Good Behaviour by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Crime
Published: 2011-06-19T08:35:44.109000+00:00

EXODUS

"Lie down with wolves, you get up with toothmarks."

Frank Ritter sat at his desk in the corner office suite of Margrave Corporation and studied this addition he'd just made to his commonplace book. Was that truly an aphorism? Possibly it was merely a low-level epigram or even, God help us, just a joke. Ritter didn't like crossing things out in his commonplace book, it made for a sloppy appearance, but this particular statement, well… On the other hand, it wasn't inaccurate, as his current situation-and the inspiration for the remark-demonstrated. The wolves were the five dozen mercenaries he had employed to ease his irritation vis-a-vis General Pozos of Guerrera; and the toothmarks? Bullet holes in the assembly room door. Several broken seats in there as well, and sixteen men on the injured list (the kneed victim recovered). None needing hospitalization, happily, but all with broken bones and all unavailable for the punitive strike.

Shattered morale among the building's own security forces, there was another tooth mark And from the grim tone in Virgil Pickens' voice this morning, when he'd requested a meeting with Ritter, there were further toothmarks to come.

It was now not quite nine o'clock on Sunday morning, and Ritter, as usual, had been up for hours. ("The first arrival gets the best seat.") Family business had kept him at the Glen Cove estate out on Long Island until nearly eight, when the helicopter had flown him in to the pad at East Twenty-third Street, where his car had been waiting to take him through empty Sunday morning Manhattan streets to his own tower. Here and there in high-floor windows of the office buildings along the way lights had gleamed, and Ritter felt a kinship: We are here, we are working, we are not making excuses.

"The deadline," a laughing executive at a company social event had once unwisely remarked to Ritter, "is when you have to have your alibi ready." Not a Ritter-style aphorism; that executive, if he still laughed, did so with some other corporation.

One single firm rap at the door, military-style. There was no secretary available here on Sunday mornings, unfortunately, but this could only be Pickens arriving, precisely on time, so Ritter put away his commonplace book with the wolf line intact and called, "Come in."

The man himself entered, burly and thick-bodied, but neat as a pin in his pressed and creased camouflage fatigues.

"Good morning," Ritter said, and gestured at the easy chair across the desk.

"Have you had coffee?"

"I've had lunch, sir," Pickens said, and remained standing.

"Sit down, man, you'll give me a crick in the neck."

So Pickens sat, uncomfortably, on the edge of the chair, knees together, hands on thighs, as though waiting to see the dentist.

Ignoring this overdone Spartan effect, Ritter said, "We've lost a lot of men, have we? And the war isn't started yet."

"Some limited casualties," Pickens agreed.

"Nothing we can't live with."

"Sixteen men!"

"Twelve, as a matter of fact," Pickens said.

"The boys with the broken jaws have all been wired, they'll be coming along."

Ritter was astounded.

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