Why Me? (10 page)

“You have a very nice house,” the man went on. “I drove past it earlier this evening. Right on the water.”

“You drove past my house?” Mologna didn't like that much.

“Very expensive house, I should say.” The man nodded. “I envied it, I must tell you that.”

“You want a regular savins plan,” Mologna told him.

“Very expensive car,” the man continued, following his own obscure line of thought. “Very expensive family. Children in college. Wife with station wagon. St. Bernard dog.”

“Don't forget the boat,” Mologna said.

The man looked surprised, then pleased. He seemed happy for Mologna. “You have a boat? I didn't see it.”

“This time of year, it's in the boathouse.”

“The boathouse,” echoed the man, savoring the word. “So that's what that was. Ah, to be an American. You have a boat, and you have a boathouse. How many many things you do have, after all.”

“They do sort of mount up,” Mologna admitted.

“How very well the Police Department must pay you,” the man said.

Whoops. Mologna looked sharply through the glass in those spectacles at the eyes behind them, and those eyes seemed now to be amused, knowledgeable. So maybe the subject hadn't changed after all. “I do pretty well,” Mologna said carefully.

“Astonishingly enough,” the man said, “in the United States, salaries of government employees are public knowledge. I
know
what your official income is.”

“You know so much about me,” Mologna said. “And I know so little about you.”

“For many reasons,” the man said, “it seemed to us that you were the very best person to talk to in connection with the Byzantine Fire. We want it, you see. We will resort to violence if necessary, we will hunt the thief down ourselves and torture him with electric probes if necessary, but we would much prefer to be civilized.”

“Civilized is nice,” Mologna agreed.

“Therefore—” The man reached inside his jacket. Mologna flinched away, but what the man brought out was a white envelope. “This,” the man said, hefting the envelope in the palm of his hand, “is twenty thousand dollars.”

“Is it, then?”

The man opened Mologna's glove compartment and placed the envelope inside, then shut the glove compartment. “When you give us the Byzantine Fire,” he said, “we shall give you another envelope, containing sixty thousand dollars.”

“I call that generous,” Mologna said.

“We want the Byzantine Fire,” the man said. “You want eighty thousand dollars, and you do not want violence in your home city. Why should we not have a meeting of minds?”

“It don't sound bad,” Mologna agreed. “But when we do get that ruby back, how'm I supposed to spirit it away? You think they'll just leave it lie around in a drawer somewhere?”

“We think, Chief Inspector, you are very imaginative, very clever, and in a position of some importance. We think you would have uses for eighty thousand dollars. We rely on your ingenuity.”

“Do you, now? That's quite a compliment.”

“We were very careful in choosing the right person to approach,” the man said. His ski mask bunched and bubbled, suggesting that he was smiling. “I do not think,” he said, “you will let us down.”

“Oh, that would be cruel.”

“We will contact you,” the man promised. He opened the car door, stepped out, closed the door without slamming it, and went away to his own car with his armed friend. A moment later, both cars spun quickly away, and Mologna was alone.

“Well well,” he said. “Well well well well well well well. Twenty thousand dollars. Sixty thousand dollars.
Eighty
thousand dollars. Great lumps of Manna out of Heaven.” Taking his ring of keys out of the ignition, he locked the glove compartment, then climbed from the Mercedes, walked around it, found his revolver in the grass, and brought it back to the car. Then he drove home, where Brandy slobbered on his trousers, and he found Maureen in the family room, asleep before the TV, on which a suntanned actor chuckled meaninglessly, substituting for the substitute for Johnny Carson. Leaving Maureen where she was, absently patting Brandy, Mologna went through the house to his den, shut Brandy out, and phoned the FBI in New York. “Let me talk to Zachary,” he said.

“He's home for the day.”

“Put me through to him at home.”

They didn't want to, but Mologna possessed a heavy, brooding, humorless authority that no minor clerk could stand up to for long, so fairly soon Zachary himself was on the line, sounding irritable: “Yes, Mologna? What is it at this hour? You found the ring?”

