Dortmunder frowned at him past his own half-empty glass. "We what?"
"This is a famous painting, right, the one we copped from Chauncey? So there'll be pictures of it, copies of it, all that stuff. Porculey's a real artist, and he can imitate anything. So he runs up a copy of the painting and that's the one we give back!"
Dortmunder studied Kelp's words one by one. "There's something wrong with that," he said.
"What?"
"I don't know yet. I just hope I find it before it's too late."
"Dortmunder, it's better than getting shot in the head."
Dortmunder winced. "Don't talk like that," he said. Already in anticipation, the last few weeks, he was getting headaches every time he passed a window.
"You gotta do something," Kelp told him. "And this is the only something in town."
Was that true? Dortmunder considered again his dream of escaping to some South American seacoast town with May, opening a little restaurant-saloon – May's famous tuna casserole would make them an instant success – he himself would run the bar; he wasn't sure whether to call it May's Place or The Hideaway. But as he visualized the dream once more, himself behind a gleaming black bar with bamboo fittings – somehow South America was very South Pacific in his imagination – in walks a tall narrow fellow with a bad limp. He ups to the bar and he says, "Hello, Dortmunder," and his hand comes out of his topcoat pocket.
"Un," said Dortmunder.
Kelp looked at him, concerned. "Something wrong? Bourbon no good?"
"Bourbon's fine," Dortmunder said.
Kelp said, "Listen, why don't I call Victor, have him set up the meet? Dortmunder? I'll do that, right? Why don't I?"
May's Place faded, with its unwelcome customer. "Okay," Dortmunder said.
Chapter 3
"I don't see why we had to meet him at a shopping center," Dortmunder grumbled, watching the windshield wipers push snow back and forth on the glass. Today's doctor's car was a silver gray Cadillac Seville, with a tape deck and a selection of tapes by Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Gary Puckett & The Union Gap. (The Seville was Cadillac's response to the oil crisis and the need for smaller cars; dan de was removed from the middle of the Cadillac Sedan de Ville, resulting obviously in a shorter lighter car: the Seville.)
"What difference does it make?" Kelp said, slithering through the erratic traffic on the Southern State. "We meet Victor at the shopping center, he takes us on to Porculey's place."
"It's Christmastime," Dortmunder pointed out. "That's what difference it makes. We're going out to Long Island in a snowstorm to a shopping center a week before Christmas, that's what difference it makes."
"Well, it's too late to change it now," Kelp said. "It won't be that bad."
As a matter of fact, it was that bad. When they left the parkway, they immediately found themselves in endless clogged traffic, windshield wipers slap-slapping in the headlight-lit darkness all around them, auto windows all steamed up, smeary child-faces peering out every side and back window, people honking furiously and pointlessly at one another, and the same people revving like mad and spinning their wheels when they found themselves on a bit of ice, instead of gently accelerating. And the huge sprawling parking lot of the Merrick Mall, when they reached it, was if possible even worse; in addition to at least as much stalled traffic, there were also millions of pedestrians slipping and sliding around, some of them pushing shopping carts full of Christmas packages and some of them pushing baby carriages full of Christmas packages and babies. "This is terrific," Dortmunder said. "Your nephew Victor is still the same giant brain he always was."
"The Dunkin' Donuts," Kelp said, peering through the windshield and pretending he hadn't heard Dortmunder's comment. "We're supposed to meet him at the Dunkin' Donuts."
The Merrick Mall, in the manner of most shopping centers, was designed like a barbell, with a branch of a major department store at one end, a branch of a major supermarket at the other end, and several zillion smaller stores in between. As Kelp inched along amid the shoppers, the familiar electric logos gleamed out at them from the darkness: Woolworth's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Thom McAn, Rexall, Gino's, Waldenbooks, Baskin-Robbins, Western Auto, Capitalists & Immigrants Trust. Then the record stores, the shoe stores, the ladies' clothing stores, the Chinese restaurants. However, inflation and unemployment have affected the shopping centers at least as much as the rest of the economy, so that here and there among the brave enticements stood a storefront dark, silent, its windows black, its forehead nameless, its prospects bleak. The survivors seemed to beam the more brightly in their efforts to distract attention from their fallen comrades, but Dortmunder could see them. Dortmunder and a failed enterprise could always recognize one another.
"There it is," Kelp said, and there it was: Dunkin' Donuts, with its steamy window full of do(ugh)nuts. Kelp pootled around a while longer, found a parking place at the far end of a nearby row, and he and Dortmunder squelched through the slush and the hopeless vehicles to find Victor seated at a tiny formica table in the Dunkin' Donuts, actually dunking a do(ugh) nut into a cup of coffee.
Kelp's nephew Victor, a small neat dark-haired man who dressed as though he were applying for a job as a bank teller, was more than thirty years of age but looked barely out of his teens. His slenderness and boyishly unlined face helped to give that impression, confirmed by the eager anticipatory quality of his every expression. What he most looked like was a puppy seen through a pet-store window, except he didn't have a tail to wag.
"Mr. Dortmunder!" he said, hopping to his feet and sticking out the hand with the dunked do(ugh)nut in it. "Nice to see you again." Then be realized he was still holding the do(ugh)nut, chuckled sheepishly, stuck the whole thing out of sight in his mouth, wiped his hand on his trousers, stuck it out again, and said, "Muf nur muf."
"That goes for me, too," Dortmunder told him, and shook his sticky hand.
Victor gestured for them to sit at his table, while he hurriedly and noisily swallowed, then said, "Coffee? Donuts? Uncle?"
"Not for me," Dortmunder said. Neither he nor Kelp had taken the invitation to sit.
"Victor," Kelp said, "I think we'd just rather go see this fellow Porculey, okay?" Kelp tended to get a little nervous when in the presence simultaneously of Dortmunder and Victor.
"Oh, sure," Victor said. Standing beside the table, he gulped his coffee down, patted his mouth with a paper napkin, and said, "All set."
"Fine," Kelp said.
Victor led the way outside, and turned right, to walk along the semi-protected sidewalk. The few other pedestrians slogging past weren't even trying to look imbued with Christmas cheer. A roof extended over the walk, but a gusty cold breeze shot little clumps of wet snow in under it from time to time. Kelp, his uneasiness expressing itself in a fitful desire to keep some sort of conversation going, said, "Well, Victor. Still got your old Packard?"
"Oh, yes," Victor said, with his modest little chuckle. "It's a fine car. Ask the man who owns one."
"Do you want us to follow you, or should we all ride in the Packard?"
They were just passing one of the empty stores; black windows, a bit of trash in the doorway. "We're here," Victor said, and stopped.
This was so unexpected that Kelp and Dortmunder kept going, until they realized they'd left Victor behind. When they looked back, Victor was knocking on the glass door of the empty store.