Donald Westlake - Why Me?

"I answered for you," she pointed out. "This is open house."

The new arrivals were plainclothes detectives, three of them. "Police," they said, showing unnecessary identification.

"Come on in," May said.

The three detectives and the four tough guys looked at each other in the living room. "Well well well," said the detectives. "We're waiting for a friend," said the tough guys. "I've got to unpack my groceries," said May, leaving them to work it out among themselves.

"It seems," Mologna said, unsmilingly gazing at Zachary and Freedly, "I was right."

"That may well be," Zachary acknowledged, as brisk and alert as though he'd been right. "We'll know more, of course, once we've interrogated this individual."

"Dortmunder," Mologna said, tapping the dossier Leon had lovingly placed in the exact center of his desk. "John Archibald Dortmunder. Born in Dead Indian, Illinois, raised in the Bleedin Heart Sisters of Eternal Misery Orphanage, thousands of arrests on suspicion of robbery, two jail terms. Hasn't been heard from recently, but that doesn't mean he isn't active. An ordinary, home-grown, minor-league, light-fingered crook. Not an international spy, not a terrorist, not a freedom fighter, not a political in any way." A quick glance at Freedly: "Not even an Armenian." Back to Zachary, the chief asshole: "A small-time crook, all on his own. Pulled a smalltime jewelry store burglary, got the Byzantine Fire by mistake. Like I said all along."

"It's very possible you're right," Zachary said. "Of course, under interrogation it may well turn out this man Dortmunder has been recruited by some other element."

Freedly said, "And then there's his partner, Kelp."

"Andrew Octavian Kelp," Mologna said, his fingertips sensing that second dossier beneath the first. "Dortmunder's partner in his alibi, but not in the heist. I assume Dortmunder has somethin on Kelp and forced him into supportin that alibi. Kelp himself is absolutely clean the night of the robbery."

"Could be the link," Freedly said.

Zachary frowned at him: "What?"

"If there is a link," Mologna acknowledged, "which I very much doubt."

Zachary said, "What?"

"It's Kelp's foreign associations we'll have to check into," Freedly said, making a note.

Zachary said, "Goddam it."

"Link between Dortmunder and international aspect," Freedly explained.

"Oh, Kelp !" Zachary said, and immediately leaped on the idea and rode madly off in all directions. "Excellent concept! 'Kelp, Kelp'—the name is obviously shortened. He'll have relatives in the old country. He's establishing the alibi while Dortmunder's out pulling the actual job. Ruby-Oswald!"

"They weren't linked," Mologna pointed out.

"Concept," Zachary explained. "In the theorizational stage, many linkages were postulated between those two. While they all turned out to be inappropriate in that instance, some of the same theories could very well come into play in this situation."

"Why not," Mologna said. "They'll work just as well as last time." He looked up as the door opened: "Yes, Leon?"

"Captain Cappelletti," Leon announced. "With that cute little tattletale."

"Let's see them," Mologna said, and Leon ushered in Tony Cappelletti, shooing ahead of himself Benjamin Arthur Klopzik.

Who was a changed man. Absolute terror had made him even thinner than before, but with a wiry, tensile strength that was very new. He was still scrawny but, on looking at him, one felt he might be able, like an ant, to lift and carry a crumb seven times his weight. His huge hollow eyes darted this way and that, as though expecting Mologna's office to be full of his former comrades; they lit with horror and wild surmise when they met the curious gazes of Zachary and Freedly. "Ak!" he said, recoiling into Tony Cappelletti's chest.

"These are FBI men, Klopzik," Mologna said. "Agents Zachary and Freedly. Come on in here and quit foolin around."

Hesitantly, Klopzik advanced far enough into the room for Cappelletti also to enter and Leon to shut the door behind them. Then Klopzik stopped and merely waited, blinking.

"You did fine," Mologna told him. "We picked up every word. It wasn't your fault about that goddam CB. You may be happy to hear we towed that son of a bitch's car away and slapped a reckless drivin charge on him, just to relieve our feelins."

"They're gonna kill me." Klopzik's voice sounded like a zipper opening.

"No, they won't, Benjy," Cappelletti said, and told Mologna, "I promised him the protection of the Department."

"Well, sure," Mologna said.

"But this time," Cappelletti said, "we really got to do it."

Mologna frowned. "What are you tellin me, Tony?"

"This time," Cappelletti explained, "we don't have just one mob or half a dozen ex-partners looking for a guy. Every professional crook in New York is looking for Benjy Klopzik." (Klopzik groaned.) "If they find him, they'll never trust the Police Department again."

"Ah," Mologna said. "I see what you mean."

Zachary, sitting firmly like an FBI man, said, "Of course, the Bureau has considerable experiential knowledge in this sort of area: new identities, jobs, a new life in a completely different part of the country. We could—"

"No!" cried Klopzik.

Mologna looked at him. "You don't want help?"

"Not from the FBI! That program of theirs, that's just a delay of sentence! Everybody the FBI gives a new identity, the first thing you know the guy's been buried under the new name."

"Oh, now," Zachary said, offended on the Bureau's behalf. "I'll admit we've had a few problems from time to time, but there's no point overstating the case."

Mologna shook his head, seeing from Klopzik's anguished face that the little man would not be dissuaded. "All right, Klopzik," he said. "What do you want?"

"I don't wanna move out of New York," Klopzik said, his terror receding. "What are all those other places to me? They don't even have the subway."

"What do you want?"

"Plastic surgery," Klopzik said, so promptly that it was clear he'd been thinking about this rather intently. "And a new name, a new identity—driver's license and all that. And a nice soft job with decent money and not much to do—maybe in the Parks Department. And I can't go back to my old place, so I need a nice rent-controlled apartment and new furniture and a color TV…and a dishwasher!"

"Klopzik," Mologna said, "you want to stay in New York? Right here where they're lookin for you?"

"Sure, Francis," Cappelletti said. "I think it's an okay idea. This is the last place in the world they'll expect to find him. Anywhere else, he'll stick out like a sore thumb."

"He is a sore thumb," Mologna said.

"I was kinda thinking about making a change anyway," Klopzik confided to the room at large. "Things were kinda getting out of hand."

Mologna considered him. "Is that all?"

"Yeah," Klopzik said. "Only, I don't wanna be a Benjy any more."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I wanna be a, a… Craig!"

Mologna sighed. "Craig," he said.

"Yeah." Klopzik actually grinned. "Craig Fitzgibbons," he said.

Mologna looked at Tony Cappelletti. "Take Mister Fitzgibbons outa here," he said.

"Come along, Benjy."

"And, and," Klopzik said, resisting Cappelletti's tugging hand, staring with wild-eyed hope at Mologna, getting it all out, the whole big, beautiful, suddenly-realizable dream, "and tell the plastic surgeon I wanna look like, like Dustin Hoffman!"

"Get it outa here," Mologna told Tony Cappelletti, "or I'll start the plastic surgery right now."

But that was all; Klopzik had shot his wad. Exhausted, satiated, happy, he allowed himself to be led away.