"It's too early in the day," Kelp said, giving up on the phone. Turning away from the window, regaining his cheerful manner, he said, "I'll take the coffee."

"Fine."

Dortmunder was putting water on to boil when Kelp said, "D'jou hear the latest about that ruby?"

Dortmunder's stomach instantly became paved with concrete. Watching the pot to see if it would boil, he cleared his throat and said, "Ruby?"

"The Byzantine Fire. You know."

"Sure," Dortmunder said. He put the spoon in the instant coffee jar, but it kept hitting against the sides and knocking all the coffee off—tink-tink-tink-tink—before he could get it out. In an effort to be devious, he said, "They found it?"

"Not yet," Kelp said, "but they will. Very quick now."

"Oh, yeah?" Dortmunder emptied the instant coffee jar into the cup and spooned all but one measure back; it was the only way he could do it. "How come is that?"

"Cause we're helping," Kelp said.

Dortmunder poured boiling water on the counter, on the floor, and into the cup. "We're helping? We're helping? Who's 'we're'?"

"Us," Kelp explained. "Everybody. All the guys around."

Cream and sugar would be beyond Dortmunder's capacity, and even Kelp might notice something was wrong if Dortmunder poured a quart of milk on the floor. "Do your own mixings," he said, and sat down at the kitchen table in front of his own coffee cup, which he didn't feel calm enough to pick up. "What guys around?" he asked.

Kelp was rooting in the refrigerator for milk. "Tiny Bulcher's kind of running it," he said. "Him and some other guys, using Rollo's back room at the O.J."

"At the O.J." Dortmunder felt an irrational but nevertheless poignant sense of personal betrayal. The back room at the O.J. used as the center of the hunt for him.

"The heat just got too much," Kelp said, coming over to the table with his coffee. He sat to Dortmunder's left. "I myself got picked up twice. Once by the transit cops!"

"Mm," said Dortmunder.

"Now, you know me, John," Kelp said. "Normally I'm an easygoing kind of guy, but when I get hauled in for no good reason twice in one day, when I got to stand around being polite to transit cops, even I say enough is enough."

"Mm mm," said Dortmunder.

"The cops have been put wise," Kelp went on. "They'll ease off, for a little while."

"The cops?"

"Contact was made," Kelp explained, bringing the fingertips of both hands together over his coffee cup in illustration. "A kind of arrangement was worked out. It's to everybody's benefit. The cops ease off on their blitz, we all look around, we find the guy, we turn the guy and the stone over to the law, everybody's happy."

Dortmunder pressed his elbows to his sides. "The guy? Turn over the guy?"

"That's the deal," Kelp said. "Besides, with what he's put everybody through, that's the least he oughta get. Tiny Bulcher wants to turn him over in sections, one piece a week."

"That seems kinda rough on the guy," Dortmunder said, as though casually. "I mean, he's just a fella like you and m-m-me, it was probably even just an accident, something like that."

"You're too good, John," Kelp told him. "In your own way, you're a kind of a saint."

Dortmunder looked modest.

"I mean," Kelp said, "even you've been rousted, am I right?"

"I spent a couple hours," Dortmunder forgivingly allowed, "at the precinct."

"We all did," Kelp said. "This guy, whoever he is, he's made a lot of unnecessary trouble for everybody. What he should of done was leave the stone there."

"Well, but—" Dortmunder stopped, trying to figure out how best to phrase what he wanted to say.

"After all," Kelp went on, "no matter how dumb he is—and this guy is dumb, John, he's grade-A dumb—no matter how dumb he is, he had to know he couldn't sell any Byzantine Fire."

"Maybe, uh…" Dortmunder had a brief coughing spell, then went on. "Maybe he didn't realize," he said.

"Didn't realize he couldn't sell the Byzantine Fire?"

"No, uh…Didn't realize that's what it was. Just took it along with, like, everything else. Found out too late."

Kelp frowned. "John," he said, "have you seen in the papers the picture of this Byzantine Fire?"

"No."

"Well, let me describe it. See, it's about—"

"I know what it looks like."

"Okay. So how dumb could—" Kelp broke off, looking at Dortmunder. "You know what it looks like? You said you didn't see it."

"I did," Dortmunder said. "I remember, I did see it. On the, on the television."

"Oh. So you know it doesn't look like something you buy the missus for Mother's Day. Anybody sees that rock, they're gonna know."

"Maybe," Dortmunder said, "maybe he thought it was fake."

"Then he wouldn't take it at all. No, this guy, whoever he is, he went into this thing with his eyes open, and now he's gonna get what he deserves."

"Nn," said Dortmunder.

Kelp got to his feet. "Come on along," he said.

Dortmunder's left hand clutched the chairseat. "Come along? Come along where?"

"Up to the O.J. We're all volunteering to help."

"Help? Help? What kinda help?"

"We're getting around and about, you know," Kelp said, making swimming motions with his arms, "we're finding out where everybody was Wednesday night. We can check out alibis better than the cops, you know."

"Oh, yeah," Dortmunder said.

"Wednesday night," Kelp said thoughtfully, while Dortmunder watched him in terror. Then Kelp grinned and said, "You got an alibi, all right. That's the night you did your little knockover, right?"

"Ul," said Dortmunder.

"Where was that, exactly?" Kelp asked.

"Andy," Dortmunder said. "Sit down, Andy."

"Ain't you finished your coffee? We oughta go, John."

"Sit down a minute. I–I wanna tell you something."

Kelp sat down, watching Dortmunder critically. "What's wrong, John? You look all weird."

"A virus, maybe," Dortmunder said, and wiped his nose.

"Wha'd you wanna tell me?"

"Well…" Dortmunder licked his lips, looked at his old friend, and took his life in his hands. "The first thing," he said, "I'm sorry I dropped your phone out the window."

25

The five men seated around the kitchen table drank retsina and smoked Epoika cigarettes and spoke in guttural voices. Machine pistols hung on their chairbacks, dark shades covered the windows, and a small white plastic radio played salsa music to confound any bugging apparatus that might have been placed here by their enemies, of which there were many in this troubled old world, including the six men who abruptly crashed through the service stairwell door, brandishing their own machine pistols and in four languages ordering the men at the table not to move, nor speak, nor react in any way to their sudden appearance, lest they die like the dogs they were. The men at the table, wild-eyed and frozen, clutching their glasses and their cigarettes, muttered in three languages that the new arrivals were dogs, but made no other rejoinder.

After the first few seconds, when it became apparent that the shooting of machine pistols was not to be the first item on anybody's agenda, a cautious kind of relaxation eased all those bodies and all those faces, and everybody moved on to whatever would happen next. While two of the intruders made determined but clumsy efforts to reclose the door they'd just demolished, their leader (known as Gregor) turned to the leader of the group at the table (code name Marko) and said, "We are here to negotiate with you dogs."

Marko grimaced, scrinching up his eyes and baring his upper teeth: "What kind of debased language is that?"

"I am speaking to you in your own miserable tongue."