Nobody's Perfect

Irritably, Chauncey said, "Why not, Zane? They don't want anything, let them leave."

"With what they know?" Zane shook his head. "They could still make money, Chauncey. From your insurance company, for instance."

Chauncey gave Dortmunder a sudden sharp look, and Dortmunder told him, "You know better than that. All we want is our airfare, and we're quits."

"I can't think about you now, Dortmunder," Chauncey said, shaking his head like a man pestered by gnats.

"Mr. Chauncey," Kelp said, "I didn't sleep under your dresser for a week and a half to be treated like this."

But Chauncey wasn't listening. He'd turned back to Macdough, saying, "I want my painting."

"Buy it at the auction."

"I've already paid for it. It's mine."

"I won't give it to you," Macdough said, "and that's that. And I won't give up the lion's share of the money either."

Dortmunder said, "Why not pull the insurance game again?" Everybody looked at him. Macdough said, "What insurance game?"

"You go back to Parkeby-South," Dortmunder told him, "and say you're worried because of the robbery, you want the same experts to come back and look at the painting. They do, they see it's a fake, you claim the original was stolen during the robbery–"

"Which is what happened," Macdough pointed out, sounding bitter.

"So you aren't even lying. The gallery's insurance company pays you, so you've got your money. You sell Chauncey the original for a few dollars and everybody's happy."

There was interest in Macdough's face, and also in Chauncey's, but then Zane had to stick his two cents in, saying, "That's cute, Dortmunder, but it won't work."

"Sure it will."

"Insurance companies won't pay twice for the same painting," Zane said.

Which was the flaw in Dortmunder's argument, as Dortmunder had already known, but he could only do his best with the materials at hand. "They'll have to pay," he insisted. "How can the gallery's insurance company refuse to pay Macdough for a painting everybody says is real?"

"By stalling," Zane said. "That's the way insurance companies operate anyway. There's already a lawsuit between Chauncey and his insurers in the states. The insurance company here would just tell Macdough they won't settle his claim until the lawsuit on the other side is settled. One of those two might get some insurance money, but not both."

"Chauncey's already had his," Macdough grumbled, and from the lowering expression on his face Dortmunder knew the ploy had failed.

"I'll give you a hundred thousand for the painting," Chauncey told Macdough. "I can't afford it, but we have to break this deadlock somehow."

"Not enough," Macdough said. "I signed a paper with these two for half. I'd only get fifty thousand pounds out of it."

Chauncey shook his head with a rueful smile. "I'm sorry, it's worse than you think," he said. "I meant a hundred thousand dollars."

"What? Sixty thousand pounds? With thirty for me?"

"Keep all sixty," Chauncey told him. "Tax free. It's under the table, you don't have to declare it and these two can't take you to court."

"I wouldn't take him to court," Zane said dryly. "Forget it, Chauncey. Macdough and I – and Porculey, of course – intend to split four hundred thousand dollars. If we get it from you, fine. If not, we'll get it at the auction."

Dortmunder said, "Not if Chauncey makes an anonymous call and tells the London police to check the copy in Parkeby-South. You don't dare stop Chauncey, but he can stop you. Once the cops know the original was stolen, Macdough doesn't dare show up with it. And you're right back with only one buyer: Chauncey."

Chauncey smiled at Zane. "He's right, you know."

"He's not in this conversation," Zane said, angrily.

"I'm the one took the painting away," Dortmunder told Macdough. "I could put it back."

"I can put it back!" Zane yelled, glaring at Dortmunder. To the others he said, "We won't talk in front of these people any more. They're out of it."

Chauncey said, "You can't let them go, and nobody wants you shooting them."

Kelp said, "I'd just like to mention, today's my birthday."

"There are rooms here with doors that lock," Zane said mildly. "We'll put them away till the discussion's over."

Dortmunder said to Macdough, "I could be useful to you." But it wasn't enough; not against Zane's gun. Macdough glanced away, biting the insides of his cheeks, and Zane gestured with the gun barrel, saying, "Come on, you two."

There wasn't any choice. Dortmunder and Kelp went, out the door and farther down the hall to a closed door with a thick wooden bar across it. "Take off the bar and lean it against the wall," Zane ordered, standing back too far for Dortmunder to swing it at him. Then he had them enter the room, which they saw in the flashlight's beam to be filled with the same massed clutter as the room they'd just left.

"There's no light in here," Kelp said, crossing the threshold. "There's nothing interesting to see," Zane assured him. "Step back from the door." When Dortmunder stood facing him, just barely inside the room, Zane smiled at him and said, "Relax. You know they won't let me shoot you."

"They'll let you leave us here. Is that a better way to die?"

Zane shrugged. "Where there's life, I understand," he said, "there's hope." And he shut and barred the door.

Chapter 14

"He's crazy, you know," Chauncey told Macdough, the instant Zane had led his prisoners out the door. "He wants all the money, and he'll kill every one of us before he's done."

"He's my partner," Macdough said. "You're just trying to split us up."

"He's a killer. That's what attracted me to him in the first place."

Porculey, stepping toward the two men, said, "Mr. Chauncey, I agree with you, and I want you to know I am heartily sorry I ever got involved with the man."

"I can handle myself with Zane," Macdough insisted, rather too forcefully. "And with you." Both he and Chauncey ignored Porculey, as though he hadn't spoken, as though he weren't there.

"You're out of your depth," Chauncey said. "I will queer your pitch, Macdough, and even Zane knows he doesn't dare stop me."

"We'll find another buyer. We'll get just as much on the black market. Some Arab sheikh."

Porculey, seeing he'd get cold comfort from both these two, and also seeing how absorbed they were in their argument, sidled as unobtrusively as a stout terrified man can sidle toward the door, picking up the still-wrapped painting on the way by. Quietly, without fuss, he departed the room.

Meanwhile, Chauncey pointed out Macdough's lack of expertise in selling paintings on the black market, and Macdough stated he had nothing but time and could probably sell the painting and collect on Parkeby-South's insurance, and Chauncey said, "And the minute you get your hands on the money, you're a dead man."

Which was when Zane entered, saying "Talking against me, Chauncey?"

"Telling him the truth."

"Macdough knows better than that," Zane said, though from the way Macdough looked at Zane maybe he didn't know better than that. Still, Zane went blithely on, saying, "Porculey and I have no–" Then he stopped, frowned, looked left and right. "Where is my little friend?"

"Porculey?"

"The painting!" Macdough pointed at the table on which it had lain.

"He – he wouldn't dare!"

The three men turned toward the door, about to race in pursuit, Zane already waving his pistol over his head, when Porculey himself came backing in and turned to give their astonished faces a sheepish smile. The tubular package was held at port arms across his chest.

"You!" Macdough shrieked, and led the charge, closely followed by Chauncey and Zane. Porculey, his smile panicky, yelped and ran away into the piles of junk, the other three pursuing, Zane actually firing a shot in the air, a vast blast of explosion which deafened them all in that confined stone room, so that nobody, not even Zane himself, heard his own voice shout, "Stop!"