Don't Ask

by Donald E. Westlake

  Dortmunder still couldn't see anything: "Are you sure?" "John, John,"

  Kelp said. "Have some faith."

  "One time," Tiny rumbled from the seat behind them, "you drove us into the reservoir."

  "I never did," Kelp said as he put the van in gear.

  The outside environment was in shades of black: deep black with some deep green mixed into it on both sides of their vehicle, paler black tinged with blue and pink up above, and flat gray black in a ribbon out front. The last one was the road, and Kelp steered along it uphill until they came over a rise to some great knobby black mounds, with glints in them; that was the chateau and its outbuildings.

  Following Dortmunder's whispered directions, Kelp angled around to the left, away from the second residence and toward the long garage, where he almost, but not quite, ran into Stan and Fred, hunkered over the open trunk of Grijk's Hyundai, monitoring the video and audio spy stuff. Fortunately, blue TV light glinted off Fred's high forehead just in time for Kelp to hit the brakes, causing the sleeping logs in back to roll half over and then back.

  Something made Fred lose concentration on the tiny TV screens lined up on the floor of the trunk. He turned his head, he saw the chrome front bumper of the van immediately beside his right elbow, and he jumped a foot--four feet--knocking over Stan in the process.

  Before it was all over, a lot of shrill whispering went over the dam, with a repeated refrain being Fred's "You don't sneak up on people like that!" counterpointed by Kelp's "We're being silent, Fred, that's the whole point." "You aren't being silent now" was Dortmunder's contribution.

  Finally everybody calmed down. A glim at the TV screens and a hark at the radios reassured them that no one over at the residence had been disturbed, and they all got back to business. While Kelp picked up the blessed bone and carried it away downslope to the art gallery, Tiny picked up Ambassador Kralowc, Wally Whistler picked up the girl, and Dortmunder and Jim O'Hara picked up Dr. Zorn. Dortmunder led the way around to the main front door of the chateau, he being the one who'd been to this place before.

  Down in the art gallery, the movers, having gone as far as they could without the bone, were taking it easy, sitting around on the floor in the faint illumination from one set of indirect lights at a very low dimmer setting. Harry, the two Ralphs, Gus, Grijk, and Thelma, still wearing her hat, all perked up when Kelp came in through the open doorway, carrying the sacred object. They all rose and stretched and whispered greetings, and Thelma picked up her Polaroid, saying, "Let's get this show on the road." Thelma'd become more aggressive since she'd taken over as the active driver in the partnership.

  Kelp nestled the bone into the glass box, fitting it precisely to the indentations already existing in the felt. He and the others stepped out of the way, and Thelma took half a dozen pictures, all clearly showing the bone in the box in the art gallery, amid the rest of the collection.

  Meantime, upstairs, Wally Whistler gently laid the girl onto the small bed in a ground-floor guest bedroom and covered her with the down comforter, while Tiny and Dortmunder and Jim O'Hara carried Kralowc and Zorn up the broad main staircase and into the master bedroom. A few arrangements were completed, and the sleepers were left there as Dortmunder and the others went back downstairs and out the front door and around to the art gallery entrance just in time to watch Thelma's latest round of pictures of the interior of the now nearly full truck, with the bone in the glass box prominent. (Down in New York, in and about the Votskojek embassy, seven guards severally awoke from their naps, feeling rested and content. Fenton, the oldest of them, who'd slept curled up on the carpeted staircase half a flight up from the entrance, was the last to awaken, and the most disconcerted. How long had he been asleep? He wasn't sure. Had the others noticed his absence? Quickly adjusting his uniform, swallowing the taste of old pizza in his mouth, he hurried down the stairs, to find Garfield and Morrison alertly on duty at the door, the others all bright-eyed and at their posts. Fenton, like the other six, believed he was the only one who'd fallen asleep, which he would certainly not verify with self-exposing comments to the rest of the crew. He was just relieved that nothing untoward had happened during his momentary lapse, that everything was still all right aboard the embassy. Whew!) Up in Vermont, there was little left to do. A couple of minor torsos and a Dine oil were stowed in the now-full truck, which was then shut up.

  All spy stuff was removed from both buildings and stashed any which way in Grijk's Hyundai, which Grijk then drove off, headed for New York.

  Stan, with Jim O'Hara riding shotgun, steered the truck up an dover and out of there. Fred, with Thelma at the wheel, drove Ralph Winslow and Gus Brock away in the same car they'd come up in. And Kelp, back at the wheel of the doctor's van, had for his passengers Dortmunder, Tiny, Wally Whistler, Harry Matlock, and Ralph Demrovsky.

  Real dawn painted the sky in faint pastels as the four vehicles fled away from the mountain, leaving a temporary peace in their wake.

  Now all that was left was the anonymous phone call.

  'ilver legs, silver legs. No, loud noises. Bright lights, crashing around, heavy feet on stairs. What stairs? Headache. Mouth dry, nose clogged. Silver legs?

  Rising reluctantly from blissful sleep, Hradec frowned; he frowned against the noise and the aches and the light pressing insistently on his eyelids; he frowned against consciousness entirely. Straining to dive back down into dear oblivion, he snuggled against Krystal, nose moving against her hairy shoulder, arm around her-- What?

  As horrified as any Stephen King character, Hradec jolted awake, to stare at Karver Zorn's unlovely sleeping profile, four inches away.

  Mouth open, small snores emerging. I'm naked, Hradec thought, I'm in bed with Karver and I'm naked. And so is he!

  "Agh!" Hradec recoiled to a sitting position, arms protectively about himself, just as the room filled with uniformed men pointing guns. At him.

  Horror on horror! Which horror to be appalled by first?

  "Hold it right there!" said a lot of the uniformed men.

  Hold it! Right here› In this bed, with this, this person) Memory swooped back, like a giant hawk with poisoned talons. Diddums! What is this place? What has he done to me? Somewhere, a girl screamed.

  Gluy Claverack usually started his day with the New York Times, but this Monday morning was different. Having seen the early reports of the Hochman art collection robbery on the television news last night, and having understood immediately that this was the job his carpenters had been planning, he wanted to know more about what had actually happened.

  Much more. He wanted to know everything there was to know, in fact, and somehow it seemed to him that with this particular kind of story the tabloids would be far likelier to squeeze out of it all the juice it might contain. Lack of journalistic restraint, that's what he craved this morning, and so he sent his secretary out first thing for the Daily News, the Post, and Newsday, and they did not disappoint. The Post:

  GAY LOVE NEST STRIPPED OF 6MIL ART

  Newsday.

  THEY SLEPT THROUGH IT

  Hotelier's Guests Unaware of RobberyThe Daily News:

  TWO MEN, SNEERING WOMAN SLEEPTHROUGH ART HEIST

  She Slept Alone The stories below these headlines read something like this:Following an anonymous phone tip, Vermont State Police and Windham County Sheriff's Department deputies yesterday morning searched the supposedly empty mountain retreat of multimillionaire hotelier Harry Hochman, to find a scene described by Deputy Buell Rondike as "like nothing I ever seen before in my life."

  Downstairs in the plush chateaulike building, police found that the Hochmans's world-renowned art collection, valued at more than $6 million, had been cleaned out, down to the bare walls. Upstairs, police and deputies discovered an Eastern European diplomat, Hradec Kralowc, ambassador to the United States from the recently formed nation of Votskojek, asleep in bed with another Votskojek national, a United Nations Famine Relief researcher, Dr. Karver Zorn. The two men claimed to have no knowl
edge of the robbery, and to have slept through it.

  In another part of the building, police found Broadway actress Krystal Kerrin (see accompanying photo), currently featured in Ncmn: The Musical at the Mark Time Theater. Miss Kerrin's claim to have been forcibly abducted and drugged by a large group of homosexual men has been hotly denied by the two Eastern Europeans.

  As to their own version of events, Ambassador Kralowc is said by police sources to be claiming dip lomatic privilege, although, "I don't believe there is any such thing as diplomatic privilege in a situation like this," said State Department spokesman Rondike Buell in Washington last night.

  Guy was still wallowing through this stuff--the Post gave greatest emphasis to the homosexual angle and Newsday to the value of the stolen art, while the Daily News went with Hoch man's wealth, {Crystal's show biz link, and Kralowc's upper-crust social standing (posh, posh, and posh)--when his secretary buzzed him to say, "The carpenter's calling."

  "I thought he might." Guy switched over to the outside line and said.

  "That's some letter of recommendation."

  "We stand behind our work," said the phlegmatic voice on the phone, though with an understandable hint of pride. "We thought we'd come by today, show you some pictures of stuff we've done."

  "Come ahead," Guy urged him. "I'm looking forward to seeing them."

  Dortmunder and Kelp let Claverack drool over the pictures as long as he wanted. They were back in the basement storage cubicle with all the imprisoned Victorian sofas, and they spent the time looking the place over for a possible future visit.

  At last, Claverack sighed, and the eye he turned on his guests was shiny with emotion. "Beautiful," he said. "Beautiful objects. Beautiful work.

  Beautiful documentation." 'Thanks," Dortmunder said.

  "We aim to please," Kelp added.

  "And these other photos, as the truck is being loaded," Claverack said, fanning out the pictures in his hands. "Is that where the material is now? Still in this truck? Or did you move it somewhere else?"

  "It's safe," Dortmunder said.

  "Yes, of course."

  Safe? Dortmunder certainly hoped so. He didn't see any reason why it wouldn't be safe, given the decision they'd made. Keep the goods in the truck so they're easily movable, and keep the truck where nobody will pay any attention to it.

  Therefore, when they'd left the scene of the crime early Sun day morning, Stan and Murch and Jim O'Hara had run at first along back roads eastward to Interstate 91, then took that south past Brattleboro and out of Vermont into Massachusetts. They'd dropped through Massachusetts from north to south, on into Connecticut, and finally left 91 at Hartford, taking Route 2 southeast to the Connecticut Turnpike, then south on the Pike to the coast at New London in plenty of time for the noon ferry across Long Island Sound to Orient Point, the eastern tip of Long Island's more expensive and more residential north shore. Then at last they'd turned west toward New York but angled down along local streets to the island's less expensive and more industrial south shore.

  Finding a commercial area full of parked trucks, within walking distance of a Long Island Railroad station, Stan had parked their truck in among all the others on a warehouse block, and he and Jim had taken the train to New York, calling Dortmunder at home a little after six to report the job was done. Every couple of days, until the deal was complete with the insurance company, Stan would take the train back out to the island and move the truck a town or two, to keep it from becoming noticeable. Being a big, boxy, gray-bodied, green-cabbed, anonymous International Harvester of a certain age, with j l carting hand-stenciled in black on both doors, it would take a lot to make that truck noticeable. Safe?

  Yeah.

  "I should think," Claverack said at last, "there shouldn't be too much difficulty with the insurance company. These photos pretty well establish you people as the perpetrators, the ones with actual possession of the collection. We'll simply dicker a bit, I think. How will I get in touch with you?" he finished, and started to put the thick stack of photos into his inside jacket pocket.

  "Hold it," Dortmunder said, pointing at the pictures. "You don't get those yet."

  "I don't?" Confused, Claverack stopped putting the pictures away.

  Instead, he looked down at them, looked up at Dortmunder, and said, "I can hardly negotiate without them, you know."

  "I know that," Dortmunder agreed. "Give em here."

  "Whatever you say."

  A bit miffed, Claverack handed back the pictures, and Dort munder put them away in his own inside jacket pocket, saying, "The thing is, it took a bunch of us to do this, and we're out certain expenses here."

  Claverack looked wary. Carefully, he said, "I don't see what that has to do with me."

  "What we estimated, when we talked about this before, you remember that time--"

  "Of course I remember."

  "What we estimated, we estimated twenty percent of value from the insurance company, right?"

  "That's correct."

  "Half for you," Dortmunder said, "and half for us."

  "That's what we agreed, yes."

  "Now, normally," Dortmunder reminded him, "you'd get maybe a quarter, maybe a little more than that. But this time, you're getting half, on accounta you're doing it exactly like we want you to do it, right?"

