Authors: Donald Westlake
The purpose of the Princess is to be rescued.
Wally pushed back from the computer, his swivel chair rolling on the scratched floor. His hands trembled as he looked at the machine’s last response. Out of the program. Into real time, real consequence, real challenge. Real life.
Wally took a long slow deep breath. As much as was possible for him to do, he firmed his jaw. Real life. The greatest interactive fiction of them all.
“You want the restaurant, right?” the cabby asked, looking at them in his mirror, because what else would they want on Ganesvoort Street at three in the morning?
“Right,” Dortmunder said.
The space in front of Florent was lined with stretch limos, some with their attendant drivers, some empty. The taxi stopped in the middle of the lumpy cobblestone street, and Dortmunder and Kelp paid and got out. They maneuvered between limos to the broken curb, moving toward the restaurant, as the cab jounced away to the corner. When it made its right, so did Dortmunder and Kelp, turning away from the inviting open entrance of the bistro and walking east instead, past all the dark and empty butcher businesses.
Kelp said, “Which one, do you know?”
Dortmunder shook his head. “All she said was, this block.”
“I see it,” Kelp said, looking forward. “Do you?”
“No,” Dortmunder said, frowning, squinting at the empty nighttime view, not liking it that Kelp had gotten the answer first, if in fact he had. “What do you think you see?”
“I
think
I see,” Kelp answered, “a truck over there on the other side, down a ways, with a guy sitting at the wheel.”
Then Dortmunder saw it, too. “That’s it, all right,” he agreed.
As they started across the street, Kelp said, “Maybe after we talk to Tiny we can go back to that place, grab something to eat. Looked nice in there.”
Dortmunder said, “Eat? Whadaya wanna eat at
this
hour for?”
“Ask the people in the restaurant,” Kelp suggested. “
They’re
eating.”
“Maybe they got a different body clock.”
“And maybe
I
got a different body clock,” Kelp said. “Don’t take things for granted, John.”
Dortmunder shook his head but was spared answering because they’d reached the truck, an anonymous high–sided aluminum box with a battered cab, on the door of which some previous company name had been sloppily obliterated with black spray paint. The driver was a twitchy skinny owlish man who hadn’t shaved for seventy–nine hours, which was not for him a record. He sat nervously, hunched over the wheel of his truck, its engine growling low, like something asleep deep in a cave. He stared straight forward, as though it was the law in this state to keep your eye on the road even when your vehicle was stationary.
Dortmunder approached the driver’s open window and said, “Whadaya say?”
Nothing. No answer. No response. The driver watched nothing move in front of his unmoving truck.
So Dortmunder decided to cut straight to the essence of the situation. “We wanna talk to Tiny,” he said.
The driver blinked, very slowly. His left hand trembled on the steering wheel, while his right hand moved out of sight.
“Wait a second,” Dortmunder said. “We’re friends of —”
The truck lunged forward, suddenly in gear. Dortmunder automatically flinched back as the dirty aluminum side of the truck swept past his nose, about a quarter of an inch away.
Kelp, behind Dortmunder a pace, cried out helpfully, “Hey! Dummy! Whadaya — !” But the truck was
gone,
rattling away down Ganesvoort Street, reeling past Florent, tumbling to the corner, swaying around to the right, and out of sight. “Well, now, what the hell was
that
for?” Kelp demanded.
“I think he was a little nervous,” Dortmunder said, and a voice behind them growled, “Where’s my truck?”
They turned and found themselves facing a bullet head on an ICBM body lumpily stuffed into a black shirt and a brown suit. It was as though King Kong were making a break for it, hoping to smuggle himself back to his island disguised as a human being. And, just to make the picture complete, this marvel carried over his shoulder half a cow; half a naked cow, without its fur or head.
“Tiny!” Dortmunder said inaccurately. “We’re looking for you!”
“
I’m
looking for my truck,” said Tiny, for that was indeed the name by which he was known. Tiny Bulcher, the blast furnace that walks like a man.
Dortmunder, a bit abashed, said, “Your driver, uh, Tiny, he’s a very nervous guy.”
Tiny frowned, which made his forehead like a children’s book drawing of the ocean. “You spooked him?”
Kelp said, “Tiny, he was spooked long before we got here.
Years
before. He never said a word to us.”
“That’s true,” Dortmunder said.
Kelp went on, “We just told him we’re your friends, we’re looking for you, and
zip,
he’s gone.”
Dortmunder said, “Tiny, I’m sorry if we made trouble.”
“You’re right to be,” Tiny told him. “You called my place, huh? Talked to Josie?”
“That’s right.”
“And she just told you I was down here, huh?”
“Sure.”
