Watch Your Back!

"Maximilian's Used Cars, Miss Caroline speaking. I'm sorry, you want to do what with it? Yes, I remember that vehicle, I typed up the paperwork on it. You're the rubber man in the carnival, aren't you? So amusing, we all — Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Flexo, was it? All sales are final."

Max and Stan should have been in the other room by now, but both had stopped to listen to how the phone conversation would come out. Harriet listened, smiled pityingly, and said, "Well, 'final' means we don't take them back. There's a forwardness to the story of life, Mr. Flexo. That vehicle came to us, we passed it on to you, if you are finished with it, you pass — Well, it drove off the lot, if you recall. Mr. Flexo, there are strange sounds in the background, just where are you? Setting up the county fair? Where, Mr. Flexo?"

Harriet's light trilling laughter filled the little office like bouquets of roses. "In Kentucky, Mr. Flexo? I tell you what. You get that car here, then we'll talk." Hanging up, she shook her head, turned her smile toward Stan and Max, and said, "They know they're scrap iron, and still they rely on them."

"If buyer's remorse ever accomplished anything in this world," Max said, "we'd all still be living in caves. Come in before Harriet makes any more friends."

Max's i

There was also space in this room grudgingly allowed for furniture other than filing cabinets, in the corner farthest from the door and near a barred window with views of weeds and anonymous vinyl buildings. Here crouched Max's desk, smaller than Harriet's and much messier, with everything on it from empty soda bottles to various newspapers folded open to partly done crossword puzzles, to a V-shaped metal spring-operated object meant to improve the operator's grip. As though Max needed his grip improved.

"Siddown," Max said, involving the last of the room's furniture, being his own wooden swivel desk chair and the small, sagging brown mohair sofa facing it.

Stan sat on the sofa arm, that being as much of that sofa as he cared to know, and said, "The truck had a life in Vermont."

"It did. It was an undercover for the feds."

This was a surprise. "The feds had that truck."

"And here's a fact you may not have considered before this, Stan," Max said, raising a pedagogical finger. "At all levels of law enforcement, they take very good care of their vehicles. I've had undercover narc cars come through here, look on the outside like they been run off cliffs, but the insides and the wheels are better than when they came out of the factory."

"When they need to drive, I guess," Stan said, "they really need to drive."

"You've got it."

"But why do the feds need to drive in Vermont?"

"Smuggling."

"Oh. Canada. What, whiskey?"

"Chinamen," Max told him. "And also Chinawomen. And I believe sometimes Chinachildren, too."

Stan said, "Chinese? From Canada?"

"Asians, anyway," Max said. "And yes, from Canada. The same like you got all these Hispanics coming up to the border down south, you got these other people coming down from Canada. A Chinaman can go to Toronto and you'll never notice him, they already got a Chinatown. That same Chinaman in Guadalajara? Not your best idea."

"So they used this truck," Stan said, "to infiltrate the smugglers."

"Worked like a charm," Max told him. "From what I understand, they used this truck to send a whole lot of people back where they didn't wa

"So now the truck is retired. Why?"

"Well, it got burned. The word got around up there, you do business with this truck, all of a sudden you meet a lotta people that don't smile."

"Not good," Stan suggested.

"You're okay if you stay away from that border," Max assured him. "But the thing is, the way it got outed, the feds can't do the normal way to get it back into civilian life. It still has some of its previous life on it."

"Meaning what?"

"The truth is," Max said, "it has very strange papers. The fella had it, he deals in big trucks mostly, sends em overseas so nobody ever tries to bring them back, I envy that guy, he tells me, you get a cop, he runs a check on the registration on this truck, he gets like an asterisk, says, don't worry, keep your nose clean, good-bye."

"Pretty good."

"For you, Stan," Max said, "it couldn't be better. For a furniture dealer, maybe, somebody in the legit world, a little freaky. So my friend and I worked out a deal, and now, depending on this BMW, you and me are go

Stan told him about the owner of the BMW, off for years now in a Club Med, hiding out from process servers, nobody checking the garage where the BMW's stored. Just give it a new christening, it's gold.

"This sounds good," Max admitted.

"It is good."

"I would say, Stan, you and me, we've done a good morning's work."

"No, you have," Stan said, getting up from the sofa arm. "My work starts now. I gotta meet my guys at nine-thirty in the city."

A small amount of paperwork adjustment, and Stan was on his way, the nephew waving bye-bye. The truck felt fine. And keep it around after the job, eh? Hmmm.

And who knew the feds listened to Schubert?

44

"COME ON UP," Arnie said.

Dortmunder, at the foot of the stairs, having just been buzzed into the building by Arnie, looked up at him and said, "Arnie, the idea is, you're coming down, I'm taking you to the place."

"I've been having second thoughts about that," Arnie said. "Come on up."

Not going on up, Dortmunder said, "Don't do that, Arnie. Never have second thoughts, they just ball you up. Come on, we don't wa

"This is where I'm having second thoughts," Arnie said. "What am I doing in? Come to that, what am I doing out? Look at me, I'm still the color of a roll of burlap."

This was true, but Dortmunder said, "Arnie, don't even think like that, it's fading away to nothing."

"And we got more sun today, I heard the warning on the radio."

"You'll be indoors, in an entire penthouse. Come on, Arnie, we can't stand here in the stairwell forever, some neighbor's go

"So come up, we'll discuss it."

Dortmunder well knew, if he were to go up these stairs, he would never get Arnie down them, so, without moving, he said, "Arnie, come down, we'll talk it over while we walk through the park, you'll see where—"

"Walk?" Astonished, Arnie said, "I don't walk, Dortmunder! I don't even walk anyway, and you're talking through the park? It's all sun out there."

"Okay," Dortmunder said, "I'll meet you halfway. No walking, we'll take a cab. I'll buy."

"A cab. Over to the place, you mean, with the thing and the thing and everybody zips in."

"Sure. Come on."

"How's this meeting me halfway? You want the cab to go halfway there and come back?"

"Arnie," Dortmunder said, "I'm not coming up."

"I just don't see—"

"Preston Fareweather, Arnie."

Arnie shook all over and looked agonized. His hand clutched to the banister in front of him.