You’dve rung the doorbell,” she said.
“Or looked through the window.”
“Don’t give me a tough time, Stan,” she said. “I’m going crazy cooped up in
this house.”
“Whyn’t you go for a walk?”
“I go out with that brace on,” she said, “kids come up and want to know am I
a publicity stunt for Beneath the Planet of the Apes.”
“Little bastards,” Murch said.
“Language.”
“I tell you what. I’ll take tomorrow off, we’ll go for a ride.”
She perked up a bit. “Where to?”
“Montauk Point. Break out the maps. Let’s figure a route.”
“You’re a good boy, Stan,” his mother said, and soon the two of them had
their heads together over road maps opened on the dining-room table. They
were like that when the doorbell rang.
“Damn!” she said.
“I’ll get it,” Murch said. “You put on your brace.”
“I’m using it,” she said.
Murch looked at her, and she didn’t have it on. “What do you mean, you’re
using it?”
“You put it upside down on the drainboard,” she said, “it’s just perfect for
drying socks.”
“Aw, Mom, you don’t take this seriously.” The doorbell rang again. “What if
that’s an insurance adjuster and you’ve got socks on your neck brace?”
“I’ll put it on, I’ll put it on,” she said, and went away to the kitchen, while
Murch moved more slowly toward the front door.
It was Kelp out there. Murch opened the door wide and said, “Hey, come on
in. Long time no see.”
“I figured I’d-”
“Mom! Forget it!”
Kelp looked a little startled.
Murch said to him, “Sorry, I just didn’t want her to put her brace on.”
Kelp tried a smile but went on looking baffled anyway. “Sure,” he said. “I just
figured I’d-”
Murch’s Mom appeared with her neck brace on. “You called me?”
“Hey, Mrs. Murch!” said Kelp. “What happened?”
“I wanted to tell you to forget it,” Murch said.
“I couldn’t make out what you …” She stopped and frowned at Kelp.
“Kelp?”
“You hurt your neck?”
Disgusted, she said, “I put this thing on for you?”
“That’s why I called to you,” said Murch.
Shaking her head as best she could in the brace, she turned away again,
saying, “This thing is cold, and it’s wet.”
Kelp said, “You put it on for me?”
Murch said, “Well, if you’re gonna put socks on it, it’s gonna be cold and
wet.”
“Wait a minute,” Kelp said.
“I don’t know how much longer I can put up with this,” she said and left the
room.
Kelp said, “Why don’t I go out and walk around the block and then come
back?”
Murch looked at him, bewildered. “What for? You feel dizzy or something?”
Kelp glanced around. “No, I guess not. Everything’s okay, I guess. I must’ve
come in while there was already a conversation going on.”
“Something like that,” Murch said.
“I thought so, yeah.”
“Well, come on in.”
Kelp was already in. He looked at Murch and didn’t say anything.
“Oh, yeah,” Murch said. He shut the door and said, “We were just in the
dining room.”
“I’m busting into dinner? Look, I can-”
“No, we were just looking at maps. Come on in.” Murch and Kelp went into
the dining room, just as Murch’s Mom was coming in from the other direction,
patting her shoulders and saying, “It’s my cashmere sweater and it’s all wet.”
Murch said to Kelp, “You wouldn’t have something lined up, would you?”
“As a matter of fact, I would. You free to look it over tomorrow?”
“Oh, hell,” said Murch’s Mom. “There goes our ride out to the Island.”
“Out to Long Island?” said Kelp. “That’s perfect, that’s just what I want,
couldn’t be better.” He approached the table with all its maps. “Is this Long
Island? Here, let me show you the exact spot.”
“You two talk,” Murch’s Mom said. “I’ve got to go change out of this wet
sweater before I get a stiff neck.”
