Drowned Hopes by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1990)

 

Dortmunder said, “How long were you in, Tom, all in all?”

“All in all?” Tom made that sound again. “All my life, all in all. Twenty-three years, this last time. It was supposed to be for good, you know. I’m habitual.”

“I remember that about you,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, the answer is,” Tom said, “while I been eating regular meals and getting regular exercise and a good night’s sleep all these years on the inside, the world’s managed to get worse without me. Maybe I’m not the one they should of been protecting society from all along.”

“How do you mean, Tom?”

“The reason I’m out,” Tom said. “Inflation, plus budget cuts, plus the rising inmate population. All on its own, Al, without any help from yours truly, society has raised up a generation of inmates. Sloppy ones, too, Al, fourth-rates you and me wouldn’t use to hold the door open.”

“There is a lot of that around,” Dortmunder agreed.

“These are people,” Tom went on, “that don’t know a blueprint from a candy wrapper. And to pull a job with a plan? When these bozos take a step forward with the right foot, they have no really clear idea what they figure to do with the left.”

“They’re out there, all right,” Dortmunder said, nodding. “I see them sometimes, asleep on fire escapes, with their head on a television set. They do kinda muddy the water for the rest of us.”

“They take all the fun outta prison, I can tell you that,” Tom said. “And the worst of it is, their motivation’s no damn good. Now, Al, you and me know, if a man goes into a bank with a gun in his hand and says gimme the money and a five-minute start, there’s only two good reasons for it. Either his family’s poor and sick and needs an operation and shoes and schoolbooks and meat for dinner more than once a week, or the fella wants to take a lady friend to Miami and party. One or the other. Am I right?”

“That’s the usual way,” Dortmunder agreed. “Except it’s mostly Las Vegas now.”

“Well, these clowns can’t even get that much right,” Tom said. “The fact is, what they steal for is to feed their veins, and they go right on feeding their veins inside, they buy it off guards and trusties and visitors and each other and probly even the chaplain, but if you ask them why they ignored the career counselor and took up this life of crime for which they are so shit-poor fitted, they’ll tell you it’s political. They’ll tell you they’re the victims.”

Dortmunder nodded. “I’ve heard that one,” he said. “It’s useful in the sentencing sometimes, I think. And in the parole.”

“It’s a crock, Al,” Tom insisted.

Gently, Dortmunder said, “Tom, you and I’ve told the authorities a couple fibs in our time, too.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “Granted. Anyway, the result is, inflation makes it cost more to feed and house a fella in the pen in the manner to which we’ve all become accustomed, and budget cuts—Did you know, Al,” he interrupted himself, “that health-wise, long-term cons are the healthiest people in America?”

“I didn’t know that,” Dortmunder admitted.

“Well, it’s the truth,” Tom said. “It’s the regularity of the life, the lack of stress, the sameness of the food intake, the handiness of the free medical care, and the organized exercise program. Your lifers are the longest-lived people in the society. Any insurance company will tell you so.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said; “that must be some kind of consolation, I guess.”

The Hot Rock (1972)

 

The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake ( Simon and Schuster 1970)

 

Dortmunder blew his nose. “Warden,” he said, “you don’t know how much I appreciate the personal attention you been paying me.” There wasn’t anything for him to do with the Kleenex, so he just held it balled up in his fist.

Warden Outes gave him a brisk smile, got up from behind his desk, walked around to Dortmunder’s side, patted him on the arm, and said, “It’s the ones I can save that give me the most pleasure.” He was a latter–day Civil Service type — college–trained, athletic, energetic, reformistic, idealistic, and chummy. Dortmunder hated him.

The warden said, “I’ll walk you to the gate, Dortmunder.”

“You don’t have to do that, Warden,” Dortmunder said. The Kleenex was cold and gooey against his palm.

