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

But actually, Max realized, halfway down the steps from the plane, both images were wrong. It was all wrong. He stopped, and two of his guards bumped into him, and then fell all over each other apologizing. Ignoring them, Max crooked a finger at Earl, turned about, shoved through his escort—it was like pushing through a small herd of dairy cows—and went back up and inside the plane, where his breakfast-serving steward leaped up guiltily from the table where he’d been sprawled, finishing Max’s breakfast and reading Max’s newspapers.

Max ignored that, too, though in other circumstances he might not. Turning away from the red-faced stammering steward, now quaking on his feet, Max faced the doorway until Earl entered the plane, saying, “Mr. Fairbanks? You see something wrong out there?”

“I see everything wrong out there, Earl,” Max told him. “We aren’t trying to scare this fellow off, we aren’t trying to make it obviously impossible for him to get anywhere near me, we’re trying to lure . . . him . . . in.”

Earl stiffened, even more than usual: “Mr. Fairbanks, your security—”

“—is primarily my concern. And I will not feel secure until we have our hands on that burglar. And we won’t get our hands on that burglar unless he believes he can at least make a try for me.”

Earl clearly didn’t like this. An enforcer to his toes, he had wanted to do by-the-book security here, without regard for the specifics of the situation. But he did at least recognize who was boss, so, with clear reluctance, he nodded once and said, “Yes, sir. What do you suggest?”

“Three cars,” Max told him. “Two men each in the front and rear cars. You and I and the driver in the middle car. No one else. No cars out in front, none trailing along behind. No snipers on the roofs. No helicopters. No people on street corners with walkie-talkies. Earl, I want to arrive at the Gaiety in as normal a manner as possible, as though I didn’t have a care in the world.”

“Sir,” Earl said. He nodded once more, permitted one small sigh to escape his thin lips, and exited to undo a whole spiderweb of security.

Max still wasn’t exactly making an anonymous entrance. They brought him in his limo around to the rear of the hotel, through the employee parking lot, and over to the high wall of shrubs shielding the hotel grounds from any view of parked unwashed automobiles. Max emerged from the limo at last to find himself in another dairy herd of bulky men in suits, who insisted on flanking him all the way through the gate in the shrubbery and across the paths and landscaping to the cottages, and thence around the secondary cottages, and at last to cottage number one, where they left him and, alone, he went inside.

All the drapes inside cottage one were firmly drawn, and all the lights switched on, as though he’d suddenly gone backward again into night through all those time zones. On their feet, waiting for him, were two men, one of whom he recognized, the other not. The one he recognized was his manager here, Brandon Camberbridge, a solidly reliable if unimaginative cog in the giant machine of TUI. The other, in tan uniform, bearing an expression of unassailable self-confidence, would be head of security here; the local Earl.

As the original Earl came into the cottage behind Max, shutting the door on the dairy herd, Brandon Camberbridge stepped forward, looking worried, pleased, attentive, nervous, and weepy. Such an excess of emotion seemed unwarranted—even Max wasn’t that concerned about himself—but then all became clear when Camberbridge wailed, “Oh, Mr. Fairbanks, we so hope nothing will happen to you here at our beautiful hotel!”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Max said, as he realized that Camberbridge cared more for the hotel than he did about his employer. By God, he thinks it’s his hotel!

Max smiled on the man, while deciding in that instant to have him transferred at the earliest possible moment to some other territory within the TUI empire. There was, for instance, an older downtown hotel in Boston; that might be good. It isn’t acceptable for employees to think of Max’s properties as their own, it encourages the wrong kind of loyalty. “Good to see you again, Brandon,” Max assured him, and, the man’s fate sealed, pleasantly shook his hand.

“I want you to meet Wylie Branch,” Camberbridge said, “head of security here at the Gaiety. I sometimes think he worries about the place almost as much as I do.”

“I don’t think I could,” Wylie Branch said, with a western drawl. “I don’t even think it would be fitting.”

Branch and Max eyed one another, understood one another in an instant, and both of them smiled as Max shook the rangy man’s hand, saying, “So you’ll be keeping an eye out for me.”

Branch grinned. “What I’ll mostly do, Mr. Fairbanks,” he said, “is try to keep out of your way.”

“We’ll get along,” Max assured him, then turned aside to yawn largely in Camberbridge’s face. “Sorry,” he said, “it was a long flight.”

“Yes, of course,” Camberbridge said. “We should leave you alone to unwind. What time should we send the chef to prepare your dinner?”

“Nine, I think. A lady chef, I believe?”

Camberbridge blinked. “Yes, certainly,” he said, with a brave smile.

“Have her phone me at seven,” Max said, “to discuss the menu.”

Camberbridge would have said something more, but Max yawned at him again, giving the man a full view of his long-ago tonsillectomy, and at last Camberbridge took the hint and, with the security men Earl and Wylie in tow, departed.

It wasn’t for sleep that Max had wanted to be alone—he’d just, after all, awakened after a long and peaceful slumber on the plane—it was for The Book. Since he’d made the decision to use himself to snare the bothersome burgler, Max had avoided the I Ching, almost afraid to know what The Book might think of his idea. In the two and a half weeks since that impetuous moment at the now-lost house in Carrport, Max had found doubt creeping into his mind, insecurity, no matter how hard he fought against it, misgivings, a sense that somehow, in taking the damn burglar’s ring, he had not made a coup, but a mistake.

Not that he had done wrong, or, more accurately, not that he would care if he had done wrong. Many’s the time in Max’s eventful life he had done wrong, serious wrong, and never lost an instant’s repose over it. No. What he felt somehow was that he had made an error, he had exposed himself to something unexpected, he had leaped before he had looked.

That wasn’t like him. He was known for his impishness, for his surprising moves, but they were always grounded in his awareness of what was safe, safe for him. He didn’t, because he no longer had to, risk all.

He hadn’t known, in truth, that when he’d boosted that burglar’s ring he was risking anything.

In any event, the time had come. He was here now, in place, waiting for the burglar. The die was cast, it was too late to change his mind. Now he could consult The Book.

His luggage had been brought here when his plane had first landed, while he breakfasted, so that his clothing was now neatly stored in closet and dressers, and the briefcase containing The Book awaited him on the pass-through counter between the cottage’s living room and kitchen. Opening the briefcase there, Max took out The Book and the small leather Hermès cuff-link box in which he kept the three pennies.

These he carried to the conversation area of the living room, where he sat on the sofa, readied hotel pen and hotel pad on the coffee table, and tossed the coins six times onto a copy of the in-hotel magazine, to lessen the clatter they made.