“A foreign fella in a ski mask offered me a bribe tonight,” Mologna said. “If I would turn the ring over to him once I got it.”

“A bribe?” Zachary sounded not so much astonished as bewildered, as though the very word were brand-new to him.

“Twenty thousand cash in an envelope. He put it in my glove compartment himself, with his own bare hands. I have it locked in there—I'll turn it over to the fingerprint people in the mornin.”

“Twenty thousand
dollars
?”

“And sixty thousand more when I give them the ring.”

“And you didn't take it?”

Mologna said not a word. He just sat there and let Zachary listen to his own monstrous question, until at last Zachary cleared his throat, mumbled something, coughed, and said, “I didn't mean that the way it sounded.”

“Sure not,” Mologna said. “Sorry to disturb you so late, but I wanted to report this right away. Should the good Lord in His infinite wisdom and mercy see fit to call me to His bosom this very evenin, I wouldn't want anyone to come across that envelope and think I meant to keep the dirty money.”

“Oh, of course not,” Zachary said. “Of course not.” He still sounded more dazed than amazed.

“Good night to you, now,” Mologna said. “Sleep well.”

“Yes. Yes.”

Mologna hung up and sat a moment in his comfortable den with the antique guns mounted on the wall, as Zachary's blurted question circled again in his mind: “And you didn't take it?” No, he didn't take it. No, he wouldn't take it. What did the man think he was? You don't get to be top cop in the great city of New York by takin bribes from
strangers
.

18

May was looking worried when Dortmunder got home, which he didn't at first notice because he was feeling irritable. “Cops stopped me twice,” he said, shrugging out of his coat. “Show ID, where you going, where you been. And Stan didn't show, he was arrested. Complete mess everywhere.” Then he saw her expression, through the spiraling ribbons of cigarette smoke, and said, “What's up?”

“Did you watch the news?” The question seemed heavy with unexpressed meaning.

“What news?”

“On television.”

“How could I?” He was still irritable. “I been spending all my time with cops and subways.”

“What was the name of that jewelry store you went to last night?”

“You can't take the watch back,” he said.

“John, what was the
name
?”

Dortmunder tried to remember. “Something Greek. Something
khaki
.”

“Sit down, John,” she said. “I'll get you a drink.”

But he didn't sit down. Her strange manner had finally broken through his annoyance, and he followed her through the apartment to the kitchen, frowning, saying, “What's going on?”

“Drink first.”

Dortmunder stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her make a stiff bourbon on the rocks. He said, “You could tell me while you're doing that.”

“All right. The store was Skoukakis Credit Jewelers.”

“That's right.” He was surprised. “That's just exactly what it was.”

“And do you remember the people who came in and fussed around and then left?”

“Clear as a bell.”

“They were the ones,” May told him, coming over to hand him his drink, “who'd just stolen the Byzantine Fire.”

Dortmunder frowned at her. “The what?”

“Don't you read the papers or
anything
?” Irritation made her puff out redoubled clouds of cigarette smoke. “That famous ruby that was stolen out at the airport,” she said, “the one the fuss is all about.”

“Oh, yeah, the ruby.” Dortmunder still didn't make the connection. He sipped at his drink. “What about it?”

“You've got it.”

Dortmunder stood there, the glass up by his mouth, and looked over it at May. He said, “Say what?”

“Those men stole the Byzantine Fire,” May told him. “They put it in the safe in that jewelry store. You took it.”

“I took the—
I've
got the Byzantine Fire?”

“Yes,” said May.

“No,” said Dortmunder. “I don't want it.”

“You've got it.”

Dortmunder filled his mouth with bourbon—too much bourbon, as it developed, to swallow. May pounded his back for a while, as bourbon dribbled out of his nose and eyes and ears, and then he handed her the glass, said hoarsely, “
More
,” and went away to the bedroom.

When May left the kitchen with the fresh drink, Dortmunder was just leaving the bedroom with the plastic bag of loot. Silently, solemnly, they walked to the living room and sat next to one another on the sofa. May handed Dortmunder his drink, and he took a normal-sized sip. Then he emptied the plastic bag onto the coffee table, bracelets and watches all a-tumble. “I don't even know what it looks like,” he said.

