9

ANDY KELP TRUSTED DOCTORS. Not so much on the medical side, though some of them were pretty good at that, too, but on the question of automobiles. As far as he was concerned, if you trusted a doctor’s judgment when it came to his personal wheels, you were not likely to go far wrong.

Doctors have a deep understanding, for instance, of the difference between comfort and pain, so they’re unlikely to choose a car with a badly designed driver’s seat or misplaced steering wheel or one of those accelerators where your knee begins to hurt after a hundred miles. Also, doctors have a perhaps too-vivid picture in their minds of the aftereffects of high-speed physical impacts, so they’re mostly going to wrap themselves in products that will (a) avoid accidents where possible, or (b) survive them when necessary. Thus, when Andy Kelp went shopping in the streets and parking lots of greater New York for transportation, he always went for the sign of the MD plate.

Today, however, Kelp had a second criterion to include in his search, which was that he needed not just a car and not just a doctor’s car, but a large car currently owned by a doctor. This wasn’t because the car would be carrying five travelers, but because one of the travelers would be Tiny.

It was, therefore, a distinct pleasure to him when, the morning after the meeting at the O. J., while roving the outer reaches of long-term parking out at Kennedy International Airport, a place where you’re pretty much guaranteed to have a few days’ head start if you choose a vehicle with no dust on it, he saw ahead of him a Buick Roadmaster Estate, seven or eight years old, an antique the day it was built, a nine-passenger station wagon with not only room enough inside for a bowling team but room enough for that team to bowl. And proudly below that broad rear window and door, a … yes! MD plate.

This grand vehicle was a color not seen in nature, nor much of anywhere else except certain products of Detroit. It was a metallic shimmering kind of not-chartreuse, not-gold, not-silver, not-mauve, with just a hint of not-maroon. It was in effect a rendering in enamel of a restaurant’s wine list descriptions. But even better, from Kelp’s point of view, the Roadmaster was dust-free.

It’s amazing how many people don’t want to carry their parking lot ticket with them when they travel, preferring to “hide” it behind the sun visor instead. Even some doctors. Kelp was happy to pay the two-day parking fee, explaining to the ticket-taker’s surprised look, “Emergency at the hospital.”

“Oh, too bad.”

Kelp took his change, took the Van Wyck Expressway toward the city, and while stopped by the monorail construction phoned the troops. “I’m on my way,” he told them, not completely accurately.

Still, they didn’t have that long to wait, at Ninth Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, before Kelp slid the Roadmaster in at the curb next to them. Once he got there, it didn’t take them long to sort themselves out. Chester and Stan, of course, had to ride up front with Kelp, because they’d be the drivers on the day and Chester knew how to find Hall’s place. Tiny, of course, had to sit on the back seat; all of the back seat. And Dortmunder, of course, had to open the rear door and climb over the tailgate and sit on the backward-facing final seat, as though he’d been bad in class.

“Been waiting long?” Kelp asked, after everyone was in and the door closed.

“A while,” rumbled Tiny from behind him.

“They waved down a couple real doctors,” Chester said, between Kelp and Stan. “I think one of them’s gonna send a bill.”

“We’ll fight him to the Supreme Court,” Kelp said, and accelerated to and through the Lincoln Tunnel and across New Jersey without looking at it, and halfway across Pennsylvania.

•

“There it is,” Chester said.

“There what is?” Kelp asked.

“The compound. Hall’s land, it started just back there.”

Tiny said, “Pull off, let’s look at this.”

“Right,” Dortmunder said, from way in the back.

This was a fairly straight county road, rolling along with the low hills to either side, some of it farmed and some of it forested. This stretch was forested on both sides. The right shoulder was wide enough for a car to pull off, but just beyond the shoulder was an old low stone wall that suggested this land too had at one time been farmed, or at least settled. Beyond the wall was second-growth forest, tall but skinny-trunked trees with a lot of bramble and shrubbery underneath.

“This is it here,” Chester said. “The main entrance—well, the only entrance now—is a couple miles farther on.”

Kelp peered past Chester and Stan at the empty forest. “Where’s the security start? Down by the entrance?”

“No, it’s here,” Chester said. “Not right out by the road, in behind the wall about ten feet. Stan, open the window, would you?”

So Stan, next to the door, rolled the window down and said, “I don’t see anything.”

“You can’t see the wires,” Chester told him, “but you can see the uprights.” He pointed past Stan’s nose at the trees. “See them?”

Stan sighted along Chester’s forearm, closing one eye. “Oh, yeah,” he said.

Kelp squinted, looking past Chester and Stan, glance roaming among the trees; then all at once he realized he was looking at a slender black metal pole, about six feet tall. Off to the left, a little farther, a little farther, there was another one. “I see them,” he said. “Very discreet.”

“They didn’t want it to look like a penitentiary or something,” Chester explained.

Dortmunder, from way back there, said, “I don’t see them.”

Tiny said, “What kinda wire?”

“Electric,” Chester said. “Not enough to kill you, but enough to make you go away. Like a deer fence. But if a wire gets broken, there’s a signal in the guardhouse, tells them exactly where, between which two posts. And there’s lights in the trees, you can’t see them from here, but if the wire gets broken at night, they can switch the lights on, it’s like high noon in there.”

“I don’t see them,” Dortmunder said.

Stan said, “Just one wire?”

“No, three,” Chester said. “At two feet, four feet, and six feet.”

“Hey,” Dortmunder called. “I’m back here, remember me?”

Kelp looked in the mirror and saw him way back there, waving for attention. “Oh, hi, John,” he said. “Almost forgot about you.”

“I noticed that,” Dortmunder said. “What I don’t notice is these posts you’re all talking about.”

“They’re right there,” Tiny said, and waved a paw at the woods.

“I don’t see them,” Dortmunder insisted.

Chester said, “Okay, John, you and I can get out, I’ll show it to you.”

So that’s what they did. Stan had to get out first, to let Chester out; then he leaned against the side of the car, leaving the door open, while the other two stepped over the stone wall and walked in among the trees. The occasional vehicle went by, mostly pickup trucks, but nobody paid any attention to the parked car or the strolling men.

With the door open, Kelp could hear Chester as he said, “Closer in, they’ve got motion sensors, but not way over here. So we can walk right up to it. See it, John? See it there? Stop, you’re gonna walk into it!”

“What? There’s—I can’t—Oh, this! It’s metal!”

“Sure,” Chester said, and pointed away to the right. “Metal poles. See them? Every so often, all the way to the cornfield back there, that’s where Hall’s property stops.”

“I thought it was gonna be wood,” Dortmunder said. “I was looking for wood.”

“They did it in metal.”

“Yeah, sure, I get it.”

Dortmunder now squinted off to the right, holding a hand up to his brow to shade his eyes even though he stood under a whole lot of trees in full leaf. He said, “So then it makes the turn and goes along next to the cornfield, is that it?”