  "Certainly," Claverack said. "We've already agreed to that. I show those photos to no one but the insurance company--or companies, I suppose, unlikely to be just one of them at this level of valuation--the companies involved."

  "And you give us an advance," Dortmunder said. Beside him, Kelp smiled.

  Claverack didn't smile. "You never said this before."

  "There was nothing to talk about before," Dortmunder pointed out.

  Patting the pocket with the pictures, he said, "Now it's real, now we got something, now we can talk it over. So far, we're out all these expenses and travel and trouble and all this, and we're taking half. So far, all we get from you is you nod and smile and say that sounds nice, and you're getting half. So what we figure, we need you to contribute."

  Claverack nodded, but he didn't smile and he didn't say that sounds nice. Instead, he said, "How much?"

  "We figure," Dortmunder said, "five percent. Our piece ought to be, minimum, six hundred grand, though we'd like more, you know."

  "I'll do my best, for both of us," Claverack said rather stiffly.

  "I know you will," Dortmunder agreed. "And five percent of six hundred grand is thirty."

  Claverack gazed at him, absorbing that. "Thirty thousand dollars? Is that what you want?"

  "An advance," Dortmunder repeated. "You take it outta our half when the insurance people pay."

  "Thirty thousand dollars is, well, uh…"

  "Nonnegotiable."

  "Mm." Claverack shook his head. "Do you expect me," he said, "to have thirty thousand dollars in cash, just lying around? I presume you wouldn't take a check."

  "What I expect," Dortmunder said, "I'll call you tomorrow, unless that's too soon, you tell me, and if you got the thirty we'll come back and we'll give you the pictures and you'll give us the cash."

  Kelp had been quiet up till now, letting Dortmunder do the haggling, but now he played good cop a little, saying, "If tomorrow's too soon, that's okay. We don't want to rush you."

  Claverack brooded. He chewed a bit on a thumb knuckle. He sighed. He said, "Tomorrow's not too soon."

  Horjme at last, in a false beard and turban, surrounded by blue-uniformed Continental rent-a-cops, all to avoid the ravening press.

  Reporters squealed and squirmed around the Pride of Votskojek like dogs around carrion, the landward contingent buttressed by seagoing journalists in every kind of boat they could rent or steal; and a helicopter from the Star hovered overhead.

