Don't Lie to Me

by Donald E. Westlake

  Fortunately I’d known this offer was coming, so I didn’t have to hesitate and think it over. I’d made my decision to keep Linda out, and any reversal now would not be as simple and trouble-free as Grinella suggested. They’d insist on her name. They’d insist on questioning her. They’d turn up Dink, an ex-con, and roust him a little just to see if anything would fall out of the tree. They’d make a lot of waves in my personal life, and I didn’t want them to. And I’d had time during Grinella’s preamble to work all that out for myself, so that the instant he was finished talking, I could say, “I wish I could save you the time and trouble, but I told you the truth from the beginning. So far as I knew, I was alone here last night. I didn’t have any friends with me.”

  Hargerson said, “And here you are tonight, you aren’t even at your post. You’re off someplace. Maybe your friend is back again, maybe you’re some kind of poontang sex maniac.”

  I laughed. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for the compliment.”

  He gave a sour grunt, and extended his hand toward me, palm up. “Let’s see the basement key.”

  It was still in my pocket. I gave it to him, and he went off. I looked at Grinella and said, “Is your partner really and truly going to the basement to look for a girl?”

  “Seems that way,” Grinella said. He was still casual and relaxed.

  I shook my head, and went over to my usual chair to sit down. Grinella remained standing, leaning his back against the wall over by the door. After a minute he said, “I hear you used to be on the force.”

  I wondered where he’d heard, and how much he’d heard. I said, “That’s right.”

  “Get sick of the hours?” Which meant he didn’t know why I’d left, which meant he didn’t know anything at all. He had probably talked to the patrolman last night, the one who’d asked me if I’d ever been on the force. I’d given him a bald yes, without explanations.

  But now Grinella wanted explanations. I said, “Personal problems.”

  “Ah.” He nodded, then said, “With me, it’s the hours. Me and my wife both. We just get used to one shift, boom I’m switched to the next one.”

  “I remember that,” I said. I remembered a lot from the eighteen years; it had been the only life I’d ever wanted. I’d been inside precinct houses a couple of times in the last few years, and every time it had gotten me all over again; the smell, the look, the feel of the place, reminding me of the times when everything had been good.

  “Still,” Grinella was saying, “I guess I must like it okay. I mean, here I am, right?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  We kept talking like that, slow-paced, unimportant, skipping along the surface, for the next ten minutes, until Hargerson at last came back. He walked into the room and said to Grinella, “You hear me?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Hargerson might have handed the key back to me; instead, he dropped it on the nearest desk. “Let’s go,” he said.

  I said, “You went down to the workroom and shouted, to see if I really could have heard you two at the door or not.”

  He gave me a level stare. “So?”

  “I told you about it,” I said. “It would have been better if you’d told it to me.”

  “I’m not up on my Emily Post,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He put his hands in his pants pockets and stood flatfooted, looking at me. “While we’re getting names straight,” he said, “let me see do I have yours. Mitchell Tobin?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Any record?”

  “That’s a hell of a question,” I said. “What do you want to be offensive for?”

  “I’m doing my job,” he said. “No reason my job should offend you. Isn’t that right?”

  I looked at Grinella. “I was always lucky in my partners,” I said.

  He chuckled, but he said, “Me, too. See you around.”

  I walked them to the door. They’d let themselves in with skeleton keys, opening all three locks, but had only bothered to relock one of them. I opened it, let them out, fastened the three locks, walked back to the office, put the basement key back on the rack, started off on another tour of the display area. And all the time the last thing I’d said to Grinella kept circling in my head: “I was always lucky in my partners.” I’d said it fast, without thinking, aiming a shaft at Hargerson in a way he couldn’t respond to directly, and only after it was out of my mouth had I realized what I’d done, and what I’d said. Yes, I was always lucky in my partners, but my partners weren’t always lucky in me. Jock Sheehan wasn’t lucky to be my partner, I didn’t bring him any luck at all.

  I knew Hargerson would be looking into my history now, not because he thought for one second that I’d had anything to do with the dead John Doe, but because he was irritable and I was within range. He would look into my background, and he would find it all there, and I would be seeing Hargerson again. And he would have something to say to me about partners and luck.

  Miserable, I completed my uneventful round, and went to sit again in the office. If only the killer had left his John Doe somewhere else. If only I had found another agency to work for. If only Linda had picked a different night to come ask me her favor.

  But the “if only” song could begin much, much further back than that. Silently I sat there in the office and sang it.

  5

  THE NEXT DAY WAS Saturday, first of my three days off. Starting early last spring, and continuing all through the summer, Kate and I had been taking long weekend trips together, driving up into New England or over to Pennsylvania or down as far as the Carolinas. Our marriage hadn’t come to an end at the time of my disgrace, but it hadn’t really gone on either; it had fallen into a kind of suspended animation, as though it had been flash-frozen—which is, I suppose, a pretty accurate description of what in truth did happen—and ceased to have any meaningful existence after that for more than two years. The trips had been Kate’s idea, and it was a good one; they helped a lot in the thawing process. Bill is old enough now to be left alone for a few days, so each weekend we just get into the car and start driving, sometimes with no specific destination at all in mind.

