Good Behaviour

by Donald E. Westlake

  Where Tiny was a one-man team all his own, surrounded by more high mounds of plastic bags, sorting and packing like mad, tossing sealed packages into the corner between the window and the piano. The great big toilet-paper carton they'd brought in with them, which had at that time contained most of these mailers, had been emptied and placed in the corner to receive the completed packages, but they now filled and overflowed the carton and were gradually turning into a jagged brown cardboard replica of an alp, its peak just under the ceiling.

  Howey added his new armload to this ever-growing slope and gathered up another stack of empty packages from atop the piano. 18} As he was going out, Tiny looked over at him, paused, and said,

  "Wilbur."

  "Here I am," Howey told him, peering over the top of the mailers.

  "When we get done here," Tiny told him, "take a look through those two books of security specs."

  Howey said, "Sure thing. You want to go up look for Dortmunder, huh?"

  Tiny glowered.

  "There is no Dortmunder," he said.

  "There's only us. And what you're gonna do is find us another floor with good stuff in it that we can hit tonight."

  Howey gaped at him.

  "Tonight? Say, Tiny, you want more?"

  "Yes," Tiny said simply.

  "Well, but, say, listen," Howey said, the stack of mailers wobbling in his arms.

  "When do we grab some shuteye?"

  Tiny grinned.

  "When we get to Bermuda," he said.

  In his dream, Dortmunder walked a tightrope between two tall towers.

  Instead of a balancing pole, he carried a long heavy lance, tipping first to the left and then to the right. And the tightrope itself was made of long blonde hair. In the arched window at the top of the stone tower out in front he could see the girl whose hair this was, still attached to her head, long and braided and looped between the two towers; from the strained and painful expression on her face, she didn't much like what was going on.

  But what could he do? Looking down, he saw a jousting arena laid out on the bare tan ground between the towers. Men on horseback tilted at one another down there, but instead of knight's armor they were dressed in green-shaded camouflage uniforms, and the weapons they jousted with were Valmets. Each pair started far apart, then rode madly together on their horses, whacking and whamming at each other with the rifles, never firing them.

  Other green-clad men off to the side were setting up a catapult, and beyond them stood a company of archers. In bleachers farther away, a group of nuns silently applauded. As Dortmunder watched, the archers nocked an arrow into their bows, took a stance, and at a signal from their commander-the burly man who'd led Dortmunder into Margrave-a volley of arrows arched into the air and came straight at him! Yi! he tried to shout, but couldn't make a sound. He ducked and wiggled, his feet shuffling back and forth while the girl in the tower window grimaced and grabbed at her hair to ease the strain, and the arrows went whiff whiff-whiff on by.

  Thwack! A great boulder came curving up from the catapult.

  Dortmunder dropped his lance and fell forward onto the braids, and the boulder brushed his back as it went by.

  Dortmunder clung to the braided tightrope. The archers were readying a second volley. Another big boulder was being tipped into the catapult.

  The silent nuns jumped up and down in excitement. The jousting men all stopped lambasting one another to point their pennant-tipped Valmets at Dortmunder. And now they were shooting! Bullets ripped through the hair-rope, breaking it, Dortmunder was losing his grip and falling, and somebody pinched his nose hard. His eyes popped open, he stared at Sister Mary Grace leaning over him, and he said, "Oh, thank you! I needed that."

  Wide-eyed, she put a warning finger to her lips, then pointed a thumb toward the doorway.

  Dortmunder had been sleeping in the big beige marble bathtub, the surface softened by a couple of layers of terrycloth towels and with a tan terrycloth robe thrown over him for comfort. Now he tried to sit up, bumping his elbow on bare marble and his knee on a faucet, and whispered, "Somebody's coming?"

  She nodded. She pretended to open a door and look in, to raise a chest lid and study the interior, to pull a curtain aside and peer past it.

  "They're searching?" His whisper was so loud and harsh that she made the shush-shush gesture with finger to lips again. More quietly, he whispered, "Here? Up here?"

  Emphatic nod. Then she tugged at his wrist.

  "Okay, okay, here I come."