  But the press wasn't Hradec's main concern, and he knew it; though they were certainly pestiferous. And the blow to his manly reputation wasn't his main concern, either, though the newspaper accounts had wounded him dee
ply, where he lived. Since Harry Hochman's lightning trip to Vermont, verifying Hradec's hastily concocted claim to have been a legitimately invited house guest-- "Hradec, do you know where my shit is?" cNo!33 "Your word's good enough for me"--neither legal action nor Harry's mistrust was anymore an overriding consideration. As to the faxes and telegrams and telephone messages that were surely awaiting him aboard the embassy from his wife back home in Novi Glad, wanting to know who and what is this Krystal Kerrin (because she would have no doubt as to his sexual orientation), they were a mere dermatitis in the array of his afflictions. No, his main concern, his main problem, the main disaster he knew still faced him was… the relic. The sacred femur of St. Ferghana. Somehow, some way, it was gone. Hradec knew that as well as he knew that Votskojek's future, Harry Hochman's future, and his own future depended on the relic's presence. But it was not going to be present; he knew that. There wasn't a chance of it, despite the assurances of the Continental security people that Saturday night had passed without an incident of any kind aboard the Pride of Votskojek. Well. Here he was aboard at last, though hardly alone. A helicopter loudly coughed overhead, zoom lenses were aimed at every porthole, and reporters were being repulsed in every direction. (Oh, for the days of boiling oil!) Tearing off the turban, flinging it at the useless Terment, beaning Lusk with the beard, Hradec strode to the lab, used his keys, threw open the door, and… "You fainted, sir," Lusk said. "What? Of course I did!" Hradec sat up. Lusk and Terment stooped with concern at the foot of his bed. They had carried him here to his bedroom, where the iron storm panels had been closed over every window and every light had been switched on. Midnight at noon, the perfect metaphor. Hradec's dark midnight. I can't report the theft, not with seven guards, my own employees, who insist that nothing went wrong. A simple wiretap won't get the relic back to me like last time; the Tsergovians aren't that stupid. Where is it? Can I get it back without the outer world being the wiser? Can I get it back at #//? There isn't a clue, a hint, a single thread to follow. Like Harry's art collection, and just as impossibly, the relic has simply vanished into thin air. That fiend Diddums! He's my Moriarty, Hradec thought, but Hradec had never particularly wanted a foeman worthy of his steel. All he'd ever wanted was a life of ease and comfort, that's all, to be his nation's representative at the United Nations and in Washington, to be Harry Hochman's friend, to be escort of an endless supply of sweet young things. Was that too much to ask? Apparently. The revenge of Diddums; the phrase ought to have more of a ring to it. Think, Hradec, think. It isn't over. What's Diddums up to? What happens next? "Sir?" He glowered at his faithful servants. The only thing in the world he had to rely on, and it was them. "Leave me," he said. "I must think." "Sir," they murmured, and bowed themselves from the room, snicking the door shut after themselves. "And no phone calls!" he screamed at the door. "No, sir," wafted the faint reply. Hradec adjusted the pillows and reclined to muse. The theft of the relic and the theft of Harry Hochman's art, it was all connected somehow. And Diddums's revenge isn't complete yet, is it? Of course not. What next? 'hat I think you ought to do," Dortmunder said to Zara Kotor, back in their upstairs living room over the embassy, "if you don't mind me giving you a little advice--" "I don't mind," Zara said, though brusquely. "I see these pictures of the sacred relic, I see you've apparently done what you set out to do, and even more, so I don't mind at all if you give me advice. What I wish you'd give me, though, is the relic." Present for this meeting, in addition to Dortmunder and Zara, were Grijk and Andy Kelp. (Once again, Tiny had been unavoidably tied up elsewhere, though Zara had asked specifically that he be along, and some of her present bad temper was probably a result of his absence. Dortmunder didn't know what Tiny's problem was with these people--they were his relatives, after all, and nobody else's--but he was sorry the big man wasn't here, if only so Dortmunder didn't have to keep repeating himself to the mulish Zara all the time.) "If I give you the bone," he said, demonstrating a patience he didn't feel, "what are you gonna do with it? You can't show it to anybody or admit you got it, or they're gonna ask you where you got it from, how long you had it, how come you never showed it before, how'd it get to the States, all these questions. The main thing about this bone is, when you claim it, your hands have got to be clean, or this archbishop's gonna take against you. Am I right?" "Conceivably," Zara admitted. "Good," Dortmunder said. "So conceive it. Now, here's my advice. Today, this afternoon, you do a press release or a press conference or however you work it, and you announce you've privately had tests done on your own St. Ferghana bone, the one you've been claiming all along you've got, the one that made Votskojek have to test theirs all this time, and the tests you did on your own prove conclusively it's a fake. You apologize to Votskojek--" "Never!" Zara cried, and Grijk actually jumped to his feet and looked around for a pike or a halberd. "Just wait for it, okay?" Dortmunder said. "Sit down, Grijk, it comes out okay at the end." Frowning like an avalanche, Grijk resumed his seat while Zara said, "I will never apologize to Votskojek for anything." "Okay, fine," Dortmunder said. "Apologize to the UN instead; that's even better. You apologize to the world, okay? Sorry to cause this delay and trouble, but you always believed you had the right bone, but now you have to admit Votskojek has it, so all they have to do is show it in public and you'll withdraw your application to join the UN." Zara stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief. "And what do I get out of that?" "Your seat at the UN," Dortmunder told her. Well, well," said the archbishop. Having come here to his office at the United Nations building on New York's First Avenue directly from yet another memorial service, the archbishop was outfitted in full funereal vestments, with the purple cassock and purple cope piping nicely setting off the dazzling white linen of the stole and cope, the whole ensemble belted and sashed with an array of cinctures. The lacy rochet below the stole contrasted with the massive, dark--and heavy-- mahogany pectoral cross lying on his sunken chest like the stone before the grave at Gethsemane. He had removed the tall white miter from his head and placed it on a corner of his desk, and had then dropped like last year's leaf into his swivel chair, just to get a few minutes rest. And he was no sooner settled, a scrawny little old guy gasping for air inside all the panoply, when one of his clerical clerks brought in a fax, uncurled it like the scroll it was, and held it up for the archbishop to read. Which was when the archbishop said, "Well, well." "Yes, Your Grace," said the clerk. "Call, um, er, umm, that fellow, you know, the fellow we don't call." The clerk nodded, looking thoughtful. After the briefest of pauses, he said, "Would you mean the Votskojek embassy, Your Grace?" "Can't call them," the archbishop said, laying a scrawny finger aside his scrawny nose to indicate slyness. "Can't indicate bias. Not a hint of bias." "Of course not, Your Grace." "Not an issue now, eh? Get him for me, that, uh, umm…" "I believe, Your Grace, his name is Ambassador Kralowc." "That's the fellow. Ring him up." "At once, Your Grace." As the clerk turned away, still holding the fax in both hands, the archbishop waggled bony fingers at him. "And leave that." "Yes, Your Grace." The clerk let go of the fax with one hand, and it flexed shut like a clam. He handed this tube to the archbishop, then retired to his outer office while the archbishop spread the fax faceup on the desk, weighing the corners with a stapler, a Scotch tape dispenser, a pocket calculator, and a small plaster statue of the Infant Jesus of Prague. Making these moves, grunting with the effort of shifting around inside all his vestments as he reached out across the gleaming teak surface of his desk, he looked like some major chess player of mythology, losing another big one to the devil. The archbishop read the fax again, savoring it, and then the phone at his right elbow rang, and he disrupted the whole construct in his effort to swivel around and pick the damn thing up. "What? "Ambassador Kralowc, Your Grace." "What? Here?" "On line one, Your Grace. I rang him for you." "Oh! Right!" The archbishop punched a button and then another button and said, "Hello?" "Archbishop?" "Yes, of course. What did you want?" "Archbishop, this is Hradec Kralowc, from Votskojek, you remember me, your clerk said you wanted to--" "Yes! Yes, of c
ourse! Well, my boy, are you relishing the good news?" "Good news, Archbishop?" Kralowc didn't sound like a man who believed in good news. "The press release. Didn't those people send you the press release?" 'Who, Archbishop?" "Who? Them! Those upstart pretenders at the, over there in the, you know, the competition." "Tsergovia?" "Thafs the place. They didn't send you the press release?" "No one has sent me anything, Archbishop," the ambassador said, but the tone of self-pity in his voice was lost on the archbishop, who was distracted at that moment by his struggle to recapture all the corners of the fax without losing the telephone. Slamming the Infant Jesus of Prague onto the final corner, he said, 'There! Now stay there!" "Archbishop?" "Wait, I'll read it to you," the archbishop said. "Are you there?" "Yes." "Good. Listen. Are you listening?" "Yes, Archbishop. I'm here, and I'm listening." "Good. Listen, now." Squinting through his wire-framed spectacles and down past his pale, old, narrow hawk nose, the archbishop read, "'Immediate release. Major General Zara Kotor, Ambassadress to the United States from the free and sovereign state of Tsergovia, has received today permission from her government at Osigreb to announce the result of certain tests made at Osigreb Polytechnic, in Osigreb, Tsergovia, in an effort to authenticate a certain relic, known as the Relic of St. Ferghana, consisting of a thighbone purporting to be the thighbone of the martyred St. Ferghana of Carpathia. Knowing that a similar relic has existed for some time at the Rivers of Blood Cathedral in Novi Glad in our sister republic of Votskojek, and knowing further that the question of the authenticity of these two supposed relics has served to complicate and exacerbate the relations between these two sister republics, and to further complicate and exacerbate the question of the successor seat available to one but not to the other of our nations at the United Nations in New York City, United States of America, it is our sad duty to announce that the result of our scientific investigation of the Relic of St. Ferghana in our possession at Osigreb is that it is, in fact, false. We no longer--'" "What?" "There, now, you see, my boy?" the archbishop said, chortling and wheezing over the fax. "Good news comes unexpectedly, does it not? Let me go on," he said, and, not hearing the long, low moan that then emanated from the throat of Ambassador Kralowc into the telephone system known as NYNEX because it is run by Venusians, he continued to read: " We no longer make any claim toward the authenticity of the relic in our possession, nor do we demand of Votskojek that she produce any evidence, scientific or historical or otherwise, in support of the claim that the relic in her possession is the true relic. It is our understanding that the true relic is currently in New York City, under the protection and in the care of the government of Votskojek on behalf of the people of Votskojek. When the government of Votskojek, or its representatives, shall present this relic to the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York City, United States of America, we, the sovereign state of Tsergovia, will give up, cede, and relinquish for all time from this moment until the end of the world any and all claims we might have had to the successor seat at the United Nations. We would pray to that august body that we be considered for a new seat, at the earliest opportunity. By the grace of God and the order of the freely elected and democratic government seated at Osigreb, sovereign state of Tsergovia. Signed, Zara Kotor, Major General.'" Chuckling and panting, the archbishop said, "Well, Ambassador, what do you think of that?" He waited. "Ambassador? Ambassador?" Very faintly came the voice of the ambassador: "It's wonderful, Archbishop." "Overcome, are you? Well, I don't blame you, my boy; it's been a long struggle and those Tsergovians didn't mind fighting dirty, I can tell you that, and I can tell you now it's a great relief to me to have this matter resolved, because it was, I'll admit it now, it was difficult not to show bias toward those sneaking, underhanded, sacrilegious--" "Archbishop?" "Yes?" "Was that release sent to anyone else?" "Anyone else? My boy, it was faxed to everyone. Down at the bottom here, wait just a minute, here's a list, it's--Yes, every United Nations member--" "Every one?" "Every one. All major news media, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York--Ambassador? Was that a moan?" "No, no, Archbishop, I was merely clearing my throat. Uh, this if wonderful news, as you say. I can hardly wait to tell my superiors back in Novi Glad. Archbishop, uh, would you mind faxing me that fax?" "Not at all," the archbishop said. "Delighted to be the bearer of good tidings. I'll fax the fax at once. I have your fax number?" "Your people have my fax number." "As long as they have your fax number, there's no problem. We'll fax the fax in just a moment." "Fax you--uh, I mean, thank you, Archbishop." "My pleasure," the archbishop said; which was more accurate than he knew. radec had barely hung up from talking with Archbishop Minkokus, that doddering old fool, when Lusk came in to say, "Sir, the president is on the phone." "The president?" As weighed down by worry and care as he was, it took a few seconds to work that one out. "My president?" "Our president, yes, sir," Lusk agreed. "On the phone from Novi Glad." "Oh, God." Bad news travels fast. Or, that is, good news travels fast. Whatever. That damn helicopter; why wasn't this ship equipped with antiaircraft weapons? That's Votskojek airspace you're violating up there, pal, I'd have every legal right to shoot you down, blow you away, knock you out of the sky. "Sir?" Reality calls; that is to say, the president calls. "What time is it in Novi Glad?" Lusk consulted a wristwatch, made a calculation, said, "Quarter after six, sir. p.m." "Did he sound drunk?" "No, sir." More's the pity. What to do? Impossible to tell the president the truth; that would lead to immediate recall, dismissal, public shame, and possible dismemberment. Was there still a way out of this mess? Temporize, Hradec, temporize. "Leave me," he said. "Sir." Lusk bowed, departed, and Hradec painted a huge smile on his face, breathed rapidly three times, picked up the phone, and said into it, at top speed, "Isn't that wonderful news? I just heard it myself this minute from the arch--" "What? What? What's all that?" It was only when he heard the president's gravelly voice yelling Magyar-Croat in his ear that Hradec realized he'd been speaking in English. Will nothing go right? Switching at once to his native tongue, Hradec said, "Oh, Your Excellency, I'm sorry, I thought I was speaking to the New York Times. The entire city is agog at the news." "Of course they are," said His Excellency. "What sort of ceremony do you plan for the occasion?" "Ceremony, Your Excellency?" "Of course, ceremony," grated the voice that used to bring a chill to many a heart and a confession to many a lip in the old days when His Excellency was a hands-on head of the VIA, the Votskojek Intelligence Agency. (From leading the nation's spies to leading the nation is a rather common route to power these days; Andropov in the former Soviet Union, for instance. Other examples come to mind.) "You'll want to give the relic a first-rate ceremony at the United Nations," this terror-striking voice went on. "Votskojek expects it of you. The world expects it of you. I expect it of you." "Yes, Your Excellency, of course." "You aren't going to just walk over there and flash it at them like a ticket of admission to a film show." "No, of course not, Your Excellency. But," as a ray of hope seemed to gleam before him, a tiny ray, a temporary ray, but still a ray, "a ceremony will take a little while to organize, Your Excellency, to arrange. This won't be immediate." "No one expects it to be immediate," His Excellency snarled. "Let them wait a little." "Your wish is my command, Excellency." "The waiting game, Kralowc," that voice purred, heavy with awful memories, "it has its uses in many departments of life." If he ever finds out, Hradec thought, if this brute of a president ever finds out, he'll restore flaying to the Votskojek code of justice, just for me. "I'll let them wait, Your Excellency," he promised, his voice hardly trembling at all. "I'll drag it out, I promise you, just as long as I can." Somehow, Guy just didn't like having these carpenters in his house. They kept looking around all the time; it was unnerving. That may be why he didn't bargain with them, haggle them down from their arbitrary thirty thou. Not that he didn't have the money, or the reasonable assurance he would get it back and tenfold, but merely that it wasn't his nature, under any circumstances, to accept the first number he heard. But with these two, playing the game was somehow just not worth it. Get them in, get them out, get
