SHORT STORIES

Donald E. Westlake

Table of Contents

AND THEN HE WENT AWAY

ARREST

DREAM A DREAM

JOURNEY TO DEATH

PAID IN FULL

THE DORTMUNDER WORKOUT

AND THEN HE WENT AWAY

Emory Ward sat hunched over his drawing board, manipulating compass and ruler and pencil. If he could get the illo roughed out by lunchtime, he could begin working with color in the afternoon. He sat hunched, weighed down by a deadline, and bit his lower lip as he drew.

The doorbell rang.

“Damn,” said Ward. He reached for the gum eraser, corrected, drew another line.

The doorbell rang.

“Fry in hell.” Ward shifted on the chair, irritable, annoyed at the outside sound. He drew lines, measured angles.

The doorbell rang.

“Disconnect it,” muttered Ward. As he drew, he grumbled about the sound and its maker. Salesman, paperboy, somebody meaningless and unimportant, a cipher, non-entity, mass man…

The doorbell rang.

“Nobody home, nobody home,” Ward whispered desperately. “Go away.” He’d have to put down his tools, straighten, stand, walk to the door, open it, walk down the hall, down the stairs, across the front hall, open the door, listen to words, say, “No, thank you,” close the door, climb the stairs, walk down the hall, open the door, come into the room, close the door, cross to the drawing board, sit down, pick up his pencil and protractor and compass, put them down, light a cigarette, be angry, go back to work—total loss, ten minutes.

The doorbell rang.

“No,” grated Ward, “I will not.” He shut his ears, turned off all the circuits of his mind except those connected with his work, drew lines, measured, drew.

Someone knocked on the door.

Emory Ward stiffened. He stared at the wall. He thought indignantly, someone is outside the door. The upstairs door, this door, in my house, knocking on the door while I’m trying to meet a deadline.

The door opened.

Ward’s back was to the door. He turned slowly, ready to tongue-lash an insurance salesman, browbeat a paperboy, utterly demolish a collector from the United Fund.

The visitor was tall and slender, with white hair, impeccably dressed in gray flannel surmounted by a thin face with thin smiling lips, and he said, “Mister Emory Ward?”

“Listen,” said Ward.

“I am Gamble Two,” said the visitor. “I am from the twenty fifth century.”

Ward got to his feet. “I am going to kick you down the stairs.”

“I will erect a force field around myself,” the visitor told him. “Then I will put you in a temporary state of paralysis. Very flamboyant. I would rather we sat and chatted like gentlemen.”

Ward advanced.

“I will kill you.”

The visitor smiled and disappeared. A voice said, “Please be sensible, Emory Ward.”

Ward stared at the doorway. “Listen,” he said. “Listen, cut it out. I got a deadline.”

The visitor reappeared. “Five minutes. Five minutes. No more, I promise.”

Emory Ward took a deep breath. “You are not from the future.”

“Of course I am,” said Gamble Two. “Tell me, do I speak without an accent?”

“You are a wise guy,” Ward told him. “You are a practical joker.”

Gamble Two looked faintly pained. “May we sit and chat? I would like to explain.”

Ward looked with regret at his drawing board. “I got a deadline.”

“I promise not to take long.” Gamble Two gestured at the two chairs over by the writing desk. “May we sit?”

“You from some fan club?” demanded Ward.

“May we sit?”

Ward shrugged. “Have I got a choice?” Disgruntled, he sat.

“Fine,” said Gamble Two, beaming. He also sat; he even leaned back and made himself comfortable. “First, as to myself. I am Gamble Two. I am an android. I am from the twenty fifth century. I am a policeman, until recently assigned to customs duty. I have just been promoted, and my job assignment changed to the Time Police. You are, frankly, my first important case.”

Ward looked sour. “I am?”

“Yes.” Gamble Two nodded. “You are Emory Ward. You are a commercial artist. An illustrator. You work primarily for science fiction magazines and paperback book companies.”

“So what?”

Gamble Two waved a hand at the illustrations covering the walls. “This,” he said, “is what you are best known for. Machines. Machines of the future. Space ships, cybernetics machines, robots, weapons, all the manufactured and constructed paraphernalia of future civilizations.”

Ward repeated, “So what?”

“Some illustrators work mainly with the depiction of strange and fantastic life forms, creatures from other planets. Some work mainly with the human form, usually the female human form. Some are best known for their illustrations of uniforms. The Space Corp, the Intergalactic Patrol, strange uniforms with strange insignia. Some have made their names drawing other worlds, strange seething jungles, rocky landscapes, tundras. But you draw machines.

Emory Ward said, “I’d like to be drawing a machine right now. I got a deadline.”

Gamble Two raised a restraining hand. “Please. I hasten to the point. All of these illustrators, teeming and pouring through the newsstands, spreading their imaginations across the covers and interiors of magazines, all are wild and far-fetched and illusory. All except you.”

“Me?”

“You.” Gamble Two stood and viewed at close hand some of the illustrations on the wall. He tapped one. “Here,” he said. “This instrument panel. The J-27 model intra-system four-seater. I have operated the J-27. This instrument panel is correct. To the smallest detail, correct. Even to the alphabet used, the words on the various dials and levers. All correct.” He proceeded to another illustration. “Here,” he said, “This robot. I own one exactly like this. He is my janitor. Everything is perfectly in order. It is almost a photograph.” He proceeded around the room, tapping various illustrations, nodding and saying, “Yes,” and, “Here,” and “Exactly.”

Ward snorted. “Ridiculous.”

Gamble Two returned to his seat. “You say ridiculous. Next you will say coincidence. I deny both.” He mused, as Emory Ward squirmed. “Time travel,” said Gamble Two, still musing. “So fascinating, yet so impractical. So unproductive. Man is born, grows to maturity, lives and dies. All within one environment. It is as necessary to him as atmosphere. We know this. A man from the Greece of Pericles, how long could he last in this century? He would not speak the language; he would be terrified by the machines. He could not last.”

“Naturally,” said Ward.

Gamble Two reflected. “A man from this century, in the Greece of Pericles. He might stand a somewhat better chance. He could at least get an academic knowledge of the language. But could he survive?”

“Probably not,” said Ward.

“Definitely not,” agreed Gamble Two. “The change in environment. He would have no resistance to germs. Disease bacteria evolve. He would miss all the conveniences of civilization he had come to accept as a part of the environment. His ideas would be completely out of tune with the time. He would be shunned. He might eve be stoned. He would last perhaps a week.”

“One out of every five science fiction stories I illustrate,” said Ward, “is based on just this conclusion. Finish please, and let me get back to work.”

But Gamble Two could not be hurried. “Could any man survive in an era other than his own?” he wondered. “Could any man usefully employ his knowledge of his original environment?”

“Probably not.”

Gamble Two held up a finger. “One kind of man can survive in environments other than his own,” he suggested. “Think of ship-wrecked sailors on South Sea islands.”

“They usually went mad.”

“Precisely the point,” said Gamble Two. “Before one can integrate himself into a new environment, he must divorce himself from the old. There is only one way to divorce oneself from one’s environment. Insanity. Psychosis.”

