Nobody’s Perfect by Donald Westlake

“He’ll be okay.” Rollo dismissed the Death-of-Montcalm scene with a shrug. “Your vodka-and-red-wine is here, your sherry is here, your beer-and-salt is here.”

“We’re the last,” Dortmunder said.

Rollo nodded hello to Kelp. “Nice to see you again.”

“Nice to be back,” Kelp told him.

Rollo went off to make their drinks, and Dortmunder and Kelp watched the first-aid team. One of the regulars was now trying to stuff paper bar coasters into the bleeder’s nose, while another one was trying to get the poor bastard to count backwards from one hundred. “That’s for hiccups,” said the third.

“No no,” said the second, “you drink out of the wrong side of the glass for hiccups.”

“No, that’s for when you faint.”

“No no no, when you faint you put your head between your knees.”

“Wrong. If somebody faints, you slap their face.”

“You do and you’ll stumbun with me,” said the patient, who now had bar rag and paper coasters in his mouth.

“You’re crazy,” the second regular told the third. “You slap somebody’s face if they’ve got hysterics.”

“No,” said the third regular, “if somebody’s got hysterics, you have to keep them warm. Or is it cold?”

“Neither. That’s for shock. You keep them warm for shock. Or cold.”

“No, I’ve got it,” the third regular said. “You keep them warm for hysterics, and you keep them cold if they’ve got a burn.”

“Don’t you know anything?” asked the second regular. “For a burn you put butter on it.”

“Now I know!” the third regular cried. “Butter’s for a nosebleed!”

Everybody stopped what they were doing to stare at him, even the bleeder. The first regular, his hands full of paper coasters, said, “Butter’s for a nosebleed?”

“You stuff butter up the nose! Rollo, give us some butter!”

“You won’t dumrumbin my nose!”

“Butter,” said the second regular in disgust. “It’s ice he needs. Rollo!”

Rollo, ignoring the cries for butter and ice, carried a tray past the invalid’s feet and slid it across the bar toward Dortmunder. It contained a bottle of Amsterdam Liquor Store bourbon, two empty glasses with ice, and a glass containing, no doubt, vodka-and-red-wine. “See you later,” he said.

“Right.” Dortmunder reached for the tray, but Kelp got to it first, picking it up with such eagerness to be of help that the bourbon bottle rocked back and forth, and would have gone over if Dortmunder hadn’t steadied it.

“Thanks,” Kelp said.

“Yeah,” Dortmunder said, and led the way toward the back room.

But not directly. They had to stop for a second so Kelp could throw in his own contribution with the medics. “What you do for a nosebleed,” he told them, “is you take two silver coins and put them on both sides of his nose.”

The regulars all stopped squabbling among themselves to frown at this outsider. One of them, with great dignity, pointed out, “There haven’t been any silver coins in circulation in this country since 1965.”

“Oh,” said Kelp. “Well, that is a problem.”

“Sixty-six,” said another regular.

Dortmunder, several paces ahead, looked back at Kelp to say, “Are you coming?”

“Right.” Kelp hurried in Dortmunder’s wake.

As they went past POINTERS and SETTERS, Dortmunder said, “Now, remember what I told you. Tiny Bulcher won’t be happy about you because you’re costing him five grand, so just be quiet and let me do the talking.”

“Definitely,” Kelp said.

Dortmunder glanced at him, but said nothing more, and then went through the green door and into the back room, where Stan Murch and Roger Chefwick and Tiny Bulcher were all seated at the green-felt-topped table, with Tiny Bulcher saying, “…so I went to his hospital room and broke his other arm.”

Chefwick and Murch, who had been gazing at Bulcher like sparrows at a snake, looked up with quick panicky smiles when Dortmunder and Kelp came in. “Well, there you are!” Chefwick cried, with a kind of mad glitter in his eyes, and Murch actually spread his arms in false camaraderie, announcing, “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!”

“That’s right,” Dortmunder said.

Talking more rapidly than usual, his words running together in his haste, Murch said, “I did a new route entirely, that’s why I’m so early, I was coming from Queens, I took the Grand Central almost to the Triborough–”

Meanwhile, Kelp was putting the tray on the table and placing Bulcher’s fresh drink in front of him, cheerily saying “There you go. You’re Tiny Bulcher, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Bulcher said. “And who are you?”

