What's The Worst That Could Happen (6 page)

Dortmunder, in a raincoat that absorbed water and a hat that absorbed water and shoes that absorbed water, had walked many blocks from the subway, and by now he looked mostly like a pile of clothing left out for the Good Will. He should have taken a cab — he was rich these days, after all — but although it had been cloudy when he’d left home (thus the raincoat) it hadn’t actually been raining in Manhattan when he left, and probably still wasn’t raining there. Only on Maximilian’s, this steady windless watering–can–type rain out of a smudged cloud cover positioned just about seven feet above Dortmunder’s drooping hat.

One thing you could say for the rain; it made the cars look nice. All those !!!CREAMPUFFS!!! and !!!ULTRASPECIALS!!! and !!!STEALS!!! shiny and gleaming, their rust spots turned to beauty marks, their many dents become speed styling. Rain did for these heaps and clunkers what arsenic used to do for over–the–hill French courtesans; gave them that feverish glow of false youth and beauty.

Plodding through these four–wheeled lies, Dortmunder looked like the driver of all of them. As he approached the office, out through its chrome metal screen door bounded a young guy in blazer and chinos, white shirt, gaudy tie and loafers, big smile and big hair. He absolutely ignored the rain, it did not exist, as he leaped like a faun through the gravel and puddles to announce, “Good morning, sir! Here for wheels, are we? You’ve come to the right place! I see you in a four–door sedan, am I right, sir? Something with integrity under the hood, and yet just a dash of —”

“Max.”

The young man blinked, and water sprayed from his eyelashes. “Sir?”

“I’m here to see Max.”

The young man looked tragic. “Oh, I am sorry, sir,” he said. “Mister Maximilian isn’t here today.”

“Mister Maximilian,” Dortmunder said, “has no place to be except here.” And he stepped around the young man and proceeded toward the office.

The young man came bounding after. Dortmunder wished he had a ball to throw for the fellow to catch, or a stick. Not to throw. “I didn’t know you were a friend of Mister Maximilian’s,” the youth said.

“I didn’t know anybody was,” Dortmunder said, and went into the office, a severe gray–paneled space where a severe hatchet–faced woman sat at a plain desk, typing. “Morning, Harriet,” Dortmunder said, as the phone rang.

The woman lifted both hands from the machine, the right to hold one finger up toward Dortmunder, meaning I’ll talk to you in just a minute, and the left to pick up the telephone: “Maximilian’s Used Cars, Miss Caroline speaking.” She listened, then said, “You planted a bomb here? Where? Oh, that’s for us to find out? When did you do this? Oh, yes, yes, I know you’re serious.”

Dortmunder moved backward toward the door, as the gamboling youth entered, smiled wetly, and crossed to sit at a much smaller desk in the corner.

Harriet/Miss Caroline said, “Oh, last night. After we closed? Climbed the fence? And did you change the dogs’ water while you were here, were you that thoughtful?” Laughing lightly, she hung up and said to Dortmunder, “Hi, John.”

Dortmunder nodded at the phone. “A dissatisfied customer?”

“They’re all dissatisfied, John, or why come
here?
And then they call with these bomb threats.”

Jerking a thumb over his shoulder, toward the cars outside, Dortmunder said, “Those are the bomb threats.”

“Now, John, be nice.”

Dortmunder seemed to be doing a lot of gesturing; this time, it was toward Peter Pan in the corner. “I see you got a pet.”

“My nephew,” Harriet said, with just a hint of emphasis on the word. “Have you met?”

“Yes. Is Max in?”

“Always.” Picking up the phone again, she pressed a button and said, “Max, John D. is here.” She hung up, smiled, started typing, and said, “He’ll be right out.”

And he was. Through the interior door came Maximilian himself, a big old man with heavy jowls and thin white hair. His dark vest hung open over a white shirt smudged from leaning against used cars. For a long time he’d smoked cigars, and now, after he’d given them up, he continued to look like a man smoking a cigar; a ghost cigar hovered around him at all times. Chewing on this ghost in the corner of his mouth, he looked left and right, looked at Dortmunder, and said, “Oh, I thought she meant John D. Rockefeller.”

“I think he’s dead,” Dortmunder said.

“Yeah? There goes my hope for a dime. What can I do you for?”

“I dropped a car off the other night.”