  This time we drove up to Lake Champlain; Plattsburg, Dannemora, that area up near the Canadian border. It was October and many places were already closed for the winter, but up in the mountains the leaves had changed their colors and were really beautiful to look at. And it was pleasant not to be surrounded by so many tourists as in the summer.

  We came back late Monday night—I drove the last three hundred miles with Kate asleep in the back seat—and there was a note on the kitchen table from Bill, saying that Allied had called and wanted me to call the office first thing in the morning.

  The result was, I only got four hours’ sleep, since I’d expected to be able to stay in bed till noon, to readjust myself to the late schedule of a working night. I got up a little after eight, and was reasonably conscious and functional by the time the Allied office was open at nine.

  I got Grazko, and he was brusque and irritable: “Where’ve you been?”

  “Took a trip upstate,” I said. “Up around Plattsburg.”

  “Come into the office at ten-thirty. We got problems.”

  “All right,” I said. It didn’t occur to me, the state I was in, to ask him what kind of problems we had until I was already off the phone. Well, I’d find out when I found out. I had more coffee, left the house a little before ten, took the subway to Manhattan, and walked into the Allied office on Lexington Avenue four minutes early.

  The attorney, Goldrich, was in the office with Grazko. The two of them looked at me as I walked in as though I were a stranger to them and they had little hope of my making them cheerful. Grazko said, “You’re here at last. Sit down, sit down.”

  “I’m early,” I pointed out.

  He brushed it away as though it were an irritating horsefly. Grazko is six foot three and very wide; the kind of body the uniform designers had
in mind. He has a square-jawed grouchy face, and gray hair that sticks up an inch long all over the top of his head. There’s no hair on the sides at all, his ears are like gnarled rafts in an ocean of milk. His head looks like a novelty item found in a cheap gift shop: a hairbrush made to look like a human head.

  But it was Goldrich who spoke next, saying as I sat down in the last remaining chair in Grazko’s small, crowded but neat office, “Things are getting much more difficult. It’s time we all put our cards on the table.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Goldrich said, “Do you have anything to say to us?”

  “What about?”

  “It wouldn’t leave this office,” Goldrich said.

  Grazko said, or barked, “The woman, for instance.”

  I looked at him. “The woman the police talked to me about the other night?”

  “We offer our customers a guarantee,” Grazko said.

  What did they all know? What had they found out? When embarked on a lie, and when uncertain of your footing, cling to the lie no matter what. “There wasn’t any woman with me,” I said. “I can see the police thinking I might have done something like that, but you know me better.” And all the time I was saying it, I was wishing the lie wasn’t necessary. How stupid to be harboring my own little falsehood in the middle of a murder investigation!

  Goldrich said, “The woman doesn’t matter, that isn’t the point.”

  Grazko waved one of his big hands across his desk at me, saying to Goldrich, “What’s he gonna know about the other? He’s only been there three weeks.”

  “He might have been approached,” Goldrich said. “He might have seen something.” He turned back to me, and said, “If you want to avoid involvement, I can understand that. But if you’re keeping something back, you’re making a big mistake. The company will be square with you, but only if you’re square with us.”

  I said, “I’m not keeping anything back.”

  Grazko, looking at his watch, said, “We have to get over there pretty soon.”

  “There’s time,” Goldrich told him. He studied me broodingly for a minute, and then shook his head. “I only wish you did know something,” he said. “But I believe you don’t.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Our asses are hanging out so far on this,” Grazko said angrily.

  “It happens,” Goldrich told him. “No company has an unblemished record.”

  Grazko sighed, and got to his feet. “All right, all right. Let’s go on over.”

  I said, “You want me, too?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What do you think we called you for?”

  “To impugn my honesty,” I said.

  Grazko looked impatient, but Goldrich quickly said, “That isn’t it at all, Mitch. May I call you Mitch?”

  I nodded, with some reluctance.

  “Mitch,” he said, “we’re in a very tough situation here. Now, nobody’s perfect, it could be you very innocently have a fact, a bit of information, that could help Allied get off the hook a little. But you don’t want to make waves, that’s understandable. Nobody’s perfect. It was a chance, it was a hope we had, that maybe you could say something that would help us. If we leaned a little more than we meant to, it’s because we’re upset. Nobody thinks badly of you, Mitch, I promise that.”

  Grazko was looking at his watch again. “We got to go,” he said. “The cops said eleven, I want to there early.”

  I said, mostly to Goldrich, “Are the police going to come at me the same as you people, wanting to know if I have some innocent fact, was I approached by somebody, do I know something about something?”

  “They’re just going to ask some questions,” Goldrich said, dismissing it. “Don’t worry, I’ll be there at all times; in the circumstances I’m your attorney, because the discussion is in the area of your role as an employee of the company.”

  I said, “What is this thing that I might be able to help out about, I might know something about?”

