Donald Westlake - Watch Your Back!

"So now the truck is retired. Why?"

"Well, it got burned. The word got around up there, you do business with this truck, all of a sudden you meet a lotta people that don't smile."

"Not good," Stan suggested.

"You're okay if you stay away from that border," Max assured him. "But the thing is, the way it got outed, the feds can't do the normal way to get it back into civilian life. It still has some of its previous life on it."

"Meaning what?"

"The truth is," Max said, "it has very strange papers. The fella had it, he deals in big trucks mostly, sends em overseas so nobody ever tries to bring them back, I envy that guy, he tells me, you get a cop, he runs a check on the registration on this truck, he gets like an asterisk, says, don't worry, keep your nose clean, good-bye."

"Pretty good."

"For you, Stan," Max said, "it couldn't be better. For a furniture dealer, maybe, somebody in the legit world, a little freaky. So my friend and I worked out a deal, and now, depending on this BMW, you and me are gonna work out a deal, and what I think, Stan, whatever you want that truck for, afterward you might as well keep it. You'll never find a better mace. Now, about your offering."

Stan told him about the owner of the BMW, off for years now in a Club Med, hiding out from process servers, nobody checking the garage where the BMW's stored. Just give it a new christening, it's gold.

"This sounds good," Max admitted.

"It is good."

"I would say, Stan, you and me, we've done a good morning's work."

"No, you have," Stan said, getting up from the sofa arm. "My work starts now. I gotta meet my guys at nine-thirty in the city."

A small amount of paperwork adjustment, and Stan was on his way, the nephew waving bye-bye. The truck felt fine. And keep it around after the job, eh? Hmmm.

And who knew the feds listened to Schubert?

"COME ON UP," Arnie said.

Dortmunder, at the foot of the stairs, having just been buzzed into the building by Arnie, looked up at him and said, "Arnie, the idea is, you're coming down, I'm taking you to the place."

"I've been having second thoughts about that," Arnie said. "Come on up."

Not going on up, Dortmunder said, "Don't do that, Arnie. Never have second thoughts, they just ball you up. Come on, we don't wanna be late, Stan's gonna be there with the truck nine-thirty, got the remote opener and everything, he zaps the opener, zip, zip, everybody's in."

"This is where I'm having second thoughts," Arnie said. "What am I doing in? Come to that, what am I doing out? Look at me, I'm still the color of a roll of burlap."

This was true, but Dortmunder said, "Arnie, don't even think like that, it's fading away to nothing."

"And we got more sun today , I heard the warning on the radio."

"You'll be indoors, in an entire penthouse. Come on, Arnie, we can't stand here in the stairwell forever, some neighbor's gonna call the cops."

"So come up, we'll discuss it."

Dortmunder well knew, if he were to go up these stairs, he would never get Arnie down them, so, without moving, he said, "Arnie, come down, we'll talk it over while we walk through the park, you'll see where—"

"Walk?" Astonished, Arnie said, "I don't walk, Dortmunder! I don't even walk anyway, and you're talking through the park? It's all sun out there."

"Okay," Dortmunder said, "I'll meet you halfway. No walking, we'll take a cab. I'll buy."

"A cab. Over to the place, you mean, with the thing and the thing and everybody zips in."

"Sure. Come on."

"How's this meeting me halfway? You want the cab to go halfway there and come back?"

"Arnie," Dortmunder said, "I'm not coming up."

"I just don't see—"

"Preston Fareweather, Arnie."

Arnie shook all over and looked agonized. His hand clutched to the banister in front of him.

Dortmunder pressed his advantage. "Those guys were so brilliant, they even got the Seersucker."

"The what?"

Dortmunder said, "Didn't you say he had one of those?"

"I don't even know what the hell it is!"

"Well, we'll go look for it. Come on, Arnie, Preston Fareweather. Broadway's out there, Arnie, it's full of taxicabs, and every one of them has a roof. Don't let Preston Fareweather think we're bozos, Arnie."

"Preston Fareweather thinks everybody's bozos," Arnie said with disgust.

"Including you," Dortmunder reminded him. "And that's the mistake he made, that he's gonna find out what a mistake it is. That's the whole point here, isn't it? We're not gonna let Preston Fareweather forget what happens when he messes around with you."

Alarmed, Arnie said, "Wait a minute, I don't want him to know I had anything to do with it."

"Of course not, Arnie. Just some unnamed, unknowable genius he mistreated in the past. Can you see his face, Arnie? Picture it in your mind, Preston Fareweather's face, the next time he walks into that penthouse."

Arnie thought. "Let me get my hat," he said.

WHERE KELP GOT THE hard hats was a theatrical costumer in the west Forties, a place he'd patronized before, always very late at night, when the prices were better but you had to serve yourself, mostly in the dark.

It was a deep, broad shop full of crannies and nooks and little rooms, two stories of costumes and props, anything you might want in a stage show or on a movie set or shooting a commercial or running another day of a soap opera — all things that happen in that neighborhood just about every day. Kelp was always careful not to harm any locks here or otherwise be intrusive, and since they had so much and he took so little, he doubted they were even aware of his visits. Which was nice — he liked the opportunity to be a loyal customer, and wouldn't like them to feel the need to increase their security.

Ordinary yellow hard hats without logos were harder to find than cowboy hats and Nazi officer hats and football helmets and graduation caps, but eventually, on a low shelf upstairs near the rear, he came across a cluster of them, looking like the world's largest canary eggs. He put two in the plastic bag he'd brought for the purpose, let himself gently out of the place, took a cab home, had a brief pleasant chat with Anne Marie, slept peacefully, and at nine-thirty in the morning was crossing Fifth Avenue at Sixty-eighth Street when Tiny called to him, "Kelp!"

Kelp looked, and Tiny was waving from a limo waiting for the light to change so it could make the left turn onto Sixty-eighth Street. Kelp waved back, and Tiny called, "Come wait in the limo."

"Will do."

Kelp finished crossing Fifth and turned left to cross Sixty-eighth, because the driver of the limo was stopping it at the fire hydrant across the street from the garage entrance they'd be aiming at, but before he could step off the curb, a cab stopped at his feet, and out of it, astonishingly, stepped Arnie Albright, wearing the kind of cloth cap with a soft brim all around it that really terrible golfers wear, except without the comical pins.

Kelp said, "Arnie? You sprang for a cab?"

"Not on your life," Arnie said, and from behind him, putting his wallet away, out crawled Dortmunder, looking nettled and saying, " I paid for the cab. It was the only way to get him here."

"Though I still got my doubts," Arnie said as the cab hurtled away.

"Well," Kelp said, "let's go over there and wait in the limo with Tiny."

Arnie said, "Limo?" but then a white truck, sneaking around the corner just as the light turned red, made the left, then a right toward the garage door, which began to lift. Stan could be seen in the truck cab, putting the remote back down on the seat.

So instead of everybody getting into the limo, Tiny got out of it, and it drove away. Now that all the traffic had stopped, Tiny crossed the street to join them, and everybody followed the truck into the garage, where Stan thumbed the door shut again.