Good Behavior by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

the periodical rooms, reading about Frank Ritter and Templar International and Margrave Corporation and Avalon State Bank, and dropping dimes into the Xerox machine. Fortunately, Andy Kelp had one time showed her the quiet way to get dimes back out of such machines, so the day wasn’t as expensive as it might have been. But it was exhausting, much more so than her normal day standing at the cash register.
    Back in the living room, May sat in the most comfortable chair, put her feet up on a puffy hassock, sipped her coffee, and watched Dortmunder poke at the pictures with his cane. “You don’t look happy,” she told him.
    â€œGood,” he said. “If I looked happy, it’d be a bad sign. That guy Chepkoff phoned this afternoon.”
    â€œWhich guy was that?”
    â€œThe one sent me for the caviar. He paid three hundred on account, you know.”
    â€œOn account?”
    â€œOn account we wouldn’t do the job otherwise. So now he called, he wants his three hundred back. I told him, ‘We all take risks in this. You it cost three hundred, me it cost a sprained ankle, O’Hara it’s probably gonna cost about eight years.’ He argued with me, so I hung up on him. The guy’s crazy.”
    May said, “John, do you want to hear about Frank Ritter?” Without waiting for an answer, she went on, “I just spent all day at the library, with a lot of people in overcoats and asleep and scratching their arms and looking at pictures of naked statues. I was learning all about Frank Ritter. Do you want to hear about Frank Ritter?”
    Dortmunder looked at her in some surprise. “I’m sorry, May,” he said. “You’re right, yeah. I want to hear about Frank Ritter.”
    May didn’t like to be short-tempered. Taking a deep breath, she said, “All right.”
    Dortmunder said, “You aren’t smoking.”
    â€œI gave it up.”
    â€œYou what? ”
    â€œI was thinking about it from time to time,” she said. “Remember how, whenever there was a letter in the New York Times from somebody with the Tobacco Institute, I always used to clip it out and keep it for a while?”
    â€œScotch-tape them on the mirror sometimes,” Dortmunder agreed. “Freedom of choice and all that.”
    â€œSure. Then did you notice, a while back, how I stopped clipping those letters out?”

    â€œNo, I didn’t,” Dortmunder said. “But it’s tough to notice somebody not doing something.”
    â€œThat’s true. Anyway, it occurred to me, I don’t write letters to the New York Times and you don’t write letters to the New York Times .”
    â€œWell,” Dortmunder said, “we’re not in business with the public, like the tobacco people.”
    â€œThe ketchup people don’t all the time write to the New York Times ,” May pointed out. “The beer people don’t, the pantyhose people don’t. All the people that write to the New York Times is South African spokesmen and the Tobacco Institute.”
    â€œAnd people from out of town that lost their wallet in a taxi,” Dortmunder reminded her, “and the cabby brought it back to them at the hotel, and they never knew New Yorkers were such nice people.”
    â€œWell, those letters,” May said. “What bothers me about those letters is, most cabbies aren’t New Yorkers, they’re from Pakistan. But the Tobacco Institute letters, what bothers me about those is, why talk so much unless you’ve got something to hide?”
    â€œThat makes sense,” Dortmunder said.
    â€œSo I kept thinking, maybe I’d give it up for a while,” May said, “but I could never seem to get a start on it. But I was in the library now, six hours steady in there, and there’s No Smoking, and I was so distracted by Frank Ritter and the Xerox machines and the people sticking matches in their ears and