“To me, in fact.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Judge Blick turned his attention to J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, saying, almost plaintively, “Is that it? That’s what you’re here for?”
“Essentially, Your Honor.” Stonewiler didn’t seem at all abashed. “I’m finished with Mr. Dortmunder,” he went on, “and if Your Honor pleases, I would like now to cross-examine Officer Fahey.”
The bench so ordered, and while the defendant slunk away to his seat – guilty as all hell, just look at him – Officer Fahey retook the stand, and Stonewiler approached him, smiling, saying, “Officer, I realize we’re taking up your free time here, and I’ll try to be as brief as possible.”
Officer Fahey’s heavy-jowled red face was impassive as he glowered at Stonewiler. He could clearly be seen thinking to himself, You won’t get around me with your shenanigans. You’ll not pull the wool over my eyes.
Stonewiler, undaunted, went on: “Officer, may I just ask you to describe the defendant as he was in the instant when you first saw him?”
“He was coming out the door,” Officer Fahey said, “with a TV set in each hand.”
“Coming out? Directly into your oncoming headlights?”
“He stopped when he saw us.”
“And had he already stopped when you first caught sight of him?”
“He froze there. But he was coming out.”
“Before you saw him.”
“He was facing out,” Officer Fahey announced in some irritation. “He was coming out because he was facing out.”
“But he wasn’t in motion when you first saw him, Officer, is that right? I just want to have this absolutely clear. Whether he was entering or leaving the store, he had already frozen in place when you first saw him.”
“Facing out.”
“But frozen.”
“Yes, frozen. Facing out.”
“Thank you, Officer.” Turning to the bench, Stonewiler said, “With Your Honor’s permission, I would like to try a small experiment.”
Judge Blick frowned on him. “Getting fancy, Counselor?”
“Not at all fancy, Your Honor. Very plain indeed. May I?”
“Proceed, Counselor,” Judge Blick said, “but watch your step.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
Stonewiler turned and walked to a side door, which the judge knew led to a small waiting room. Opening that door, Stonewiler gestured to someone inside, and two men appeared, each carrying a television set. They placed these on the floor a few steps into the room, then turned and departed again, leaving the door open behind them. The door, however, was on a spring, and slowly it closed itself, until Stonewiler stopped it with his palm just before it would snick shut. The door remained open half an inch, and Stonewiler returned to the bench to smile impartially upon Officer Fahey and Judge Blick, and to say, “With the court’s permission, I would like to ask Officer Fahey’s cooperation. Officer?”
Officer Fahey glanced uncertainly at Judge Blick, but the judge was still faintly hoping for something interesting to happen, so all he said was, “It’s up to you, Officer. You may assist Counsel if you want.”
The officer brooded at Stonewiler, mistrust oozing from every pore. “What am I supposed to do?”
Stonewiler pointed. “Merely pick up those two television sets,” he said, “and return them to the other room.”
The officer’s brow furrowed. “What’s the point?”
“Perhaps there is none,” Stonewiler acknowledged, with a sudden humble smile. “We won’t know till we’ve tried.”
The officer frowned once more at Judge Blick, then at the television sets, and then at the door. He appeared indecisive. Then he looked at the defendant, Dortmunder, slumping hopelessly in his chair, and a sudden confident smile touched his lips. “Fine,” he said. “Right.”
“Thank you, Officer.” Stonewiler stepped back as Officer Fahey rose and crossed the court to the television sets. Picking them up by their handles, and pretending the combined weight didn’t bother him, he approached the door. He hesitated, facing the door, his hands full of TV sets. He put one of the sets down, pushed on the door, and it swung open. He picked the set up again, and the door swung closed. Quickly, before it could slam, Officer Fahey turned about and bunked the door with his behind.
“Freeze!” boomed J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, pointing his long manicured finger at Officer Fahey, who obediently froze, a TV set in each hand, his behind stuck out behind him. The door swung open, hesitated, and swung back, lightly spanking Officer Fahey on the bum.
