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

Tiny climbed aboard, looked around at the interior of the Invidia, and said, “Not bad, Murch, not bad.”

“We call it home,” Stan said, and drove away from there.

They had one last misdeed to perform before finally leaving New Jersey in peace. At an auto repainting shop in yet another county, once they’d gone through the ineffectual locks, they picked up two gallons of high-gloss silver automobile body paint, an electric paint sprayer, and two rolls of masking tape.

After that, it was just a matter of picking up their passengers. Stan hadn’t wanted to drive this big monster into Manhattan if he didn’t have to, so everybody else was coming out, to be met at prearranged locations. First, he picked up the four who’d come over to Hoboken on the PATH train, saving some muggers there who’d been just about to make a mistake. Then he went on to Union City and gathered in the three who’d taken the bus over from the Port Authority terminal through the Lincoln Tunnel. And finally he drove up to Fort Lee, where he connected with the three who’d driven across the George Washington Bridge in a car they’d found somewhere.

From Fort Lee, it was nothing at all for the big Invidia, green tonight but going to be silver by some time tomorrow, with its new Kentucky license plates firmly in place, to get up onto Interstate 80 and line out for the West, just one more big highballing vehicle among the streams of them, all aglow with running lights in yellow and red and white, rushing through the dark.

“Home away from home,” somebody said.

“Shut up and deal,” said somebody else.

Sunday morning, across America. Rolling over the tabletop of Kansas, now on Interstate 70, here came the silver Invidia, containing Stan and Tiny and the ten other guys. Stan was now asleep in the back bedroom while Jim O’Hara drove, with Ralph Winslow clinking ice cubes in his glass beside Jim in the passenger seat. Tiny had sat in on the poker game, and was winning. He usually did win, but guys didn’t like to refuse to play with him, because they knew it made him testy. So this bunch in the Invidia, alternating drivers and traveling day and night, expected to reach Las Vegas some time before dark tomorrow.

But right now, Sunday morning, in the sky over Kansas and the Invidia, a commercial airliner was sailing by, also headed west. It contained among its passengers Fred and Thelma Lartz, Gus Brock, Wally Whistler, and another lockman, who used to be called Herman X, back when he was an activist. Then, while briefly vice president of an African nation called Talabwo, his name had changed to Herman Makanene Stulu’mbnick, but when the rest of his government was hanged by the new government he came back to the States, and now he was called Herman Jones. He and the other four were on their way to Los Angeles, where Herman would select for them a nice automobile from long-term parking and Fred (that is, Thelma) would drive them tomorrow to Vegas.

Counting Dortmunder and Kelp and Anne Marie already established in Las Vegas, this meant a crew of twenty, four times Dortmunder’s maximum. The result was, Dortmunder kept changing the plan this way and that way. His problem was, he didn’t have enough for all these people to do, but he knew they all wanted to be part of the action. And, of course, they would all want part of the profit, as well.

As would Lester Vogel. Out there in Henderson, at General Manufacturing, on this Sunday morning, some of Lester Vogel’s employees were at work on an unusual special order, preparing a consignment and loading a truck, to give A.K.A.’s pal John just exactly what he’d asked for. “I don’t know, man,” the workers told each other, shaking their heads. “I wouldn’t do this.” But then again, they didn’t know how this special order was going to be used.

Sunday in Las Vegas. The wedding chapels and slot machines were busy. The sun was shining. Everything was calm.

Max slept on the plane, in his own private bedroom aft, and didn’t awake until the steward knocked, then opened the door to say, “Excuse me, sir, we’ll be landing in ten minutes.”

Max blinked, disoriented. “Landing where?”

“Las Vegas, sir. I’ll have breakfast for you out here.” And he bowed himself out, shutting the door.

Las Vegas. It all came back to him now, and Max sat up and smiled. Las Vegas. Here he would have meetings over the next two days in connection with his purchase of a partial stake in two small southwestern TV cable companies; and meetings concerning land of his along the Mexican border in New Mexico; and meetings concerning a few western politicians who could use his counsel, advice, and money. And here, here, he would rid himself once and for all of that goddamned burglar!

In coming here from Sydney, with a pause for a meal and a business discussion in San Francisco, Max had crossed twelve time zones, and had briefly moved backward in time from Sunday to Saturday, before returning to Sunday again in mid-Pacific. At this point, his body clock hadn’t the foggiest idea what time it was, but he hardly cared. It was Sunday here in Las Vegas, some daylight hour of Sunday—harsh sun glared outside the small windows of his bedroom—and he had arrived ahead of the original schedule, at Earl Radburn’s suggestion, to be sure the bait would be already firmly fixed inside the snare at the Gaiety before the mouse came to sniff the cheese.

Max washed and dressed, and soon went out to the main cabin, where the deferentially smiling steward ushered him to the table set for one; snowy linen, china with his own symbol on it in the dark red known as garnet, one bright red rose in a cut glass vase, a sparkling tumbler of orange juice, the smell of toast, the pale yellow of a thin square of butter on a small white dish, red strawberry jam agleam in a shallow bowl, a folded white napkin with a slender garnet border. Lovely.

As Max settled himself into the comfortable chair, the steward poured his first cup of coffee and murmured, “Your omelette will be along in just a moment, sir.”

“Thank you.”

A second steward entered, with newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the London Daily Telegraph. They were placed on the table near Max’s right hand, and then that steward withdrew.

Outside the window, the flat vista baked; gray runways and tan dead ground and low airport buildings in no color at all. Smiling upon this view because he was safely insulated from it, Max said to the remaining steward, hovering nearby, “What time is it here?”

“Three-twenty, sir. Your car will come at four. I’ll just go get your omelette now, sir.”

Things are looking up, Max thought, as he drank his orange juice. I can feel it. Las Vegas is where all the bad karma gets worked out of the system, and I’m on top of the world again. This is where it happens. Endgame.

He spread jam on toast, the cool knife in his right hand, and on the third finger of that hand the lucky ring glinted and gleamed.

It wasn’t a car that came for Max forty minutes later, it was a fleet of cars, all of them large, all except his own limo packed with cargos of large men. He couldn’t have had more of a parade if he were the president of the United States, going out to return a library book.

His own limo, when it stopped at the foot of the steps from the TUI plane, held only Earl Radburn and the driver. Earl emerged, to wait at the side of the car, while half a dozen bulky men came up to escort Max down those steps, so that he corrected the previous image: No, not like a president, more like a serial killer on his way to trial.

The president image had been better.