“Oh, that thing.” Max shook his head; a doctor with bad news for the family. “Pity about that. A nice–looking car, too. Did you notice how it pulled?”

“No.”

More headshaking. “The boys in the shop, they figure they can probably do something with it, they can do anything eventually, but it’s gonna be tough.”

Dortmunder waited.

Max sighed. “We know each other a long time,” he said. “You want, I’ll take it off your hands.”

“Max,” Dortmunder said, “I don’t want you to do that.”

Max frowned: “What?”

“I don’t want you to load yourself up with a lemon,” Dortmunder said, while Harriet stopped typing to listen, “just on account of our friendship. I wouldn’t feel right about it. The thing’s that much of a turkey, I’ll just take it away, and apologize.”

“Don’t feel like that,” Max said. “I’m sure the boys can fix it up.”

“It’ll always be between us, Max,” Dortmunder said. “It’ll be on my conscience. Just give me the keys, I’ll see can I get it started, I’ll take it off your lot.”

This time Max scowled. “John,” he said, “what’s with you? Are you
negotiating?
”

“No no, Max, I’m sorry I dumped this problem in your lap, I didn’t realize.”

“John,” Max said, beginning to look desperate, “it’s worth
something.
”

“For parts. I know. I’ll take it to a guy can strip it down, maybe I’ll get a couple bucks off it. Harriet got the keys?”

Max stepped back, the better to look Dortmunder up and down. “Let’s change the subject,” he decided. “Whadaya think a the weather?”

“Good for the crops,” Dortmunder said. “Harriet got the keys?”

“You met Harriet’s nephew?”

“Yes.
He
got the keys?”

“I’ll give you twelve hundred for it!”

Dortmunder hadn’t expected more than five. He said, “I don’t see how I can do that to you, Max.”

Max chewed furiously on his ghost cigar. “I won’t go a penny over thirteen fifty!”

Dortmunder spread his hands. “If you insist, Max.”

Max glowered at him. “Don’t go away,” he snarled.

“I’ll be right here.”

Max returned to his inner office, Harriet returned to her typing, and the nephew opened a copy of
Popular Mechanics.
Dortmunder said, “Harriet, could you call me a cab?”

The nephew said, “You’re a cab.”

Harriet said, “Sure, John,” and she was doing so when Max came back, with an old NYNEX bill envelope stuffed with cash, which he shoved into Dortmunder’s hand, saying, “Come back when it’s sunny. Rain brings out something in you.” He stomped back into his office, trailing ghost cigar smoke.

Dortmunder read an older issue of
Popular Mechanics
until his cab arrived. Then, traveling across the many micro–neighborhoods of Queens, he reflected that he’d just done much better with Maximilian’s Used Cars than ever before. Was it because Max happened to have the same first name as the guy who stole May’s uncle’s lucky ring, and this was a kind of revenge to beat down all Maxes everywhere? Or was he just on a roll?

That would be nice. He’d never been on a roll before, so he’d have to pay attention to what it felt like, if it turned out that’s what this was. Eight hundred fifty dollars more than he’d dared hope for; so far, it felt good.

Home, he unlocked his way into what should have been an empty apartment, since May would be off at work at the supermarket, and there was Andy Kelp in the hall, walking toward the living room from the kitchen, a can of beer in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. “Hi, John,” he said. “Where you been?”

Dortmunder looked at his apartment door. “Why do I bother to lock this thing?”

“Because it gives me a challenge. Come on in. Wally’s got your rich guy pinned to the wall.”

The real fury that had driven Dortmunder on the eventful night, that had fueled his brilliance and expertise in escaping from those cops, was gone now; you can’t stay white–hot mad at somebody forever, no matter what they did. Between the stuff he’d sold to Stoon, and the unexpectedly large return on the car, he’d cleared almost thirty grand from his encounter with Max Fairbanks, which was probably about three thousand times what the ring was worth. So did he really still want to pursue this vendetta, chase down some jet–setting billionaire who, as Andy had pointed out, would usually be surrounded by all kinds of security? Or was he ahead now, enough ahead to forget it, get on with his life?

Well, no. Having seen Andy Kelp’s reaction, and in a more muted way May’s reaction, to what had happened to him, he could see now that most people would look at the story in a way that made it seem like he was the goat. Also, given Andy’s big mouth, it was pretty certain that in no time at all everybody he knew would have heard about the ring incident in Carrport. They might laugh to his face, like Andy did, or they might laugh behind his back, but however they handled it, the point was, Max Fairbanks would come out of it the hero and John Dortmunder the jerk.

