361 by Donald E. Westlake

like in the cleaners. I opened it and peeked out. I was looking at the corridor between the bar and the kitchen. It was empty. We went through and made a sharp left into the men’s room. We washed our faces and hands, and then went down the long length of the bar and out the street door. We turned the corner and walked crosstown and downtown to the West 46th Street parking lot where we’d left the car. There was a sullen veteran in khakis and fatigue cap on duty, and he walked back to the car with us and stood looking in through the windshield at the steering wheel as he said, “I’m taking a chance on this, but what the hell. I don’t do their goddamn dirty work or anybody’s.”
    He sneaked a quick look at us and glared back at the steering wheel again. “They screwed me out of two hundred fifty bucks. What am I going to do, call the goddamn cops on them? They got the goddamn cops in their pocket. You know that.”
    I said, “What’s the point?”
    His cheek twitched, and he kept staring through the windshield into the car. “I just want you to know, that’s all. How come I’ll do this. I’m paying the bastards back, that’s what, two hundred and fifty bucks worth.” He tugged at his fatigue cap, and turned around quick to look out at the street. Then he turned back. “A guy came around yesterday afternoon,” he told the car, “with a sheet of paper and your license plate on it. He give me, and said I should call in at Alex’s if the car shows up. He described the car, red and cream Merc like this one. Only, I wouldn’t give them the sweat off my stones. And you’ve got an out-of-town plate, I figure you’re tourists or something and they’re trying to give you a bad time. So the hell with them. I didn’t call. And I smeared mud on your plates.”
    “You did?” I went over and looked at the back of the car. He’d done a good job, realistic, with mud and dirt on the bumper and over the license plate, so a part of each number was showing. Enough so it didn’t look like a covered plate, but it wasn’t easy to read the numbers.
    I went back and said, “Thanks. You did a good job.”
    “You better go back upstate,” he said.
    I dug out my wallet and found a ten. I slid it down the fender to him. “Here’s an installment on the two-fifty,” I said.
    “You didn’t have to, but it’s okay.” He palmed the ten.
    “This guy, what’s his name?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve heard him called Sal. Or Sol, I don’t know which. He comes around sometimes, and sometimes he works here. Every once in a while, he parks some fancy car here. The boss knows him. He’s big, with a great big jaw like Mussolini.”
    “And Alex’s?”
    “That’s a car rental place, up by the bridge. Up in Washington Heights.” He swiped another quick look at me. “You don’t want to spoil with them, Mister. You better go back upstate.”
    “Thanks for the help,” I said.
    He shrugged. “You got to wait out by the sidewalk,” he said. “I’ll bring the car to you.”
    “Okay.”
    We walked back over the gravel to the sidewalk, and he drove the car out and gave it to us without a word. We went around the block and down to 39th Street and through the Lincoln Tunnel. In Jersey City, we parked the car on a street off Hudson Boulevard and took the tube back to Manhattan, switched to the subway and went uptown to the hotel. We unpacked the suitcase and showered and brushed our teeth.
    Bill said, “Do you want to follow up this car rental place?”
    I shook my head. “That’s a Pacific campaign. Fight your way across every useless little island you can find for five thousand miles, before you get to the big island you wanted all along. I want to stay away from the little islands. That’s why we switched hotels. Thursday we get to the big island.”
    “Fine with me,” he said.
    Later on, we went to a movie. I couldn’t sit still, so we went down to Brooklyn on the subway and drank a while at a neighborhood bar. He