"Let's talk about the window."
"Dortmunder, why?"
"I want to know about it. Describe it."
"Very well, yet again. It was a window, on the landing half a flight below the value room. That would put it three and a half levels above the street. It was double hung, with one large pane of glass on top and six small panes in the bottom. The wood was painted a grayish-cream color, and it looked out over Sackville Street."
"What could you see when you looked out through it?"
"I told you. Sackville Street."
"Exactly what could you see?"
"Dortmunder, I passed that window twice, once on the way up and once coming down. I didn't stop and stare out."
"What did you see on the way by?"
"The buildings across Sackville Street."
"Describe them."
"Describe – ? Gray stone upper stories, windows, just – No! By God, now I remember. There was a streetlight!"
"A streetlight."
"I saw it on the way down. It was below window level, of course. But what possible difference does that make?"
"For one thing, it means that staircase won't be dark. Tell me more about the window."
"More? There isn't any–"
"It didn't have a lock."
"Of course it did. All windows have locks."
"Well, it didn't have that – You know, that catch thing in the middle. I can remember distinctly, there was – Ah, wait!"
"You're remembering something else."
"Dortmunder, when you're finished with me I'll be fit for nothing but a sanitarium."
"Tell me."
"It had two locks. Sliding bolts on the inside top corners of the lower half I suppose the top half must be permanently fixed in place."
"Sliding bolts? They slide into the frame on both sides?"
"So that's two new things you remembered about the window."
"No more about the window. Please, Dortmunder."
"Fine. Let's talk about the floor in the hall outside the value room."
"Dortmunder, you're driving me crazy."
"Was it wood? Rug? Linoleum?"
"The floor. God help us. Let me think…"
Chapter 8
"What a country," Kelp said. Trying to shift gears with the stick jutting out on the right side of the steering column, he signaled for a right turn instead, and said, "Damn! Crap! Bastard!" Still signaling for a right turn, he found the other stick, jutting out on the left side of the steering column, and shifted into second.
"Drive on the left," Dortmunder told him.
"I am on the left," Kelp snarled, yanking the wheel hard to the left and thus not hitting that oncoming taxi.
"You weren't before."
"I was."
"You're signaling for a right turn."
"Maybe I'll turn right."
Kelp was in a foul mood, and his first experience driving in London wasn't helping much. Tottering down Sloane Street toward Sloane Square in a maroon Opel, surrounded by coughing black taxis, two-story-high red buses and darting scruffy Minis the size of washing machines and the color of week-old snow, Kelp struggled to deny all his deepest driving instincts. Sitting on the right, driving on the left, shifting with his left hand – and just to compound the confusion, the foot pedals weren't reversed.
Not that Kelp had been his usual cheery self even before entering this Opel. Five nights sleeping on the floor in Chauncey's apartment had already left him stiff, cranky and worn out. His initial alignment, with feet under bed and head under dresser, had quickly proved unacceptable, since both Zane and Dortmunder invariably stepped on his exposed center section if they got up in the middle of the night, and both the bastards were constantly getting up in the middle of the night. Having Zane's gnarled foot, naked, pressing on one's stomach in the dark, was one of life's least pleasant experiences. The result was, Kelp was sleeping – or trying to sleep – curled up under the dresser, and it was having a very bad effect on both his posture and his personality.
And now Dortmunder wanted to go for a drive. "Where to?" Kelp had asked him. "Around," Dortmunder had said. "What are we looking for?" Kelp had asked him. "I'll know it when I see it," Dortmunder had said. He'll know it when he sees it. Driving around all afternoon in city traffic, on the wrong side of the street, on the wrong side of the car – Kelp signaled for a left turn, swore loudly, shifted into third gear, shifted into fourth gear, and almost ran down two women in tan wool cloaks and high leather boots who stepped out right in front of the car.
"Christ, Andy," Dortmunder said, peeling himself off the windshield.
"Those two – those two–" Kelp pointed at the women, more in outright astonishment than rage, while the women in their turn stood in front of the car, giving him reproving looks and pointing to something on the sidewalk. Peering in that direction, Kelp saw a blinking orange globe light over there, atop a pole. "Well, what the hell do you suppose that is?" he said.
"Beats me," Dortmunder said.
The women, having shaken their fingers at Kelp, walked on. Kelp sat blinking at the orange globe, which blinked back. "What am I supposed to do now?" he asked. "Wait for it to stay off, or to stay on?"
Peep, said the Mini behind them, and Dortmunder said, "I think you just go now." So Kelp signaled for a right.
"SHIT!"
First gear; tromp the accelerator; second gear; tromp the accelerator; third goddam gear and there was another one of those orange globes. Tromping the brake, Kelp now saw a similar orange globe directly across the way, and white lines on the street between the two, and as he was himself working out what it meant Dortmunder said, "It's a pedestrian crossing, that's all. Pedestrians got the right of way."
"I know it," Kelp snapped, and tromped the accelerator again, and lurched into Sloane Square. "Which way now?"
"Any way you want."
"I wanna go back under the dresser," Kelp said, because Sloane Square was completely full of traffic and people. Kelp inched the Opel along, painfully aware that he didn't know how much car he had on his left, stuck in the whirlpool flowing clockwise around the square, and was practically back where he'd started before he managed to break free, scooting down Kings Road, which turned out narrower than Sloane Street, with more traffic and more pedestrians and more shops and more buses. "And," Kelp cried, "they don't even have MD plates! What if there's an emergency? How you gonna find a doctor?"
"This car's okay," Dortmunder said.
"You try driving it. You try – Oh, shit."
Another pedestrian crossing, this one full of young people wearing carpet remnants. Kelp realized as he was doing it that he was about to shift gears with the wrong stick again, and said, "That's it." Depressing the stick, signaling for a right, he just kept on bearing down until the stick said snap. "Hold this for me," he said, handed the stick to Dortmunder, shifted into first, and drove on once the carpet sale had reached the sidewalk.
"You're signaling for a right again," Dortmunder told him.
"Tough," said Kelp.
They drove around for another half hour, down through Chelsea and over the Albert Bridge into Battersea, and north again over the Battersea Bridge, and up through Earl's Court and Kensington, with Kelp becoming increasingly adjusted to this weird way of driving, and up in Notting Hill Gate Dortmunder suddenly said, "Stop here."
"Here?"
"No, back there. Circle the block."