“Boy,” Kelp said after a while, “there’s sure a lot of goods in the world.” Impossible, his expression seemed to say, for anybody to steal it all. Impossible even to scratch the surface.
After several million alien impedimenta had appeared on the conveyor belt – some of them circling over and over again, apparently having arrived at a destination other than that of their owners – May suddenly said, “That’s ours,” and Dortmunder obediently plucked the old brown suitcase off the conveyor belt.
Kelp said, “One more, right?”
“We bought some stuff,” Dortmunder muttered, looking the other way.
“Oh, yeah?”
It took another ten minutes for May to feel they’d wrenched the last of their own possessions from the passing parade, and by then she and Dortmunder and Kelp were standing in the middle of a redoubt formed of seven pieces of luggage. In addition to the two lumpy ordinary suitcases they’d had with them on departure, they now claimed: two flimsy-looking wicker baskets, each about the size of a typewriter case, both tied with stout cord; a tennis racket(!); a smallish bright-colored carton announcing in red and yellow letters for all the world to know that the contents were duty-free liquor and duty-free cigarettes; and a scruffy cardboard carton wrapped in length after length of thin string. “Jeepers,” Kelp said. “I guess you did buy some stuff.”
“They had some really wonderful bargains,” May said, but like most returned travelers her expression suggested that doubt was beginning to set in.
“Let’s get outa here,” Dortmunder said.
“Well,” Kelp said, cheerily picking up both wicker baskets and the tennis racket, “wait’ll you see what the medical profession has for us this time.”
They pushed their way through the crowd, found the outside world, and then walked endlessly through parking lot No. 4. It was a cool, damp, overcast spring night with a hint of rain in the air, and they just kept walking around in it. “The car’s here someplace,” Kelp kept saying, looking left and right over the acres of cars glittering in the infrequent floodlights. “It’s right around here.”
“What is it?” Dortmunder asked him. “What does it look like?”
“I want it to be a surprise. I know it’s around here someplace.” So they walked, and they walked. Dortmunder carried both suitcases, with the string-wrapped carton under one arm. May carried the box of duty-free liquor and cigarettes. And they kept walking.
Until Dortmunder stopped, put everything down on the blacktop, and said, “That’s enough.”
“But it’s very close,” Kelp said. “I know it’s right around here.”
“Unless it’s here,” Dortmunder told him, “you can forget it.” May said, “Here’s a car with MD plates.” She was gesturing at a dusty Mustang II with crumpled fenders and a metal coat hanger for an antenna.
Kelp gave the Mustang a look of scorn. “That belongs to some intern.”
“We’ll take it,” Dortmunder decided. “Get out your keys.”
Kelp was shocked, hurt, distraught. “But I picked one special,” he said. “A silver Rolls-Royce, with a TV and a bar! A wonderful car, it must belong to some doctor has his own hospital, I’ll bring you home in style.”
“We’ll take this one,” Dortmunder said, pointing at the Mustang.
“But–”
May said, softly but meaningfully, “Andy.”
Kelp stopped, looked at May, looked at Dortmunder, looked with hatred at the Mustang, looked desperately around the endless parking lot, and then sighed, and reached for his bunch of keys.
One of the keys opened the Mustang’s doors and started the engine, but none of them would open the trunk, so they went to Manhattan with May in the front seat next to Kelp, while Dortmunder rode in back with the two suitcases, the cardboard carton, the two wicker baskets, the duty-free carton and the tennis racket.
They left the Mustang a block from home, carried everything to the building and up the stairs, and May unlocked the front door to let them in. They walked inside, May first and then Dortmunder and then Kelp, and in the living room Leo Zane limped forward with a cold smile while Arnold Chauncey turned from the fake painting thumb tacked to the wall and said, “Dortmunder.” He gestured at the painting. “Before Leo shoots you people,” he said, “would you mind telling me what in hell that’s all about?”
Chapter 2
“It’s a fake,” Dortmunder said.
