Why Me?

snik, responded the door, yawning open. This time, knowing this particular door's wiles and stratagems, Dortmunder already had one hand gripping the frame, so he didn't lose his balance but merely stepped across the threshold into the store, where he stopped to look back at Kelp, standing lookout at the curb in the rain, gazing assiduously up and down empty Rockaway Boulevard. Dortmunder gestured, and Kelp happily squelched across the sidewalk and joined him in the warm interior of the store. "Nice little place," he said, as Dortmunder shut the door.

"This ski mask itches," Dortmunder said, peeling the thing off.

Kelp kept his on; his eager eyes sparkled amid gamboling elks on a field of black. "It sure keeps the rain off," he said.

"It isn't raining in here. The safe's over this way."

The "Closed For Vacation To Serve You Better" sign was still in the front window, and the mustiness of the air inside the store suggested no one had been in it since the cops had arrived Wednesday night to find the Byzantine Fire missing. The store owner was in jail now, his relatives had things other than his shop to think about, and the law had no more use for the place.

Or at least that's what they thought.

"Forty-eight hours," Dortmunder said. "See those clocks?"

"They all say twenty to one."

"That's what they said Wednesday night, when I came in. What a forty-eight hours!"

"Maybe they're stopped," Kelp said, and went over to listen to one.

"They're not stopped," Dortmunder said, irritated. "It's just one of those coincidences."

"They're working," Kelp agreed. He came back and watched Dortmunder seat himself cross-legged, tailor-fashion, on the floor in front of the familiar safe, spreading his tools out around himself. "How long, you figure?"

"Fifteen minutes, last time. Shorter now. Go watch."

Kelp went over to the door to watch the still-empty street, and twelve minutes later the safe said plok-chunk as its door swung open. Dortmunder shined his pencil flash in at the trays and compartments, now stripped of everything except the junk he'd rejected last time, and saw one tray full of junky pins—gold-plated animals with polished stone eyes. That would do.

Reaching into his pocket, Dortmunder took out the Byzantine Fire, then spent a long moment just looking at it. The intensity of the thing, the clarity, the purity of the color. The depth—you could look down for miles into that damn stone. "My greatest triumph," Dortmunder whispered.

Over at the door, Kelp said, "What?"

"Nothing." Dortmunder put the Byzantine Fire on the tray with the junky animals; dubious peacocks and lions stared pop-eyed at this aristocrat in their midst. Dortmunder sort of piled the animals around the ruby ring, obscuring it slightly, then slid the tray back into place.

"How you doing?"

"Almost done." Chock-whirrr; he shut and locked the safe and spun the dial. His tools went back into their special pockets inside his jacket, and then he got to his feet.

"Ready to go?"

"Just one second." From another pocket he took May's watch and pressed the button on the side: 6:10:42:11. Crossing to the display case, he beamed his pocket flash at the watches behind the glass until he found another of the identical kind, in a small felt-lined box with the lid up. Going behind the counter, opening the sliding door in the back of the display case, he took out this new watch and saw that in the box with it was a much-folded paper headlined INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE. Right. 6:10:42:11 went back on the counter display where he'd originally found it, and the new one with its box and its instructions went into his jacket pocket. And the itchy ski mask went back on his face. "Now I'm ready," Dortmunder said.

43

Every edition of the paper. From the bulldog edition that had come out last night before Mologna had left the city for Bay Shore and home, right up to the late final that hadn't hit the street until he was already back in his office this morning, every last rotten edition of that rotten paper had carried the same rotten editorial. "The Cost Of Blowing Your Top" it was headed, and the subject matter was Mologna's now-famous incident of hanging up on the guy with the Byzantine Fire.

Was it those FBI assholes who'd given the story to the paper? Probably, though it had to be admitted Mologna had one or two enemies right here within the sheltering arms of the NYPD. All morning his friends on the force had been calling to commiserate, to tell him the same thing could have happened to them—and they were right, the bastards, it could have—and to assure him all the pressure in the world had been put on the editors of that rag to drop the editorial from the later editions, but in vain. The bastards had known they were safe, Chief Inspector Francis Xavier Mologna was down, they could kick him with impunity now. "There's nothin lower than a newspaperman," Mologna said, and swept the late final edition from his desk onto the floor.

Where Leon skipped over it on his way in, saying, "Another phone call."

"Friend or foe?"

"Hard to say," Leon told him. "It's that man again, with the Byzantine Fire."

Mologna stared. "Leon," he said, "are you havin fun at my expense?"

"Oh, Chief Inspector!" Leon's eyes fluttered.

Mologna shook his head. "I'm not in the mood today, Leon. Go away."

"He insists on talking with you," Leon said. "I quote—" he made his voice a kind of deep falsetto " — 'for our mutual advantage. That's what he said."

Wait a minute. Was it possible to recoup after all, to make a comeback, to shove that editorial down those craven editors' throats? Mutual advantage, huh? Reaching for the phone, Mologna said, "Which line?"

"Two."

"Record it and trace it and track it," Mologna ordered. His own voice deepening, he said, "I'll keep him on the line." Then, as Leon skipped from the room, Mologna said into line two, "Who's this?"

"You know," said the voice.

It was the same voice. "John Archibald Dortmunder," Mologna said.

"I'm not Dortmunder," Dortmunder said.

"Is that right," Mologna said comfortably, settling into his seat for a good long chat.

"The frame won't hold," the voice said. "You'll find out Dortmunder isn't the guy, and you'll keep looking till you find me."

"Interestin theory."

"I'm in trouble," said the voice.

"That's the understatement of the year."

"But you're in trouble, too."

Mologna stiffened. "Meanin what?"

"I read the paper."

"Every son of a bitch reads the paper," opined Mologna.

"We could maybe help each other," the voice said.

Mologna glowered, from deep within his soul. "What are you suggestin?"

"We both have a problem," said the tired, weary, pessimistic and yet self-confident voice. "Maybe together we got a solution."

Leon tiptoed in, hopped over the newspaper on the floor, and put a note on Mologna's desk, reading, "Phone company says untraceable, no such phone." Mologna glared at that, and said to the voice, "Hold it a second." Pushing the hold button, he glared at Leon and said, "What the fuck is this?"