“A psychotic divorces himself from all environments,” Ward suggested.

“Exactly, he doesn’t even hear doorbells.”

Emory Ward flushed. “Now, wait a minute; I heard that doorbell. I got a deadline. I never answer the doorbell when I got a deadline.”

“I am almost finished,” Gamble Two assured him. “We have already answered one point. Only a psychotic could make the necessary adjustment to a totally new environment. Now. Is there any man who could survive at the economic level in an environment other than his own? A physicist from this century, for instance, would be an unskilled laborer in Julius Caesar’s Rome. As environment changes, vocations change.”

“What about a doctor?” asked Ward. “A twentieth century doctor in second century Rome.”

Gamble Two shook his head. “Useless. Doctors do not cure, they only prescribe cures. And what good would it do a doctor to prescribe penicillin, aureomycin, or even aspirin, in an environment where such products do not exist?”

“Then,” said Ward, “the answer is no one.”

“There is a possibility, however,” Gamble Two corrected him gently. “What about an artist, an illustrator? All he requires are the drawing tools of the period. Pencil on paper, berry juices on stone, what does it matter to him? He can draw with anything.”

Emory Ward was stunned. “You’re not suggesting…”

“It is a severe crime,” Gamble Two told him, “to attempt to escape one’s obligations by running away through time. You are well aware of that.”

Ward shook his head. “You’re out of your mind.”

Gamble Two ignored him. “Return with me to the South Seas,” he said. “The ship-wrecked sailor again. He always retains his European clothing, although the native dress, or undress, is much more suitable for the environment. Why is that?”

“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Ward said urgently.

“It is not possible,” Gamble Two said sadly, “for man to divorce himself entirely from his native environment. The sailor keeps his European clothes. You wistfully draw pictures of the machines you once knew and loved, the machines that once seemed so necessary to civilized life, and which you now must try to get along without.” Gamble Two pointed an accusing finger. “You are from the twenty fifth century.”

Defiantly, Emory Ward stated, “I am not.”

Gamble Two sighed. “I wish you would just admit it and be done with this foolishness. They should have sent an esper. I wish I could read your mind. The only thing for me to do now is return you for identification. You are from the twenty fifth century, aren’t you?”

“I am not.” Emory Ward erected a force field around himself, then he put Gamble Two in a temporary state of paralysis. Very flamboyant. Finally, he withdrew from a desk drawer a hand weapon precisely like one in an illustration on the wall. Very functional. “I am from the thirtieth century,” he said.

ARREST

William Winthrop turned the key in its lock, pushed open the apartment door and stepped inside. Kicking the door shut behind him, he stopped in the foyer and looked at the key in the palm of his hand. He grinned to himself and slowly turned the hand palm downward. The key made no sound at all as it hit the carpet.

Winthrop moved from the foyer to the living room, leaving hat and tie on a sofa as he went by. He walked into the bedroom, tossing his coat and shirt in the corner of the room as he removed them. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.

He could feel his hands trembling against his cheeks, and was surprised. He felt his chest for his cigarettes, realized he didn’t have his shirt on, and walked over to where the shirt lay, on the floor beside the chair. He picked it up, took the cigarettes from the pocket, and dropped it on the floor again. Removing one cigarette, he dropped the pack on the floor beside the shirt, then lit the cigarette with his pocket lighter. He looked at the lighter for a long moment, then dropped that, too.

He stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, walked over to the dresser on the other side of the room, and opened the top drawer. He felt under a pile of shirts, came up with a .45 automatic. The gun dangling from his hand, he went back and sat down on the bed again. He dropped the cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.

He took the clip from the handle of the gun, looked at the eight bullets, then put the clip back. He pressed the barrel of the gun against the side of his head, just above the ear, and sat there, his finger trembling on the trigger. Perspiration broke out on his forehead. He stared at the floor.

Finally, he looked up from the floor and saw his own reflection in the mirror on the closet door. He saw a young man of twenty four, long brown hair awry, face contorted, dressed in brown pants, brown shoes and a sweaty undershirt, a gun held to his head.

He hurled the gun at the mirror. The crash startled him and he jumped. Then he lay face down on the bed, his head in the crook of his left arm, his right fist pounding the bed. “Damn it,” he cried, over and over, in time to the pounding of his fist. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

At last, he stopped swearing and beating the bed, and a sob shook his body. He cried, bracingly, for almost five minutes, then rolled over and stared at the ceiling, breathing hard.

When he had calmed down, he rolled out of the bed to his feet and walked across the room to where his cigarettes lay. This time, after he’d lit the cigarette, he stuffed cigarettes and lighter in his pants pocket, then recrossed the room, past the bed and the dresser and the shattered mirror and the gun on the floor, and on into the bathroom.

With water filling the sink, he took a comb and ran it through his hair, to get it out of the way while he washed. Then he turned the tap off, dipped a washcloth in the water, and scrubbed his face until it hurt. Grabbing a towel, he dried face and hands, and looked at himself in the mirror. Again he took the comb, this time combing more carefully, patting his hair here and there until it looked right to him.

The cigarette had gone out in the ashtray, so he lit another. Then he went back to the bedroom.

Kicking the gun and the larger pieces of glass out of the way, he opened the closet door and looked over the clothing inside. He selected a dark blue suit, shut the closet door, and tossed the suit on the bed.

Back at the dresser, he took out a clean shirt, underwear and socks. From the tie rack on the back of the bedroom door he took a conservative gray number and brought all back to bed.

He changed rapidly, transferring everything from the pockets of the pants he’d been wearing to the suit. Then he went back to the living room and made himself a drink at the bar in the corner. He gulped the drink, lit another cigarette and went to the front door, to make sure it was unlocked. On the way back, he picked up the key and put it in his pocket.

He sat down, crossed and recrossed his legs, buttoned and unbuttoned his suit coat, played with the empty glass. After a minute, he crushed the cigarette in an ashtray, got up, and made another drink. He swallowed half, lit another cigarette, threw away the empty pack and went to his room for another. When he came back, he reached for the half-full glass on the bar, but his hand shook and the glass went over, shattering on the floor behind the bar. He jumped again.

Leaning back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, he whispered to himself, “Take it easy. Take it easy. Take it easy.”

After a while, he moved away from the wall. He’d dropped the cigarette when the glass broke, and it was still smoldering on the rug. He stepped on it and took out another. He got another glass and made a drink, then went back to the sofa and sat down again.

He was just finishing the drink when the knock came. He was facing the door. “Come in,” he called.

The door opened, and the two of them came in through the foyer to the living room. “William Winthrop?” asked one.

Winthrop nodded.

The man took out his wallet, flipped it open to show a badge. “Police,” he said.

“I know,” said Winthrop. He got to his feet. “Anything I say can be used against me. I demand my right to make one phone call.”

“To your lawyer,” said the detective. It wasn’t a question.

“Of course,” said Winthrop. He crossed to the phone. “Care for a drink? The makings are over there, in the corner.”

