dollars for every one, should the robbery turn out to he successful. If the
robbery failed, of course, the financier got nothing.
“Mostly what we get,” Kelp had said, “is undeclared income. Doctors are the
best, but florists are pretty good, too. Anybody whose line lets them keep some
cash that they don’t tell the Feds about. You’d be surprised how many
greenbacks there are in safe-deposit boxes around the country. They’re saving
the money for when they retire. They can’t really spend it now, for fear the
income-tax people will get after them. They can’t invest it anyplace legal for the
same reason. So it just sits there, not earning any interest, getting eaten up by
inflation, and they look around for some way to put it to work. They’ll go for a
high risk if they can get a shot at a high return. And if they can be a silent
partner.”
“That’s fascinating,” ‘Victor had said raptly.
“I like doctors best,” Kelp had said. “I don’t know why, I’ve just got a thing
about doctors. I use their cars, I use their money. They’ve never let me down
yet. You can trust doctors.”
They spent half an hour now in this particular doctor’s waiting room. The stout
lady was called in by the nurse after a while and never returned. Nor did any
other patient come out. Victor wondered about that, but later on discovered the
doctor had a different exit, another door that led back to the elevator.
Finally the nurse came back, saying, “Doctor will see you now.” Kelp
followed the nurse, and Victor followed Kelp, and they all went down a hall to
an examining room-white cabinets, black leatherette examination table.
“Doctor will be right with you,” the nurse said, and shut the door behind her
when she left.
Kelp sat down on the examination table and let his feet dangle. “Now, let me
do the talking.”
“Oh, sure,” Victor said reassuringly. He wandered around the room, reading
the charts and the labels on the bottles, until the door opened again and the
doctor came in.
“Doctor Osbertson,” said Kelp, getting to his feet. “This is my nephew,
Victor. He’s okay.”
Victor smiled at Dr. Osbertson. The doctor was fiftyish, distinguished-looking,
well padded and irritable. He had the round face of a sulky baby, and he said,
“I’m not sure I want to be involved in this sort of thing any more.”
Kelp said, “Well, that’s up to you. It looks like a good one, though.”
“The way the market’s been …” He looked around, as though he’d never
seen his own examining room before and didn’t much like it. “There’s no place
to sit in here,” he said. “Come with me.”
They followed him part way back along the same hall and into a small wood-paneled office with two maroon chairs facing the desk. All three sat down, and
the doctor leaned back in his swivel chair, frowning in discontent. “I took a
couple of headers in the market,” he said. “Take my advice. Never listen to a
stock tip from a terminal case. What if he turns out to be wrong?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Kelp said.
“Then my car was stolen.”
Victor looked at Kelp, who was facing the doctor, his expression showing
sympathetic interest. “is that right?”
“Just the other day. Kids, joy-riding. Managed to get into a rear-end collision
somehow.”
“Kids, huh? Did they get them?”
“The police?” The doctor’s sullen baby face made a grimacing smile, as
though he had gas. “Don’t make me laugh. They never get anybody.”
“Let’s hope not,” Kelp said. “But about our proposition.”
“Then I had to buy some letters back.” The doctor waggled his hands, as
though to minimize what he was saying. “Ex-patient,” he said. “Didn’t mean a
thing, of course, just consolation in her grief.”
“The terminal tipper’s wife?”
“What? No, I never wrote her anything, thank God. This one … Well, it
doesn’t matter. Expenses have been high. That car business was the last straw.”
“Did you leave the keys in it?”
“Of course not.” He sat up straight to show how indignant he was.
“But you’re insured,” Kelp said.
“You never recover all your costs,” the doctor said. “Traveling by cab,
making phone calls, getting estimates . I’m a busy man. I don’t have time for all
this. And now you people. What if you’re caught?”
“We’ll do our best to avoid that.”
“But what if you are? Then I’m out-how much do you want?”
“We figure four thousand.”
The doctor pursed his lips. He looked now like a baby who’d just had his
pacifier plucked from him. “A lot of money,” he said.
“Eight thousand back.”
“If it works.”
“This is a good one,” Kelp said. “You know I can’t tell you the details, but-”
The doctor flung up his hands as though to ward oft an avalanche. “Don’t tell
me. I don’t want to know! I won’t be an accessory!”
“Sure,” Kelp said. “I know how you feel. Anyway, we think of this one as
being a really sure thing. Money in the bank, you might say.”
The doctor rested his palms on his green blotter. “Four thousand, you say.”
“There might be a little more. I don’t think so.”
“You’re getting the whole thing from me?”
“If we can.”
“This recession …” He shook his head. “People don’t come around for
every little thing any more. When I see a patient in the waiting room these days, I
know that patient is sick. Drug companies getting a little stingier, too. Had to dip
into capital just the other week.”
“That’s a shame,” Kelp said.
“Diet foods,” the doctor said. “There’s another problem. Used to be, I could
count on gastritis from overeating for a good thirty percent of my income. Now
everybody’s on diets. How do they expect a doctor to make ends meet?”
“Things sure can get rough,” Kelp said.
“And now they’re giving up cigarettes. The lungs have been a gold mine for
me for years. But not any more.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what
medicine is coming to,” he said. “If I had a son entering college today, and he
asked me if I wanted him to follow in my footsteps, I’d say, ‘No, son. I want
you to be a tax accountant. That’s the wave of the future, you ride it. It’s too
late for me.’ That’s what I’d tell him.”
“Good advice,” Kelp said.
The doctor slowly shook his head. “Four thousand,” he said.
“That should do it, yes.”
“All right.” He sighed and got to his feet. “Wait here. I’ll get it for you.”
He left the room, and Kelp turned to Victor to say, “He left the keys in it.”
11
DORTMUNDER at the movies was like a rock on the beach; the story kept
washing over him, in wave after wave, but never had any effect. This one, called
Murphy’s Madrigal, had been advertised as a tragic farce and gave the
audience an opportunity to try out every emotion known to the human brain.
Pratfalls, crippled children, Nazis, doomed lovers, you never knew what was
going to happen next.
And Dortmunder just sat there. Beside him May roared with laughter, she
sobbed, she growled with rage, she clutched his arm and cried, “Oh!” And
Dortmunder just sat there.
When they got out of the movie it was ten to eight, so they had time to get a
hero. They went to a Blimpie and May treated, and when they were sitting
together at a table with their sandwiches under the bright lights she said, “You
didn’t like it.”
“Sure I did,” he said. He pushed bread and sauerkraut in his mouth with his
finger.
“You just sat there.”
“I liked it,” he said. Going to the movies had been her idea; he’d spent most
of the time in the theater thinking about that mobile home bank out on Long
Island and how to take it away.
“Tell me what you liked about it.”
He thought hard, trying to remember something he’d seen. “The color,” he
said.
“A part of the movie.”
She was really getting irritated now, which he didn’t want to happen. He
struggled and came up with a memory. “The elevator bit,” he said. The director
of the movie had tied a strong elastic around a camera and dropped the camera
down a brightly lighted elevator shaft. The thing had recoiled just before hitting
bottom and had bounced up and down for quite a while before coming to rest.
The whole sequence, forty-three seconds of it, was run without a break in the
movie, and audiences had been known to throw up en masse at that point in the
picture. Everybody agreed it was great, the high point of film art up to this time.
May smiled. “Okay,” she said. “That was good, wasn’t it?”
“Sure,” he said. He looked at his watch.