Thieves' Dozen d-12

by Donald E. Westlake

  Petey glowered. "We're just partners," he said.

  "Right, right, I forgot."

  Dortmunder got to his feet, as though casual. "Well, cuz," he said to Arnie, "maybe I'll go back outta town."

  Petey switched his glower to Dortmunder. "Why don't you stick around instead?" he said.

  "Yeah, Door-Diddums," Arnie said. "Stick around."

  Although Dortmunder did say, "I don't see why-" nobody heard him because at that moment a whole lot of pounding rattled the metal apartment door, and voices shouted, "Open up! Police! Police!"

  Petey and Kate stared at one another wide-eyed. Dortmunder stared at the fire escape; if Arnie could only stall the cops for thirty or forty seconds . . .

  Arnie strode briskly to the apartment door and flung it open. "Took you guys long enough," he said.

  Dortmunder and Petey and Kate all reacted to that remark, staring open-mouthed at Arnie as the room filled up with uniforms. There then followed a great deal of noise and confusion, during which Dortmunder and Petey and Kate found themselves standing in a row against a wall of Januaries-baseball players, old cars, chrome-covered diners-while a number of fierce-looking cops pinned them there with gimlet glares.

  When at last there was comparative silence, except for everybody's heavy breathing, a plainclothesman came in through the open door and pointed his lumpy forehead at Arnie to say, "Arnie, what the hell are you up to?"

  "Nothing, Lieutenant," Arnie said, "as you well know. I'm retired, and reformed, and off the fence."

  "Crap," the lieutenant said, and sniffed. "What stinks in here?"

  "Me," Arnie said. "As usual."

  "Worse than usual, Arnie." The lieutenant's forehead considered Dortmunder and Petey and Kate. "What's with this unlovely crowd?"

  "What I told you on the phone," Arnie reminded him. "Them two tried to sell me stolen TV sets."

  Petey said, "We never said they were stolen."

  "Sharrap," the lieutenant told Petey. To Arnie, he said, "These three, huh?"

  "No, no, them two. That one's my cousin, John Diddums, from outta town."

  "First cousin!" Dortmunder cried. In that moment, he became the only person in history ever to love Arnie Albright.

  The lieutenant's forehead expressed all sorts of disbelief. "This isn't a crook?"

  "Absolutely not," Arnie said. "I'm the black sheep of the family, Lieutenant. John there, he's my inspiration for honesty. He runs the family grocery store in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania."

  The lieutenant frowned at Dortmunder. "Where the hell is Shickshinny?"

  "Pennsylvania," Dortmunder said, being in no mood to contradict Arnie.

  The lieutenant thought things over. He said, "Arnie? You'll come downtown, make a statement?"

  "Naturally," Arnie said. "I told you, I'm the straight goods now."

  "Will wonders never cease." To his armed forces, the lieutenant said, "Take those two, leave that one."

  Kate cried out, "This is a hell of a thing! Lou, what we-"

  "Shut up, Kate," Petey said, and Kate shut up. But she fumed, as she and Petey were taken away by all the uniforms, followed by the lieutenant, who closed the door.

  Dortmunder dropped into the chair by the window like something that had fallen out of an airplane. Arnie came over to sit across the table and say, "Quick, lemme see those coins. We don't got a whole lotta time."

  Wondering, handing over the Ziploc bag, Dortmunder said, "Arnie? Why'd you turn those two in?"

  "You kidding?" Loupe in eye, Arnie studied coins. "They were cops. Undercover. Entrapment, like they like to do. That's probably what got your pal Stoon."

  "Cops? Are you sure?"

  The loupe looked at Dortmunder; still an uncomfortable event. "What's the first thing they said when they come in? 'We're just partners." Dortmunder? Were they just partners?"

  "He put his hand on her knee, while you were out on the phone."

  "They do the four-hand aerobics, am I right?"

  "Sure. So?"

  "If two regular, honest crooks walk in here," Arnie said, "and they're a guy and a broad, what do they care what we think about whether they're schtuppin' or not, am I right?"

  "You're right."

