As they went past POINTERS and SETTERS, Dortmunder said, "Now, remember what I told you. Tiny Bulcher won't be happy about you because you're costing him five grand, so just be quiet and let me do the talking."
"Definitely," Kelp said.
Dortmunder glanced at him, but said nothing more, and then went through the green door and into the back room, where Stan Murch and Roger Chefwick and Tiny Bulcher were all seated at the green-felt-topped table, with Tiny Bulcher saying, "…so I went to his hospital room and broke his other arm."
Chefwick and Murch, who had been gazing at Bulcher like sparrows at a snake, looked up with quick panicky smiles when Dortmunder and Kelp came in. "Well, there you are!" Chefwick cried, with a kind of mad glitter in his eyes, and Murch actually spread his arms in false camaraderie, announcing, "Hail, hail, the gang's all here!"
"That's right," Dortmunder said.
Talking more rapidly than usual, his words running together in his haste, Murch said, "I did a new route entirely, that's why I'm so early, I was coming from Queens, I took the Grand Central almost to the Triborough–"
Meanwhile, Kelp was putting the tray on the table and placing Bulcher's fresh drink in front of him, cheerily saying "There you go. You're Tiny Bulcher, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Bulcher said. "And who are you?"
"–then I got off, and turned left under the El, and, uh…" And Murch ran down, becoming aware of the new tension in the room as Kelp, still cheery, answered Bulcher's question.
"I'm Andy Kelp. We met once seven or eight years ago, a little jewelry-store job up in New Hampshire."
Bulcher gave Kelp his flat look. "Did I like you?"
"Sure," Kelp said, taking the chair to Bulcher's left. "You called me pal."
"I did, huh?" Bulcher turned to Dortmunder. "What's my pal doing here?"
"He's in," Dortmunder said.
"Oh, yeah?" Bulcher looked around at Murch and Chefwick, then back at Dortmunder. "Then who's out?"
"Nobody. It's a five-man string now."
"It is, huh?" Bulcher nodded, glancing down at his fresh vodka-and-red-wine as though there might be some sort of explanation engraved on the glass. Looking at Dortmunder again, he said, "Where does his cut come from?"
Same as everybody else's. We'll get twenty thousand a man."
"Uh huh." Bulcher sat back – the chair squealed in fear – and brooded at Kelp, whose cheery expression was beginning to wilt. "So," said Bulcher, "you're my five thousand dollar pal, are you?"
"I guess so," Kelp said.
"I never liked anybody five grand worth before," Bulcher said. "Remind me; where were we pals?"
"New Hampshire. A jewelry–"
"Oh, yeah." Bulcher nodded, his big head going back and forth like a balancing rock on the mountain of his shoulders. "There was a second alarm system, and we never got into the place. All the way up to New Hampshire for nothing."
Dortmunder looked at Kelp, who did not look back. Instead, he kept smiling at Bulcher, saying, "That's the one. The finger screwed up. I remember you hit him a lot."
"Yeah, I would of." Bulcher took a long slow taste of his fresh drink, while Kelp continued to smile at him, and Dortmunder brooded at him, and Murch and Chefwick went on doing their hypnotized-sparrow number. Putting the glass down at last, Bulcher said to Dortmunder, "What do we need him for?"
"I already been at work," Kelp said, bright and eager, and ignoring Dortmunder's shut-up frown.
Bulcher observed him. "Oh, yeah? Doing what?"
"I checked out the theater. Hunter House, it's called. How we get in, how we get out."
Dortmunder, who was wishing Kelp would get laryngitis, explained, "We get to the roof through a theater nearby."
"Uh huh. And we're paying this guy twenty grand to go find out how we get in a theater." Bulcher leaned forward, resting one monstrous forearm on the table. He said, "I'll tell you the secret for ten grand. You buy a ticket."
"I bought tickets," Kelp assured him. "We're gonna see the Queen's Own Caledonian Orchestra."
Dortmunder sighed, shook his head a bit in irritation, and paused to pour some Our Own Brand bourbon into one of the glasses on the tray. He sipped, watched moodily as Kelp poured his own drink, and then said, "Tiny, I make the plan. That's my job. Your job is to carry heavy things and to knock people down that get in the way."
Bulcher jabbed a thumb the size of an ear of corn in Kelp's direction. "We're talking about his job."
"We need him," Dortmunder said. Under the table, he crossed his ankles.
"How come we didn't need him the first time we got together?"
"I was out of town," Kelp said brightly. "Dortmunder didn't know where to find me."
Bulcher gave him a look of disgust. (So did Dortmunder.)
"Bull," he said, and turned back to Dortmunder, saying "You didn't mention him at all."
"I didn't know yet I needed him," Dortmunder said. "Listen, Tiny, I've been to the place now. We have to get in through the top of an elevator shaft, we got a fifteen- or twenty-foot brick wall to go down and then back up, and we don't have all night to do it. We need a fifth man. I'm the planner, and I say we need him."
Bulcher turned his full attention on Kelp again, as though trying to visualize a circumstance in which he would find himself needing this person. His eyes still on Kelp, he spoke to Dortmunder, saying, "So that's it, huh?"
"That's it," Dortmunder told him.
"Well, then." A ghastly smile turned Tiny's face into a cross between a bad bayonet wound and a six-month-old Halloween pumpkin. "Welcome aboard, pal," he said. "I'm sure you're gonna be very helpful."
Dortmunder released held breath, his shoulders sagging in relief. So that was over. "Now," he said, "about tomorrow night. Stan Murch will drive us to this Hunter House a little before eight-thirty…"
Chapter 9
The hall was full of Scotsmen. Hundreds of them gamboled in the aisles and thronged the lobby, with more arriving every minute. Some were in kilts, some were singing, some were marching arm in arm, most were clutching mugs, flasks, bottles, cups, glasses, jars, demijohns, goblets and jugs, and all were calling out to one another in strange and barbarous tongues. Around many necks and trailing down many backs were long scarves in the colors of favorite soccer or rugby teams. Tam o' Shanters with bright wool balls on top were jauntily cocked over many a flashing eye. Hunter House bulged with Highland bonhomie.
"Well, now what the hell?" said Dortmunder.
Tiny Bulcher said, "That guy's wearing a dress."
"It's a kilt," Roger Chefwick told him. A level crossing of English manufacture in one part of Chefwick's model-train lay-out featured a man in a kilt who would glide out and wave a red flag every time a train went by. Chefwick was very familiar with kilts. "These are all Scotsmen," he explained.
"I don't know," Dortmunder said. "I don't know about this."
"I've got the tickets," Kelp said, in a hurry to get them all upstairs and on about their business. "Follow me."
Except it wasn't quite that easy. Kelp tried to lead, but everywhere he turned there were another six Scotsmen in his path. Also, the two fifty-foot rolls of vinyl clothesline he had tucked inside his coat didn't increase his maneuverability. For all his efforts they remained becalmed, four innocent bystanders abroad on a roiling sea of Scotsmen.
And now some of them were fighting. Over there by the head of the second aisle, two or three lads were rounding and punching and clutching at one another, while another half dozen tried to either stop them or join in, hard to tell which. "What are they fighting about?" Kelp cried.