Donald Westlake - High Adventure

No.

Thinking fast, she said, “I certainly do know him, Rosita, and let me tell you, he’s a very bad man!”

“Oh, I thought he was,” Rosita said. “You bet I did. He rape you one time, did he?”

“No, no,” Valerie said, then wished she’d said yes-yes; it would paint him blacker in Rosita’s eyes. Instead, she said, “He used to work for Winthrop.”

Rosita was impressed. “Wintrop Cartwright?” she asked. “The man your papa gone make you marry?”

“Yes. He worked for Winthrop and cheated Winthrop very badly. This was a few years ago,” she added, not knowing how long the Indians and Galway might have known one another.

“Well, ain’t that something,” Rosita said, and gazed away sharp-eyed at the empty sky. “Next time he come around here,” she said, “I think I give him a spider in his ear.”

“You mean a flea in his ear,” Valerie said.

“Oh, no, I don’t,” Rosita said.

It was embarrassing at first, but also rather funny. Gerry winked at a boy in Sheridan Square who then turned out to be a girl, who gave him such a glare. Giggling to himself, Gerry walked on through the slushy snow toward home, waving at a friend in the window of the bar called Boots & Saddle, continuing on his way, wishing he could share the funny moment with Alan — “I winked at a very nice hunk in Sheridan Square who turned out to be some awful dike in full drag” — but Alan would think the point of the story was his winking rather than the sexual confusion, and there’d just be argument and upset and wild talk about disease, and Gerry just didn’t think he could face it, so he decided not to mention it at all.

What he needed, he reflected, not for the first time, was a boyfriend on the side, someone he could really talk to.

The sun was shining today, but the wind-chill factor was somewhere down around your ankles. Walking west on Christopher Street, looking at the anemic milky sky over the Hudson River, Gerry found himself thinking again of Belize. That had been rather fun, really, in parts, and God knows it was warm . It had been a mistake to play investigative reporter for Hiram, just too nerve-wracking.

If they’d simply gone down there on their owny-own—

To actually deal with Kirby Galway? To actually buy smuggled pre-Columbian artifacts for resale?

Well, maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea at that.

The more Gerry thought it over, in fact, the more he believed he and Alan had been hasty in talking to Hiram, and in deciding the point of that story — like the wink and the dike — was a magazine article exposing the racket rather than the potential of the racket itself. He hadn’t quite had the courage yet to broach the subject with Alan, so of course he had no idea if Alan were still content with their having sacrificed themselves for king and country.

Entering the lobby of his home, Gerry sighed, thinking just how difficult it was to understand Alan, to follow his moods, to cater to him. We all have our crosses to bear, he thought, and went over to the mailboxes.

The usual bills. A tacky postcard from a friend wintering in New Orleans. And a blue and white envelope containing a cablegram. A cablegram? Gerry went to the elevator, which for once was right here on the first floor, boarded, pushed his button, and ripped the cablegram as the elevator started up.

“A l -an!” Gerry called, entering the apartment, waving the cablegram in front of himself, all thought of the wink-dike story fled from his brain. “Alan, you will simply not believe this!”

Alan appeared, covered with flour. So they’d be eating in tonight; good. “All right, Gerry,” he said, very testily (he was wonderful in the kitchen, but it was bad for his nerves), “what now? I’m in the middle of things here, I hope this is important, not some silliness .”

“A l -an,” Gerry said, aggrieved. “Would I disturb you for nothing at all?”

“You would, and you have. Well? What is it?”

“Oh, you take the heart out of everything,” Gerry said. Tossing the cablegram on the nearest table, he said, “Read it for yourself,” and went on into the bedroom to sulk.

Well, of course Alan came in three minutes later, flour washed off, black apron removed, cablegram in hand, to say, “Gerry, you’re absolutely right. I was abominable.”

“It’s only because you’re cooking,” Gerry said, having decided to be magnanimous. “I know what it does to you, but it’s perfectly all right, it’s worth it, because I know what comes out of your kitchen is just fabulous .”

“Gerry,” Alan said, positively blushing with pleasure, “you are in truth the sweetest person, I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you. The good fairy brought you to me.”

“I am your good fairy,” Gerry said, beaming, happy they’d made up. Pointing to the cablegram, he said, “And what do you think of that ?”

“This.” Alan held the cablegram up, frowned at it. “I just don’t know,” he said.

“A l -an, it’s from Kirby Galway!”

“I know that.”

“He still wants to do business with us!”

“He says so.”

“He says so? He says this Sunday, in Florida!”

“I know he does,” Alan said. But still he frowned and looked disapproving.

Gerry couldn’t understand it at all. “A l -an,” he said, “this is wonderful news!”

“If true.”

“Alan, for heaven’s sake, what’s the problem ?”

“Our missing tapes,” Alan said.

“Oh, dear,” Gerry said, suddenly seeing it all.

“This could be a trap, Gerry. If Kirby Galway is the one who arranged to steal our tapes...”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” Gerry said, and the doorbell rang.

Alan frowned. “That’s the upstairs bell,” he said.

“Then it must be Hiram,” Gerry said, starting out of the bedroom. “We can ask him what he thinks.”

“At this hour?” Alan was finding fault with everything, as usual. “I don’t know, Gerry,” he called, as Gerry went on through the apartment toward the front door. “That door downstairs has been funny lately, it—”

“Oh, it’s bound to be Hiram,” Gerry called back.

“Yesterday I saw him going out with suitcases.”

“Oh, who else could it be ?” Gerry called, flung open the door, and found himself staring at the mobster he’d seen with Kirby Galway back in Belize. “My God!” he cried.

“My God!” cried the mobster, recoiling.

Gerry would have slammed the door in a trice if his own feelings of shock and terror had not been so vividly mirrored on the mobster’s face. A mobster displaying shock and terror?

“The drug dealer!”

Oh, dear, oh, dear: Gerry had cried that out, but the mobster had also cried it out, at the same instant, pointing at Gerry, who now said, “But you’re the drug dealer!”

Wide-eyed, the mobster said, “Kirby Galway told me you—”

“Kirby Galway told us you —”

“Gerry, for heaven’s sake, who is it?” Alan called, from deeper in the apartment.

“It’s— It’s— I don’t know!”

“I am Whitman Lemuel,” the ex-mobster was saying, extending his card. “I am assistant curator of the Duluth Museum of Pre-Columbian Art.”

Gerry took the card. He looked at it with a sense that the world was spinning, the entire Earth flipping on its axis. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“I think I’m beginning to,” said Whitman Lemuel. “I was given a real run-around down there in Belize—”