"Okay."

"Okay. Now, the first thing we do, we're gonna learn how to remove the cover." Kelp bent over the instruction manual. "You will notice four Phillips-head screws in the corners of the cover."

"Uh huh."

"You will remove them in the following sequence. Any other sequence, the alarm turns on."

"Pretty sneaky," Judson commented.

"All's fair in love and theft. The sequence is, top right, bottom left, top left, bottom right. What'd I say?"

Judson repeated it to him, and Kelp said, "Good. Do it."

Judson chose a screwdriver from the toolkit, then hesitated over the alarm. "If I do something wrong, will it make a lot of noise?"

"What, that one? No, it can't, it isn't plugged into anything. Go ahead."

So Judson removed the screws, then followed further directions to remove the cover, revealing a very complicated interior apparently operated by many tiny computer chips.

At this point, Kelp handed him a six-inch length of fairly thick wire with alligator clips on each end. "Your electric feed is from that black box on the upper left. Follow the green wire."

"Uh huh."

"Clip it at the other end."

"Okay."

"Your phone connection is the sheathed black wire comes up from the bottom, fastens to the works with a nut over bolt. Undo the nut."

Judson found pliers in the toolkit and undid the nut.

"Bend the phone wire back, put the other alligator clip on the bolt."

"Got it."

"Now, there should be a red button in there, it's the manual override."

"It must be that one."

"When you push that, you just unlocked the garage door. Go ahead, push it."

Feeling a little silly, because this alarm wasn't attached to a garage door or anything else, Judson pushed the red button. "Done."

"Fine. Now, when we do it, you would put the cover back on, and you wouldn't have to worry about the sequence because at this point the alarm is out of the loop. But this time, don't put the cover on yet. Instead, put everything back the way it was. Exactly like it was."

Judson did that, and then Kelp said, "So, do you wanna run through it one more time before we go?"

"Well, it seems pretty simple," Judson said. "I don't see a problem with it."

"What you gotta remember," Kelp told him, "if you get one thing wrong with the real alarm, you're gonna suddenly be reenacting New Year's Eve on Times Square."

"I know how to be careful," Judson assured him.

"That's good," Kelp said. "Because, the thing is, you're gonna be doing the real one in the dark."

With the rented Ford Econoline van from a place on Eleventh Avenue in the Forties, and with the alarm back in its cardboard box on the floor in the back of the van, out they headed for Long Island. Once through the Midtown Tunnel, Kelp pulled over to the side of the toll plaza and said, "Get in back and practice some more."

So Judson unalarmed and alarmed the alarm all across the Long Island Expressway as evening turned into night, so that he gradually did learn to do it in the dark. They drove like that all the way out to his former home, just into Suffolk County, where he introduced Kelp to his bewildered parents, who had been briefed in advance by Judson but still didn't get it. So they simply stood and watched as their third child of seven — not that big a deal, then — and his shifty-looking companion — Kelp was never at his best on Long Island — carted out of the house everything of Judson's he thought he'd need in his new life, including, at Kelp's suggestion, his bed linen. "There's furnished and there's furnished," Kelp pointed out.

On the return, with the back of the van pretty full, Judson got to sit up front. Also, "The later the better," as Kelp phrased it, so on driving back to the city, coming through the Mid-town Tunnel just before midnight, they went first to his new residence to cart everything upstairs, where many hands — four, anyway — did make light work.

Then, not long after one in the morning, they drove uptown and through Central Park, then stopped at the curb on the park side of Fifth Avenue in the Seventies, so they could get Judson and the alarm both up on the roof, which was more curving and slippery than it looked. However, Judson held on tight and Kelp drove carefully, and in no time at all they were making the turn — slowly — onto Sixty-eighth Street, where Kelp stopped, then backed around into the driveway indentation and stopped with the rear doors of the van snug up against the garage door.

Kelp stayed in the van, in case it should be necessary to leave earlier than expected, while Judson knelt in front of the alarm and reached for the toolkit. Windows loomed all around him, but every one of them was dark. He noticed that he had, in fact, more illumination from streetlights out here than he'd had inside the van.

Proper preparation is all. When he at last did get to the job, it was a snap.

40

THE KEY LARGO HOLIDAY INN, where the original steamboat the African Queen used in the movie is kept on display in the parking lot, is such a nexus of popular American culture that it practically shimmers all over with irony — an effect less noticeable at just after midnight, when the rattletrap old Chevy pickup truck turned in from U.S. Route 1, Preston Fareweather in the passenger seat, his rescuer at the wheel. Along the way, Preston had lost his white hat with the chinstrap and his flip-flops, but still retained his bright red bikini bathing suit and his Rolex. And his sense of entitlement.

"I wonder if that's for sale," the bonefisherman said, looking at the African Queen.

"I doubt it."

"Why not? Why other would you put it out there?"

"You can ask inside," Preston said. "Come along with me."

"You bet," said the bonefisherman, whose name was Porfirio.

Their hours together had not been entirely happy ones.

Initially, they were being chased, by people, boats, limos, and who knew what all. When Preston had last looked back, after that bridge had spanked him, the three pursuers had stood on the bridge, two of them pointing at him and one talking on a cell phone. Then they were out of sight.

The ribbon of water Preston and Porfirio moved on snaked this way and that through alternate areas of lush subtropical flora and dank, salty sand. Steering through it, Porfirio said, "You gimme the watch, man, I'll drop you where you want."

"No, I don't think so," Preston said. He well knew that he was old and fat and out of shape while Porfirio was none of these, but he also knew he was of the class born to lead and Porfirio was emphatically not that, either. The sheer weight of superiority was, it seemed to Preston, all the armament he would need in this situation. "If I give you my watch at this point," he explained, "you'll drop me where you want."

"Maybe I do that anyway," Porfirio suggested, with that sneaky grin he occasionally flashed.

"I think not, my man," Preston told him.

"Your whu?"

"We will come to an accommodation," Preston promised him, "but not yet. I take it you have a land vehicle somewhere around here."

"A wha?"

"An automobile. A car. A thing with wheels and an engine."

"I know what a car is." The smirk had been wiped from Porfirio's face.

"And you must have one."

"I got a pickup," Porfirio said, being sulky.

"Shall we go to it?"

The smirk was back, Porfirio having recovered his self-confidence. "Oh, sure," he said. "It's back there with that limo and those guys. You want we should turn around and go back there? We could do that. We got a little wide spot up here, we could turn around. That what you want?"

"You know better than that." Exasperated, Preston snapped his fingers at the fellow and said, "What's your name?"