“I believe we’ve been wondering about each other.”
“And here it is Thanksgiving,” Kelp said.
“I wanted to be sure to catch you at home,” Guilderpost told him. “And it was just two days ago I learned how to reach you.”
“Yeah, I’d love to know how you did that.”
“The Internet,” Guilderpost explained. “We all leave trails, Andy. I admit yours was fainter than most, but still. It’s no longer really possible to hide, you know.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Which means, more than ever,” Guilderpost said, “we should all strive to compromise, to come to agreements, not to let hostility and bad feelings fester and grow. Not now, when anybody can find anybody.”
“So I could find you, too,” Kelp pointed out.
“Of course you could! I’m not exempt, I know that. But Andy, would you have any reason to pursue me?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“No. So I’m comfortable, here in my little home. And how about you, Andy? Can you think of any reason I might have to pursue you?”
“Not if we come to an agreement,” Kelp said. “By the way, did you find John, too?”
“Not yet. Of course, I know less about him. Does John have an E-mail address?”
Kelp laughed. “John barely has a snail mail address.”
“Not an enthusiast of the new technologies, I take it.”
“John’s still dubious about the internal combustion engine.”
“That’s here to stay,” Guilderpost assured him.
“That’s why he’s dubious. You want to include him in the conversation now? He’s here.”
“Oh, really?”
Kelp said, “Well, it’s Thanksgiving. We thought we’d get together, cut up old jackpots, count our blessings. We were wondering if—Hold on.”
Kelp walked back into the living room, where Dortmunder and May and J.C. and Tiny were now seated on most of the chairs, with Tiny on most of the sofa, talking away about something or other. Anne Marie must be in the kitchen with the turkey and all that. To Dortmunder, very up and cheerful, Kelp said, “Guess what, John? It’s Fitzroy Guilderpost!”
“No kidding,” Dortmunder said. “Tell him I said hello.”
“John says hello,” Kelp told the phone, “and about these blessings we were counting, you know, as a matter of fact, we were just wondering if you were one of those blessings, or if you were the other thing.”
“I’m prepared to pay—”
“No, Fitzroy, wait.” To Dortmunder, Kelp said, “I think he wants to talk money, like a payoff.”
Dortmunder shook his head. “We want in.”
“I heard that,” Guilderpost said, “and Andy, I’m sorry, but it isn’t possible. There are already people involved—”
“Well, there’s gonna be more, Fitzroy,” Kelp interrupted. “I know John, when he sets his mind to something. What we’re gonna need from you right now is a rundown on the scam, and then—”
“I’m not going to do that!”
“Listen, Fitzroy,” Kelp said. “It’s pretty clear, what you’re doing is gonna go public, you’re expecting some kinda splash, so we’ll know the score then, anyway, so we might as well know it now, see what we think of it, do we wanna help out some way or just take a chunk of cash and leave.”
There was a brief silence while Guilderpost thought that over, and then he said doubtfully, “I suppose we could meet.”
“Us and Irwin? And your other partners?”
“Just one other.”
“So you’re three.” Kelp thought about his last meeting with Guilderpost and Irwin. He looked at Tiny, then nodded to himself and said, “I think we’re three, too.”
“Andy!” came the reproving voice from the phone.
“Well, there’s this other fella here, we hang out sometimes. Hold on.” To Tiny, he said, “Tiny, you want a piece of this?”
The phone asked, “Tiny?”
Tiny said, “How much?”
“That’s a good question. I’ll find out.” Into the phone, Kelp said, “How much are we talking here, Fitzroy?”
“I’m not going to—What are you—”
“Just ballpark, Fitzroy. I’m not asking for a guarantee. But roughly how much? In total, how many commas?”
Another little pause. A sigh shivered down the phone lines. “Two.”
Kelp nodded, and said to Tiny, “Two.”
Tiny nodded, and said, “In.”
Kelp said to Guilderpost, “Tiny’s in, so that’s three of us, and if we make this meeting pretty soon, maybe there won’t be any more.”
“Good.”
“So where and when?”
“I’ll have to make arrangements,” Guilderpost said. “Why don’t I phone you tomorrow, say three o’clock? I’ll tell you then where we’ll meet.”
“Gee, I’d rather not do that, Fitzroy,” Kelp said, “not after what happened to a friend of mine.”
“And what would that be?”
“Well, there was this other fella, and he and my friend had a little misunderstanding, bad blood, threats, that kinda thing, and the other fella called and said why don’t we meet someplace neutral and talk it over, and my friend said okay, and the other fella said I’ll call you tomorrow at two o’clock and tell you where we’ll meet so the next day my friend made sure he was home at two o’clock and the phone didn’t ring.”
“It didn’t?”
“No. The house blew up instead.”
“Well, that’s terrible,” Guilderpost said.
“That’s what my friend thought,” Kelp said. “Or what he would have thought, you know what I mean. So why don’t we just go ahead and meet tomorrow?”
“So soon? I—”
“Won’t be able to set anything up. And neither will we. That bridge where we saw each other last?”
“Yes?”
“If you don’t go over that little bridge, if you head for Jones Beach, you come to these huge parking lots that fill up in the summer with everybody’s cars that are going to the beach.”
“Yes, I know them.”
“This time of year, there’s nobody there,” Kelp said. “A fella in a car in the middle of that parking lot, nobody could sneak up on him or stash anything there ahead of time or anything like that. That fella could feel safe.”
“You, you mean, Andy,” Guilderpost said.
“Well, I meant both of us, Fitzroy,” Kelp told him. “How about eleven tomorrow morning in Parking Area Six? Out in the middle of it.”
“That’s rather early, isn’t it?”
“Is it? We could make it earlier. Would ten be better?”
“No, no, I don’t want it earlier.”
“Let me say this, Fitzroy,” Kelp told him. “I’m glad you called when you did, because I was getting tired of the responsibility of Mr. Redcorn. I figured, next week, I was gonna park the van in front of a police station.”
“Then I’m glad we chatted this week,” Guilderpost said.
“Me, too, Fitzroy. See you eleven tomorrow morning, Parking Area Six.” And he hung up and carried the phone back to the bedroom.
When he came out, J.C. pointed a dark red–nailed finger at him and said, “Andy, if you don’t tell what that was all about, I’m going to have to throw you out the window.”
“No need,” Kelp said. “I’ll tell you the whole story.”
But then Anne Marie appeared in the doorway and said, “Dinner. Andy, help me carry things to the table.”
So that was a delay, not Kelp’s fault, and now everything had to come out to the other table, next to the dining room table, and Anne Marie had to consult her seating list, and then she had to change her seating list, because it was clear that Tiny couldn’t sit with somebody else on the side of the table, but had to sit by himself at the end. But then that worked out another way, because when Anne Marie looked at Kelp and said, “So now the question is, who’s going to carve?” and Kelp gave her the blankest look anybody’s ever seen outside an opium den, Tiny said, “I can be pretty handy with a knife,” and there he was, already at the head of the table.