  He crawled and struggled up out of the bathtub, not aided by the fact that terrycloth slides on marble, and when at last he was more or less erect and on his feet he found he was just as stiff and sore as if the surfaces he'd slept on had been of more plebeian matter.

  "Whoosh," he commented, and pressed knuckles into his back.

  She was over by the bedroom door, gesturing dramatically for him to come on. He looked around the bathroom, and said, "Uh.

  Do I have two minutes?"

  Her face was agitated, but then she nodded briskly and hurried from the room, pulling the door shut, and two minutes later Dortmunder followed her.

  A clean and simple bedroom. The twin bed stood high enough from the ground and was so unostentatiously covered that the well-swept floor beneath it was in plain sight. A small wooden chest of drawers, a modest bedside table and an armless wooden chair completed the furnishings. The closet door stood open, revealing an almost empty interior.

  "There's no place to hide," Dortmunder pointed out.

  She was over by the hall door. She nodded agreement, touched finger to lips, and cautiously opened the door, looking out.

  Dortmunder heard male voices, and slid over to peek past the top of Sister Mary Grace's head.

  A short hall. Half a dozen tough guys in camouflage uniforms out of Dortmunder's dream were just entering a room down to the right. They weren't carrying their Valmets, but on the other hand they didn't have to.

  The instant the last of the searchers disappeared into that room, Sister Mary Grace was out the bedroom door and moving away to the left, gesturing for Dortmunder to follow. He did, both of them jogging on the balls of their feet, and she led them into the kitchen.

  Large, airy, very elaborate and modern, with a big doubleovened electric stove. Side-by-side refrigerator-freezer, with ice water dispenser. Butcher block island in the middle of the room, with copper pans hanging above. Blond wood cabinets, white tile floor. Twin stainless steel sinks. Dishwasher, with a small magnetic sign on the front reading, sucio-DIRTY. Lots of unopenable windows letting in the morning light here a thousand feet closer to Heaven. Dortmunder opened a narrow wooden door and found a broom closet crammed with brooms and mops and buckets. There was nowhere to hide.

  Sister Mary Grace had made one brisk circuit around the room, staring and frowning at everything, then abruptly hurried to the dishwasher and turned the magnetic sign around so it read, LIMP1O-CLEAN. A hell of a time for tidying up.

  But now what? Opening the dishwasher, which was less than a quarter full, she started pulling out used glasses, coffee cups, plates, forks, everything. Opening cabinets, she stowed it away, dirty dishes with the clean. Not onJy that, she gestured urgently for Dortmunder to come over and help.

  So Dortmunder went over and helped.

  "What's this for?" he asked, putting glasses with milk scum on their bottoms on a shelf with clean glasses.

  She pointed at him. She pointed at the dishwasher.

  "Oh, no," he said.

  "I couldn't fit in, that's nothing I could, no way I'm gonna…"

  She was very good at ignoring him, when she was of a mind to. The dirty dishes dealt with, she pulled the lower rack out of the dishwasher, reached in and lifted the propeller-like water dispenser out of the bottom and dropped it in the rack, then carried the rack over to the stove. The wide oven ate the rack as though it were no more than a thirty-pound turkey or three pies.

  Hardly believing he was doing it, Dort
munder removed the dishwasher's top rack and brought it over to Sister Mary Grace, who fed it to the other oven. Meantime, Dortmunder was saying, "See, it's this phobia, I can't, there's a phobia with places like that."

  Well, there's about a million phobias in connection with getting inside a dishwasher; about the only phobia that doesn't come into play is the fear of heights. But there's claustrophobia, the fear of small enclosed spaces; nyctophobia, the fear of the dark; dysmorphophobia, the fear of being bent out of shape; lyssophobia, the fear of going crazy; hydrophobia, the fear of someone turning the dishwasher on to rinse cycle… Sister Mary Grace pointed at the dishwasher, her mouth a stern grim line. Dortmunder paused to marshal further arguments, and heard male voices out in the hall, crossing to search the bedroom. It wouldn't take long at all to search that bedroom, nor the bathroom beyond it.

