Nobody's Perfect

by Donald Westlake

  Chauncey took drink orders — they all wanted bourbon, thank you — and while he poured he said to Dortmunder, “You were late.”

  “We had a little chore to take care of first.”

  Chauncey handed around glasses, then raised his own in a toast: “Success to all our schemes.”

  “Hear, hear. Okay. I’ll drink to that.”

  They did, and Chauncey had his first real opportunity to study Dortmunder’s “string.” And what a motley collection they were, all in all, dominated by a man monster with a face like a homicidal tomato, plus a skinny sharp–nosed bright–eyed fellow who looked like a cockney pickpocket, and a mild–mannered gent who looked like a cross between a museum curator and a bookkeeper out of Dickens. So these four — with the driver outside — were the team of burglars, were they? Except for the monster, they looked perfectly ordinary. Chauncey, who had been rather nervous at the prospect of having these people all together in his house, was almost disappointed.

  But mostly his thoughts were on Folly. He sipped at his drink, waiting impatiently for the others to finish their first tastes — with many aaahhhs and lip–smackings — and then he said, “Well. Shall we get to it?”

  “Sure,” Dortmunder said. “You got the money?”

  “Of course.”

  From another cabinet near the liquor supply he brought out a small black attaché case. Opening this on a side table, Chauncey revealed stacks of bills, all fifties and hundreds, neatly filling the interior of the case. “I suppose you’ll want to count this,” he said.

  Dortmunder shrugged, as though it didn’t matter, saying, “It couldn’t hurt.” He nodded to the cockney pickpocket and the museum curator, who stepped over to the money, little smiles on their faces, and started flipping through the stacks. Meanwhile, Dortmunder was removing the rolled painting from its cardboard tube. “Hold this, Tiny,” he said.

  Tiny? As Chauncey stared in disbelief at the monster, who apparently did answer to that name, Dortmunder handed the fellow one corner of the painting and then backed away, unrolling it. Tiny (!) held two edges, Dortmunder held the other two, and there was Folly, revealed in all his splendor.

  Not exactly, of course. There were still creases and curves in the surface, from the rolling–up, and the light struck it differently from this angle, making everything seem slightly different, slightly strange. But it was his Folly, all right, and Chauncey smiled in welcome as he stepped toward it, leaning forward to get a better look at the details. Odd how different that market basket looked in this — “Hold it right there!”

  The voice, cold and loud and aggressive, came from the doorway behind Chauncey, and when he spun around he was absolutely astounded to see the room filling up with terrorists.

  At least, they looked like terrorists. Three of them, all wearing ski masks and brown leather jackets and all carrying machine pistols with those skimpy–looking tubular metal stocks. They moved very professionally, one hurrying to the left, one to the right, the leader remaining in the doorway, the barrel of his pistol moving lazily from side to side, prepared to stitch a line of bullets across the entire room. From his hands he was a black man, while the other two were white.

  “Good God?” Chauncey cried, and these people looked so exactly like terrorists in the weekly newsmagazines that at first he thought it was a coincidence, that he was about to be kidnapped as a capitalist oppressor and held until Outer Mongolia, say, or Lichtenstein, had released a selected list of fifty–seven political prisoners.

  But then he heard a thwap behind him, and knew that either Dortmunder or Tiny had released his end of the painting, allowing it to snap back into a roll, and all at once he understood. “Oh, no,” he said, almost under his breath. “No.”

  Yes. “We’ll take that,” the leader was saying, gesturing with the machine pistol past Chauncey, at Dortmunder behind him. Then the machine pistol angled toward Dortmunder’s two partners over by the attaché case, their hands full of stacks of bills, their faces showing the most complete — under other circumstances comical — surprise. “That, too,” the leader said, and the satisfaction in his voice was like molasses.

  “You son of a bitch,” Dortmunder said, his voice almost a growl.

