And now some tall slender yellow–haired guy in a dark blue pinstripe suit, white shirt and dark blue patterned tie had come out of the house, called him by name, and was standing up there grinning at him.
Dortmunder took his time. Staying where he was on the sidewalk, he studied the guy the way he’d been studying the house, and what he saw wasn’t reassuring. The fellow was about forty, deeply tanned and very fit, and everything about him suggested dignified secure wealth; his banker’s clothing, his self–confident smile, the house in which he lived. Everything, that is, except the shoulder–length yellow hair, hanging in long waves around his head, neither sloppy nor pretty, but somehow totally masculine. Like a knight in the Crusades. No; better yet, like one of those Viking raiders who used to play such hell along the English coast. Some Viking barbarian, that’s what he was, plus all the civilization money could buy.
He was also clearly willing to let Dortmunder look him over forever. He stood there grinning, studying Dortmunder in return, and it was finally Dortmunder who ended it, calling up to him, “You’re Chauncey?”
“Arnold Chauncey,” the other one agreed. Stepping to one side, he gestured at his open doorway. “Come on up, why don’t you?”
So Dortmunder shrugged and nodded and went on up, climbing the steps and preceding Chauncey into the house.
A wide carpeted hallway stretched to an open doorway at the far end, through which could be seen delicate wooden–armed chairs in a bare–floored gleaming room with tall windows. On the left side of the hallway, a staircase with a red runner and dark–wood banister extended upward. White light filtering down suggested a skylight at the top of the stairs. To the right of the hallway were two sets of dark–wood sliding doors, one near and one far, both shut. A few large paintings in heavy frames were on the pale walls, with a number of spindly occasional tables beneath. A hushed, padded quiet pervaded the house.
Chauncey followed Dortmunder inside, shutting the door behind himself and gestured at the staircase, saying, “We’ll go up to the sitting room.” He had one of those Midlantic accents that Americans think of as English and Englishmen think American. Dortmunder thought he sounded like a phony.
They went up to the sitting room, which turned out to be a living room without a television set, where Chauncey urged Dortmunder into a comfortable velvet–covered wing chair and asked him what he’d like to drink. “Bourbon,” Dortmunder told him. “With ice.”
“Good,” Chauncey said. “I’ll join you.”
The bar — complete with small refrigerator — was in the cabinetry in the far wall, beneath an expanse of a well filled bookcase. While Chauncey poured, Dortmunder looked at the rest of the room, the Persian rug and the antique–looking tables and chairs, the large ornate lamps, and the paintings on the walls. There were several of these, mostly small, except for one big one — about three feet wide, maybe not quite so high — which showed a medieval scene; a skinny fellow with a round belly, wearing varicolored jester’s clothes and a cap and bells, was dancing along a road, playing a small flute. The road led down in darkness to the right. Following the jester along the road were a whole bunch of people, all of them with tense staring faces. They were apparently supposed to represent a great variety of human types: a fat monk, a tall knight in armor, a short fat woman with a market basket, and so on.
Chauncey brought Dortmunder’s drink, saying, “You like that picture?”
Dortmunder neither liked nor disliked pictures. “Sure,” he said.
“It’s a Veenbes,” Chauncey said, and he stood beside Dortmunder’s chair, smiling thoughtfully at the painting, as though reconsidering its position on the wall, or his attitude toward it, or even the fact of his ownership of the thing. “You’ve heard of Veenbes?”
“No.” The bourbon was delicious, a very smooth brand. Dortmunder hadn’t recognized the shape of the bottle when Chauncey was pouring.
“An early Flemish master,” Chauncey said. “A contemporary of Brueghel, possibly an influence, nobody’s quite sure. This is Folly Leads Man to Ruin.” Chauncey sipped bourbon, and chuckled, nodding at the painting. “Woman, too, of course.”
“Sure,” Dortmunder said.
“The painting has been valued at four hundred thousand dollars,” Chauncey said, the way a man might say the weather was good, or that he’d just bought a pair of snow tires.
Dortmunder looked up at Chauncey’s profile — tanned face, sharp nose, long yellow hair — and then he frowned again at the painting. Four hundred thousand dollars? For a picture to cover a water stain on the wall? There were parts of life, Dortmunder knew, that he would never understand, and most of those parts of life had something to do with people being cuckoo.
“I want you to steal it,” Chauncey said.
Dortmunder looked up again. “Oh, yeah?”
Chauncey laughed, and moved off to seat himself in another chair, putting his glass on the drum table at his right hand. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “Stonewiler told you my instructions to him.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Good; he wasn’t supposed to.” Chauncey glanced at the picture of Folly again, then said, “Three months ago, I told him I wanted a crook.” His bright eyes flickered toward Dortmunder’s face. “I hope you don’t object to that term.”
Dortmunder shrugged. “It covers a lot of people.”
Chauncey smiled. “Of course. But there was a very specific kind of crook I wanted. A professional thief, not too young, successful at his profession but not wealthy, who had served at least one term in prison, but had never been convicted or even charged with anything other than larceny. No mugging, murder, arson, kidnapping. Only theft. It took three months to find the man I wanted, and he turned out to be you.” Chauncey stopped — for dramatic effect, probably — and sipped more bourbon, watching Dortmunder over the rim of his glass.
Dortmunder also sipped bourbon, watching Chauncey over the rim of his glass. They studied one another over the rims of their glasses for a while — Dortmunder was getting a bit cross–eyed — and then Chauncey put his glass back on the drum table, Dortmunder lowered his own glass into his lap, and Chauncey shrugged as though embarrassed, saying, “I need money.”
Dortmunder said, “Who owns the painting?”
That surprised Chauncey. “I do, of course.”
“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.”
“D
one 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.
And that painting really would look okay in the living room, for the next six months.
Chauncey said, “Well, what do you think? Can we work together?”
“Maybe,” Dortmunder said. “I got to look the house over first, and I got to see what kind of string I can put together.”
“String?”
“The people to work with me. This isn’t a one–man job.”
“No, of course not. Have you ever stolen a painting before?”
“Not a big one like that.”
“Then I’ll have to show you how it’s done,” Chauncey said. “It’s a delicate operation, really, you don’t want to harm the painting in transporting it.”
“We’ll just carry it away,” Dortmunder said.
“Indeed you will not,” Chauncey told him. “You’ll do a professional job of it. You’ll cut the picture out of its frame —”
“We don’t take the frame?”
“Certainly not. An art thief uses a razor blade, cuts the painting out of the frame, carefully rolls it into a cylinder, being sure not to crack or break the paint in the process, and finishes with something that can be readily transported and hidd
en.”
“So the frame stays here.” Dortmunder looked at the painting again, wondering if Woolworth’s had frames that big. Or maybe they could just thumbtack it to the wall.
“I’ll show you all that,” Chauncey said. “But would you like to see the rest of the house first?”
“And can I freshen your drink?”
Dortmunder looked at his glass. Nothing but an amber echo around the bottom. “Yes,” he said.
While Chauncey was pouring more bourbon, Dortmunder walked over to look at the painting closer up, seeing the lumps and streaks of paint on the canvas. That could be a little tricky to carry around.
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