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

“So this judge,” Lutetia said, “he didn’t merely take away a corporate asset, he stole a part of your pleasure in who you are.”

“Irreplaceable,” he said.

“Oh, no, my dear,” she assured him. “You’ll get over it, and you’ll find some other symbol. It was only a symbol, really, not actually you . Some other house, a plane, a ship—Have you thought about a ship?”

He frowned at her, as though she might be making fun of him. “A ship? What are you talking about, Lutetia?”

“A number of men,” she said carefully, “financial giants, somewhat like you, have found comfort in commanding a yacht. You could dock it here in New York, travel all sorts of places in it, have your management meetings aboard it, do all the things you used to do in Carrport.”

He looked at her with growing suspicion. “You don’t like ships. You don’t like being on the water.”

“I was never interested in Carrport either, remember? This would be your place. Even better than Carrport, I should think. Master of your own ship, on the high seas.”

Really suspicious now, he said, “Lutetia, why are you so good to me?”

“Because, my dear,” she told him, with absolute truth, “you’re so good to me.”

The car had stopped now in front of the theater. The show inside— Desdemona! —had broken nearly an hour ago, and the lobby was half-lit, visible through its bank of glass doors. Arthur, their doorman/lift operator, came out of the lobby, crossed the broad sidewalk still rich in pedestrians, and opened the rear door for them. Lutetia emerged first, and just heard Max, behind her, say to Chalmers, “Wait.”

They crossed the sidewalk together, following Arthur, Lutetia saying, “You told Chalmers to wait? Are you going out again?”

“I’m going to Carrport.”

Arthur held the lobby door, and they stepped through, Lutetia staring at Max, saying, “Are you mad? You just told me the judge took it away from you!”

“I’m permitted one last visit,” he explained, as Arthur opened the elevator doors and they boarded. “To remove my personal possessions, inventory that shouldn’t be sold with the property. One overnight.”

“ Now? It’s nearly midnight!”

“When else am I going to do it?”

The elevator sped upward and Max gave her the open frank and honest look she mistrusted so. “I have to leave tomorrow in any event, then I’m in Washington, then Chicago, then Sydney, then Nevada, on and on. The place has to be put on the market right away.”

The doors opened at their reception room. “Wait,” Max told Arthur, as Lutetia clapped the apartment lights on.

As they crossed the reception room, Lutetia said, “So you won’t come back here tomorrow, but go from Carrport straight to Kennedy and fly south.”

“That makes the most sense,” he said. “I’ll just grab the papers I need, and my overnight bag. I’ll be out there by one, sleep, have most of the day tomorrow to do my inventory, say my . . . good-byes, to the house.”

And have it off with some tootsie, Lutetia thought. Her antennae were always very good. Following him into the bedroom, she said, “I’ll come with you.”

He stopped, as though he’d run into a glass wall. Turning, he said, “You will not.”

“But I really should,” she said. “And I want to. You’re right, I never did see the place out there, and this will be my last chance. Now that I know it means so much to you, I feel I should be with you when you say your farewells.” Resting a loving hand on his forearm, she said, “I want to feel close to you, Max, you know that. I want to be a help to you.”

“But you don’t want to—You have so much to do here .”

“As a matter of fact, no,” she said, and smiled her sunniest smile. “The next two days, my calendar is absolutely empty. I can’t think of anything nicer to do, anything more romantic, than to be driven out to your thane’s castle with you for your final night there, to spend the night with you, there, in the symbol of your inner self. There must be fireplaces. Tell me there are fireplaces.”

Trying for a friendly smile, nearly accomplishing it, he said, “Love petal, you don’t want to do that. An unfamiliar house, you’ll be uncomfortable, away from everything you care for, stuck in—”

“But you are everything I care for, dearest,” she assured him, and then allowed slight doubt to color her features as she said, “Unless . . . You don’t have any other reason for going out there by yourself, do you?”

“Of course not, sweet minx,” he said, and spontaneously hugged her, and let her go. “You know me better than that, my warm bunny.”

“Then it’s settled,” she announced, innocent and happy. “Off we go!”

“Off we go,” he echoed, less exuberantly. He looked as though the dinner he’d eaten at the Lumleys’ might be disagreeing with him. He sighed, and his next smile was a brave one. “I’ll just get my . . . things.”

The lockman was not the woman from the restaurant at dinner. The lockman was Wally Whistler, and Andy Kelp didn’t mention the woman at dinner, or dinner itself, or anything about that entire scene. Which was okay with Dortmunder. No sweat off his nose. He didn’t mind if Andy Kelp wanted to snub him at dinner and have secrets. Didn’t matter to him.

Since Gus Brock had already showed up, a couple minutes early, the arrival of Wally Whistler and Andy Kelp meant the gang was all here. Wally Whistler was a cheerful guy and a first-rate lock expert, whose only flaw was a certain absentmindedness. He’d once spent a period of time in an upstate prison merely because, visiting the zoo with his kids, he’d absentmindedly fiddled with a lock, and the resulting freed lion had made everybody upset and irritated until the tranquilizer dart had made it possible to put the lion back in his cage. Another time, Wally had been helping some people one night at a Customs warehouse on the Brooklyn docks—people who hadn’t wanted to encumber Customs with a lot of documents and forms—and he was, as usual, playing absentmindedly with locks, and when he realized he’d somehow unlocked his way from the warehouse into the bowels of a cargo ship, the ship had already sailed, and he hadn’t managed to get off the thing until Brazil, which was unfortunate, because Brazil and the United States don’t have an extradition treaty. Wally Whistler, like some other of Dortmunder’s friends, liked to travel by extradition, which meant, when overseas, they’d confess to a crime in America they knew they could prove they hadn’t done, be extradited back home, produce the proof of innocence, and walk. Without extradition from Brazil, it had taken Wally a long time indeed to get home, but here he was at last, as good as ever, and just as absentminded.

“This is our room here, that’s somebody else,” Dortmunder pointed out, seeing Wally drift in the direction of the connecting door to some other room.

“Oh, right,” Wally said.

Gus said, “Open sesame.”

They looked at him. Dortmunder said, “What?”

“We’re going to Aladdin’s Cave, aren’t we?” Gus asked. “So why don’t we do it.”

Everybody agreed that was a good idea, so they trooped on out of the room. Wally carried a few small tools in his pockets, but none of the others had brought along anything special. They were prepared to wait and see what they found when they got down to the apartment. It was true Max Fairbanks had to be approached with care, since he was known to carry heat—a memory Dortmunder would retain for a good long time—but they expected that the element of surprise, plus their force of numbers, would be able to deal with that problem.