Donald Westlake - Nobody's Perfect

Dortmunder was tasting one kind of bourbon, and dreaming about another kind, when the door opened and a stocky open-faced fellow with carroty hair came jauntily in, carrying a glass of beer in one hand and a salt shaker in the other. "Hey, there, Dortmunder," he said. "Am I late?"

"No, you're right on time," Dortmunder told him. "Tiny Bulcher, this is–"

The newcomer said, "I took a different route. I wasn't sure how it'd work out."

"Your timing is good," Dortmunder assured him. "Tiny, this is Stan Murch – he'll be our–"

"You see," said Stan Murch, putting his glass and shaker on the table and taking a chair, "with the West Side Highway closed it changes everything. All the old patterns."

Tiny said to him, "You the driver?"

"The best," Murch said, matter-of-factly.

"It was a driver got me sent up my last stretch," Tiny said. "Took back roads around a roadblock, made a wrong turn, come up behind the roadblock, thought he was still in front of it. We blasted our way through, back into the search area."

Murch looked sympathetic. "That's tough," he said.

"Fella named Sigmond. You know him?"

"I don't believe so," Murch said.

"Looked a little like you," Tiny said.

"Is that right?"

"Before we got outa the car, when the cops surrounded us, I broke his neck. We all said it was whiplash from the sudden stop."

Another little silence fell. Stan Murch sipped thoughtfully at his beer. Dortmunder took a mouthful of bourbon. Tiny Bulcher slugged down the rest of his vodka-and-red-wine. Then Murch nodded, slowly, as though coming to a conclusion about something. "Whiplash," he commented. "Yeah, whiplash. That can be pretty mean."

"So can I," said Tiny, and the door opened again, this time to admit a short and skinny man wearing spectacles and a wool suit, and carrying a round bar tray containing the bottle of Amsterdam Liquor Store bourbon, plus a glass with something that looked like but was not cherry soda, and a small amber glass of sherry. "Hello," said the skinny man. "The barman asked me to bring all this."

"Hey, Roger!" Stan Murch said. "Where you been keeping yourself?"

"Oh," said the skinny man, vaguely. "Just around. Here and there." He put the tray on the table and seated himself, and Tiny reached at once for his new vodka-and-red-wine.

Dortmunder said, "Tiny Bulcher, this is Roger Chefwick." Tiny nodded over his glass, and Roger said, "How do you do?"

Dortmunder explained to Tiny, "Roger is our lock-and-alarm man."

"Our terrific lock-and-alarm man!" Stan Murch said.

Roger Chefwick looked pleased and embarrassed. "I do my best," he said, and delicately lifted his sherry from the tray.

Tiny washed down some red stuff and said, "I'm the smash-and-carry man. The terrific smash-and-carry man."

"I'm sure you're very good at it," Chefwick said, politely. Then he pointed at the glass of red stuff and said, "Is that really vodka and red wine?"

"Sure," said Tiny. "Why not? Gives the vodka a little taste, gives the wine a little body."

"Ah," said Chefwick, and sipped sherry.

Murch said, "Roger, somebody told me you were in jail in Mexico."

Chefwick seemed both embarrassed and a bit annoyed at the subject having come up. "Oh, well," he said. "That was just a misunderstanding."

"I heard," Murch insisted, "you tried to hijack a subway car to Cuba."

Chefwick put his sherry glass on the felt surface of the table with some force. "I really don't see," he said, "how these silly rumors spread so far so fast."

"Well," Murch said, "what did happen?"

"Hardly anything," Chefwick said. "You know I'm a model-train enthusiast."

"Sure. I seen the layout in your cellar."

"Well," Chefwick said, "Maude and I were in Mexico on vacation, and in Vera Cruz there were some used New York City subway cars awaiting shipment to Cuba, and I– well– I actually merely intended to board one and look around a bit." A certain amount of discomfort was evident in Chefwick's face now. "One thing led to another," he said, "and I'm afraid the car began to move, and then it got out of control, and the first thing I knew I was on the main line to Guadalajara, having a great deal of difficulty staying ahead of the two-thirty express. But, so far from hijacking a subway car to Cuba, the Mexican police at first accused me of stealing the car from Cuba. However, with Maude's help we got it all straightened out in a day or two. Which," Chefwick concluded petulantly, "I'm afraid I can't say for the rumors and wild stories."

Tiny Bulcher abruptly said, "I did a bank job once with a lock man that thought he was a practical joker. Give me a dribble glass one time, exploding cigar one time."

Dortmunder and Murch both looked at Tiny a bit warily. Dortmunder said, "What happened?"

"After we emptied the vault," Tiny said, "I pushed him in and shut the door. He thought he was such hot stuff, let him get himself out from the inside."

Dortmunder said, "Did he?"

"The bank manager let him out, Monday morning. I hear he's still upstate."

"That wasn't very funny," Roger Chefwick said. His expression was very prim.

"Neither was the cigar," Tiny said, and turned to Dortmunder, saying, "We're all here now, right?"

"Right," Dortmunder said. He cleared his throat, sipped some more bourbon, and said, "What I got here is a simple breaking and entering. No fancy caper, no helicopters, no synchronize-your-watches, just come in through an upstairs window, take what we pick up along the way, and go after our main thing, which happens to be a painting."

Tiny said, "Valuable painting?"

"Four hundred thousand dollars."

"Do we have a buyer?"

"That we got," Dortmunder said, and went on to explain the whole story, finishing, "So our only problems are the burglar alarm and the private guards, but we got the best kind of inside help, and a guaranteed buyer."

"And twenty-five thousand a man," said Stan Murch.

"Plus," Dortmunder reminded him, "whatever we pick up on the upper floors."

Tiny said, "I don't know about that six-month wait. I like my money right away."

"The guy has to get it from the insurance company," Dortmunder said. "He said to me, and it makes sense, if he had a hundred thousand cash on him he wouldn't have to pull anything like this."

Tiny shrugged his huge shoulders. "I guess it's okay," he said. "I can make a living in the meantime. There's always heads to crack."

"Right," Dortmunder said, and turned to Roger Chefwick. "What about you?"

"I've seen Watson Security Services and their installations," Chefwick said, with some disdain. "The easiest thing in the world to get through."

"So you're with us?"

"With pleasure."

"Fine," Dortmunder said. He looked around at his string – an erratic genius lock-and-alarm man, a compulsive one-track-mind driver, and a beast from forty fathoms – and found it good. "Fine," he repeated. "I'll work out the timing with the owner, and get back to you."

Dortmunder was sitting on the sofa with his feet up on the coffee table, a beer in his right hand and a luncheon-loaf sandwich on white with mayo in his left hand, his sleepy eyes more or less focused on Angels with Dirty Faces, being screened this afternoon on WNEW-TV, channel five, when the doorbell rang. Dortmunder blinked slowly, but otherwise didn't move, and a minute later May walked through the living room, trailing a thin wavy line of smoke from the cigarette in the corner of her mouth as she dried her sudsy hands on a dishtowel. She crossed the line of vision between Dortmunder and the television set – he blinked again, as slowly as before – and went on out to the foyer to open the door.

A loud and rather angry voice cut through the background music of Angels with Dirty Faces: "Where is he?"