Good Behavior by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1985)

 

That produced the comfortable laugh of the professional thinking about amateurs, which Pickens ended, in his carefully paced presentation, by balling up the Guerreran flag, hurling it offstage in the same direction as the rifle, and showing another assault rifle lying on the card table. He picked this one up, held it out in front of him, and said, “Gentlemen, the Valmet.”

“That’s that Finnish fucker!” cried a voice.

“Very good,” Pickens told him, grinning as though he didn’t at all mind having his surprise spoiled. “That’s just what this is, the Finnish M-60 Valmet. Essentially, this is the design of the AK-47 adapted to the needs of Finland. It’s like an AK-47, but it isn’t an AK-47, so it isn’t as familiar as you might think, and if you don’t keep the differences in mind, the head you blow off may be your own.”

He had their attention now. Weapons, travel and money were the only things these fellows cared about, probably in that order. Holding the Valmet out, pointing to its features, Pickens said, “In the first place, you’ll notice it’s all metal, much of it plastic-coated, it doesn’t have the AK’s wooden stock or handguard. That’s fine in a cold country like Finland, but we’re going to a hot country, so keep this thing in the shade. The other thing, you’ll notice it doesn’t have any trigger guard, just this little piece of metal out in front here and nothing down under the trigger at all. The later model, the M-62, they added a skimpy little guard on the bottom, and some of you’ll have those, but mostly we’ve got the original, the M-60. And you see also there’s almost no curve to the trigger itself. Now, the reason for all that is, the Finnish troops have to be able to fire this thing with big heavy mittens on, because of the cold you got up there in Finland. And what it means to you is, you don’t have that guard there where you’re used to it, to protect you if your mind wanders. And your finger wanders.”

A voice from the auditorium called out, “Why the fuck are we taking some fucking North Pole fucking weapon to the fucking tropics?”  A lot of other voices growled agreement with the sentiment.

“Well, now, that’s The People Upstairs,” Pickens said. “They make the decisions, I just implement them. They didn’t want to use Warsaw Bloc weaponry because they don’t want anybody saying the revolution’s Cuban supplied. And they didn’t want to use NATO weapons because they don’t want anybody saying we’re fronting the CIA. And maybe they got a price on these Valmets, I don’t know.”

“It’s always the same fucking thing,” cried a disgusted voice. “They want us to fight the wrong fucking war with the wrong fucking weapons on the wrong fucking terrain at the wrong fucking time of the year.”

“You’re goddamn right!” several voices cried, with variants. More and more of them got into the thing, some rising in their places to make their points, shaking their fists, yelling out their professional opinions.

It was becoming bedlam out there. Pickens hunched his head down into his shoulders, and waited for the storm to subside.

It wasn’t easy, dealing with homicidal maniacs.

Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1983)

 

The back room at the O.J. looked like one of those paintings from the Russian Revolution—the storming of the Winter Palace—or, perhaps more appropriately, from the Revolution of the French: a Jacobin trial during the Terror. The place had never been so crowded, so smoky, so hot, so full of strife and contention. Tiny Bulcher and three assistant judges sat together on one side of the round card table, facing the door, with several other tough guys ranged behind them, on their feet, leaning against the stacked liquor cartons. A few more savage-looking types lurked to both sides. A couple of chairs had been left empty near the door, facing Tiny and the rest across the green felt table. Harsh illumination from the single hanging bare bulb with its tin reflector in the middle of the room washed out all subtlety of color, reducing the scene to the work of a genre painter with a poor palette, or perhaps a German silent film about Chicago gangsters. Menace and pitiless self-interest glinted on the planes of every face, the slouch of every shoulder, the bend of every knee, the sharpness of every eye, the slant of every smoldering cigarette. Everybody smoked, everybody  breathed, and—because it was hot in here—everybody sweated. Also, when there was no one being interviewed everybody talked at once, except when Tiny Bulcher wanted to make a general point, at which time he would thump the table with fist and forearm, bellow, “Shadap!” and insert a sentence into the resulting silence.

