"That was legit? You want me to steal it?"
"Let me explain," Chauncey said. "I have a rather good collection of art, fifteenth and sixteenth century mostly, here and in my other places, and of course everything is completely insured."
"Ah," Dortmunder said.
Chauncey's smile now had lost that brief touch of embarrassment. "You see the plot already," he said. "Since I truly love paintings, it isn't necessary for me to display my possessions in public. If I arrange to have a painting 'stolen' from me, at some point when I am very short of cash, then I can collect from the insurance company, hang the painting in some private place, and enjoy both the picture and the cash."
"You don't need a thief," Dortmunder told him. "Put the thing away in a closet and say a burglar got in."
"Yes, of course," Chauncey said. "But there are problems."
Again the trace of embarrassment appeared in his smile, but this time Dortmunder could see the embarrassment was tempered by self-satisfaction, self-indulgence. Chauncey was like a boy who's just been caught making an obscene drawing in the school lavatory; he's embarrassed, but he's also pleased with the skill and the cleverness of the drawing.
Dortmunder said, "What problems?"
"I am very extravagant," Chauncey said. "I needn't give you my autobiography, but I inherited money and I'm afraid I never learned to be a good manager. My accountants are usually furious with me."
Dortmunder didn't even have one accountant. "Is that right," he said.
"The fact is," Chauncey said, "I've already done it twice."
"Done it? Faked a theft?"
"Twice," Chauncey said. "The second time, the insurance company made their suspicions very plain, but they didn't really push the matter. However, if I do it a third time, I can see them becoming cross."
"They might," agreed Dortmunder.
"I imagine," Chauncey said, "they would do their level best to prove it was a fake theft."
"They might."
"So it has to be a real theft," Chauncey said. "Professional thieves actually do have to break into the house and steal the painting."
"While you're out of town."
"Good Lord, no." Chauncey shook his head, and then laughed again, saying, "That's the worst thing I could do."
Dortmunder drank bourbon. "So what's your idea?"
"I will give a dinner party," Chauncey said. "In this house. I will have two couples staying with me at the time, in rooms on the top floor. Very well-to-do people. There should be a lot of valuables in their rooms while they are down to dinner. Because my house guests, and the other guests invited for the dinner, will all be wealthy people, most of the women wearing jewelry and so on, I will have hired private guards for the evening. During dinner, with me very much in the house, and with private guards hired by me in the house, thieves will break in from the roof, rifle the guest bedrooms, rifle my own rooms – carefully, please – steal the Veenbes from this room, and make their getaway."
"With private guards in the house," Dortmunder said.
"Whose attention will be on the persons and jewelry of my guests, downstairs." Chauncey shrugged, smiling in a relaxed and self-approving way. "No insurance company in the world could suggest a fake robbery under the circumstances."
"Will your guests be in on it?"
"Of course not. Nor will the guards."
"What do we do with their stuff?"
"Keep it. Returning mine, of course. And giving me back the painting."
"You mean selling you back the painting," Dortmunder said.
Chauncey nodded, his self-satisfied smile now spreading to include Dortmunder; Chauncey thought they were both terrifically witty and clever. "Of course," he said. "You'll want your own profit out of the transaction."
"That's right."
"You'll get to keep whatever items you find in the guest bedrooms, of course," Chauncey said.
"That stuff doesn't matter."
"No, you're perfectly right. Very well; I told you the insurance valuation, and believe me I'm being accurate. The newspapers will carry the story of the theft, and they'll surely give the valuation themselves."
"Four hundred thousand," Dortmunder said.
"I'll give you twenty-five per cent."
"A hundred thousand."
"Yes."
"When?"
"When I collect from the insurance company, of course. If I had a hundred thousand dollars, I wouldn't need to get into an operation like this."
Dortmunder said, "Then you'd get the painting back when you paid us."
Chauncey looked startled. "But – My dear Mr. Dortmunder, I am a respectable citizen, very well established, I have this house, other properties, I'm not going to simply up and disappear. You can trust me for the money."
Dortmunder said, "You're robbing an insurance company. You're inviting your own friends to your house so I can steal their goods. I wouldn't trust you with a ham sandwich in a phone booth for five minutes."
Chauncey burst into loud laughter, apparently genuine. "Oh, my God," he said, "Stonewiler did himself proud! Mr. Dortmunder, we can do business, you and I, we understand one another very well."
"Maybe we can," Dortmunder said.
Chauncey finished his laughing jag, and became suddenly serious, pointing a stern finger at Dortmunder and saying, "Can you hold on to the painting that long? Without damage, without having it stolen from you?"
"How long?"
"In my previous experience, it takes the insurance company about six months to finish its investigation and process the claim."
"Six months? Fine. I'll hold on to the painting six months, then you'll give me the hundred thousand, I'll give you the painting." Dortmunder turned to look at the picture again, visualizing it over the sofa in May's living room. Sure, why not? Look good there.
"I'll have to think about that," Chauncey said. "Table that for the moment. Otherwise, do we have a partnership?"
Dortmunder said, "You want a complete legit theft. That means no inside help, no doors left open, nothing like that."
"Absolutely not," Chauncey said. "I can give you some help ahead of time, let you look the house over-casing the joint, isn't that it? I can show you where the burglar alarm wires are, things like that."
"Burglar alarm?"
"Oh, yes. All the doors and windows are hooked up to an alarm system. Watson Security Services. If a door or window is opened, or a wire is cut, it triggers an alarm in the Watson offices down on 46th Street. They phone the police, and also send a car of their own."
"That's great," Dortmunder said.
"Surely you know how to bypass alarms," Chauncey said.
"To break into a private house? If I was the insurance company, I'd smell a rat."
"No, I don't believe you would," Chauncey said, speaking judiciously, as though he'd considered this point himself at some length. "I'll have a few famous wealthy people here, you know. A princess, an heiress, an oil sheikh and so on. The gossip columns will mention the house party, and the dinner, before they take place. All certainly enough to attract the attention of an enterprising team of burglars."
"If it really does get in the paper," Dortmunder said, "then okay."
"It will, I guarantee. Possibly only 'Suzy Says' in the Daily News, but the public prints nevertheless."
Dortmunder sat back, swirling the remaining bourbon in his glass, thinking it over. In a way it was a crazy deal, stealing a man's goods and then giving them back, but in another way it was just a simple straightforward B&E with inside help; except that in this case the inside help wasn't a disgruntled maid or hungry plumber, it was the mark himself. The burglar alarm wouldn't be that much of a problem, not with Chauncey pointing out where the wires ran, and if the guards did actually stay downstairs they'd be no trouble either. And a hundred thousand dollars, plus whatever jewelry or other valuables were in the guest bedrooms, would come in very handy right now. Dortmunder had been living on May's salary as a cashier down at the Safeway supermarket for so long he was almost forgetting to be embarrassed about it; the time had come to bring some money of his own into the house.