Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

Vito stared in horror. “Martians!” he screamed. “Help, it’s Martians!”

One of the Martians lifted its scuba mask and revealed the irritated face of Rosa Palermo. “What Martians, you idiot?” she demanded. “It’s me, Rosa Palermo. And here’s Angelo, Angelo Salvagambelli, you remember him.”

“Rosa?” Vito peered at her through the descending dust.

“Yeah, sure. Rosa. What do you think?”

“Rosa.” Then, in a swift transition from terror to indignation, Vito cried, “What have you done to my wall?”

Lifting his own scuba mask, Angelo said, “We’re here to rescue you.”

“Rescue?” Vito stared at these two crazy people in their crazy clothes. “Who wants to be rescued?”

But they wouldn’t listen to him. Replacing their scuba masks, they approached and each took one of his arms. “Come on,” Rosa said, her voice muffled by the mask. “We’ll explain the details later.”

“Let me go! Let me go!” Vito struggled uselessly against the strong younger hands.

They drew him inexorably toward the ruined wall of his ruined cell, trampling on the fallen pictures of the saints. “Vito!” cried Angelo, hearty and stupid. “Vito, it’s your comeback!”

Vito wailed as they dragged him out to the sunlight: “But I don’t want to come back!”

Who listens?

The factory safe was being expertly burgled by Rudi Schlisselmann, a fiftyish, irritable, big-mouthed professional burglar. Around him, the city of Dortmund slept the sleep of honest burghers. Beneath his fingers, the safe’s combination lock went click-click-click, as the tumblers whispered to him their secrets.

And then the lights went on, pop , just like that, and two uniformed policemen rushed into the office, clutching automatics. Rudi leaped to his feet, clutching his chest: “My heart!”

They ignored him. “Stop where you are, Rudi Schlisselmann!” shouted the first.

“We have you this time!” shouted the second. “It’s jail for you!”

“But—” Rudi stared frantically from cold face to cold face. “Friends!” he cried, inaccurately. “Wait! Wait!”

But they wouldn’t wait. Without ceremony, they hustled Rudi out of the office and down the long room past all the lathes and out through the door Rudi himself had so recently and so expertly jimmied, while Rudi continued to shout his useless appeals. “Fellows,” he cried, “I’m a veteran! I was in the Wehrmacht! We guys in uniform have to stick together!”

Nothing. No response. No help. The bastard cops were probably too young to even remember the Wehrmacht. In fact, all of a sudden everybody was too young to remember the Wehrmacht.

Outside was the police car, the same shade of dusty green as the policemen’s uniforms, with its bright blue flasher light on top and the black letters POLIZEI in a white rectangle on each door. The policemen were just hustling Rudi into this vehicle when another policeman came along, obviously an officer, definitely bad-tempered, thoroughly in charge. “So,” said this officer, tall and thin and stern-looking, “you caught him.”

“Yes, Herr Oberleutnant,” said the first policeman, snapping to attention.

“Caught him in the act,” said the second policeman, “Herr Oberleutnant,” also snapping to attention.

“Very good,” the officer said, approving of them with slight nods. “Very good.”

They preened under this minimal praise, shifting about as much as a person can do while standing at attention.

“You will be commended for this,” the officer went on, with more slight brisk nods, and the policemen’s cheeks swelled with pleasure. Then the officer said, “I’ll take over now. Bring him to my car.”

“Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.”

“Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.”

Rudi, meantime, had stopped his useless shouting and wheedling and was staring in a kind of glazed panicky disbelief at the officer. He didn’t even resist when the two policemen marched him down the dark block to the black Mercedes under the next streetlamp, where the officer gestured curtly at the back seat and said, “Put him in.”

They did so. The rear window was open, and Rudi immediately stuck his head out, looking up in open-mouthed wonder at the officer, who told the policemen, “Return to your beat, now. Good luck.”

“Thank you, Herr Oberleutnant.”

“Thank you, Herr Oberleutnant.”

With stiff salutes, the two policemen marched quickly away to their own car, got in, and drove off, while the officer continued to stand on the sidewalk watching them and Rudi continued to hold his head outside the car window, staring up at the officer’s chiseled face. Finally, as the police car was leaving, Rudi said, in soft tentative wonder, “Herman?”

Herman continued to watch the police car on out of sight.

Half whispering, Rudi said, “Herman Muller?”

“Just wait,” Herman said. “They may circle the block.”

“I’ve always liked you, Herman,” Rudi said, with an endearing big smile. “You know that, don’t you? I’ve always said you were a prince. Ask anybody. I talk about you all the time. ‘That Prince,’ I say. ‘Herman Muller, he’s a Prince.’ ”

“Hush, Rudi.”

“The uniform fits you nice. It’s beautiful on you.”

At last Herman was satisfied that the police were gone, and swiftly he got behind the wheel of the Mercedes and started the engine. Rudi leaned forward to rest his forearms on the seatback and say, “We don’t see enough of each other.”

“Oh, we will, Rudi,” Herman told him, as they drove away. “We’ll see a lot of one another.”

Deep in the Black Forest was the Lederhosen Inn, the world’s largest cuckoo clock, a baroque but beautiful explosion of turned wood, stag antlers, alpenstocks, beer steins, banners and general Gemüchtlichkeit, practically all of it authentic. Out front of the Inn waited four huge chartered buses, all with banners on their sides proclaiming: “Sons of the Mountains 23rd Annual Hike and Picnic.” And from inside the Inn came the sound of a male chorus, strong joyful sounds emerging from hundreds of rugged male throats, belting out “I Am A Happy Wanderer.”

Within the Inn, however, were no rugged male throats belting out any song at all. A rugged phonograph was playing a record of hundreds of rugged male throats belting out “I Am A Happy Wanderer,” at one end of a large high ceilinged ballroom packed with trencher tables. Packed at these trencher tables were hundreds of fifty-five-year-old fat men in lederhosen, all of whom gave the appearance that they’d been drinking beer steadily for a month. They were now somnolent, comatose, moribund; in a word, passed out. They looked like the result of a gas attack.

All but one. Moving in the room was one man, and one man only. Otto Berg by name, he looked like all the unconscious men, and was dressed like all the unconscious men, but he was different. First, he was different because he was up and awake and moving around sober. And second, he was different because he was picking everybody else’s pockets.

This was probably the biggest drunk-rolling caper in recorded history. There was an open knapsack on Otto Berg’s back, and as he moved among his sleeping benefactors he tossed a steady stream of watches and wallets and rings into this knapsack, which was becoming quite significantly heavy.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Otto saw movement other than his own. It was the heavy end door of the ballroom, next to the record player, slowly opening. At once Otto dropped onto the nearest open bench space and pretended to be unconscious. When he ceased to move, in these circumstances, he became to all intents and purposes invisible.