Nobody’s Perfect by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1977)

 

Tiny said to him, “You the driver?”

“The best,” Murch said, matter-of-factly.

“It was a driver got me sent up my last stretch,” Tiny said. “Took back roads around a roadblock, made a wrong turn, come up behind the roadblock, thought he was still in front of it. We blasted our way through, back into the search area.”

Murch looked sympathetic. “That’s tough,” he said.

“Fella named Sigmond. You know him?”

“I don’t believe so,” Murch said.

“Looked a little like you,” Tiny said.

“Is that right?”

“Before we got outa the car, when the cops surrounded us, I broke his neck. We all said it was whiplash from the sudden stop.”

Another little silence fell. Stan Murch sipped thoughtfully at his beer. Dortmunder took a mouthful of bourbon. Tiny Bulcher slugged down the rest of his vodka-and-red-wine. Then Murch nodded, slowly, as though coming to a conclusion about something. “Whiplash,” he commented. “Yeah, whiplash. That can be pretty mean.”

“So can I,” said Tiny, and the door opened again . . .

Jimmy the Kid by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1974)

A luminous afternoon in the black-and-white forest. The monster, played by Boris Karloff, pauses as he hears the sweet notes of a violin. His face lights, he lumbers through the woods, following the sound. He comes to a cosy cottage amid the trees, very gingerbread. Inside, the violin is being played by a blind hermit, who is being played by O. P. Heggie. The monster approaches, and pounds on the door.

Someone pounded on the door.

“Eee!” Murch’s Mom said, and jumped straight up out of her folding chair. Which folded, and fell over with a slap.

They had all been sitting around the battery-operated small television set they’d brought out to follow the kidnapping news. There’s been no kidnapping news—apparently the cops were keeping a news blackout on—so now they were watching the late movie. The three kerosene lamps, the hibachi in the fireplace, and the flickering television screen, all gave some light and less heat.

Someone pounded at the door again. On the TV screen, the blind hermit opened his door to the monster. The others had all scrambled to their feet too by now, though without knocking over their chairs. Harshly Kelp whispered, “What do we do?”

“They know we’re here,” Dortmunder said. “Let me do the talking.” He glanced upstairs, and said, “May, if the kid acts up, say something about him having nightmares and go up there and keep him quiet.”

May nodded. The pounding sounded at the door for a third time. Murch’s Mom said, “I’ll go.”

They all waited. Dortmunder’s hand was near the pocket with his revolver. Murch’s Mom opened the door and said, “Well, for God—”

And the kid walked in.

“Holy Toledo!” Murch said.

Kelp, slapping his hands to his face, yelled, “Masks!" “Masks! Don’t let him see your faces!”

Dortmunder didn’t believe it. He stared at the kid, looking as wet and muddy and ragged as a drowned kitten, and then he looked upstairs. And then he ran upstairs. He didn’t know what he thought, maybe that the kid was twins or something, but he just didn’t believe he wasn’t in that room.

Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1972)

 

The lieutenant looked out the side window, though without any hope. They were climbing a hill, and just ahead was the sign for McKay’s Diner. The lieutenant remembered the free cheeseburger he’d been promised, and smiled. He was about to turn his head toward the captain and suggest they stop for a snack when he saw the diner was gone again. ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘That diner, sir,’ the lieutenant said as they drove by. ‘They went out of business already.’

‘Is that right.’ The captain didn’t sound interested.

‘Even faster than I thought,’ the lieutenant said, looking back at the space where the diner had been.

‘We’re looking for a bank, Lieutenant, not a diner.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The lieutenant faced front, began again to scan the countryside. ‘I knew they wouldn’t make it,’ he said.

