Nobody's Perfect

"I'm – I'm just–" Kelp righted himself, dropped two of his bags, stuck his rump in Dortmunder's face as he gathered them up, and climbed on.

Chauncey brought up the rear at rather a safe distance, and when he reached the top, Edith and Bert were already unpacking his bags in his room, while a dispute was starting in the guest room. Dortmunder expressed the core of the problem in a question to Chauncey: "All three of us in here?"

"This is it," Chauncey told him. "On the other hand, the sooner the job is done, the sooner you'll be able to leave and go home."

Dortmunder and Kelp and Zane looked around at the room, which had been designed with married – or at least friendly – couples in mind. One double bed, one dresser, one vanity, one chair, one writing desk, two bedside tables with lamps, one closet, one window overlooking the garden. Kelp, looking apprehensive but determined, said, "I don't care. He can shoot me if he wants, but I'm telling you right now I won't sleep with Zane."

"I believe there's a fold-up cot in the closet," Chauncey said. "I'm sure you'll sort something out."

"I can't sleep on a cot," Zane said. "Not with this foot."

"And I can't sleep with you," Kelp told him. "Not with that foot."

"Take it easy, you," Zane said, pointing a bony finger at Kelp's nose.

"Let's all take it easy," Dortmunder suggested. "We'll draw straws or something."

Zane and Kelp were both objecting to that plan when Chauncey left the room, closing the door behind him, and entered his own civilized quarters, where Bert and Edith had not only finished his unpacking but had laid out a change of clothing on the bed and were starting a hot tub. "Lovely," Chauncey said, and then told them, "Now, those men with me, they're very eccentric Americans, just pay them no mind at all. They'll be here for a few days, on business, and then they'll be gone. Just ignore them while they're here, and if they behave at all strangely, pretend you don't notice."

"Oh, r," said Edith.

"Aye," promised Bert.

Chapter 4

Leaning against a Chippendale chifferobe, Dortmunder watched two Japanese gentlemen bid against one another for a small porcelain bowl with a bluebird painted inside it. That is, he assumed it was the two Japanese gentlemen who were doing the bidding, since their slight head-nods were the only activity in the crowded room apart from the steady chanting of the impeccably dark-suited young auctioneer: "Seven twenty-five. Seven-fifty. Seven-fifty on my right. Seven seventy-five. Eight hundred. Eight twenty-five. Eight twenty-five on my left. Eight twenty-five? Eight-fifty. Eight seventy-five."

They'd started at two hundred, and Dortmunder had by now become bored, but he was determined to stay here in this spot long enough to find out just how much a rich Japanese would spend on a peanut bowl with a bird in it.

Here was one of the auction rooms at Parkeby-South, a large auctioneer-appraisal firm in Sackville Street, not far north of Piccadilly. Occupying a bewildering cluster of rooms and staircases in two adjacent buildings, the firm was one of the oldest and most famous in its line of work, with co

There were three kinds of rooms at Parkeby-South. There were half a dozen auction rooms filled with people seated on rows of wooden folding chairs as they bid incredible amounts for marble thises and crystal thats; there were display rooms crammed with everything from a life-size bronze statue of General Pershing's horse to a life-size blown-glass bumblebee; and finally there were rooms behind closed doors featuring the discreet notice: PRIVATE. Modest unarmed gray-haired guards in dark blue uniforms made no ostentatious display of themselves, but to Dortmunder's practiced eye they were everywhere, and when Dortmunder experimentally pushed open a PRIVATE door to see what would happen, one of these guards immediately materialized from the molding and said, with a helpful smile, "Yes, sir?"

"Looking for the men's room."

"That's up on the first floor, sir. You can't miss it."

They were already on the first floor. Dortmunder thanked him, collected Kelp from his mesmerized pose in front of a glass cabinet full of gold rings, and went on upstairs, where he was now watching a pair of Orientals struggle with one another for a jelly-bean bowl.

He was also brooding. There must be over a million dollars worth of goods in this building. Guards were all over the joint like flu in January, and so far as Dortmunder could see there were no burglar alarms on the windows. Which could only mean live guards in the place all night long.

"Eleven hundred," said the auctioneer. They were going by fifties now. "Eleven-fifty. That's eleven-fifty on my left. Eleven-fifty? No? Eleven-fifty on my left." Clack went the hockey puck in his left hand onto the top of his wooden rostrum. "Sold for eleven-fifty. Item number one fifty-seven, a pair of vases."

While a pair of gray-smocked employees held up the pair of vases – also porcelain, they featured one-footed flamingoes on their sides – Kelp whispered in disbelief, "They paid eleven hundred fifty dollars for that little bowl?"

"Pounds," Dortmunder whispered back. "English money."

"Eleven hundred fifty pounds? How much is that in cash?"

"More," said Dortmunder, who didn't know.

"Two grand?"

"Something like that. Let's get out of here."

"Two grand for a little bowl," Kelp said, following Dortmunder out to the hall. Behind them, the auctioneer had started the bidding on the vases at six hundred. Pounds, not dollars.

Out on the street, Dortmunder turned toward Piccadilly, but Kelp lagged behind, looking wistfully back. "Come on," Dortmunder said, but Kelp still dawdled, looking over his shoulder. Dortmunder frowned at him: "What's the matter?"

"I'd like to live there," Kelp said. He turned to grin wistfully at Dortmunder, but his expression changed almost immediately into a puzzled stare. He seemed to be looking now at something across the street.

Dortmunder, facing the same way, saw nothing. "What now?" he said. "You wa

"I thought – No, it couldn't have been."

"You thought what?"

"Just for a second–" Kelp shrugged and shook his head. "There was a guy looked like Porculey," he said. "Fat like him. He went in one of those doors over there. You know the way people look like other people. Especially out of town."

"People look like other people out of town?"

"Couldn't have been him, though," Kelp said, and at last he moved briskly forward, leaving Dortmunder staring after him. Looking back, Kelp said, "Well? You coming?"