Nobody's Perfect

by Donald Westlake

  Officer Fahey’s heavy–jowled red face was impassive as he glowered at Stonewiler. He could clearly be seen thinking to himself, You won’t get around me with your shenanigans. You’ll not pull the wool over my eyes.

  Stonewiler, undaunted, went on: “Officer, may I just ask you to describe the defendant as he was in the instant when you first saw him?”

  “He was coming out the door,” Officer Fahey said, “with a TV set in each hand.”

  “Coming out? Directly into your oncoming headlights?”

  “He stopped when he saw us.”

  “And had he already stopped when you first caught sight of him?”

  “He froze there. But he was coming out.”

  “Before you saw him.”

  “He was facing out,” Officer Fahey announced in some irritation. “He was coming out because he was facing out.”

  “But he wasn’t in motion when you first saw him, Officer, is that right? I just want to have this absolutely clear. Whether he was entering or leaving the store, he had already frozen in place when you first saw him.”

  “Facing out.”

  “But frozen.”

  “Yes, frozen. Facing out.”

  “Thank you, Officer.” Turning to the bench, Stonewiler said, “With Your Honor’s permission, I would like to try a small experiment.”

  Judge Blick frowned on him. “Getting fancy, Counselor?”

  “Not at all fancy, Your Honor. Very plain indeed. May I?”

  “Proceed, Counselor,” Judge Blick said, “but watch your step.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Stonewiler turned and walked to a side door, which the judge knew led to a small waiting room. Opening that door, Stonewiler gestured to someone inside, and two men appeared, each carrying a television set. They placed these on the floor a few steps into the room, then turned and departed again, leaving the door open behind them. The door, however, was on a spring, and slowly it closed itself, until Stonewiler stopped it with his palm just before it would snick shut. The door remained open half an inch, and Stonewiler returned to the bench to smile impartially upon Officer Fahey and Judge Blick, and to say, “With the court’s permission, I would like to ask Officer Fahey’s cooperation. Officer?”

  Officer Fahey glanced uncertainly at Judge Blick, but the judge was still faintly hoping for something interesting to happen, so all he said was, “It’s up to you, Officer. You may assist Counsel if you want.”

  The officer brooded at Stonewiler, mistrust oozing from every pore. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Stonewiler pointed. “Merely pick up those two television sets,” he said, “and return them to the other room.”

  The officer’s brow furrowed. “What’s the point?”

  “Perhaps there is none,” Stonewiler acknowledged, with a sudden humble smile. “We won’t know till we’ve tried.”

  The officer frowned once more at Judge Blick, then at the television sets, and then at the door. He appeared indecisive. Then he looked at the defendant, Dortmunder, slumping hopelessly in his chair, and a sudden confident smile touched his lips. “Fine,” he said. “Right.”

  “Thank you, Officer.” Stonewiler stepped back as Officer Fahey rose and crossed the court to the television sets. Picking them up by their handles, and pretending the combined weight didn’t bother him, he approached the door. He hesitated, facing the door, his hands full of TV sets. He put one of the sets down, pushed on the door, and it swung open. He picked the set up again, and the door swung closed. Quickly, before it could slam, Officer Fahey turned about and bunked the door with his behind.

  “Freeze!” boomed J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, pointing his long manicured finger at Officer Fahey, who obediently froze, a TV set in each hand, his behind stuck out behind him. The door swung open, hesitated, and swung back, lightly spanking Officer Fahey on the bum.

  Stonewiler, his pointing finger still calling attention to the frozen Officer Fahey, turned toward Judge Blick. “Your Honor,” he cried, in a voice similar to that which Moses heard from the burning bush, “I leave it to the Court. Is that man going out, or coming in?”

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  May said, “And the judge believed it?”

  Dortmunder shook his head, in slow bewilderment. The whole thing was still too baffling to think about.

  May watched him shake his head, and shook her own, frowning, not sure she understood. “The judge didn’t believe it,” she suggested.

  “I don’t know what the judge believed,” Dortmunder told her. “All I know for sure is, I figure I’m home about six years early.”

  “What you need is a beer,” May decided, and went away to the kitchen to get one.

  Dortmunder settled back into his easy chair, kicking off his shoes, relaxing in the scruffy familiarity of his own living room. This was not the address he’d given in court, nor did he live here alone — it was Dortmunder’s policy never to tell authority the truth when a lie would do — but it was his home, his castle, his refuge from the buffets and abrasions of the world, and no way had he expected to finish his day in it, shoes off, feet up on the old maroon hassock, watching May carry a can of beer back from the kitchen. “Home sweet home,” he said.

  “Got a match?” She had a fresh cigarette flopping in the corner of her mouth.

