Donald Westlake - What's The Worst That Could Happen?

“Not disappeared, left me,” she said. “We came here Sunday, and on Monday he said, ‘Anne Marie, it isn’t working out,’ and he packed his bag and went away.”

“That’s rough,” Kelp said.

“Well,” she said, “it’s rough because it’s here . I mean, he’s right, it isn’t working out, that’s why I’ve been having an affair with Charlie Petersen for three years now, and is he gonna turn white as a sheet when he hears the news, but I do wish he’d done it, if he was gonna do it, I do wish he’d done it in Lancaster and not here.”

“More convenient,” Kelp said, and nodded to show he sympathized.

“What it was,” she said, “this trip was our last try at making the marriage work . You know how people say they wanna make the marriage work ? Like they wanna give it a paper route or something. So we came here and we got on each other’s nerves just as bad as we do at home in Lancaster, only here we only had one room to do it in, so Howard said, it isn’t working out, and he packed and took off.”

“Back to Lancaster.”

“I don’t believe so,” she said. “He’s a traveling salesman for Pandorex Computers, you know, so he’s all over the Midwest anyway, so he’s probably with some girlfriend at the moment.”

“Any kids?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “This damn glass is empty again. What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Bourbon.”

“And?”

“And more bourbon.”

“Really? I wonder what that’s like.”

“Barman,” Kelp said, “I think we got a convert. Another of these for me, and one of these for the lady, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I hate to be called the lady.”

“Sorry,” Kelp said. “My mama told me pronouns were impolite.”

“The lady sucks.”

“That’s good news,” Kelp said. “From now on, I’ll refer to you as the broad. Deal?”

She grinned, as though she didn’t want to. “Deal,” she said.

The barman brought the drinks, and the broad sipped hers and made a face. Then she sipped again, tasted, and said, “Interesting. It isn’t sweet.”

“That’s right.”

“Interesting.” She sipped again. “If you get tired of calling me the broad,” she said, “try Anne Marie.”

“Anne Marie. I’m Andy.”

“How you doing?”

“Fine.”

“You see, what it is,” she said, “it’s a package, a tour, we paid for everything ahead of time. I’ve got the room until Saturday, and I got breakfast until Saturday, and I got dinner until Friday, so it seemed stupid to go back to Lancaster, but in the meantime what the hell am I doing here?”

“Holding up the bar.”

“I certainly don’t want to get drunk,” she said. “I’ve been pacing myself.” She frowned at the half-empty glass in front of her. “Will this get me drunk?”

“Probably not,” Kelp said. “Unless you’re one of those rare people with the funny chemistry, you know.”

She looked at him as though she might begin to doubt him soon. She said, “How long are you here for?”

“Oh, for a while,” he said, and sipped from his own half-full glass.

She thought about that. “You like this hotel?”

“I’m not staying here,” he said.

She was surprised. “Why would you come in here,” she asked, “if you’re not staying here? You couldn’t have been just passing by.”

“I’ve got an appointment in the neighborhood,” he told her, and looked at his watch, and said, “pretty soon. So I’m killing time here.”

“So we’re ships passing in the night,” she said.

“Possibly,” Kelp said. “In this hotel, do they have that little refrigerator in the room full of stuff?”

“Beer,” she said, “and champagne, and macadamia nuts and trail mix.”

“That’s the one. Does it have bourbon?”

She considered, then pointed at her empty glass. “This stuff? I’m not sure.”

“I could come around later, take a look,” Kelp suggested. “I figure, my appointment, I’m probably done by three, maybe earlier, something like that.”

“That’s some late appointment,” she said.

“Well, you know, New York,” he said. “The city that never sleeps.”

“Well, I sleep,” she said. “Though not so much, actually, since Howard left. I suppose he isn’t coming back.”

“Doesn’t sound it,” Kelp said.

“I’m in 2312,” Anne Marie said. “When your appointment’s done, you know, you could try, knock on the door. If I’m awake, I’ll answer.”

When Dortmunder woke up, he had no idea where the hell he was. Some beige box with the lights on and faint voices talking. He lifted his head, and saw an unfamiliar room, with a TV on, all the lights on, himself sprawled on his back atop a king-size bed with its thick tan bedspread still on it, and May slumped asleep in a chair off to his left, one of her magazines on the floor beside her. On the TV, people covered with blood were being carried to ambulances. Wherever it was, it looked like a real mess. Then, as Dortmunder watched, the people and the ambulances faded away and some candy bars began to dance.

Dortmunder sat up, remembering. The N-Joy Broadway Hotel. Max Fairbanks. The lucky ring. The service elevator. Andy Kelp coming by, later; one in the morning.

There was a clock radio bolted to the table beside the bed; its red numbers said 12:46. Dortmunder moved, discovering several aches, and eventually made it to his feet. He sloped off to the shiny bathroom, where he found his own personal toothbrush and toothpaste, plus the hotel’s soap and towels. When he finally came back out of the bathroom, feeling a little more human and alive, May was stirring in her chair, looking for her magazine, coming awake just as fuzzily as he had. Seeing him, she said, “I fell asleep.”

“Everybody fell asleep.”

They’d checked in late in the afternoon, hung around the room for a while to unpack and think things over, then had a pretty good dinner down in the hotel’s restaurant. Then May had gone back to the room to read while Dortmunder did a preliminary walk-through of the hotel, getting to know the lay of the land, then went back to compare what he’d seen with the floor plan placed on the inside of the room door in case of fire. “You Are Here.” “Use Staircase A.” “Do Not Use Elevator.” Still, they were marked, the elevators, on the floor plan.

The layout was simple, really. The hotel was basically a thick letter U, with the base of the U on Broadway and the arms of the U on the side streets. The space in the middle was occupied, down below, by the theater and by the hotel lobby, with a glass roof at the top of that lobby on the sixteenth floor. The U started with floor seventeen and went on up that way, so all the hotel rooms could have windows.

“I don’t sleep well in chairs,” May said, getting to her feet.

“Well, you didn’t mean to,” Dortmunder said.

“Doesn’t help,” she decided, and went off to the bathroom, while Dortmunder crossed to the room’s only window and drew the heavy drapes open partway. The window wouldn’t open, so he pressed his forehead against the cool glass in order to look as straight down as possible.

They had an inside room, meaning no city vistas but also no traffic noise, and the view below, just visible with your forehead flat against the windowpane, was the glass roof of the lobby. Earlier this evening, that glass dome had been very brightly lit, but now it was dim, as though some sort of fire had been banked down there.

12:53.

Dortmunder crossed to the door to once again study the floor plan in its little frame. He leaned in close, peering, figuring it out.