"They wouldn't listen," Dortmunder said. "They said they were gonna catch me and I'd fall downstairs for a month."

"Wow," said May.

"That's a terrible threat, May, from a cop," Dortmunder said. "You ever see their new building, downtown? Till now, in a precinct, it's at the most down one metal flight in the back of the place, you just keep curled up. That Police Plaza, that's a skyscraper. And it's all brick."

"It wasn't a real threat," May assured him. "It was just a figure of speech."

"I heard his voice," Dortmunder said.

Lighting a new cigarette from the ember of the old, May studied both men, then said, "So what do you do now?"

"Find some other way to give it back," Dortmunder said. "Maybe call a newspaper or a TV station, something like that. I don't think there's an insurance company."

"Um," said Kelp.

Dortmunder looked over at his friend, and Kelp seemed very troubled. "I'm not gonna like this," Dortmunder said.

"I been thinking." Kelp scoffed down some beer, then said, "The cops turning you down that way, it knocked the scales off my eyes."

Dortmunder drank beer. "Okay," he said. "Tell me what you see."

"It isn't enough to give it back."

"Whadaya talking about? I give it back, the heat's off, it's all over."

Kelp shook his head. "There's been too much irritation," he said. "Too many noses out of joint, too much commitment. What they want now is you."

Dortmunder burped. "Don't say that, Andy."

"I'm sorry, John, it's true."

"Oh, dear," May said. "I think Andy's right."

"Sure I am," Kelp said, but not as though he was glad to be right. "That stone gets turned over to the cops, that might satisfy some folk, maybe satisfy Turkey and the American people, but it wouldn't satisfy the cops, and it wouldn't satisfy Tiny Bulcher or a lot of other guys we both know. Also, I heard at the O.J. there's a religious angle now, there's these religious fanatics also on your trail, and not to convert you. Just getting the stone back won't do it for them, either."

"You're not making me feel better," Dortmunder said.

"I tell you what you got to do, John," Kelp said. "You got to forget the stone for now and get yourself an alibi."

"I don't follow."

"For the boys at the O.J.," Kelp explained. "That gets the specific personal heat off you."

Dortmunder shook his head. "No way. We're not talking about the cops here, we're talking about Tiny Bulcher. We're talking about a lot of street people."

"I realize that," Kelp said. "But we can still do an alibi that'll hold up."

Dortmunder frowned at him. " We?"

"Sure we," Kelp said, apparently surprised. "We're in this together, aren't we?"

Dortmunder found himself deeply and surprisingly touched. "Andy," he said, "I don't know what to say."

"That's right," Kelp said, misunderstanding. "So we'll work out what you say."

"No, I mean—I mean that's a terrific offer, but you shouldn't stick your neck out for me."

"Why not? You'd do the same for me, wouldn't you?"

Dortmunder blinked a lot.

Kelp laughed, a trifle shakily. "Sure you would. And the thing of it is, if the three of us all tell the same story—"

"Not May," Dortmunder said.

May said, "John, this is no time for chivalry."

"No," Dortmunder said. "May, in my mind's eye I see Tiny Bulcher biting your nose off, and I don't like it."

"He won't have any reason to bite my nose off," May said, although she did sort of absently touch the part in question. "If we all tell the same story, you won't be under suspicion."

"I won't do it," Dortmunder said. "Not if you're a part of it."

"That's okay," Kelp said. "Two is fine. You and me, we tell the same story, we alibi one another, it works out the same."

Dortmunder considered being chivalrous in re Andy as well, but decided one noble gesture per customer per day was enough. "What alibi?" he asked.

"Well," Kelp said, "I've already mentioned to some of the guys my own alibi, in a general kind of way, so we just fit you in with me."

"What's your alibi?"

"The funny thing is, it's the truth. I was at home all that night, doing things with telephones."

"Alone?"

"Yeah."

"Then how does that alibi you?"

"Well," Kelp said, "I made and received a lot of calls. You know? I'd put some gizmo on, I'd want to try it, I'd call somebody. If it was my answering machine or my call-waiting gadget or something like that, I'd call somebody and have them call me back."

"Right," Dortmunder said. "So all night you're covered, on account of these phone calls."

"Sure. And now I say you were with me, helping me like with the wiring, and now we're both covered."

Dortmunder said, "How come you didn't mention before about me being there? Like when you told people your alibi. Or like when you were making all these calls Wednesday night."

"The question didn't come up."

"I don't know," Dortmunder said.

May said, "John, this is a wonderful gesture on Andy's part, and the fact of the matter is, you're in no position to look wonderful gestures in the mouth."

Dortmunder drank beer.

Kelp said, "We'll go back to my place, I'll give you half an hour instruction on telephones, you'll know as much as I do. Then it's our hobby together."

"If it goes wrong," Dortmunder pointed out, "Tiny won't like you any more either."

Kelp waved that away with an airy sweep of his beer can: "How could it go wrong?" he asked.

33

"He annoyed me," Mologna said to Leon. "I was gettin all this shit about telephones—he is there, he isn't there, it's goin through, it isn't goin through—and I just forgot myself."

"This too will pass," Leon said, his face a woodcut entitled Sympathy. He was feeling so bad on Mologna's account that he wasn't even dancing in place.

Mologna sat slumped at his desk, forearms sprawled among his papers. "The static I'm goin to take," he said, shaking his heavy head. "The static I am goin to take."

It had already started. The Commissioner—Mologna could never remember the man's name, and didn't see any real reason to make the effort—had called to chew him out in that discreet, distant, with-gloves-on manner of upper-echelon bureaucrats everywhere. The point, as Mologna well knew, was not what the Commissioner said, or what he himself said in response; the point was that in the Commissioner's phone log and in his day book and in Mologna's personal file there would now be a notation to the effect that the Commissioner had demonstrated leadership. The son of a bitch.

Well, maybe not entirely a son of a bitch at that, since the Commissioner had in the same phone call made it very clear where Mologna's true enemies were: "FBI Agents Zachary and Freedly are in my office at this very moment, discussing the situation with me," the Commissioner had said, and the background gasp of outraged betrayal behind the Commissioner's voice had been the only bright spot in that entire fumigated conversation.

Was there anything to be done about Zachary and Freedly? Was there anything to be done to protect his own ass, now that he'd exposed it for all the world to see?

The only real solution, obviously, was to find that goddam ruby. And to find it with perpetrator; this wasn't the kind of little trouble that could be smoothed over with a nice piece of jewelry. What the public would need this time, what the Police Department and the FBI and the State Department and the United Nations and the Turkish Government would need, what Mologna himself would need, was a human sacrifice. Nothing less. "We've got to get him," Mologna said aloud.

"Oh, I couldn't agree more," Leon said. He and Mologna were alone in Mologna's big office in Police Plaza, partly because Mologna wanted it that way and partly because right at the moment nobody else in the great city of New York wanted to be linked with Francis Mologna in any way.