“No thanks,” said the detective. He motioned and the other one walked into the bedroom.

“Don’t mind the mess in there,” called Winthrop. “I tried to commit suicide.”

The detective raised his eyebrows and walked over to the bedroom door to take a look. He whistled. “What happened to the mirror?”

“I threw the gun at it.”

“Oh.” The detective came back. “At least you’re sane. A lot of guys try to cash in. Only the nuts do.”

“That’s a relief,” said Winthrop. He dialed.

The detective grunted and sat down. The other one came back from his inspection, shook his head, and sat down near the door.

Winthrop heard the click as a receiver was lifted, and a man’s voice said, “Arthur Moresby, attorney.”

“Hello, Art? This is Bill.”

There was a pause, then “Who?”

“Bill. Bill Winthrop.”

“I’m afraid I don’t recognize the name. Are you sure you have the right number?”

“Oh,” said Winthrop. “Like that. It’s in the papers already, eh?”

“On the radio.”

“You don’t know me, is that right?”

“That’s right,” said Arthur Moresby, attorney. “Goodbye.”

Winthrop heard the click but continued to hold the phone against his ear.

“What’s the matter?” asked the detective.

Winthrop shook his head and returned the phone to its cradle. He grinned crookedly at the detective. “Wrong number,” he said.

“How a wrong number?”

“I’m a sinking ship.”

“And your lawyer?”

“He’s a rat. He doesn’t know me. He never heard the name.”

“Oh,” said the detective. He stood up. “I guess we can go then, huh?”

Winthrop shrugged. “I guess so.”

He followed them out of the apartment. They walked to the elevator, Winthrop pushed the button, and they waited without speaking. When the elevator came, they stepped in and the detective pushed the button marked ‘1’.

On the way down, the detective said, “Mind if I ask you a question?”

“For the insurance,” said Winthrop. “I was in debt. Either I paid or chhhhk.” He ran a finger across his neck.

“That isn’t the question. I want to know why you waited for us to come before you called the lawyer. You had a lot of time before we got there. Why did you wait?”

Winthrop stared at the door. Why had he waited? He thought a minute, then said, “I don’t know. Bravado or something.”

“Okay,” said the detective. The door slid open and they walked across the vestibule to the street. A few passersby watched curiously as Winthrop got into the back seat of the police car.

“I’m twenty four,” said Winthrop, as they drove through the streets to Police Headquarters.

“So?” said the detective.

“Seems like a hell of an age to stop at.”

“How old was your mother?” asked the cop.

Winthrop closed his eyes. “Do you hate me?”

“No,” said the cop.

Winthrop turned and looked at the cop. “I do,” he said.

“I hate my guts.”

DREAM A DREAM

I’m dreaming, Nora thought, and she was right, but it didn’t matter.

The dream was very realistic, even to the glitter on the knife in the hand of the tall Mayan priest. He faced Nora in a small chamber she knew to be at the base of the temple, and even while her attention was on the stone knife she was aware of the rightness of every detail, both in his costume and the room itself, a narrow stone-walled space with a dry-smelling thatch roof. Stylized hummingbirds and vultures flowed on the priest’s robes as he gestured, saying, “Well? Are you ready?”

Of course he isn’t speaking English, and of course I understand him. “Ready for what?”

“After the rains,” the priest said, “we must sacrifice a virgin to ensure fertility in the new fields.

Astonished, almost offended, not yet scared, Nora said, “I’m not a virgin!”

His free hand extended toward her. “Come, you keep everybody waiting.”

A great crowd could be faintly heard outside. Nora shrank away, feeling the rough wall against her back through the thin white cotton tunic. “I’m a married woman,” she said. Safe in that other world, beyond the edge of the dream, Ray was now asleep in the cot next to hers, the two of them peaceful and at rest in the Central American night. “I’m twenty-seven years old,” Nora said. “I’ve been married nearly three years. I am not a virgin!”

“Of course you are.” His impatience made him draw quick cutting motions in the air with the blade. “There is no passion in your life,” he said, “—not for anything with juice in it. You married your husband not for love of him but of archaeology,” the word dripping with contempt. “You’ve never loved anything but dust. You’re a virgin, no question. Come along.” Eyes determined, his wiry hand closed around her arm.

“No!” She sat up straight in the dark, disturbing the mosquitoes, staring at the night. On the other cot, Ray turned heavily in his sleep, smacking his lips, a fiftyish man who slept profoundly after the hard physical days in the field.

“I’m not,” she whispered. The pressure of that bony hand could still be felt, a tight band around her upper arm. The glassless screened rectangle of the window let in air and the tiny night sounds of the jungle. Nora slowly lay back, hands holding the sheet under her chin, eyes very wide in the dark.

During breakfast at one of the long tables in the dining shed, Nora pensively picked at her eggs and beans while Ray talked with the oil company man. His name was Stafford, and he had come to this remote jungle camp five days ago for a stay of about a month. By day he wandered the high land to the west, and in the evenings after dinner he sat here in the dining shed in the circle of light, where he drew his tiny maps and made notes in a small, neat hand. Now he was saying something about tall mounds he had seen in the jungle, similar to those concealing the structures here in the main part of Actun Ek, the Mayan city whose excavation Ray was directing. “Thanks, Bill,” Ray said. “We’ll have a look.”

Nora was relieved when the breakfast was done and they could tramp on out to the site, where the workers already crawled over high-stepped sides of Building B-1, the primary temple of Actun Ek. I was here last night, Nora thought.

The workers, Indian tribesman who made their living from archaeological sites, had nearly finished the first task, clearing away the centuries of growth and decay, the earth and brush and trees that covered the cunningly nested old stones, the steep lines of stairs. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, Mayan temples were built solid, without rooms or corridors, just the steps and walls and sculptures reaching upward. Only at the base had there originally been the small thatch-roofed rooms built out from the temple’s side.

Nora and Ray worked behind the Indians, collecting shards, filling in site maps. This was Nora’s third year at Actun Ek, her eighth year since she had fallen in love with the dignity, strength and confidence of the Mayan civilization, the impervious mystery of their individual persons. Who had they been? When they awoke in the morning, what had they thought of themselves and the jungle around them and the high temples to which they devoted their lives?

Human sacrifice; yes, that was part of it but hardly everything. Something was known of their agriculture, their trade, their religion, even their sports, but never very much. Never enough to hamper Nora’s imagination.

Every day, in her mind, as she gleaned her way across the uneven steps, Nora was a Mayan priestess. Not even Ray knew of this game, this fantasy she had lived and elaborated for eight years. She imagined her clothing, her food, the understated drama of her days. Little was known of the place of women among the Mayan upper class, so her invention could float unimpeded.

