"Okay."

Cappelletti nodded his heavy head. Black hair stood in his ears, his nostrils; lines of discontent were on his cheeks. "Klopzik tells us," he said, "the street people are unhappy about the blitz."

Mologna smiled a carnivore's smile. "Good," he said.

"They're so unhappy," Cappelletti went on, "they're organizing."

Mologna's smile turned quizzical. "Revolution? From the underclass?"

"No," said Cappelletti. "They're helping us look."

Mologna didn't get it for a few seconds, and then when he did get it, he didn't want it. "The crooks?" he demanded. "The punks, the riffraff, they're goin to help us? Help us?"

"They want the heat off," Cappelletti said. "They figure, once we've got the ruby back, we'll ease up."

"They're right."

"I know that. They know it. So they're getting together, they're looking through their own people, they're gonna find the ruby. And the word I got, they're so teed off about this thing, they're not only gonna give us the ruby, they'll give us the guy that's got it."

Mologna stared. "Tony," he said, "I will tell you the Virgin Mary's own truth. If any other man but you came into this office and told me such a thing, I'd call him a liar and a dope addict. But I know you, Tony, I know your great flaw has always been your unimpeachable reliability, and therefore I believe you. It's a mark of the respect and admiration with which I have always beheld you, Tony. And now I want hundreds and hundreds of details."

"Klopzik came to Abel last night," Cappelletti said, "wanting to know what clues we had in the Byzantine Fire theft. Abel asked him some questions back, and they came to a meeting of the minds, and Klopzik said the headquarters of this group—"

"Headquarters! And I suppose they've got aerial reconnaissance as well."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Cappelletti said, unmoved. "It was in the back room of a bar up on Amsterdam. So we raided it and brought in eleven men, every one of them with a sheet as long as both your arms, and once our interrogators suggested cooperation might be possible, damn if all eleven didn't tell the same story as Klopzik. So we gave them our nihil obstat and our imprimatur and put them back on the street."

One nice thing about the cops—no matter how diverse their ethnic backgrounds, they could always talk Catholic at one another. "Just so you didn't give them a plenary indulgence," Mologna said, and chuckled.

Cappelletti wasn't very lightfooted when it came to humor. Dropping the religious parallels, he said, "We got a string on them, we know where they are."

"And they're siftin the underworld, are they?"

Cappelletti nodded. "That's just what they're doing."

Mologna chuckled again. After his first indignation at the idea, he found himself increasingly amused by it. Leon had been right after all—this time he was enjoying Tony Cappelletti's presence. "Can you imagine our perpetrator," he said, "tryin out his fake alibi on those boyos?"

Even Cappelletti smiled at that. "I'm very hopeful, Francis," he said.

"It's lovely," agreed Mologna. "But, Tony, this has got to stay within the Department. None of our FBIers or state troopers or all them other malarkeys get to hear a word of it."

"Of course not." Since Cappelletti looked indignant all the time, it was hard for him to express it when he really was indignant.

"And bring me this Klopzik," Mologna said. "Quietly and secretly and quickly. We should get to know our new partners."

24

Dortmunder awoke to the distant sound of a ringing phone and found his left hand in his mouth. "Ptak!" he said, expelling it, then sat up, made a face around his bad-tasting mouth, and listened to the murmur of May's voice in the living room. After a minute the lady herself appeared in the doorway, saying, "Andy Kelp on the phone."

"As if I didn't have trouble enough," Dortmunder said. But he got out of bed and plodded into the living room in his underwear and spoke into the phone: "Yeah?"

"Listen, John," Kelp said, "I got good news."

"Tell me quick."

"I'm not using the answering machine any more."

"Oh, yeah? How come?"

"Well…" An uncharacteristic hesitancy came into Kelp's voice. "The fact of the matter is, I was burgled."

"You were?"

"You remember, my message on the machine said I wasn't home. What I figure, somebody called and heard me say I wasn't home, so he came right over and boosted some things."

Dortmunder tried not to smile. "That's too bad," he said.

"Including the answering machine," Kelp said.

Dortmunder closed his eyes. He put his hand very tight over his mouth, and practically no sound at all came through.

"I could get another one," Kelp went on, "you know, from my access, like I got the first one, but I figure—"

Another voice, high-pitched and very loud, suddenly yelled, "Your father's a fairy! Your father's a fairy!"

Dortmunder jerked away from the screaming phone, no longer distracted at all by the desire to laugh. Cautiously nearing the instrument again, he heard what seemed now to be three or four shrill childish voices, giving out with some sort of nursery rhyme or something, with words that sounded like, "Hasn't got a lump fish. Didn't do his dump dish. Make her get her plump wish—" Through which Kelp's voice could be heard yelling, "You kids get off that phone! You get away from there or I'll come up and getcha!"

The nursery rhyme ended in giggles and cackles, stopping abruptly with a loud click. Dortmunder, enured by now, said into the phone, "You're gone, right?"

"No, no, John!" Kelp sounded out of breath. "Don't hang up, I'm still here."

"I don't really want to know what that was," Dortmunder said, "but I guess you'll tell me."

"It's my roof phone," Kelp said.

"Your roof phone? You live in an apartment house!"

"Yeah, well, I like to go up on the roof," Kelp said, "when the sun's shining, catch a few rays on the bod. And I don't want to—"

"Miss any calls," Dortmunder said.

"That's right. So I ran a line up, a jack, I got a phone I can bring up there and plug it in. But I guess I musta forgot to bring it back down last night."

"I guess you—"

Click: "You've got stinky un-derwear, ding-gles in your pu-bic hair—"

"Enough," said Dortmunder, and hung up and went away to the bathroom to brush the taste of his hand out of his mouth. And he was finishing breakfast half an hour later when the front doorbell rang, May answered, and Andy Kelp himself came into the kitchen, a wiry, bright-eyed, sharp-nosed fellow carrying a telephone. He seemed as cheerful as ever. "Whadaya say, John?"

"Have some coffee," Dortmunder told him. "Have a beer."

Kelp showed him the phone. "Your new kitchen phone," he said.

"No," said Dortmunder.

"Save you steps, save you time, save you energy." Kelp looked around the room. "Right there by the refrigerator," he decided.

"I don't want it, Andy."

"You'll never know how you got along without it," Kelp assured him. "I'll have it in place in fifteen minutes. You give it a trial period, a week, couple of weeks, then if you still don't like it I'll be happy—"

Kelp went on talking as Dortmunder got to his feet, walked around the kitchen table, and took the phone out of his hands. Then Kelp stopped talking and looked on open-mouthed as Dortmunder carried the phone to the kitchen window and dropped it into the airshaft.

"Hey!" said Kelp.

"I told you—" (distant crash) " — I don't want it. Have some coffee."

"Aw, John," Kelp said, coming over to look out the window. "That wasn't nice."

"You got access, right? A whole warehouse. So what I'm doing, I'm making a point. You prefer beer?"