Thieves' Dozen

The cop picked up the jacket and patted its pockets. Then he turned, draping the jacket over his arm, and Dortmunder, in the part at last, extended the tray. "You want a, a thing?"

The cop shook his head. He still wasn't looking at Dortmunder. He went away with the jacket, and Dortmunder sat on the now jacketless chair to have a quiet nervous breakdown. The hostess was going to say, "Why, that's my husband's jacket. In the kitchen? What was it doing there?" Then all the cops would come back and lay hands on him, and he would never be heard from again.

The harried woman steamed in, her own tray empty. Dortmunder got to his feet and said, "Just resting a minute."

She raised a meaningful brow in his direction.

Which he pretended not to see. "The cops didn't want the tarts," he said.

"I wonder what they did want," she said, still with that meaningful look.

"Maybe the party's too noisy," Dortmunder suggested. "Maybe the neighbor upstairs complained."

"That many cops? The neighbor upstairs must be the police commissioner."

"That's probably it," Dortmunder said. "What do you think? Should I make a special tray for them?"

"For the police?" This question brought her back to earth, and to business. "Nonguests are not our concern," she said. "What's that you're taking out there?" She peered at his tray much more suspiciously than she'd peered at him; good. "Ah, the anchovy logs," she said, nodding her approval.

"Anchovy logs?"

"You don't have to mention the name, just distribute them. And stick to the area at the other end of the room from the bar to move people away from the drinks."

"These logs," Dortmunder pointed out, "will drive them right back to the drinks."

"That's OK. Circulation's the name of the game."

The hostess came fluttering in, saying, "We have to do something. Can you believe this? Police!"

"We noticed," the harried woman said.

"Police ruin a party," the hostess a

"They sure do," Dortmunder agreed.

He should have kept his mouth shut; this just made the hostess focus on him, saying, "Jerry, what you should do is-" She blinked. "You're not Jerry."

"Sure I am," Dortmunder said, and flashed the tray of logs. "I better get out there," he said, scooting through the door. From behind he heard the harried woman say, "A different Jerry."

In the living room, the party wasn't really ruined at all. The cops were nowhere in sight and the partygoers were peacefully at graze once more. Dortmunder moved his tray hither and yon, away from the bar, and soon the hostess returned, but she was not at ease. She kept flashing worried looks toward the hall.

Hmmm. His tray still half full of logs, Dortmunder eased away from the party, skirted the hostess at some little distance and proceeded down the hall to reco

He heard them before he saw them, a cop voice saying, "Which coat is yours?" Then he made the turn into the bedroom and there were the three cops, plus two more cops, plus two male partygoers, who looked worried and guilty as hell as they pawed through the pile of coats. "Snack?" Dortmunder inquired.

All the cops looked at him, but with a

"Right." Dortmunder bowed from the waist, like butlers in the old black-and-white movies on TV, and backed out of the room. Moving down the hall toward the party, he considered the possibility that one or both of those suspects would prove to have some sort of illegal substance in his coat. A happy thought, but would it sufficiently distract the law? Probably not.

Back at the party, Dortmunder unloaded more anchovy logs, and then somebody put two glasses onto his not-quite-empty tray and said, "Two white wines, pal."

Dortmunder looked at the glasses, then looked up, and it was his buddy Larry again, who turned away to continue pistol-whipping his girlfriend, saying, "Make your own decisions for yourself, Sheila, don't put the blame on me."

Bewildered, she said, "The blame for what?"

The waiter wasn't supposed to get drinks for people, was he? Everybody else was getting his own. Dortmunder considered tucking the two glasses inside Larry's shirt, but then he glanced over and saw a cop briefly in the doorway, looking around. He decided a waiter was somebody who waited on people, not somebody who knocked people around, so he carried the tray to the drinks table. The cop was gone again. Dortmunder filled one glass with white wine and the other with tonic and carried them back on the tray, being careful to give Sheila the wine. She was saying wistfully, "It just seems as though you're trying to push me away, but making it my fault."

So she was catching on, was she? Airily, Larry smirked at her and said, "It's all in your mind."

Dortmunder made a rapid retreat to the kitchen, not wanting to be in sight when Larry tasted the tonic, and now this room was absolutely full of cops talking to the harried woman, one of them saying, "You been here since the begi

"We're catering the party," she said. "We had to be here an hour before it started, to set up the food and the bar."

The cop gave Dortmunder a full frontal stare. "Both of you?"

"Of course both of us," the harried woman said. To Dortmunder she said, "Tell them, Jerry. We got here at six-thirty."

"That's right," Dortmunder told the cops, then turned to his partner in crime to say, "They're still hungry out there."

"We'll give them the shrimps now," she decided, and gestured for Dortmunder to join her at the counter next to the sink, where plastic pots of cold peeled shrimp and glass bowls of red sauce awaited.

The cops stood around and growled together while Dortmunder and the harried woman worked, their fingers sliding on the slippery shrimp. At last, though, the law left the room, and Dortmunder whispered, "Thanks."

"I don't know what you did-"

"Mistaken identity."

"All I know is, you saved my sanity. Also, I still need help with these shrimp."

"You got it."

"There's one thing, though, that I have to tell you," she said as they arranged shrimp on decorative plates. "I'm married."

"So am I," Dortmunder said. "Kinda."

"Me, too," she agreed. "Kinda. But for real."

"Sure," Dortmunder said. "We're just trays of shrimp that pass in the night."

"Right."

Returning to the party, Dortmunder saw Larry at the drinks table, a wrinkled look around his mouth as he poured a glass of white wine. Dortmunder kept out of his way as he circulated, distributing shrimp. The two suspects from the bedroom came back, looking shaken but relieved, and both beelined to the drinks table, where they made quite a dent.

A few minutes later, the apartment door thudded shut with a sound that gonged all the way down the hall and into the room with the party, where a whole lot of tense smiles suddenly loosened up.

Really? Gone? Given up? Dortmunder, suspicious by nature and cautious by necessity, carried his half-full tray of shrimp and sauce down the empty hall, glanced into the empty bedroom, opened the apartment door and looked out at five cops looking in.

Umm. Two of them were women cops. All five were just standing around the corridor with faintly eager and hungry looks, like lions in the Colosseum. Behind them, the door to the apartment across the hall was propped half-open.

OK. So they still think the odds are that their missing burglar is at the party, so they've set up this corridor equivalent of a radar trap. Each partygoer on the way out will be taken into the apartment across the hall-with that good citizen's cooperation and approval, no doubt-and frisked. The women cops are for the women partygoers. And all five were looking at Dortmunder as though he were their first customer.