  “Dortmunder,” Chauncey said, warning him. Life is better than death, said the tone of his voice. This is merely one battle, not the whole war. All of those sentiments, however expressed over the centuries, were summed up in the tone of Chauncey’s voice when he spoke Dortmunder’s name. And Dortmunder, who had been teetering forward on his toes, hands clenched, shoulders bunched, now slowly relaxed, settling onto his heels once more.

  From here, everything moved with professional speed and assurance. It was Tiny who held the re–rolled painting, and at the leader’s orders he put it into its cardboard tube and turned it over to the man on the left. The attaché case was refilled, closed, and given to the man on the right. Those two backed from the room, leaving the leader in the doorway. “We’ll watch this door for ten minutes,” he said. “Check your watches. Anybody through too soon gets shot.” And he was gone.

  The stairs were carpeted, so the people in the room wouldn’t hear the trio leave, or know when they left, or how many stayed behind. Chauncey just stood there, gaping at the empty doorway, and the true fact of his loss — the painting and the money — didn’t come home till Dortmunder was suddenly in front of him, glaring.

  “Who’d you tell?”

  “What? What?”

  “Who did you tell?”

  Tell? Tell someone about the insurance fraud, about the exchange of painting and money here tonight? But he hadn’t told anyone. “Dortmunder, I swear to God — Why would I, man, think about it.”

  Dortmunder shook his head: “We’re pros, Chauncey, we know our job. Not one of us would say a word to anybody. You’re the amateur.”

  “Dortmunder, who is there for me to tell?”

  “There they go!” cried the cockney pickpocket. He and the other two were over by the front windows, looking out into the rain. “Dortmunder!”

  Dortmunder hurried to the windows, Chauncey following him. Tiny was saying, “One, two, three. They didn’t leave anybody.”

  “Four!” cried the cockney pickpocket. “Who’s that?” Chauncey stared out the window. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Over there, diagonally across the way, near the streetlight, three men in brown leather jackets had crowded around a fourth. Their faces were bare, now, but too far away to see. One carried the cardboard tube, another the attaché case. But it was the fourth man who held Chauncey’s attention, held him frozen. Tall, narrow, dressed in black …

  “He can’t move fast with that limp,” Tiny was saying. “Come on, Dortmunder, we’ll trail them, we’ll get our goods back.”

  “Z–z–z–z–z,” said Chauncey, but stopped himself before making that mistake. The limping man and the other three hurried away toward the corner, out of the light.

  Dortmunder’s men were running from the room. Dortmunder had paused, was staring now into Chauncey’s eyes as though to read his mind. “You’re sure,” Dortmunder said; “You told nobody. You don’t know how this happened.”

  How could he admit it? What would happen to him? “Nobody,” he answered, and looked Dortmunder straight in the eye.

  “I’ll get back to you,” Dortmunder said, and ran from the room.

  Chauncey sat down and drank half a bottle of bourbon.

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  It was Christmas all over again, in May’s new apartment. The same crowd as at Christmastime, the same tasty aroma of tuna casserole wafting through the air, the same spirit of joy and good fellowship.

  The gifts this time, though, weren’t booze and perfume, they were solid cash and a sense of solid accomplishment, and maybe even the renewed gift of life itself. The lost painting was dealt with, Chauncey was cooled out and would be sending around no more hired killers, and on that table where once had stood the miserable fake tree the
attaché case now yawned wide, gleaming with crisp new greenery.

  Dortmunder sat in his personal chair with his feet up on his old hassock and a glass of bourbon–on–the–rocks in his left hand, and he damn near smiled. Everything had worked out exactly, even the moving of all the furniture and goods from May’s old apartment to this new one six blocks away. And now everybody was relaxing here, less than half an hour since they’d left Chauncey’s house, and all Dortmunder could say was, it was the best worked–out goddam plan he’d ever seen in his life.

