Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (11 page)

           
“How solid was the case?”

           
“Walked out the front door of this
house in
Michigan
Heights
, carrying a wall safe, straight into two
beat cops with flashlights.”

           
“Carrying
a wall safe?”

           
“That’s the way to do,” Frank
explained. He threw the dead tire on its hub into the trunk, wheeled the spare
along the verge beside the car. “A wall safe is a metal box stuck in a wall.
You dig it out, takes no time at all, carry it home, work on it at your
leisure.”

 
          
“Was that the first time you were caught?”

           
He looked at her, not answering,
letting her drink him in, until she laughed and said, “Sorry, you’re right.
Stupid question. Okay, next time,
I’ll
represent you. But try not to be caught quite so red-handed.”

           
He looked at his hands, pitying
them. “Black-handed, this time.”

           
“I have towelettes in the glove
compartment,” she said.
^cc
When you’re done.”

           
A car or a truck went by from time
to time, but nobody stopped to see if any help was needed. It was clear that
Frank was doing the job. And the lady lawyer wasn’t afraid of him any more.
That’s all it took, a little conversation, spend some time, see what Frank
Hillfen’s really like. Not a nice guy, maybe, not pretty, but not dangerous.

           
She said her name was Mary Ann
Kelleny, and he told her he was Frank Hillfen, and she said, “Frank. Good. That
fits you.”

           
“I don’t know about that Mary Ann
stuff,” he said. “How can a lawyer be named Mary Ann?”

           
“Why not?” she asked him. ‘There’s
lawyers named Randolph, aren’t there?”

           
“Yeah, that’s true.” He tightened
the last lug nut.

           
“What was your attorney’s name?”
she asked. “The one with the necktie.”

           
“Gower.”

           
She smiled and spread her hands. “I
rest my case.”

           
He hadn’t known what she meant when
she said “towelettes,” but they turned out to be those folded wet paper towels
in a packet that restaurants give you after you eat the lobster. He used three
of them from her glove compartment supply; a well-prepared lady. He would have
thrown the towelettes away into the weeds but she pointed at the plastic trash
bag she’d hung from the dashboard cigarette lighter. “You’re a good influence
on me,” he said, and disposed of his trash properly.

           
The bus stop was less than a mile
farther on, at an intersection containing two gas stations, a diner, and a
squat modern one-story “professional building”: the professionals were a
dentist, a real estate agent, and a stockbroker. Down the road to the right
were a few houses, new but shabby, as though for a town that hadn’t quite
happened. Up to the left was a long, wide, gray two-story factory building with
very few windows. TEXTECH in blue was along the blank wall facing this way.
Frank said, “What’s that?”

           
“Clothing,” she told him. “Sweaters,
T-shirts. Sweatshirts that say
Property
of Alcatraz?

           
“I never saw a sweatshirt like
that,” Frank said. He couldn’t help it, his mouth was pursed in disapproval.
Property of Alcatraz;
that was bad
taste.

           
“They don’t sell them in America,”
she explained. “Only overseas.”

           
“Where?”

           
“Asia. Europe.”

           
“Property of Alcatraz.” Frank saw a
teenager in Tokyo, walking down a crowded street, wearing a sweatshirt that
says,
Property of Alcatraz.
Doesn’t
speak ten words of English. Was the kid somebody’s property
in
Alcatraz, wouldn’t last a day. People
wearing the words, don’t know what they say. Don’t know what they
mean.

           
“The global village,” Mary Ann
Kelleny said.

           
“Yeah,” Frank said. “But do they get
it? I don’t think so.”

           
“Does it matter? As long as they’re
happy.”

           
“Okay,” Frank said. “Fll bite. Are
they happy?”

           
She glanced at him as she drove,
curious and amused. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

           
“Because they don’t know who they
are,” he said. “They don’t know who anybody is. They mosdy sound bewildered.”

           
“I don’t follow,” she said.

           
“You put your clothes on,” Frank
told her, “they’re your flag for the day. The public announcement, who you
think you are. What we all do. You gonna walk into court with words on you?
Property of Alcatraz?”

           
She smiled and gave him another
look. “So you’re dressed as the humble workman,” she said. “Is that it?”

           
“I’m dressed like I just walked out
of prison,” he answered.
^cc
When I get a couple of dollars, I’ll
dress a litde different. Like a guy ready to party.”

           
She’d stopped smiling when he
mentioned the “couple dollars,” and now she said, sounding fatalistic but
worried for him, “You’re going back, aren’t you, Frank?”

           
He pretended he didn’t know what she
meant. “Back where? A life of crime?”

           
“The
wrong
crime,” she said. “So back to prison. You’re an intelligent man,
Frank, you know it yourself. There’s a rubber band on you, and the other end is
still in your cell.”

           
“I’ve learned stuff,” he said,
trying to sound competent and confident. ‘Whatever happens, I’m not gonna be
that easy to find.”

           
“Oh, sure you are,” she said.

           
He hadn’t expected this conversation
with anybody but himself, and he
sure
hadn’t expected it with a good-looking woman lawyer in an air-conditioned white
Saab doing sixty down the highway. He said, ‘What do you mean, the wrong
crime?”