At dinner, Bill Stafford showed them, on his neat maps, the location of the mounds he’d seen. This earnest geologist seemed even younger than Nora, which from the beginning had pleased her. She’s married a man much older than herself, was mostly around people of his generation, and resented their usual assumption that she was too young to be serious. Stafford was barely out of engineering college, but there could be no doubt of his seriousness. He had a square-jawed, handsome face, softened by a faint vagueness of expression. His eyeglasses were square-lensed, with plastic frames just a bit darker than his tanned skin. His hair was blond but already very thin, sunlight reflecting from his scalp through his widow’s peak. He wore hiking shoes, khaki slacks, a short-sleeved white dress shirt; in a white hard-plastic pouch in his shirt pocket, his pens and pencils were neatly arrayed. He shaved every day.

She didn’t dream that night but she barely slept either. Every time she dozed off, the fear of the dream startled her awake. She spent the night remembering her life, seeing herself as Dr. Helm’s promising student, then as Mr. Helm’s gifted graduate student, then as Raymond Helm’s assistant, and now as Ray’s wife. She had not slept with him until after his divorce from Joanna. He was Nora’s first husband.

In another shed in the compound, Bill Stafford would be asleep. This is terrible, Nora told herself. I must get over this. I must sleep. Toward morning, she did.

“I’m just here to do the stuff on the ground,” Bill Stafford was explaining to her. “Confirm or deny the technology’s guesses.”

“Does technology guess?” Nora asked, following him. She had volunteered at breakfast to go with him to see if the mounds he’d described did contain buried structures. Perspiration ran down behind her ears, between her breasts.

“It’s all step by step,” Stafford told her. “We’ve got satellite pictures to map the terrain, aerial survey using infrared. SLAR scanning. Now we have to walk the groun—”

“What kind of scanning? Help here, will you?”

They were crossing a gully. He held his hand back for her. His teeth glistened when he smiled. Sweat made gray islands on his shirt. He said, “SLAR—for Side-Looking Airborne Radar.”

“Sounds very suggestive,” she said, laughing and released his hand. Then she had to clasp his arm to keep from slipping backward on a muddy stone.

His hand pressed to the small of her back. “Careful.”

Not careful. “You’re all wet,” she said, showing her tongue, tracing with her fingertip a line of perspiration that ran from his throat down his chest and under the shirt.

Behind the glasses his eyes looked surprised, but when she kissed him he knew what it meant.

Before dinner, she used the primitive bucket-and-cistern-in-a-tree shower, the sun-warmed water plashing over her heated body. She lifted her right breast and, yes, his watchband had left a scratch. She smiled at it.

I wasn’t wrong, she thought late that night, slipping silently through the sleeping camp, away from Bill’s room, back toward her own cot. I was right in the college, right to follow my own needs and grow at my own pace. I wouldn’t have been ready then for this. But now I’m right again!

She was brand-new, tingling with rebirth. The dream had rescued her before she withered, using her Mayans as the symbol. Her stone passion had pointed the way to a richer, truer passion of the flesh.

Not that she would run off with Bill, nor leave Ray. There was no need to throw away the life she already had, the work she’d already accomplished. She would still admire Ray just as much, esteem and help him, serve him and the Mayans and the work, absorbed and satisfied; but now there would be more. A lifetime of Bill Staffords smiled in her mind, all young, all loving and giving, all a kind of delicious dessert. And no one need ever know, no one need ever be hurt. She could have it all.

Ray’s breathing was long and regular. Nora slid between the cool, damp sheets.

The same cell. She stared, unbelieving. The same cell, the same rough thatch ceiling, square stone walls, tall imperious priest in all his finery, grasping the same rough-edged knife. “Now,” he said, “what we do with adulteresses…”

JOURNEY TO DEATH

Although ocean voyages are not new to me, I have never grown accustomed to the sway and roll of ships, especially at night. For that reason, I normally get very little sleep while crossing the Atlantic, not being able to close my eyes until I have reached such a point of exhaustion that it is no longer possible for me to keep them open. Since business often makes it necessary for me to journey to America, my wife has urged me, from time to time, to go by air, but I’m afraid I’m much too cowardly for that. The rolling of a ship at sea causes uneasiness in both my stomach and mind, but the mere of traveling through the air terrifies me. A sea voyage, then, is the lesser of two evils, and I face my insomnia, after all these years, with the calm of old resignation.

And yet, it is impossible to merely lie in bed awake, eyes staring at the ceiling, through all the long rolling nights between Dover and New York, and even reading begins, at last, to pall. On so many voyages, I have been reduced to aimless pacing of the deck, watching the million moons reflected in the waves surrounding me.

I was delighted, therefore, on the last and latest crossing, to discover, the third night out, a fellow-sufferer, an insomniac like myself, named Cowley. Cowley was an American, a businessman, younger than me, perhaps forty five or fifty. A direct and sensible man I found him, and enjoyed his company, late at night, when all the other passengers slept and we were alone in an empty and silent sea. I found no fault in him at all, save for an occasional example of rather grim and tasteless humor, a reference to the decaying bodies in Davy Jones’s locker, or some such thing.

The nights were spent in conversation, in strolls about the decks, or in billiards, a game which we both loved but neither had ever mastered. Being of equal incompetence in the sport, we contentedly wiled away many hours in the large billiard room located on the same deck as my cabin.

The eighth night of the voyage was spent in this room, where we puffed happily at cigars, played with our normal lack of skill, and waited patiently for dawn. It was a brisk and chilly night, with a cold wet wind scampering across the waves like a chilled and lonely ghost searching for land, and we had closed every door and window in the room, preferring an atmosphere polluted by cigar smoke to being chilled to the bone.

It was only fifteen minutes after thus sealing ourselves into the room that the catastrophe struck. I don’t know what it could have been, an explosion in the huge and mysterious engines somewhere in the bowels of the ship, perhaps unexpected contact with a mine still unreclaimed from the Second World War. Whatever it was, the silence of the night was suddenly torn apart by a tremendous and powerful sound, a roar, a crash that dulled the senses and paralyzed the body, and the whole ship, the Aragon, shuddered and trembled with a violent jerking spasm. Cowley and I were both thrown to the floor, and on all the tables, the billiard balls clacked and rolled, as though their hysteria and fear were equal to our own.

And then the ship seemed to poise, to stop and hold itself immobile while time flashed by, and I struggled to my feet, hearing the hum of absolute silence, of a broken world suddenly without time or movement.

I turned toward the main door, leading out to the deck, and saw there, staring in, a wild and terrified face, a woman, still in her nightgown, whose mouth was open and who was screaming. I started toward her, staring at her through the glass in the door, and time began again. The ship lurched, bent, and as I struggled to keep my balance, I saw her torn away, out to the emptiness, and eager waves dashed against the window panes.

It was like an elevator gone mad, hurtling down from the uppermost story. The water boiled and fumed outside the window, and I clung to the wall, sick and terrified, knowing that we were sinking, and in a matter of seconds I would surely be dead.

A final jolt, and all movement stopped. The ship lay at a slight angle, the floor was at a slant, and we were at the bottom of the sea.

A part of my mind screamed in horror and fear, but another part of me was calm, as though outside myself, separate, a brain not dependent upon this frail and doomed body. It—this part of my mind that I had never known before—it thought, it conjectured, it reasoned. The ship was lying on the sea floor, that much was obvious. But how far down, how far from the surface? Not too far, surely, or the pressure of the water would have burst the glass of the windows. Was the surface close enough for me to dare to leave the ship, this room, this pocket of trapped air? Could I hope to fight my way to the surface before my lungs burst, before my need for air drove open my mouth and let the water in to kill me?