  "I'll try," Dortmunder said.

  "If I can't fit in, I'll just give myself up or something."

  Shoo, shoo, she gestured, and he went over to the dishwasher and tried to figure out how to get into it. If he stepped on the open door, it would break. Finally, he turned his back to the thing, spread his legs wide like a parody of a cowboy on a horse, and backed up slowly, shins brushing the sides of the door, while Sister Mary Grace held one arm to help him keep his balance.

  Tight, very tight. Dortmunder sat down in the dishwasher, hit the back of his head, scrinched around, hit the back of his head, drew his left leg up inside, hit the back of his head, drew his left leg up inside, hit the back of his head, wriggled farther and farther back while his spine found an interesting curve it had never known it could make before, and then there he was, head bent down to look at his own stomach, legs tied in a granny knot, and body generally speaking doing a Lon Chaney imitation.

  But he was in it, by golly, inside the dishwasher. By looking as far upward as possible, past his own eyebrows, he could see the dishwasher door closing.

  "Not all the way!" he said.

  Not all the way. In fact, it rested gently on the top of his head just a quarter-inch from being completely closed, so there was even a bit of light in here. So much for nyctophobia. But what if I get a cramp in here, he wondered, so there's another one: crampophobia.

  The dishwasher smelled of sour milk. Also something vaguely Mexican or South American. Dortmunder heard the faint rustle of Sister Mary Grace leaving the kitchen, and he spent a moment in extreme discomfort, sniffing, trying to place that somehow Latin odor, and the kitchen filled up with men talking, walking around, banging into things.

  "Goddamnit," one voice said, "there's just nobody here."

  A voice that sounded to Dortmunder like the leader, the guy who'd been up on the stage last night, said, "He's got to be, boys. I doped it out, and that little quiet girl there has to be the one that helped him with the lights, and up here is the only place she could bring him."

  "Well, she won't talk."

  "I know she won't talk," the leader's voice said.

  "She's took a vow of silence."

  "Vow of silence? Is that spreading around among women?" asked another voice; he sounded hopeful.

  "Mr. Pickens," said another voice, "the fella just isn't here.

  We've searched every room. We've left a man on duty in every room, so the fella couldn't do a flanking movement and get around behind us. He just plain and simple isn't up here."

  "And yet," said the leader's voice, who must be Pickens, "he just has to be. I don't get it."

  Another voice suggested, "Maybe we oughta do another sweep down on seventy-four. And in that apartment on seventy five "We've done all that," Pickens complained, but he could be heard weakening.

  Go do it again, Dortmunder thought. I can't stay scrunched up in here much longer.

  A sound of water running. Now what?

  "Long as we're here," a voice said, "anybody else want coffee?"

  It was curiosity that brought J.C. Taylor back to her office on Sunday morning, but she told herself her motives were hardheaded and realistic. She wanted to be sure they weren't doing any irreparable damage to her place, for one thing, and she also wanted to be damn certain there wouldn't be any evidence on her territory linking her to whatever burglaries those plug-uglies were committing. But besides that, and at bottom, it was curiosity.

  On Sunday, you had to sign in at the lectern in the lobby. J.C. knew the blue-uniformed security guard-she occasionally did come in anyway on Sundays, to get caught up with the mailing and he gave her a happy smile of greeting, saying, "A real nice day."

  So nothing's gone wrong yet with their plans, she thought, no excitement or trouble.

  "A very nice day," she agreed, scrawled J.C.

  Taylor, 712, 10:50 AM on the sheet, and went away to the 5-21 elevators and on up to seven.

  The Avalon State Bank Tower always felt different on Sunday, huge and cavernous and echoing. There was something timeless about it then, as though it had existed forever on some asteroid out in space and human beings had just recently started to inhabit it.

  J.C. listened to the magnified tock-tock of her footsteps as she walked down the corridor from the elevator, and she could just feel the emptiness in the offices all around her.

  Not total emptiness, though. Unlocking the door to 712, she stepped into the middle of a touring company production of The Thief of Bagdad.