         
  
“Little stuff,” she said. “Burglaries.
Breaking into houses and stealing
wall
safes, for heaven’s sake.”

           
Defensive, he said, ‘What’s the
complaint? Wall safes, that’s where they keep the valuables. That’s what I’m
after.”

           
“How much in valuables?” she demanded.
‘What do you mean, valuables?” She must be a pretty good lawyer. She said, “Are
you talking about three or four thousand dollars? Jewelry, and what do you get
from your fence? Ten percent?”

           
“Sometimes more,” he muttered.

           
“You can live a week, or a month if
you’re lucky, and then you have to go out and do it again. Every time you do
it, you’re at the same risk. Every time. It doesn’t matter how many times you
don’t get caught, because they don’t count in your favor the time you
do
get caught. So the odds are against
you, and sooner or later you
will
get
caught. That’s the only way it can end, cycle after cycle.”

           
“Okay, then, I’ll reform,” he said,
bored with the conversation, and looked out the window at the passing scenery:
trees, farms, trees.

           
But she wouldn’t let it go. “You
won’t reform, Frank,” she said. “You’re who you are, and you know it.”

           
“Habitual,” he said, like the word
was a joke.

           
“But you could
retire
she said. “That’s not the same thing as reform, you know. If
you reform, you have to get a job somewhere, live in a house somewhere...”

           
“No can do.”

           
“I
know,”
Frank, that
^’
s what I’m saying. If you do a
burglary and you make five thousand dollars on it, you don’t go right back out
the next night, do you?”

           
“No need to.”

           
“Exactly. You retire, short-term.
Then, when the money’s gone, you come out of retirement.”

           
He laughed, seeing himself as a guy
constantly bouncing out of retirement. “I guess that’s me, okay.”

           
“But if you committed just one
crime,” she went on, “and you got five
million
dollars, you’d never have to come out of retirement, would you?”

           
This time, he laughed out of
surprise. “Five million? Where
is
this
score?”

           
“Don’t ask
me,
Frank,” she said half kidding but also half on the square. “I’m
not a criminal. And I’m not suggesting any crime to you, either. What I’m
saying is, if you keep doing the five-thousand-dollar crimes, you’ll definitely
go back to prison.” He knew what she was doing. It was a lawyer’s trick, that,
to make you think you’ve got two alternatives, but then the first one’s no good
and the second one’s impossible, so you wind up doing exactly what lawyers
always want everybody to do, anyway, which is nothing. “So instead of the
five-grand hits,” he said, “I should stay home and dream up a five-mil hit. And
not go out till I got it. Right?”

           
“You’ll never reform, Frank,” she
said. “You know that. So the best thing to do is retire.”

           
“With my five million.”

           
“Or whatever.”

*
 
*
 
*

           
They came into
Omaha
around seven in the evening, the city
rising out of the landscape like children’s toys in a sandbox, the reddening
sun still partway up the western sky but the children gone home to dinner. As
the country road became city street, the streetlights automatically switched
on, anemic in the rosy light of the sun.

           
They’d been talking law, anecdotes,
him telling her some of his court experiences, she talking about clients and
how it seemed that everybody had a crooked streak in them somewhere. She wasn’t
herself a criminal lawyer, or a courtroom lawyer, but flew a desk in a big
corporate law firm, so the clients were businessmen, all looking for an edge.
It began to seem to Frank that it was unfair of society to single him out this
way, keep riding him so hard when everybody else was up to something, too. But
nobody ever said it was supposed to be fair, life.

           
The first time they were stopped at
a red light, she pointed at her purse, a big brown soft-leather thing on the
seat between them, and said, “There’s money in there. Take three hundred.”

           
He brisded. “What’s this about?”

           
“To get you started. You need money
to get you moving. If I don’t give it to you, you’ll start right in trying to
beat the odds. The first day on parole.”

           
“I can’t take your money,” he said.
The fact was, three hundred wouldn’t do it. Three grand was closer to what he
needed, with the flight to New York, and some clothes, and a hotel, and this
and that and the other. Four or five grand, more like. But he wasn’t going to
say that. “I appreciate the thought,” he went on, “but I just wouldn’t feel
right.”

           
She sighed. The light turned green,
and they drove on. She tapped fairly short fingernails against the steering
wheel, and at last she said, “All right, then. Look in there, you’ll see my
wallet.”

           
“I really won’t—”

           
“Not money,” she said. “Hold on a
second.”

           
Another red light. She picked up the
bag, braced it between the steering wheel and her lap, took out a thick wallet,
unclasped it, brought out a business card, handed it to him. “I can’t come to
court for you,” she said, “but I can find you somebody better than the wet
necktie.”

           
Taking the card, reading her name
and the firm name and the business address and the phone number and the telex
number and the cable word and the fax number, he said, “You don’t have much
confidence in me.”

           
“I have confidence in the
mathematics.” The light was green; she shoved the bag onto the seat and drove.
“The five-thousand- dollar crimes will get you right back in trouble.”