Why Me?

"Wait a minute," Costello said. "Are you telling me the Byzantine Fire has been in that jewelry shop the whole time?" He was peripherally aware of Dolores staring at him, open-mouthed.

"Absolutely," said Klopzik, with ringing sincerity. "This whole thing has been very unfair to me. It's strained my relationship with my friends, made me the object of a police dragnet, driven me from my home—"

"Hold on, hold on." Costello gazed at Dolores with wondering eyes, as he said to the man he was now convinced was an honest, truthful burglar, "Can you tell me exactly where you saw the Byzantine Fire?"

"Sure. It's in the safe, in a tray on the lower right. You know, the kind of tray you pull out like a drawer. It's there with a lot of little gold pins shaped like animals."

"That's where you saw it." ,

"And that's where I left it. A great big red stone like that in a little jewelry store in South Ozone Park, you got to figure it for a fake, right?"

"Right," said Costello. "So the police-and the FBI, by God, the police and the FBI—they all went to that jewelry store, they all searched the place, and none of them saw the Byzantine Fire, and it was there all along!"

"Definitely," said Klopzik. "I never had it on my person. I never so much as touched it."

"Let's see." Costello scratched his head through his thick black hair. "Would you be willing to do an interview? Just a silhouette, you know, no names."

"You don't need me," Klopzik said. "The whole point is, I never had nothing to do with that ruby in the first place. Listen, the store's empty now, it's closed, there isn't even a police guard. What you do, what I think you ought to do, if you don't mind my giving you advice—"

"Not at all, not at all."

"I mean, it's your business."

"Give me advice," Costello instructed.

"Okay. I think you oughta go out there with Skoukakis' wife, or whoever has a key and the safe combination, and bring along a camera, and you can film the stone just lying there on that tray."

"My friend," Costello said warmly, "if I can ever do you a favor—"

"Oh, you're doing me a favor," Klopzik said, and there was a click, and he was gone.

"Lordy lordy lordy," Costello said. He hung up and sat there nodding thoughtfully to himself.

Dolores said, "From the half I heard, he says he never took it."

"It's still there." Costello looked at her, wide-eyed with hope. "I believe him, Dolores. The son of a bitch was telling the truth. And I am going to ram the Byzantine Fire so far up those dirty bastards at Police Headquarters, they'll have red molars. Get me—" He stopped, frowning, gathering his thoughts. "Skoukakis is in jail; he has a wife. Get me the wife. And put an order in for a remote unit. Oh, and one thing more."

Dolores paused, halfway out the door toward her own desk. "Yes?"

"You were right before," Tony Costello told her, with a big happy grin. "It is a beautiful day."

46

Dortmunder was still hidden in the telephone tu

Since the O.J. had been the subject of a very severe police raid last night, immediately after Benjy Klopzik's spy equipment had started picking up CB, and was therefore now closed for repairs, Dortmunder had agreed that Stan Murch's postponed meeting could take place here in the apartment tonight, with only one proviso: "I need to watch the news at eleven."

"Sure," Stan had said, on the phone. "We'll all watch."

And so they did. Stan Murch, a blocky, ginger-haired man with freckles on the backs of his hands, was the first to arrive, shortly before eleven, saying, "I was out in Queens anyway, so I took Queens Boulevard and the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and came down Lex."

"Uh-huh," Dortmunder said.

"The trick is," Stan said, "you don't turn off on Twenty-third like everybody else. You take Lex down to the end, you go around Gramercy Park over to Park, you save a lot of lights, a lot of traffic, and you got a lot easier left turn onto Park."

"I'll remember that," Dortmunder said. "You want a beer?"

"Yes, I do," Stan said. "Hiya, Kelp."

Kelp was on the sofa, watching the end of a prime time rerun. "Whadaya say, Stan?"

"I bought a car," Stan said.

"You bought a car?"

"A Honda with a Porsche engine. The thing flies. You gotta throw out a parachute to stop it."

"I believe you."

Dortmunder came back with Stan's beer as the doorbell rang again, and this time it was Ralph Winslow and Jim O'Hara, the two guys Dortmunder had met at that first aborted meeting at the O.J. Everybody said hello, and Dortmunder went back to the kitchen for two more beers. On his return, handing them out, he said, "We're all here but Tiny."

"He won't be along," Ralph Winslow said. He didn't sound unhappy.

"Why not?"

"He's in the hospital, sick. When the cops raided the O.J. last night, Tiny was alone in the back room with all those files listing everybody's crimes and whereabouts and whatnot for Wednesday night."

Dortmunder stared. "Did the cops get all that?"

"No," Winslow said. "That's just it. Tiny barricaded the door. He didn't have any matches to burn the papers, so he ate them. All of them. The last batch, the cops broke through the door, they're beating on him with sticks, he's chewing and swallowing and fighting them off with chairs."

O'Hara said, "The word is, he'll be in the hospital at least a month."

Winslow said, "Some of the guys are getting up a collection. I mean, that was a noble act."

"I'll contribute," Dortmunder said. "In a kind of a way, I almost feel some responsibility, you know?"

"I hate to tell you this, John," Stan Murch said, "but even I began to think you were the guy with the mark on his back."

"Everybody did," Dortmunder said. His eye was level, his voice was clear, the hand holding his beer can was steady. "I don't blame people, it was just one of those things. It was circumstantial evidence."

"Don't tell me about circumstantial evidence," O'Hara said. "I did a nickel-dime once for hitting a lumberyard safe, and all they had on me was sawdust in my cuffs."

"That's terrible," Kelp said. "Where'd they nab you?"

"In the lumberyard office."

"So that's the way it was with me," Dortmunder said. "And the bad mood everybody was in, I didn't dare come out and explain myself."

"Wasn't that Klopzik something?" Winslow gri

"Without even taking the Byzantine Fire," O'Hara said. "A thing as famous as that. How dumb can you get?"

"It's coming on," Kelp said.

So they all sat down to watch. The anchorman introduced the story, and then a tape of the six o'clock report came on, starting with Tony Costello seated at a desk in front of a blue drape, his head and right hand bandaged but his expression cheerfully triumphant. He said, "The intensive nationwide search for the missing Byzantine Fire came to an abrupt and bizarre end this afternoon, back where it all started, at Skoukakis Credit Jewelers on Rockaway Boulevard in South Ozone Park."

Then there was film of the jewelry store, showing Tony Costello—unbandaged—with a woman identified as Irene Skoukakis, wife of the store's owner. While a voice-over narration explained that Benjamin Arthur Klopzik himself, object of the most intense manhunt in New York Police Department history, had phoned this reporter earlier today with the astounding revelation that had led to the recovery of the missing priceless ruby ring, the camera showed Costello watch Irene Skoukakis unlock the front door and then go inside and open the safe. The camera pa