press domestic, I press eight-ounce, I press sale. Then the order shows up down here, in this rectangle, the yellow one.”

  “I see it.”

  “It says one domestic beer, eight ounces, and then it says, ‘Press here if correct, press here if incorrect,’ and I press correct, and then I press cash, and then I press sale, and then the cash register drawer opens.”

  “The cash register drawer is open,” Dortmunder said.

  “Yeah,” Rollo agreed. “I keep it that way. It’s simpler.”

  At the other end of the bar, the regulars were trying to figure out what ever happened to Armistice Day. “It used to be,” the third regular said. “I remember it.”

  The second regular, the one with the voice, intoned, “The eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”

  The third regular said, “Maybe if that ever shows up on a Monday, we’ll get Armistice Day again.”

  “So what happened,” the fifth regular inquired, “when all those elevens came up?”

  “Why, the war ended,” the second regular told him, with great solemnity.

  “What war?”

  “The war they were having at that time.”

  The buttinsky from the regulars’ auxiliary said, “What if it’s the tenth minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and the lieutenant tells you to take a peek over the top of the trench, see if the Germans are still there?”

  Darkly, the third regular said, “I had a lieutenant like that.”

  “Yeah?” The first regular was interested. “What ever became of him?”

  “Friendly fire.”

  “I take it,” Rollo said, placing on the bar in front of Dortmunder a round enameled Rheingold Beer tray, “you’re meeting some of your associates in the room in the back.”

  “Yeah,” Dortmunder said, as Rollo put two thick squat glasses and a shallow ironstone bowl with ice cubes in it and a bottle of murky brown liquid labeled Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon—Our Own Brand all in a row on the tray. “We’ll have the vodka and red wine and the beer with salt and the other bourbon,” he said, because Rollo knew his customers strictly by their liquid preferences. “And a guy with like a barrel chest and skinny arms and legs, answers to Chester, I don’t know what he drinks.”

  “I’ll know,” Rollo said. “The minute I look at him.” Pushing the tray closer to Dortmunder, he said, “You’re the first.”

  Good; that meant he’d get to sit facing the door. “Thanks, Rollo,” he said, and carried the tray past the holiday debate team, who were trying to decide if Arbor Day was an actual holiday or a typo for Labor Day. Leaving the front part of the bar, Dortmunder went down the hall with doors decorated with black metal dog silhouettes labeled POINTERS and SETTERS and past the phone booth surrounded by graffiti of hacker’s code and on into a small square room with a concrete floor. The walls were hidden, floor to ceiling, by beer and liquor cases, leaving just enough space for a battered old round table with a stained felt top that had once been pool-table green but now looked mostly like Amsterdam Liquor store bourbon. The table was surrounded by half a dozen armless wooden chairs.

  This room had been dark, but when Dortmunder hit the switch beside the door, one bare bulb under a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire let you see all you wanted to see of the place.

  Dortmunder walked all around the room to sit in the chair that most directly faced the door—the prize for being first. Then he added an ice cube to one of the glasses, poured in a little murk, and sat back to await his crew.

  As far as Dortmunder was concerned, holidays were mostly an opportunity to improve your luggage.

  5

  DORTMUNDER HAD LEFT THE door open, which turned out to be a good thing. It wasn’t a good thing for the view it offered, which was of the opposite wall of the corridor, constructed many ages ago, apparently out of cooling lava, possibly with small life forms ambered within, but because the door being open made it possible for the next arrival to arrive.

  He couldn’t have done it otherwise. With both of his hands encumbered as they were, a glass of beer (domestic, eight-ounce) in the right, a half-full glass salt-shaker with metal top in the left, he might have found it a little tricky to deal with that round smooth doorknob requiring a half turn to the left. It’s bad luck to spill salt, as everybody knows, and even worse luck to spill beer.

  The bearer of these objects, a blocky ginger-haired man with freckles on the backs of his hands, gave Dortmunder a sour look and said, “You got here first.”

  “Hi, Stan,” Dortmunder said. “You’re right on time.”

  Stan came around the table to sit at Dortmunder’s right hand, which meant he would have anyway a three-quarter view of the door. Putting down his beer and his salt, he said, “I woulda been okay, I mean, I plotted it out ahead, I know the BQE’s no good, they’re putting in a bicycle lane—”

  Dortmunder said, “On the BQE? Impossible. The slowest car on the BQE is doing Mach two. You’re gonna put bicycles up there?”

  “A bicycle lane,” Stan corrected. “It keeps the greens happy, now they got a bicycle lane, it keeps the construction industry happy, now they got useless work at union wages, and if a green ever tries to use it, there’s another cause for happiness. Anyway, the Van Wyck’s no good because they’re putting in the monorail—”

  “I don’t know,” Dortmunder said, “what’s happening to New York.”

