Read Online Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake - Free Book Online Page B

May. I wouldn’t like you to take chances.”
    â€œJust to deal with customers I know. I’ll think about it, anyway.”
    â€œIt’d be an easy pinch, is all.”
    â€œI won’t do it unless things get really tight around here. How’d you do with Arnie?”
    â€œUm,” Dortmunder said.
    May was putting two plastic-wrapped trays of chicken parts in the refrigerator. She gave Dortmunder a questioning look, closed the refrigerator door, and while folding up the grocery sacks said, “Something went wrong.”
    â€œArnie got arrested. While I was there.”
    â€œThey didn’t take you with?”
    â€œThey didn’t see me.”
    â€œThat’s good. Wha’d they take him for?”
    â€œIt’s a sweep. There was some big jewel robbery out at Kennedy last night.”
    â€œI saw something about it in the paper.”
    â€œSo the law’s busting everybody,” Dortmunder said, “looking for it.”
    â€œThe poor guy.”
    â€œThat took it?” Dortmunder shook his head. “He deserves what he gets, making all this trouble. It’s the guys like Arnie I feel sorry for. Arnie and me.”
    â€œWon’t they have to let him go after a while?”
    â€œArnie’s probably out already,” Dortmunder said, “but he won’t be buying for a while. And I heard about another possible guy and went there, and the cops were grabbing him, too. I guess they’re hitting particular on the fences because it’s a jewel.”
    â€œSo you’ve still got the goods?”
    â€œIn the bedroom.”
    May would know he meant the hiding place in the back of the dresser. “Never mind,” she said. “You’ll have better luck tomorrow.” Fishing out a new cigarette, she lit it from the final coal of the old one, then flipped the ember into the sink, where it briefly sizzled.
    â€œI’m sorry, May,” Dortmunder said.
    â€œIt’s not your fault,” she said. “Besides, you never know what’s going to happen in this life. That’s why I brought home the chicken. We’ll eat out tomorrow.”
    â€œSure.” As much to encourage himself as her, he said, “Stan Murch called. He’s got something, he says. Needs a planner.”
    â€œWell, that’s you.”
    â€œI’m seeing him tonight.”
    â€œWhat’s the score?”
    â€œI don’t know yet,” Dortmunder said. “I hope it isn’t jewelry again.”
    â€œThe noncash economy,” May said, smiling.
    â€œMaybe it’s food stamps,” Dortmunder said.
    15
    When Malcolm Zachary got mad, he got mad like an FBI man. His jaw clenched so four-square and rock-hard he looked like Dick Tracy. His shoulders became absolutely straight and right-angled and level with the floor, as though he were wearing a cardboard box from the liquor store under his coat. His eyes became very intense, like Superman looking through walls. And when he spoke, little muscle bunches in his cheeks did tangos beneath the skin: “Mo- log -na,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “Mo- log -na, Mo -log- na, Mo- log -na.”
    â€œI couldn’t agree more, Mac,” said Freedly, whose manner when enraged was exactly the reverse. Freedly’s eyebrows and moustache and shoulders became all slumped and rounded, as though gravity were overcoming him, and he got the look in his eye of a man trying to figure out how to get even. Which he was.
    Zachary and Freedly had also failed to watch the right TV news at six o’clock, or in fact any news at all, because they were in conference at that time with Harry Cabot, their liaison from the CIA, a smooth fiftyish man with a distinguished handsomeness and an air of knowing more than he was saying. Fresh from suborning an overly enlightened Central American government, Cabot had been rewarded for a dirty job well done by being given this soft assignment