8
WHEN Dortmunder walked into the 0. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam
Avenue at eight-thirty the next night, there was nobody in the place but three
subway motormen, the television set high up on the wall, and Rollo, the
bartender. The television set was showing three people scaling a wall, all
burdened down with coils of rope and little hammers and walkie-talkies; they
were a Negro, a Jew, and a beautiful blond Swedish girl. The three subway
motormen, all Puerto Rican, were talking about whether or not there were
alligators in the subway tunnels. They were shouting back and forth at the top of
their voices, not because they were mad at each other-though they were-but
because their jobs had got them used to talking at that volume. “It’s in the
sewers you got the alligators,” one of them shouted.
“Them scum tunnels we got, you don’t call them sewers?”
“People bring up alligators from Florida,” the first one yelled, “little alligators
for pets, they get tired of them, they flush them down the toilet. But in the sewer,
not in the tunnels. You don’t flush toilets into subway tunnels.”
“Not much, you don’t.”
The third one, the gloomiest of them, shouted, “I run over a rat the other day,
down by Kingston-Throop, this big.” And knocked over his beer.
Dortmunder strolled on down to the end of the bar while Rollo sopped up the
spilled beer and drew a new one. The motormen started shouting about other
animals that were or weren’t in the subway tunnels, and Rollo came heavily
along the bar toward Dortmunder. He was a tall, meaty, balding, blue-jawed
gent in a dirty white shirt and dirty white apron, and, when he reached
Dortmunder he said, “Long time no see.
“You know how it is,” Dortmunder said. “I been living with a woman.”
Rollo nodded sympathetically. “That’s death on the bar business,” he said.
“What you want to do is get married, then you’ll start coming out at night.”
Dortmunder nodded his head toward the back room. “Anybody there?”
“Your friend, the other bourbon,” Rollo said. “Along with a no-proof-of-age
ginger ale. They got your glass.”
“Thanks.”
Dortmunder left the bar and headed for the rear, past the two doors with the
dog silhouettes on them and the sign on one door POINTERS and on the other
door SETTERS and past the phone booth and through the green door at the
back and into a small square room with a concrete floor. None of the walls were
visible because practically the whole room was taken up floor to ceiling with
beer cases and liquor cases, leaving only a small opening in the middle big
enough for a battered old table with a green felt top, half a dozen chairs and one
bare bulb with a round tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black
wire.
Kelp and Victor were seated at the table side by side, as though waiting for a
big-stakes poker game to start. A bottle of bourbon and a half-empty glass
stood in front of Kelp, and a glass with ice cubes and something sparkly and
amber stood in front of Victor.
Kelp, cheerful and optimistic, said, “Hi! Murch isn’t here yet.”
“So I see.” Dortmunder sat down in front of the other glass on the table,
which was still empty.
“Hello, Mr. Dortmunder.”
Dortmunder looked across the table. Victor’s smile made him squint, like too
much sunlight. “Hello, Victor,” he said.
“I’m glad we’ll be working together.”
Dortmunder’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile, and he gazed
down at his big-knuckled hands on the green felt of the table.
Kelp pushed the bottle toward him. “Have one.” The bottle claimed to be
Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon-“Our Own Brand.” Dortmunder splashed
some in his glass, sipped, made a face and said, “Stan’s late. That isn’t like him.”
Kelp said, “While we wait, why don’t we work out some of the details on this
thing?”
“Just like it was really going to happen,” Dortmunder said.
“Of course it’s going to happen,” Kelp said.
Victor managed to look worried while still smiling. “Don’t you think it’ll
happen, Mr. Dortmunder?”
Kelp said, “Of course it’ll happen.” To Dortmunder he said, “What about the
string?”
Victor said, “String?”
“The crew,” Kelp told him. “The group engaged in the Operation”
“We don’t have the job planned out yet,” Dortmunder said.
“What plan?” Kelp asked. “We back up a truck, hook on, drive the thing
away. Dump the guards at our leisure, take it someplace else, bust into the safe,
go on about our business.”
“I think you skipped over a few spots,” Dortmunder said.
“Oh, well,” Kelp said airily, “there’s details to be worked out.”
“One or two,” Dortmunder said.
“But we have the general outline. And what I figure, we here can handle it,
plus Stan to do the driving and a good lockman to get into the safe.”
“We here?” Dortmunder asked. He gave Kelp a meaningful look, glanced at