So Dortmunder went around the table the other way, to take the seat at Kelp’s right, as Kelp said, “Hey, John. John Dortmunder, this is Jim Green.”

Dortmunder said, “So we’re using our own names, are we?”

“Some of us are,” Kelp said.

Jim Green stood up to extend a hand past Kelp as he offered a bland smile and said, “How are you today?”

“Terrific,” Dortmunder said, and shook the hand, which didn’t do a whole lot of shaking back.

Kelp said, “I’ll explain things when the other two get here.”

“Sure.”

Dortmunder sat, then looked past Kelp to remind himself what Jim Green looked like. Oh, yeah, right. He poured himself a glass of “bourbon” from the bottle on the tray at Kelp’s right elbow, then leaned forward again to see what Green was drinking. Beer, no salt.

But here came the beer with salt, through the doorway, saying, “I’d of been here sooner, only I started up Eleventh Avenue, and they got a whole shipment of BMWs comin in to the dealer there, nothin but trucks full of high-priced cars all over the place, backin into the windows, backin into each other, backin into the cabs all over there, so then I went over to the West Side Highway, and there’s a cruise ship on strike at the docks there, pickets in Hawaiian shirts, handin out pink leaflets, whado they want with a livin wage, they got room and board on a ship, so I did a U-ey and went all the way down to Forty-second, and come up Tenth, and the way it’s goin in midtown, I think next time, I’ll take the Holland over to Jersey, up to the bridge, come down here. Either that or Staten Island.” By then, he was seated, beer and salt in front of him, to Dortmunder’s right, and he nodded and said, “Hi, John. Hi, Andy.”

Dortmunder said, “Well, you made it, anyway.”

“Yeah, at the very least.”

Kelp said, “Stan Murch, this is Jim Green.”

“Oh, hi,” Stan said. “I didn’t notice you over there.”

“How are you today,” Green said, and Tiny Bulcher came in, carrying a glass of red liquid and frowning at some personal dissatisfaction of his own. Green looked at him. “Is he one of you?”

Kelp said, “Tiny Bulcher, this is Jim Green.”

“Harya,” Tiny said.

“How are you today,” Green said, but more warily than before.

“I’m still okay,” Tiny said, and shut the door, then sat at the place in front of it, facing the rest of them.

“Now we’re all here,” Kelp said, “and Jim’s gonna tell us what he can do to give us clean identities.”

“Right,” Green said, and could be seen to forcibly remove his attention from Tiny. “Like I told Andy,” he said, “a whole new identity, perfect and forever, is a very expensive proposition, and not easy, and I can’t do it even once as a favor. But I got some lightly used identities that I can adjust for you guys if it’s just short term, but there’s the slight risk, and Andy says you’ll chance it, that the real owner might show up. Or, worse, somebody that doesn’t like the real owner could show up.”

Dortmunder said, “I don’t get that. How does that work?”

So Green explained it, and then Stan said, “There’s something I don’t follow in there.”

So Green explained it again, and Tiny said, “Are you talking about some bozo finds us or finds the paperwork?”

So Green explained it again, and Dortmunder said, “If you say it works, it works, let’s let it go at that.”

“Thank you,” Green said.

Kelp said, “So what now?”

“Now,” Green said, and lifted from the floor beside his chair a big black squared-off leather case of the kind photographers use when they’re away from home, “we start assembling the identities.” And he placed the case on the table in front of himself, folded the top back, and it actually was, at least in part, a photographer’s case, with a camera and some lenses and lights, but there were also other little dark machines in there, tucked together very neatly, that could have been intended to do anything from trim your toenails to encourage a confession.

Tiny, not sounding pleased, said, “Whadawe got here?”

“I need stuff for your new identities,” Green explained. “Photos, fingerprints, eye and palm scans, a swab for DNA.”

Stan said, “Without even a phone call to my lawyer?”

Kelp said, “It’s okay, Stan, it just stays with him.”

Green said, “Also, I’m gonna tape-record little bios from you, where you grew up, where you went to school, any jobs, specialties, scars or things like that I wouldn’t see, stuff like that. The closer I can get the new you to the old you, the less you got to memorize.”

Tiny said, “Dortmunder? This is what we’re doing?”

“He’s Andy’s friend,” Dortmunder said.

“Well, he’s Anne Marie’s friend,” Kelp said, “but he’s okay, Tiny, I’m pretty sure.”

Green smiled, friendly with them all. “You really can trust me,” he said.

Tiny considered him. “No,” he decided. “I don’t have to trust you. I just have to find you, if I want to, and you got found once, so you could get found twice. If we want to. So go ahead.” Turning his massive head to the left, he said, “This is my good profile.”

22

WHEN HENRY COOPER WAS a young man, he was a ne’er-do-well, a layabout, an idler, according to his father, Henry Sr., and it was true. He loafed through high school and much of college, collecting Fs and Incompletes as though they were merit badges, until when he was twenty, Henry Sr. had had enough:

“You will pass your four courses this semester,” he announced, “and I mean all four of them, or your allowance is stopped, your schooling is stopped, the lease on your automobile is stopped, the rent on your apartment is stopped, and all legal fees you incur for whatever reason will henceforward be paid by you. Is that understood?”

Well, in a way. The threat was understood right enough, but what to do about it was far from understood. Pass his courses, all four of them, the very first time? He was used to failing at least twice per subject before enough of the material could wedge itself into his inattentive brain so that he could eke out a D and move on to the next crop of failure. And yet, he couldn’t survive a minute without Henry Sr.’s cash, and he damn well knew it. What to do?

At this time, Henry was enrolled in a huge Midwestern land grant university, thousands upon thousands of enrolled students, hundreds in every lecture hall, and all of it to cover for the school’s football team, which was the actual product being manufactured there. The football team won games, the alumni therefore gave to the university endowment, and the school sailed sunnily on.

Henry was at this place instead of an Ivy League school closer to home, home being a well-off suburb outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, because (a) his father wasn’t going to throw away that much money, and (b) no Ivy League school would have touched Henry Cooper with a rake.

So, given the general lack of rigor in this football factory, it shouldn’t have been that hard for Henry to scrape along somehow, except that he could just never pay attention. He wasn’t stupid; he was merely disengaged. He didn’t have anything else in particular to do, but he also had not the slightest interest in what he found himself doing (but had to do, to keep supporting himself with Henry Sr.’s money), so how was he to survive this draconian threat?

The hugeness of the university is what saved him. Here and there among his fellow undergraduates were those who were both very good in a particular subject and also impecunious. Henry found four such who were willing to write his papers for him and take his exams for him in the large anonymous examination halls, in return for some small share of Henry Sr.’s cash. Every college student in America, prior to legal drinking age, learns how to manufacture fake ID, so it was nothing for Henry to provide his team with student passes featuring his name and their faces. “Now, don’t ace all this stuff,” he warned them. “I want to be a C student; my father wouldn’t believe anything better.”