Unless he got the damn ring back. Let him walk around with that ring on his finger, on this personal finger right here, and
then
who’s the goat?

Okay. Max Fairbanks, here I come.

Which meant, first, Wally Knurr here I come, so Dortmunder walked on into the living room and there he was, Wally Knurr, looking the same as ever, like a genial knish. A butterball in his midtwenties, his 285 pounds, devoid of muscle tone, were packed into a ball four feet six inches high, so that he was at least as wide as he was tall, and it seemed arbitrary in his case that the feet were on the bottom and the head on top. This head was a smaller replica of the body, as though Wally Knurr were a snowman made of suet, with blue jellybean eyes behind thick spectacles and a beet for a mouth. (The makers presumably couldn’t find a carrot, so there was no nose.)

Dortmunder was used to Wally Knurr’s appearance, so he merely said, “Hey, Wally, how you doing?”

“Just fine, John,” Wally said. When he stood from the chair he’d been perched on, he was marginally shorter. The orange juice stood on the end table beside him. He said, “Myrtle and her mother say hello.”

“And back at them,” Dortmunder said. This having exhausted his social graces, he said, “You found my guy, huh? Sit down, Wally, sit down.”

Wally resumed his chair, while Dortmunder crossed to the sofa. To the side, Andy sat at his leisure in the overstuffed chair, smiling upon Wally as though he’d created the little fella himself, out of instant mashed potato mix.

Wally said, “Finding Mr. Fairbanks wasn’t the problem. He’s kind of everywhere.”

“Like bad weather,” Dortmunder said. “Wally, if finding him wasn’t the problem, what
was
the problem?”

“Well, John,” Wally said, swinging his legs nervously under his chair (his feet didn’t quite reach the worn carpet when he was seated), “the truth is, the problem is you. And Andy.”

Laughing lightly, Andy said, “Wally thinks of us as crooks.”

“Well, you are,” Wally said.

“I am,” Dortmunder agreed. “But so is Fairbanks. Did Andy tell you what he did?”

Andy said, “I just said he had something of yours. I figured, you wanted Wally to know the details you’d rather tell him yourself. Put your own spin on it, like they say.”

“Thanks,” Dortmunder said, and to Wally he said, “He’s got a ring of mine.”

Wally said, “John, I don’t like to say this, but I’ve heard you tell fibs about rings and things and this and that and all kinds of stuff. I like you, John, but I don’t want to help you if you’re going to do felonies, and after all, that’s what you do.”

Dortmunder took a deep breath and held it. “Okay,” he said, “here it is,” and he gave Wally the full story, including the Chapter Eleven stuff and the house supposed to be empty — and yes, it was a felony he and an unnamed partner, not Andy, planned in that supposedly empty corporate–owned building that night — and when he got to the theft of the ring he got mad all over again, and it didn’t help when he saw Wally — Wally! — hiding a smirk. “So that’s it,” he finished, sulky and feeling ill–used.

“Well, John, I believe you,” Wally said.

“Thanks.”

“Nobody would tell a story like that on themselves if it wasn’t true,” Wally explained. “Besides, when I looked for Mr. Fairbanks, I read all about the Chapter Eleven bankruptcy, and I even remember something about the house in Carrport.”

“So there you are,” Dortmunder said.

“You told that very well, John,” Andy said. “There was some real passion in there.”

“But if you do meet with this Mr. Fairbanks again,” Wally said, “how are you going to get him to give you your ring back?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “I thought I’d use a combination of moral persuasion and threats.”

“You aren’t going to hurt anybody, are you?”

There’s only so much truth a person should tell in one day, and Dortmunder felt he might already have overdosed. “Of course not,” he said. “You know me, Wally, I’m one hundred percent nonviolent.”

“Okay, John.” Smiling, animated, Wally said, “You know, finding Mr. Fairbanks was very interesting, very different from other stuff I do.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Usually, if you’re looking for somebody,” Wally explained, “you go through the airline computer systems, probably United Airlines, most of the others run through that. And you go to the big hotel chain computers, like Hilton or Marriot or Holiday Inn. And the car rental companies, and like that. But not with Mr. Fairbanks.”

“Oh, no?”

