7

IT WAS JUST simple woolgathering, that's all. Stan Murch had been driving for twenty minutes across the original-equipment neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, enjoying the massive delicacy of this dark green Lincoln Navigator, equipped with everything, when it suddenly occurred to him that if this vehicle came with everything, that meant it came with everything.

Yes. Unobtrusive on the dashboard, because it wasn't at the moment in use, was the little screen of the Global Positioning System. This was a car, unfortunately, that knew where it was. And would tell.

That was the snag lately. If you grabbed some old clunker, it didn't have enough resale value to be worth the risk involved in taking it away from its former owner, but a shiny new, valuable piece of tin was more than likely to be leashed to a satellite. And there was no known way to jam a satellite.

That's the problem, Stan thought. The law's got all the labs.

How long had he been in possession of this bigmouth? Twenty minutes by the dashboard clock — no, twenty-one.

He'd picked up this untrustworthy beauty at a seafood restaurant in Sea Gate at 1:27, and it was now 1:48. Was the original purchaser of this vehicle an early luncher or a late luncher? Once he completed his piscatory blowout and moved from restaurant to parking lot to find an empty space where his wheels were supposed to be, how long would it take to get the law on the case? And then how long before that nosy satellite up in the sky, the one whose weight on the top of his head was now giving Stan a migraine, would be telling every cop in the five boroughs that the dark green Lincoln Navigator they all so much wanted to meet was at this very instant east-bound on the Belt Parkway, just past Aqueduct racetrack, with JFK Airport coming up on the right? Thirty seconds.

I gotta get outa here, Stan informed himself, even though he knew he already knew that. I do not want to be on a highway, he advised himself. Yeah, yeah, shut up, he snapped at himself, getting a little edgy, here comes Lefferts Boulevard.

Slow damn traffic around JFK all the time. Nobody wants to take a train to the plane, that's the problem, one form of tubular transport a day is enough. Still, the exit ramp did creep closer on the right; Stan signaled — always be law-abiding, when possible — and onto Lefferts Boulevard he swung, headed north into South Ozone Park. Three minutes later, he pulled to a stop next to the yellow curb of a bus zone, pulled two tissues from the Navigator's dispenser, wiped the steering wheel and whatever other parts he might have touched, and exited.

And just in time, too. He'd walked barely two minutes farther along Lefferts when a cop cruiser pulled in beside him as he waited for traffic to stop or the light to change, whichever came first. The passenger cop, a blonde woman who got her iron supply by eating nails for breakfast, said, "You. Sir." The «you» was a little more believable than the "sir."

Stan kept an innocent look for just such occasions as this. Strapping it on, he said, "Yes?"

"D'you park that car back there?"

Stan frowned, looking back toward but not directly at the Navigator. "Car? What car?"

"That isn't your car?"

"What, that Lincoln?" Stan chuckled, which was part of the innocent look. "Don't I wish. I'm on my way up to the subway."

"I thought you were the one just got outa that car," the cop persisted.

All right, he'd have to give her more. He said, "Wait a minute, do I look Chinese?"

"No, you don't," she said. "So what?"

"Just before I got there," Stan told her, "there was a Chinese guy stopped that car, got out, went up this way. I remember thinking, 'He's gonna get a ticket, that's a bus zone. "

"That wasn't you." Still skeptical.

"He passed me," Stan explained. "Moving fast. Listen, the light's with me now, okay?"

"Go on," she said, but she wasn't happy about it.

So he went on, headed for the subway as he'd said, because maybe today wasn't a good day for private wheels, and damn if, three minutes later, she wasn't back again, pulling in next to a fire hydrant, both cops getting out of the car, hitching their gunbelts, the driver male, skinny, bored.

It was still the woman doing the talking: "You. Sir."

"Hello, again," Stan said. "Still on my way to the subway," he said, and pointed up the boulevard. Just a couple blocks to go.

"Tell us more about this Chinese guy," she said.

So then he understood he'd made another mistake. He'd given her the Chinese guy to distract her, throw a little fairy dust in her eyes, and now the Chinaman was coming back to bite him on the ass, because guess what? The first time, they were only interested in an illegally parked car, but since then the satellite has been at its busybody work, and now they've got a stolen car, and Stan has already declared himself a witness who saw the perp. Crap — a double scoop, please.

"Well," he said, picking his words carefully now that it was too late, "I don't know he was Chinese, exactly. Oriental, though. I think. Could be Japanese, Burmese. Maybe Thai."

"Dressed?"

"Oh, sure."

"Dressed how?"

"Oh." This part he could get right. "Kind of like me," he said. "You know, normal. Chinos and a light T-shirt. I don't think his T-shirt said anything." Stan's, in fact, said NASCAR, with smoke coming out of tailpipes on all the letters.

The woman cop gave this shirt a flat look, then said, "And which way did this Oriental person go?" She was still skeptical about the existence of the Oriental person, but so long as she contented herself with sarcasm, Stan didn't care.

"Up to the corner and turned right," he said, and pivoted to point back to where he'd come from. "Back there, that would have been."

"How old—"

The cell in Stan's pocket ripped off the race-starting jingle, and the woman cop gave him a severe look. "Sorry," he said, took out the cell, and managed to button it before it announced the second race. "Yeah?"

It was John Dortmunder's voice — Stan recognized it right away — saying, "You wanna make a meet tonight? You and your mom."

"Oh, hi, John," Stan said, with a bigger smile than he'd usually offer John, put on mostly for the cops' benefit. "Oh, you wanna play poker again, huh?"

"No, I—"

Stan wasn't sure whether the cops could hear what John was saying, so it would be better if he didn't say it. Interrupting he said, "Wanna win your money back, huh? Fat chance. Listen, I'm here helping a couple cops with a car in a no-parking zone—"

"Nk."

"— so maybe we could talk later."

"You gonna be in jail tonight?"

"I don't see why, John."

"O.J. at ten," John said, and broke the connection.

So did Stan. "Friendly game," he assured the cop. "Nickel-and-dime."

She nodded. "May I see some ID?"

Stan frowned, honestly sorry not to be more helpful. "Gee, I don't think so," he said.

"No?" Skepticism doubled, she said, "You got something to hide?"

"Not that I know of," Stan said. "But I don't believe I have to show ID to walk on the sidewalk, and what else am I doing?"

"You're a witness."

"To a car in a no-parking zone?"

"To a stolen car in a no-parking zone."

"Oh," Stan said, showing surprise. "In that case, I'm not a witness at all. I forget everything. Sorry I can't be more help. Listen, I don't wanna miss my subway. You probably want to get back to your evidence before it's towed."

And he walked very briskly indeed to the Ozone Park — Lefferts Boulevard subway station, end of the A line, which, before it reaches its other terminus, in the Bronx, burrows through four of the five boroughs. But we don't have to go there.