The Fugitive Pigeon by Donald E. Westlake (Random House 1965)

 

It was a slow night, like any Tuesday. The late late show was High Sierra and there’s always a couple of Bogart fans around, in fact I’m a Bogart fan myself, so I figured to stay open till the movie was over and then lock up and go upstairs and get some sleep. After one-thirty I only had two customers, both regulars, both sitting at the bar, both watching the TV, both beer drinkers. I stood down to the far end of the bar, with my arms folded and my white apron on, and I watched the TV myself. Commercials, one or both customers had refills. I don’t drink on duty, so it was none for me.

My name is Charles Robert Poole, everybody calls me Charlie. Charlie Poole. Just so you know.

High Sierra ended with the cop shooting Bogart in the back and Ida Lupino glad society couldn’t treat Bogart bad any more, and I said, “Okay, gents, time to drink up. I need my beauty sleep.” It’s a neighborhood bar, regular customers, I like to keep an informal atmosphere.

These two were both good about it, not like some which come in mostly on weekends and want the night to go on forever. But not these two, they drank up and said, “Night, Charlie,” and out they went, waving to me.

I waved back and told them good night and rinsed their glasses and set them on the drainboard, and the door opened again and two guys came in with suits and topcoats, the topcoats all unbuttoned so you could see they were wearing white shirts and ties. Not what you mostly get in a bar in Canarsie two-thirty on a Tuesday night.

I said, “Sorry, gents, just closing up.”

“Yeah, that’s okay, nephew,” said one of them, and they came over and sat down on stools at the bar.

I looked at them then, and they were both grinning at me. Tough-guy types. I recognized them both, associates of my Uncle Al, they’d both been in before to drop off a package or a message or to pick one up. I said, “Oh..I didn’t recognize you at first.”

The one that talked said, “You know us, though, don’t you, nephew? I mean you know us to see, am I right?”

The Split (1968)

 

Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake (M. Evans and Company, Inc 1975)

“Have I kept you waiting? I’m so sorry,” Brother Oliver said. “I was painting, in the courtyard. This winter light is so perfect for—”

Dwarfmann gestured that away with an impatient flick of his numerical wrist; I couldn’t see the numbers. “My days,” he said, “are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Let’s get down to business.”

I’m sure Brother Oliver was as taken aback as I was. The imagery, in Dwarfmann’s rattly style of speech, seemed wildly inappropriate. Then Brother Oliver said, in distinct astonishment, “Was that from Job?”

“Chapter seven, verse six,” Dwarfmann snapped. “Come, come, if you have something to say to me, say it. Our time is a very shadow that passeth away.”

“I don’t know the Apocrypha,” Brother Oliver said.

Dwarfmann gave him a thin smile. “You know it well enough to recognize it. Wisdom of Solomon, chapter two, verse five.”

“Then I can only cite One Thessalonians,” Brother Oliver said. “Chapter five, verse fourteen. Be patient toward all men.”

“Let us run with patience,” Dwarfmann or somebody said, “the race that is set before us.”

“I don’t believe,” Brother Oliver told him, “that was quite the implication of that verse in its original context.”

“Hebrews, twelve, one.” Dwarfmann shrugged. “Then how about Paul to Timothy, with its meaning intact? Be instant in season, out of season.” Again he tapped those little red numbers, and now I saw them: 2:51. I don’t know why I felt so relieved to know the exact time— something about Dwarfmann’s presence, I suppose. And he was saying, “I’m a busy man.” That couldn’t be Biblical. “My man Snopes told you all you needed to know, we’ll give you every assistance in relocation, given the circumstances we’ll go farther than the law requires. Much farther. But that wasn’t enough for you, you have to hear it from me direct. All right, you’re hearing it from me direct. We’re building on this site.”

“There is a building on this site,” Brother Oliver said.

“Not for long.”

“Why not look at it?” Brother Oliver made hospitable gestures, urging our guest to come look the place over. “Now that you’re here, why not see the place you intend to destroy?”

“Beauty is vain,” Dwarfmann said. “Proverbs, thirty-one, thirty.”

Brother Oliver began to look somewhat put out. He said, “Wot ye not what the Scripture saith? Romans, eleven.”