it over with. And so he did, early Tuesday morning. They went away from his basement with thirty thousand dollars in cash tucked away in their pockets, looking around at everything on their way out, heads turning back and forth, eyes glancing off locks, windows, electric outlets, who knew what. Guy, in relief, shut and locked the basement door on them, hurried upstairs to his office, and phoned Perly. Jacques Perly was an old associate, a known quantity. A private investigator by trade, his specialty was art theft and his employers usually insurance companies or banks--those who had to pay for insured losses, those who had to absorb uninsured losses. As Guy had supposed, there was more than one insurance company involved in the Harry Hochman art collection; there were three, and Jacques Perly represented them all. Guy had phoned him yesterday to say he might be of use in the present instance--"I rather thought you might," Perly had answered, a bit too dryly for Guy's taste--and now today Guy phoned to say he'd made contact with the thieves and was prepared to be the go-between. "Fine," Perly said. "Lunch? Or are you doing one of your own today?" "Not today, or at all this week. I've cleared the decks for this, Jacques." "Lunch, then," Perly decided, and they met at one o'clock at Tre Mafiosi on Park Avenue, a smooth, hushed place in white and green and gold, with yellow flowers. Perly had arrived first, and he rose with a smile and an outstretched hand when Tony the maitre d' escorted Guy to the table. A round, stuffed Cornish game hen of a man, Jacques Perly retained a slight hint of his original Parisian accent. A onetime art student, a failed artist, he viewed the world with a benign pessimism, the mournful good humor of a rich, unmarried uncle, who expects nothing and accepts everything. "Good afternoon," Guy said as Tony seated him and Angelo distributed menus and Kwa Hong Yo brought rolls, butter, and water. "You're looking well." "And you." Menus were consulted, food and wine were ordered, and then Guy took the bulky envelope from his inner pocket and, without a word, handed it over. Perly raised an eyebrow, removed the photos from the envelope, leafed through them, and smiled dolefully as he said, "A well-documented felony." 'These are professionals," Guy assured him. "We don't have to worry about any of the works being harmed." "No, I suppose not. May I keep these?" "Of course." Food and wine arrived and were consumed, with small talk about the city, the weather, the disappointing Broadway season-- "Although Nana: The Musical isn't bad," Perly suggested--and one's plans for the summer. Then, over espresso and raspberries, Perly said, "Honestly, Guy, the extreme professionalism of these people, with all these Polaroid prints, gives me pause. Are we creating this monster, you and I?" Guy looked askance. "Which monster is that, Jacques?" "These thieves," Perly explained. "If they were to steal a loaf of bread, it would be to eat. If they steal money, it's to spend; jewelry, to pawn. But when they steal an art collection like this"--tap tap on the envelope of photos--"it is only to sell it back. And how could they do that, if it were not for you and me? We are certainly collaborators in their crimes, but are we more? Do we encourage the commission of these crimes, by our very existence? Do we instigate them?" "Nonsense," Guy said in automatic disagreement. "People will steal anything; you know that as well as I do. We don't encourage the theft; we encourage the recovery." "Without the punishment of the perpetrators." "With or without," Guy said, dismissing that. "Capturing is the police's job. Recovery is ours." "But if we didn't exist, Guy, you and I, what would these very professional thieves do with all these paintings and sculptures they've just loaded so precisely into their truck? Would they present their demands direct to Harry Hochman? He'd set the dogs on them." Guy smiled faintly. "Or the shotguns, more likely." "Exactly. We are the go-betweens, and necessary, if anything useful is to be done. But in this instance, don't the go-betweens create the very condition they're supposed to be alleviating?" Guy shook his head, irritated by this conversation and surprised that a man like Jacques Perly would demonstrate such compunction. "The thieves will sell Hochman's art to the insurance companies, through us. You want to know what they would do without us? Or without the insurance companies, who, after all, put up the money, so maybe they create the monster." "Very possible," Perly said, nodding. Guy didn't need that particular agreement. "Without any of us," he said, "the thieves would find a way to make contact with art dealers in Europe. Switzerland, for instance, or Holland. Or maybe South America. The dealers would buy, no questions asked. The dealers--some of the dealers, anyway, and you know a number of them yourself, Jacques--those dealers would be happy to cobble together brand-new authentication and sell the works to collectors anywhere. There's a market beyond us, Jacques, and you're just being provocative to suggest there isn't, and you know it. What we do is keep the collection together, no small consideration, and in the rightful owner's hands." Eyes twinkling, Perly sipped espresso, bit delicately into a raspberry, and said, "So, Guy. You mean we are without guilt?" "Absolutely," Guy said. Blotches of red stood on his cheeks. "Such a relief," Perly murmured. then Dortmunder walked into the OJ Bar Grill, the regulars were discussing why cable television needs wires. "It's because of the vibrations," one of them was saying. "They send these vibrations down the wire, and that tells the TV what to show." "How?" asked a second regular. The first regular stared at him. "Whadaya mean, how? I just told you how. With vibrations." A third regular weighed in. "That's a load of crap," he announced, and gestured forcefully with his beer glass. The second regular adapted his question to the new circumstances: "How come?" "If a TV's gotta have vibrations to tell it what to show," the third regular belligerently reasoned, "how come regular TV don't need it?" Here came a fourth regular, saying, "That's easy, pal. Regular TV works like radio, without wires." "How?" asked the second regular, but the first regular overrode him, saying, "Without wires? Radio works without wires? Whadaya think that dark brown cord is, comes outta the back, goes into the wall?" "It ain't cable," said the fourth regular with supreme confidence. The first regular glared at him. "It's a wirel" The second regular, building strongly on his original base, said, "How about portables?" The third regular banged his beer glass on the table. "I can't stand them," he announced. "Boom boxes. The only stations you can get on those things is brain damage." "They cause brain damage," said the fourth regular, being positive on a whole new subject. "How?" asked the second regular, returning to the basics. "Vibrations," said the first regular, also returning to basics. But the third regular rounded on the fourth and said, "How can you be sure it isn't the other way around?" "What isn't the other way around?" "They were already brain-damaged to begin with; that's why they bought the boom boxes." "No no no," said the positive fourth regular. 'They used to have enough brains to walk into a store, hand over the money, walk out with the radio." "Can't stand those things." "But you look at them now," the fourth regular persisted, "walking around with those boxes, you can see they don't have enough brain left to close their mouths." The others, establishing a certain level of brainpower, closed their mouths to mull that one over, while Dortmunder approached Rollo the bartender, snoozing against the cash register, and said, "Anybody back there?" Rollo's eyes focused. "I would say," he answered, "everybody's back there. The other bourbon's got your glass." "Thanks." Dortmunder nodded to Rollo, who'd drifted off again, then he walked past the regulars, who were all blinking and frowning, trying to remember what they'd been talking about, and headed for the back room. Which, as Rollo had suggested, was full. With Dortmunder, all eleven from the caper were here: Kelp, Tiny, Stan Murch, Gus Brock, Fred Lartz, Harry Matlock, Ralph Demrovsky, Ralph Winslow, Jim O'Hara, and Wally Whistler. All of the chairs were occupied except the one with its back to the door, and a few of the guys were sitting around on upended wooden liquor cases. Dortmunder upended a liquor case, sat on it, and Gus Brock said, "Dortmunder, we got three cents left over." Dortmunder wasn't ready for this. "How come?" Gus said, "We got eleven guys, we got thirty grand. That comes out twenty-seven hundred bucks a man, but with three hundred bucks left over. So we split that, and it's twenty-seven bucks a man, but with three bucks left over. So we split that, and it's twenty-seven cents a man, but with three cen
ts left over, for eleven guys." Dortmunder nodded. Somehow, he felt as though he were still out front with the regulars. He said, "We'll give it to Tiny; he didn't get anything the first time around." Everybody agreed that was fair, especially Tiny, and then everybody wanted to know what was going to happen next. "Nothing," Dortmunder said. "We'll give this guy Guy Claverack, this guy Clav--Guy--Him. We'll give him two days to meet some people, talk it over, start the negotiation. Thursday we'll give him a call. Meanwhile," turning to Stan, "how's the truck doing?" "Fine," Stan said. "I went out there today and moved it to a different town. Every six blocks out there, it's a different town with different cops, so all I have to do is keep it moving; no police force is gonna notice they got this same truck all the time." Gus Brock said, "How long is this two thousand seven hundred twenty-seven dollars and twenty-seven cents supposed to last us? In other words, when can we expect something from your guy?" "You mean Guy?" But then Dortmunder waved a hand in the air, saying, "No, forget that, I know who you mean. And the way I figure, it's going to have to be at least a week, so they can all negotiate, and maybe a month, but it can't be any longer than that." Stan said, "I'm gonna take the train out to Long Island and bop that truck around every other day for a month*" "I hope not that long," Dortmunder said. Harry Matlock said, "Me and Ralph got a suggestion." Meaning his partner, Ralph Demrovsky. Dortmunder wasn't sure he was in the market for suggestions --they were already moving forward on the agreed-upon plan here, after all--but he said, "Sure. What is it?" "Just in case there's a problem with your guy," Harry said, "in case it looks like there's a problem, or there could be a problem, or whatever, Ralph and me a few years ago made contact with a couple people that move art to Europe. First to Canada, and then to Europe. We could slip that truck into Canada, get some people in Europe that buy that kind of stuff. Dealers, you know." "That's a possibility," Dortmunder agreed. "Ifs less money, because they pay less, and you got more people along the route with their hand out that they got to have a little piece, but if the first plan falls through, that's good you've got those contacts." "When?" Harry said. "You mean, when do you call your contact? When do we figure things aren't working out? Is that what you mean?" "Yes," Harry said. Stan said, "I don't feature taking that train every other day for a month, I'll tell you that." Dortmunder considered. The essence of leadership is compromise. That, and sensing the needs of your people. That, and remaining confident on the surface. And some other stuff. "Two weeks," he said. "How's that?" Everybody agreed two weeks was fine. It was long enough to know if the negotiation with the insurance company was going to come to anything, but not so long as to drive everybody, and especially Stan, crazy. "Fine," Dortmunder said. "When I call this guy Guy on Thursday, I'll tell him the deadline. In the meantime, we already got a little taste, almost three grand apiece." "And me," Tiny said, deadpan, "I got three cents for the first caper. Things/are lookin up.'' Harry Hochman was not a detail man. The kind of man Harry was, he hired detail men, and they took care of the details, while Harry kept his mind and eye on the big picture. What Harry Hochman was was a big-picture man. Which was what made it so goddam irritating to be in this hotel room with these people, listening to details. The room itself was all right, but it damn well better be, it was his. But really his. This was the living room of the Imperial Dragon Suite on the top floor of the Dragon Host Hotel on Park Avenue in New York City, just north of Grand Central Station and south of the Crispinite monastery, and this was the flagship of a chain of seventeen Dragon Host hotels Harry owned in partnership with the Japs, because the only way to get into the Japs' pants was to let them get into yours. So Dragon Host ran hotels in New York and Washington and Chicago and San Francisco and Los Angeles, plus a few in Canada and South America, but it also ran hotels in Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto and Otaru and Yokohama and Nagoya and Kobe, and that's what Harry Hochman meant by the big picture. Not these goddam details about insurance and art thieves and private eyes. Why couldn't he just hire somebody to handle all these details and give him a call when everything was straightened out and the art was back where it belonged and Harry could go visit the Vermont chateau once more? But, no. Outside, if a person had the leisure to stand up and look out a window, was all of Manhattan Island, or at least all of Manhattan Island that a big-picture man like Harry Hochman needed to look at, but could he go look at it? No. He had to sit here in the living room of the Imperial Dragon Suite with a lot of detail men and converse with them about details. Like these Polaroid pictures of his art collection. Pictures showing it where it belonged, and then pictures of it in some goddam truck. "Do you recognize these, Mr. Hochman?" asked one of the detail men. Perly, his name was, Jacques Perly. He was the private eye, though in his blue suit and round plumpness he looked to Harry more like an untrustworthy doctor. Didn't look like any private eye Harry had ever seen. "Of course I recognize them," he snapped, leafing rapidly through the pictures, barely concentrating at all, for so many reasons. Details, for one. And the fact all this stuff was gone, stolen, for another. And that the thieves took the photos, for a third. If that pissant little faggot Hradec had only torn himself out of the embraces of his smarmy little lover--talk about your untrustworthy doctors!