  He traded her a book of matches for the beer can, and swigged while she lit. May was a chain–smoker, but she never gave up on a cigarette until the stub was too small to hold, so she could never light the next cigarette from the last, and as a result the Dortmunder–May household was always in a match crisis. Dortmunder was the only burglar in the world who, having finished rifling some company’s cash register or safe, would pause to fill his pockets with their promotional match–books.

  May settled herself in the other easy chair, adjusted the ashtray to her left hand, puffed, enveloped her head in a cloud of smoke, leaned forward out of the smoke, and said, “Tell me all about it.”

  “It’s crazy,” he told her. “It makes no sense.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “This lawyer came by —”

  “J. Radcliffe Stonewiler.”

  Dortmunder frowned, thinking it over. “I’ve seen him in the papers or something.”

  “He’s famous!”

  “Yeah, I figured. Anyway, he walked in, he threw this court–appointed jerk out on his ear, and he said, ‘Okay, Mr. Dortmunder, we got about an hour and a half to cook up a story.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said he could cook for a year and a half and it didn’t matter what story he came up with, because what was cooked was my goose.”

  “Didn’t you know who he was?”

  “I could see he was some rich–type lawyer,” Dortmunder admitted. “For a while, I figured he was in the wrong cubicle. I kept telling him, ‘Look, my name’s Dortmunder, I’m up for B&E.’ And he kept saying, ‘Tell me all about it.’ So finally I told him all about it. The cops had me cold, and I told him so, and he nodded and said, ‘That’s okay. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, and I know where I’m going, and it’s upstate.’ ”

  “That wasn’t any way to talk to J. Radcliffe Stonewiler.”

  “I wasn’t feeling cheerful.”

  “Naturally,” May agreed. “So what happened?”

  “This Stonewiler,” Dortmunder said, “he kept me going over and over the details of what happened, and then he went away to make a phone call, and when he came back he had a skinny little guy with him called George.”

  “Who’s George?”

  “Stonewiler said, ‘Here’s my movie expert. Tell him the story, George.’ And George told me the whole story of this movie, Sex Sorority, so I could tell it to the judge in case I was asked. Only I don’t think it’s legal to even tell a story like that in court. Do they really make movies where a girl takes her —”

  “Never mind movies,” May said. “What happened next?
Where does this door business come into it?”

  “It was Stonewiler’s whole idea, completely. He even wrote my story down for me, and then made me write it myself, copying from him, so I’d remember it. Not word for word, but so I could tell it smooth and easy when I got to court. I didn’t believe in it, you know, because he didn’t tell me the part where he was gonna make a monkey out of the cop. He just gave me this song–and–dance about carrying TV sets in instead of out — I mean, you couldn’t get away with that one in Sunday school. I kept saying, ‘Why don’t we make a deal? Why don’t we trade them a guilty plea for a lesser charge?’ And Stonewiler kept saying, ‘Trust me.’ ”

  “So you trusted him.”

  “Not exactly,” Dortmunder said. “I thought he was crazy, but on the other hand he looked rich and he acted sure of himself, and what the hell did I have to lose anyway? So finally I said, ‘All right, I’ll do it. Things can’t get worse.’ And I did it, and the judge looked at me like he figured maybe it was time to bring back some cruel and unusual punishments, and then Stonewiler did his little number with the cop and the door, and all of a sudden you could see the judge wanted to laugh. He looked at the cop, with his ass stuck out behind him and the TV sets hanging off his hands, and he rubbed his hand over his mouth like this, and he went, ‘Rrrumph rrrumph,’ and then he said something like, ‘Counselor, you have created reasonable doubt, though I still have reason to doubt you. Case dismissed.’ And I come home.”

  May’s expression, around the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, combined equal portions of wonder and delight. “What a defense,” she said. “Not every lawyer in the world could have pulled it off.”

  “I’ll have to go along with that,” Dortmunder admitted.

  “But why? Why’d he do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s this gonna cost?”

  “I don’t know,” Dortmunder said. “He didn’t say.”

  “Didn’t he say anything at all?”

  Dortmunder took an embossed business card from his breast pocket. “At the end there, after he shook my hand, he gave me this, he told me call this guy.” Dortmunder frowned at the card, reading off the name as though the sound of the syllables would give him a clue to what was going on: “Arnold Chauncey. What kind of a name is that?”

  “Arnold Chauncey.” It sounded just as mysterious when May said it. Shaking her head, she asked, “Who’s he supposed to be?”

  “I don’t know. Stonewiler gave me the card, told me to call, said good luck, and went away.”

  “When are you supposed to call?”

  “Today.”

  “Why don’t you do it now?”

  “I don’t want to,” Dortmunder said.

  May frowned. “Why not?”

  “People don’t do people favors just for the fun of it,” Dortmunder said. “This guy Chauncey, he wants something.”