  Inlaid chests, amphorae, statuettes, the smoothness of ivory, the glitter of jade, amethyst, alexandrite, aquamarine, drapes of necklace, bangles, armlets, anklets, pendants, gleam of garnet, jasper, peridot, heliotrope, a rainbow of crimsons and golds and fierce greens strewn about her office furniture and floor as in some Hollywood Technicolor bazaar. All it lacked was Maria Montez.

  It didn't lack Sabu, however; here he came from the inner office, in the person of Wilbur Howey, carrying a teetering stack of mailers, while the ones called Kelp and Murch worked industriously away at JCs desk, sorting and stowing, like minor elves in Santa's workshop, to blur the metaphor just a bit.

  It was Sabu-that is, Howey-who noticed her first, gaped with surprise and delight over the top of his stack of cardboard, and cried out,

  "Say, Toots!"

  That made the elves look up.

  "Chicky," said Kelp, "it's the landlord."

  "I guess this must be success," J.C. said. Something deeply acquisitive in her nature, something magpie-ish, some instinctive turning toward luxury and comfort and sybaritic satisfaction, some softness she invariably kept locked away so deeply she remained barely aware of its existence, made her reach out and pick up a smooth ivory bracelet, a simple oval, very delicately carved with a floral design.

  The fingers that typed the mailing labels gently caressed the design, the eyes that looked without emotion at the photographers softened as they looked at the soft white of the ivory.

  "Not too tough to take," she murmured, and cleared her throat, and put the bracelet down again before these birds got the idea she was trying to steal it. Or noticed any flaw in her armor.

  Looking around, she said, "Where's the rest of the team?"

  "Say, I'll tell you," Howey said, dumping the empty mailers on the floor next to Kelp, "Tiny's back there," with a thumb toward the inner door.

  "And the other guy? The one with the worry lines on his head."

  "You mean Dortmunder," Kelp told her.

  "If you say so," she said, and was becoming aware of an awkwardness in their silence when the monster appeared in the inner office doorway, glowering at her from under those throw rugs he used for eyebrows, and saying, "What's this? You come back on Monday, that's the story the way 7 heard it."

  "I wanted to check on things," she said, and shrugged. Monsters didn't intimidate her, she'd worked with them all her adult life.

  "Where's the other one?" she repeated.

  "Dort-whatever."

  "Munder," Kelp said.

  "Gone," Tiny Bulcher said.

  "Like you. We'll see you tomorrow."

  "Gentle down, big fella," she
told him, and turned to Howey, the most malleable of them.

  "Where is he, Wilbur?"

  "Well, say," Howey told her, and threw a worried glance at Tiny, "he's gone, you know?"

  "No, I don't know."

  Tiny said, "He went upstairs to get the nun and he didn't come down, so that's it."

  "Nun?"

  Kelp said, "It's very simple," and then proceeded to tell her a story that wasn't simple at all. For some strange reason, there was a nun imprisoned at the top of this tower. For some other strange reason, Dortmunder had to go rescue her. The whole robbery business was to pay for partners to help in the rescue of the nun.

  Last night, Dortmunder went away to rescue the nun, and so far he hadn't come back.

  J.C. said, "And?"

  Everybody shifted around uneasily. The others all glanced at Tiny Bulcher, who said, belligerently, "And nothing. He's on his own."

  Slowly she looked him up and down.

  "So that's why they call you Tiny," she said. With a graceful sweeping gesture of the arm that she'd learned in ballet class at the age of four-J.C. Taylor was not always as we see her now-she indicated the king's ransom strewn helter-skelter around the room.

  "Dort-whatever brought you all this," she said, voice dripping with scorn, "and now you're going to just leave him."

  Virgil Pickens sipped cooling coffee.

  "I just don't like it," he said.

  The four troops sitting around the kitchen table with him were getting so bored with all this they were beginning to let him know it.

  "Whether you like it or not, Mr. Pickens," one of them said, "that fella Smith just isn't up in this apartment."

  Pickens brooded, watching the Guatemalan cook who'd arrived just a few minutes ago-came to work at eleven, apparently-and who'd been throwing evil-eye hostile looks at the men gathered in her kitchen ever since.