What's The Worst That Could Happen (14 page)

“I hate telling that story, over and over,” John said. “It’s got the same ending every time.”

“Do you mind, I tell it?”

“It’ll still come out the same,” John said, “but go ahead.”

John ostentatiously looked at the blank TV screen, as though waiting for a bulletin, while Andy said, “What happened, about a week ago John and another fella went to a place that was supposed to be empty —”

“To pick up some things,” Anne Marie suggested.

“That’s it. Only it wasn’t empty, after all, the householder was there, with a gun.”

“Ouch,” Anne Marie said.

“John’s feelings exactly,” Andy said. “But that’s what we call your occupational hazard, it’s all in the game. You know. But what happened next wasn’t fair.”

John, watching the nothing on TV, growled.

Andy said, “The householder called the cops, naturally, no problem with that. But when the cops got there the householder claimed John stole a ring and was wearing it. Only it was
John’s
ring, that his best close personal friend, her name is May, you’d like her, she gave him. And the cops made him give it to the householder.”

“That’s mean,” Anne Marie said, and she meant it. She also thought it was kind of funny, she could see the humor in it, but from the slope of John’s shoulders she suspected she would be wiser not to mention that side.

“Very mean,” Andy agreed. “So John, after he got away from the police —”

Surprised, she said, “You escaped?”

“Yeah.” Even that memory didn’t seem to give him much pleasure.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were out on bail or something.”

“No,” Andy said, “he got away clean. But he’s been looking for the householder ever since, because he wants his ring back. It’s got sentimental value, you know.”

“Because his friend gave it to him,” Anne Marie said, and nodded.

“Because,” John said, “he made a fool outta me. I’m gonna feel itchy and uncomfortable until I get that ring back.”

“This householder is a very rich householder,” Andy said. “I mean, he didn’t
need
the ring. Also, he’s got a lot of houses, including one in this very building.”

“So last night …” she said.

“You know the phrase,” he told her. “Last night, we cased the joint.”

“Of course.”

“And tonight we went there,” Andy said, “and we just missed the guy, he was just going out the door. So John did not get his ring.”

“Again,” John said.

“But we
did
get a lot of other stuff,” Andy said. “Nice stuff. As long as we were there.”

Anne Marie said, “And this man is going to Washington?”

“Next week. He’s got a house there, too. John figures to pay him a visit.”

“And this time,” John said, “he’ll be there.”

Anne Marie said, “Where’s this house exactly?”

“Well, it’s an apartment, is what it is,” Andy said. “In the Watergate.”

This time she felt she could show her amusement, and did. “John? You want to pull a burglary at the Watergate? A little third–rate burglary at the Watergate?”

Andy said, “I already tried that on him, and it didn’t work. John isn’t much of a history buff.”

Anne Marie said, “So that’s why you’ll have some questions about DC. You want to get in there, and get your ring, and get out again, and not get into trouble along the way.”

“That’s it,” Andy said.

John, the recital of his tale of woe at last finished, turned away from the TV screen and said, “So if it’s okay with you, I’ll give you a call here tomorrow, sometime, whenever you say. I’ll have some questions figured out.”

“Sure,” Anne Marie said. “Or …” And she allowed a pause to grow, while she lifted an eyebrow at Andy, who gave her a bright look but no other response. So she said to John, “Did Andy tell you my own situation at the moment?”

“He didn’t tell me anything,” John said, “except you knew Washington.”

“Well, my marriage seems to have hit an underwater stump and sunk,” she said. “Theoretically, I’m supposed to go home on Saturday, but I’m not sure I think of it as home any more. I’m not sure
what
to think, to tell you the truth. I’m at kind of loose ends here.”

“Anne Marie,” Andy said, “I wouldn’t have hoped to even ask this, but I’m wondering. Do you mean that you think you could stick around some, give us advice along the way?”

“It’s been awhile since I’ve been in DC,” she said.

John’s head lifted. He damn near smiled. He almost looked normal. He said, “Yeah?”

Andy, with all evidence of delight, said, “Anne Marie! You’d come along?”

“If I wasn’t in the way.”

“In the way? How could you be in the way?” Andy looked at John, and they grinned at each other, and Andy said, “John? Is Anne Marie in the way?”

“Not in
my
way,” John said.

Andy looked back at Anne Marie, and grew more serious. He said, “Is it gonna bother you? You know, us picking up things, here and there, along the way? I mean, that’s what we
do.
Is that gonna be a problem?”

Anne Marie smiled, and shook her head. She had no idea what she was doing, or why, or what was going to happen next, but there was no other door in her life right now she could think of opening that had even the prospect of fun behind it. “I’m a politician’s daughter, Andy,” she said. “Nothing shocks me.”

But then it wasn’t so bad. The old love in a new setting, an invigorating change of pace. And the memory of Miss September so recently on this black silk sheet — laundered since; ah, well — could only add to the spirit of the occasion.

Max was feeling so pleased with himself, and with life, and with the success of his maneuvering, and with his recent decision that TUI should replace the Carrport house with a corporate yacht, that next morning, over bran muffins and coffee, he showed Lutetia his new ring, his pride and joy, and explained its history.