  Andy Kelp came by — good old Andy — with an open bourbon bottle in one hand, an aluminum pot full of ice cubes in the other. “Top up your drink,” he said. “It’s a party.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Dortmunder topped up his drink, then found himself, actually grinning at good old Andy Kelp. “Whadaya think?” he said.

  Kelp stopped, paused, grinned, cocked his head to one side, and said, “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re a goddam genius. I think you been operating under a cloud too long, and it was about time your true genius shone through, and it did. That’s what I think.”

  Dortmunder nodded. “Me, too,” he said simply.

  Kelp went away, to top up other drinks around the room, and Dortmunder settled down to sip and smile and consider the harvest, at long last, of his own genius. The original notion had been Andy’s, but the plan had been all Dortmunder.

  And how well it had worked! Dortmunder always planned well, nobody could argue that, but things never worked out the way they were supposed to. This time, though, the pieces had clicked into place one after the other like a stunt drill team.

  It was at the Christmas party that Kelp had suggested to the other guests they could do an old buddy a favor and at the same time pick up some pocket money for themselves, and once they’d understood the situation they’d all agreed. Wally Whistler, the lock man whose absentmindedness in releasing a zoo lion from its cage had resulted in an only–recently–completed involuntary vacation upstate, had followed Roger Chefwick’s route in bypassing Chauncey’s alarm system and coming down through the elevator shaft while Dortmunder, purposely late, had kept Chauncey out of his house. Fred Lartz, the former driver who had quit driving after he’d got run down by Eastern Airlines flight two–oh–eight, and Herman X, the radical black lock man, had completed the terrorist trio, and their timing, manner and efficiency just couldn’t have been bettered. (Dortmunder raised his glass thrice: to Herman X, dancing once more with his sleek girl friend Foxy to an Isaac Hayes record; to Fred Lartz, comparing routes in a corner with Stan Murch; and to Wally Whistler, absentmindedly fumbling with the catch on the spring–leaf table. Whistler and Lartz raised their glasses in return. Herman X winked and raised his right fist.)

  A strange string, that; two lock men and a non–driving driver. The driving for that bunch, in fact, had been done by Fred Lartz’s wife, Thelma, the lady in the crazy hat out in the kitchen helping May. Thelma did all Fred’s driving for him now that he’d quit, but this was her first time driving professionally, and she’d been cool and reliable all the way. (Dortmunder raised his glass to Thelma, who couldn’t see him because she was in the kitchen. Three or four other people saw him, though, and grinned and raised their glasses back, so that was all right.)

  But the coup de grace had been the little play put on for Chauncey’s benefit on the street outside. And for that, who better than an actor? Alan Greenwood, the former heist man and now television star, had been delighted at the idea of playing the limping killer, Leo Zane. “It’s the kind of role an actor can get his teeth into,” he’d said, and he’d made a special trip back from the Coast just to appear in Dortmunder’s private production. And what a job he’d done! For just a second, seeing him out there under that streetlight, Dortmunder had actually believed he was Zane, somehow free of the trap and ready to blow the gaffe on all of them. Wonderful performance! (Dortmunder raised his glass to Greenwood, also dancing. At first, he’d thought Greenwood was here with Doreen again, the girl from Christmas, but this time Greenwood had introduced her as Susan, so maybe she was somebody different. Anyway, they were dancing, and over Susan’s shoulder Greenwood gave the English thumbs–up salute and smiled with several hundred teeth.)

  So now they had it all. Porculey’s copy of Folly Leads Man to Ruin looked terrific thumb tacked over the sofa, and the attaché case full of money looked just as terrific on the table across the room. One hundred thousand dollars, every last dollar of it present and accounted for. The money had to be spread a bit thinner than if the original robbery had worked out, but so what? The point was, they’d done the job at last and they had the money. Ten thousand would go to Porculey for the fake, and the man had earned every penny of it. One thousand each would go to Wally Whistler and Fred Lartz and Herman X as a token payment of appreciation, and one thousand to Alan Greenwood to cover his expenses in coming to town just for this gig. It had been agreed by everybody concerned that May should get a thousand, both to help fix up the new apartment and also as a kind of testimonial to her world–renowned tuna casserole. And that left eighty–five thousand dollars. Split five ways (Kelp would give his nephew Victor a little something as a finder’s fee out of his own piece), it left Dortmunder and Kelp and Murch and Chefwick and Bulcher a solid reasonable seventeen thousand dollars each. What was wrong with that? Nothing. (Dortmunder raised his glass to the attaché case. It didn’t offer any visible response, but it didn’t have to. Its presence was enough.)

