"Ah," said Chauncey.
Zane, pausing with a fork load of lamb chop and mint jelly halfway to his mouth, said, "Create a distraction."
"Very good!" Chauncey said, and beamed hopefully at Dortmunder. "What about that?"
Dortmunder looked dubious. "What distraction?"
Zane answered again: "Rob the place. Go in with guns, steal a few things, and while you're there switch the paintings."
"Lovely," Chauncey said.
Dortmunder didn't seem to think so. He said, "Another fake robbery? If we're stealing stuff, why don't we steal the painting? The cops'll want to know about that."
"Mm," said Chauncey.
But Zane wouldn't give up that easily. He said, "Did you actually see the picture while you were there? Is it on display?"
"No. I guess they keep the most valuable stuff locked up somewhere until it's sold."
Shrugging, Zane said, "So you didn't see it, that's why you didn't steal it."
Chauncey, tired of shifting between hope and despair, merely raised an eyebrow at Dortmunder this time, waiting for his negative response.
Which didn't come. Frowning, Dortmunder poked brussels sprouts here and there on his plate, saying at last, "I don't know. It sounds complicated. Just the two of us, we don't know how many guards they got in there, we've got to fake a robbery in one part of the place and at the same time find the painting locked up in some other part and get through that lock without anybody knowing, and switch the paintings without anybody seeing, and get away before the cops show up. It doesn't sound good."
Chauncey said, "What sounds better?"
Dortmunder slowly shook his head, having nothing to say. He was brooding, thinking, quite apparently getting nowhere.
It was Zane who broke the silence again, saying casually to Chauncey. "I was looking at that back yard of yours. High walls, nobody can see in, nice soft dirt. Plenty of room back there for a couple graves."
Dortmunder went on brooding as though he hadn't heard, but Kelp babbled, "Don't you worry about a thing, Mr. Chauncey! Dortmunder'll figure it out. He's figured out tougher problems than this one. Haven't you, Dortmunder?"
Dortmunder didn't answer. He continued to brood, pushing and poking at the brussels sprouts on his plate. His fork hit one too hard, and it dropped off the edge and rolled forward to bunk against his wineglass, leaving a thin trail of melted butter in its wake on the damask cloth. Dortmunder didn't seem to notice that either, but went on staring with hooded eyes at his food a moment longer, while the other three watched. Then he sighed, and lifted his head. Pointing both his eyes and fork at Chauncey, he said, "I got a job for you."
"Oh, yes?"
"Yes," said Dortmunder.
Chapter 6
Folly Leads Man to Ruin. It was the Veenbes, all right, the original, last seen on the sitting-room wall in New York. Chauncey could have reached out and touched it, but he restrained himself, merely gazing upon it with disguised hunger, plus a wince of pity for the dreadful garish frame in which the poor thing now found itself. "I don't believe it," he said, casually, with a dismissing shrug. "Frankly, I just don't believe it's legitimate."
"Well, you can believe it," that scoundrel Macdough told him, with a self-satisfied smirk. "That's the genuine article, you can take it from me."
I intend to, Chauncey thought, with no little satisfaction, but all he said aloud was, "I'll be insisting on my own expert valuation, of course."
Leamery, the attentive young twit representing Parkeby-South, simpered diplomatically at them both, saying, "Of course, of course. Under the circumstances, naturally, that's the only thing to do. Everyone agrees."
"Troop your experts through," Macdough challenged, with his whisky-soaked burr. "Troop em up and down and sideways, it's all one to me."
It was at Dortmunder's request that Chauncey was here, in this next-to-the-top-floor value room at Parkeby-South, putting up with Leamery's smarm and Macdough's gloat, gazing helplessly at his own property while feigning disinterest. "You can get in to see the painting," Dortmunder had told him. "You've got a legitimate reason, this picture could cost you four hundred grand to an insurance company. So you'll go in, and you'll look at everything, and when you come back here you'll make me a map. I'll want to know where the painting is, what kind of doors and windows, where's the nearest outside wall, what brand is the lock on the door, what else is in the room, do they have closed-circuit TV, security cameras, everything. Is it a regular room or a safe, or a safe inside a room, or a barred cage, or what is it? And how many locks to go through. Everything."
"I'll do my best," Chauncey had promised. "If in fact I can get in at all, which I very much doubt."
"You'll know somebody," Dortmunder had told him, and he'd turned out to be right. The next morning Chauncey had started making phone calls among his acquaintances in town, and damned if a young friend with a local publisher wasn't the nephew of Parkeby-South's head of publicity. The link had been enough to get Chauncey a sympathetic hearing from a vice-manager of the firm, who was certain something could be, as he said, "sorted out."
The sorting out had taken four days, but on Monday afternoon this fellow Leamery had called to say that Chauncey could most certainly view the painting, though "Mr. Macdoo does insist on being present. He's rather a diamond in the rough, you know, our Mr. Macdoo."
"Mac who?"
"Macdoo. The owner of the Veenbes."
"Oh, Macdow, you mean."
"Are you certain?" Leamery sighed, an aspish sound over the phone. "I never seem to get it right."
In any event, the showing was to take place the following afternoon, Tuesday. "I hope you don't mind," Leamery went on, "but we'd much prefer you saw it in situ, as it were. That is to say, in our value room."
"That's perfectly all right," Chauncey told him, and here it was Tuesday, and here was Chauncey in the value room, surrounded by the most precious items currently in Parkeby-South's care, memorizing everything in sight, trying his damnedest to be distracted neither by his craving for the Veenbes nor by his loathing for Macdough, a smug sloppy otter of a man smirking like a shop steward. Walls, doors, locks, exterior walls, staircases … "I've seen enough," he said at last, reluctantly, and turned away with one last backward glance at Folly and his followers. I shall return, he quoted General MacArthur telepathically at the oil, and left the room, pausing to watch with narrowed eyes as the guard locked the locks.
Down the stairs they went, Chauncey ahead of both Leamery and Macdough, his eyes flicking left and right, and on the ground floor Leamery smiled his wet-toothed pale smile and said, "Would you care for tea? We're just serving, in the office."
"Thank you, no."
"Or a peg," Macdough offered, with that offensive smile. "You look as though you could stand a bracer."
"I suspect, Mr. Macdow," Chauncey permitted himself to say, "that you should save–"
"Macduff," said Macdough.
"–all the bracers you have in stock. You'll be needing them yourself soon."
"The name is Macduff," Macdough repeated, "and I don't believe I will."
Chapter 7
"Let's talk about that window again, the one on the staircase."
"Again? Dortmunder, I've told you everything I know about that window. I've told you everything I know about everything. I've drawn you maps, I've drawn you sketches, I've gone over and over and over–"