  “The cops will tell you,” Grazko said impatiently, “when we get there.”

  “No,” I said. “I walked into this office blind, I’d rather not do the same thing twice.”

  “You can rely on us,” Goldrich said. “We’ll stand behind you, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “The way you two are acting,” I said, “I don’t think I want you standing behind me. I want you out front where I can see you. What’s going on?”

  Grazko said, “We’re going to be late.”

  “If I’m not in your confidence,” I said, “fire me.”

  “That isn’t—” Grazko thrashed around in frustration, then made a violent arm gesture toward Goldrich. “Tell him,” he said. “For God’s sake, tell him and we’ll get it over with.” And he stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Goldrich gave me a small sympathetic smile. “He’s feeling upset,” he said. “He’s embarrassed because the company’s been caught out in a big one. He didn’t want to tell you because he doesn’t like to even think about it.”

  “What happened?”

  “The fact is, somebody has been stripping the museum.”

  I frowned at him. “Stripping it? Since Friday?”

  “God, no. For months, maybe for years. Museum officials say it has to have been going on for at least six months, because of the work involved.”

  I shook my head. “Everything was there on Friday,” I said. “They were doing the inventory, they hadn’t found anything missing at all by Friday night.”

  “Forgeries,” Goldrich said. “Substitutions. They don’t know for sure how much yet, but they’re beginning to think less than half the material on display is the real thing.”

  “Good God!”

  “And what makes it worse,” Goldrich said, “particularly from our point of view, is that all the forgery work was apparently done in the museum itself, using museum materials.”

  “You mean that workroom downstairs?”

  “And the copier in the office on the first floor.”

  I remembered that machine; Phil Crane had been using it the other night. A big thing the size of a table-model television set, it was on a worktable near the door. The thing to be copied was placed face down on a pane of glass on top, then covered with a rubber pad. A button was pushed, the machine clicked a while, and a copy slid out of an opening at the bottom front. My first night on the job, I’d been curious about the machine and had run off a copy of part of a newspaper that was in a trash can there. The copy had been more starkly black and white than the newspaper, and on much heavier paper. I said, “That wouldn’t make copies that would fool anybody.”

  “Not at first,” Goldrich said. “The way it was apparently done, the forger took something from one of the display rooms, say a cartoon from an old magazine. He opened the frame, took the cartoon out, and ran a copy on that machine. He then brought everything down to the workroom and used chemical baths and dry heat in the oven they have down there and whatever else he needed to make the copy look like the original.”

  “He couldn’t get the texture right,” I said. “That machine uses its own paper, and it’s very heavy. Nothing at all like a newspaper or a magazine.”

  “That didn’t matter,” Goldrich said. “It only had to look right, because everything is in a frame with glass over it.”

  I nodded. “That’s right, you’re right.”

  “So when he had the copy looking like the original,” Goldrich said, “he put it in the frame, glued fresh brown paper to the back of the frame, copied the original framing notations onto the new paper, and put the copy up on the wall where the original had been.”

  I said, “That’s a lot of work. How much can they get for the original?”

  “The museum people say the average missing item will go for something over a hundred dollars. Of course, there’s some things in there that are worth a lot more. Two or three thousand, say.”

  “For one old political cartoon.”<
br />
  Goldrich nodded. “If it’s rare enough,” he said. “And in good enough condition. And if the cartoonist is well enough known. Nast, for instance. Or an early children’s illustration by N. C. Wyeth.”

  “And if it hadn’t been for the John Doe,” I said, “they might not have known about it for years.”

  “That’s right.”

  I felt myself wondering if the forger had the same attitude toward the murderer as I did: irritation at having a completely unrelated private secret threatened by this outsider’s crime. Unless, of course, the forgeries and the murder were connected. I said, “Do they have a name for the John Doe yet?”

  “Not that I know of.” Goldrich sat back in his chair, hooking his thumbs into the top of his trousers. “Now you can see why Grazko is so ticked off,” he said.

  Which was another element I hadn’t given sufficient thought to. “Of course,” I said. “All of this was being done with an Allied operative on guard in the building.”

  “For months,” Goldrich said.

  “I was down in that workroom last week,” I said. “You can’t hear anything down there, and when you’re upstairs you can’t hear anything from the workroom.”

  “That made it easier for him,” Goldrich said. “The point is, Allied was there to protect the place, and it was being stripped right under the company’s nose.”

  “Under my nose, too,” I said. “For the last three weeks.”

  “Too bad he wasn’t working there when you went downstairs last week.”

  “I suppose he was going to lie low till the murder investigation was done.”

  “Probably.”

  A picture came into my mind of my flashlight beam sweeping down a line of framed drawings. I said, “But I would have noticed if something was gone. While they were doing the switch, there’d be an empty spot along the wall. I’d have noticed it.”

  Goldrich shook his head. “They’d substitute something from the workroom. There’s always new things down there being put together. They’d just stick any old framed cartoon or ad or whatever in the spot until they were ready to bring the forgery up.”