Authors: Donald Westlake
It was during a somewhat shallower stretch that Dortmunder was slightly disturbed by the scratchings and plinkings of someone picking the lock on the apartment door, opening it, creeping in (these old floors creak, no matter what you do) and closing the door with that telltale little
snick.
Dortmunder almost came all the way to the surface of consciousness at that instant, but instead, his brain decided the noises were just Tom returning from one of his late–night filling–the–pockets forays, and so the tiny sounds from the hallway were converted in his dream factory into the shushings and plinkings of wavelets, and in
that
dream Tom was a giant fish with teeth, from whom Dortmunder swam and swam and swam, never quite escaping.
Normally, the interloper would have had trouble finding his way around the dark and almost windowless apartment, but Dortmunder’s recent underwater experiences had led him to leave a light burning in the bathroom, by which illumination it was possible for the interloper to make his way all through the place, to reassure himself that the sleeping Dortmunder was the only current resident, and then to go on and make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen. (The clinking of knife inside peanut butter jar became, in Dortmunder’s dreams, the oars in the oarlocks of Charon’s boat.)
The interloper was quiet for a long time after ingesting his sandwich and one of Dortmunder’s beers; in fact, he napped a little, at the kitchen table. But then, along around sunup, he moved into the bedroom and threw all Dortmunder’s clothing onto the floor from the chair beside the door so he could sit there, just beyond the foot of the bed, and watch Dortmunder sleep.
The faint metallic click as the interloper cocked his rifle caused Dortmunder to frown in his sleep and make disgusting smacking sounds with his mouth, and to dream briefly of being deep underwater and having his air tank suddenly fall off his back and separate from the mouthpiece hose with a faint metallic click just before his mouth and stomach and brain filled with water; but then that dream floated away and he dreamed instead about playing poker with some long–ago cellmates in the good old days, and being dealt a royal flush — in spades — which caused him to settle back down in contentment, deeper and deeper into sleep, so that it was almost two hours later when he finally opened his eyes and rubbed his nose and did that sound with his mouth and sat up and stretched and looked at the rifle aimed at his eye.
“GL!” Dortmunder cried, swallowing his tongue.
Rifle. Gnarled old hands holding the rifle. Wrinkly old eye staring down the rifle’s sights. The last resident of Cronley, Oklahoma, seated in a chair in Dortmunder’s bedroom.
“Now, Mr. Department of Recovery,” said the hermit, “you can just tell me where Tim Jepson is. And
this
time, ain’t nobody behind me with no bottle.”
Three bottles. All broken and smashed on the bar floor, all with their corks still jammed tight in their cracked–off necks. And all absolutely
stinking.
They were dry inside, so it wasn’t merely that the wine had gone bad after all these years; and in any event, the stench seemed to come more from the crusted gunk on the bottles’ outside.
Plumbing. The second invader had gone to the basement to look at the plumbing. So did Guffey, reeling a bit from the aftereffects of the blow on the head, and when he found the dismantled trap he
knew.
By God, it was Tim Jepson after all! Come back for his fourteen thousand dollars, just as Mitch Lynch had said he would. Fourteen thousand dollars hidden all these years in those wine bottles in this dreadful muck river; wasn’t that just like Jepson?
In my hands, Guffey thought inaccurately, and I let him get away. But perhaps all hope was not yet lost. There was still one slender thread in Guffey’s hand: the license plate of that little white automobile. Could he follow that thread? He could but try.
Before noon on that same day, Cronley became at last what it had for so long appeared to be: deserted. Guffey, freshly shaved, garbed in the best of the professors’ stolen clothing, dismantled rifle and more clothing stowed in the knapsack on his back, marched out of Cronley and across the rock–strewn desert toward his long–deferred destiny.
