Dortmunder didn’t answer. He went on up the fire escape. He became aware after half a flight that Kelp was following him, and he considered turning around and telling him to go away, or possibly turning around and hitting Kelp on the head with the canvas bag, but he didn’t do it. He didn’t have the strength, he didn’t have a positive enough attitude. He was feeling defeatist again, the way he always did around Kelp. So he just kept plodding up the fire escape stairs to the roof.
At the top he turned left and headed across the roofs toward the parking garage. He knew Kelp was trotting after him, but he tried to ignore the fact. He also tried to ignore it when Kelp caught up with him and walked next to him, panting and saying, “Don’t go so fast, will ya?”
Dortmunder went faster.
“You were going in the wrong floor,” Kelp said. “Is that my fault? I got there ahead of you, I jimmied the door, I thought I’d help.”
“Don’t help,” Dortmunder said. “That’s all I ask, don’t help.”
“If you’d stopped at the right floor,” Kelp said, “I wouldn’t have had to call you. We could have talked inside. I could have helped you carry the furs.”
“Don’t help,” Dortmunder said.
“You went to the wrong floor.”
Dortmunder stopped. He was one roof shy of the parking garage. He turned and looked at Kelp and said, “All right. One question. You’ve got a caper? You want me in on it?”
Kelp hesitated. It could be seen that he’d had a different plan in mind for broaching his subject, a method more circuitous and subtle. But it wasn’t to be, and Dortmunder watched Kelp gradually accept the fact. Kelp sighed. “Yes,” he said.
“The answer is no,” Dortmunder said. He turned and headed again for the parking garage.
Hurrying after him, Kelp protested, “Why? You can’t even listen?”
Dortmunder stopped again, and Kelp ran into him. Kelp was shorter than Dortmunder, and his nose ran into Dortmunder’s shoulder. “Ow!” he said.
“I’ll tell you why,” Dortmunder said.
Kelp pressed a hand to his nose. “That hurt,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Dortmunder said. “The last time I listened to you, I wound up running all over Long Island with a stolen bank, and what did I get out of it? A head cold.”
“I think I’ve got a nosebleed,” Kelp said. He was tenderly touching his nose with his fingertips.
“I’m sorry,” Dortmunder said. “And the time before that, you remember what that was? That other time I listened to you? That goddam Balabomo Emerald, remember that one?”
“If you’re blaming me for any of that,” Kelp said, talking nasally because he was holding his nose, “I think it’s very unfair.”
“If I’m unfair,” Dortmunder pointed out, “you don’t want to be around me.” And he turned away again and walked on.
Kelp trailed along, touching his nose and loudly sniffing. The two of them crossed to the last roof, and Dortmunder opened the door leading to the stairs. He went down, followed by Kelp, to an open, concrete-floored area with half a dozen dusty cars parked in it. Walking across the floor, with Kelp still behind him, he went down a concrete ramp past another parking level with more dusty cars, and at the third level down walked out past a lot of less dusty cars to a brown Volkswagen Microbus with red side curtains. Kelp, still talking nasally, said, “Where’d you get that?”
“I stole it,” Dortmunder said. “Because you weren’t around, nothing went wrong. I figured to be filling it with furs right now.”
“That’s not my fault,” Kelp said. “You were on the wrong floor.”
“It was because you were around,” Dortmunder told him. “You’re my jinx, I don’t even have to know you’re there and you screw me up.”
“That isn’t fair, Dortmunder,” Kelp said. “Now, you know that.” He gestured with both hands.
“You’re bleeding on your shirt,” Dortmunder told him.
“Oh, damn.” Kelp closed his fingers over his nose again. “Listen,” he twanged, “lemme just tell you about this thing.”
“If I listen to you—” Dortmunder started, and then stopped and shook his head. Sometimes there just wasn’t anything to be done with a bad hand but play it. He knew that, if anybody did. “Screw it,” he said. “Get in the car.”
Behind the hand holding his nose, Kelp beamed. “You won’t regret this, Dortmunder,” he said, and ran around to the other side of the Microbus.
“I regret it already,” Dortmunder said. But he got into the Microbus and started the engine and drove it down and out of the garage. A man in a green work shirt and green work pants sitting on a kitchen chair out on the sidewalk did not look up as they went by. Kelp, looking out at that man, said, “Isn’t he the garage man?”
“Yes.”
“How come you can just drive in and out?”
“Twenty dollars,” Dortmunder said. His expression was grim. “That’s something else you cost me,” he said.
“Aw, now, Dortmunder, you’re just in a bad mood.”
“No kidding.”
“Tomorrow you’ll think it over,” Kelp said, “you’ll realize it isn’t right to blame me for everything.”
“I don’t blame you for everything,” Dortmunder said.
“I don’t blame you for the Second World War and I don’t
blame you for the Johnstown flood. But everything else I
do blame you for.”-
“Tomorrow you’ll feel different,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder glanced at him, to give him an unbelieving look, and said, “You’re bleeding on yourself again.”
“Oh.” Kelp put his head back, and stared at the Volkswagen’s roof.
“You might as well tell me the caper,” Dortmunder said, “so I can say no and get it over with.”
“It’s not like that,” Kelp said, holding his nose and talking to the roof. “I got nothing to tell you exactly. It’s more to show you.”
Like the emerald. “Where is it?”
With the hand that wasn’t holding his nose, Kelp reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a paperback book. “It’s this,” he said.
Dortmunder was approaching an intersection with a green light. He made his turn, drove a block, and stopped at a red light. Then he looked at the book Kelp was waving. He said, “What’s that?”
“It’s a book.”
“I know it’s a book. What is it?”
“It’s for you to read,” Kelp said. “Here, take it.” He was still staring at the roof and holding his nose, and he was merely waving the book in Dortmunder’s direction.
So Dortmunder took the book. The title was Child Heist, and the author was somebody named Richard Stark. “Sounds like crap,” Dortmunder said.
“Just read it,” Kelp said.
“Why?”
“Read it. Then we’ll talk.”
Dortmunder hefted the book in his hand. A skinny paperback. “I don’t get the point,” he said.
“I don’t want to say anything till after you read it,” Kelp said. “Okay? I mean, after all, you gave me a nosebleed, you can anyway read a book.”
Dortmunder thought of saying several things about furs, but he didn’t. The traffic light was green. “Maybe,” he said, and tossed the paperback behind him, and drove on.
2
STAN MURCH made his call from a diner pay phone. “Maximilian’s Used Cars, Miss Caroline speaking.”
“Hi, Harriet. Max there?”
“To whom am I speaking, please?”
“This is Stan.”
“Oh, hi, Stan. One moment, please, Max is explaining the guarantee to a dissatisfied customer.”
“Sure,” Murch said. The phone booth was inside the diner, but it had a window that overlooked the blacktop parking lot, and Jericho Turnpike beyond. A dozen cars winkled in the thin October sunlight. The car Stan had in mind, an almost-new white Continental, a definite cream-puff, was parked almost in front of him. The driver had staggered in just a few minutes ago, drunk out of his mind even though it was barely two o’clock in the afternoon, and was now sprawled in a booth in the rear of the diner, occasionally spilling black coffee on himself. All things considered, Murch told himself, I’m doing that bird a favor. He shouldn’t be driving in his condition.