  "But an undercover cop," Arnie said, studying coins again, "when he's out on the job, he'll pretend to be a druggie, a burglar, a murderer, a spy, any goddam thing. He'll say he's anything at all, because everybody that matters knows he really isn't. But the one thing he can't say is he's getting it on with his partner, because when that gets home to the wife, she'll know it's true."

  "You had me very worried, Arnie," Dortmunder said. "I probably didn't show it, but I was really very worried."

  "They won't uncover themselves until they get downtown," Arnie said, "so we got a little time. Not much."

  "Really very worried," Dortmunder said.

  "I may be ugly, stupid, bad-smelling, antisocial, friendless and a creep," Arnie said, "but I don't get entrapped by officer Petey and officer Kate. I tell you what I'll do with these coins."

  "Yeah?"

  From his pocket Arnie took the piece of rye bread and a set of truck keys. The keys he dropped on a January of a boy carrying his girlfriend's books home from school down a country lane, and the bread he started to eat. "I palmed those when we went down to look at the goods," he said, around the stale bread. "I got no use for trucks or TVs, Dortmunder, but there's a guy over in Jersey-"

  "I know him."

  "An even swap," Arnie said. "I'll take the coins, you take the truck and the TVs."

  "Done."

  Dortmunder scooped in the keys and got to his feet. "Better give me the Ziploc bag, Arnie," he said.

  "For why?"

  "To carry the loot in."

  Arnie gaped at him, bread an unlovely mass in his mouth. "The TVs and the truck? In a Ziploc bag?"

  Dortmunder smiled upon him. "That's how you tell that joke, Arnie," he said, and got out of there.

  NOW WHAT?

  EVERYBODY ON THE SUBWAY WAS READING THE DAILY NEWS, and every newspaper was open to exactly the same page, the one with the three pictures. The picture of the movie star, smiling. The picture of the famous model, posing and smiling. And the picture of the stolen brooch. Shaped vaguely like a boomerang, with a large, dark stone at each end and smaller, lighter stones scattered between like stars in the night sky seen, say, from a cell, even the brooch seemed to be smiling.

  Dortmunder was not smiling. He hadn't realized how big a deal this damn brooch would be. With pictures of the brooch in the hands of every man, woman and child in the greater New York metropolitan area, it was beginning to seem somehow less than brilliant that he should smuggle the thing into Brooklyn, disguised as a ham sandwich.

  Over breakfast (sweetened orange juice, coffee with a lot of sugar, Wheaties with a lot of sugar), that concept had appeared to make a kind of sense, even to have a certain elegance. John Dortmunder, professional thief, with his sloped shoulders, shapeless clothing, lifeless hair-colored hair, pessimistic nose and rusty-hinge gait, knew he could, if he wished, look exactly like your normal, average working man, even though, so far as he knew, he had never earned an honest dollar in his life. If called upon to transport a valuable stolen brooch from his home in Manhattan to a new but highly recommended fence in Brooklyn, therefore, it had seemed to him that the best way to do it was to place the brooch between two slabs of ham with a lot of mayonnaise, this package to be inserted within two slices of Wonder Bread, the result wrapped in paper towels and the whole carried inside an ordinary wrinkled brown paper lunch bag. It had seemed like a good idea.

  Only now he didn't know. What was it about this brooch? Why was its recent change of possessor all over the Daily News?

  The train trundled and roared and rattled through the black tunnel beneath the city, stopping here and there at bright-lit white-tile places that could have been communal showers in state prisons but were actually where passengers embarked and detrained, and eventually one such departing
passenger left his Daily News behind him on the seat. Dortmunder beat a bag lady to it, crossed one leg over the other and, ignoring the bag lady's bloodshot glare, settled down to find out what the fuss was all about.

  300G BROOCH IN DARING HEIST

  Lone Cat Burglar Foils Cops, Top Security

  Well, that wasn't so bad. Dortmunder couldn't remember ever having been called daring before, nor had anyone before this ever categorized his shambling jog and wheezing exertions as that of a cat burglar.

  Anyway, on to the story:

  "In town to promote his new hit film, Mark Time 111: High Mark, Jer Crumbie last night had a close encounter with a rapid-response burglar who left the superstar breathless, reluctantly admiring and out the $300,000 brooch he had just presented his fiancée, Desiree Makeup spokesmodel Felicia Tarrant.