By early evening, he’d walked and hitchhiked as far as a town with a state police barracks, where he reported the hit–and–run driver, offering a description of the car and its license number, plus the welt on the back of his head for evidence. They took the license number and description and ran them through their computer, and they took the welt on the back of his head and ran
him
through the hospital, giving him the softest night’s sleep and the best food of his entire life, and almost making him give up the quest right there. All a fella had to do, after all, to live in the lap of luxury like this, was step out in front of a bus seven or eight times a year.
But duty called, particularly when the cops came around the hospital next morning to say they knew who’d hit him but there wasn’t much to be done about it. (He’d been counting on this official indifference.) The car, it seemed, was a rental, picked up at the Oklahoma City airport the same day it hit Guffey and turned back in the next day. The miscreants — “New Yorkers: you might know” — were long gone. There wasn’t the slightest mark on the car, nor were there any witnesses, nor had the hospital found anything at all seriously wrong with Guffey (amazingly enough), so there simply wasn’t enough of a case to warrant an interstate inquiry.
Guffey, humble as ever, accepted everything he was told, and asked only one thing in return: Might he have, please, the name and address of the person who had rented the car?
One of the cops grinned at that request and said, “You wouldn’t think of taking the law in your own hands, would you?”
“I’ve never been out of Oklahoma in my life!” Guffey cried, truthfully. “I just want to write that person and tell him I forgive him. I’m a Christian, you know. Praise the Lord!”
When it looked as though Guffey might intend to start preaching in their direction nonstop, the cops gave him
two
names — Tom Jimson, who’d rented the car, and John Dortmunder, who’d driven it — plus one address in New York for both of them. (Tom Jimson, huh? Tim Jepson, Tom Jimson, huh? Huh?
Huh?
)
There was a little glitch when the hospital said they wanted to keep Guffey a few days longer for observation, but when they discovered he didn’t have any insurance they realized they’d already observed him long enough, and he was let go. And then, for the first time in his life, thumb extended, Guffey left Oklahoma.
The trip northeast was fairly long and adventurous, punctuated by a number of crimes of the most cowardly and despicable sort: church poor–boxes rifled, cripples mugged for their grocery sacks, things like that. And here at last was New York. And here was the address. And here was John Dortmunder.
Tim Jepson wasn’t here right at this minute, unfortunately — killing him in his sleep would be the safest way to go about it, after all — but that was all right. John Dortmunder was here and John Dortmunder could tell Guffey how to find Tim Jepson.
And he would, too. Oh, yes.
“Lives here,” the madman corrected him. “Said so when you rented the car.”
Dortmunder stared, astonished at the madman’s information, and the madman cackled, rather like Tom himself, except that his mouth opened plenty wide enough to see the shriveled and darkened toothless gums. “Didn’t know I knew that, did you?” he demanded, the rifle as steady as a courthouse cannon in his wrinkled old hands.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, I know all sorts of stuff, Mr. Department of Recovery. Tim Jepson calls himself Tom Jimson now. He paid for that rental car. You drove.”
“Well, gee, you’re pretty good,” Dortmunder told him, thinking like mad.
“You know what I’m
really
good at?” the madman asked him.
“No, what’s that?”
“Shooting.” The maniac grinned, cheek nestled against the cold rifle. “I been shooting for the pot for years now,” he explained.
“Don’t you ever hit it?” Dortmunder asked him.
Which made the old guy mad, for some reason. “Shooting for the
pot!
” he repeated, with great emphasis. “That means shooting food! Coyotes and rabbits and gophers and snakes and rats! That you put in the
pot!
And
eat!
”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Dortmunder told him, very sincerely. “I’m a city person, I don’t know these things.”
“Well,
I
do,” the touchy countryman said, “and let me tell you, Mr. City Person, I’m goddamn good at shooting for the pot.”
“I bet you are,” Dortmunder told him, filling his voice to the gunwales with admiration.
“You get a little squirrel out there,” the madman told him, “it don’t stand still and let you aim, like how
you
do. It keeps moving, jumping around. And yet, every blessed time I pull this trigger, I hit that squirrel just exactly where I want. I
never
spoil the meat.”