She was amused and appalled, exactly the response he’d been hoping for. “Max, what a terrible person you are!” she cried, laughing at him across the breakfast table. “To treat that poor fellow that way.”

“You should have seen the expression on his face,” Max said. “It was priceless. He looked like a basset hound.”

“You’d better hope,” she told him, “he never gets to see
your
face again.”

“Somehow I don’t think,” Max said, comfortably twirling the ring on his finger, “we travel in the same circles.”

After breakfast, Max went through the house one final time, finding very little in it he cared about. All this safe bland decorating, good for the corporate image but not exactly hearty, nothing that stuck in the mind or created a yearning for possession. Leave it, leave it all, sell the stuff. The damn burglar got everything of value, anyway.

Lutetia found a squat brown vase she liked. “It reminds me of you,” she said, “when you’ve been bad and you’re afraid you’ll be caught.”

“Oh, my sweetness,” Max said, pursing his mouth and trying to look like Sydney Greenstreet in a pet, “how you talk to me.”

“I’ll put dried flowers in it,” she decided, holding the vase up to see it better in the light. “It will fit in wonderfully at the apartment. The place is almost perfect as it is, so carefully put together —
you
wouldn’t notice a thing like that — but occasionally one still finds something to add to the effect.”

“Take it,” Max said, magnanimous to a fault. “If it shows up on some inventory somewhere, we’ll say the burglar got it.”

“Of course he did,” Lutetia said. “He has a very good eye, your burglar.”

“Especially for rings,” Max said, with a malicious little leer.

Lutetia laughed, and clucked her disapproval, and went away to put the vase in her overnight bag, while Max went to the library to get the only thing he actually cared about in this building. The Book, his guide, the source of his self–image and strength, the home of
Tui,
the Joyous. It was called the
I Ching,
and it was the soul of the wisdom of the East, and Max put it in his bag.

Then they were ready to go. They had sent Chalmers and the limo back to the city last night. The burglar had made off with the Lexus, of course, leaving in the garage the Honda van for the transportation of middle management in manageable groups, and the Mazda RX–7, the very paradigm of the little red foreign sports car. (Little red foreign sports cars used to be Italian or French, but times change, times change.) The Chapter Eleven judge could have the Honda, and be damned to him, but the Mazda would stay with Max, definitely, and no arguments.

It was without a backward glance that Max left the Carrport house for the last time, at the wheel of the little red Mazda, Lutetia beside him, his mind full of plans for the yacht — to be called
Joyous
— as he also idly wondered where they’d stop for lunch. Somewhere on the water, for preference.

A lovely day, all in all, whizzing around Long Island in the little red car, finding an acceptable seafood restaurant with a view southward over the Atlantic, chatting and joshing with Lutetia, the two of them in a jolly mood. It was, in fact, delightful to Max, that in his uxorious moments, at those times when, out of necessity or conviction, he wanted to be a husband, he had found for the role such a wife as Lutetia. (The
I Ching
had helped him choose her, of course, from the then–available herd.)

Then at last they made their way to Kennedy Airport for Max’s midafternoon flight. He would enplane to Savannah, to be met there by the car that would take him to Hilton Head, while Lutetia drove the Mazda back to the city and stashed it in the basement garage at the N–Joy.

“I have a few stops to make along the way,” she told him. “Antique shops and whatnot, you’ll probably get to the island before I make it home. I’ll phone you when I get there.”

She did, too.

It was rolling in, all at once, just rolling in. First the twenty–eight grand for the stuff he took out of the house in Carrport, then the thirteen fifty for the Lexus that also came from the same house, and now twenty–four and a half large was his share of the proceeds from the last visit to the N–Joy Broadway Hotel night before last, where it turned out Mrs. Fairbanks’s taste was both exquisite and expensive. Even after spending a little on himself and May, Dortmunder still had over fifty thousand dollars American in his kick. A lot to take care of.

So that’s why he was under the sink, constructing a new bank down there, when the phone rang. It’s Andy, he thought, struggling backward out from under the sink. Ouch! Dammit! That hurt. I know it’s Andy.

Only it wasn’t. “Hey, John,” said a hearty voice to Dortmunder’s surly hello. “Ralph here.”

Ralph. Dortmunder knew a couple of Ralphs; which one was this? “Oh, yeah,” he said. “How you doing?”

“Just fine,” said Ralph, and faintly in the background ice cubes could be heard, clinking against a glass.

Oh. So this was Ralph Winslow, another lockman, the one Andy would have gone to if Wally Whistler had been unavailable. Unless working on a particularly complex safe, Ralph Winslow at all times had a glass of rye and water in his hand, ice cubes clinking.

Was this another visit somewhere? If so, he’d have to turn it down. Max Fairbanks was a full–time occupation. “What’s up?” Dortmunder asked.

“Well, I’m just calling,” Ralph said, “to tell you I’m with you one hundred percent.”

This sentence didn’t seem to have any content. Dortmunder said, “Thanks, Ralph.”

