Donald Westlake - High Adventure

Valerie ordered the shrimp cocktail and the chicken parmigiana.

Witcher, as though suddenly interested in the non-view, turned to gaze at the curtains at the far end of the room. His eyes swiveled to look at Lemuel, who was reading his magazine and not staring at anybody at all. Witcher’s mouth curled in the expression of contempt he was about to show Feldspan.

Lemuel looked up, and they were both glaring at him, grimacing at him.

Valerie thought she might have a glass of white wine as well. But no more; she’d had too much to drink, really, at lunch.

The waitress, in asking Lemuel if he were done with the soup, interposed herself between him and the table containing Witcher and Feldspan. “Yes!” said Lemuel. “Could you hurry the duckling, please, I have to leave soon.”

“The chef is working on it, sir. You can’t really hurry a duckling.”

Witcher and Feldspan looked at one another. Witcher said, “It doesn’t mean a thing, Gerry.”

“A l -an, he moved! He was sitting the other way, and he moved around that way so he could stare at me! He knows!”

“For Heaven’s sake, Gerry, what does he know?”

“He saw us looking at him,” Feldspan said, “when he was out by the pool with Galway.”

“It’s a public place,” Witcher pointed out. “And he was still there when we went for a swim; he didn’t act like anything was wrong then.” “He left right after we got there.”

“A few minutes later.”

“A l -an,” Feldspan said, leaning forward, “why did he move?”

The waitress having departed, Lemuel could see the one drug dealer leaning forward to speak tensely and grimly to the other one. Were they talking about him? They’d come down to the pool this afternoon, decadent creatures, reeking of crime and unholy knowledge. Drug dealers tended to be addicts themselves, didn’t they? Those two weren’t like oldtime mobsters at all, they were like the criminals in recent French films; civilized in a sneering way, secure in their power, spouting philosophy, utterly cold and emotionless. Lemuel had waited just a minute or two after their arrival, not to call attention to himself, and then had hurried back to his room.

The waitress asked Feldspan and Witcher if they were ready to order. “I don’t think I can eat,” Feldspan said.

“You should take Lomotil,” the waitress told him.

Witcher said, meaningfully, “Gerry, don’t call attention to yourself.” To the waitress, he said, “We would both like a very dry Tanqueray Gibson on the rocks, please.”

“I don’t think that’ll help,” the waitress said.

Lemuel, at a loss for what to do, turned his head, gazed this way and that, and found himself staring directly into the eyes of Valerie Greene. A small involuntary moan escaped him.

I know that man, Valerie thought. Isn’t that odd; the short time I’ve been here, and I’ve already seen two men I think I’ve met before. First the driver of that pickup truck outside the hotel, and now this man. It’s probably just that people look like other people; or maybe this man was on the same plane coming down, though I don’t seem to remember him from then.

I’m going to die, Lemuel told himself, and the thought was not entirely unpleasant. He stared at a page in Harper’s in which the art department had decided to snazz things up a bit by tilting the illustration at an angle; down to the left and up to the right, to indicate happiness. (The reverse tilt indicates mental imbalance.) Unconsciously, Lemuel tilted his head to match the illustration, and stuck a breadstick into his cheek.

Witcher ordered food for himself and Feldspan, who had been unable to concentrate on the menu. “You know you like shrimp,” Witcher said, after the waitress departed.

“I won’t taste a thing,” Feldspan said.

Valerie took from her purse a paperback edition of Maya: The Riddle And Rediscovery Of A Lost Civilization , by Charles Gallenkamp, and began to read chapter 13, “Warriors And Merchants; A Prelude To Disaster”.

Feldspan gulped his Gibson.

As one waitress brought Valerie her shrimp cocktail and glass of white wine, the other brought Lemuel his duckling. “And a glass of red wine,” he said. “No, wait! Never mind.” I dare not get drunk, he thought.

Feldspan gulped Witcher’s Gibson.

“Gerry,” Witcher said, “get hold of yourself.”

While reading her book, Valerie ate her shrimp cocktail with her fingers, licking her fingers after each shrimp. Two businessmen at a nearby table watched her intently, all talk of tractor tires forgotten.

Lemuel tried to call the waitress without attracting attention to himself.

The other waitress brought two more Gibsons to Witcher and Feldspan, saying, “Feeling better?”

“Not yet,” Feldspan said.

The waitresses passed one another. “Some really weird ones tonight,” said the one. “Mm- mm, ” said the other. Then, seeing Lemuel’s hand waving discreetly next to his ear, she veered away in that direction: “Sir?”

“On second thought,” Lemuel said, “I believe I’ll have another vodka sour. No, wait a minute, make it a vodka on the rocks.”

“Water on the side?”

“Yes.”

“He could be bribing the waitress,” Feldspan said. “They’re awfully chummy over there.”

“Bribe her to do what?”

Feldspan leaned forward. Three Gibsons on an empty stomach had turned his eyes into cocktail onions. “Poison us,” he whispered.

“Gerry, please.”

Valerie finished the last shrimp. For the last time, she inserted a finger into her mouth, pursed her lips around it, and drew the finger slowly out, freed of red sauce. She read her book. The businessmen discussed tractor tires.

In his nervousness, Lemuel crunched duckling bones, eating the little wings entire.

“He’s eating bones,” Feldspan said.

“Gerry, stop looking at him.”

Feldspan blinked. He wanted Witcher’s Gibson, but Witcher kept holding it. He said, “He looks like Meyer Lansky.”

“He does not,” Witcher said, though he didn’t turn around to look. “Meyer Lansky was about a hundred, and Jewish.”

“He could be Jewish.”

“Gerry.”

“Meyer Lansky wasn’t always a hundred. It’s just like The Godfather; they almost look like normal people, but they have dead eyes. It’s because their souls are so black.”

Valerie looked up from her book, and her face suddenly suffused with a bright red blush. The waitress, removing the empty shrimp cocktail goblet, glanced at the blush and at the book and went away, shaking her head.

But it wasn’t the book that had done it; there’s nothing in Maya: The Riddle And Rediscovery Of A Lost Civilization to make any damsel blush. Valerie had just remembered where she’d seen Lemuel before.

Lemuel, peeking around his own left shoulder, looked off toward Valerie and found her staring directly at him, wide-eyed. “She’s recognized me!” Hunching down, shielding his face with his shoulder and arm, he ate frantically, hurriedly gnawing at his dinner, trying to finish it and get out of here.

“He eats like an animal,” Feldspan said.

“Gerry, will you please eat your nice shrimps, and stop looking at that man?”

Maybe she isn’t absolutely sure it’s me, Lemuel thought. If I can just get out of here— He picked up his fresh vodka with greasy fingers, and drained half.

It all came back to Valerie in a rush of mortification. She’d had a little bit too much to drink that time, too, and she’d gotten on that hobby horse of hers about stolen antiquities. Of course it was a problem, worldwide, ranging from the current Greek demand that the British return the Elgin marbles to the recent pillaging-under-cover-of-warfare at Angkor Wat. But still Valerie knew she tended to take it all a bit too personally, and that she could very easily become a bore on the subject, and loud as well. Particularly at parties.