“–then I got off, and turned left under the El, and, uh…” And Murch ran down, becoming aware of the new tension in the room as Kelp, still cheery, answered Bulcher’s question.

“I’m Andy Kelp. We met once seven or eight years ago, a little jewelry-store job up in New Hampshire.”

Bulcher gave Kelp his flat look. “Did I like you?”

“Sure,” Kelp said, taking the chair to Bulcher’s left. “You called me pal.”

“I did, huh?” Bulcher turned to Dortmunder. “What’s my pal doing here?”

“He’s in,” Dortmunder said.

“Oh, yeah?” Bulcher looked around at Murch and Chefwick, then back at Dortmunder. “Then who’s out?”

“Nobody. It’s a five-man string now.”

“It is, huh?” Bulcher nodded, glancing down at his fresh vodka-and-red-wine as though there might be some sort of explanation engraved on the glass. Looking at Dortmunder again, he said, “Where does his cut come from?”

Same as everybody else’s. We’ll get twenty thousand a man.”

“Uh huh.” Bulcher sat back – the chair squealed in fear – and brooded at Kelp, whose cheery expression was beginning to wilt. “So,” said Bulcher, “you’re my five thousand dollar pal, are you?”

“I guess so,” Kelp said.

“I never liked anybody five grand worth before,” Bulcher said. “Remind me; where were we pals?”

“New Hampshire. A jewelry–”

“Oh, yeah.” Bulcher nodded, his big head going back and forth like a balancing rock on the mountain of his shoulders. “There was a second alarm system, and we never got into the place. All the way up to New Hampshire for nothing.”

Dortmunder looked at Kelp, who did not look back. Instead, he kept smiling at Bulcher, saying, “That’s the one. The finger screwed up. I remember you hit him a lot.”

“Yeah, I would of.” Bulcher took a long slow taste of his fresh drink, while Kelp continued to smile at him, and Dortmunder brooded at him, and Murch and Chefwick went on doing their hypnotized-sparrow number. Putting the glass down at last, Bulcher said to Dortmunder, “What do we need him for?”

“I already been at work,” Kelp said, bright and eager, and ignoring Dortmunder’s shut-up frown.

Bulcher observed him. “Oh, yeah? Doing what?”

“I checked out the theater. Hunter House, it’s called. How we get in, how we get out.”

Dortmunder, who was wishing Kelp would get laryngitis, explained, “We get to the roof through a theater nearby.”

“Uh huh. And we’re paying this guy twenty grand to go find out how we get in a theater.” Bulcher leaned forward, resting one monstrous forearm on the table. He said, “I’ll tell you the secret for ten grand. You buy a ticket.”

“I bought tickets,” Kelp assured him. “We’re gonna see the Queen’s Own Caledonian Orchestra.”

Dortmunder sighed, shook his head a bit in irritation, and paused to pour some Our Own Brand bourbon into one of the glasses on the tray. He sipped, watched moodily as Kelp poured his own drink, and then said, “Tiny, I make the plan. That’s my job. Your job is to carry heavy things and to knock people down that get in the way.”

Bulcher jabbed a thumb the size of an ear of corn in Kelp’s direction. “We’re talking about his job.”

“We need him,” Dortmunder said. Under the table, he crossed his ankles.

“How come we didn’t need him the first time we got together?”

“I was out of town,” Kelp said brightly. “Dortmunder didn’t know where to find me.”

Bulcher gave him a look of disgust. (So did Dortmunder.)

“Bull,” he said, and turned back to Dortmunder, saying “You didn’t mention him at all.”

“I didn’t know yet I needed him,” Dortmunder said. “Listen, Tiny, I’ve been to the place now. We have to get in through the top of an elevator shaft, we got a fifteen- or twenty-foot brick wall to go down and then back up, and we don’t have all night to do it. We need a fifth man. I’m the planner, and I say we need him.”

Bulcher turned his full attention on Kelp again, as though trying to visualize a circumstance in which he would find himself needing this person. His eyes still on Kelp, he spoke to Dortmunder, saying, “So that’s it, huh?”

“That’s it,” Dortmunder told him.

“Well, then.” A ghastly smile turned Tiny’s face into a cross between a bad bayonet wound and a six-month-old Halloween pumpkin. “Welcome aboard, pal,” he said. “I’m sure you’re gonna be very helpful.”

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