Why Me?

"The phone company's bewildered," Leon told him. "They say the call's coming from somewhere south of 96th Street, but they can't track it down. It's just there, in their relays."

"That's too fuckin stupid to be believed," Mologna said.

"They're still working on it," Leon said, not with much display of hope. "They said please keep him on the line as long as you possibly can."

"Are you insultin me, Leon?" Mologna demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he pushed the two-line button, and heard a dial tone. The son of a bitch was gone. "Oh, Jesus," Mologna said.

"He hung up?" Leon asked.

"I lost him again." Mologna stared at infinity as the phone on Leon's desk outside began ringing. Leon trotted away, and Mologna leaned forward, elbows on desk, head in hands, thinking the unthinkable: Maybe I should retire, like the fuckin paper said.

Leon was back. "It's him again. This time he's on one."

Mologna moved so fast he almost ate the phone. "Dortmunder!"

"I'm not Dortmunder."

"Where'd you go?" Mologna demanded, while Leon danced back out to contact the phone company once more.

"You put me on hold," the voice said. "Don't put me on hold, all right?"

"It was only a second."

"I've had a lot of trouble with phones," the voice said. (Perhaps another voice in the background made a complaining noise.) "So just don't put me on hold. No gizmos."

"No gizmos?" Honest rage and accumulated frustration bubbled up within Mologna. "You're one to talk, you've been makin a mental case out of me with your telephones."

"I just—"

"Never mind that, never mind that. I call you at a pay phone, right out on the street in the sunshine, you answer the phone, and there's nobody there! Right now, right this minute, you're talkin to me big as life, the phone company can't trace the call! Is that honest? Is that playin the game?"

"I just don't like to be on hold," the voice said, sounding sullen.

Which brought Mologna back down out of his luxurious bad temper. "Don't hang up again," he said, squeezing the receiver hard, as though it were his caller's wrist.

"I won't hang up," the voice agreed. "Just so you don't put me on hold."

"You've got a deal," Mologna told him. "No hold. I'll just sit here and you'll tell me your story."

"My story is," said the voice, "I don't want this ruby thing."

"And?"

"And you do. It'll make you the big man again around Headquarters, never mind what they say in the papers. So what I want, I want to propose a trade."

"You'll give me the ring? For what, immunity?"

The mirthless voice said, "You can't give me immunity, nobody can."

"I hate to say it, pal," Mologna told him, "but you're right." And yet, the strange thing was, he felt within himself a desire to help this poor son of a bitch. Some echo in that world-weary voice reached out to him, called out to their common humanity. Maybe it was just because he was depressed after that stinking editorial, but he knew in his heart he was closer to this fourth-rate burglar, in some cockamamie way, than to anybody else involved in the whole case. He pictured FBI Agent Zachary in an interrogation with this clown, and despite himself, his heart just reached out. "So what do you want?" he said.

"What I want," said the voice, "is another burglar."

"I don't follow."

"You're the cops," the voice explained. "You can make up a name, make up a guy, some guy that doesn't exist. Frank Smith, say. Then you a

"Nice try, Dortmunder," Mologna said.

"I'm not Dortmunder."

"The problem is," Mologna went on, "where is this Frank Smith? If we set up a make-believe guy, we've got nobody to show the press. If we set up a real guy, maybe the frame doesn't stick."

"Maybe Frank Smith commits suicide in the House of Detention," the voice suggested. "Such things have been known to happen."

"Too many people involved," Mologna said. "I'm sorry, but there's no way we could work it." He laid out the parameters of the problem: "It would have to be a real guy, with a record, somebody known to the courts and to the underworld. But at the same time, it would have to be a guy nobody's ever goin to find, he'll never come back with an alibi or a—Holy Jesus!"

In sudden hope, the voice said, "Yeah? Yeah?"

"Craig Fitzgibbons," Mologna said, an almost religious awe trembling in his voice.

"Who the hell is that?"

"A guy who will never come around to call us liars, Dortmunder."

"I'm not Dortmunder."

"Sure, sure. I can do your setup for you, that's all. I sit here astonished at myself. Now, what about the quo?"

"The what?"

"The Byzantine Fire," Mologna explained.

"Oh, that. You get it back," the voice said, "as soon as you make the a

"What a

"Police breakthrough. Proof positive the thief with the Byzantine Fire is this fella Craig Whoever. Arrest expected any minute."

"All right. Then what?"

"I get the ring back to you, my own way. Indirect like."

"When?"

"Today."

"And if you don't?"

"Another police breakthrough. Proof positive it isn't Craig Thingummy."

"Okay," Mologna said, nodding. Leon came in and made the world's most expressive shrug of incredulity, representing in himself all of the thousands and thousands of employees of the New York Bell Telephone Company. Mologna nodded, waving him away, not caring any more. "I'm in a good mood today," he told the phone. "You've got yourself a deal, Dortmunder."

"Call me Craig," said Dortmunder.

44

Every half hour Dortmunder phoned May, who was staying home from work so she could listen to an all-news radio station ("You give us twenty-two minutes, we'll give you the world," they threatened). Dortmunder would have preferred to be his own listening post, but down here in the telephone company conduit, far beneath the mighty metropolis, there was no such thing as radio reception. As for TV, forget it.

"There's trouble in Southeast Asia," May told him at ten-thirty.

"Uh-huh," Dortmunder said.

"There's trouble in the Middle East," she said at eleven o'clock.

"That figures," he said.

"There's trouble in the Cuban part of Miami," she a

"Well, there's trouble everywhere," Dortmunder pointed out. "There's even a little right here."

"They have positively identified the thief who stole the Byzantine Fire," she said at noon. "It was just a bulletin, interrupted the trouble in baseball."

Dortmunder's throat was dry. "Hold it," he said, and swigged some beer. "Now tell me," he said.

"Benjamin Arthur Klopzik."

Dortmunder stared across the conduit at Kelp, as though it was his fault. (Kelp stared back, expectant, alert.) Into the phone, Dortmunder said, "Who?"

"Benjamin Arthur Klopzik," May repeated. "They said it twice, and I wrote it down."

"Not Craig Anybody?"

"Who?"

"Benjamin—" Then he got it. "Benjy!"

Kelp could stand no more. "Tell me, John," he said, leaning forward. "Tell me, tell me."

"Thanks, May," Dortmunder said. It took him a second to realize the unfamiliar, uncomfortable feeling in his cheeks was caused by a smile. "I hate to sound really optimistic, May," he said, "but I have this feeling. I just think maybe it might be almost possible that pretty soon I'll be able to come up out of here."

"I'll take the steaks out of the freezer," May said.

Dortmunder hung up and just sat there for a minute, nodding thoughtfully to himself. "That Mologna," he said. "He's pretty smart."