--long enough to hear an entire moving van being filled with paintings and statuary, none of this would be happening, and Harry would be comfortably concerning himself with some big picture somewhere, instead of looking at these little pictures in his hands here. (Since Harry wasn't taking any of Hradec's constant phone calls, he was unaware of Hradec's theory that the whole thing was the work of Diddums, nor was he aware of Hradec's contention that he and the ungood doctor had been drugged and were not sexually involved with one another, but, even if he'd heard all that, he wouldn't have believed it, mostly because he was too irritated.) The private eye, Perly, said, "The reason we need your positive identification, Mr. Hochman, is because your insurance companies are uninterested in paying for works that you don't own." "Well, they damn well better pay for the works I do own," Harry snarled, and glared around generally at the four men and two women here representing the insurance companies. More detail people, as were the two lawyers, the accountant, and the two men in wrinkled neckties from the New York Police Department. (How do people wrinkle neckties*) The NYPD men were here because, even though the theft had taken place in Vermont, and everybody's best guess was that it was a Boston gang that had pulled the job and they were hiding the loot somewhere in Boston, the extortion attempt was taking place in New York. The reason the Vermont police and the Boston police weren't here was because they were searching Boston for Harry Hochman's stolen art, and fat chance they had of finding it, is what Harry thought. Fat chance. He thought it was all in Canada. This detail man, this private eye, Perly, wasn't finished with him yet. "Sir," he said, "could you take a look at the photographs? Just identify one or two items for me, sir, if you would." Details; you could drown in details. "Very well," Harry said with bad grace, and peered at one of the photographs. "There," he said. "Leaning against the side of the truck there, that's a Botticelli, two angels with one ribbon around their necks, bought that eleven, no, twelve, no eleven, I think maybe twelve, years ago in Geneva. Then here--" "Thank you, sir. Something from one of the other photos would be good." Harry sighed long and loud to let them know what he thought of this pecksniffery. Lotta crap. "Here we are," he said. 'That's a de Chirico. You see the little white Doric column, the blue sky?" "Yes, sir, Mr. Hochman, thank you." Harry, with the feeling of an adult dragooned into a child's game, put that photo at the bottom of the stack in his hands and looked at the next one. He blinked. "Now," he said, "what the hell is thati" Nobody in the room had expected such a reaction. This was a simple cut-and-dried procedure, legally necessary but not normally full of surprises; the victim identifies the stolen insured items. The whole crowd in the room tensed up, detail people realizing that a detail was wrong. Jacques Perly, already leaning solicitously over Harry to guide him through the identification process, said, "What's that you say, Mr. Hochman?" "This
damn thing," Harry said, pointing at the damn thing, prominent in the photograph. "What the hell is this supposed to be?" "Don't you know, sir?" "How the hell am I supposed to know? What is this?" "You mean, sir," Perly asked, bending down even closer to Harry and the photo, "that glass chest or coffer there? That small casket? No, let me see… reliquary, I would say." "Don't be stupid," Harry said. "I don't own any reliquary." "Are you sure, sir?" Harry did not believe his ears. In his own suite, in his own hotel, in his own nation, on his own planet, he was being insulted to his face. "Am I suret" Perly withdrew his objectionable head somewhat from Harry's lap but held out his hand instead, saying, "May I see that photo, sir? If I may?" "You can keep it," Harry said, and slapped the damn thing into the damn man's damn hand. Perly, unruffled, studied the photo. 'These other objects visible here," he said. "You do recognize these, don't you? Isn't this the de Chirico you mentioned before, in the background here?" "Don't show me that damn thing," Harry said, waving it away. "I didn't say the rest of it isn't mine, the rest of it is mine. I'm saying, what the hell is that glass box doing there?" "With something in it," Perly said, peering closely at the photograph. "And that isn't mine, either," Harry said. "Whatever the hell it is." One of the insurance munchkins said, "Mr. Hochman, isn't it possible, with everything you own, I mean, with all your possessions, isn't it, that you might have, uh, have, uh…" It was Harry's fierce eye that ground the fellow to a stop, and Harry's pointing finger that pinned him in his place. "Say the next word," Harry said, "and you're looking for a job." There was a long silence in the suite. Everyone but Harry was too uncomfortable to move; Harry was too irritated to move. When he'd established that the insurance company clown was not going to say the dread word, Harry answered it, anyway: "I know every piece of art I own. And I do not own that glass box. And I do not own whatever is inside it." Perly cleared his throat. "Excuse me, Mr. Hochman," he said. Harry bent his fierce eye on Perly, who, being an independent subcontractor, was less intimidated by it. "What," Harry said. "I believe, Mr. Hochman," Perly said, pointing at the photos in Harry's hands, "if you'll look through those, you'll see some showing the box in your gallery, on a pedestal." "Bullshit," Harry said. "If you would look, sir…" Harry looked. Harry's eyes widened. There it was. There the damn thing was, by God. And there it was again. And, tucked away in the background, there it was yet again. "Well, what the hell is this?" Harry demanded. "It's a pity, Mr. Hochman," Perly said, "that your collection was never catalogued." "What's the point in that? I'm always buying or selling; it changes all the time. We just did some painting down there, moved things around. But this glass box is not mine." "It appears to be, sir," Perly dared to say. "It very strongly appears to be." Harry had had enough of this. This goddam glass box was one detail too many, the detail that right this minute was breaking the camel's back. Glowering once more at Perly, Harry said, "You're the private eye, aren't you?" "We prefer private investigator, Mr. Hochman," Perly said. "Oh, do you. Well, I prefer to know what's going on, and it seems to me it's your job to tell me what's going on. Here's a picture of this glass box for you, Mr. Private Investigator. Investigate. When you've got it figured out, let me know." He strafed the room with his glare. "When you've all got it figured out, let me know," he said. "This meeting is over. Goodbye." He turned the Lamborghini onto Gansevoort Street, thumbing the beeper on his visor as he did so, and down the block, amid the warehouses and the few remaining elements of the meat-packing industry, his battered old green garage door lifted out of the way. Perly steered into the building, beeped the door shut behind him, and drove up the concrete ramp. The conversion didn't start until the second floor, where the high stone block walls were painted a creamy off-white and spotlights mounted high in the metal ceiling beams pinpointed the potted evergreens in front of his office door. Perly parked in his spot--the other was for the occasional client--crossed to the faux Tudor interior wall, handprinted the door open, and stepped into his reception roonywhere Delia looked up from her typing to say, "Hi, Chief. HoVd it go?" "Weird one this time, Delia," Perly said, skimming his hat across the room to a perfect ringer on the hat rack. "They're all weird, Chief," Delia reminded him. "What's the story this time?" Sitting with one heavy hip cocked on the corner of Delia's desk, Perly said, "Rich guy, Harry Hochman, hotels. Art collection stolen up in Vermont. Thieves took pictures of the loot, prove they've got it." He took several photos from his inner jacket pocket, hefted them. "Did the standard ID with Hochrnan, showed him the pictures." He put a photo on the desk in front of Delia, pointed. "See that reliquary?" "It's a beauty, Chief." "Hochman says it isn't his." "He does?" Perly spread the rest of the photos in front of Delia. She looked at them, photo after photo of Harry Hochman's art collection, with the glass box. She did her soundless whistle. "Wow, Chief," she said. "Why would he say a thing like that?" "That's the question all right, Delia." Perly stood from her desk, brushed the seat of his trousers, shot his cuffs, and said, "I told you, Delia, it's a weird one this time. Call Fritz, tell him I need blowups of the best pix of the box, soonest. Then call Margo, Jerry, and Herkimer. Meeting here at four o'clock." "High gear, eh, Chief?" said Delia. "You've got it, Delia," Perly said. "I want to know what that box is, and I want to know what that thing inside it is, and I want to know what it's all worth, and I want to know why Harry Hochman's so shy all of a sudden. And I want it all yesterday." "Consider it done, Chief," Delia said, and reached for the phone. A, ^rchbishop Minkokus rarely if ever read the lay press. It was so full of discomforting information. "In order to hold your faith intact/Be sure it's kept unsullied by fact." Therefore, he had not known, when he'd phoned Hradec Kralowc on Monday about Tsergovia's wondrous abdication by fax, about the Votskojek ambassador's other problems, the robbery in Vermont and the sudden public doubts about his sleeping patterns and sleeping partners. It wasn't until Wednesday morning, when one of his clerks brought him the anonymous letter and the photograph that had just been hand-delivered to the guard desk by the UN building's main entrance down below, that the archbishop began to learn what had been going on in the mundane world while he'd been concentrating on the eternal. The photograph, a Polaroid shot, placed neatly on the desk in front of him, was clearly a picture of the sacred relic of St. Ferghana --he recognized the reliquary--supposedly in the care and safekeeping of the Votskojek authorities in Novi Glad, but apparently in some sort of underlit art gallery somewhere. Naked statues and paintings of naked women were discomfitably visible in the photo, causing the archbishop to look hastily away and to stare at his clerk instead, saying, "Father? Why are you showing me this?" "The letter explains, Your Grace." The letter. The first draft of this letter had been written personally by John Dortmunder, by hand, on Sunday night. It had been read, on Monday and Tuesday, by Dortmunder's faithful companion, May, by Andy Kelp, by Tiny Bulcher, and by Grijk Krugnk, all of whom pronounced it wonderful, and all of whom knew how to fix it. Statements were altered by this editorial staff, emphasis was shifted, entire sentences were moved from place to place, additional thoughts were inserted (some of them later to be removed again), and eventually a letter was produced that everybody but Dortmunder found satisfactory. He still preferred his first draft. But the letter the archbishop now held was far from that first draft. Handwritten by May on typewriter paper from the Safeway, it read: Dear Archbishop Minkokus. I am a disgruntled employee of Mr. and Mrs. Hoch man, the hotel people. They think their better than anybody. So I helped steal all their art. But I am a devout person, I pray to Saint Dismas all the time, and I was shocked when I saw this sacred relic in among all the profane and filthy art that people like those people like. Naked pictures, and pictures that hold the Church up to scorn. Mr. and Mrs. Hochman are doing many dirty deals with Ambassador Hradec Kralowc of Votskojek, like him helping them get around the tax laws in this country and Europe. They paid to fix up a love nest apartment in that Votskojek ship for the Ambassador. And now he gives them this sacred relic, for them to pretend it is "art" like all that corrupt filth they have their, I say t
heir going too far. Archbishop, the people that stole all that "art" may be thieves, but they have got more respect than that. They will treat the sacred relic like it should be treated, and when the insurance company pays and the art goes back I hope you will see to it that the sacred relic is treated decent and like it ought to be from now on. Sincerely, A Sinner but not a Total Loss "Absurd," the archbishop said when he'd finished this group effort. "Ridiculous. I don't even understand most of it." "Your Grace," said the clerk diffidently, "I took the liberty of bringing along these recent articles from the New York Times. If you'd look at these two reports, Your Grace, you'll see what the letter writer is talking about." The archbishop viewed the papers in the clerk's hands with deep mistrust. "It isn't about world population growth, is it?" "No, Your Grace. If s about the art theft referred to in that letter." "I hate all that anticlerical stuff about world population growth." 