Why Me?

Mologna heaved to his feet, resting his beer belly on the desktop. "We couldn't possibly succeed without it," he said. "I'm very happy to have you fellows aboard in this little burglary case."

"We feel the same way," Zachary assured him. "In such a delicate international affair, we're delighted to have such able and willing cooperation at the local level."

Hands were shaken. Leon drew a little caricature of Freedly, wearing pendant earrings. The federal agents made their departure, closing the door behind themselves.

"The man's an asshole," Zachary and Mologna said to Freedly and Leon.

11

Dortmunder brought home a Whopper from the Burger King, opened a can of beer, and started phoning around. The first several guys he called weren't home. Then he reached one fellow's wife, who said, "Jack's in jail."

"In jail? Since when?"

"Since about half an hour ago. I just put the soufflé in the oven and in walk these cops. So much for lunch."

"Wha'd they grab him for?"

"Practice. Took him in for questioning, is all. They don't have a thing on him and they know it."

"So they'll have to let him go."

"Sure. And here I am with cold, soggy soufflé. It's just harassment, that's all."

"Listen," Dortmunder said. "What I wanted to ask Jack is, does he know the address of a fellow called Stoon. Would you maybe know it?"

"Stoon? Oh, I think I know who you mean, but I don't know where he lives."

"Oh. Okay."

"Sorry."

"Tsokay. Sorry about Jack."

"It's the soufflé I feel sorry for."

The next two guys weren't home, but the one after that was. He was home, and he was mad. "I just been to the precinct," he said. "They had me there two hours."

"For what?"

"Questioning, they call it. Bullshit is what I call it. They're grabbing people all over the city."

"What is it, a stunt?"

"No, it's that ruby, the one got knocked over out to Ke

"It's real valuable, huh?"

"I don't know, Dortmunder, I don't think that's it. Valuable things get stolen, am I right? That's what they're for. I mean, it happens a lot. I mean, you wouldn't go out to steal apple cores."

"So what's the point?"

"Beats me. This ruby's important somehow. It's got the law very agitated."

"It'll blow over," Dortmunder said. "What I'm calling about, do you know a guy named Stoon?"

"Stoon. Yeah."

"Do you have an address?"

"On Perry Street, in the Village. Twenty-one, I think, maybe twenty-three. His name's on the bell."

"Thanks."

"I'll tell you one thing. I'm glad I'm not the guy boosted that ruby. The heat is intense."

"I know what you mean," Dortmunder said.

Next, he tried Kelp's number again, just in case the idiot had retired his phone-ahead box, but it was the cheery girl who answered. "Oh," Dortmunder said. "He's still got that box on, huh? Sorry to bother you."

"No," said the girl, "I'm here—" But Dortmunder, disgusted, was already hanging up, breaking the co

Immediately, with Dortmunder's hand still on it, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver again: "Hello?"

"You been on the phone."

"I'm still on the phone," Dortmunder pointed out. "How you doing, Stan?"

"I'm okay," Stan Murch said. "I think I got a nice one. Needs some pla

"Very," Dortmunder said.

"I thought, just a couple guys. Ralph Winslow, you know him?"

"Sure. He's okay."

"And Tiny Bulcher."

"Is he out again?"

"Turned out the gorilla didn't press charges."

"Oh."

"We'll meet tonight at the O.J. Ten o'clock good?"

"Sure."

"Do you know how I can get in touch with Andy Kelp?"

"No," said Dortmunder.

12

The name «Stoon» appeared among the doorbells at neither 21 nor 23 Perry Street. Coming out of the latter, pausing on the stoop to consider the perfidy of life, Dortmunder saw activity diagonally across the way. Three men were emerging from a building over there, the two flankers each holding an elbow of the one in the middle. Additionally, the flanker on the left was carrying a large blue canvas bag, which appeared to be very heavy. The three men hustled across the street to a battered light blue Ford parked near Dortmunder, who could see that the man in the middle—short, round-faced—seemed much less happy than his companions, both of whom were large, rather beefy, and obviously quite pleased with themselves. As they stuffed their short companion into the back seat of the Ford and the heavy blue canvas bag into the front seat, one of them said, "This'll keep you inside for quite a while." What the short man answered, if anything, Dortmunder didn't hear.

The two big, self-satisfied men also entered the Ford, one in front and one in back, and the car drove away. Dortmunder watched it go. At the corner, it turned and drove out of sight.

Dortmunder sighed. There was no question in his mind, of course, but he might as well make absolutely sure. He walked across the street, entered the vestibule of the building the trio had appeared from, and sca

Stoon.

"You lookin for somebody?"

Dortmunder turned and saw a truculent fortyish Puerto Rican armed with a push broom. The super. Dortmunder said, "Liebowitz."

"They moved out," the super said.

"Oh."

Dortmunder walked away. At the corner, a cop looked at him very hard. By then Dortmunder was so disgusted that, forgetting the plastic bag of jewelry in his jacket pocket, he looked back at the cop just as hard. The cop shrugged and went on about his business. Dortmunder went home.

13

Jack Mackenzie got along so well with the cops because they all thought he was Irish. His ancestry was, in fact, Scottish, a shameful secret wild horses couldn't have dragged out of him.

Being a police reporter for a large metropolitan TV station, it was a good thing Mackenzie was so tight with the men in blue—otherwise, he wouldn't have kept the job very long. But the cops knew good old Jack would always get their names right, would put them on camera if at all possible, would always believe their version of how the suspect fell off the roof, and would never twit them for their occasional inevitable failures. And that's why, when Chief Inspector Francis Xavier Mologna (which Jack Mackenzie always pronounced Maloney) decided to go public with this Byzantine Fire problem, it was red-haired, freckle-faced, jovial, hard-drinking, pseudo-Irish Jack Mackenzie who got the nod for the exclusive interview.

The meeting took place in a conference room at Headquarters, down several flights from Mologna's own office. With its indirect lighting, serious-looking desk, and windowless walls thoroughly diapered in sound-absorbing Virgin-Mary-blue drapes, this room had been designed for television. If a police spokesman stood behind that desk, in front of those drapes, holding up an old.22 rifle while a

The meeting was scheduled at four o'clock, just early enough to make the opening segment of the six o'clock news. (The rest of the press would get the story a bit later, also in time for the six o'clock news, but not till the end of the program rather than the begi