  Of course, there was something a little strange about the fact that, when success finally did arrive, it came in the form of a fake robbery of a fake Old Master, but just so long as the money was real — and it was, they’d looked it over very carefully — what the hell. Right?

  And here was Kelp — good old Andy Kelp — back with more bourbon and more ice cubes. Dortmunder was astounded to realize his glass was practically empty; nothing in it but one naked ice cube. He added a second, Kelp filled the glass to the top, and the party went on.

  Dortmunder was never exactly sure afterward when the party did come to an end. After a while May and Thelma brought out the food, and then a while later the money was divvied up — May took her share and Dortmunder’s share away to the bedroom, where she’d already worked out this apartment’s hiding place — and then a while later Wally Whistler’s absentminded fiddling with the catch on the spring–leaf table resulted in a lot of dishes and glasses and peanuts clattering to the floor with a hell of a racket when the table collapsed to Wally’s utter embarrassment, and a while after that people started going home, all of them stopping to thank Dortmunder for a nice party and to say a word or two about tonight’s success. Dortmunder just smiled at them all, and nodded happily whenever his glass was refilled, and somewhere in through there he must have fallen asleep, because you can’t wake up unless you’ve been asleep, and just like THAT Dortmunder woke up. He stared around an empty room gray with daylight, and he said out loud, “What’s going wrong?”

  Then he heard the echo of his own voice, and sat back in his chair. He had the fuzzy mouth and the muzzy headache that come from sleeping sitting up in a chair with your clothes on after you’ve had just a bit too much to drink. Moving his tongue around inside his head as though it were a sock he was trying to put away somewhere, he silently answered his own question: Nothing’s going wrong. Chauncey was cooled out. Zane was certainly not cooled out, but his credibility was destroyed in Chauncey’s eyes because Chauncey didn’t know Dortmunder knew what Zane looked like, and in any event Dortmunder was going to make himself very hard to find for the next few months. Besides moving their apartment, he and May intended to take some of that money and have a real vacation, a real spree for themselves, and by the time they came back this whole business would have blown over. Why would a professional like Zane spend the rest of his life, with no employer, on a manhunt that had no profit in it? Zane would eventually stop being upset, he’d get back to his own life, and that would be the en
d of that.

  So what could go wrong? Nothing. This job was done, and it had been a complete success.

  Dortmunder closed his eyes. Ten seconds later, the left eye opened halfway, and watched the empty room.

  The Bridge

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  Andy Kelp met them at the airport, grinning from ear to ear. “What a great tan,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Dortmunder said. “Hello.”

  May said, “I made him go out on the beach. All he wanted was to sit in the hotel and look at television.”

  “I went to the casino,” Dortmunder said, defending himself.

  Kelp said, “Yeah? You win?”

  Dortmunder looked around, frowning. “Where do we pick up our stuff?”

  Pointing at signs, Kelp said, “Baggage, that way.” The three of them set out, along with several million other travelers, following the lit BAGGAGE signs and arrows suspended from the ceiling. This was a Sunday evening in early June, and the terminal was full of people who had not at all terminated; they were insistent, every one of them, on pushing toward some farther destination. Sunday is when most people finish their vacations, and when the disorganized finally get started. Pale faces and vinyl luggage going out, peeling faces and wicker baskets coming back. Walking along through this mob, May told Kelp, “We had beautiful weather. The whole thing was just perfect.”