“Exactly.”
And us, Dortmunder thought, we just sink, right there in the channel.
The Voyager’s headlights hadn’t appeared in the mirrors until they’d gotten back up on the expressway, but they were there now, keeping a certain distance, trying to remain unremarkable in this sparse traffic. After two in the morning, even the Long Island Expressway wasn’t getting much action.
And the traffic only got sparser as they headed east, so that the Voyager had to hang farther and farther back. They left Queens and crossed Nassau County, all the little bedroom communities asleep, and by the time they got to Sagtikos Parkway, that distant Voyager was the only light at all in the rearview mirrors.
Fitzroy turned south on Sagtikos Parkway, which was empty in both directions as far as the eye could see. They crossed the Southern State Parkway, and then they came to a very long and elaborate bridge, which couldn’t be the one Fitzroy had in mind.
No. This one crossed the Great South Bay, the long strip of seawater between the southern shore of Long Island and its line of sandbar beaches. At the end of this bridge, you could turn right and go eventually to Jones Beach, or you could go straight, over a much smaller and shorter bridge crossing a narrow inlet over to Fire Island, a long strip of sand with seasonal communities, no real roads, and very few vehicles, so that this bridge wasn’t used much even in season.
There had been no headlights in the mirror since they’d reached the first bridge, so the follower must be driving with his lights out. A whole lot of effort these people were putting in, and it seemed to Dortmunder the reason had to be something more than just stiffing a couple guys out of a thousand dollars. They wanted nobody to know Joseph Redcorn was AWOL from his grave, replaced by an alternate. Meaning that when that coffin was dug up again, by somebody else, there would be some publicity in it, something of value connected to it.
But what? A guy falls off the Empire State Building, and seventy years later he’s important? How can that be? And how can slipping a proxy in there in his place do anything for anybody?
Well, we’ll find out, Dortmunder thought. Eventually, we’ll find out.
This smaller bridge was steeply arched, and Fitzroy stopped the van at the top of the hump. “All we have to do now,” he said, “is toss it over. Andy, would you open the doors back there?”
“Sure,” Kelp said, and got out, and Dortmunder reached forward to give Fitzroy a neck hold in the crook of his left arm while he reached for Fitzroy’s pistol. One crime a fat guy usually can’t commit is carrying a concealed weapon, so Dortmunder had known from the beginning that Fitzroy’s pistol was in the right-side pocket of his suit jacket, handy to his right hand. Handy to Dortmunder’s right hand, too. He pulled it out, a neat little Smith & Wesson .32 six-shot revolver with a cover over the firing pin, so it wouldn’t snag in a pocket.
Taking his bent left arm away from Fitzroy’s Adam’s apple, so the guy could start to breathe again, substituting for it the barrel of the pistol, touching Fitzroy’s head just behind his right ear, Dortmunder said, “Put both hands on the steering wheel, okay? Up high, where I can see them.”
Obeying, Fitzroy said, “What was—” But he had a little trouble with his throat, had to cough and ahem before he could start again. “What was that for, John? What are you—Why are you doing this? What are you doing?”
“At the moment,” Dortmunder told him, “I’m waiting for Andy to come back with your pal in the Voyager. Then we’ll see what happens next.”
Fitzroy kept trying to see Dortmunder in the nonexistent interior mirror. “You—How did you . . .” But then he ran down, had nothing more to say, and merely shook his head.
“Just lucky, I guess,” Dortmunder said. “Listen, would you like to tell us the scam now?”
“What? Absolutely not!”
“Well, later then,” Dortmunder said, and the door behind him opened and a strange voice, talking very fast, said, “Well, I certainly don’t know what this is all about, I mean, a man should be able to park by the side of the road, a little meditation in the, in the darkness, I certainly don’t know what you people want from me.”
Still watching Fitzroy, Dortmunder said, “Andy, hit him with something.”
The voice stopped, and Kelp, behind Dortmunder in the doorway, said, “He was wired.”
That galvanized Fitzroy. He spun about, ignoring the pistol held to his head, and yelled at the people behind Dortmunder, “What?”
“I have no idea who you are, sir,” the new voice said, “and I would prefer to have nothing to do with whatever’s going on here tonight.”
“Irwin?” screamed Fitzroy. “You’ve been tape-recording us? You miserable sneak!”
There was a little pause. Fitzroy’s face was now inches from Dortmunder’s, his eyes focused in wrath toward the people in back. Then the focus shifted, and he and Dortmunder gazed deeply into each other’s eyes. Dortmunder smiled amiably and showed him the pistol. “Just go with the flow, Fitzroy,” he advised.
From behind him, the new voice said, “One has to protect oneself around you, Fitzroy.”
“Miserable, miserable sneaking . . .”
Kelp said, “I think this is what they call a falling-out among thieves.”
Dortmunder said, “Bring yours around, Andy,” and to Fitzroy, he said, “When they get here, time for you to step out.”
Fitzroy was doing his best to get his cool back. “My friend,” he said, pretending he’d been calm all along, “John, I have no way of knowing, of course, what misapprehension you have about this evening. Irwin was merely to observe, to be a backup in case there was trouble.”
“There’s no trouble,” Dortmunder assured him, and the door beside Fitzroy opened, and Kelp said, “Come on out, Fitzroy.”
Dortmunder clambered past the coffin and stepped out onto the bridge. He shut the door, and when he came around to the front, the pistol easy at his side, Kelp had what must be Irwin’s pistol in his right hand and the other two were standing unhappily together by the rail. Irwin, the new one, was as scraggly as Fitzroy was plump, and no more appetizing.
Dortmunder said to Kelp, “Do you have the Voyager key?”
Kelp held up his left hand, to show a chain with a car key dangling from it. “Yes . . .” he said, and tossed the key over the rail, “. . . and no.”
“No!” cried Irwin.
“Too late,” Kelp told him.
Dortmunder said, “Fitzroy, do you by any chance have our two thousand dollars?”
Fitzroy actually looked embarrassed. “Not all of it,” he said.
Dortmunder pocketed Fitzroy’s pistol and held out his hand. “Wallet, Fitzroy.”
“Can’t we,” Fitzroy said, “can’t we discuss this?”
“Sure,” Dortmunder said. “What’s the scam?”
“No.”
“Wallet, Fitzroy, or I’m gonna shoot you in the knee, which you won’t like at all.”
Fitzroy didn’t like turning over his wallet at all, either, but grudgingly he did, and Dortmunder counted the bills in it, then gave Kelp a disgusted look. “Four hundred thirty-seven dollars.”
“I apologize, John,” Kelp said. “I didn’t think he was that much of a jerk.”
Dortmunder pocketed the money and gave back the wallet, then turned to Irwin: “Hand it over.”
Irwin looked astonished and outraged. “Me? Why me? I didn’t promise you any money!”
Dortmunder leaned closer to him. “Irwin,” he said, “you remember the threat with the knee?”
Irwin, grousing and complaining, throwing Fitzroy angry looks as though it were all his fault, pulled out his shabby wallet and handed it over. Dortmunder counted, gave the wallet back, pocketed the cash, and said to Kelp, “Another high roller. Two thirty-eight.”