Put a Lid on It by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online Page A

but not their topcoats and squared-off hats.
    From the parking lot, they moved like a highly trained close-drill team into the terminal building where, amid the announcements and the lost children and the teenagers traveling with their skateboards, Jeffords grudgingly counted out three dollars in quarters and dimes and nickels into Meehan's palm. “Thanks, Dad,” Meehan said, and Jeffords gave him a sour look.
    The bank of pay phones was clustered in a little campground of its own off to the side of pedestrian traffic. One Buster stood off to the right, the other equally to the left, and Jeffords paced back and forth in the near distance, getting in the way of people carrying heavy luggage.
    By necessity, Meehan's telephone directory was kept in his head. He dialed the number, pumped in change, and the nasal voice that he knew was female only because he'd seen its owner a few times over the years said, “Cargo.” Cargo Storage was the name under which Leroy worked.
    “Leroy, please.”
    “Who shall I say?”
    “Meehan.” It always bothered Meehan to speak his name aloud on the telephone, but sometimes you had to.
    “Leroy isn't in at the moment,” she said, which is what he'd known she would say. “Can he get back to you?”
    “I'm at a pay phone at Norfolk International Airport,” Meehan told her.
    “What a weird place to be.”
    “You don't know the half of it,” he said, and read the number off to her, and hung up.
    Both Busters immediately moved toward him, but he held up both hands, one to either side, to deter them, so they backed off to position A, glancing toward Jeffords to be sure it was okay.
    Meehan pretended to be actively using the phone for the next seven minutes, holding the receiver to his ear while keeping the hook depressed with his other hand. Then at last, once Leroy had reached his own secure phone, this one rang. Meehan lifted the hook, and a different nasal voice said in his ear, “What the fuck you doin in Norfolk fuckin Virginia?”
    “I hope to tell you some day,” Meehan said. “For right now, I want to know, if I happened to come into possession of some antique guns, all American, Revolution, Civil War, would you be interested?”
    “Antique guns? So you mean a collection.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Lemme think, lemme think. Is it Lewes-Moday?”
    “What?”
    “Which collection is it? Who owns it?”
    “I dunno yet.”
    “You're a strange bird, Meehan,” Leroy told him. “When you find out whose house you're in, call me back.”
    “No, hold on, I'll find out.” Gesturing to Jeffords, he said into the phone, “What was that name you said?”
    “Lewes-Moday. If it's Lewes-Moday, I don't want it. They got photos of every fucking piece, they injected bird DNA in the stocks, nobody's gonna dare go near a piece of that.”
    “Okay, hold on.” To Jeffords, now next to him frowning deeply, he said, “Whose collection is this?”
    Jeffords looked shocked, then mulish. “I can't tell you that, not at this point.”
    “Is it Lewes-Moday? Just tell me if it's Lewes-Moday.”
    “I've never heard of Lewes-Moday,” Jeffords said, as though he felt obscurely as though he'd been accused of something.
    Into the phone, Meehan said, “It isn't Lewes-Moday. What I think it is, I think it's somebody in the northeast, a rich guy, political, probably an estate or some—”
    “Oh, Burnstone!” Leroy said. “Absolutely! You get your hands on Burnstone, you got a deal.”
    “One second.” Meehan looked at Jeffords, who was practicing his poker face. Looking deep into those eyes, Meehan said, “Burnstone.”
    “I can't tell you—”
    Meehan said into the phone, “It's Burnstone. See you soon.”

14
    H ER PLANE WAS thirty-five minutes late, which isn't bad for an airplane, and at first he didn't recognize her among the passengers drifting brain-damaged into the terminal. He'd only seen Elaine Goldfarb three times in his life, always in the MCC, she on the other side of the black metal