Donald Westlake - Why Me?

"Hello," said the telephone cheerfully into Dortmunder's ear, "this is Andy Kelp."

"This is Dort—" Dortmunder started to say, but the telephone was still talking in his ear. It was saying:

"I'm not home right now, but—"

"Andy? Hello?"

"— you can leave a message on this recording machine—"

"It's John, Andy. John Dortmunder."

"— and I'll call you back just as soon as I can."

"Andy! Hey! Can you hear me?"

"Leave your message right after you hear the beep. And do have a nice day."

Dortmunder held both hands cupped around the mouthpiece of the phone and roared down its throat: "HELLO!"

"eeeepp"

Dortmunder recoiled from the phone as though it were just about to explode, which he half expected it would. Holding the receiver at arm's length, he watched it mistrustfully for a few seconds, then slowly brought it closer and bent his ear to the earpiece. Silence. A long, hollow, sort of unreeling kind of silence. Dortmunder listened, and then there was a faint click, and then the silence changed, becoming furry, empty, and pointless. Knowing he was all alone, Dortmunder nevertheless asked, "Hello?" The furry silence went on. Dortmunder hung up the phone, went out to the kitchen, had a glass of milk, and thought it over.

May was out to the movies, so there was no one to discuss this situation with, but on reflection it seemed to Dortmunder pretty clear what had happened. Andy Kelp had got himself a machine to answer the telephone. The question was, why would he do such a thing? Dortmunder cut a slice of Sara Lee cheese danish, chewed it, mulled this question, drank his milk, and at last decided you just could never figure out why Kelp did the things he did. Dortmunder had never talked to a machine before—except for an occasional rude remark at a car that refused to start on a cold morning—but okay; if he was going to continue to know Andy Kelp, he would apparently have to learn to talk to machines. And he might just as well start now.

Leaving the glass in the sink, Dortmunder went back to the living room and dialed Kelp's number again, and this time he didn't start talking until the machine was finished saying, "Hello, this is Andy Kelp. I'm not home right now, but you can leave a message on this recording machine and I'll call you back just as soon as I can. Leave your message right after you hear the beep. And do have a nice day." eeeepp

"Sorry you aren't there," Dortmunder said. "This is Dortmunder and I'm—"

But now the machine started talking again: "Hey!" it said. "Hello!"

Probably a malfunction in the announcement mechanism. Well, it wasn't Dortmunder's problem; he didn't have any goddam gizmo on his telephone. Doggedly ignoring the machine's irruptions, Dortmunder went on with his message: " — off on a little job. I thought you might come with me—"

"Hey, it's me! It's Andy!"

"— but I guess I can do it on my own. Talk to you later."

As Dortmunder hung up, the phone was saying, rather plaintively, "John? Hello !" Dortmunder went to the hall closet, put on his jacket with the burglar tools all tucked away in the hidden interior pockets, and left the apartment. Ten seconds later, in the empty living room, the phone rang. And rang. And rang…

Nestled on a deep soft background of black velvet, gleaming under the bright glare of the overhead fluorescent tubes, the Byzantine Fire shone a lustrous carmine, reflecting and refracting the light. If machines could bleed, a blood drop from Univac might look like this; cold, clear, almost painfully red, a tiny faceted geodesic dome of deep color and furious light. Weighing ninety carats, the Byzantine Fire was one of the largest and most valuable rubies in the world, worth possibly a quarter million dollars merely in itself, not even counting its setting and its history, both of which were impressive.

The setting for the Byzantine Fire was a large and intricately carved ring of pure gold, in which the central figure of the ruby was surrounded by fourteen tiny blue-and-white sapphires. While this perhaps doubled the overall value, it was the stone's history—ranging through religious wars, thefts, treaties, murders, diplomacy at the highest level, matters of national pride and ethnic identity and theologic significance—that raised it beyond all questions of value; the Byzantine Fire was priceless, like the Kohinoor Diamond.

Therefore, security during this first move of the Byzantine Fire in nearly ninety years was extremely tight. This morning, three separate teams of armed couriers had left the Chicago Natural History Museum, traveling by three different routes to New York City, and not until departure had even the couriers themselves known which team would carry the ring. It was now nearly midnight in New York, and the team with the ring had just been met at the TWA terminal in Kennedy Airport by a security escort from the United States Mission to the United Nations. This new group would carry the ring the rest of the way into Manhattan, to U.S. Mission headquarters in United Nations Plaza, in preparation for tomorrow's ceremony, when the Byzantine Fire would be gravely and solemnly returned to the sovereign nation of Turkey (which in fact had never owned it). After which, thank God, the damn thing would be Turkey's problem.

Until then, however, it remained America's problem, and there was a certain tension among the eight Americans crowded into this small, bare room in the security area of the TWA terminal. In addition to the courier from Chicago with the attaché case chained to his wrist, plus his two bodyguards, there were a three-man escort team from the U.S. Mission and two blasé New York City policemen in uniform, the cops being there simply to represent the city and to observe the ritual of transfer. Nobody really expected any trouble.

The Chicago bodyguards began the transfer by turning over their attaché case keys to the New York team, who duly signed receipts. Next, the Chicago courier placed the attaché case on a table and used his own key to remove the handcuff from his wrist. Then he unlocked and opened the attaché case, reached into it, and opened the smaller carrying box within, which was when everybody clustered a bit closer around the table, looking down at the Byzantine Fire, the deep red ruby, the warm encircling gold, the winking little blue-and-white chips of sapphire, all against the black velvet lining of the box. Even the two jaded city cops moved in closer, looking at the ring over the shoulders of the other men. "That's some cherry," one of the cops said.

The balder man from the U.S. Mission frowned at such nonseriousness. "You men should—" he said, and the door behind them opened and four men strode in, wearing black coats and gas masks, lobbing smoke and teargas bombs, carrying Sten guns, and speaking Greek.

The jewelry store door said snnnarrrkkk. Dortmunder pressed his shoulder against the door, but the snnnarrrkkk hadn't done the job. Glancing over his other shoulder—Rockaway Boulevard here in South Ozone Park in the borough of Queens remained empty, the extra wire bypassing the alarm box over the front entrance remained unobtrusive, and the hour remained a quiet midweek midnight—Dortmunder returned his attention to the door, which remained shut.

It was having to be his own lookout that was causing this delay, interrupting his concentration on this blessed door. He'd hoped to have Kelp along for that purpose; too bad he hadn't been home. Since most of the people Dortmunder knew were under the impression that Dortmunder was a jinx—bad luck, rather than incompetence, clouded his days and chilled his nights—it was very tough to find anybody willing to go out with him on a little piece of work. And he didn't want to risk delaying this job another night; who knew how long the owner would be away?