Why Me?

"That's me," Winslow said, getting to his feet.

Tiny pointed at his empty glass. "Again."

"Vodka and red wine," Rollo agreed. To Dortmunder he said, "It wasn't Murphy's law. It's Gresham's law."

"Oh," said Dortmunder.

"The way we found out, we called the precinct."

Rollo and Winslow left, closing the door behind them. Dortmunder worked some at his drink.

Tiny said, "I don't like this. I don't like to hang around—wait around." His heavy features were arranged in a peeved expression, like an a

"Stan's usually on time," Dortmunder said. He tried to stop wondering what parts Tiny removed from people who irritated him by being late.

"I got a head to break later on tonight," Tiny explained.

"Oh?"

"The cops grabbed me this morning, hung me around at the precinct two hours, asking dumb questions about that big ruby got hit."

"They're really leaning," Dortmunder agreed.

"One of them leaned too heavy," Tiny said. "Little redheaded guy. What you call your petty authority. He went too far."

"A cop, you mean."

"So he's a cop. There's still limits."

"I guess so," Dortmunder said.

"A friend of mine'll follow him home tonight," Tiny said, "to get me the address. He's on the four to twelve. Around one, I'll put on a ski mask and go to that guy's house and put his head in his holster."

"A ski mask," Dortmunder echoed. He was thinking how much good a ski mask would do to disguise this monster. In order to be effectively disguised, Tiny would have to put on, at a minimum, a three-room apartment.

The door opened again and Ralph Winslow returned, with Tiny's fresh drink and with a second man, a narrow sharp-faced type with bony shoulders and quick-moving eyes and that indefinable but unmistakable aura of a man just out of prison. "John Dortmunder," Winslow said, "Tiny Bulcher, this is Jim O'Hara."

"Whadaya say."

"Meetcha."

Winslow and O'Hara sat down. Tiny said, "Irish, huh?"

"That's right," O'Hara said.

"So's that little redheaded cop. The one I'm go

O'Hara looked at Tiny more alertly. "A cop? You're go

"He was impolite," Tiny said.

Dortmunder watched O'Hara absorbing Tiny Bulcher. Then the door opened once more, and they all looked up, and this time instead of Stan Murch it was Murch's Mom, a feisty little woman who drove a cab and was now in her working clothes: check slacks, leather jacket, and plaid cap. She looked hurried and impatient; speaking rapidly, she said, "Hello, all. Hello, John. Stan told me come by, tell you, the meeting's off."

"More impoliteness," Tiny said.

Dortmunder said, "What's up?"

"They arrested him," Murch's Mom said. "They arrested my Stan, on nothing at all."

"The police," Tiny grumbled, "are getting to become a nuisance."

"Stan says," his Mom said, "he'll call everybody again, set up another meeting. I gotta go, my cab's double-parked, there's cops all over the place."

"You can say that again," said Ralph Winslow.

However, she didn't. She merely left, moving fast.

"It's a hell of a homecoming," Jim O'Hara said. "I come back after three years upstate and there's a cop on every piece of pavement."

"It's that ruby," Tiny said.

"The Byzantine Fire," Winslow said. "Whoever grabbed that, he can retire."

"He should of retired before," Tiny said.

O'Hara said, "What retire? How does he convert it to cash? Nobody'll touch it."

Winslow nodded. "Yeah, you're right," he said. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"And in the meantime," Tiny said, "he's making trouble for everybody else, forcing me to spend valuable time teaching some cop good ma

Dortmunder drained his glass and got to his feet. "See you all," he said.

"I'd pull him through that ring," Tiny said. He told Winslow and O'Hara, "You guys stick around. I don't like to drink alone."

Winslow and O'Hara watched wistfully as Dortmunder went away.

17

For Chief Inspector F. X. Mologna it had been a long long day—nearly eleven at night before he could descend to the garage beneath Police Headquarters and climb into the tan Mercedes-Benz sedan parked in the slot designated, in yellow stencil letters on the blacktop, C INSP MOLOGNA. A long day, but not an unpleasant one. He had given an exclusive interview and a general (and well-attended) press conference. He had thrown his weight around among a lot of federal and state officials. And he had given orders that would cause a

Mologna backed out of his slot, drove up the ramp to the exit, and left Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway led him northeast to the Long Island Expressway, now fairly crowded with middle-class revelers returning from di

Shortly after the Nassau County line, the police band faded away and Mologna switched to the regular radio, permanently tuned to an "easy listening" station—"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," played by a million violins. Mantovani lives.

Having gone public, it would now be necessary for Mologna to keep the press informed, or at least amused, between now and the recovery of the Byzantine Fire. He was the trainer, the media people were the porpoises, and the little events—arrests, press conferences, displays of weapons caches—were the fish that made the porpoises perform. If Mologna's police blitz had not turned up the ruby by tomorrow, he'd have to throw the newsboys a few more fish. In the morning, a simple update on the number of unrelated crimes solved and criminals arrested would do, but by afternoon he'd need something more. The simplest solution—and Mologna had never seen anything wrong with simple solutions—was to release a list of eight or nine known criminals in the city whom the police hadn't as yet been able to put the arm on, a

Soon Mologna switched to the Southern State Parkway, where the road was free of trucks and flanked by greensward and trees. All across Nassau County the traffic gradually thi

Bay Shore. Mologna slowed for the exit, made the turn, and a car that had been rapidly overtaking him the last mile or so made a sharp right onto the exit as well, crowding him hard from the left.

A drunk, obviously, unfortunately not in Mologna's jurisdiction. He slowed to let the clown through.