I couldn’t take the chance. We had fallen for so long, and I was not a young man. I couldn’t take the chance.

A groan reminded me of Crowley. I turned and saw him lying on the floor against one wall, apparently rolled there when the ship sank. He moved now, feebly, and touched his hand to his head.

I hurried to him and helped him to his feet. At first, he had no idea what had happened. He had heard the explosion, had stumbled, his head had hit the edge of a billiard table, that was all he knew. I told him of our situation, and he stared at me, unbelieving.

“Underwater?” His face was pale with shock, pale and stiff as dry clay. He turned and hurried to the nearest window. Outside, the feeble light from our prison faintly illuminated the swirling waters around us. Cowley faced me again. “The lights—” he said.

I shrugged. “Perhaps there are other rooms still sealed off,” I said, and as I finished speaking, the lights flickered and grew dim.

I had expected Cowley to panic, as I had done, but he smiled instead, sardonically, and said, “What a way to die.”

We may not die,” I told him. “If there were survivors—”

Survivors? What if there were? We aren’t among them.”

“They’ll be rescued,” I said, suddenly full of hope. They’ll know where the ship went down. And divers will come.”

“Divers? Why?”

“They always do. At once. To salvage what they can, to determine the cause of sinking. They’ll send divers. We may yet be saved.”

“If there were survivors,” said Cowley. “And, if not?”

I sat down, heavily. “Then we are dead men.”

“You suggest we wait, is that it?”

I looked at him, surprised. “What else can we do?”

“We can get it over with. We can open the door.”

I stared at him. He seemed calm, the faint smile was still on his lips. “Can you give up so easily?”

The smile broadened. “I suppose not,” he said, and once more the lights flickered. We looked up, staring at the dimming bulbs. Yet a third time they flickered, and all at once they went out. We were in the dark, in pitch blackness, alone beneath the sea.

In the blackness, Cowley said, “I suppose you’re right. There’s nothing to lose but our sanity. We’ll wait.”

I didn’t answer him. I was lost in my own thoughts, of my wife, of my children and their families, of my friends on both continents, of land and air and life. We were both silent. Unable to see one another, unable to see anything at all, it seemed impossible to converse.

How long we sat there I don’t know, but suddenly I realized that it was not quite so dark any more. Vaguely, I could make out shapes within the room, I could see the form of Cowley sitting in another chair.

He stirred. “It must be daylight,” he said. “A sunny day. On the surface.”

“How long,” I asked him, “how long do you suppose the air will last?”

“I don’t know. It’s a large room, there’s only two of us. Long enough for us to starve to death, I suppose.”

“Starve?” I realized, all at once, just how hungry I was. This was a danger I hadn’t thought about. Keeping the water out, yes. The amount of air we had, yes. But it hadn’t occurred to me, until just now, that we were completely without food.

Cowley got to his feet and paced about the dim room, stretching and roaming restlessly. “Assuming survivors,” he said, as though our earlier conversation were still going on, as though there had been no intervening silence, “assuming survivors, and assuming divers, how long do you suppose it will take? Perhaps the survivors will be rescued to day. When will the divers come? Tomorrow? Next week? Two months from now?”

“I don’t know.”

Cowley laughed suddenly, a shrill and harsh sound in the closed room, and I realized that he wasn’t as calm as he had seemed. “If this were fiction,” he said, “they would come at the last minute. In the nick of time. Fiction is wonderful that way. It is full of last minutes. But in life there is online last minute. The minute before death.”

“Let’s talk about other things,” I said.

“Let’s not talk at all,” said Cowley. He stopped by one of the tables and picked up a billiard ball. IN the gloom, I saw him toss the ball into the air, catch it, toss it and catch it, and then he said, “I could solve all our problems easily. Merely throw this ball through the window there.”

I jumped to my feet. “Put it down!” If you care nothing for your own life, at least remember that I want to live!”

Again he laughed, and dropped the ball onto the table. He paced again for a while, then sank at last into a chair. “I’m tired,” he said. “The ship is very still now. I think I could sleep.”

I was afraid to go to sleep, afraid that Cowley would wait until I was dozing and would then open the door after all, or throw the billiard ball through the window. I sat and watched him for as long as I could, but my eyelids grew heavy and at last, in spite of my fears, my eyes closed and I slept.

When I awoke, it was dark again, the dark of a clouded midnight, the dark of blindness. I stirred, stretched my cramped limbs, then subsided. I could hear Cowley’s measured breathing. He slumbered on.

He awoke as it was again growing light, as the absolute blackness was once again dispelled by a gray and murky gloom, the look of late evening, a frustrating halflight that made my eyes strain to see details where there were only shapes and vague forms and half-seen mounds.

Cowley grumbled and stirred and came slowly to consciousness. He got to his feet and moved his arms in undefined and meaningless arcs. I’m hungry,” he muttered. “The walls are closing in on me.”

“Maybe they’ll come today,” I said.

“And maybe they’ll never come.” Once more, he paced around the room. At length, he stopped. “I once read,” he said, as though to himself, “that hunger is always the greatest after the first meal missed. That after a day or two without food, the hunger pains grow less.”

“I think that’s right.” I don’t think I’m as hungry now as I was yesterday.”

“I am,” he said, petulantly, as though it was my fault. “I’m twice as hungry. My stomach is full of cramps. And I’m thirsty.” He stood by a window, looking out. “I’m thirsty,” he said again. “Why don’t I open the window and let some water in?”

“Stay away from there!” I hurried across the room and pulled him away from the window. “Cowley, for God’s sake get hold of yourself! If we’re calm, if we’re patient, if we have the self-reliance and strength to wait, we may yet be saved. Don’t you want to live?”

“Live?” He laughed at me. “I died the day before yesterday.” He flung away from me, hurled himself into his chair. “I’m dead,” he said bitterly, “dead and my stomach doesn’t know it. Oh, damn this pain! Martin, believe me, I could stand anything, I could be as calm and solid as a rock, except for these terrible pains in my stomach. I have to eat, Martin. If I don’t get food soon, I’ll go out of my mind. I know I will.”

I stood watching him, helpless to say or do a thing.

His moods changed abruptly, instantaneously, without rhyme or reason. Now, he suddenly laughed again, that harsh and strident laugh that grated on my spine, that was more terrible to me than the weight of the water outside the windows. He laughed and said, “I have read of men, isolated, without food, who finally turned to the last solution to the problem of hunger.”

I didn’t understand him. I said, “What is that?”

“Each other.”

I stared at him, and a chill breath of terror touched my throat and dried it. I tried to speak, but my voice was hoarse, and I could only whisper, “Cannibalism? Good God, Cowley, you can’t mean—”

Again he laughed. “Don’t worry, Martin. I don’t think I could. If I could cook you, I might consider it. But raw? No I don’t believe I’ll ever get that hungry.” His mood changed again, and he cursed. “I’ll be eating the rug soon, my own clothing, anything!”