“He doesn’t travel the way other people do. He has all kinds of offices and homes all over the world, and they’re all tied together with fax lines and phone lines and protected cables and all kinds of stuff, so he doesn’t stay in hotels. And when he goes someplace, he doesn’t take a commercial flight. He travels in one of his own airplanes —”

“One of,” Dortmunder echoed.

“Oh, sure,” Wally said. “He’s got five I know about, I mean passenger airplanes, not cargo, and I think there may be some more over in Europe he isn’t using right now.”

“Uh huh,” Dortmunder said.

“So I have to track him with the flight plans his pilots give the towers.”

“Uh huh.”

“And this,” Andy said, “is the guy you’re gonna hunt down like a wounded deer, am I right, John?”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said. To Wally he said, “Tell me more.”

“Well, they send out his schedule,” Wally said. “His staff does, to his different homes and offices. Just a rough schedule of where he’s going and what he’s doing. They fax it, mostly, and they fax the changes to it, he’s always changing it, so everybody knows where he is and how to get in touch with him.”

“That’s one nice thing, John,” Andy said. “Here you’ve got a guy, he tells the
world
where he’s gonna be.”

“Good,” Dortmunder said. “Then he can tell me. Wally, where is he?”

There was a manila envelope on the floor beside Wally’s chair. Stooping now, with many grunts and false starts, Wally picked up this envelope and took from it two sheets of paper, as he said, “You just want for the rest of May, I guess.”

“Sure,” Dortmunder said.

“Okay.” Wally studied the papers. “Well, today,” he said, “he’s in London.”

“That’s fast,” Dortmunder said. “He was on Long Island last Thursday.”

“Wait for it,” Andy said.

Wally said, “He got to London this morning.”

“How long is he gonna be there?” Dortmunder asked, thinking he really didn’t want to have to go all the way to London to get his ring back.

“Day after tomorrow,” Wally said, “he’s going to Nairobi.”

“Nairobi.” Dortmunder didn’t like the sound of that. “That’s in Africa someplace, isn’t it?”

“Uh huh.”

“Is he ever coming back to the States?”

“Saturday,” Wally said, “because he’s going to testify at a congressional hearing next Monday, a week from today.”

Andy said, “What you’ve got there, John, you’ve got your basic moving target.”

Dortmunder said, “London, Nairobi, Washington, all this week. He’s going to Washington on Saturday?”

“On Monday. He’s going to spend the weekend at Hilton Head, in South Carolina.”

“Nice for him,” Dortmunder said. “How long’s he gonna be in Washington?”

“Until Wednesday. Then he goes to Chicago for two days, and then Sydney for the next —”

“Sydney? That’s a person.”

“Sydney, Australia, John, it’s a city. And then the Monday after that he flies back and goes to Las Vegas, and then he —”

Dortmunder said, “Are we still in May?”

“Oh, sure, John,” Wally said. “The schedule says he’ll be in Las Vegas two weeks from today.”

“I’m almost feeling sorry for this guy,” Dortmunder said.

“I think he likes it,” Andy said.

“Well, I’m not gonna chase him around London and Africa, that’s for sure,” Dortmunder said. “I can wait till he comes back this way. Washington isn’t so far, where’s he stay in Washington? Got another house there?”

“An apartment,” Wally said, “in the Watergate.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Dortmunder said. “It’s some kinda place.”

Wally and Andy looked at one another. “He’s heard of it,” Andy said.

Wally said to Dortmunder, “It’s a great big building over by the Potomac River. It’s partly offices and partly hotel and partly apartments.”

“Apartments are harder,” Dortmunder said. “Doormen, probably. Neighbors. Could be live–in help there, a guy like that.”

Grinning, Andy said, “John? You planning a burglary at the Watergate?”

“I’m planning to get my ring back,” Dortmunder told him, “if that’s what you mean.”

Andy still had that little crooked grin. “No big deal,” he suggested. “Just a little third–rate burglary at the Watergate.”

Dortmunder shrugged. “Yeah? So? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Well,” Andy said, “you could lose the presidency.”

Dortmunder, who had no sense of history because he had no interest in history because he was usually more than adequately engaged by the problems of the present moment, didn’t get that at all. Ignoring it as just one of those things Andy would say, he turned to Wally. “So he’s gonna be there next Monday night? A week from today.”

“That’s the schedule,” Wally agreed.

“Thank you, Wally. Then so am I.”