  “So?”

  “The whole thing makes me nervous,” Dortmunder said. “I’m not gonna call.”

  “But you’ve got to —”

  “I don’t want to,” Dortmunder said, and set his jaw. Nobody could be quite as mulish as Dortmunder, when he put his mind to it.

  “You took the man’s assis —” May started to say, and the phone rang. She snapped it a quick irritated glance, then got up and crossed the room and answered on the second ring. Dortmunder lapped up some more beer, and then May told the phone, “Hold on,” and turned to say, “It’s for you.”

  Dortmunder hunched his shoulders, and pushed himself lower in his chair. He wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody on the telephone. He said, “Who is it?”

  “J. Radcliffe Stonewiler.”

  “Oh,” said Dortmunder. He hadn’t given Stonewiler his phone number or his right home address. “So it’s like that,” he said, and got to his feet, and went over to take the phone, saying into it, “Stonewiler?”

  But it was an English–accented female voice that answered, snippily, saying, “Hold on for Mister Stonewiler, please.” And there was a click.

  Dortmunder said into the phone, “Hello?” When there was no answer, he frowned at May, saying, “Who’s that?”

  May, elaborately whispering, told him, “His sec–re–ter–ry.”

  “Oh,” Dortmunder said, and the phone said hello to him with Stonewiler’s deep confident voice. “Yeah,” Dortmunder answered. “Hello.”

  “I just spoke with Mr. Chauncey,” Stonewiler said. He sounded cheerful, but in charge. “He says you haven’t called yet.”

  “I been thinking about it,” Dortmunder said.

  Stonewiler said, “Mr. Dortmunder, why don’t you drop by Mr. Chauncey’s house now for a chat? It’s on East 63rd Street, you could be there in half an hour.”

  Dortmunder sighed. “I suppose that’s what I’ll do,” he said. “Right.”

  “The address is on the card.”

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Dortmunder.”

  “Yeah, goodbye,” Dortmunder said, and hung up, and turned a bleak eye toward May, who was back in her chair, watching him through cigarette smoke. “He didn’t threaten me,” Dortmunder said.

  May didn’t get it. “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “He could have said, ‘I got you off the hook, I can put you back on.’ He could have said, ‘I got weight I could throw around.’ There’s lots of things he could have said, and he didn’t say any of them.”

  May continued to frown at him. “So?”

  “His not threatening me,” Dortmunder said, “was a lot more threatening than if he threatened me.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I’m supposed to go see Chauncey at his house in half an hour.”

  “You’d better go.”

  “I don’t like this, May.”

  “Still, you’d better go.”

  Dortmunder sighed. “Yeah, I know.” And he sat down, to put his shoes back on.

  May watched him, frowning, thinking her own thoughts, and when he stood up to leave she said, “One thing.”

  Dortmunder looked at her. “What?”

  “That business about backing out a door if you’re carrying things in both hands. That is true, people do that.”

  “Sure,” Dortmunder said. “That’s how I got off.”

  “Then how come you were facing the police car?”

  “It was a different kind of door,” Dortmunder explained. “It didn’t have a spring closer. I just opened it and picked up the TV sets and walked out.”

  May’s frown deepened. “That’s all there was to it?”

  “They didn’t ask about the door,” Dortmunder said. “They might have, if we just talked about it straight out, but the way Stonewiler worked things, he had everybody thinking about that cop’s ass.”

  May nodded, thoughtfully. “You better watch your step with those people,” she said.

  “I figure to,” Dortmunder told her.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  The third time Dortmunder walked past the house, in the raw November afternoon, its front door opened and a guy with long yellow hair leaned out, calling, “Mr. Dortmunder?”

  Dortmunder broke stride, but didn’t quite stop walking. He quick looked across the street, as though he hadn’t seen the man or heard what he’d said, but almost immediately gave all that up and stopped and looked back.

  The house was one of a row of four–story brownstones on this tree–lined quiet street off Park Avenue; an expensive house, in an expensive neighborhood. The building was fairly wide, with a dozen broad concrete steps leading up to the front door, at the second level. Flowers and ivy and a couple of small evergreen shrubs were in concrete pots in the space to the right of the steps.

  It had taken Dortmunder twenty minutes to get here by subway, and he’d spent the last quarter hour casing the joint and thinking things over. The house was anonymous, beyond the obvious indication that its inhabitants must have money, and no matter how long Dort
munder stared at it he still couldn’t figure out why anybody who lived in there would strain himself to get John Dortmunder off the hook on a felony charge, and then invite him over for a chat. He’d walked around the block the first time to get the lay of the land, and the second time hoping to find a way to see the rear of the place — there wasn’t any — and the third time he’d simply walked as an aid to thought.