"These people," Stan said, "can't do anything right."

"Enough is enough," Dortmunder said, stepping forward from the stairwell. "Stan, get the van. Take the kid with you. Tiny, Andy, come on."

Everybody did as they were told, Stan and Judson exiting through the nearby door, Kelp and Tiny following Dortmunder, Kelp saying, "John? What's our plan?"

"We're getting what we came for," Dortmunder said, and yelled at the armored car as it did that scrape thing again, "Hey! Cut it out! Whadaya wanna do, knock down the wall?"

The armored car was completely inside the building now, on the ramp, in a position where it scraped the wall just as much when it went backward as when it went forward. The driver, over on the far side in his closed cab, looked out his right window at Dortmunder and shrugged his arms up in the air: "Whadaya want from me?"

Dortmunder went to the rear door of the armored car and banged on the bulletproof window. Cautiously, the door opened an inch, and the Continental in there, his hand on his holstered sidearm, said, "Who are you?"

"We work for Perly," Dortmunder told him. "We're the outside security, keep an eye on the place while you people are here, and brother, you need us. I got a van here," he went on, as Stan and Judson arrived with it. Turning to Kelp, he said, "Tell him to back it in. As close to the armored car as he can."

Kelp, looking awed, went away to instruct Stan, while Dortmunder said to the Continental, "You're gonna wreck this place. We'll get the chess set out and into the van, then get your truck outa here, then take the set up the ramp with the van. Also, we gotta take pictures of the damage."

"That's Securivan," the Continental told him. "That's not us."

From up above, one of the two Continentals already in position called down, "You need help down there?"

"Stay there," Dortmunder yelled up to him. "You don't wanna compromise the security you got there." Then he had to move briskly out of the way as Stan backed the van into the building and over to the rear of the armored car.

"I guess that's all we can do," the Continental said, and turned to tell his friends in the armored car what was going on. They all climbed out and, with all nine of them lending a hand, it took no time at all to transfer the chess set and its dolly into the van.

Once it was in and the van door shut, Stan drove the van out to the curb with Judson on the seat beside him, Kelp and Tiny sort of vagued themselves out of the scene and down the block, and Dortmunder said to the four Continentals, "You guys want to get in position where you can guide this driver. He's all messed up in here. You two go round front, you get on this side, you get on that side, I'll stand here by the door, be sure there's nobody coming."

Everybody got into position, and Dortmunder stepped back and thumbed the opener in his pocket, then galloped over to shove into the van next to Judson, which then left. The Continentals ran to the closing door, but didn't get there in time. If one of them had been a little spryer he might have been able to roll out under the closing door, but none of them were that spry.

Eventually they got the door open again, with a lot of shouting and recrimination, but the van was nowhere to be seen. Also, nobody had noticed its license number.

55

THE LONGEST DAY of Jacques Perly's life started, appropriately enough, before dawn, with a phone call from the NYPD that woke him from a sound sleep at, according to the green LED readout of his bedside clock, 1:57 a.m., approximately fifty minutes since he'd shut his eyes.

"Jacques? Whuzza?"

"God knows," Jacques muttered, rolling over, lifting onto an elbow, tucking the phone between shoulder and jaw as he switched on the low bedside light and reached for pen and paper, just in case, while saying, "Perly."

"Jacques Perly?"

"That's me."

"This is Detective Krankforth, Midtown South. There has been a robbery at your office, sir."

Jacques was not really yet awake. He said, "A — a burglary?"

"No, sir," Detective Krankforth told him. "There were individuals present on the premises, that upgrades it to a robbery."

"Indi— Oh, my God, the chess set!"

"There are officers at the location," Detective Krankforth told him, "who would like to converse with you as soon as possible."

"I'll be there in an hour," Perly promised, and dropped the phone into its cradle as he scrambled out of bed.

"Jacques? Whuzza?"

"Hell," he told her. "Go back to sleep."

More hell than he'd guessed. He couldn't park in his own building, couldn't even drive down that block. After being impatiently waved off by a traffic cop who didn't want to hear anything he might want to say, he found an all-night garage two blocks away and walked back, shivering in the cold. Three-fifteen in the morning now, nearly the coldest time of the night.

Two television remote trucks were parked outside the yellow crime tape that closed off the block. Whatever had happened here had caused some commotion because people leaned out windows into the cold up and down the block, and other people stood in clumps outside the yellow tape, staring at nothing much.

Perly identified himself to a cop at the tape, who radioed to someone, then nodded and let him in, saying, "See Captain Kransit in the command module."

The command module, in civilian life, was a mobile home, though sporting NYPD blue and white. A uniformed patrolman ushered Perly up the steps and in, where a disgruntled plainclothesman in brown suit and no tie, raw-boned, fortyish, craggy-faced, looking exactly like a disgruntled high school science teacher, said, "Mr. Perly? Have a seat."

The front half of the command module contained tables and benches bolted to the floor, with a closed door in a black wall partway back. Perly and Kransit sat facing one another, elbows on table, and Perly said, "The chess set was stolen?"

"We're still trying to work out exactly what happened," Kransit told him. "Somebody's coming down from C&I bank, should have been here by now. You got a valuable chess set delivered to you tonight, is that it?"

"Yes. After I left. The Continental Detective Agency provided uniformed guards, and Securivan made the transfer. NYPD provided escort coming down."

Captain Kransit didn't take notes, but did consult a yellow legal pad open on the table at his right elbow. "You were not here when this chess set arrived?"

"No, that wasn't necessary. The arrangement is, I'm renting my office to these people while the set is out of its vault for study and evaluation, so once the security people were in place I could go home. That was about twelve-fifteen" — glance at watch — "three hours ago. Can you tell me what happened?"

The microphone/speaker dangling from Kransit's lapel squawked like a chicken, and Kransit told it, "Send him in," then got to his feet. "The bank man's here. Let's go take a look at what we've got."

The command module had been warm, which Perly noticed when he stepped back out to the cobbled street. The man approaching them was black, well over six feet tall, and done up in thick black wool overcoat, plaid scarf and black homburg. He looked like a Negro Theater Ensemble production of The Third Man. "Woolley," he announced.

Introductions were made, hands were shaken, and they turned toward Perly's building, where the garage door stood uplifted. "The crime scene is still intact," Kransit said, as they walked. "The vehicle is still inside."

"Well, yes, it would," Perly started, then stopped and started. "It's on the ramp!" And there it was, tilted up, a big, dark, bulky mass of metal, crawling with forensic team members like ants on a rotted eggplant.

Captain Kransit seemed slightly embarrassed on the armored car's behalf. "Yes, sir," he said. "Seems it got stuck in there."