Donald Westlake: The New Black Mask ( No 3 )

“For the extradition,” Dortmunder guessed.

“You got it.”

Stan said, “How about Herman X?”

Tiny, who had been observing Kelp so carefully that Kelp was beginning to fidget, now swiveled his head around to look at Stan. “Herman what?”

“X,” Stan said.

“Hes a black power radical,” Dortmunder explained, but he’s also a good lockman.”

“He was with us that time we took the bank,” Stan said.

“Now, the problem with Herman,” Kelp started, and everybody turned to look at him. “Don’t blame me,” he said. “I’m just telling you the situation.”

“Tell us the situation,” Tiny suggested.

“Well,” Kelp said, “the problem with Herman is, he’s in Africa.”

Dortmunder said, “Without extradition?”

“No, Herman doesn’t need extradition. He’s vice-president of Talabwo.”

Tiny said, “Is that a country?”

“For now,” Kelp said. “There’s a lot of unrest over there.”

Dortmunder said, “Talabwo. That’s the country wanted the Balabomo Emerald that time.”

“That’s right,” Kelp said. “And you gave Major Iko the paste emerald and he brought it home and when they found out it wasn’t real they ate him, I think. Anyway, there was trouble back and forth, and Herman was with his radical friends at the UN to steal some secret documents that proved the drought was a plot by the white people, and they came on this assassination attempt, and Herman helped the guy they were trying to kill, and it turned out he was the next president of Talabwo, which is why they were trying to put him out that window, so when he got home he invited Herman over as a thank-you, and that’s when Herman found out the vice-president was figuring on a coup, so now Herman’s vice-president, and he says he enjoys it a lot.”

Dortmunder said, “He does, does he?”

“Yeah. Except he isn’t Herman X anymore, now he’s Herman Makanene Stulu’mbnick.”

Tiny said, “I am growing weary.”

“Well, that’s all I know anyway,” Kelp said. He poured himself some more Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon.

Tiny said, “J know a guy, for the locks. He’s a little unusual.”

Dortmunder said, “After those stories? Your guy is unusual?”

“At least he’s in New York,” Tiny said. “His name’s Wilbur Howey.”

“I don’t know him,” Dortmunder said.

“He just came out of the slammer,” Tiny said. “I’ll have a word with him.”

“Fine,” Dortmunder said. He hesitated, and cleared his throat.

“Here it comes now,” Tiny said.

Dortmunder gave him an innocent look. “Here comes what, Tiny?”

“The butcher’s thumb,” Tiny said. “You know what I do with the butcher’s thumb?”

“There’s nothing wrong , Tiny,” Dortmunder said. “The deal is exactly as I said it was. Only, there’s just one more little element.”

“One more little element.”

“While we’re in the building,” Dortmunder said, “take no time at all, we go up to the top floor, handle one extra little piece of business. Nothing to it.”

Tiny viewed Dortmunder more in sorrow than in anger. “Tell me about this, Dortmunder,” he said. “What is this extra little piece of business?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said. He knocked back a little Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon, coughed, and said, “The fact is, uh, Tiny, while we’re in there anyway, uh, it seems we have to rescue this nun.”

One of the most respected British crime writers, Michael Gilbert has written more than twenty-five books, as well as plays and an estimated four hundred short stories. Mr. Gilbert, who has been pleasing his readers for forty years, has commented, “What is a writer to do if he is not allowed to entertain?” A founding member of the Crime Writers’ Association, Michael Gilbert is a London solicitor and lives in Kent.

It was seven o’clock of a lovely summer evening when Andrew Siward first saw her. He was sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Dauphin at Cannes, looking across the square of burnt grass and bent orange trees at the deep blue of the Mediterranean. It was the best hour of the day. His second aperitif was on the table in front of him. He was looking forward to a leisurely dinner, not more than two glasses of mare with his coffee, and an early bed.

The work he had come to the South of France to do was finished. It was a moment for sitting back and enjoying the scenery; and beautiful girls were a prominent part of the scenery on the promenade at Cannes.

Not that this particular girl was got up to attract attention. She was wearing a plain white linen dress cut square across the top of her breasts, and showing the sunbrowned skin of arms, shoulders, and throat and, as far as Andrew could judge, nothing else at all. He put her age at nineteen or twenty.

The man who was with her was a figure as typical of that time and place as she was. In his middle fifties, but still alert and fit. Frenchmen of his age seem to grow through middle age more gracefully than the English or American male. Hair so light it was difficult to see whether it was grey or not, cut en brosse , a bush shirt with half-length sleeves which showed brown and muscular arms; on one wrist a gold watch, on a metal strap, and a small gold medallion on a chain around his neck.

Andrew was used to summing people up by their clothes and their belongings. These were clearly residents, not tourists. In spite of the informality of their dress, or perhaps because of it, he sensed a background of wealth and position.

He wondered if the man was her father.

He wondered if they were going to come onto the terrace. After a moment of indecision they climbed the three steps which separated it from the roadway and settled down two tables from him.

They were so close now that it was difficult to examine them, but their reflection in the glass front of the hotel dining room gave him an opportunity to do so without seeming rude.

The girl seemed to him as attractive as anyone he could remember. Maybe a film star? He thought not. She had none of the hardness and sophistication which encased even the youngest actresses like a protective shell. It was a shell which might be invisible at ten yards, but was unmistakable at close quarters.

It was possible that she was the man’s petite amie , but he thought not. There was nothing in their attitude towards each other to suggest such a relationship.

Andrew thought, I wish she was sitting here at the table with me, talking to me, looking at me in that way, or, perhaps, looking at me a little more intimately than that. We could have dinner together, and after dinner we would go up to my room. As he put his hand out to pick up his drink he was shocked to find that desire for a girl he had hardly set eyes on had made it shake. He put the glass down slowly and said, “Take a grip on yourself, Andrew. You’re an old man. Well, middle-aged, anyway. Thirty-five years older than that girl. A whole generation.”

It was a sobering thought, if not a comforting one.

Up to that time his experience of women had been standardised. A few adventures during and after the war, followed by marriage to an attractive and desirable wife. Twenty years of happiness. Then he had noticed that she grew easily tired, and curiously weak. She made nothing of it. She belonged to a stoic generation. A generation that had been brought up to believe that complaining was something only the lower classes did. It was the doctors who had spoken the word “leukemia” to him. He had hardly had time to grasp what it meant before she was gone.

When the numbness had worn off he had taken consolation where he could find it. Not from the professionals who hung around the pavements of Maddox Street and Soho Square but from amateurs, discontented wives, some of them not much younger than he was. A sordid, unsatisfactory series of bargains. Pumped-up lust for the price of a dinner and a theatre. Furtive coupling which left him with nothing but a bad taste in his mouth.