“I know it’s a fake,” Chauncey answered. “What’s it for?” Before Dortmunder could work out an answer – a memento? I’ve been practicing? – Kelp stuck an oar in, crying, “Say! Isn’t that the guy highjacked us? You remember, Dortmunder? The guy outside with the limp.”
It was a nice try, but Dortmunder knew from the cold smile on Zane’s face and the cold frown on Chauncey’s that it wasn’t going to work. Nevertheless, having nothing better to do, he went along with the gag: “Could be him, I don’t know. I only got a quick look.”
Chauncey shook his head in irritation, saying, “Don’t waste everybody’s time, Dortmunder. I know everything. I know Leo disobeyed my orders and made contact with you last November. I know you tied him up in a cocoon of trucks downtown while you had some stooge imitate him in front of my apartment. I know you staged that robbery, and I know you turned the painting over to another buyer, and I know–” with an angry gesture at the luggage all over the floor “–you’ve just been away on a nice vacation on my money. The only thing I don’t know,” Chauncey finished, flinging his arm out toward the painting on the wall, “is what that goddam thing is for.”
“Listen,” Dortmunder said.
“Don’t tell me lies,” Chauncey warned him.
“Why would I lie to you?” Dortmunder asked, but hurried along without waiting for an answer. “Just because this guy sold you a bill of goods, you blame me. I think he was in on that highjack. It sure looked like him outside the window. What makes you believe him instead of me?”
Chauncey seemed to give that question more consideration than it actually deserved. Everybody watched him think it over (except May, who was frowning uncertainly at Dortmunder), and finally Chauncey nodded and said, “All right, I’ll make you a trade. A story for a story. I’ll tell you why I know Leo’s telling the truth, and then you’ll tell me what in hell you’re doing with a grade-A imitation of the painting you stole.”
“It’s a deal,” Dortmunder said.
Leo Zane said, “Mr. Chauncey, you’re the employer, so it’s up to you, but aren’t we wasting time? Why don’t I just pop these three, and we go home?”
“Because I’m curious,” Chauncey told him. “I’m fascinated. I want to know what’s going on.” To Dortmunder he said, “My story first. No more than a minute or two after you people left my house that night of the so-called robbery, the phone rang. It was Leo, calling from a phone booth down in Greenwich Village.”
Dortmunder shrugged. “So he said.”
“And so he proved. He told me how you people had blocked him in, and how he’d smashed the rear window of his car so he could crawl out and get away. He gave me the phone number at the booth where he was, and I called back, and he was there. I drove downtown to meet him, and that phone booth did have that number, and his car was boxed in as he’d described.”
“Hmmm,” Dortmunder said.
“Leo went looking for you,” Chauncey went on, “but of course you’d moved, and it took a while to find the trail.”
Kelp suddenly broke in, saying, “Wait a minute. Listen; how about this? What if Zane himself set up a fake Zane, so then when he proved he was someplace else you’d naturally think somebody else was trying to frame him? How about that?”
While Dortmunder and May both looked embarrassed, Chauncey gave Kelp a look of scorn, then said to Zane, “If that one says anything else, shoot him right away.”
“Absolutely,” said Zane.
Kelp looked hurt and unappreciated, but kept his mouth shut.
Chauncey returned his attention to Dortmunder. “All of which is annoying enough,” he said, “but now it’s even worse. There’s been another development.”
Dortmunder’s expression was wary. “Oh, yeah?”
“The painting has turned up. In Scotland, with an apparently authentic pedigree. They claim it’s been in the same family more than a hundred fifty years.”
“Then it’s not yours,” Dortmunder said.
“Three experts in London,” Chauncey told him, “have affirmed it is the original. It’s listed for auction at Parkeby-South in September, and expected to sell at better than two hundred thousand pounds.” A faint trembling in Chauncey’s voice suggested his calm was only skin deep. “On the assumption the experts are right,” he said, “and the painting has been in Scotland the last one hundred fifty years, my insurance company now believes only a copy was stolen from me, and they’re suing. They want their money back.”