“That’s pretty good,” Dortmunder assured him.
“It’s
goddamn
good!”
“That’s right! That’s right!”
“So, then,” the madman said, settling down once more, “what do you think the chances are, if I decided to shoot that left earlobe offa you, that I’ll probly do it?”
“Well, uh,” Dortmunder said. His left earlobe began to itch like crazy. His left hand began to tremble like crazy, thwarted in its desire to scratch his left ear. His left eye began to water. “Uhhhhh,” he said, “I don’t think you ought to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, uh, the noise, the neighbors, they —”
“What I hear about New York City,” the madman informed him, “when the neighbors around these parts hear a gunshot they just turn up on the TV and pretend it didn’t happen. That’s what
I
hear.”
“Oh, well,” Dortmunder said, “that’s just people out in the sticks knocking New York the way they do. This city’s really a very warm–hearted, caring, uh, for instance, people from out of town are
constantly
getting their wallet back that they left in the taxi.”
“Well, I don’t leave no wallet in no taxi,” the madman told him. “I only know what I hear. And I figure it’s worth the chance.”
“Wait a minute!” Dortmunder cried. “Why do you, why do you want to
do
such a thing?”
“For practice,” the madman told him. “And so you’ll take me seriously.”
“I take you seriously! I take you seriously!”
“Good.” The madman nodded agreeably but kept the rifle aimed at Dortmunder’s ear. “So where’s Tim Jepson?” he said.
Guffey frowned at him. “Uh?”
“I don’t know!”
“If you really don’t know,” Guffey told him, in all sincerity, “that’s a pity, because you’re about to lose an ear.”
“Wait a minute!” the man called John Dortmunder cried, waving his arms around, kicking his legs under the blanket. “I
do
know, but wait a minute, okay?”
Guffey almost lowered the rifle at that, it was so astonishing. “You do know, but wait a minute?”
“Listen,” John Dortmunder said earnestly, “you know Tom Jimson, right? Or Tim Jepson, or whatever you want to call him.”
“I surely do,” Guffey agreed, hands squeezing the rifle so hard he almost shot the fellow’s ear off prematurely.
“Well, then, think about it,” Dortmunder invited him. “Would anybody on this Earth
protect
Tom Jimson? Would anybody risk their own ear for him?”
Guffey thought that over. “Still,” he said, “Tim Jepson lives here with you, and you know where he is, but you don’t want to tell me. So maybe you’re just crazy or something, and what you need is shock therapy, like me shooting off your ear and then a couple of fingers and then —”
“No no no, just give me a chance,” Dortmunder cried, bouncing around on the bed some more. “I don’t blame you, honest I don’t. I know what Tom did to you, he told me all about it.”
Guffey growled, low in his throat. “He did?”
“Getting you stuck in that elevator and the whole thing.” Shaking his head sympathetically, he said, “He even
laughed
about it. I could hardly stand to listen.”
Nor could Guffey. “Then how come you hang
out
with this fella?” he demanded. “And
protect
him?”
“I’m not protecting Tom,” Dortmunder protested. “There’s other people in it that I
do
care about, okay?”
“I don’t care about nobody but Tim Jepson.”
“I know that. I believe it.” Dortmunder spread his hands, being reasonable. “You waited this many years,” he pointed out. “Just wait another day or two.”
Guffey gave that suggestion the bitter chuckle it deserved. “So you can go
warn
him? What kinda idiot do you think I am?”
Dortmunder stared around the room, brow corrugated with thought. “I tell you what,” he said. “Stay here.”
“Stay
here?
”
“Just till I get my phone call.”
“What phone call?”
“From the friends of mine that’ll say they’re done doing what they’re doing, and then —”
Guffey was getting that lost feeling. He said, “Doing what? Who? What are they doing?”
