Thieves' Dozen

"Right," said Dortmunder.

In the atrium, they were cutting the nymph's head off. As Dortmunder came back from his phone call, the girl's head nodded once, then fell with a splash into the fountain. As the plug-ugly switched off the saw, the elegant man turned toward Dortmunder a face of anguish, saying, "It's like seeing a human being cut up before your eyes. Worse. Were she flesh and blood, I could at least imagine she was Moira."

"That thing's loud," Dortmunder said.

"Not outside," the elegant man assured him. "Because of traffic noise, the façade was soundproofed. Also the floor; the servants won't hear a thing."

The plug-ugly having wrapped the decapitated head in rope, he switched on his saw again and attacked the nymph, this time at her waistline. The head, meantime, peering raffishly through circlets of yellow rope, rose slowly roofward, hauled from above.

Dortmunder, having pointed out to the elegant man that removal of this statue was all that mattered, that its postoperative condition was unimportant, had for his $5000 suggested they cut it into totable chunks and remove it via the roof. Since, like most cast-bronze statues, it was hollow rather than solid, the dismembering was certainly within the range of the possible.

Dortmunder had first thought in terms of an industrial laser, which would make a fast, clean and absolutely silent cut, but the elegant man's elegant contacts did not include access to a laser, so Dortmunder had fallen back on the notion of an acetylene torch. (Everybody in Dortmunder's circle had an acetylene torch.) But there, too, the elegant man had turned out to be deficient, and it was only after exhaustive search of the garage that this large saber saw and several metal-cutting blades had been found. Well, it was better than a pocket-knife, though not so quiet.

The head fell from the sky into the fountain, splashing everybody with water.

The plug-ugly with the saw turned it off, lifted his head and spoke disparagingly to his partner on the roof, who replied in kind. The elegant man raised his own voice, in French, and when the plug-uglies ceased maligning each other, he said, "I shall bind the parts."

The nearer plug-ugly gave him a sullen look. "That's brain-work, I guess," he said, switched on the saber saw and stabbed the nymph in the belly with it. Renewed racket buried the elegant man's response.

It was too loud here. From Dortmunder's memory of the model of this house, the kitchen should be through the dining room and turn right. While the elegant man fumbled with the bronze head, Dortmunder strolled away. Passing through the dining room, he pocketed an antique oval ivory cameo frame.

Dortmunder paused in the preparation of his second pâté and swiss on rye with Dijon mustard-this kitchen contained neither peanut butter nor jelly-when the racket of saber saw was abruptly replaced by the racket of angry voices. Among them was a voice undoubtedly female. Dortmunder sighed, closed the sandwich, carried it in his left hand and went through to the atrium, where a woman surrounded by Louis Vuitton suitcases was yelling at the top of her voice at the elegant man, who was yelling just as loudly right back. The plug-ugly stood to one side, openmouthed but silent, the saber saw also silent in his hand, hovering over the statue stub, now reduced to tree trunk, knees, shins, feet, toes, base and a bit of curtain hem.

This was clearly the ex-wife, home ahead of schedule. The elegant man seemed unable to do anything right. In the semi-darkness of the dining-room doorway, Dortmunder ate his sandwich and listened and watched.

The screaming was merely that at first, screaming, with barely any rational words identifiable in the mix, but the ex-wife's first impulse to make lots of noise was soon overtaken by the full realization that her statue was all cut to pieces; gradually, her shrieks faded away to gasps and then to mere panting, until at last she merely stood in stu

"You-you-" But she wasn't capable of description, not yet, not with the butchery right here in front of her.

"An explanation is in order," the elegant man acknowledged, "but first let me reassure you on one point: That Rodin has not been destroyed. You will still, I'm afraid, be able to turn it over to the populace."

"You bluh-you-"

"My presence here," the elegant man continued, as though his ex-wife's paralysis were an invitation to go on, "is the result of an earlier deception, at the time of our separation. I'm afraid I must admit to you now that I bribed Grindle at that time to accept on your behalf not the original but a copy of the Rodin- this copy, in fact."

The ex-wife took a deep breath. She looked away from the bronze carnage and gazed at the elegant man. "You bloody fool," she said, having at last recaptured her voice, and speaking now almost in a conversational tone. "You bloody self-satisfied fool, do you think you invented bribery?"

A slight frown wrinkled the elegant man's features. "I beg your pardon?"

"Beg Rodin's," she told him. "You could only bribe Grindle with cash. When he told me your proposition, I saw no reason why he shouldn't take it."

"You-you-" Now it was the elegant man who was losing the power of speech.

"And, having taken your bribe and mine," she went inexorably on, "he pronounced the false true before reversing the statues. That," pointing at the shins and tree trunk, "was the original."

"Impossible!" The elegant man had begun to blink. His tie was askew. "Grindle wouldn't-I've kept the-"

"You bloody FOOL!" And the woman reached for a handy piece of luggage-toilet case, swamp-colored, speckled with someone else's initials, retail $364.50-and hurled it at her ex-husband, who ducked, bellowed and reached for the late nymph's bronze thigh with which to riposte. The woman sidestepped and the thigh rolled across the atrium, coming to a stop at Dortmunder's feet. He looked down at it, saw the glint of something shiny on the rough inside surface and hunkered down for a closer look. At the foundry, when they'd covered the removable plaster interior with wax prior to pouring the bronze, maybe some French coin, now old and valuable, had got stuck in the wax and then transferred to the bronze. Dortmunder peered in at the thing, reaching out one hand to turn the thigh slightly to improve the light, then ru

The rasp of the saber saw once more snarled; Dortmunder, looking up, saw that the woman had it now, and was chasing her ex-husband around the plants and flowers with it, while the plug-ugly stood frozen, pretending to be a floor lamp. Dort-munder stood, mouthed the last of his sandwich, retraced his steps to the kitchen and went out the window.

The far-off sound of sirens was just audible when he reached the pay phone at the corner and called again the OJ. Bar & Grill. When Kelp came on the phone, Dortmunder said, "The guys still there?"

"Sure. You on your way?"

"No. I got a new thing over here on the East Side. You and the guys meet me at Park and Sixty-fifth."

"Sure. What's up?"

"Just a little breaking and entering."

"The place is empty?"

Down the block, police cars were massing in front of Moira's house. "Oh, yeah," Dortmunder said, "it's empty. I don't think the owner's go

"Something valuable?"

There weren't two copies of the Rodin, no; there was one original, one copy. And the elegant man had been right about ex-husbands' getting the sympathy vote. The hired expert had accepted bribes from both parties, but he'd made his own decision when it came to distributing the real and the fake Rodins. In Dortmunder's mind's eye, he saw again the shiny thing hidden within the nymph's thigh. It was the flip-off ring from a thoroughly modern beer can. "It's valuable OK," he said. "But it's kind of heavy. On the way over, steal a truck."