  Stan nodded. “You wanna know what’s happening to New York?” he asked. “I tell you what you do. You go to a used-magazine store, you look at the covers of science fiction magazines from the thirties. That’s what’s happening to New York. Anyway, I figured, the old streets are still okay, I’ll take a straight run up Flatbush Avenue, come to Manhattan that way. I’ve got ten-ten-wins on, to tell me anything I ought to know, this is the radio station they say, ‘Give us twenty-two minutes, we’ll give you the world.’ What about the demonstration at Flatbush and Atlantic? Isn’t that part of the world?”

  Dortmunder said, “Demonstration?”

  “The people that want Long Island to secede from New York State,” Stan said, shrugging as though naturally everybody knew about that, but before Dortmunder could ask the first of several questions that came to mind, Andy Kelp entered, empty-handed, followed by Chester Fallon, carrying a glass of beer much like Stan’s, but without the side order of salt.

  They both scoped out the seating situation pretty fast, but Kelp was quicker, and slid in to Dortmunder’s left, leaving a less-than-half view of the doorway for Chester at his left as he reached for the “bourbon” bottle and the other glass and said, “Tiny’ll be along in a minute.”
/>   Dortmunder said, “Where is he?”

  “Out in the bar,” Kelp said, “arguing with some people, is Decoration Day a national holiday.”

  Surprised, Chester said, “That guy? He’s with us? I wouldn’t argue with him.”

  Dortmunder said, “The arguments don’t run long.”

  Kelp said, “Some of the people out there think it’s Decorator Day, which is kinda muddying the issue.”

  At this point a man-monster entered the room. Shaped mostly like an armored car, but harder, he held in his left hand a tall glass of red liquid while his right hand was to his mouth as he licked his knuckles. He left off the licking to glare around the room and say, “I was born in this country.”

  “Of course you were, Tiny,” Dortmunder said. “Come on in. This is Chester Fallon. Chester, Tiny Bulcher.”

  “Harya,” Tiny said, and stuck out a hand like a Christmas ham, with wet knuckles.

  Chester studied this offering. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “I don’t hurt myself,” Tiny told him.

  So they shook hands, Chester winced, and Tiny shut the door, then sat with his back to it, not giving a damn.

  Stan said to Chester, “We weren’t introduced. I’m the driver, Stan Murch.”

  Chester looked at him in surprise. “You’re the driver? I’m the driver.”

  Stan gave him the critical double-o. “Then where’s your salt?”

  Chester said, “Salt? You expect icy roads? In May?”

  “The driver drinks beer,” Stan told him. “Like you, like me. But the driver doesn’t want to drink too much beer, because he’s gotta know what he’s doing when he’s at the wheel.”

  “Sure,” Chester said, and shrugged.

  “But the thing with beer,” Stan said, “it won’t last. You just sip it, sip it, one time you look, it’s flat, head’s gone, tastes like shit.”

  “That’s true,” Chester said.

  Stan picked up the saltshaker. “Every once in a while,” he said, “you tap in a little salt, gives it back its head, gives it back its zest, you can pace yourself.” He demonstrated, tapping a little salt into his glass, and they all watched the head improve.

  Chester nodded. “Pretty good,” he said. “Not exactly driving expertise, but useful. Thank you.”

  “Any time,” Stan told him, and sipped beer.

  “Anyway,” Dortmunder said, “this time around, we need more than one driver.”

  Stan said, “Why? What are we taking?”

  “Cars,” Dortmunder said.

  Stan looked interested. “Yeah?”

  Dortmunder turned to Chester. “Tell Stan and Tiny the story.”

  So Chester told them the story, and at the end of it Tiny said, “Would you like it if this guy Monroe Hall got chastised a little along the way, as long as we’re there?”

  “I wouldn’t mind that a bit,” Chester said.

  “It sounds,” Tiny said, “like he’s overdue.”

  “What we’re here for now,” Dortmunder said, “is, Chester tells us the layout, we see how we can do it. Or, you know, if we can do it.”

  “For now,” Stan said, “let’s stick with how. I wanna see Tiny chastise that guy.”

  “Okay,” Dortmunder said. “Chester, what’s the layout?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” Chester said. “It isn’t easy. I wish it was, but it isn’t.”

  Tiny said, “Just tell us.”

  “Sure,” Chester said. “It’s a big place, don’t know how many thousands acres, rolling land, some woods, different buildings, roads. It’s like its own little country. In fact, it’s almost the entire county.”

  “Everything,” Kelp suggested, “except the ‘R.’”

  “Uh, yeah,” Chester said, and told the rest: “Part of it used to be a dairy farm, there’s still a part with horses, there’s these special buildings for the cars, other buildings for the other collections—”

  Kelp said, “Collections?”

  “This guy’s a collector,” Chester explained. “Not just cars. Some of the collections he keeps in the main house, like the music boxes and the cuckoo clocks, but some have their own buildings, like the model trains and the nineteenth-century farm equipment.”

  Dortmunder said, “Wait a second, Chester. While we’re there taking these cars, is there stuff we should be putting in the cars?”

  Kelp said, “I was just thinking the same thing. Small, valuable, fit right in the car, backseat and trunk. Chester? They got stuff like that?”

