But mostly his thoughts were on Folly. He sipped at his drink, waiting impatiently for the others to finish their first tastes – with many aaahhhs and lip-smackings – and then he said, "Well. Shall we get to it?"
"Sure," Dortmunder said. "You got the money?"
"Of course."
From another cabinet near the liquor supply he brought out a small black attaché case. Opening this on a side table, Chauncey revealed stacks of bills, all fifties and hundreds, neatly filling the interior of the case. "I suppose you'll want to count this," he said.
Dortmunder shrugged, as though it didn't matter, saying, "It couldn't hurt." He nodded to the cockney pickpocket and the museum curator, who stepped over to the money, little smiles on their faces, and started flipping through the stacks. Meanwhile, Dortmunder was removing the rolled painting from its cardboard tube. "Hold this, Tiny," he said.
Tiny? As Chauncey stared in disbelief at the monster, who apparently did answer to that name, Dortmunder handed the fellow one corner of the painting and then backed away, unrolling it. Tiny (!) held two edges, Dortmunder held the other two, and there was Folly, revealed in all his splendor.
Not exactly, of course. There were still creases and curves in the surface, from the rolling-up, and the light struck it differently from this angle, making everything seem slightly different, slightly strange. But it was his Folly, all right, and Chauncey smiled in welcome as he stepped toward it, leaning forward to get a better look at the details. Odd how different that market basket looked in this – "Hold it right there!"
The voice, cold and loud and aggressive, came from the doorway behind Chauncey, and when he spun around he was absolutely astounded to see the room filling up with terrorists.
At least, they looked like terrorists. Three of them, all wearing ski masks and brown leather jackets and all carrying machine pistols with those skimpy-looking tubular metal stocks. They moved very professionally, one hurrying to the left, one to the right, the leader remaining in the doorway, the barrel of his pistol moving lazily from side to side, prepared to stitch a line of bullets across the entire room. From his hands he was a black man, while the other two were white.
"Good God?" Chauncey cried, and these people looked so exactly like terrorists in the weekly newsmagazines that at first he thought it was a coincidence, that he was about to be kidnapped as a capitalist oppressor and held until Outer Mongolia, say, or Lichtenstein, had released a selected list of fifty-seven political prisoners.
But then he heard a thwap behind him, and knew that either Dortmunder or Tiny had released his end of the painting, allowing it to snap back into a roll, and all at once he understood. "Oh, no," he said, almost under his breath. "No."
Yes. "We'll take that," the leader was saying, gesturing with the machine pistol past Chauncey, at Dortmunder behind him. Then the machine pistol angled toward Dortmunder's two partners over by the attaché case, their hands full of stacks of bills, their faces showing the most complete – under other circumstances comical – surprise. "That, too," the leader said, and the satisfaction in his voice was like molasses.
"You son of a bitch," Dortmunder said, his voice almost a growl.
"Dortmunder," Chauncey said, warning him. Life is better than death, said the tone of his voice. This is merely one battle, not the whole war. All of those sentiments, however expressed over the centuries, were summed up in the tone of Chauncey's voice when he spoke Dortmunder's name. And Dortmunder, who had been teetering forward on his toes, hands clenched, shoulders bunched, now slowly relaxed, settling onto his heels once more.
From here, everything moved with professional speed and assurance. It was Tiny who held the re-rolled painting, and at the leader's orders he put it into its cardboard tube and turned it over to the man on the left. The attaché case was refilled, closed, and given to the man on the right. Those two backed from the room, leaving the leader in the doorway. "We'll watch this door for ten minutes," he said. "Check your watches. Anybody through too soon gets shot." And he was gone.
The stairs were carpeted, so the people in the room wouldn't hear the trio leave, or know when they left, or how many stayed behind. Chauncey just stood there, gaping at the empty doorway, and the true fact of his loss – the painting and the money – didn't come home till Dortmunder was suddenly in front of him, glaring.
"Who'd you tell?"
"What? What?"
"Who did you tell?"
Tell? Tell someone about the insurance fraud, about the exchange of painting and money here tonight? But he hadn't told anyone. "Dortmunder, I swear to God – Why would I, man, think about it."
Dortmunder shook his head: "We're pros, Chauncey, we know our job. Not one of us would say a word to anybody. You're the amateur."
"Dortmunder, who is there for me to tell?"
"There they go!" cried the cockney pickpocket. He and the other two were over by the front windows, looking out into the rain. "Dortmunder!"
Dortmunder hurried to the windows, Chauncey following him. Tiny was saying, "One, two, three. They didn't leave anybody."
"Four!" cried the cockney pickpocket. "Who's that?" Chauncey stared out the window. He couldn't believe what he was looking at. Over there, diagonally across the way, near the streetlight, three men in brown leather jackets had crowded around a fourth. Their faces were bare, now, but too far away to see. One carried the cardboard tube, another the attaché case. But it was the fourth man who held Chauncey's attention, held him frozen. Tall, narrow, dressed in black…
"He can't move fast with that limp," Tiny was saying. "Come on, Dortmunder, we'll trail them, we'll get our goods back."
"Z-z-z-z-z," said Chauncey, but stopped himself before making that mistake. The limping man and the other three hurried away toward the corner, out of the light.
Dortmunder's men were running from the room. Dortmunder had paused, was staring now into Chauncey's eyes as though to read his mind. "You're sure," Dortmunder said; "You told nobody. You don't know how this happened."
How could he admit it? What would happen to him? "Nobody," he answered, and looked Dortmunder straight in the eye.
"I'll get back to you," Dortmunder said, and ran from the room.
Chauncey sat down and drank half a bottle of bourbon.
Chapter 13
It was Christmas all over again, in May's new apartment. The same crowd as at Christmastime, the same tasty aroma of tuna casserole wafting through the air, the same spirit of joy and good fellowship.
The gifts this time, though, weren't booze and perfume, they were solid cash and a sense of solid accomplishment, and maybe even the renewed gift of life itself. The lost painting was dealt with, Chauncey was cooled out and would be sending around no more hired killers, and on that table where once had stood the miserable fake tree the attaché case now yawned wide, gleaming with crisp new greenery.
Dortmunder sat in his personal chair with his feet up on his old hassock and a glass of bourbon-on-the-rocks in his left hand, and he damn near smiled. Everything had worked out exactly, even the moving of all the furniture and goods from May's old apartment to this new one six blocks away. And now everybody was relaxing here, less than half an hour since they'd left Chauncey's house, and all Dortmunder could say was, it was the best worked-out goddam plan he'd ever seen in his life.