Don't Ask (24 page)

Dortmunder not expressing any of this aloud--how could he, when it was more mood and feeling than coherent thought?--the others gave up waiting and started to chat again among themselves.

"The nice thing," May said, "is that we don't have to go to Vermont in the winter. I understand it can get brutal up there."

Kelp nodded soberly. "Slipping and sliding down mountains with paintings in our arms," he said. "Not a pretty picture."

"Oh, I don't know," Tiny said "Some of them modern things are okay. We could use something in our living room, Josie and me, over the sofa.

Something in, you know, different shades of green. That's what Josie says. Maybe Fll take part of my piece in a painting."

May said, "You'd better have J.C. pick out the painting herself."

"Oh, yeah," Tiny agreed. "I know that much."

Stan said, "I don't know how my Mom's gonna take to Vermont, should she has to go there. You know how she gets, outside the city. You think we'll need her?"

"No telling," May said.

Kelp said, "If she could look on it like a vacation, maybe--" 'The other problem is," Dortmunder said, and stopped, staring sightlessly at a stain on the opposite wall where an intrusive policeman had once rested the palm of his hand, at a moment when May had been explaining that she had no suggestion to make concerning her consort's then-whereabouts.

The other problem was, this was two jobs in one, and they were two hundred miles apart. Security around the bone was gonna be a lot tighter now than the last time, and who knew what kind of security Harry Hochman had at his chateau in Vermont? Wasn't there something in history about not opening a war on two fronts? Where's the manpower coming from, just to begin with? And how do you keep control over what's happening in New York and Vermont at the same time?

Do you do them at different times?

Is there any way to tie them together?

The observers waited, and waited, wondering not only what the other problem was but also what the first problem had been, but Dortmunder seemed to have nothing else to say. Then he was seen to sigh, and to drink from his beer can--but not. It was empty. He gave the thing a reproachful look, shook it--no slosh--and got to his feet. He left the room, and Kelp said, "I don't know, May, could be this time John bit off--"

Dortmunder stuck his head back into the room. "Tiny," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Call your people over there, ask them, can they get us a helicopter."

And Dortmunder's head retracted from the room again.

"I don't know about that," Tiny said, but he reached for the phone.

With a happy smile, Kelp said, "We haven't been in a helicopter in a long time. Remember that, Stan?"

Stan looked a little grumpy. "Probably," he said, "these people would have their own driver."

In the kitchen, Dortmunder stood in front of the open refrigerator, thinking. "And the other other problem is," he said aloud, "the UN," finishing a sentence for once.

The problem with the UN was, if the Tsergovians got their bone with any kind of cloud on it, questions about how they happened to have it in their possession, stufflike that, it could make things worse for them instead of better, when it came to influencing people over at the United Nations to give them that seat. So, however the heist was pulled, it had to wind up with the bone clean. Like a stolen car where you've got beautiful paper. Somehow they had to find the equivalent of beautiful paper for a bone.

Dortmunder began to shiver; it was damn cold in here. Then he realized he was still standing in front of the open refrigerator, so he closed the door, turned away, turned back, opened the door, took out a beer, closed the door, opened the beer (bending his thumbnail back so it hurt), and, sucking his thumb, walked thoughtfully back to the living room, where Tiny said, "No helicopter."

"What?"

Tiny shook his head, having expected something like this. "You forgot, huh?"

"Oh, the helicopter," Dortmunder said, and spilled beer on himself while sitting down. Ignoring that, he drank some of the brew and said, "Okay, no helicopter."

Kelp said, "That doesn't louse up your plan?"

"What plan?" Dortmunder asked him; he was really interested.

"I just thought you had something," Kelp explained.

Dortmunder nodded, understanding. Then he went on nodding a while, so the others went back to their conversation, Stan saying to Tiny, "If this country doesn't have any helicopters, what about their boats? Maybe we could disguise an aircraft carrier or something, probably something smaller, sneak up the East River, grapple onto their boat, do it that way."

Tiny shook his head. "They don't have a navy," he said.

Kelp said, 'Tiny, everybody has a navy. Every country, I mean."

"Not Tsergovia," Tiny said. "Or the other one, either. Votskojek. They don't have any seacoast, so they don't have a navy."

Disappointed, Stan said, "So they won't have any boats, then."

"Well," Tiny said, "they'd have a hell of a time getting them into the water."

May said, "Maybe that's why the Votskojeks put their embassy on a boat.

Maybe to them it's romantic, something different."

"Could be," Tiny said without much interest.

Dortmunder said, "Andy."

Everybody looked at him. Kelp said, "Yes, John?"

"You know a lot of people," Dortmunder told him.

Kelp grinned. "I don't know everybody" he said, "but I do know a lot, you're right."

"I'm thinking about fences," Dortmunder said.

Kelp said, "John? That you sell to, or climb over?"

Dortmunder struggled for an answer. "The one with money," he decided.

"Okay."

Tiny said, "Dortmunder, isn't this a little early? Shouldn't we go get the stuff first?"

"Not this time." Dortmunder reached out in front of himself and made little feeble clutching gestures with the fingertips of his right hand.

"What I've got," he said, "is I got a corner of something, I think I got a corner of something, and if I'm right we got to know we got the fence ahead of time. A very special fence."

Kelp said, "You know the same guys I do, John."

"I hope not," Dortmunder said. "What I hope, I hope you know a guy we wouldn't normally use, that you'd only use if you had a big, major, important big-league haul, a guy that wouldn't be interested in just some little jewelry store."

Nodding, Kelp said, "A conservative estimate six million dollar value fine art collection kind offence, is that what you mean?"

"Yes," Dortmunder said simply.

