"Well well," he said. "Well well well well well well well. Twenty thousand dollars. Sixty thousand dollars. Eighty thousand dollars. Great lumps of Manna out of Heaven." Taking his ring of keys out of the ignition, he locked the glove compartment, then climbed from the Mercedes, walked around it, found his revolver in the grass, and brought it back to the car. Then he drove home, where Brandy slobbered on his trousers, and he found Maureen in the family room, asleep before the TV, on which a suntanned actor chuckled meaninglessly, substituting for the substitute for Johnny Carson. Leaving Maureen where she was, absently patting Brandy, Mologna went through the house to his den, shut Brandy out, and phoned the FBI in New York. "Let me talk to Zachary," he said.

"He's home for the day."

"Put me through to him at home."

They didn't want to, but Mologna possessed a heavy, brooding, humorless authority that no minor clerk could stand up to for long, so fairly soon Zachary himself was on the line, sounding irritable: "Yes, Mologna? What is it at this hour? You found the ring?"

"A foreign fella in a ski mask offered me a bribe tonight," Mologna said. "If I would turn the ring over to him once I got it."

"A bribe?" Zachary sounded not so much astonished as bewildered, as though the very word were brand-new to him.

"Twenty thousand cash in an envelope. He put it in my glove compartment himself, with his own bare hands. I have it locked in there—I'll turn it over to the fingerprint people in the mornin."

"Twenty thousand dollars?"

"And sixty thousand more when I give them the ring."

"And you didn't take it?"

Mologna said not a word. He just sat there and let Zachary listen to his own monstrous question, until at last Zachary cleared his throat, mumbled something, coughed, and said, "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"Sure not," Mologna said. "Sorry to disturb you so late, but I wanted to report this right away. Should the good Lord in His infinite wisdom and mercy see fit to call me to His bosom this very evenin, I wouldn't want anyone to come across that envelope and think I meant to keep the dirty money."

"Oh, of course not," Zachary said. "Of course not." He still sounded more dazed than amazed.

"Good night to you, now," Mologna said. "Sleep well."

"Yes. Yes."

Mologna hung up and sat a moment in his comfortable den with the antique guns mounted on the wall, as Zachary's blurted question circled again in his mind: "And you didn't take it?" No, he didn't take it. No, he wouldn't take it. What did the man think he was? You don't get to be top cop in the great city of New York by takin bribes from strangers.

18

May was looking worried when Dortmunder got home, which he didn't at first notice because he was feeling irritable. "Cops stopped me twice," he said, shrugging out of his coat. "Show ID, where you going, where you been. And Stan didn't show, he was arrested. Complete mess everywhere." Then he saw her expression, through the spiraling ribbons of cigarette smoke, and said, "What's up?"

"Did you watch the news?" The question seemed heavy with unexpressed meaning.

"What news?"

"On television."

"How could I?" He was still irritable. "I been spending all my time with cops and subways."

"What was the name of that jewelry store you went to last night?"

"You can't take the watch back," he said.

"John, what was the name?"

Dortmunder tried to remember. "Something Greek. Something khaki."

"Sit down, John," she said. "I'll get you a drink."

But he didn't sit down. Her strange manner had finally broken through his annoyance, and he followed her through the apartment to the kitchen, frowning, saying, "What's going on?"

"Drink first."

Dortmunder stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her make a stiff bourbon on the rocks. He said, "You could tell me while you're doing that."

"All right. The store was Skoukakis Credit Jewelers."

"That's right." He was surprised. "That's just exactly what it was."

"And do you remember the people who came in and fussed around and then left?"

"Clear as a bell."

"They were the ones," May told him, coming over to hand him his drink, "who'd just stolen the Byzantine Fire."

Dortmunder frowned at her. "The what?"

"Don't you read the papers or anything?" Irritation made her puff out redoubled clouds of cigarette smoke. "That famous ruby that was stolen out at the airport," she said, "the one the fuss is all about."

"Oh, yeah, the ruby." Dortmunder still didn't make the connection. He sipped at his drink. "What about it?"

"You've got it."

Dortmunder stood there, the glass up by his mouth, and looked over it at May. He said, "Say what?"

"Those men stole the Byzantine Fire," May told him. "They put it in the safe in that jewelry store. You took it."

"I took the—I've got the Byzantine Fire?"

"Yes," said May.

"No," said Dortmunder. "I don't want it."

"You've got it."

Dortmunder filled his mouth with bourbon—too much bourbon, as it developed, to swallow. May pounded his back for a while, as bourbon dribbled out of his nose and eyes and ears, and then he handed her the glass, said hoarsely, "More" and went away to the bedroom.

When May left the kitchen with the fresh drink, Dortmunder was just leaving the bedroom with the plastic bag of loot. Silently, solemnly, they walked to the living room and sat next to one another on the sofa. May handed Dortmunder his drink, and he took a normal-sized sip. Then he emptied the plastic bag onto the coffee table, bracelets and watches all a-tumble. "I don't even know what it looks like," he said.

"I do. There was a picture on—" She picked up a ring out of the scrumble of jewelry. "That's it."

Dortmunder took it, held it between thumb and forefinger, turned it this way and that. "I remember this," he said. "I almost left it behind."

"You should have."

"At first I figured it was too big to be real. Then I figured, why put glass in the safe? So I brought it along." Dortmunder turned it over and over, peering at it, seeing the light glint and shimmer in the depths of the stone. "The Byzantine Fire," he said.

"That's right."

Dortmunder turned to her, his eyes filled with wonder. "The biggest haul of my career," he said, "and I didn't even know it."

"Congratulations." There was irony in her voice.

Dortmunder didn't notice; he was caught up in this astonishing success. Again he studied the ring. "I wonder what I could get for this," he said.

"Twenty years," May suggested. "Killed. Hunted down like a deer."

"Um," said Dortmunder. "I was forgetting."

"There's a police blitz on," May reminded him. "Also, according to the TV, a lot of foreign guerrillas and terrorists want that ring." She pointed at it.

"And people on the street," Dortmunder said thoughtfully, "they're pretty teed off right now at whoever has this thing."

"You."

"I can't believe it." Dortmunder slipped the ring onto the third finger of his left hand, stretched the hand out at arm's length, and squinted at it. "Jeez, it's gaudy," he said.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Do with it." That question hadn't occurred to him. He tugged the ring, to remove it from his finger. "I don't know," he said.

"You can't fence it."

"You can't fence anything, everybody's shook up by all this cop business." He kept tugging at the ring.

"You can't keep it, John."

"I don't want to keep it." He twisted the ring this way and that.

"What's the matter?"

"It won't—"

"You can't get it off?"

"My knuckle, it won't—"