“Well, no,” Dortmunder said.
“By God,” Guffey said, taking a bead, “you can kiss that ear good–bye.”
“No, I don’t think I could, really,” Dortmunder told him. “And I don’t think I can tell you who’s doing what, or where they’re doing it, or anything about it. But if you shoot my ears off, I won’t be able to answer the phone, and then you’ll
never
get your hands on Tom Jimson.”
Guffey nodded and said, “So why don’t I forget about your ear and just drop a cartridge into your brainpan there and wait for that phone call myself?”
“They won’t talk to you,” Dortmunder answered. “And what do you want to sit around with a dead body for?”
“They’ll talk to me,” Guffey said. “I’ll tell them I’m your uncle, and they’ll believe me. And the reason I want to sit around with a dead body is, if you’re alive I won’t be able to sleep or turn my back or go to the bathroom or
nothing
for two, three days until the phone rings. As a matter of fact,” he added, having convinced himself with his own logic, “that’s
just
what I’m gonna do.” And he adjusted his aim accordingly, saying, “Good–bye.”
“Wait!”
“Quit shoutin things,” Guffey told him irritably. “You throw off my concentration, and that could spoil my aim. I’m givin you a nice painless death here, so just be grateful and —”
“You don’t
have
to!”
Guffey knew it was rude to sneer at a person you’re about to kill — it adds insult to injury, in fact — but he couldn’t help it. “What are you gonna do? Give me your word of honor?”
“I got handcuffs!”
Guffey lowered the rifle, intrigued despite himself. “Handcuffs? How come you got handcuffs?”
“Well, they kinda come in handy sometimes,” Dortmunder said with a little shrug.
“So your idea is, I should cuff you to the bed there —”
“Maybe to the sofa in the living room,” Dortmunder suggested. “So it’s more comfortable and I could watch television if I wanted.”
Was this some sort of trick? In Guffey’s experience,
everything
pretty much was some sort of trick. He said, “Where’s these cuffs?”
Dortmunder pointed to the dresser along the wall to Guffey’s left. “Top drawer on the left.”
By standing beside the dresser, back against the wall, Guffey could keep an eye on Dortmunder while he pushed the drawer open and studied its contents by means of a number of quick peeks. And what contents! Mixed in with gap–toothed combs and nonmatching cufflinks and broken–winged sunglasses and squeezed–out tubes of various lotions and ointments were worn–looking brass knuckles, a red domino mask, a Mickey Mouse mask, a ski mask, three right–handed rubber gloves, a false mustache mounted on a white card in a clear plastic bag, a sprinkling of subway slugs, and as advertised, a pair of chrome handcuffs with the key in the lock.
One–handed — the other hand keeping the rifle trained on Dortmunder — Guffey removed the handcuffs, dropped them on the dresser top, and pulled out the key, which he pocketed. Then he tossed the handcuffs at Dortmunder and said, “Good. Put em on, why doncha?”
“Well, hey, you know,” Dortmunder complained. “I just woke up. Could I get dressed? Could I at least go to the bathroom?”
“Just a minute,” Guffey told him. “Don’t move.”
So Dortmunder didn’t move, and Guffey stepped sideways to the doorway, then backed through it and looked to the left (apartment door) and right (kitchen, with stove visible) before saying, “Okay, Mr. Dortmunder. I’m gonna go in the kitchen there and make me some coffee. And I’ll keep an eye down this way. And if your head shows past this door before I say okay, I’ll blow it off. You got that?”
“Oh, sure,” Dortmunder agreed. “I’ll just stay in here until you say.”
“Good.” Guffey started to back away toward the kitchen, then stopped. Grudgingly, he said, “You want coffee?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Okay.” Guffey started to back off again, but Dortmunder raised his hand like a kid who knows the answer. Guffey stopped. “Yeah?”
“If it isn’t too much trouble,” Dortmunder said, “uh, orange juice?”