'This is something else entirely, Your Grace," the clerk assured him. Still dubious, prepared to clamp his eyelids shut at the first sign of an uncomfortable reality, the archbishop took the papers and began to read. When, four minutes later, he raised his head, he was a changed man, though not on the subject of world population growth. "Get me," he said coldly, "that man. On the telephone." "Yes, Your Grace." The clerk started to leave, but the archbishop said, 'Take these things with you," waggling bony fingers over the newspaper articles and the letter. "Yes, Your Grace." The clerk picked up the papers, saying, "Should I turn the letter over to the police?" The archbishop stared. "Whatever for? To have this shameful revelation in the newspapers?" "I only thought, Your Grace, the police might think it was evidence or some such thing. Concerning the crime." "Temporal laws are not our concern," the archbishop instructed. "We have the Church to consider. File that letter under miscellaneous correspondence." "Yes, Your Grace." "I'll keep this photo a while." "Yes, Your Grace." The clerk bowed himself out, and the archbishop brooded at the photograph, observing this treatment of the relic of St. Ferghana, until the clerk buzzed him that he had the ambas sador on the phone. The archbishop pressed the button. "Hello." "Hello, Archbishop, how are you today?" There was a nasty homosexual nasal quality to the ambassador's voice that the archbishop had never noticed before. If there was one thing the archbishop hated more than normal sex, it was abnormal sex. His own voice, usually thin and gravelly and harsh, became colder and more forbidding than ever as he said, "It doesn't matter how I am today, Ambassador. When do you intend to bring the relic of St. Ferghana over here to the UN and present it to the General Assembly?" There was a brief startled silence at the other end of the line, punctuated by little coughs and grunts. Then the ambassador said, "Well, Archbishop, I was on the phone yesterday with President Ka--" "I want to know," the archbishop said, "when we'll be seeing the relic over here at the UN." "Well, there should be, you know, Archbishop, a certain ceremony in connection with--" "When." "I had thought, well, uh, you know, a few weeks--" "Tomorrow," the archbishop said. The silence this time was stunned, and profound. "Tomorrow, Archbishop?" "Tomorrow." "But my president wants a ceremonial occa--" "You may have your ceremony whenever you want it," the archbishop said. "Whatever sort of ceremony a fellow like you might devise. But the relic is to be in this building, in my office, for safekeeping, tomorrow." "Archbishop," the miserable invert stammered, "I don't see how I can, uh, uh, uh…" The archbishop hung up. It turned out, Guy could host a lunch on Thursday, after all. There happened to be a few people in town who could be useful or amusing when put together at his table, at least two of whom immediately broke other appointments when they received his invitation, which was highly gratifying. The lunch went as well as Guy had expected, and after it, after seeing his guests out at the front door to their limousines waiting on East Sixty-eighth Street--Guy did prefer guests who departed by limo rather than by cab --he returned to his office, to learn that two calls had come in while he'd been lounging upstairs: Jacques Perly and the carpenters. "Ah," Guy said, standing over his secretary's desk, holding the two "While you were out" slips. "No number for the carpenters?" "They said they were on a job site without a phone," she explained, "and would call back after three. It sounded as though they were at a pay phone." The pay phone is to the telephone as the taxicab is to the limousine. "Get Jacques for me, then," Guy said, "and put the carpenters through when they call back." "Yes, sir." Guy moved on into his own office, and beyond, to his bathroom, where he dropped two Alka-Seltzer into a glass of cold water. Carrying it back, listening to the fizz, feeling the faint shower of bursting bubbles on the hand holding the glass, anticipating the relief just ahead, he sat at his desk as the intercom said, "Mr. Perly on one." "Hello, Jacques." Guy sipped Alka-Seltzer. "How are we coming along?" "Slow and steady," Perly answered. "This situation, Guy, I'm afraid it isn't quite as simple as you and I, in our own simplicity, assumed." "Were we assuming that?" "Well, I was assuming it," Perly said, "and I suppose I was assuming you were assuming it, as well. But you already knew this affair was complicated?" "Well, no," Guy said. He felt his feet weren't quite touching bottom in this conversation. "I wouldn't say I thought it was complicated." "Because if there's anything I should know…" "No, no, no," Guy said. "I merely meant, I never assume any situation is simple.'''' "Ah. A wise philosophy. This situation is quite other than simple. I'm having to run down a few leads here and there." "Leads?" Guy drained the Alka-Seltzer, suddenly needing it more. "You mean to find the collection, rather than buy it?" Thirty thousand down instead of a million up; a hell of a thought. But Perly said, "Not precisely. In a way, I think what we're dealing with here is an inside job." "Fascinating," Guy said. "Anyone I know?" "I'll be happy to chat about it once I've cracked it," Perly said. "But what I need now is time." "Oh, dear." Guy was sorry the Alka-Seltzer was all gone. "You don't want me to stall these people, do you? Desperate criminals like these?" "Frankly, yes." "We discussed at lunch, Jacques, you know we did, the alternatives they do have. Europe, South America. To be just as frank as you are, I'm already out-of-pocket in this situation, to keep them contented--" 'That's up to you, of course." "I know it is; I'm not complaining. But to stall? They already phoned once today, while I was out; they'll be calling back after three." "All I want," Perly said, "is two weeks." "What? Impossible. How can I ask these people to wait two weeks, when they know any second they could be exposed, arrested?" "What can you do for me, Guy? I need time. Ten days, can you do that much?" "One week," Guy said firmly. "In good conscience, that5s all I could even try for." Perly sighed. "Well," he said, "then it's up to me, that's all. Work faster, that's all." Which was when Guy realized one week was how long Perly had hoped for from the beginning. To be negotiated with, and not notice; the Alka-Seltzer turned to gall and wormwood in Guy's stomach. "I'm sure," he said acidly, and burped, "you'll find the way. You're very resourceful, after all." And he hung up on Perry's suave goodbye. By one minute past three, when the carpenter called, Guy was feeling better about life, mostly because of other business dealings that had occupied his time. Now, hearing the gloomy tones of the chief carpenter in his ear, he was positively cheerful when he said, "No news yet, I'm sorry to say." 'That's okay," the carpenter said. "For now, it's okay. Pretty soon, though, it's not gonna be okay." "I understand." "We're hanging out here in the wind, you know." "I perfectly sympathize." "The longer it takes, the more chance something goes wrong, one of us gets nabbed, the whole deal goes south." "I couldn't agree more." "We got other things we could do with this stuff." "Everyone is aware of that, I assure you." "So we gotta have a deadline here, and then after that we're gonna have to go and do other things. Some one other thing." Here was the sticking point. Gripping the phone, speaking carefully, Guy said, "I don't know how much I can rush the process here. We're dealing, after all, with insurance companies and so on." "That's okay. You just tell them the deadline, if they ever want to see this stuff again. Or, if they'd like to pay a hundred cents on the dollar to the guy in Vermont, they could do that, too." "I'm sure they'd rather not." "So they'll meet the deadline." "I don't know how rapi
dly we could all--" "Two weeks." "You there?" "Oh, yes," Guy said. "You heard me?" "I heard you. Two weeks, you said." "And not a minute more." Guy smiled all over his face. "My friend," he said, "I think I can assure you, it might even be a few minutes less." The storm came out of nowhere, whipping northward up the Atlantic Coast, swamping small boats, eroding beaches, exposing the frenzied ocean waves to the lurid glare of its lightning bolts. Wind rammed the rain before it, sweeping across the bare decks of the Staten Island ferries as they wallowed in the heaving harbor and waddled slowly toward shore. Sheets of rain flung themselves up Broadway, drumming on taxi roofs, theater marquees, closed newspaper kiosks. Skyscrapers ran with fat tears of water; the gutters boiled; trees in the parks bent and trembled before the fury of the elements. Far up in the Bronx, the storm raged and shrieked around the black bell tower of St. Crispinian, where pale arching currents of electricity feebly echoed the jolts of lightning from above, and where Hradec Kralowc's faint voice, torn by the wind, was heard to cry, "We can't give up! Not now!" Electric power had not failed, at least there was that. Round light globes beneath circular tin reflectors hung on long black wires from the shadowy stone ceiling high above Dr. Zorn's laboratory. The globes swayed in the air as crooked fingers of wind reached in through cracks in the church walls, making shadows twist and writhe in all the corners, but at least the lights stayed on. The experiment could continue. There was to be no defeatism. They were winning, they were! Hadn't Hradec succeeded in quitting the Pride of Votskojek unobserved, eluding the press by wearing the uniform of a Continental Detective Agency guard and exiting with the eight-to-four shift? Hadn't he brought his cellular phone with him, and hadn't he used it, right here in this former church yesterday afternoon, to convince Archbishop Minkokus, that fiend from Hell, that he needed twenty-four more hours before he could bring the sacred relic to the archbishop's office in the United Nations building? Hadn't he done so by claiming he couldn't move the relic without permission from his president back in Novi Glad, which permission had not as yet come through but would surely come through at any moment, once the situation had been sufficiently explained to the president? And hadn't that persuaded the archbishop to say, "Very well. Friday. By noon"? Friday, by noon. That was hours from now. Hradec had been here for more than twenty-four wakeful hours so far, spurring Dr. Zorn to greater heights of experimentation, demanding success, and they still had until noon tomorrow, nearly eleven hours. Surely, surely, surely by then they could fake a bone! "We won't fool anyoncl" Zorn insisted, that defeatist, that miserable mewling swine. 'This doesn't even look like a femur!" he cried, pointing at the bone they were working with, brought here by Hradec from a butcher shop in Chinatown, the closest thing he could find to his memory of the stolen relic. "We don't have to fool anyone," Hradec argued. "The only person who is going to see this bone is Archbishop Minkokus, that senile, old, doddering fool. This is only to buy time, Karver, only to buy a little time." "Defrauding an archbishop," Zorn wailed. "They'll lock us up forever!" "No one will know! The archbishop's half-blind!" "The other half will see this bone doesn't even come from a human being!" "How do you know? Maybe it does! No one knows what goes on in Chinatown!" Dr. Zorn picked up the bone in question and banged it on the autopsy table. "This is not a human bone." "How would the archbishop know such a thing? What does he know of the inside of the human body?" The argument raged on within as the storm raged on without. They shaved the bone; they painted it; they surged powerful beams of electric energy through it; they lowered it into various solutions; they exposed it to the storm; they radiated it; they boiled it but didn't keep the soup; they froze it. On and on the work continued, without pause or rest. Around the church, the storm keened and crashed, but the two within remained bent over their experiments. The storm abated, its cruel teeth withdrew, the storm fled away northward to exhaust itself on the upland slopes, and still Hradec and Zorn labored on. Morning came, and with it the sun, and still they did not rest. And then the phone rang. Hradec looked up from the container of dry ice. Smoke and steam enveloped his head. He listened to the tone of the ring. 'That's my phone," he said. "It must be Lusk or Terment, from the embassy; no one else has my cellular phone number." "You'd better answer it," Dr. Zorn suggested. He was haggard from lack of sleep, his reddened eyes behind the thick lenses looking this morning like targets. "Oh, God," Hradec moaned, turning unwillingly toward his briefcase, where the ominous phone shrilled once more. "What now?" And he fished it out. It was, as Hradec had supposed, Lusk or Terment; he himself didn't care which. "I am not to be disturbed," he barked, his voice hoarse and ragged. "A Mr. Perly called. He's investigating Mr. Hochman's theft." "I don't care about that." "He says he wants you at/Mr. Hochman's suite in the Dragon Host Hotel at ten o'clock this morning." "What? For God's sake, why?" "He didn't say. He just said Mr. Hochman will be there, and everyone else concerned will be there, and it would be better for you if you were there." Outraged through his exhaustion, fitting the tattered cloak of diplomatic immunity about himself, Hradec said, "Are you implying he threatened me?" "It sounded that way, sir. I told him you'd be there." "You take a lot on yourself!" Hradec cried, but Lusk or Ter ment had hung up. Across the way, a beaker exploded. racing, Perly prowled the luxurious parlor of Harry Hoch man's suite, while in the room the tension mounted. The eight people he'd assembled here did not include any of the lawyers or insurance executives who so cluttered this case; one way and another, these people here were all principals. And Jacques Perly, with their help --witting or unwitting--was about to crack this case wide open. He was, in fact, about to speak, to open the meeting, when Harry Hochman abruptly said, "Well? Are we all here?" Perly took a moment to answer. Hochman, because this was his suite, was attempting to direct the agenda of the meeting, but Perly had other ideas. "Yes, Mr. Hochman," he said eventually, "we're all assembled." "Then get on with it," Hochman said, either displaying irritability or revealing nervousness; hard to tell. "I'm a busy man." / "We're all busy men, Mr. Hochman," Perly said. "The question is, Busy at what? May I turn to you, sir," he said to another of the invited guests. "Would you tell the group your name and occupation?" The tall, slender, white-haired man recrossed his legs. Calm, self-confident, he sat comfortably in an uncomfortable chair, arms folded, and said, "Name's Hammond Cash. I'm regional manager for CDA." "Continental Detective Agency." "Yes, sir." "You have had the contract to provide security for the Votskojek embassy for some months now, is that correct?" "Yes, sir." "And there was a robbery at the embassy some little time ago?" The thin man smiled thinly. "It looked like a robbery, yes, sir." Perly was gratified to see, from the corner of his eye, Hradec Kralowc's sudden spasm of shock at that sentence, but he pretended for the moment not to have noticed. Concentrating on Cash, he said, "Looked like a robbery? Could you describe the event, Mr. Cash?" "Certainly." Cash had a battered old briefcase on the floor beside his chair. Reaching into it, bringing out a sheaf of papers, he said, "I have here the affidavits of the security men on duty at the time, but to sum it up, Ambassador Kralowc there had two guests aboard the ship, one of whom created a diversion at the gate while the other one scampered about, waving something that was supposed to be the relic of St. Ferghana--" "Supposed to be!" "One moment, Ambassador," Perly said. "You'll get your chance. Mr. Cash?" "Having made sure my men saw this artifact," Cash continued, "the accomplice made his escape in a powerboat operated by a third member of the group." "Quite elaborate," Perly suggested. "Yes, sir, very." Cash chuckled, then sobered and said, "My men naturally suggested phoning the police, but the ambassador wouldn't hear of it." "You mean, this relic was apparently stolen in front of the eyes of your security men, and Ambassador Kralowc refused to make a police report?" "Yes, sir. He apparently released the first man as well." Kralowc was on his feet, yowling: "What? What are you suggesting? What are you trying to imply?" "All in good time, Ambassador," Perly told him. "If you'll just be seated--" "I want to know what you think you're--" "Sit down, Hradec," Harry Hochman said with such cold distaste in his gr
