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

“I just wanted to tell you,” Wally said, sounding as though he had a cold or something, “your friend isn’t at Hilton Head any more.”

Wally. In Dortmunder’s mind, Wally now morphed from Wally Whistler, the lockman, to Wally Knurr, the computer genius who was tracking Max Fairbanks for him. Catching the sense of what this Wally had just said, Dortmunder lunged upward, wide-eyed. “What? Where is he?”

“Don’t know,” this Wally said. “A fax just went out to his people that he’s unavailable from now, Saturday, until Monday morning.”

“And where’s he gonna be Monday morning?”

“Oh, that doesn’t change,” Wally said. “He still has to appear before that committee, so from Monday morning his schedule’s the same. It’s just over the weekend.”

“Thanks, Wally,” Dortmunder said, and hung up, and sat brooding at his empty beer can. This didn’t change anything, since he’d never for a second had it in mind to attack an island off the South Carolina coast—piracy was not part of his job description—but it was still confusing, and maybe worrisome.

Unavailable? Max Fairbanks unavailable? To his own people, Max Fairbanks was never unavailable. So what’s going on? What’s happened?

And where is Max Fairbanks?

“I’m not even supposed to be here,” Max complained to the detective. Running distraught fingers through rumpled hair, he said, “I’m supposed to be preparing for my testimony before Congress on Monday. I have to talk to Congress on Monday. I don’t see what I’m accomplishing here at all. I don’t see it at all. What am I accomplishing? I’m not accomplishing anything here, I’m not even supposed to be here.”

The detective calmly but disinterestedly waited for Max to run down. He was a thirtyish chunky fellow with bushy black hair and a long fleshy nose, and he had introduced himself as Detective Second Grade Bernard Klematsky. He didn’t look much like a detective of any grade, but more like a high school math teacher, with his rumpled gray suit and rumpled blue tie. But he was the detective in charge of the burglary at the N-Joy apartment, he was laconic as hell, and he just had a few questions to ask.

Well, for that matter, so did Max. What the hell happened here? It’s as though a tornado had been through, and cleaned the place out. Nothing large had been taken, not the grand piano or the antique armoire in the master bedroom or the medieval refectory table here in the reception room, or anything like that. But everything, everything, every item of any value at all small enough to fit into the overhead bin or under the seat in front of you was gone . Stripped clean, the one night Lutetia wasn’t home.

Well, thank God she wasn’t home, come to think of it. Horrible that would have been, to be actually present when they came breaking in. As it was, Lutetia was now asleep in her bedroom—or, rather, unconscious—and had been so for many hours, heavily sedated by one of her doctors, leaving Max alone in the denuded reception room to deal with this rather thick-witted detective, who didn’t seem to realize who he was dealing with here.

Max couldn’t quite bring himself to utter the words Do you know who I am? but he was close. In fact, probably the main consideration keeping him from voicing that question was the suspicion that this slow-moving blunt-minded bored detective more than likely already had a smart-aleck answer waiting on the shelf.

Nevertheless, though, this was ridiculous, to sit here hour after hour at the whim of some detective . Certainly, when Lutetia’s screaming voice on the telephone last night had at last managed to communicate to him something of the enormity of what had occurred, he had at the earliest opportunity this morning reversed his travel—car to Savannah, private plane to JFK, limo to the N-Joy—to be with her in this traumatic situation. And certainly he’d been happy to see this detective, Bernard Klematsky, happy to answer his questions, happy to help in any way he could, happy to see the man so obviously earnest in his work, but enough was enough.

There should by now have come a point at which Max could shake the detective’s hand, wish him well, give him a telephone number where Max could be reached if necessary, and leave. Back to Hilton Head, back to the extremely attractive secretary waiting there to help him prepare his testimony before Congress on Monday, back to his normal life.

Instead of which, this fellow Klematsky, this roadshow Columbo, was holding him here. Gently, yes; indirectly, yes; but nevertheless, that was what was happening.

“If you’ll just give me a little of your time, Mr. Fairbanks. I’m expecting some phone calls, then you can help me with one or two little details.”

“Why don’t I help you with those details now, so I can leave?”

“I wish we could do it that way, Mr. Fairbanks,” Klematsky said, not even trying to look sympathetic, “but I’ve got to wait for these phone calls before I know exactly what it is I need to ask you.”

So here he was, hour after hour, all of Saturday going by, Saturday evening coming up, Lutetia unconscious in the other room, the apartment raped, and Detective Klematsky as bland as an ulcer diet—which Max would be needing, if things kept on like this.

But what could he do? He’d called his New York office, told them to hold all messages for the weekend—nothing else in his business life could possibly matter between now and Monday—and he remained hunkered down in this place, waiting, and every time the phone rang, which it did from time to time, it was for Klematsky. Who lives here, anyway?

But now at last Klematsky, having come back from yet one more phone call, seemed ready to get on with it. He’d always taken his calls in some other room, so Max could hear nothing but murmuring without words, so he had no idea what all this hugger-mugger was about, but he was glad that finally they might be getting down to it. Ask the bloody questions, and let me go. It’s my plane, and my pilot, and he’ll fly whenever I say, whenever I get there, so let me get there.

And here came the first question: “Your wife, Lutetia, lives in this apartment?”

“Well, we both do,” Max said, “though this isn’t my legal residence, and I suppose she’s here more than I am. Business keeps me traveling a great deal.”

“She’s here more than you are.”

“Yes, of course.”

“She’s here almost all the time, isn’t she, Mr. Fairbanks?” Klematsky had some sort of notebook, was riffling through it, looking at little handwritten notes in it. “She’s something of a hostess in New York, isn’t she?”

“My wife entertains a great deal,” Max said. And what was the point of all this?

“But Thursday night she wasn’t here.”

“No. Thank God for that, too.”

“You and she went away together?”

“Yes.”

“Just for the one night?”

“That was all the time I had, as I say, I’m supposed to be in Washington—”

“And where did you go?”

“My corporation owns—well, it did own, we’re giving it up, selling it—a house out on Long Island, we’ve used for management sessions, that sort of thing. I suppose we were saying good-bye to it. Sentimental; you know how it is.”

“You were sentimental about giving up the house on Long Island.”

“We’d had it for some years, yes.”

“And your wife was sentimental about giving it up.”

“Well, I suppose so,” Max said, trying to find his way through the obscurity of these questions, not wanting to compromise himself with an outright lie either. “I suppose she felt about it much the same way I did.”