  '"It was like something in the movies,' Crumbie told cops. 'This guy got through some really tight security, grabbed what he wanted and was out of there before anybody knew what happened.'

  "The occasion was a private bash for the Hollywood-based superstar in his luxury suite on the 14th floor of Fifth Avenue's posh Port Dutch Hotel, frequent host to Hollywood celebrities. A private security service screened the invited guests, both at lobby level and again outside the suite itself, and yet the burglar, described as lithe, in dark clothing, with black gloves and a black ski mask, somehow infiltrated the suite and actually managed to wrest the $300,000 trinket out of Felicia Tarrant's hands just moments after Jer Crumbie had presented it to her to the applause of his assembled guests.

  '"It all happened so fast,' Ms. Tarrant told police, 'and he was so slick and professional about it, that I still can't say exactly how it happened.'"

  What Dortmunder liked about celebrity events was that they tended to snag everybody's attention. Having seen, both on television and in the New York Post, that this movie star was going to be introducing his latest fiancée to 250 of his closest personal friends, including the press, at his suite at the Port Dutch Hotel, Dortmunder had understood at once that the thing to do during the party was to pay a visit to the Port Dutch and drop in on every suite except the one containing the happy couple.

  The Port Dutch was a midtown hotel for millionaires of all kinds-oil sheiks, arbitrageurs, rock legends, British royals-and its suites, two per floor facing Central Park across Fifth Avenue, almost always repaid a drop-in visit during the dinner hour.

  Dortmunder had decided he would work only on the floors below the 14th, where the happy couple held sway, so as not to pass their windows and perhaps attract unwelcome attention. But on floor after floor, in suite after suite, as he crept up the dark fire escape in his dark clothing, far above the honking, milling, noisy red-and-white stage set of the avenue far below, he met only disappointment. His hard-learned skills at bypassing Port Dutch locks and alarms-early lessons had sometimes included crashing, galumphing flights up and down fire escapes-had no chance to come into play.

  Some of the suites clearly contained no paying tenants. Some contained occupants who obviously meant to occupy the suite all evening. (A number of these occupants' stay-at-home activities might have been of educational interest to Dortmunder, had he been less determined to make a profit from the evening.)

  A third category of suites was occupied by pretenders. These were people who had gone out for an evening on the town, leaving behind luggage, clothing, shopping bags, all visible from the fire escape windows, providing clues that their owners were second-honeymooners from Akron, Ohio who would repay an enterprising burglar's attentions with little more than Donald Duck sweatshirts from 42nd Street.

  Twelve floors without a hit. The not-quite-honeymoon suite was just ahead. Dortmunder was not interested in engaging the attention of beefy men in brown private security guard uniforms, but he was also feeling a bit frustrated. Twelve floors, and not a soul no bracelets, no anklets, no necklaces; no Rolexes, ThinkPads, smuggled currency; no fur, no silk, no plastic (as in credit cards).

  OK. He would pass the party, silent and invisible. He would segue from 12 up past 14 without a pause, and then he would see what 15 and above had to offer. The hotel had 23 floors; all hope was not gone.

  Up he went. Tiptoe, tiptoe; silent, silent. Over his right shoulder, had he cared to look, spread the dark glitter of Central Park. Straight down, 140 feet beneath his black-sneakered feet, snaked the slow-moving southbound traffic of Fifth Avenue, and just up ahead lurked suite 1501-2-3-4-5.

  The window was open.

  Oh, now what? Faint party sounds wafted out like laughing gas. Dortmunder hesitated but knew he had to push on.

  Inch by inch he went up the open-design metal steps, cool in the cool April evening. The open window, when he reached it, revealed an illuminated room with a bland pale ceiling but apparently no occupants; the party noises came from farther away.

  Dortmunder had reached the fire escape landing. On all fours, he started past the dangerous window when he heard suddenly approaching voices:

  "You're just trying to humiliate me." Female, young, twangy, whining.

  "All I'm trying is to teach you English." Male, gruff, cocky, impatient.

  Female: "It's a pin. Anybody knows it's a pin!"

  Male: "It is, as I said, a brooch."

