"This Sunday night?" Jay asked him. "The day after tomorrow?"

"Yes, sir," Larry confirmed. "We'd want to get our armored car into position at the curb downstairs here at oh two hundred hours Monday morning."

His partner Harry spoke up: "This thing weighs, so we're told, a third of a ton. We'll have a crew of four with the armored oar, to bring the object up and place it into the vehicle."

"And we," Chief Inspector Mologna said, "are gonna have patrol cars on that block, and patrol cars up at the next intersection to divert traffic, so you are gonna have no vehicles in that area except your van and our patrols."

"This all sounds very good," Jay said.

Jacques Perly said, "When do you think you'd get to my shop?"

Larry considered that. "If we start at oh two hundred hours," he said, "say it takes fifteen minutes to bring the object up and secure it. At that time of night, fifteen or twenty minutes to drive down to your area. You should count on an arrival time of oh two-thirty to oh two-forty hours."

One of the other lawyers present said, "That means the experts could start examining the artifact Monday morning."

"Not quite," Jay said. "We don't want to tell anybody else about the move until after it's made." With a bow toward the chief inspector, he said, "Granted that secrets are difficult or impossible to keep, we'd still like to limit the advance knowledge of the move as much as we can."

Another lawyer said, "But they can start their inspections Tuesday morning, surely."

"I don't see why not."

"Some of our principals," another lawyer said, "and some of our senior partners as well, will certainly want to take this opportunity to see the thing in the flesh, as it were."

"We'll make accommodations for that as we can," Jay assured him. "But we don't want it to become a tourist destination."

That quip got its chuckle, and another lawyer said, "Oh, I think most of us are mature enough to show restraint."

Another lawyer said, "However, speed in assessing the object is also a priority, of course. I understand we're all paying Mr. Perly a per diem for the use of his space, and of course every day the object is out of the vault the risk of theft increases."

Another lawyer said, "What we're talking about here is not one object, but thirty-four. A theft doesn't have to be of the entire piece."

Jay said, "We're arranging for private guards to stay with the object 24/7 while it's at Mr. Perly's. We'll all breathe easier once the set is back in the vault downstairs."

"Amen to that," said another lawyer, and still another lawyer said, "In fact, the per diem is not that much. In this instance, it is truly better to be safe than sorry."

Which caused a general murmur of agreement, followed by Jay saying, "Does that cover it all?"

"I'd like to say one thing," said the chief inspector, and got to his feet. He also picked up his braid-rich hat from the conference table, so he apparently didn't intend to stay much longer. "At oh two hundred hours in the ayem of this comin Monday morning," he informed them all, "I am gonna be asleep in my bed in Bay Shore, Long Island. And I will not be wantin any phone calls." And he put on his hat.

On that note the meeting concluded, having worked out about as satisfactorily as the one just ending in the park downtown.

44

ANDY KELP CAME home from the department store wearing three suits and two coats. It wasn't really that cold out, but it was still better to wear them than to pay for them.

Anne Marie was at her computer on her desk in the bedroom. She looked at him and said, "Did you put on weight?"

"No," he said. "I put on wool. Let me get these clothes off."

"Okay," she said, and shut her computer down, and the phone rang.

Kelp gave it a look of dislike. "It's gotta be John," he said.

"You do your strip," she told him, "and I'll talk to John."

"Deal."

He got half his new wardrobe off when she said, "It is John, and it sounds like he really does have to talk to you."

"Then I suppose he does. Hello," he told the phone.

"We've got the place where it's gonna be."

"Where it's gonna be. But it isn't there now."

"No, but it's gonna be there soon, and you and me, we should look it over, look the place over before the thing shows up. A little easier now than later."

This was unfortunately true. Looking at Anne Marie, who had started her own striptease, Kelp said, "So where is this place?"

"Down on Gansevoort Street. An office down there."

"An office? Doesn't sound right."

"I'll give you the details, you know, in other circumstances."

"Okay, but…" Kelp looked wistfully toward Anne Marie. "Anne Marie and me, we had plans for this evening, maybe a movie… I tell you what."

"Tell me."

"There's a very trendy hotel down there on Gansevoort," Kelp said, "now that the area's gentrified. I could meet you there, in the bar there."

"Fine. When?"

"We should make it pretty late," Kelp said, and looked again at Anne Marie, who was smiling. "I'll meet you in the bar there at midnight," he said, and did, and saw Dortmunder already in position there at the bar.

Kelp had to admit, even seen from behind and across the room, slouched at the bar, John Dortmunder did not go with this setting. Any observant person in the joint would have taken one look at him in this environment and called the cops on general principles.

Fortunately, this hotel did not generally cater to observant persons. It was the kind of place that attracted rail-thin persons of several genders, all of whom sandpapered their cheekbones every evening before leaving their cave. Being unaware of the existence of any other people at all, none of this rather large and very loud mob of trendoids had noticed the creature from another species who had joined their revels. Dortmunder was in perfect concealment with this crowd.

And now there were two aliens at the bar, once Kelp climbed onto the fuschia stool beside him. The bartendress, an action figure in a skintight black dress, dropped a coaster bearing an ad for condoms on the bar in front of Kelp and said, with complete indifference, "Sir?"

Kelp looked at Dortmunder's drink, recognized it, and said, "I'll have what he's having."

"Ew." She rolled her eyes and slanked away.

Kelp observed Dortmunder's glass again, from which in fact Dortmunder was now drinking. "That's bourbon, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Two cubes?"

"Yeah." Dortmunder shrugged. "They don't like to leave bourbon all by itself around here," he explained. "They like to muffle it down a little."

Kelp looked up and down the bar and saw that the things in front of the other patrons didn't look so much like drinks as like extraterrestrials. Short extraterrestrials. "Gotcha," he said.

The bartendress might have felt sullied by having to serve a high-test drink, but she did it, and only charged fourteen dollars for the indignity, sliding a five and a one back at him from his original twenty. Kelp sipped his drink, found it to be as requested, and said, "Tell me about this office where they're gonna move the thing."

"It's some hotshot private detective named Perly," Dortmunder said. "What makes it a good place to stash the thing is what we'll find out."

"And the thing's gonna get there soon."

"That's the story."

"Probly in an armored car."

"Probly."

Kelp contemplated the situation, lubricating his brain muscles with a little more bourbon. "Tough to do an armored car on a city street," he said. "Those jobs are more for the countryside."

"Oh, you can do it," Dortmunder said, "but it takes explosives. I'd rather work more quiet than that."

"Oh, you know it." Kelp took a little more of his drink and said, "You look at this place on your way here?"