Tiny looked discontented with this idea. “Somebody calls that girl on the phone, says, ‘Where’s Tiny,’ and she says, ‘Oh, Tiny’s downtown committing a felony right now.’ ”
“She knows me, Tiny,” Dortmunder pointed out. “You and me met J.C. Taylor together, remember?”
Kelp added, “We been through the wars together, Tiny, us and J.C. Rescued the nun and everything.”
Tiny ignored Kelp, saying to Dortmunder, “Josie knows you, does she?” He was the only one in the known universe to call J.C. Taylor “Josie.” “On the phone, she knows you. Could be a cop calls, says, ‘Hello, J.C., this is John Dortmunder, your pal Tiny committing any felonies at this particular moment?’ ‘Oh, sure,’ says Josie.”
“Come on, Tiny,” Dortmunder said, “J.C. recognized my voice. I didn’t say my name at all, she did. And I said I wanted to get in touch with you right away, so that’s when she told me you were down there. So she did the right thing, okay?”
Tiny brooded about that. He shifted the half a cow from his right shoulder to the left. “Okay,” he decided. “I trust Josie’s judgment. But what about the truck?”
Kelp said, “The guy ran off, Tiny. What are we supposed to do, come down here with tranquilizer darts? The guy was very spooked, that’s all. We show up and that’s it, he’s gone.”
“Well, here’s the situation,” Tiny said. “The situation is, I agreed I’d come down here for a guy, with the guy’s truck and the guy’s driver, and I’d make my way in this place and pick up six sides a beef, on accounta I can do that quick and easy.”
“You sure can, Tiny,” Kelp said admiringly.
“And the
further
idea is,” Tiny said, glowering at the interruption, “I throw a seventh side in the truck and that one goes home with me. A side a beef for a half hour’s work.”
“Pretty good,” Dortmunder admitted.
“So the guy’s truck and the guy’s driver run off,” Tiny went on, “so that’s it for his six sides a beef.
But
” — and he whacked his open palm against the half a cow on his shoulder:
spack!
— “I got mine.”
“Well, that’s good,” Dortmunder said. “You wanna get yours, Tiny.”
“I
always
get mine,” Tiny told him. “That’s just the way it is. But now what do I do about taking this side home? Sooner or later, I make my way into some more populated parts a town, I’m gonna attract attention.”
“Gee, Tiny,” Kelp said, “I see what you mean. That’s a real problem.”
“And I think of it,” Tiny said, “as
your
problem.”
Dortmunder and Kelp looked at each other. Kelp shrugged and spread his hands and turned to Tiny to say, “I could argue the point, Tiny, but let’s just say I feel like helping you out. Everybody wait right here.”
He took a step away but stopped when Tiny said, “Andy.” He turned back and looked alert, and Tiny said, “None of your doctors’ cars, Andy.”
“But doctors have the best cars around, Tiny,” Kelp explained. “They understand the transitoriness of life, doctors, and they’ve got the money to make things smooth and even along the way. I always put my faith in doctors.”
“Not this time,” Tiny said, and whacked his cow again. “Me and Elsie here don’t want no cute Porsches and Jaguars. We don’t like that crowded feeling.”
Kelp sighed, admitting defeat. Then he looked up and down the street, thinking, his eye drawn to the light spilling from Florent. His own eyes lit up, and he grinned at Tiny. “Okay, Tiny,” he said. “What would you and Elsie say to a stretch limo?”
Tiny thought about that. “From inside?”
“That’s the one,” Dortmunder agreed. “That’s where we both knew him. He was my cellmate awhile.”
“Nasty poisonous old son of a bitch,” Tiny suggested.
“You’ve got the right guy,” Dortmunder told him.
“A snake with legs.”
“Perfect.”
“Charming as a weasel and gracious as a ferret.”
“That’s Tom, okay.”
“He’d eat his own young even if he wasn’t hungry.”
“Well, he’s always hungry,” Dortmunder said.
“That’s true.” Tiny shook his head. “Tom Jimson. He was the worst thing about stir.”
Looking in the mirror, Kelp said, “Tiny, I never heard you talk like that before. Like there was a guy out there somewhere that worried you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tiny frowned massively at this suggestion that another human being might give him pause. “You’re lucky you don’t know the guy,” he said.
“But I do,” Kelp corrected him. “John introduced me. And I’m with you a hundred percent.”
“Introduced you?” Tiny was baffled. “How’d he do that?”
Quietly, Dortmunder said, “They let him go.”
Tiny switched his frown to Dortmunder. “Let him go
where?
”
“Out.”
“They wouldn’t. Even the law isn’t
that
stupid.”
“They did, Tiny,” Dortmunder told him. “On accounta the overcrowding. For a seventieth birthday present.”
Tiny stared at his cow as though to say
do you believe this?
He said, “Tom Jimson? He’s out right now? Walking around the streets?”
“Probably,” Dortmunder said. “He usually comes home pretty late.”