  Female: "A brooch is one of them things you get at the hotel in Paris. For breakfast."

  Male: "That, Felicia, sweetheart-and I love your tits-I promise you, is a brioche."

  Female: "Brooch!"

  Male: "Bri-oche!"

  Most of this argument was taking place just the other side of the open window. Dortmunder, thinking it unwise to move, remained hunkered, half-turned so his head was just below the sill while his body was compressed into a shape like a pickup's spring right after 12 pieces of Sheetrock have been loaded aboard.

  "You can't humiliate me!"

  An arm appeared within that window space above Dortmunder's head. The arm was slender, bare, graceful. It was doing an overarm throw, not very well; if truth be told, it was throwing like a girl.

  This arm was attempting to throw the object out through the open window, and in a way it accomplished its purpose. The flung object first hit the bottom of the open window, but then it deflected down and out and wound up outside the window.

  In Dortmunder's lap. Jewelry, glittering. What looked like emeralds on the ends, what looked like diamonds along the middle.

  Any second now somebody was going to look out that window to see where this bauble had gone. Dortmunder closed his left hand around it and moved. It was an automatic reaction, and since he'd already been moving upward he kept on moving upward, rounding the turn of the landing, heaving up the next flight of the fire escape, breathing like a city bus, while behind him the shouting began:

  Male: "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!"

  Female: "Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!"

  Up and over the hotel roof and into the apartment building next door and down the freight elevator and out onto the side street, a route long known to Dortmunder. When he at last ambled around the corner onto Fifth, merely another late-shift worker going home, the police cars were just arriving in front of the hotel.

  Newspapers tell lies, Dortmunder thought. He read on, to find a description of the thing in his ham sandwich. The things that looked like emeralds were emeralds, and the things that looked like diamonds were diamonds, that was why the fuss. Altogether, the trinket the bride-perhaps-to-be had flung ricocheting out the window last night was valued, in the newspapers, at least, at $300,000.

  On the other hand, newspapers lie. So it would be up to Harmov Krandelloc, said to be an ethnic so different from anybody else that no one had yet figured out even what continent he came from, but who had recently set himself up in a warehouse off Atlantic Avenue where it crossed Flatbush as king of the next generation of really worthwhile fences, who paid great dollar (sometimes even more than the usual ten percent of value) and never asked too many questions. It would be up to Harmov Krandelloc to determine what the thing
in the ham sandwich was actually worth, and what Dortmunder could hope to realize from it.

  But now, on the BMT into deepest Brooklyn, surrounded by newspaper photos of his swag, realizing that the celebrity of its former owners made this particular green-and-white object more valuable but also more newsworthy (a word the sensible burglar does his best to avoid), Dortmunder hunched with increasing despondency under his borrowed paper, clutched his brown bag in his left hand with increasing trepidation and wished fervently he'd waited a week before trying to unload this bauble.

  More than a week. Maybe six years would have been right.

  Roizak Street would be Dortmunder's stop. While keeping one eye on his News and one eye on his lunch, Dortmunder also kept an eye on the subway map, following the train's creeping progress from one foreign neighborhood to another; street names without resonance or meaning, separated by the black tunnels.

  Vedloukam Boulevard; the train slowed and stopped. Roizak Street was next. The doors opened and closed. The train started, roaring into the tunnel. Two minutes went by, and the train slowed. Dortmunder rose, peered out the car windows and saw only black. Where was the station?

  The train braked steeply, forcing Dortmunder to sit again. Metal wheels could be heard screaming along the metal rails. With one final lurch, the train stopped.

  No station. Now what? Some holdup, when all he wanted to do--

  The lights went out. Pitch-black darkness. A voice called, "I smell smoke." The voice was oddly calm.

  The next 27 voices were anything but calm. Dortmunder, too, smelled smoke, and he felt people surging this way and that, bumping into him, bumping into one another, crying out. He scrunched close on his seat. He'd given up the News, but he held on grimly to his ham sandwich.

  "ATTENTION PLEASE."

  It was an announcement, over the public address system.

  Some people kept shouting. Other people shouted for the first people to stop shouting so they could hear the announcement. Nobody heard the announcement.