"That's right. And I threw it to Roger."
"Well, I didn't get it." Chefwick was sounding prissier and prissier, as though defending himself against unjust accusations.
"Well, I threw it to you," Kelp insisted.
"Well, I didn't get it," Chefwick insisted.
Kelp glared at Chefwick, and Chefwick glared at Kelp, and then gradually they stopped glaring and started frowning. They looked each other over, they frowned at Bulcher, they looked around the interior of the car, and all the time Bulcher watched them with his head cocked to one side while Murch tried to concentrate simultaneously on the Friday-night traffic and the events Inside the car.
It was Murch who finally said the awful truth aloud. "You don't have it."
"Something–" Kelp lifted up and looked beneath himself, but it wasn't there either. "Something happened," he said. "In that fight. I don't know, all of a sudden there was this huge fight going on."
"We don't have it," Bulcher said. He sounded stunned. "We lost it."
"Oh, my goodness," Chefwick said.
Kelp sighed. "We have to go back for it," he said. "I hate the whole idea, but we just have to. We have to go back."
Nobody argued. Murch took the next right, and headed uptown.
The scene in front of the theater was not to be believed. The police had arrived, ambulances had arrived, even a fire engine had arrived. Platoons of Scotsmen were being herded into clumps by wary policemen, while other policemen in white helmets trotted into the hall, where the controversy was apparently continuing.
Slowly Murch drove past Hunter House along the one lane still open to traffic, and was waved on by a cop with a red-beamed long flashlight. Sadly Kelp and Chefwick and Bulcher gazed at the concert hall. Kelp sighed. "Dortmunder is going to be very upset," he said.
Chapter 18
Dortmunder took the subway to Union Square, then walked the rest of the way home. He was in the last block when a fellow came out of a doorway and said, "Pardon me. You got a match?"
"No," said Dortmunder. "I don't smoke."
"That's all right," the man said. "Neither do I." And he fell into pace with Dortmunder, walking along at his right hand. He had a very decided limp, but seemed to have no trouble keeping up.
Dortmunder stopped and looked at him. "All right," he said. The man stopped, with a quizzical smile. He was an inch or two taller than Dortmunder, slender, with a long thin nose and a bony sunken-cheeked face, and he was wearing a topcoat with the collar turned up and a hat with the brim pulled down, and he was keeping his right hand in his topcoat pocket. Some sort of black orthopedic shoe was on his right foot. He said, "All right? All right what?"
"Do whatever you're here to do," Dortmunder told him, "so I can knock you down and go home."
The man laughed as though he were amused, but he also stepped back a pace, twisting on the lame foot "I'm no holdup man, Dortmunder," he said.
"You know my name," Dortmunder mentioned.
"Well," said the man, "we have the same employer."
"I don't get it."
"Arnold Chauncey."
Then Dortmunder did get it. "You're the other guy the lawyer found for him. The killer."
The killer made a strangely modest gesture with his left hand, while the right remained in his pocket. "Not quite," he said. "Killing is sometimes part of what I do, but it isn't my real job. The way I like to think of it, my job is enforcing other people's wishes."
"Is that right."
"For instance," the killer said, "in your case, I'm being paid twenty thousand dollars, but not to kill you. I get paid whether you live or die. If you give back the picture, that's fine, you live and I collect. If you don't, if you make trouble, that's not fine, and you die and I collect." He shrugged. "It makes no difference."
Dortmunder said, "I don't want you hanging around me the next six months."
"Oh, don't worry," the killer said. "You'll never see me again. If it's thumbs down, I'll drop you from a distance." Grinning, he took his right hand out of his pocket, empty, made a pistol shape with the fingers, pointed it straight-arm at Dortmunder's face, closed one eye, grinned, sighted along his arm, and said, "Bang. I'm very good at that."
Somehow, Dortmunder believed him. He already knew that he himself was precisely the kind of reliable crook Chauncey had asked for, and he now believed that this fellow was precisely the kind of reliable killer Chauncey had asked for. "I'm happy to say," he said, "that I don't intend to do anything with that painting except hold on to it till I get paid, then give it back to Chauncey. Fancy is not my method."
"Good," said the killer, with a friendly smile. "I like getting paid for doing nothing. So long." And he started away, then immediately turned back, saying, "You shouldn't mention this to Chauncey."
"I shouldn't?"
"He doesn't want us to meet, but I thought we should have one chat." His grin flickered. "I like to see my people," he said. His eyes glittered at Dortmunder, and then once again he turned away.
Dortmunder watched him go, tall and narrow and dark, body twisting as he strode on his game leg, both hands now in his topcoat pockets, and he felt a faint chill up the middle of his back. Now he understood why Chauncey had said Dortmunder wasn't dangerous; it was because he'd had that fellow as a comparison. "Good thing I'm an honest man," he muttered to himself, and he walked on home, where he found Kelp and Murch and Chefwick and Bulcher and May all waiting for him in the living room.
"Dortmunder!"
"John!"
"You made it! I knew you would!"
They gave him cheers and pats on the back, and he gave them Chauncey's bourbon, and then they all sat down with glasses of the stuff – terrific bourbon, almost worth the trouble it caused – and Kelp said, "How'd you do it? How'd you get away?"
"Well, I went down to the bottom of the elevator shaft," Dortmunder started, "and then…" And he stopped, struck by something vaguely wrong. Looking around at the attentive faces, he saw they were more glazed than attentive. Bulcher's and Kelp's clothes were all messed up, and Kelp maybe had the beginnings of a black eye. There was a kind of subterranean tension in the room. "What's the matter?" he said.
May said, "John, tell us how you got out of the elevator shaft."
He frowned at May, he frowned at the others, he listened to the silence, and he knew. Looking at Kelp, he said, "Where is it?"
"Now, Dortmunder," Kelp said.
"Where is it?"
"Oh, dear," said Chefwick.
Murch said, "There was a fight in the theater."
"It wasn't anybody's fault," said Kelp.
Even Tiny Bulcher was looking abashed. "It was just one of those things," he said.
"WHERE IS IT?"
An electric silence. Dortmunder watched them stare at the floor, and finally it was Kelp who answered, in a tiny voice:
"We lost it."
"You lost it," Dortmunder said.
Then all of them were talking at once, explaining, justifying, telling the story from a thousand different directions, and Dortmunder just sat there, unmoving, stolid, letting it wash over him until at last they all ran down. In that next silence, Dortmunder sighed, but didn't speak, and May said, "John, can I freshen your drink?"
Dortmunder shook his head. There was no heat in him. "No, thanks, May," he said.
Kelp said, "Is there anything we can do?"
"If you don't mind," Dortmunder told him, "I'd like to be alone for a while."