He grew silent, and I sat as far from him as I could get. I meant to stay awake now, no matter how long it took, no matter what happened. This man was insane, he was capable of anything. I didn’t dare sleep, and I looked forward with dread to the coming blackness of night.

The silence was broken only by an occasional muttering from Cowley across the room, unintelligible, as he muttered to himself of horrors I tried not to imagine. Blackness came, and I waited, straining to hear a sound, waiting to hear Cowley move, for the attack I knew must come. His breathing was regular and slow, he seemed to be asleep, but I couldn’t trust him. I was imprisoned with a madman, my only hope of survival was in staying awake, watching him every second until the rescuers came. And the rescuers must come. I couldn’t have gone through all this for nothing. They would come, they must come.

My terror and need kept me awake all night long and all through the next day. Cowley slept much of the time, and when he was awake he contented himself with low mumbling or with glowering silence.

But I couldn’t stay awake forever. As darkness returned again, as the third day ended without salvation, a heavy fog seemed to lower around me, and although I fought it, although I could feel the terror in my vitals, the fog closed in and I slept.

I woke suddenly. It was day again, and I couldn’t breathe. Cowley stood over me, his hands around my neck, squeezing, shutting off the air from my lungs, and I felt as though my he’d were about to burst. My eyes bulged, my mouth opened and closed helplessly. Cowley’s face, indistinct above me, gleamed with madness, his eyes bored into me and his mouth hung open in a hideous laugh.

I pulled at his hands, but they held me tight, I couldn’t move them, I couldn’t get air, air, I flailed away at his face, and my heart pounded in fear as I struggled. My fingers touched his face, perspiring face, slid away, I lunged at his eyes. My finger drove into his eye, and he screamed and released me. He fell back, his hands against his face, and I felt the warm jelly of his eye only finger.

I stumbled out of the chair, looking madly for escape, but the room was sealed, we were prisoners together. He came at me again, his clutching hands reaching out for me, his face terrible now with the bloody wound where his left eye had been. I ran, and the breath rattled in my throat as I gulped in air. Choking, sobbing, I ran from him, my arms outstretched in the gloom, and I fell against one of the billiard tables. My hands touched a cuestick, I picked it up, turned, swung at Cowley with it. Cowley fell back, howling like an animal, but then came on again. Screaming, I jabbed the cuestick full into his open mouth.

The stick snapped in two, part of it still in my hands, part jutting out of his mouth, and he started a shriek that ended in a terrible gurgling wail. He toppled face forward to the floor, driving the piece of stick through the back of his head.

I turned away and collapsed over a table. I was violently ill, my stomach jerking spasmodically, my throat heaving and retching. But it had been so long since I had eaten that I could bring nothing up, but could only lie helplessly, coughing and shaking and terribly, terribly sick.

That was three days ago, and still they haven’t come. They must come soon now. The air is growing foul in here, I can hardly breathe any more. And I find that I am talking to myself, and every once in a while I will pick up a billiard ball and look longingly at the window. I am coming to long for death, and I know that that is madness. So they must come soon.

And the worst thing is the hunger. Cowley is gone now, all gone, and I am hungry again.

PAID IN FULL

“Old bills,” I said. “I insist on that, they must be old bills.”

“Of course,” he murmured, smiling at me in that secretive way he affected. His face always looked hooded to me, remaining me of those blackout shields on automobile headlights in the war. With that face, with that smile, with that insinuating honeyed voice, no word he said could possibly sound sincere or truthful. But surely no one can lie all the time.

Most of what I knew of him I doubted. His name for instance, which he’d murmured was Sylvan Kelso, and which sounded too unlikely to be either the truth or a falsehood. His claimed feelings of friendliness for me, which I understood at once was artificial; I’ve had such buddies before, among insurance salesmen and candidates for minor political office. And the nation for which he claimed to be operating: Bulgaria! That couldn’t possibly be true.

The only truth of which I was sure was that he wished to buy from me what I was perfectly willing to sell. Willing, that is, if all my conditions were satisfactorily met, which is why we were meeting for the third time here in this dim bar in Arlington, not far from Chain Bridge.

“And small denomination,” I said to him now, as we sat crouched toward one another in the rear booth. “Nothing bigger than a twenty.”

“Ahh,” he said, “that will make a bulky package.”

“Not very,” I said. “Two packages, anyway. Half before, half after.”

“Your distrust, Mr. Stilmont,” he assured me in oiled tones, “is quite unnecessary.

“I’ve got to protect myself,” I told him.

“Of course you must. Certainly.”

“I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re liable to pull.”

He spread doughy hands. “Not a thing, Mr. Stilmont,” he said, “I do assure you. After all, why should I do anything to offend you? This is merely our first transaction.”

“Our only transaction,” I said, somewhat bitterly. “You know as well as I do there’s only the one valuable file I have access to. Once the deal is done, I’m sold out.”

“Temporarily, Mr. Stilmont. But surely in the future, as you climb the ladder of success in government employment, additional occasions will arise when we can be of…profitable service to one another.”

I was about to tell him the answer to that one was also no, but at the last second refrained. If Kelso really did think I might be useful again in the future, so much the better; it would make him less likely to double-cross me or make trouble for me.

But whether he knew the truth about me or not, I surely knew the truth about myself. I had climbed the ladder of success in government employment as far as the Civil Service system could carry me. I hovered at the edge of the executive level now, and here I would hover until retirement. In order to attain the upper ranks in government service, it is necessary to have either one of two things: superlative ability or political influence. I had neither.

Why do you suppose I’d undertaken this transaction in the first place? Do you think I’m a traitor, a spy? Do you think I’m here by choice? Let me tell you something that the progression of your own life has perhaps not yet demonstrated to you. Expenditures increase. Year by year, decade by decade, house by house, job by job, expenditures gradually but unceasingly increase. So long as income also increases—so long, in fact, as one continues to advance in one’s occupation—all is well. But when income levels off, when one has ceased to advance in one’s occupation, then, my friends, all is Hell.

I won’t blame my wife, I won’t blame my children, and I won’t even blame myself. I am the victim, perhaps, of nothing more willful or malicious than a natural law, as though I’d been struck down by a slow lightning bolt.

Be that as it may, the end result of these inexorable economics was my presence here for the third time in a grimy neighborhood tavern with the stout man who called himself Sylvan Kelso, whose assurances rang with such a tinny click, that I was constantly on the verge of throwing over the whole thing, rushing home, and struggling along without the forty thousand dollars.

Well. I went over the points once more in my mind: Old bills. Small denominations. “Oh, yes,” I said. “One thing more. The most important of all.”

Kelso smiled like drawings of the moon. “Merely state it, Mr. Stilmont,” he murmured.

