Bad News

The way it worked, two of them dug while the third kept a flashlight on them. Be

The work was hard but mindless. They dug and dug and dug, and then at last Geerome’s shovel hit something that went thunk and he said, “Here it is.”

“Finally,” Herbie said.

Yes, finally. It was almost eleven at night by now, and they still had a lot to do. Be

“Wait a minute, Be

The other two were now waist-deep in the hole. Be

“We’ll help you,” Geerome said, and leaned his shovel against the side of the hole to show he was serious. Then he and Herbie held their hands up, and Be

“Give me the flashlight,” Geerome said, and a huge white light suddenly glared all over them. Be

And so was the voice. It came from a bullhorn, and it sounded like the voice of God, and it said, “Freeze. Stop right where you are.”

They froze; well, they were already frozen. The three Indian lads standing in a row in the grave squinted into the glare, and out of it, like a scene in a science-fiction movie, came a lot of people in dark blue uniforms. Policemen. New York City policemen.

And with them came a capering old man in a threadbare cardigan and a rumpled hat, who cackled, actually cackled, as he cried, “Gotcha this time! You think you can just traipse around in here with all your flashlights and I’m not go

30

When things got slow, Kelp liked to go to the safes. They were in the closet in the other room, which was all he could think to call a room with a bed in it that you didn’t sleep in. A

This is a kind of safe that isn’t much made anymore, but your better-quality house or apartment wall is very likely to contain one. They are round and black and made of thick iron, and are a little smaller than a bowling ball. They have a round steel door on the front with a dial in it, and they have little iron ears, pierced, that angle out for mounting the safe on the studs inside the wall.

They are very hard to get into. Being round, they are almost impervious to explosives, and being thick black iron, they are impossible to crack or break with any known tool. The round door is also thick, and inset in such a way as to make it inaccessible to any lever or pry bar. The combination dial is cu

Not Kelp. His practice, if he had a vehicle handy when he discovered one of these coconuts, was to gouge it out of the wall, toss it into the vehicle, take it home, and fiddle with it from time to time when nothing much was happening. It was kind of a hobby, and also a way to keep his talents honed. Sooner or later, he managed to open every one of those doors, by which time, what he found inside was almost beside the point. And what he found inside ranged from a very nice line in jewelry all the way down through stocks of defunct corporations to absolute nothing. Still, it was the journey that mattered, not the destination.

This morning, around ten, with A

He’d been right to be dubious; it was Fitzroy Guilderpost. And he was excited, agitated, upset, blowing bubbles in the middles of his words: “Andy, we’re coming down! We’ve got to meet, we’ll meet at your place, call John and Tiny, we’re leaving now, we’ll be there no later than three, Irwin’s ready, we must fly, see you then!”

“Fitzroy,” Kelp said, “what are you talking about?”

There was a startled silence down the phone line, with bubbles, and then Fitzroy said, “You don’t know?”

“If you’ll think back, Fitzroy,” Kelp said, “you’ll realize you haven’t told me yet. And if you don’t tell me, Fitzroy, I can pretty well guarantee I won’t be here at three o’clock.”

“It was on the news!” Fitzroy jabbered. “Surely, if it was on the news up here, it was on the news down there!”

“It may be on the news,” Kelp pointed out, “but I don’t have the news on. So why don’t you just tell me?”

“The Indians were caught!”

This sounded like something from the world of sports, but Kelp knew that couldn’t be right. He said, “More, Fitzroy. Open it a little wider.”

“The Indians,” Fitzroy said, damping himself down, obviously as though he thought he were talking to a nincompoop, “took a coffin to the cemetery in Queens last night to switch bodies, just the way John said they would.”

Then Kelp saw it. “Oh, oh,” he said. “And they got caught?”

“Right in the middle of it, the hole dug, the three of them in the grave, standing on the box.”

“This is bad news, Fitzroy,” Kelp said.

“Yes! It is! I know it!”

“We better talk this over,” Kelp decided.

“Irwin and I are on our way, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

“And Little Feather?”

“She has to stay here, be in court, there’s a great coruscation over this.”

Kelp assumed that word was a legal term of some sort, and let it go. He said, “Okay, we’ll see you and Irwin then.”

“Because, Andy,” Fitzroy said, “because of what those idiots did, there is now a guard on that grave.”

“Oh boy.”

“The tribes have been trying to stall the DNA test,” Fitzroy said, “but this will certainly accelerate the process.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When they take that DNA sample out of that casket,” Fitzroy complained, “it will not be Little Feather’s grandfather in there.”

“It will be Burwick Moody.”

“I think I hate Burwick Moody,” Fitzroy said.

“Aw, naw, Fitzroy,” Kelp said, “he’s as much an i

“I did not get involved in this operation,” Fitzroy told him, “to be an i