What's the Worst That Could Happen?

by Donald E. Westlake

  Really suspicious now, he said, “Lutetia, why are you so good to me?”

  “Because, my dear,” she told him, with absolute truth, “you’re so good to me.”

  The car had stopped now in front of the theater. The show inside—Desdemona!—had broken nearly an hour ago, and the lobby was half-lit, visible through its bank of glass doors. Arthur, their doorman/lift operator, came out of the lobby, crossed the broad sidewalk still rich in pedestrians, and opened the rear door for them. Lutetia emerged first, and just heard Max, behind her, say to Chalmers, “Wait.”

  They crossed the sidewalk together, following Arthur, Lutetia saying, “You told Chalmers to wait? Are you going out again?”

  “I’m going to Carrport.”

  Arthur held the lobby door, and they stepped through, Lutetia staring at Max, saying, “Are you mad? You just told me the judge took it away from you!”

  “I’m permitted one last visit,” he explained, as Arthur opened the elevator doors and they boarded. “To remove my personal possessions, inventory that shouldn’t be sold with the property. One overnight.”

  “Now? It’s nearly midnight!”

  “When else am I going to do it?”

  The elevator sped upward and Max gave her the open frank and honest look she mistrusted so. “I have to leave tomorrow in any event, then I’m in Washington, then Chicago, then Sydney, then Nevada, on and on. The place has to be put on the market right away.”

  The doors opened at their reception room. “Wait,” Max told Arthur, as Lutetia clapped the apartment lights on.

  As they crossed the reception room, Lutetia said, “So you won’t come back here tomorrow, but go from Carrport straight to Kennedy and fly south.”

  “That makes the most sense,” he said. “I’ll just grab the papers I need, and my overnight bag. I’ll be out there by one, sleep, have most of the day tomorrow to do my inventory, say my . . . good-byes, to the house.”

  And have it off with some tootsie, Lutetia thought. Her antennae were always very good. Following him into the bedroom, she said, “I’ll come with you.”

  He stopped, as though he’d run into a glass wall. Turning, he said, “You will not.”

  “But I really should,” she said. “And I want to. You’re right, I never did see the place out there, and this will be my last chance. Now that I know it means so much to you, I feel I should be with you when you say your farewells.” Resting a loving hand on his forearm, she said, “I want to feel close to you, Max, you know that. I want to be a help to you.”

  “But you don’t want to—You have so much to do here.”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” she said, and smiled her sunniest smile. “The next two days, my calendar is absolutely empty. I can’t think of anything nicer to do, anything more romantic, than to be driven out to your thane’s castle with you for your final night there, to spend the night with you, there, in the symbol of your inner self. There must be fireplaces. Tell me there are fireplaces.”

  Trying for a friendly smile, nearly accomplishing it, he said, “Love petal, you don’t want to do that. An unfamiliar house, you’ll be uncomfortable, away from everything you care for, stuck in—”

  “But you are everything I care for, dearest,” she assured him, and then allowed slight doubt to color her features as she said, “Unless . . . You don’t have any other reason for going out there by yourself, do you?”

  “Of course not, sweet minx,” he said, and spontaneously hugged her, and let her go. “You know me better than that, my warm bunny.”

  “Then it’s settled,” she announced, innocent and happy. “Off we go!”

  “Off we go,” he echoed, less exuberantly. He looked as though the dinner he’d eaten at the Lumleys’ might be disagreeing with him. He sighed, and his next smile was a brave one. “I’ll just get my . . . things.”

  25

  T he lockman was not the woman from the restaurant at dinner. The lockman was Wally Whistler, and Andy Kelp didn’t mention the woman at dinner, or dinner itself, or anything about that entire scene. Which was okay with Dortmunder. No sweat off his nose. He didn’t mind if Andy Kelp wanted to snub him at dinner and have secrets. Didn’t matter to him.

  Since Gus Brock had already showed up, a couple minutes early, the arrival of Wally Whistler and Andy Kelp meant the gang was all here. Wally Whistler was a cheerful guy and a first-rate lock expert, whose only flaw was a certain absentmindedness. He’d once spent a period of time in an upstate prison merely because, visiting the zoo with his kids, he’d absentmindedly fiddled with a lock, and the resulting freed lion had made everybody upset and irritated until the tranquilizer dart had made it possible to put the lion back in his cage. Another time, Wally had been helping some people one night at a Customs warehouse on the Brooklyn docks—people who hadn’t wanted to encumber Customs with a lot of documents and forms—and he was, as usual, playing absentmindedly with locks, and when he realized he’d somehow unlocked his way from the warehouse into the bowels of a cargo ship, the ship had already sailed, and he hadn’t managed to get off the thing until Brazil, which was unfortunate, because Brazil and the United States don’t have an extradition treaty. Wally Whistler, like some other of Dortmunder’s friends, liked to travel by extradition, which meant, when overseas, they’d confess to a crime in America they knew they could prove they hadn’t done, be extradited back home, produce the proof of innocence, and walk. Without extradition from Brazil, it had taken Wally a long time indeed to get home, but here he was at last, as good as ever, and just as absentminded.

  “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.

  26

  T he 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 much 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.”

  27

  A nne 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 decam
ped 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.