  Chester said, “I’m not a collector, I don’t know what all that stuff is worth.”

  “We know people that do know,” Dortmunder told him. “Give us a list of the collections. Not now, later.”

  “Okay.”

  Tiny said, “Okay, never mind what we put in the cars, we know we can deal with that. But let’s say we got the cars, these six cars you think are the best, worth a lot of cash. Who do we sell them to?”

  “Insurance company,” Chester said, so promptly it was obvious he’d been thinking about it.

  Dortmunder said, “That’s what I figured, too. That’s the natural customer.”

  Kelp said, “And they don’t argue, insurance companies, all they want is to minimize the expense.”

  Stan said, “They do cooperate with the authorities, though.”

  Kelp shrugged. “We expect that, we account for that. But all along they know, they give us ten percent of the value, it’s better than giving Monroe Hall a hundred percent.”

  “Twenty percent,” Dortmunder said.

  “No, John,” Kelp said, “they gotta reimburse the owner the full value.”

  “Twenty percent to us,” Dortmunder said.

  Kelp perked up. “You think so? We could hit ‘em for that much?”

  Chester said, “All they have to do is say no once, we pick the least valuable of the six, put it in a field, burn it up, call the insurance company, say you can go pick up that one right now, and by the way, the rest’ll cost you twenty-five percent.”

  Admiring, Dortmunder said, “Chester, that’s pretty tough. Somewhere you learned to be a hell of a negotiator.”

  “From watching Monroe Hall,” Chester said. “He’d coin-toss his mother for a returnable soda bottle, and knife her if he lost.”

  Stan said, “So we just need a place to stash these cars while everybody talks it over.”

  Tiny looked doubtful. “Then it’s like a kidnapping,” he said. “It’s step after step, the phone calls, the ransom, the pickup, the return.”

  “That’s okay,” Dortmunder said. “We can handle that.”

  “No problem,” Kelp said.

  Tiny considered that. “Maybe,” he decided. “Maybe no problem. But before that there’s a problem.” He turned to Chester. “Tell us about the problem.”

  “Well, the security,” Chester said.

  Tiny nodded. “There’s always gonna be security,” he said, “where you got valuable stuff.”

  “But they beefed it up,” Chester said, “since the scandal broke. You got a lotta people out there, not just us, wouldn’t mind chastising Monroe Hall. He’s what they call a pariah. So now they got electric fence around the whole compound, miles of it, motion sensors, big lights that light up, private guards.”

  “So the first question is,” Stan said, “how do we drive a bunch of cars off the property without anybody seeing us or hearing us.”

  “Well, no,” Chester said. “The first question is, how do you get on the property.”

  “I give up,” Stan said. “How do we?”

  “I never planned any stuff,” Chester told him, “back in my life of crime. I was just the driver.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Stan suggested, “is, you don’t know how we get in.”

  “Come on, Stan,” Chester said. “You said you’re the driver. Do you ever know stuff like that?”

  “I leave that to John here,” Stan said.

  Chester nodded. “Good. Then so do I.
”

  Everybody looked at Dortmunder. He nodded, accepting the weight. “So we gotta see the place,” he said.

  They looked alert, watching him, waiting.

  “Okay,” Dortmunder said. “So the first thing we do, we steal a car.”

  6

  THEY WHILED AWAY THE empty hours in the little brown Taurus singing the union anthem:

  “Who will always guide the way?

  Give us comfort in the fray?

  Gain us benefits and pay?

  The ACWFFA!”

  At which point Mac interrupted, saying, “Here comes the Healey.” He was in the backseat, looking toward the guard-shacked entrance to the Monroe Hall compound that stretched away behind them.

  “And here we go again,” Buddy said, pessimistic as hell, but he did switch on the Taurus engine.

  “You know it’s just the wife,” Ace said, up front in the passenger seat.

  “It is,” Mac said, seeing her blond hair fly as the Healey picked up speed once it reached the county road, coming this way as the compound’s gate closed behind her.

  “Follow her,” Ace said.

  Buddy said, “Again? Why? What’s the point?”

  “Maybe he’s hiding in there,” Ace suggested.

  Buddy snorted. “In a two-seater? Where? Besides, he never did before.”

  The Healey zipped past then, still accelerating, and Buddy’s point was made. The Healey was so small and so open you could see the wife’s brown suede purse on the passenger seat to her left, the Healey being a British car, with right-hand steering. It was a beautiful car, in truth, small and neat, over fifty years old and still looking like a spring chicken. It was topless, with a wide rectangular windshield—windscreen, its makers would say—edged in chrome and tilted back. The slightly raised air scoop on the hood, like a retroussé nose, had twin low flaring nostrils over a gleaming grill shaped like an Irish harp. The body was a creamy white, like very good porcelain, and the fenders, standing out to the side of the body, were arched like white leaping dolphins. With the beautiful long-haired blonde at the wheel, flashing through the lush green Pennsylvania countryside on the first day of June, it was a sight to make you glad there’s evolution.