“I do. There was a picture on—” She picked up a ring out of the scrumble of jewelry. “That's it.”

Dortmunder took it, held it between thumb and forefinger, turned it this way and that. “I remember this,” he said. “I almost left it behind.”

“You should have.”

“At first I figured it was too big to be real. Then I figured, why put glass in the safe? So I brought it along.” Dortmunder turned it over and over, peering at it, seeing the light glint and shimmer in the depths of the stone. “The Byzantine Fire,” he said.

“That's right.”

Dortmunder turned to her, his eyes filled with wonder. “The biggest haul of my career,” he said, “and I didn't even know it.”

“Congratulations.” There was irony in her voice.

Dortmunder didn't notice; he was caught up in this astonishing success. Again he studied the ring. “I wonder what I could get for this,” he said.

“Twenty years,” May suggested. “Killed. Hunted down like a deer.”

“Un,” said Dortmunder. “I was forgetting.”

“There's a police blitz on,” May reminded him. “Also, according to the TV, a lot of foreign guerrillas and terrorists want that ring.” She pointed at it.

“And people on the street,” Dortmunder said thoughtfully, “they're pretty teed off right now at whoever has this thing.”

“You.”

“I can't believe it.” Dortmunder slipped the ring onto the third finger of his left hand, stretched the hand out at arm's length, and squinted at it. “Jeez, it's gaudy,” he said.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Do with it.” That question hadn't occurred to him. He tugged the ring, to remove it from his finger. “I don't know,” he said.

“You can't fence it.”

“You can't fence
anything
, everybody's shook up by all this cop business.” He kept tugging at the ring.

“You can't keep it, John.”

“I don't want to keep it.” He twisted the ring this way and that.

“What's the matter?”

“It won't—”

“You can't get it off?”

“My knuckle, it won't—”

“I'll get soap.” She stood as the doorbell rang. “Maybe that's Andy Kelp,” she said.

“Why would it be Andy Kelp?”

“He called, asked you to call back, said he might drop by.”

“Asked me to call back, huh?” Dortmunder muttered something under his breath, and the doorbell rang again.

May went out to the vestibule to answer the door while Dortmunder, just to be on the safe side, scooped the rest of the swag back into the plastic bag. From the vestibule came May's loud voice: “Yes, officers? What can I do for you?”

Dortmunder tuuuuggggggged at the ring. No good.

“Ms. May Bellamy?”

“Maybe,” said May.

Dortmunder got to his feet, opened the window, dropped the plastic bag into the anonymous darkness.

“We're looking for a Mr. John Dortmunder.”

“Oh. Well, um …”

Dortmunder turned the ring around so the ruby was on the inside, next to his palm. Only the gold band showed on the back of his hand.

May and two large policemen walked into the room. Looking very worried, May said, “John, these officers—”

“John Dortmunder?”

“Yes,” said Dortmunder.

“Come along with us, John.”

Dortmunder closed his left hand into a loose fist. The Byzantine Fire was cold against his fingers. “See you later,” he told May, and kissed her on the cheek away from the cigarette, and picked up his coat, and went away with the policemen.

19

When the door to the back room at the O. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue opened again, about an hour after Dortmunder had left, Tiny Bulcher was just finishing a story: “—so I washed off the ax and put it back at the Girl Scout camp.” Both Ralph Winslow and Jim O'Hara looked toward the door with tremulous hope in their eyes, but it was only Rollo, looking at Tiny and saying, “There's a sweet-vermouth-straight-up out here, I think he's looking for you.”

“Little fella? Looks like a drowned rat?”

“That's the one.”

“Kick his ass and send him in here,” Tiny said. Rollo nodded and shut the door behind himself. Tiny said, “That's my pal, with that cop's address.” He thudded his right fist into his left palm. “Let the good times roll,” he said. Winslow and O'Hara watched his hands.