The Road To Ruin

Dortmunder said, “That’s what I figured, too. That’s the natural customer.”

Kelp said, “And they don’t argue, insurance companies, all they want is to minimize the expense.”

Stan said, “They do cooperate with the authorities, though.”

Kelp shrugged. “We expect that, we account for that. But all along they know, they give us ten percent of the value, it’s better than giving Monroe Hall a hundred percent.”

“Twenty percent,” Dortmunder said.

“No, John,” Kelp said, “they gotta reimburse the owner the full value.”

“Twenty percent to us,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp perked up. “You think so? We could hit ‘em for that much?”

Chester said, “All they have to do is say no once, we pick the least valuable of the six, put it in a field, burn it up, call the insurance company, say you can go pick up that one right now, and by the way, the rest’ll cost you twenty-five percent.”

Admiring, Dortmunder said, “Chester, that’s pretty tough. Somewhere you learned to be a hell of a negotiator.”

“From watching Monroe Hall,” Chester said. “He’d coin-toss his mother for a returnable soda bottle, and knife her if he lost.”

Stan said, “So we just need a place to stash these cars while everybody talks it over.”

Tiny looked doubtful. “Then it’s like a kidnapping,” he said. “It’s step after step, the phone calls, the ransom, the pickup, the return.”

“That’s okay,” Dortmunder said. “We can handle that.”

“No problem,” Kelp said.

Tiny considered that. “Maybe,” he decided. “Maybe no problem. But before that there’s a problem.” He turned to Chester. “Tell us about the problem.”

“Well, the security,” Chester said.

Tiny nodded. “There’s always go

“But they beefed it up,” Chester said, “since the scandal broke. You got a lotta people out there, not just us, wouldn’t mind chastising Monroe Hall. He’s what they call a pariah. So now they got electric fence around the whole compound, miles of it, motion sensors, big lights that light up, private guards.”

“So the first question is,” Stan said, “how do we drive a bunch of cars off the property without anybody seeing us or hearing us.”

“Well, no,” Chester said. “The first question is, how do you get on the property.”

“I give up,” Stan said. “How do we?”

“I never pla

“So what you’re saying,” Stan suggested, “is, you don’t know how we get in.”

“Come on, Stan,” Chester said. “You said you’re the driver. Do you ever know stuff like that?”

“I leave that to John here,” Stan said.

Chester nodded. “Good. Then so do I.”

Everybody looked at Dortmunder. He nodded, accepting the weight. “So we gotta see the place,” he said.

They looked alert, watching him, waiting.

“Okay,” Dortmunder said. “So the first thing we do, we steal a car.”

6

THEY WHILED AWAY THE empty hours in the little brown Taurus singing the union anthem:

“Who will always guide the way?

Give us comfort in the fray?

Gain us benefits and pay?

The ACWFFA!”

At which point Mac interrupted, saying, “Here comes the Healey.” He was in the backseat, looking toward the guard-shacked entrance to the Monroe Hall compound that stretched away behind them.

“And here we go again,” Buddy said, pessimistic as hell, but he did switch on the Taurus engine.

“You know it’s just the wife,” Ace said, up front in the passenger seat.

“It is,” Mac said, seeing her blond hair fly as the Healey picked up speed once it reached the county road, coming this way as the compound’s gate closed behind her.

“Follow her,” Ace said.

Buddy said, “Again? Why? What’s the point?”

“Maybe he’s hiding in there,” Ace suggested.

Buddy snorted. “In a two-seater? Where? Besides, he never did before.”

The Healey zipped past then, still accelerating, and Buddy’s point was made. The Healey was so small and so open you could see the wife’s brown suede purse on the passenger seat to her left, the Healey being a British car, with right-hand steering. It was a beautiful car, in truth, small and neat, over fifty years old and still looking like a spring chicken. It was topless, with a wide rectangular windshield—windscreen, its makers would say—edged in chrome and tilted back. The slightly raised air scoop on the hood, like a retroussé nose, had twin low flaring nostrils over a gleaming grill shaped like an Irish harp. The body was a creamy white, like very good porcelain, and the fenders, standing out to the side of the body, were arched like white leaping dolphins. With the beautiful long-haired blonde at the wheel, flashing through the lush green Pe

Mac and Buddy and Ace had seen that sight enough—in fact, too much. What they wanted to see, and so far had not seen, was the man himself at the wheel, Monroe Hall, come out to meet his judgment.

Once or twice a week the wife emerged, usually in the Healey though sometimes in one of the other cars, the 1967 Lamborghini Miura or the 1955 Morgan Plus 4, for example, and in her automobile of choice she would drive apparently aimlessly around the rural back roads surrounding the compound.

Mac and Buddy and Ace had discussed among themselves whether or not these trips actually were aimless, merely the random actions of a bored woman stuck in a gilded cage the size of Catalina Island, or if there were some purpose to them after all. So far as they knew, she’d never stopped anywhere on any of these jaunts, never met anybody, never did anything but drive around for an hour or so, and then back to the Monroe Hall compound.

That was as far as they knew. Unfortunately, they didn’t know everything. From time to time, on these trips, on some particularly empty back road, the wife would floor it, apparently just for fun, and all at once the Taurus would be alone on the road, poking along, following nothing. That’s when Ace started calling the Taurus the tortoise, which Buddy, who owned the car, took offense at, not even cooling off after Mac pointed out that the tortoise had won that particular race.

Something had to be done. They’d been staking out the Hall compound for weeks now, months, and except for the occasional gallop with the Mrs. they had nothing to show for it. They could only keep this stakeout going until their unemployment insurance ran out, which would be in just a very few weeks. Something had to be done.

As they drove along the country road, well back from the gleaming white Healey, the wife taking her time today, so far not zipping off unexpectedly over some hillock and out of sight, Mac said, “Listen, something has to be done.”

“We know,” Ace said.

Mac said, “Okay. What if we kidnap her?”

Ace shook his head. “He’ll never pay.”

“She’s his wife.”

“He won’t pay,” Ace said. “You know the guy as well as we do, and he won’t pay. We could send him her fingers, one at a time, and he wouldn’t pay.”

Mac scrinched up his face. “I couldn’t send him her fingers.”

“Neither could I,” Ace said. “Even if it would do any good. I’m just saying.”

“Besides,” Buddy said, steering around curves, keeping the Healey just barely in sight, looking from time to time in the rearview mirror, “he’s what it’s all about. That was the agreement at the begi

“None of us,” Mac said, “thought it would take this long.”

Ace said, “Sure. We thought he’d go out sometimes.”

“There used to be all these pictures of him in the magazines,” Mac said, “at the opera, at charities—”