Stonewiler, his pointing finger still calling attention to the frozen Officer Fahey, turned toward Judge Blick. “Your Honor,” he cried, in a voice similar to that which Moses heard from the burning bush, “I leave it to the Court. Is that man going out, or coming in?”
Chapter 2
May said, “And the judge believed it?”
Dortmunder shook his head, in slow bewilderment. The whole thing was still too baffling to think about.
May watched him shake his head, and shook her own, frowning, not sure she understood. “The judge didn’t believe it,” she suggested.
“I don’t know what the judge believed,” Dortmunder told her. “All I know for sure is, I figure I’m home about six years early.”
“What you need is a beer,” May decided, and went away to the kitchen to get one.
Dortmunder settled back into his easy chair, kicking off his shoes, relaxing in the scruffy familiarity of his own living room. This was not the address he’d given in court, nor did he live here alone – it was Dortmunder’s policy never to tell authority the truth when a lie would do – but it was his home, his castle, his refuge from the buffets and abrasions of the world, and no way had he expected to finish his day in it, shoes off, feet up on the old maroon hassock, watching May carry a can of beer back from the kitchen. “Home sweet home,” he said.
“Got a match?” She had a fresh cigarette flopping in the corner of her mouth.
He traded her a book of matches for the beer can, and swigged while she lit. May was a chain-smoker, but she never gave up on a cigarette until the stub was too small to hold, so she could never light the next cigarette from the last, and as a result the Dortmunder-May household was always in a match crisis. Dortmunder was the only burglar in the world who, having finished rifling some company’s cash register or safe, would pause to fill his pockets with their promotional match-books.
May settled herself in the other easy chair, adjusted the ashtray to her left hand, puffed, enveloped her head in a cloud of smoke, leaned forward out of the smoke, and said, “Tell me all about it.”
“It’s crazy,” he told her. “It makes no sense.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“This lawyer came by–”
“J. Radcliffe Stonewiler.”
Dortmunder frowned, thinking it over. “I’ve seen him in the papers or something.”
“He’s famous!”
“Yeah, I figured. Anyway, he walked in, he threw this court-appointed jerk out on his ear, and he said, ‘Okay, Mr. Dortmunder, we got about an hour and a half to cook up a story.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said he could cook for a year and a half and it didn’t matter what story he came up with, because what was cooked was my goose.”
“Didn’t you know who he was?”
“I could see he was some rich-type lawyer,” Dortmunder admitted. “For a while, I figured he was in the wrong cubicle. I kept telling him, ‘Look, my name’s Dortmunder, I’m up for B&E.’ And he kept saying, ‘Tell me all about it.’ So finally I told him all about it. The cops had me cold, and I told him so, and he nodded and said, ‘That’s okay. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, and I know where I’m going, and it’s upstate.'”
“That wasn’t any way to talk to J. Radcliffe Stonewiler.”
“I wasn’t feeling cheerful.”
“Naturally,” May agreed. “So what happened?”
“This Stonewiler,” Dortmunder said, “he kept me going over and over the details of what happened, and then he went away to make a phone call, and when he came back he had a skinny little guy with him called George.”
“Who’s George?”
“Stonewiler said, ‘Here’s my movie expert. Tell him the story, George.’ And George told me the whole story of this movie, Sex Sorority, so I could tell it to the judge in case I was asked. Only I don’t think it’s legal to even tell a story like that in court. Do they really make movies where a girl takes her–”
“Never mind movies,” May said. “What happened next? Where does this door business come into it?”
“It was Stonewiler’s whole idea, completely. He even wrote my story down for me, and then made me write it myself, copying from him, so I’d remember it. Not word for word, but so I could tell it smooth and easy when I got to court. I didn’t believe in it, you know, because he didn’t tell me the part where he was gonna make a monkey out of the cop. He just gave me this song-and-dance about carrying TV sets in instead of out – I mean, you couldn’t get away with that one in Sunday school. I kept saying, ‘Why don’t we make a deal? Why don’t we trade them a guilty plea for a lesser charge?’ And Stonewiler kept saying, ‘Trust me.'”