uff voice that Kralowc dropped back into his seat as though he'd been hit by an air bag. Perly turned back to Cash. "Could you tell us what happened next?" 'They shut the embassy," Cash replied. "We stayed on the job, but they shut the place down and all the Votskojek nationals left the country." "I see." Perly turned to another of his guests, a thoughtful, pipe-smoking man. "Sir, would you tell us your name and occupation?" "John Mclntire," the thoughtful man said, sucking on his umighted pipe. "Johns Hopkins. Forensic science." "And have you had occasion to spend time on the Pride of Votskojek, the Votskojek embassy?" "Quite a lot of time, in fact." "For what purpose, sir?" "There was some question raised about the authenticity of a certain relic, a femur, this bone along here." He indicated by running the wet end of his pipe along his left pants leg. "And on the day of the alleged robbery, were you--" "Alleged!" Many people glared at Ambassador Kralowc this time, and he subsided after that one word. Perly turned back to Mclntire. "Were you contacted by Ambassador Kralowc later that same day?" "One of his people, I believe. Lusk or Terment. They called to say they were shutting the place down for a while, I wasn't to continue my work. That situation maintained until very recently, when my fellow investigators and I were permitted to study the relic once more. Or a relic; no telling if it's the same one." "No," Perly agreed. "No telling. Do you know why doubt had been raised about the relic to begin with?" "Some sort of dispute," Mclntire suggested, "with Votskojek's neighbor over there, another little country. Sorry, don't know the name." "Tsergovia," Perly supplied, and turned to the bulldog-shaped woman in the olive green uniform. "You are Ambassador Kotor of Tsergovia, are you not?" "Yes, I am." "Could you tell us why you raised this doubt about authenticity?" "We possessed a similar sacred relic ourselves," she said. "Until very recently, we thought ours was the real one and theirs the imitation. But we tested ours, and were embarrassed to learn we had the fake." "Why was this an issue?" "There were political considerations," the ambassadress said. "At least, we thought so." Perly turned to the scrawny old man in the clerical black and the red beanie. "You are Archbishop Minkokus, are you not?" "I am." "You head a commission concerning the future UN seats of both Votskojek and Tsergovia?" "I do." "Has there been a rumor that, because of religious bias, you intended to give favorable consideration to whichever country possessed the true relic?" "Scurrilous!" "But the rumor existed. Was it false?" "Of course! What an idea!" The old archbishop grew quite pink in the face. "Of course," Perly agreed, sympathetically. "But foolish ideas sometimes are believed." He turned to Ambassadress Kotor: "Did you believe the rumor?" "I'm sorry to say we did, for a while. Until we got to know the archbishop and found out what a fair and sensible man he was." "Thank you, my dear," said the archbishop, bowing in her direction his beamed head. Perly turned to Kralowc. "And did you believe the rumor?" "Of course not!" "No, you didn't," Perly said, and bore in. "You proved you didn't believe the rumor, by giving that relic to Harry Hochman!" Kralowc's eyes bugged out. "What?" "You and Harry Hochman," Perly pursued, "have been engaged in influence peddling, both here and in Europe, for some time. I have signed statements gathered by Interpol in Europe." "Now, wait a minute," Hochman said. "Just a damn minute here." "No, sir, Mr. Hochman," Perly said, turning on the financier. "You think of yourself as an art lover, an art collector, as well as a captain of industry." "I am," Hochman said, as though it were obvious, "that's what I am. I'm all of those things." "An art lover to the extent," Perly said, "that you would try anything, do anything, to get a work of art you loved." Too late cautious, "I certainly wouldn't say that," Hochman said. "I would," Perly told him. "I have affidavits concerning unethical and illegal activities you hired others to engage in, in Geneva and Rotterdam and Buenos Aires, to obtain certain works you coveted." "Oh, balderdash," Hochman said. 'The art world is a very special --That's Guy Claverack sitting right there; he's a dealer in-- you just ask him!" "We'll get to Mr. Claverack in due course," Perly said. "Suffice it to say, for now, you have been known to go to extreme lengths to get a work of art you desired." "No more than anyone else in the field who--" "Considerably more, I would say, Mr. Hochman. Not many art lovers would resort to blackmail!" Hochman screwed up his captain of industry face into shocked disbelief. "Are you out of your mmrf?" "I don't believe so." Perly took a folded sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket, opened it, and handed it to Kralowc, who seemed stunned by events. "Ambassador, this is a list of women you have dated in New York City in the last twelve months. There are forty-nine names on this list." Kralowc gazed dully at the list Jtie shook his head. "If you say so." "We left three names off the list," Perly said. "Could you fill them in?" "Of course not," Kralowc said. "How am I supposed to remember?" "Three women you dated within the last year. Three women you spent time and money on. Three women you went to bed with. But you have no memory of them." "I don't know, I mean, I don't see the, what's the point in all this?" "They remember you," Perly said. "They and several of the others. I have affidavits concerning their sexual experiences with you. None of them felt you were, shall we say, highly motivated. Their general impression was that you hadn't much real interest in heterosexual experience." "I don't believe you," Kralowc said. "Where are these affidavits?" Perly pointed at a gruff-looking, gray-mustached, athletic man across the room. "In the possession of Bill Karnitz over there. He's a detective with the Fraud Squad of the New York Police Department." "Fraud!" "I suggest, Ambassador," Perly said, "that you and Dr. Karver Zorn have been lovers ever since you shared a room in your undergraduate days at Osigreb Polytechnic, that you married to hide this relationship, that you parade with attractive women in New York for the same reason, because you know exposure would ruin your diplomatic career." "That's ridiculous," Kralowc sputtered, "the UN is crawling with--" "You were followed, Ambassador," Perly interrupted, "when you left the embassy in disguise two days ago. You spent all of the last two nights at the home of Dr. Zorn in the Bronx. Why?" "I can explain!" "Go ahead, Ambassador." Kralowc stared, thought, started several sentences, moaned, closed his eyes, put his head in his hands. Now Perly had him, and he knew it. "I further suggest," he suggested, pointing a rigid finger at the top of Kralowc's head, "that Harry Hochman told you he wanted the relic of St. Ferghana, as well as the jewel-encrusted sarcophagus in which it was--" "Reliquary," Guy Claverack said. "I beg your pardon," Perly said; "you're absolutely right; I was carried away. Reliquary. It was the reliquary he really wanted, wasn't it? And threatened to expose your affair with Dr. Zorn if he didn't get it. And how did he know about that affair? Because he had loaned you his Vermont chateau as a secure love nest for you and your doctor friend!" Hochman surged to his feet: "This is outrageous! To sit here, in my own hotel, and listen to this absurd string of ridiculous--" "You think it's ridiculous, Mr. Hochman?" Perly pointed toward Bill Karnitz, the Fraud Squad cop. "After our meeting here, you'll be able to discuss this ridiculous story with Detective Karnitz." Hochman blanched. "I don't know why you're trying to frame me with all this, Perly," he said, "but I never knew Hradec Kralowc was a faggot until--" "I'm not! I'm not!" "I never let him use that place! He broke in there! He's probably in league with the thieves; I wouldn't put it past him. Question him" Bill Karnitz spoke quietly from his corner. "We will, Mr. Hochman. We'll question everybody." "And if you have nothing to hide," Perly said, with a faint sneer, "you'll be all right." Hocriman could be seen adding up the things he had to hide. Silent, no longer full of braggadocio, he sat down. Perly turned to the group. "To sum up. Ambassador Kralowc faked a theft of the relic, but didn't report it to the police, because they would uncover the fraud at once. But the record would exist in the Continental Detective Agency files, if and when the question ever arose as to what had happened to the relic. Having established this false robbery, the ambassador closed the embassy, turned relic and reliquary over to Harry Hocriman, obtained a false relic from somewhere, then reopened the embassy. All would have gone well except that, on an occasion when he and his lover Zorn were in residence in their love nest provided by Harry Hochman at his chateau,
thieves broke in and stole the entire art collection, including the relic and reliquary. Even then, no one would have been likely to search for the truth behind appearances if Harry Hochman, in panic, had not denied ever having had the relic and reliquary in his possession. But now we know why he told that lie, as we know why the ambassador who was supposed to be guarding the relic in New York was in fact asleep in Vermont when that very same relic was being stolen right out from under him… in Vermont.'" "Amazing deduction," the archbishop murmured. Perly smiled, pleased with himself. "A tricky little case," he said, "but I think that wraps it up." Guy Claverack, looking bewildered, said, "Jacques? I thought we were here because of the theft. What happened to the stolen art?" Perly looked at him in surprise. "The stolen art? I suppose the thieves still have it, until the insurance company pays off. This isn't about stolen art, Guy. Stolen-art cases are a dime a dozen. This is the case of the orphaned reliquary." for weeks the neighborhood had been complaining about the smell. State and federal offices, county offices, even town offices had been deluged with calls. Children on the way to school were getting sick and housewives in a several block radius were blacking out, especially on warm, sunny days. "It's like all the dead fish in the world, all in one place," people said. Nothing did any good. EPA vans went by, registering the air. OSHA inspectors closed down two dry-cleaning plants and a bowling alley. State police ticketed a record number of motorists. But still the smell hung over the neighborhood, a curse that would not lift. Finally, several of the neighborhood men got together and spent an entire weekend searching for several blocks in every direction, until at last they found the center of the stink, its fetid core. The smell was coming from a truck parked in the middle of the neighborhood on a commercial block. It even said it was a fish truck. Calls were made. More calls were made. "Come take this stinking truck away!" Weeks went by; the smell got worse; real estate values in the entire community were beginning to slide. And then, at last, a police tow vehicle arrived. And wouldn't you know it? Took the wrong truck. Phone Calls Monday morning, Guy received a phone call from Jacques Perly, saying, "When do you expect to hear from your people?" "Probably today sometime. Why? What can I tell them? I haven't heard any numbers yet." "Tell them we need more pictures," Perly said. "One of the insurance companies is holding out; they want to be sure your people haven't already moved the goods offshore. You know, paying the ransom and not getting anything for it." "Jacques, what are you talking about? Of course they've still got it." "I'm just telling you what the insurance company says. A picture of the loot, or at least some of it, with a copy of today's newspaper showing so they know it's a new picture." "What if they say no?" "Then this one insurance company isn't going to pay, and that's a big chunk of it gone." "Jacques, this doesn't make sense, but I'll do what I can." "I'm sure you will, Guy. As you say, you're already out-of pocket." "And getting less pleased about it every second." "We'll laugh about this when it's over." "I'm glad to hear that." Monday afternoon, fresh from an entertaining lunch in his upstairs dining room, Guy received a phone call from the carpenters. First, he explained the negotiations were still in an early stage, and then he said, "They want another picture." There was a pause, and the gloomy-voiced carpenter said, "Oh, yeah?" "They're just dragging their feet, if you want my opinion, but there's nothing I can do about it. One of the insurance companies, they insist on proof you haven't already gotten rid of the collection somewhere else. They want a picture of it, some part of it, with a copy of today's newspaper visible, to show it's a new photograph." "Uh-huh. Do they care which newspaper?" "I'm sorry?" "Never mind." "Was that a serious question?" "Who knows what's serious, Mr. Claverack?" When Guy hung up, the sound in his ears was the fluttering of many dollar bills, flying away. Monday evening, Grijk Krugnk got a call from a friend, who said, "No names." "Oh, hello, Chon." "I said no names!" "Oh. Why?" "In case anyone's listening on this line." "Your line, or my line?" "Any line. Listen, I want you to do me a favor." "Sure ding, Cho--Oh. Zorry." "Don't worry about it. In the morning, I have to go out to where we left the truck with all the stuff in it; you know the stuff I mean. Don't mention it!" "Oh, no, I wouldn't." "We don't have a car now, so could you drive me out?" "Vad, are you giving id back?" "No, they need another picture, don't ask me why." "Oh. Hokay." "It's out on Long Island, in Farport, on Merrick Avenue, in a big gray truck that says j l carting on the doors." "You're comin vid me, aren'd choo?" "Sure, me or somebody with a camera. I just want you to know where it is. I'll come to your place around eight in the morning." "I'll be here, Chon. Oo! Zorry." "S'okay." The neighborhood was a lot more bearable now that they'd taken the right truck away at last. On the other hand, it was a lot more populated after they brought the wrong truck and very carefully parked it exactly where it had been parked before. There were vans, with men in the back, parked now at both ends of that block. Even after the video store in the middle of the block closed for the night, there were still people faintly visible moving around inside there. There were also people moving around on the roof of a two-story warehouse very near where the truck had been reparked. There was more traffic in the area than usual, and a lot of it consisted of slow-moving, plain four-door sedans with two burly guys in front. Pedestrians also made more of a presence than was usual at night in a Long Island commercial/ suburban south shore community. It kind of made you wonder, in a way. It was a little after one in the morning, and the active population of the neighborhood was still surprisingly high, though maintaining a rather low profile, when a vehicle with diplomat license plates and two occupants drove slowly down that block, braked slightly beside the returned truck, then drove on. Eight minutes later, it drove by once more, even slower than last time. And seventeen minutes after that, according to several videotaped records of the incident then being taken, the same vehicle appeared again, inched past the truck, pulled in behind it, and parked. Its lights switched off". Silence and darkness ensued for another three minutes. The passenger door of the new arrival opened, and a figure dressed in black emerged. He moved forward cautiously to the rear of the truck, which was closed with a segmented metal door that would slide up to open. He reached out and grasped the handle of this door, and as his fingers closed around it a million floodlights suddenly flashed on, aimed directly at him, and a million voices shouted, "Freeze! Police!" Like a rabbit in headlights, Hradec Kralowc spun about and pressed his back against the truck. "Diddums!" he wailed, voice cracking. "It's Diddums!" In the car, the Lada with diplomat plates, Dr. Karver Zorn lowered his forehead to the steering wheel and wished himself dead. Unfortunately, it didn't work. "Diddums," Hradec mumbled brokenly, over an dover, as they handcuffed him and read him his rights and stuffed him into a squad car. "Diddums. Diddums. If s Diddums." "Going for an insanity defense," the cops told one another. And with these lousy liberal judges, they figured, he'd probably get away with it, too. so that's that," Dortmunder said, watching from the window of a darkened, closed laundromat a block away as Kralowc and Dr. Zorn were arrested in a blaze of light. Handing the binoculars to Kelp, he said, "He doesn't look happy." "None of us look happy, John," Kelp said, and peered into the binoculars. 'The cops do." What had happened was, the instant Guy Claverack said, 'They want another picture," Dortmunder knew what it meant: The cops had found the truck, and were staked out all around it. He knew that, as clearly and instinctively as you know how to scratch where it itches, but of course instinctive knowledge always has to be verified scientifically, or it isn't worth anything, so the question was how to put some other puppy's paw in the snare and see if it went sfannnggg. It was Tiny who remembered that Kralowc had at one time put a bug on the Tsergovian embassy's phones, a fact that still stuck in Tiny"s craw. "Maybe it's still there," he said. Turns out, it was. Dortmunder and Kelp had come out to Farport by themselves, much earlier today, to see what happened to their puppy, and now, while waiting for the massive police presence to dissipate, they sat on adjoining driers with their feet swinging and discussed whether or not Guy Claverack knew he was sending them in