“Home? Where’s he living?”
“Well,” Dortmunder said reluctantly, “with me at the moment.”
Tiny was appalled. “Dortmunder! What does May say?”
“Nothing good.”
“The thing is, Tiny,” Kelp said from the front seat, “John’s agreed Tom can stay until after the job.”
Tiny slowly shook his massive head. “This is a Tom Jimson job? Forget it. Stop the car, Andy, me and Elsie’ll walk.”
“It isn’t like that, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.
But Tiny was still being extremely negative. “Where Tom Jimson passes by,” he said, “nothing ever grows again.”
Kelp said, “Tiny, let John tell you the story, okay? It isn’t the way you think.
None
of us would sign on a Tom Jimson job.”
Tiny thought that over. “Okay,” he said, “I tell you what I’ll do. I won’t just automatic say no.”
“Thank you, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.
“I’ll listen,” Tiny said. “You’ll tell me the story.
Then
I’ll say no.”
Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. But there was nothing to do but plow forward, so Dortmunder said, “What this is, it’s a buried stash.” And he went on to explain the background, the reservoir, the circumstances and the split, which should be around a hundred twenty thousand dollars for each of the three in this car.
“Tom Jimson,” Tiny interjected at that juncture, “has a way of not having any partners left to split with.”
“We know that about him,” Dortmunder pointed out. “We’ll watch him.”
“Birds watch snakes,” Tiny said. “But okay, go ahead, tell me the rest of it.”
So Dortmunder told him the rest of it, and Tiny didn’t interrupt again until the part about going underwater, when he reared around in astonishment and said, “Dortmunder?
You’re
gonna go
diving?
”
“Not diving,” Kelp insisted from up front. “We’re not gonna dive. We’re gonna
walk in.
”
“Into a reservoir,” Tiny said.
Kelp shrugged that away. “We been taking lessons,” he said. “From a very professional guy.”
“Tiny,” Dortmunder said, getting the narrative back on track, “the idea is, we’ll go down in there, we’ll walk in from the shore, and we’ll pull a rope along with us. And there’ll be a winch at the other end of the rope.”
“And you,” Kelp explained, “at the other end of the winch.”
Tiny grunted. Dortmunder said, “When we get to the right place, we dig up the casket, we tie the rope around one of the handles, we give it a tug so you know we’re ready, and then you winch it out. And we walk along with it to keep it from snagging on stuff.”
Tiny shook his head. “There’s gotta be about ninety things wrong with that idea,” he said, “but let’s just stay with one: Tom Jimson.”
“He’s seventy years old, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.
“He could be seven hundred years old,” Tiny said, “and he’d still be God’s biggest design failure. He’d steal the teeth out of your mouth to bite you with.”
Kelp said, “I gotta admit it, Tiny, you really do know Tom.”
“Tiny,” Dortmunder said, “I’ll be honest with you.”
“Don’t strain yourself, John,” Tiny said.
“With me and Andy down there at the bottom of the reservoir,” Dortmunder told him, “and Tom Jimson up on the shore with the winch and the rope, I’d feel a lot more comfortable in my mind if you were up there with him. And not just to turn the winch.”
“I think you should have the National Guard up there before you could feel really
comfortable
in your mind,” Tiny told him, “but I agree. You don’t want to go down in there without insurance.”
“That’s right,” Dortmunder said. “Will you do it, Tiny?”
“You can buy a lotta sides of beef with a hundred twenty thousand, Tiny,” Kelp chipped in.
Tiny brooded, looking at his cow. The thing looked deader and nakeder than ever. “Every time I tie up with you, Dortmunder,” he said, “something turns weird. The last time, you had me dressed like a nun.”
“We had to get through the cops, Tiny. And that one did work out, didn’t it? We wound up with most of the loot that time, didn’t we? And you wound up with J.C.”
“And think of it this way,” Kelp said, sounding chipper and positive and gung ho, like a high school basketball coach. “It’s an adventure, kinda, and getting outta the city into the healthy country —”
“Healthy,” Tiny echoed.
“ — and it’s like a real basic enterprise,” Kelp finished. “Man against the elements!”
Tiny cocked an eyebrow at the back of Kelp’s head. “Tom Jimson’s an element?”
“I was thinking of water,” Kelp explained.
Dortmunder said, “Tiny? I could really use your help on this.”
Tiny shook his head. “Something just tells me,” he said, “if I sign on to this cockamamie thing, I’m gonna wind up looking like Elsie here.”
Dortmunder waited, saying nothing more. It was up to Tiny now, and he shouldn’t be pushed. Even Kelp kept quiet, though he looked in the mirror a lot more than he looked out the windshield.
And finally Tiny sighed. “What the hell,” he said. “If I had any sense, I wouldn’t know you two in the first place.”