“No counterfeits,” I said. “I’ve heard of that stunt, don’t think I haven’t, people being paid off in counterfeit money smuggled into the country. I worked in the Treasury Department three years and believe me you can’t pass any phony money on me.” My having worked in the Treasury Department was true, but it hardly made me an expert on counterfeit bills; I’d been a file clerk, nothing more. So far as I know, I’ve never so much as seen a counterfeit bill in all my life.

But I was relying on Kelso’s not knowing these details, and apparently he did not, for he smiled more moonlike than ever and said, “Not a chance of it, my dear Stilmont, not the slightest chance. That was a German trick anyway, we wouldn’t do anything of that sort.”

“I just want you to know,” I said, “that I’m keeping my eyes open.”

“As you certainly should,” he declared, thumping his fat palm on the table. “A cautious man is a delight to do business with.”

“All right, then,” I said. “Now, what about payment?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said, lowering his voice, leaning toward me, “when you leave work, walk to the south-east corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street. Near the corner, on the 12th Street side, there will be parked a black taxicab with red lettering. The numeral seven will appear directly beneath the handle of the right front door. Tha taxi will be driven by a woman wearing an unusual hat.”

“All taxis in Washington,” I said, overstating it slightly, “are driven by women wearing unusual hats.”

“Then concentrate on the numeral seven,” he said. “You will enter this taxi, you will say ‘Dumbarton House, please,’ and the taxi will start off, with you in it.”

I said, “Dumbarton House? Where’s Dumbarton House?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You won’t be going there. On the floor in back you will find an attache case containing the first half-payment and the camera, plus a typewritten sheet of directions for the camera’s use. You will, taking care not to be seen by passersby, assure yourself of the genuineness of the money, and that it appears in the proper amount, and then you will read the camera instructions until you are certain you can operate the camera correctly. You will then hand the instruction sheet to the driver, and tell her where you wish to be driven.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all for tomorrow,” he said. “The next day, Friday, you will photograph the proper documents as agreed. Once again, after you leave work for the day, you will find the same taxicab waiting in the same place as before. You will enter it, bringing both the camera and the attache case in which you received your first payment. Now empty, of course. You will be driven to a place where the film may be verified, and then you will take your second payment and go on with your life as though nothing at all had occurred.”

“I want more detail about that last part,” I said. “Where I turn over the camera and get my second payment.”

“Certainly,” he said. “As soon as we order another round of drinks. Barkeep! Two more vodka martinis.”

Well. We got our fresh drinks, and we went over the details of the transaction until I was satisfied, or at least prepared to settle for what I had. Then, understandably nervous and tense, I made my way to my home in Bethesda, downed some straight bourbon in the kitchen, and got into bed beside my sleeping wife. Since I had, in the last few years, developed the habit of spending an occasional evening at a local tavern, there was no excuse necessary; had my wife awakened, my breath would have been sufficient indication of my recent whereabouts.

I slept badly, awaking time after time from terrible dreams in which monsters chased me while I ran through walls of molasses, and at the breakfast table had to listen to a recital of unpaid bills. I drove to work as usual, left my car in its usual slot at the parking garage on E Street, and arrived at work with trembling hands and a splitting headache. All the gins of a hangover, one might say, except that I hadn’t drunk enough the night before to justify such strong symptoms. No, it wasn’t alcohol, it was worry and fear and doubt and shame and shaky determination.

A man does what he can with what he has. All I had of any value was one fairly unimportant national secret. That it was important enough to someone to earn me forty thousand dollars was my very good fortune, and I told myself again and again I’d be a fool to pass this by. Just once, in my lifetime, just once.

An apparently chance encounter had led me into all this in the first place, and of course it was not by chance, but a recital of its appearance and subsequent reality seems unnecessary here. Kelso contacted me, that is sufficient, and found in me someone willing to listen.

That day stretched like a taut rubber band, along which I crawled toward four-thirty an eternity away. Three times my duties took me near the cabinet in which the documents were filed. Harry, the archive guard, told me an unfunny joke about a bellydancer and an eel. We had known one another’s faces for years.

Four-thirty, at long last. I walked to Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street, found the cab, boarded it, was driven aimlessly around Washington while I checked and counted the money—all here, all old bills, all so beautiful to the eye and the hand—and while I familiarized myself with the camera. This camera gave the appearance of a cigarette lighter. It had to be held directly above the flat document, on which a strong light was to shine. The camera should be ten to twelve inches above the document. And so on.

“I’m done,” I said at last to the woman cabdriver in her unusual hat; berries and leaves, on black straw. “Take me to Universal Parking Garage at E Street.”

“The instruction sheet,” she said.

“Oh. Sorry.” I handed it to her, and she drove me to my car.

By the time I got home, the attache case was safely stashed in the trunk. Late that night, after my wife had gone to sleep, I went out to the garage and transferred the cash to my coffee cans. For several years I have saved Maxwell House coffee cans, piling them up on a shelf above my workbench, using a few of them to store nails and washers and whatnot, vaguely convinced I’ll be using the others for something eventually. Well, now was that eventually. Into the coffee cans went the twenty thousand dollars, and back into the trunk went the empty attache case.

The actual photographing of the documents was simplicity itself. I took the documents away to my office—Harry told me a racial joke—switched my desk lamp on, and took the pictures in quick succession, five of them. The documents were merely pages of figures, tabulations, specifications, dry as dirt and no doubt meaningless to most people. Essentially meaningless to me as well, although necessary to me from time to time in connection with my administrative duties.

The tiny camera, full of treasonous film, seemed hot in my trouser pocket, branding my thigh. All afternoon I kept holding my watch to my ear, unable to believe it hadn’t stopped. Was it only, was it only, was it only…?

Was it at last four-thirty? Thank God.

The same cab was there again, but this time as I entered it, carrying the empty attache case, I discovered another passenger already occupying the far side of the rear seat. As I hesitated, he said, “Not to worry, Mr. Stilmont. I am merely to accompany you.”

He didn’t look dangerous. Quite the reverse, he was a pale and slender lad, the kind brought to mind by the word ‘effete.’ I slid in beside him and said, “Where’s the money?”

“On the seat beside our driver,” he said. “You can put that case on the floor there.”

I put the case on the floor, leaned forward, and saw an identical case on the front seat. I said, “I assume I can look at it now.”

“If I might have the camera,” he said.

“I’m glad to get rid of it.” I took it from my pocket and handed it to him. Then—we were in motion by now, darting through Washington traffic—I took the new case onto my lap, and determined that it contained twenty thousand dollars in genuine, old, small bills.

Wonderful, wonderful.

We stopped in front of an elderly boarding house on 8th Street NE. “Wait here,” said the young man, and left the cab, and went into the building.

In a way, I wanted to make conversation with the woman driver, merely to have the reassurance of the sound of voices, but in another way I felt as though I didn’t want to talk to anyone again.

I’d been over it and over it, rationalized it to the last detail. This information I was selling, this would help the opponents, the enemy, the other side—whoever and whatever they were—but only to a small extent, and surely to a degree easily counterbalanced by similar spy networks in their camp. What I had sold was not decisive. I would feel guilty about it the rest of my life, no doubt, but it would be a guilt of manageable size.

