Donald Westlake - Watch Your Back!

"I remember radio," Tiny said. "I'll be right over."

So when the doorbell rang again a quarter hour later, Dortmunder got to his feet and said, "Stay there, Arnie, I'll let him in. I don't wanna hear any more interrogations."

"Probably," Arnie said, though with some doubt in his voice, "the cops reeled in enough for today."

While Dortmunder buzzed Tiny in, Kelp said, "Seven known mob guys from New Jersey, and all the swag? If they want more than that, they're very greedy."

"I think they are," Stan said.

Dortmunder opened the apartment door, and Tiny had brought the kid Judson with him. "I brought the kid with me," he pointed out as they entered.

"So I see," Dortmunder said.

"Hello," Judson said, and smiled at everybody.

"He was gonna get a piece of the profit," Tiny explained, "so he can get a piece of the sorrow and woe instead."

"Just so the other team was driving the truck when the game was called," Stan said. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm ahead."

"That's you," Tiny said, and said to Dortmunder, "This is because you wanted to be a hero and save the O.J."

"I'm afraid it is," Dortmunder admitted.

"Do we know yet how much you owe me?"

Dortmunder offered a sickly smile, and Kelp said, "Julie Hapwood says they're doing an inventory now at the Fifty-seventh Street police garage, and Fareweather's at his place making a list of what he thinks is missing."

Tiny frowned at him. "Who the hell is Julie Hapwood?"

"The woman on the radio's been telling us all this stuff."

Tiny looked at the radio, which was in the process of giving them twenty-two minutes of sports. "So let's see what else she has to say," he said.

But that was it for Julie Hapwood. All at once, without even a wave good-bye, the late-breaking story seemed to have broken. The news now broke in from other fronts, of less neighborhood interest.

So at five they switched to television, to see what the local news broadcasts might have to say. At first, almost nothing, but Arnie kept switching back and forth among the stations, and all at once he stopped, pointed the remote at the set, and said, "That's him!"

A rich guy, you could tell. He wasn't fat, he was portly, and only rich guys are portly. He was being interviewed by a blonde television reporter in the living room Dortmunder and the others knew so well, with some very obvious blank spaces on the walls behind him as he said, "One does feel assaulted, Gwen. One had not expected Cro-Magnons from New Jersey to beleaguer one in the supposed safety of one's home."

"That's a lotta 'ones, " Tiny said.

The reporter asked, "Do you have a sense yet, Mr. Fareweather, of what they took?"

"The cream of the crop, Gwen. I must confess, one would not have expected that degree of taste and sophistication from fellows best known for breaking their enemies' knees. At least one of that cohort had an excellent eye."

"There you go," Arnie said. He was grinning from ear to ear.

"They were so good," Fareweather went on, "they even got the Brueghel."

Arnie, Dortmunder, Kelp and the girl reporter all said, "Brueghel?"

Gesturing to something off-camera to his right, Fareweather said, "It was the only thing they took from the hall. Everything else was from this area here. And it's true, most of the items in the hall are of perhaps a bit lesser quality, but I always kept the Brueghel there to protect it from too much sunlight."

"And nevertheless they found it," the reporter said.

"Yes, they did, Gwen. And I certainly hope the police find it among the things they are looking at right now in that truck."

Arnie said, " What Brueghel?"

The girl reporter said, "What value would you place on that Brueghel, Mr. Fareweather?"

"Oh, lord knows," Fareweather said. "I paid just under a mil for it, seven or eight years ago."

Tiny said, "Off the set, Arnie, we gotta talk."

Arnie killed the TV by remote control and said, "I didn't red-dot nothing in the hall. I didn't even look in the hall."

"Dortmunder and me," Tiny said, "we didn't take nothing unless it had a red dot on it. Right?"

"That's right," Dortmunder said.

Kelp said, "Stan and me were downstairs, so I don't know. What did this Brueghel look like?"

"Kelp," Tiny said, sounding just a bit dangerous, "none of us took it, so none of us knows what the hell it looks like."

"Well," Kelp said, reasonably, "somebody took it."

"Judson," Dortmunder said.

Everybody looked at Dortmunder, and then everybody looked at Judson, who was blushing and stammering and fidgeting on that kitchen chair with his arms jerking around — a definite butterfly, pinned in place. Everybody continued to look at him, and finally he produced words, of a sort: "Why would you — What would I — How could — Mr. Dortmunder, why would you—?"

"Judson," Tiny said. He said it softly, gently, but Judson clammed up like a locked safe, and his face went from beet red to shroud white, just like that.

Dortmunder said, "Had to be. He went there, wanted to hang out with us, we were already gone, he went in and up, looked around, decided to take a little something."

Kelp said, "Judson, what made you take that ?"

Judson looked around at them all, tongue-tied.

Arnie, in an informational way, said, "Kid, you're one of the most incompetent liars I've ever seen."

Judson sighed. He could be seen to accept the idea at last that denial was going to be of no use. "I identified with it," he said.

Everybody reacted to that one. Stan said, "You identified with it?"

Dortmunder said, "What's it a picture of, Judson?"

"Two young guys stealing a pig."

Tiny said, "That's what goes for just under a mil? Two guys stealing a pig?"

"It's nice," Judson said. "You can see they're having fun."

"More than we are," Tiny said.

Dortmunder said, "Judson, where is this picture now?"

"In my desk in J. C.'s office."

Tiny said, "I tell you what, kid. You were gonna get a piece of what we got, but we no longer got what we got, so now we are gonna get a piece of what you got."

"That seems fair," Kelp said.

Again Judson sighed. Then he said, "Maybe I can take a picture of it."

"Good idea," Dortmunder agreed.

Tiny said to Arnie, "Your guy paid a million for it. You'll deal with the insurance company, you'll get ten per cent, that means around fifteen grand for each of us, which isn't what I had in mind, but these things happen, and, Dortmunder, I forgive you, and I think we all agree it was a good decision to let the kid stick around."

"Thank you," Judson said.

"Still and all," Tiny said, "all that stuff in there, and we wind up with one picture."

Dortmunder thought of, but decided not to mention, the trinkets still burning holes in his own pockets. Some people know how to keep a secret.

THE INTERVIEW WITH Preston Fareweather had been taped forty minutes before it ran, and at the end of it, as the sound man and cameraman were packing and assembling all their plentifulness of gear, Preston said to the fair Gwen, "That was quite enjoyable. You make the thing just about painless."

"Well, that's the job," she said.

"When you finish your assigned tasks at your station," he said, "why not pop back here, we could have a lovely dinner a due."

"Oh, I don't think so," she said.

"I would rather take you to one of the better restaurants in the neighborhood," he said, smiling upon her, "but I'm afraid little legal problems, process servers and all that, are keeping me housebound at least until I can get a new car. But those restaurants know me, I think I'm probably considered a good tipper, they'll be happy to send over a little something from the menu." Chuckling, he said, "Not exactly your Chinese takeout. What do you say? A little penthouse adventure."