With that sudden thin smile again, Dwarfmann answered, “What saith the Scripture? Galatians,  four.”

“Pride goeth before destruction,” Brother Oliver told him, “and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs, sixteen.”

Dwarfmann shrugged, saying, “Let us do evil, that good may come. Romans, three.”

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Isaiah, five.”

“Sin is not imputed when there is no law,” Dwarfmann insisted. “Romans, five.”

Brother Oliver shook his head. “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.”

“Money answereth all things,” Dwarfmann said, with a great deal of assurance.

“He heapeth up riches,” Brother Oliver said scornfully, “and knoweth not who shall gather them.”

“Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.” Dwarfmann permitted his own scornful expression to roam around our room, then finished, “But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Another quick look at his watch. “I think we’ve played enough,” he said, and turned toward the door.

Brother Oliver had two pink circles on his cheeks, and his pudgy hands were more or less closed into ineffective fists. “The devil is come down unto you,” he announced, “having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

Dwarfmann’s hand was on our doorknob. He looked back at Brother Oliver, flashed that thin smile again as though to say he was glad we all understood one another now, and with another quick glance around the room said, “He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more. Job, chapter seven, verse ten.” And he left.

Brother Oliver expelled held-in breath with a sudden long whoosh. Shaking my head, I said, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

Brother Oliver gave me a puzzled look. “Is that New Testament? I don’t recognize that.”

“Uhh, no,” I said. “It’s Shakespeare. Merchant of Venice.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry,” I said.

Cops and Robbers by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1972)

 

Joe

The subway had fucked up again. Paul and I were positioned at a manhole on Broadway, where the people were coming up. They’d been down there for over an hour, and there’d been some smoke, and now they’d had to walk single file in the tunnel for a ways, and come up a metal ladder, and at last out onto the street. It was nine-thirty at night, traffic was being detoured around us, and we had our patrol car between the manhole and the street, flasher going.

Most of the people coming up were just stunned, all they wanted was to get the hell away from there. A few were grateful and said thank you to Paul or me for helping them up the last few steps. And a few were pissed off and wanted to take it out on a representative of the municipal government, which at the moment was Paul and me. These last few we ignored; they’d make an angry remark or two, and then they’d stomp off, and that would be the end of it.

Except this one guy. He stood around on the other side of us, away from the manhole, and yammered at us. He was about fifty, dressed in a suit, carrying an attaché case. He was like a manager or supervisor type, and all he wanted to do was stand there and yell, while Paul and I helped the rest of the people up out of the manhole.

He went on like this: “This city is a disgrace! It’s a disgrace! You aren’t safe here! And who cares? Does anybody care? Everything breaks down, and nobody gives a God damn! Everybody’s in the union! Teachers on strike, subways on strike, cops on strike, sanitation on strike. Money money money, and when they work do they do anything? Do they teach? Don’t make me laugh! The subways are a menace, they’re a menace! Sanitation? Look at the streets! Big raises, big pay, and look at the streets! And you cops! Gimmie gimme gimme, and where are you? Your apartment gets robbed, and where are you? Some dope addict attacks your wife in the street, and where’s the cops?”

Up till then we ignored him, the both of us; like he was a regular part of the city noise. Which in a way he was. But then he made a mistake, he overstepped himself. He reached out and tugged at my elbow, and he yelled, “Are you listening to me?”

They’re not going to start grabbing me. I turned around and looked at him, and he was so amazed he went back a step. The city had finally noticed him. I said to him, “I’m coming to the conclusion you fell coming up those stairs and broke your nose.”

It took him a second to work it out, and then he back-pedaled some more, and yelled, “You mustn’t care much about keeping that badge of yours.”

I was about to tell him what he could do with the badge, pin first, but he was still backing away, and the hell with him. I turned back and helped Paul with a fat old lady who was having trouble climbing because of bad ankles. But I kept thinking about what the guy had said.