Free Watch Your Back by Donald Westlake Page B

until the bills start to come in.”

    Kelp said, “They might not even have all the customers lined up yet.”

    Tiny said, “But they will.”

    “Sure,” Kelp said. “When your cost of doing business is zero, you can give real deep discounts.”

    Tiny said, “So that’s it for the O.J.”

    “Goddamn it,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t want it to be.”

    Kelp said, “John, nobody wants it to be, but if they’re that far along, if they’ve already burned the credit rating and the customer base that much, there’s no getting it back, you know that. They’re in there now, they’ll strip the place, sell everything they ordered, disappear, the owner goes into bankruptcy, end of story.”

    “There’s gotta be a way,” Dortmunder insisted. “If only we could make a meet. But we need the O.J. to do a meeting!”

    Kelp, being kindly, said, “John, you’re pretty good at thinking things out. Think about this problem. We’ve still got maybe a couple days before they pull the plug. You come up with something to save the O.J., we’re with you. Right, Tiny?”

    “The kid, too,” Tiny said. “If we decide to keep him.”

    A very small moan escaped through Judson’s clenched lips. He drove slowly and carefully. He hoped he’d never reach the Seventy–ninth Street Boat Basin.

    Dortmunder said, “All right, I’ll try. But I don’t know.”

    “If anybody can do it, John,” Kelp said, “you can.”

    “Here’s the Boat Basin,” Tiny said. “Kid, park somewhere.”

    “Okay.”

    There were parking places below the West Side Highway, with views over the Hudson toward New Jersey and, closer at hand, boats of various kinds, many of them occupied. I’ll be safe with all those people around, Judson thought, but didn’t believe it for a second.

    Tiny said, “Leave the engine on, kid, for the A/C.”

    “Okay.”

    Kelp said, “I guess next on the agenda is this youth here.”

    Tiny said, “I wanted you two to take a look at him. Josey thinks he’s okay, but that’s in her area. Us, I don’t know.”

    “Let’s find out a couple things,” Kelp said, and offered Judson his untrustworthy smile. “Let’s just say,” he said, “batting these ideas around here, let’s just say Tiny did boost you up to that burglar alarm. Then what?”

    “I dunno,” Judson said. “I figured, Mr. Tiny’d tell me what he wanted.”

    Kelp cocked his head, the smile turning quizzical. “No idea? What, you figured you’d go up with a screwdriver, open the thing up?”

    “Well, whatever,” Judson said. “I don’t know how those things work.”

    Dortmunder said, “What’s in it for you?”

    Judson blinked at him. Dortmunder at least wasn’t smiling. In fact, he didn’t look optimistic at all. “Well, sir,” Judson told him, “I thought you people would want to share with me or something.”

    Dortmunder nodded. “And you’d leave it up to us, the details and all that.”

    “I never did anything like that,” Judson explained, “so I don’t know how it works.” Then, desperate, reaching down deep inside himself for the truth, he said, “What it is, I don’t know anything, and I just want to get along until I figure out what I should be doing out here, so when I realized Mr. Tiny was interested in that alarm box I just offered to help, like, on the spur of the moment kind of thing.”

    Dortmunder said, “What you should be doing out here? What’s ‘out here’?”

    “Well, out of high school.”

    I shouldn’t have said that, he thought, as they all looked at one another. Then Tiny said, “Up to you two.”

    “Up to Andy,” Dortmunder said. “He’s the one would have to teach him.”

    Kelp laughed. “I was thinking,” he said, “I don’t think I’d like Tiny to boost me anywhere.” Turning his smile on Judson, he said, “Judson? You got any close friends at home? High school buddies?”

    “Oh, no,” Judson assured him. “I said good–bye to all