to a trap. Kelp kind of thought he did, and felt they should avenge themselves by visiting Mr. Claverack's storage rooms, but Dortmunder disagreed. "You didn't talk to him on the phone, I did. He didn't sound sly or guilty or nervous or anything like that; he just sounded irritated, like he wanted to get this show on the road and didn't see why there had to be all these delays." "I still think we oughta visit him." "Maybe," Dortmunder agreed. "Later on. But maybe not to burn our bridges there. It could be, down the road, we could do business with Claverack again." "I don't think I could afford it," Kelp said. The cops took quite a while to vacate the field of play, long enough for Kelp, having no choice, to become philosophic. "There are some bright sides to this," he announced. "Oh, yeah?" "Well, we didn't get nabbed, that's one thing." 'True." "And you and me and Stan, we come out about eight grand ahead. Almost." "Not the numbers we had in mind." "No, but it's something." "And the other guys got less than three." "Don't forget the extra three cents to Tiny." By the light of departing police cars, Dortmunder looked at his friend. "You gonna mention that to Tiny, when we get back?" "Maybe not," Kelp said. Zara, Grijk, and the archbishop stood admiring the sacred relic of St. Ferghana, gleaming inside its jewel-encrusted glass reliquary, standing atop a marble and iron fourteenth-century table, originally a side altar in a long-ago-sacked Moravian or Moldavian church, now given pride of place in the archbishop's office in the United Nations building, centered on the wall directly opposite the archbishop's desk, so that every time he looked up from his heavy labors, there it would be, safe and sound. For the foreseeable future, this would be the femur's home, that having been agreed to three weeks ago, once the relic and all the rest of Harry Hochman's art collection had been recovered out there on Long Island. Those involved, being the Tsergovian government, the United Nations secretariat, and the archbishop himself (but not Votskojek), had agreed that not only was this the safest location for the holy artifact under present unsettled global conditions but that it was only justice that the archbishop, who had worked so diligently to protect the saint's remain, should have her care put into his palsied yet capable hands. The new friends had come here after Zara Kotor's investiture as delegate to the United Nations from that body's newest member, Tsergovia, assuming the seat of the no-longer-extant nation of which at one time it had formed a part. The archbishop provided sherry, in very small glasses, they drank to their new understanding, and then they admired the relic a while. "It's hard to believe depravity like Kralowc's," the archbishop commented. "To hand over this symbol of purity and beauty and eternal truth to a mere temporal prince. The dear St. Ferghana is not to be of the mundane things of this mundane world." "I couldn't agree more," Zara said, and smiled upon the archbishop. Who smiled back, saying, "Well, at least we know we shall't have the unspeakable Kralowc to worry about anymore. Though it's a pity he didn't get his just desserts." "You mean," Zara said, "the punishment he so richly deserved?" 'That's it exactly." "Not that he got off scot-free," Zara acknowledged. In fact, Kralowc had escaped by the skin of his teeth, having plea-bargained his way onto a one-way flight out of America forever and back to Novi Glad (and Mrs. Kralowc) permanently. The videotaped confession he'd made in exchange for his freedom, in which he'd outlined his part in Harry Hochman's scheme to bilk the insurance companies of $6 million--a scheme carefully described to him beforehand by the federal prosecutors--was expected to feature prominently in Hochman's trial, upcoming in just a few months, once his lawyers' delaying tactics were exhausted, despite Kralowc's craven refutation of the confession once he was beyond the reach of American justice. "Id looks bigger in daydime," Grijk said, frowning through the glass at the bone. The archbishop said, "Eh?" Grijk abruptly looked terrified, but Zara distracted the archbishop's attention by grasping the elderly prelate's forearm and saying, "I was just thinking the same thing. You know, for people like Grijk and me, the only time we could ever see the holy relic of St. Ferghana was in the cathedral in Novi Glad, where they kept it in such a dark little corner." Dot's righd," Grijk said, bobbing his head. "Dorf's vhad I me and." "Well, the Votskojeks won't be getting their hands on this precious relic again anytime soon," the archbishop said with unsaintly satisfaction. Zara said, "Once they get into the UN, though, won't they petition for its return?" Chuckling deep inside his Adam's apple, the archbishop said, "That won't be for some little time, I'm afraid. There's a certain protocol to these things, you know, a certain dignity and ceremony; only one new nation's application would normally be considered at a time. You have come in ahead of Votskojek, and I believe next there will be some small island nation in the Atlantic, Maylohda, I believe, a former colony, and then… oh, someone. It's a changing world, you know." "Well, Archbishop," Zara said, "the nicest change is how we're all getting along." The archbishop agreed with that and pressed another eighth of an ounce of sherry on them, but Zara felt she shouldn't take up any more of his valuable time, and so they made their escape, and when they were out on First Avenue, with 163 flags flapping in the breeze and the UN building glinting over their shoulders in the sunlight, Zara said, as though she'd just thought of it that second, "I tell you what. Let's go see your cousin!" "You mean Diny?" Grijk was dubious. "I don't know, he's maybe--" "It'll be a nice surprise," Zara predicted. "Come on." Tiny had called Dortmunder and Kelp and said, "J-C.'s back; there's something she wants to talk to us about; come on over," so they went over, and they were all there, greeting one another, when the doorbell rang. "We're all here," Tiny pointed out. "So it's somebody else," said J.C., who hadn't gotten to her subject matter yet and so was a little irritated by the interruption. "Come on, Tiny, get em in and get em out." "You got it." Tiny buzzed for the downstairs door, then opened to the upstairs bell, and here came Zara Kotor and Grijk Krugnk, Zara beaming a big wide dolphin smile at Tiny, saying "Tchotchkus!" while Grijk grinned uneasily and said, "Hi, Diny." Kelp said, "Who?" "I brought champagne!" Zara announced, and held it up like a flag on the barricades. Smiling coquettishly at Tiny, she said, "You've been avoiding me, you bad boy." "Aw, naw, Zara," Tiny said. "I just been busy. Especially since Josie here come back." He gestured at J.C., who smiled like a shark and said, "Hii." Grijk, extremely uncomfortable, said, "Hi, J.Z." "Hi, Grijk." "Chon's still d'only one can pronounce id." Zara looked at J.C., and the champagne went to half-mast. "Hello?" she asked. Tiny made the introductions: "Zara, this is my roommate, Josie. Most people call her J.C. Josie, this is Zara Kotor; she went to Bronx Science." "Did she?" J.C. smiled on Zara. "I bet you were good at it, too." "Zara's," Tiny explained, "ambassador of Grijk's country, Tsergovia." "And today," Zara said, getting some of her wind back at the thought, "we are a member of the community of nations!" "No kidding," J.C. said. "So am I." "What I mean," Zara said, "today we are a member of the United Nations." "That, I'm not," J.C. said. "Congratulations!" Kelp said, and Dortmunder chimed in, "That's great news." "Though I've got my application in," J.C. said. "And we owe it all," Zara proclaimed, "to you guys!" J.C. said, "Tiny? Do we still have champagne glasses? Or did you bust them all while I was away?" "Josie, you can believe me," Tiny said, crossing the room to the nice glass-doored cabinet, "I never once touched your champagne glasses while you were gone." "I believe you," J.C. said. While Tiny got out the glasses, Kelp sidled over to Zara, pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Tiny, and murmured, "Whatwas that you called him?" Zara was about to answer when Grijk, with abrupt, unexpected forcefulness, said, "She called him Diny, same like you and me." Zara thought about it. Kelp watched her. Zara's expression cleared. "That's right. I called him Tiny." Tiny brought over the glasses, Grijk wrung the bottle's neck, and they toasted the newest member of the world's least exclusive club. Then Kelp said, "J.C. had something she wanted to talk about," and Dortmunder said, "Maybe she just wanted to talk to a couple of us," and Zara said, "That's okay, we'll go; we just wanted you to know, you can always count on Tsergovia." "In da schoolbooks!" Grijk promised. "Anonymous, bud in da schoolbooks." "That's right," Zara said. "Well, we'll be off." "Hold it a second," J.C. said. "You people fe
el grateful to these guys?" "Forever!" "So they could trust you." "Vid dere lifes!" "Well, it won't come to that," J.C. said, "but why don't you two sit down? Let me tell my story." So they all sat down, and some of the group switched to beer, and others stuck to champagne, and J.C. said, "When Grijk was here the last time, and I saw the advantage in being a country, I figured, Why not? So I've got my own country now, and I'm ready to cash in." Tiny said, "Josie? Whadaya mean, you got your own country?" "I've got consular agency offices set up in Geneva and Amsterdam and Nairobi and Tokyo, and now I'm setting up the commercial attache's office here in New York, and then the embassy in Washington, that's next." Zara was frowning like a steam engine. She said, "Excuse me. You and what army? Who are all these people?" "What people?" "The offices in all those cities." "Mail drops," J.C. said. "All forwarded here to the commercial attache. You'di^e surprised how many little countries do business by mail drop in different parts of the world." "No, I wouldn't," Zara said. "The world is an expensive place." "Exactly. Mail order has been my business for more years than I'm gonna tell you, and if I can be a songwriter and a police chief and a wife by mail order, I can be a country." Grijk said, "J.Z., were is dis country?" J.C. airily waved the hand not holding champagne. "Somewhere in the Atlantic," she said. "Vad's ids poppalation?" "Well, you know," J.C. said, "if truth be told, since it doesn't have any landmass, it really can't support that much of a population. The population's pretty much me." Dortmunder said, "J-C, you're gonna get caught." J.C. looked at him. "Who's gonna catch me? All the countries there are in the world, and more every day, and the old ones breaking up into smaller and smaller independent pieces, who's to say Maylohda isn't a legitimate country?" Zara said, "What was that? What do you call it?" "Maylohda," J.C. repeated, and explained, "You know, with my New York accent, it's how I say mail order." "Me, too!" Zara cried, and laughed, and said, "You're ahead of Votskojek! You're applying to the UN!" "Sure. It's part of the legitimacy, but, you know, that's gonna string out for years. Cause I don't really want to belong, too much trouble. I'd have to hire a whole diplomatic staff, maybe even find an actual island somewhere. I'm better off just being a lot of commercial consular offices, and a lot of brochures. See, here they are." She brought out and distributed nice four-color brochures, describing the wonders, natural attractions, scenic beauty, history, and economic potential of Maylohda, former colony (under other names, of course) of the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Spain. "This stuff was a lot easier to write than the how-to-be-a-detective book," she said. "I used the same printer as always. With this stuff, I can get seed money for feasibility studies of joint ventures in tourism, development of natural resources, and expansion of infrastructure. I can deal with banks, governments, trade associations, the UN, and the IMF. It's harder now at the beginning because there isn't any track record, which is why I was going to ask the guys to travel to some other countries and send me back orders and commissions and stuff, but maybe me and you people could trade somehow. Sell me something, or buy something from me. Maybe you'd like a million copies of the detective book, or some national anthems." Sounding mournful, Grijk said, "If only you could be a customer for our rocks." "Oh, I remember your rocks," J.C. said. "Sure, I'll buy them." Zara was never far from suspicion. Squinting at J.C., she said, "How?" "We're a low-lying island nation," J.C. explained; "you have no idea how low-lying. Like Holland, we want to expand our landmass, build acreage out into the sea. We'll buy your rocks to build up our coastline. What you do, you put together a proposal; you inflate the price a little so I can skim for myself; I put it together with my proposal for new acreage; I take it to one of the development commissions, maybe straight to the IMF. We do feasibility studies--" Dortmunder said, "Don't they go look at the place?" "They look at me," J.C. said. "I'm a registered lobbyist for the nation of Maylohda; I already took care of that. I show them pictures, I write up my proposals, I talk cute, I cross my legs, I say we've almost got malaria licked out there, and dengue fever, and when would you boys like to go visit. Okay?" "Okay," Dortmunder said. Zara said, "But if you work the deal, and you buy the rocks, what then?" "You deliver." "We're landlocked," Grijk pointed out. "We god no ships." "Good," J.C. said. "We'll find a country with ships and some economic problems of their own. One of the Baltics or the Balkans, maybe. There'll be one official that'll be happy to go along with us, and now Maylohda must be real, it's dealing with two other countries." Zara said, "But where do they deliver the rocks?" "To these certain coordinates in the ocean." "And just dump them?" "Who knows," J.C. said. "With enough deliveries, maybe we'll make/fa, island there. Anyway, if s a start." Zara looked at the brochures. "This is exactly what such paperwork looks like," she said. "Naturally." "Only… If you don't mind." "Productive criticism from a real country," J.C. said, "can only help." "This state seal here," Zara said. "It's nice, with the lions and all, but shouldn't it say something on this ribbon across the bottom?" "That's what I said, too," Tiny agreed. "Liberty and truth, or one of those." "I don't like any of those mottoes," J.C. said. "They don't seem to cover the situation." Kelp said, "What about that line from John's family crest? John? How'd that go?" "Quid lucrum istic mihi est?" Dortmunder quoted, and explained to J.C., "It means, 'What's in it for me?'" J.C. smiled. "Can I use it?" "Be my guest." Tiny said, "Dortmunder, I've just got to ask you this." "Yeah?" "You were an orphan, right?" "Right." "Brought up in an orphanage in Dead Indian, Illinois, right?" "Right." "What was it, an orphanage run by the Bleeding Heart Sisters of Eternal Misery, am I right?" "You're right, you're right," Dortmunder said. "So what?" "So what are you doing with a family crest?" Dortmunder looked at him with disbelief. He spread his hands. "I stole it," he said.