“I heard about the business with the ring,” Ralph explained.

Dortmunder’s eyebrows came together at the middle of his nose. “Oh, you did, did you?”

“And I want you to know,” Ralph said, “it coulda happened to any one of us.”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said, full of belligerence.

“And whoever it might have happened to,” Ralph went on, “it was a shitty thing the guy did.”

“Right again,” Dortmunder said, softening a bit.

“And I wish ya the best with gettin’ it back.”

“Thanks, Ralph,” Dortmunder said. “I appreciate that.”

“Any time, if there’s anything I can do,” Ralph said, “help out a little, just let me know.”

“I’ll do that.”

“He can’t treat us that way, you know what I mean?”

Us.
Dortmunder almost felt like saluting. “I know what you mean,” he said, “and thanks, Ralph.”

“That’s all,” Ralph said. “I gotta go. See you around.”

“Sure,” Dortmunder said, and went back under the sink, feeling a little better about life, not even much minding the little nicks and bloodlettings that were a part of his carpentry, and five minutes later the phone rang.

“Now,
that
one’s Andy,” Dortmunder muttered, backing out from under the sink. “Ouch. Why doesn’t he just come over, he’s got so much to say? Come over and help.”

But this one wasn’t Andy either: “John? Fred Lartz here.”

“Oh, yeah, Fred. How you doing?”

Fred Lartz was a driver, or at least he used to be a driver, and the unspoken agreement among his friends was that he still was a driver, though the truth was he’d lost his nerve ever since that unfortunate afternoon, coming back from a cousin’s wedding on Long Island, when he happened to take a wrong turn on the Van Wyck Expressway — there had been alcohol at this wedding — and wound up on taxiway 17 at Kennedy Airport, with an Eastern Airlines flight, just in from Miami, coming fast the other way. After he got out of the hospital he was never quite the same, but he was still Fred Lartz the driver, the guaranteed best getaway specialist in the business. Only these days it was his wife, Thelma, who did the actual driving, while Fred sat beside her to give advice. The two of them still only got one split, so nobody minded. (And though nobody would ever say so, Thelma was better than Fred had ever been.)

Now, Fred said, “I’m doing fine, John. I just wanted to tell you, Thelma and me, we heard about your trouble, and we just want to say, it was a rotten thing to happen, and you don’t want to let it get you down.”

“Oh,” said Dortmunder. “You mean the, uh, the, uh, the ring, uh …”

“That’s it,” Fred said. “Thelma and me, we feel for you, John, and if there’s anything either of us can do, any way we can help out, you just give us a call.”

“Well, thanks, Fred.”

“Will you do that?”

“Count on it,” Dortmunder said, and they said their good–byes, and five minutes later the phone rang.

“I think I’m getting too much sympathy,” Dortmunder told his hammer, put it down, backed out from under the sink — ouch — and this time it was Jim O’Hara, a general purpose workman like Gus Brock or Andy Kelp, and he too had heard about the stolen ring and wished to offer his condolences and expressions of solidarity. Dortmunder thanked him, and hung up, and decided not to try going under the sink for a while. Instead, he got himself a beer and sat in the living room by the phone, and waited.

Somebody
had been doing a lot of gossip; Gus, maybe, or Wally Whistler. Or both. Or everybody by now.

In the next half hour, he heard from five more guys, all associates in the job, all expressing their best wishes in his troubles. It was like being in the hospital, only without the flowers. He was gracious, within his limitations, and had two more beers, and decided not to work on the bank under the sink at all today. Until tomorrow, the money could stay where it was, in a brown paper supermarket bag, closed with masking tape and shoved up against the wall behind the sofa where Dortmunder sat.

Again, the phone rang. Dortmunder answered, in his new gracious voice, saying, “Hi.”

“Hello, John, it’s Wally.”

Wally? Wally Whistler? Why would Wally Whistler call to offer sympathy, when they’d already been through all this together at the N–Joy? “Hello, there, Wally,” Dortmunder said.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Wally said, sounding as though he had a cold or something, “your friend isn’t at Hilton Head any more.”

Wally. In Dortmunder’s mind, Wally now morphed from Wally Whistler, the lockman, to Wally Knurr, the computer genius who was tracking Max Fairbanks for him. Catching the sense of what this Wally had just said, Dortmunder lunged upward, wide–eyed. “What? Where is he?”

“Don’t know,” this Wally said. “A fax just went out to his people that he’s unavailable from now, Saturday, until Monday morning.”

“And where’s he gonna be Monday morning?”

“Oh, that doesn’t change,” Wally said. “He still has to appear before that committee, so from Monday morning his schedule’s the same. It’s just over the weekend.”

“Thanks, Wally,” Dortmunder said, and hung up, and sat brooding at his empty beer can. This didn’t change anything, since he’d never for a second had it in mind to attack an island off the South Carolina coast — piracy was not part of his job description — but it was still confusing, and maybe worrisome.

Unavailable? Max Fairbanks unavailable? To his own people, Max Fairbanks was
never
unavailable. So what’s going on? What’s happened?

And where is Max Fairbanks?