"Well, John," Kelp said, "I haven't had that much call in my life for guys like that, but it could happen that I might know guys that know guys. Let me look around, okay?"

"Go ahead," Dortmunder said.

"It's not the kind of question you ask on the phone," Kelp pointed out.

"I'd have to go talk to people."

"Fine," Dortmunder said, and sat there looking at him.

Kelp gazed around the room, and now they were all looking at him. He met Dortmunder's eyes again and said, "Oh, you mean now?"

"Couldn't hurt," Dortmunder said.

Kelp had been enjoying the party, sitting with the others around Dortmunder's burning brain, chatting about things. Oh, well. "Sure, John," he said, and got to his feet. "If it won't be too late, I'll come back here."

"It won't be too late," Dortmunder assured him.

"So that's what I'll do," Kelp said, and Dortmunder nodded. But then Dortmunder's head kept slowly bobbing, up and down, up and down, so Kelp knew this latest contact between John Dortmunder and Planet Earth had come to an end for now, so he said so long to the others and left, and six minutes later Dortmunder interrupted general conversation again to say, "Stan."

"Here," Stan announced.

Dortmunder gazed piercingly at him. "Who's a good driver?"

Stan reared up a little. "What kind of question is that? I'm a good driver!"

"Another one."

"My Mom!"

Dortmunder sighed a little. He said, "Could we move out beyond you and your family a little?"

Stan said, "How many drivers you gonna need?"

"I don't know yet. Who's good?"

"Well, there's always Fred Lartz," Stan said, and grudgingly added,

"He's pretty good."

Dortmunder said, "I thought he gave up driving."

"Well, yeah," Stan said, "but now his wife, Thekna, drives. He kind of just sits beside her."

"So Thelma's the driver."

"In a way. I thought you knew that."

"How is she?"

"Good, John," Stan said with an air of some surprise. "You know, she's better than Fred ever was."

May said, "I never did understand why Fred Lartz gave up driving."

Stan did the explanation, since Dortmunder was getting that faraway look in his eyes again. "Seems like, coming home from a wedding, he took a wrong turn off the Van Wyck, out by Kennedy airport, he wound up on taxiway seventeen, ran into an Eastern Airlines plane out of Miami, spent a couple of months in the hospital, doesn't trust his instincts anymore. So Thelma drives, and Fred sits beside her."

Dortmunder focused again. "Can we get him?"

"Her, you mean," May said.

"Well, both of them."

Stan said, "For when?"

That was the question, wasn't it? Dortmunder looked in absolute agony, as though undergoing some sort of anesthetic-free operation in the area of the lower torso. Finally, he said, "Today is,uhhhhhh…"

"Wednesday," May told him.

Dortmunder sighed. Now he looked as though he had a toothache, probably an abscess. "Saturday," he decided.

Everybody was surprised. May said, "That soon?"

"Saturday isn't soon," Dortmunder said. 'They've got, uh… Is Wednesday the day just finished, or the day just starting?"

"What, today?" May had to think a second. "The day just finished."

"So that gives them two more full days with the bone," Dortmunder said.

"To take pictures, measurements, X rays, all this stuff, all this record. Ifd be better if we could do it tomorrow, but we can't."

Tiny said, "There you're right."

Stan said, "So, do you want me to get ahold of Fred?"

"Thelma, you mean," May said.

"Well," Stan said, "Fred does the bookings."

"Go see them," Dortmunder said, with unexpected tact, "and ask are they ready Saturday for a maybe."

Stan sat back to think it over. "They moved up to the Bronx to get away from the airport," he mused. "So, with the construction on the Bruckner, I think I'll stay on the Henry Hudson. It's a toll across Spuyten Duyvil, but it's worth it."

"Good," Dortmunder said. He watched Stan, waiting for him to go away.

Stan finished his beer at his leisure, and looked around. "Anybody want a lift?"

"You're the only one going," Dortmunder said.

"Be back," Stan decided, and got to his feet, and left.

Tiny said, "Dortmunder, don't send me nowhere."

But Dortmunder wasn't listening. Instead, spilling a little more beer, he pawed around on the floor beside his chair and came up at last with the torn-out magazine pages he'd borrowed from Zara Kotor. ("Tiny can bring them back," she'd suggested, "when you're done.") Beetling his brow at the pretty color pictures of the interior of Harry Hochman's Vermont chateau, he said, "Call them, see do they have any spy stuff."

Tiny and May were the only others left in the room, and both guessed it was Tiny that Dortmunder was talking to. Tiny was on much of the sofa, with the phone on the end table perilously close to his right elbow.

Picking up the receiver, dialing, he said, "If you had a phone with redial, this would be easier."

"Don't talk like Andy," Dortmunder said.

Apparently, the phone rang a long time. Then Tiny began to talk, and at one point they heard him say, "No, I didn't know it was that late," but not as though he cared. Then he asked his question, and turned to say to Dortmunder, "Grijk says, sure. They got all kinds of spy stuff. What kind of stuff do you need?"

Dortmunder shrugged. "Telephoto lenses," he suggested. "Microphone bugs that you can shoot with arrows. All that James Bond stuff."

James Bond stuff, Tiny said into the phone, and then reported to Dortmunder, "He says they got a ton of that kind of crap. The only thing is, it's thirdhand. They bought it from Pakistan and Cyprus, and they bought it from Mexico and Australia and Kuwait."

"Does it still work?"

"Oh, sure. Usually. Except it's long off the warranty, you know."

Dortmunder looked at May. "It's discouraging, sometimes," he said. "Not working with the best equipment. I feel like it's holding me back."

"You'll do the best you can," May assured him.