Thieves' Dozen

"I got it," he promised her. "I'm ready to make the move."

"You'll be fine."

"Sure," he said, and picked up the tarts and went to the aid of the party.

The party consisted of several clumps of people, mostly crowded around the bar, which was a serve-yourself table in front of curtained windows at one end of the long living room. Most people ignored the big cut-glass bowl of eggnog and went straight for the wine or the hard stuff. At the opposite end of the room stood the Christmas tree, short and fat and shedding, with many tiny colored lights that blinked on and off as if to say chickee-the-cops,

chickee-the-cops, chickee-the-cops. I know, Dortmunder thought back at them, I know about it, all right?

A sofa and some chairs had been shoved against the walls to make room for the party, so everybody was standing, except one heavy woman dressed in a lot of bright fluttery scarves who perched on the sofa holding a glass as she talked to various people's stomachs. Occasionally, someone would bend down to say a friendly word to her forehead, but mostly she was ignored; the party was taking place at the five-foot level, not the three-foot level. And, as at most Christmas parties, everybody was looking a little tense thinking about all those lists at home.

Feeling the guard-dog eyes of the law scrape at his back, though the search party hadn't yet made its way down the hall, Dortmunder held the tray chest high and followed it into the scrum. People parted at the arrival of food, paused in drink and talk to take a tartlet, then closed ranks again in his wake. Sidling to the center of the crush, in the party but not of it, Dortmunder began to relax and to pick up shreds of conversation as he motored along:

"There's only twenty guys go

"She came to the co-op board in a false beard and claimed she was a proctologist. Well, naturally. . . ."

"So then I said you can have this job, and he said OK, and I said you can't treat people like that, and he said OK, and I said that's it, I quit, and he said OK, and I said you're go

"And then these guys in a rowboat-no, wait, I forgot. First they blew up the bridge, see, and then they stole the rowboat."

"Merry Christmas, you Jew bastard, I haven't seen you since Ramadan."

"And he said, 'Madam, you're naked,' and I said, 'These happen to be gloves, if you don't mind,' and that shut him up."

"Whatever you want, Sheila. If you want to go, we'll go."

Wait a minute, that was a familiar voice. Dortmunder looked around, and another familiar voice, this one female, said, "I didn't say I wanted to leave, Larry. Why do you always put it on me?"

The couple from the coats. Dortmunder steered his tart tray in that direction, and there they were, both in their mid-20s, wedged into a self-absorbed bubble inside the larger party. Larry was very tall, with u

Dortmunder inserted the depleted tartlet tray into their space as Larry said, "I don't put it on you. You weren't happy in the other room, and now you're not happy here. Make your own decisions, that's all."

She turned her worried look to the tarts, but Larry grandly waved the tray away. Neither of them looked directly at Dortmunder. In fact, nobody looked directly at the server (not servant, please, in egalitarian America) where tartlets simply appeared in one's hand at a given point during the party.

Moving on through the throng, Dortmunder heard one last exchange behind him. ("Lately, you do this all the time." "I'm not doing anything, Sheila, it's up to you.") But his attention was diverted by an event ahead: The cops had arrived.

Three of them, uniformed, stocky, mustached, irritable. They were so grumpy that the Technicolor hostess in their midst looked as though she were under arrest.

But she wasn't under arrest, she was bird-dogging, eyeing the guests for the cops, looking for cuckoos in the nest. Unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar faces. . . .

Meanwhile, all the faces had grown just a little more rigid. It's hard to be aware that three bad-tempered cops are looking at you and pretend you aren't aware of it, and at the same time present an image that shows you're i

Someone else was also observing the scene: the harried woman caterer. She'd been circulating in another part of the room with another tray, and she'd noticed the new arrivals. Dortmunder caught her looking from him to the cops and back again, and in the space between her damp hair and perky red bow tie, her thunderclouded face was an absolute emblem of suspicion. Doesn't anybody believe in altruism anymore?

Well, it was time to grasp the tiger by the tail and face the situation. The best defense is a good despair; Dortmunder marched directly to that dark blue cloud in the doorway, shoved his tray into its middle and said, "Tarts?"

"No, no," they said, brushing him away-even cops don't look at servers-and they went back to saying to the hostess, "Anybody you don't know. Anybody at all."

Dortmunder dallied nearby, offering his last few tarts to the closest convivials as he eavesdropped on the manhunt. The hostess was a rich contralto; under most circumstances, she would have been a pleasure to listen to, but these were not most circumstances: "I don't see anyone. Well, that person came with Tommy, his name is, oh, I'm so bad at names."

"It's faces we care about," one of the cops said, and damn near looked at Dortmunder.

Who realized it was time to move on. Unloading the last of his tarts, he segued into the empty kitchen, where he briefly considered his circumstances, contemplated a cut-and-run and decided this was no time to become a moving target.

On a cookie sheet on the kitchen counter lay a regiment of two-inch-long celery segments, each filled with red-dyed anchovy gunk. Green and red, Christmas colors; pretty, in a way, but not particularly edible-looking. Nevertheless, he arranged these on his tray, making a spiral, getting caught up in the design, attempting to make a Santa Claus face, failing, then picking up the tray, and as he turned to leave, one of the cops walked in.

Dortmunder couldn't help himself; he just stood there. Deep down inside, a terrific struggle was going on, invisible on the surface. You're a waiter, he told himself in desperation, you're with the caterer, nothing else matters to you. Trying to build a performance using the Method. But no. It didn't matter how he spurred himself, he just went on standing there, tray in hands, waiting to be led away.

The cop glared around the room as though he were pretty sure somebody was there. His gaze slid off Dortmunder's furrowed brow, moved on, kept searching.

I am a waiter! Dortmunder thought, and almost smiled; except a waiter wouldn't. He took a step toward the door, and the cop said, "Whose coat is that?"

Who's he talking to? There's nobody here but the waiter.

"You," the cop said, not quite looking in Dortmunder's direction. He pointed at the jacket Dortmunder had worn in here from the bedroom. "That yours?"

"No." Which was not only the truth, it was also the simplest possible answer. So rarely is the truth the simplest possible answer that Dortmunder, pleased by the coincidence, repeated it. "No," he said again, then added a flourish for the hell of it. "It was here when I came in."