The woman, for her part, sat stolid and unmoving, gazing straight ahead through the windshield, her hands resting easily on the steering wheel.

After ten minutes or so, the young man appeared in the doorway, came trotting down the stairs, smiled at me, said to the woman, “Fine,” and went walking away.

The woman said, “Where to?”

“Universal Parking Garage,” I said.

That night I filled the rest of my coffee cans. On Saturday I purchased a new set of tires for my car, paying cash, and also bought a power saw. On Sunday, I took the family to a drive-in. Monday morning I phoned into the office that I was sick, and went shopping. I bought two suits, some other clothing, a decent fishing rod, a pair of sunglasses, and a case of good scotch. I deposited three hundred dollars in our checking account, went home, and explained to my wife I’d won a boxing pool in the office. This was to be my only splurge. From now on, my extra money would be inserted into my income ten, twenty, thirty dollars at a time. It would make the difference, all the difference, give us just that little extra to get us over the hump of our economic bind.

I was beginning to feel better than I had in years.

Tuesday evening they came and arrested me. State police, not Federal. They wouldn’t say a word to me, wouldn’t explain a thing, until they had me in an office surrounded by serious looking men in plain clothes. Then one of the—gray-haired, trim, a pipe smoker—said, “You seem to have come into bit of money all of a sudden, Mr. Stilmont.”

“Money?” I said.

He picked up some bills from the desk; old, small denominations. “You passed these bills Saturday,” he said, “at Ben Franklin Shopping Center. And these you deposited in your personal checking account just yesterday.”

“Counterfeit,” I said.

He said, “I beg your pardon?”

“They did it to me anyway,” I said. “That’s what I was afraid of all the time, counterfeit bills. But I thought, old bills, used bills, how could they be counterfeit? Did you get them, too? Just so you got them, too.”

He said, “I’m not entirely sure I understand, Mr. Stilmont.”

I said, “Those bills. They’re counterfeit, right? Just as I thought they would. That’s how you got onto me.”

“These bills,” he said, holding them up so I could see them, “are perfectly valid. Excellent bills.”

I said, “But—”

“These bills,” he said, “were part of the two hundred thousand dollar haul in the armored car robbery in Baltimore last Wednesday. The numbers of those bills were known, Mr. Stilmont.” He leaned toward me. “Now,” he said, “let’s talk about the rest of the money, Mr. Stilmont.”

THE DORTMUNDER WORKOUT

or

CRIMINAL EXERCISE

The Sunday edition of The New York Times doesn’t weigh enough all by itself to satisfy its editors, so they add special sections now and again, and sometimes this special section is a Health supplement to the Magazine. An editor from there phoned me, one day in 1989, wondering if John Dortmunder had any thoughts about health, and I had to admit I didn’t know but I’d ask. I did, and when “The Dortmunder Workout” was published in the Health supplement to the New York Times Magazine in the spring of 1990 John was the only guy in the issue without a sweatband around his brow. The editor told me afterward that the staffers who already knew Dortmunder thought it was a nice piece, but those who hadn’t previously met my boy were baffled. Well, that seems fair.

~DEW

When Dortmunder walked into the O.J. Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue that afternoon the regulars were talking about health and exercise, pro and con. “A healthy regime is very important,” one of the regulars was saying, hunched over his beer.

“You don’t mean regime,” a second regular told him. “A healthy regime is like Australia. You mean regimen.”

“Regimen is women,” a third regular put in. “Something about women.”

The other regulars frowned at that, trying to figure out if it meant anything. In the silence, Dortmunder said, “Rollo.”

Rollo the bartender, observing the world from a three-point stance—large feet solidly planted on the duckboards behind the bar, elbow atop the cash register drawer—seemed too absorbed either by the conversation or in contemplation of the possibility of health to notice the arrival of a new customer. In any event, he didn’t even twitch, just stood there like a genre painting of himself, while the first regular said, “Well, whatever the word is, the point is, if you got your health you got everything.”

“I don’t see how that follows,” the second regular said. “You could have your health and still not have a Pontiac Trans Am.”

“If you got your health,” the first regular told him, “you don’t need a Pontiac Trans Am. You can walk.”

“Walk where?”

“Wherever it was you were gonna go.”

“St. Louis,” the second regular said, and knocked back some of his tequila sunrise in satisfaction.

“Well, now you’re just being argumentative,” the first regular complained.

“Some of that health stuff can get dangerous,” the third regular put in. “I know a guy knew a guy had a heart attack from the Raquel Welch workout videos.”

“Well, sure,” the first regular agreed, “it’s always possible to exercise too much, but—”

“He wasn’t exercising, he was just watching.”

“Rollo,” Dortmunder said.

“When I was in the Army,” the first regular said, “they used to make us do sailor jumps.”

“If you were in the Army,” the second regular told him, “they were soldier jumps.”

“Sailor jumps,” insisted the first regular.

“We used to call those jumping jacks,” the third regular chimed in.

“You did not,” the second regular told him. “Jumping jacks is that little girls’ game with the lug nuts.”

“Rollo,” Dortmunder demanded, and this time Rollo raised an eyebrow in Dortmunder’s direction, but then he was distracted by movement from the third regular, the jumping jacks man, who, with a scornful, “Lug nuts!” climbed off his stool, paused to wheeze, and then said, “This is jumping jacks.” And he stood there at a kind of crumpled attention, arms at his sides, heels together, chest in.

The second regular gazed upon him with growing disgust. “That’s what?”

“It isn’t sailor jumps, I know that much,” the first regular said.

But the third regular was unfazed. “This is first position,” he explained. “Now watch.” Carefully, he lifted his right foot and moved it about 18 inches to the side, then put it back down on the floor. After stooping a bit to be sure he had both feet where he wanted them, he straightened up, more or less, faced forward, took a deep breath you could hear across the street and slowly lifted both arms straight up into the air, leaning his palms against each other above his head. “Position two,” he said.

“That’s some hell of an exercise,” said the second regular.

The third regular’s arms dropped to his sides like fish off a delivery truck. “When you’re really into it,” he pointed out, “you do it faster.”

“That might be sailor jumps,” the first regular admitted.

“In my personal opinion,” the second regular said, twirling the dregs of his tequila sunrise, “diet is the most important part of your personal health program. Vitamins, minerals and food groups.”

“I don’t think you got that quite right,” the third regular told him. “I think it goes, animal, vitamin or mineral.”

“Food groups,” the second regular contended. “This isn’t twenty questions.”

The first regular said, “I don’t get what you mean by this food groups.”

“Well,” the second regular told him, “your principal food groups are meat, vegetables, dessert and beer.”

“Oh,” the first regular said. “In that case, then, I’m okay.”

“Rollo,” Dortmunder begged.

Sighing like an entire Marine boot camp, Rollo bestirred himself and came plodding down the duckboards. “How ya doin?” he said, flipping a coaster onto the bar.

“Keeping healthy,” Dortmunder told him.

“That’s good. The usual?”

“Carrot juice,” Dortmunder said.

“You got it,” Rollo told him, and reached for the bourbon bottle.