Watch Your Back!

"Help you, Mac?"

It was Puce, following Dortmunder down the hall. He had an aggressive swagger in his shoulders, as though he felt it was a little past time to start sparring with somebody.

"Gents," Dortmunder told him, calm about it.

"Pointers," Puce told him, and pointed at it.

"Thanks," Dortmunder said, and went into pointers, where the aroma immediately reminded him why generally he did not go into pointers. He stayed the minimum time plausible, flushed, washed his hands as the grimy sign said, and went out to the hall, which was now empty.

It wasn't a surprise that the door to setters was locked. Dortmunder headed for the bar, and on the way he passed the deliveryman, wheeling another quintet of cases, this one all rum.

Puce was back in his booth, muttering at his pal in plum, and Kelp was where he had been, at the bar. Dortmunder joined him, and Kelp raised an eyebrow as Dortmunder raised his glass. Dortmunder shook his head, drank, and the deliveryman came back, the dolly empty. This time he went around to extend a clipboard toward Rollo and say, "Sign it there, okay?"

"Sure."

Rollo, in the ma

Dortmunder finished his beer. "Maybe," he said, "I'll buy you that round next time."

14

"MAKE THE LEFT on Fifth," Tiny said from the backseat.

"Okay," Judson said, stopped the rented black Lexus Dzilla at the traffic light, and signaled for the left.

This was their third time around the block, over Sixty-ninth Street, down Fifth, over Sixty-eighth, up Madison, over Sixty-ninth, on and on. And Tiny never said, "Circle the block"; he always just gave the next turn, as though he hoped Judson wouldn't notice or remember the route.

Well, Judson did notice and remember the route, and he had even figured out what it was they were looking at. "Very slow here," Tiny would say every time they made the left turn from Fifth Avenue to Sixty-eighth Street, and every time Judson watched in the rearview mirror to see what Tiny was focused on, and every time it was the first house on the right after the big apartment building on the corner. There was something about that house that interested Tiny a whole lot.

"Make the left on Sixty-eighth."

"Okay."

Waiting for the green light, Judson could look diagonally across at that house, an old town house with what looked like a more recent garage cut into it on the right. Glancing once more at Tiny's reflection in the mirror, he could see Tiny frown at the house, as though something about it troubled or baffled him.

Green light. As Judson made the turn, Tiny said, "Stop on the right. At the driveway."

Directly in front of the house, in other words. So this was something new.

Judson had to watch what he was doing when he parked, because this SUV was really big, but once he'd stopped, he could do his own frowning at the house. What was it Tiny was trying to figure out?

"I'll get out here," Tiny said, opening the right-hand door. "Go around the block and pick me up."

"Okay."

Driving on, Judson saw Tiny just stand back there, head cocked to one side as he looked upward at the house. Upward. At what?

By the time he'd circled the block once more, he'd worked it out. Tiny was on the other side of the street now, looking not at the house but at his watch. Fortunately, there was a fire hydrant on that side, so Judson slid in there, and as Tiny got back into the car, Judson told him, "You could boost me up."

Tiny finished entering the car, shutting the door, adjusting himself on the seat, and only then did he look at Judson's right ear and say, "To what?"

"The alarm box. That's what you're trying to figure out, isn't it? How to reach the alarm box."

"Drive on down and make the left."

"Okay."

It wasn't until they'd made the turn onto Madison that Tiny spoke again: "Go up to Seventy-second and take the left. Why would I wa

"I don't know, "Judson said, stopping for the light at Sixty-ninth. He was begi

"You think so?"

"I du

The light turned green, and as Judson drove on, Tiny said, "One time, in the can, I knew a guy, said he knew how to break out, we could use the ductwork from the main boiler. I was too big and I didn't like the idea, but this other guy said it sounded great, he'd go first, so he went first, only he went the wrong direction."

"Did he get back?"

"Some ash did."

Judson thoughtfully made the left on Seventy-second, and Tiny said, "We'll go into the park."

"Okay."

"We wanted to get into a museum one time," Tiny told him, as he drove slowly through the heavy two-way traffic of Seventy-second Street. "One of the guys said he'd go there in the afternoon, hide himself in the mummy case, come open up for us at four in the morning. We get there at four in the morning, he doesn't show. Turns out, there's no air in the mummy case, so first he falls asleep, then he falls dead."

"Gee, that's too bad," Judson said, and stopped at the red light at Fifth.

"Wasted a night," Tiny said. "I was with some people once, we were in a penthouse, the owners weren't home. There was a power outage, that whole part of the city, this one guy said he could find the fire escape, he already counted the windows."

With gloomy foreboding, Judson said, "He counted the windows wrong?"

"No, the floors."

Judson nodded. "Mr. Tiny," he said, "do any of your stories have happy endings?"

"Not so far. The light's green."

So they crossed Fifth Avenue into the park, with a stream of traffic. "Stay on the transverse," Tiny said, when the option came to angle right northward toward the boathouse. They kept westward instead, Ramsey Playfield and then Naumburg Bandshell on their left, Bethesda Terrace with its fountain on the right. "Pull over to the right."

"I don't think I can," Judson said, looking in the mirror at the traffic behind him.

"I think you can."

So he did, and stopped half off the road, angry drivers de-touring around him. Swarms of people walked around the park in the August sun, many of them going up and down the broad stone steps leading down to the fountain and the lake beyond.

Tiny rolled his window down as he said to Judson, "Honk."

So Judson honked, and two men who'd been loitering off to one side of the steps suddenly looked their way, then waved and walked over.

"One in front, one in back," Tiny told them when they arrived, and after a brief, silent, unmoving struggle of some kind out there, the cheerful, sharp-nosed one got into the front seat next to Judson while the gloomy one got some of the seat next to Tiny.

"Drive on," said Tiny. So Judson drove on, and Tiny said, "Dortmunder," meaning the one in back, "and Kelp," for the one in front, "this is Judson Blint. He's Josey's office manager now."

"Harya."

"Hello."

Tiny said, "He says I can boost him up to the alarm. I didn't ask him, he just says it."

Judson felt many eyes on him, but didn't dare look back at anybody. I'm being taken for a ride, he thought. No, I'm taking myself for a ride.

Kelp, the one in front, with a pleasant ma

"Oh, no," Judson said. "No, I just thought — I don't know, I must have been wrong."

"I knew a guy wanted to volunteer once," Tiny said. Judson sighed, and Tiny went on, "We were in a thing together where the cops took an interest, and he thought it would be a good thing if he rolled over first."

Interested, half-turned around in the seat, Kelp said, "What happened?"