Thieves' Dozen

Arnie led the way through the decades to the table over by the parking garage view, saying, "So what have you got for me today? Huh? Not a piano, I bet, huh? Not a piano? Huh?"

It was amazing how quickly Arnie could become tiresome. "Some coins, Arnie," Dortmunder said.

"Damn, you see?" Arnie said. "It didn't work." "It didn't?"

"Just the other day," Arnie said, his voice full of accusation, "I read this self-improvement thing, see, in some goddam magazine in the garbage, 'Lighten Up, Asshole,' something like that, it said, 'Laugh and the world laughs with you, piss and moan and you piss and moan alone.'"

I heard that," Dortmunder allowed. "Something like that.

"Well, it's bullshit," Arnie said. "I just tried a joke there-"

"You did?" Dortmunder looked polite. "I'm sorry I missed it."

"It's my personality that's wrong," Arnie said. "It's just who I am, that's all. Somebody else could tell that joke, you'd be on the floor, you'd need CPR, the Heimlich Maneuver. But not me. I'm a pain in the ass, Dortmunder, and don't argue with me about that."

"I never argue with you, Arnie," Dortmunder said.

"I get on people's nerves," Arnie insisted. He waggled a bony finger in Dortmunder's face. "I make them sorry they ever met me," he snarled. "It don't matter what I do, I even put on perfume, would you believe it?"

"Well," Dortmunder said cautiously, "you do smell kinda different at that, Arnie."

"Different, yeah," Arnie growled. "Not better, just different. I put on these male scents, you know what I mean? Ripped 'em outta some other magazine, outta the trash can up at the corner, rubbed 'em all over myself, now people get close to me, they hail a cab to get away."

Dortmunder sniffed, not a lot. "It's not that bad, Arnie," he said, though it was.

"At least you lie to me," Arnie said. "Most people, I'm so detestable, they can't wait to tell me what a turd I am. Well, sid-down by the window there, that'll help a little."

Dortmunder sat by the open window, at the wooden chair by the table there, and it did help a little; the honest reek of old parking garage and soot helped to cut the cloying aromas of Arnie, who smelled mostly like a giant package of artificial sweetener gone bad.

On this old library table Arnie had long ago laid out a number of his less valuable incompletes, attaching them with a thick layer of clear plastic laminate. Dortmunder now took out his Zip-loc bag and emptied it in the middle of the table, onto a June where two barefoot, freckle-faced, straw-hatted lads were just arriving at the old fishin' hole. "This is what I got," he said.

Arnie's dirty, stubby fingers brushed coins this way and that. "You been travelin', Dortmunder?" he wanted to know. "Seein" the world?"

"Is that one of those jokes, Arnie?"

"I'm just askin'."

"Arnie," Dortmunder said, "the Roman Empire isn't there anymore, you can't visit, it's been gone, I du

"Well, let's see," Arnie said, giving nothing away. From his rumpled clothing he withdrew a piece of old rye bread and a jeweler's loupe. Putting the bread back where he'd found it, he tucked the loupe into his left eye and bent to study the coins, one at a time.

"They're good," Dortmunder assured him. "It's a big sale of the stuff, at a hotel in midtown."

"Mm," Arnie said. He lifted one coin, and bit it with his back teeth.

"It isn't an oreo, Arnie," Dortmunder said.

"Mm," Arnie said, and the doorbell rang.

Arnie lifted his head. For one horrible moment, the loupe stared straight at Dortmunder, like somebody looking out a door's peephole without the door. Then Arnie put his left hand in front of himself on the table, palm up, lifted his left eyebrow, and the loupe fell into his palm. "There," he said, "that's what you should do, Dortmunder. Ring the doorbell."

"I'm already here."

"Lemme just see what this is."

Never knowing when it might become necessary to remove oneself to a different location, Dortmunder scooped the ancient coins back into the Ziploc bag, and the bag back into his pocket, as Arnie crossed to the intercom grid near the door, pressed the button, and said, "WHAT?"

"That's why I don't," Dortmunder muttered.

A voice, distorted by all the kinks in the intercom wires, bracked from the grid: "Arnie Albright?"

"WHO WANTS TO KNOW?"

"Petey Fonanta."

"NEVER HEARDA YA."

"Joe sent me."

Arnie turned to cock a look at Dortmunder, who pushed his

chair back a bit from the table. The fire escape was a very comforting presence, just outside this open window.

"WHICH JOE? JERSEY JOE OR PHILLY JOE?"

"Altoona Joe."

Arnie reared back, releasing the button. He showed Dortmunder a gaze rich in wonder and confusion. "There really is an Altoona Joe," he whispered.

"Never heard of him," Dortmunder said.

"He's inside, been in awhile. Petey Fonanta?"

"Never heard of him either."

The doorbell rang. Arnie whirled back, stabbing the button: "HOLD ON!"

"We're just standin' around out here."

"WHO'S WE'RE?"

"My partner and me."

Arnie released the button and frowned at Dortmunder in an agony of indecision. "Now a partner," he said.

"Let them in or not," Dortmunder suggested.

"Why didn't I thinka that?" Arnie turned to chop at the button: "WHADAYA HEAR FROM JOE?"

"He's still in Allentown, another two three clicks."

Button release; turn to Dortmunder. "And that's true, too. I'm go

Dortmunder nodded, not saying a word.

"You're my cousin from outta town."

"No," Dortmunder said. "I'm from the block association, I'm here to talk to you about a contribution."

Arnie glowered. "Now you don't even wa

"It isn't that, Arnie," Dortmunder lied. "It's, we don't look that much alike."

"Neither did Cain and Abel," Arnie said and turned back to push the button once more: "COME ON UP." He pushed the other button, and the buzz sound could be heard, faintly, from far away downstairs.

Dortmunder stood and pulled his chair around with its back to the wall, so it wasn't exactly at the table anymore, but the fire escape was still extremely handy. Then he sat down again. Arnie opened the apartment door and stood there looking out and down the stairs. Feet could be heard. A normal human voice, without intercom distortion, said, "Arnie Albright?"

"I didn't change in one flight a stairs," Arnie said. "Come in."

Two people came in, and it wasn't hard at all to tell which one was Petey Fonanta. He was the non-woman. He was maybe 30, a little bulky, black-haired, blue-jawed, in chinos and thick shoes and a maroon vinyl jacket with a zipper. The woman was very similar to Petey, except her short hair was yellow, her jaw was white, and her vinyl jacket was robin's-egg blue.

It wasn't a total surprise that Petey Fonanta's partner should be a woman. Crime has been a politically correct gender-blind equal-opportunity career for a long long time, much longer than fireperson or mailperson or even doctorperson. Bo

Petey and the woman stopped in the middle of the room and looked at Dortmunder, who got to his feet and smiled like he was just a stranger here, passing through. Arnie shut the door and came around his new guests to say, "So Altoona Joe sent you, huh?"

"Yeah," Petey Fonanta said. He was still looking at Dortmunder.

"Altoona Joe can't stand my guts," Arnie remarked, and shrugged. "But neither can anybody else. And the same with you two."

The woman said, "What? What's the same with us two?"

"By the time you leave here," Arnie told her, "you'll be so disgusted, all you'll want to do is punch Altoona Joe in the mouth, and there he is in the pen, safe. I'm surprised he didn't warn you about me, paint you one a them word pictures? You owe him money or something?"