“Good advice,” Kelp said.

The doctor slowly shook his head. “Four thousand,” he said.

“That should do it, yes.”

“All right.” He sighed and got to his feet. “Wait here. I’ll get it for you.”

He left the room, and Kelp turned to Victor to say, “He left the keys in it.”

11

Dortmunder at the movies was like a rock on the beach; the story kept washing over him, in wave after wave, but never had any effect. This one, called Murphy’s Madrigal, had been advertised as a tragic farce and gave the audience an opportunity to try out every emotion known to the human brain. Pratfalls, crippled children, Nazis, doomed lovers, you never knew what was going to happen next.

And Dortmunder just sat there. Beside him May roared with laughter, she sobbed, she growled with rage, she clutched his arm and cried, “Oh!” And Dortmunder just sat there.

When they got out of the movie it was ten to eight, so they had time to get a hero. They went to a Blimpie and May treated, and when they were sitting together at a table with their sandwiches under the bright lights she said, “You didn’t like it.”

“Sure I did,” he said. He pushed bread and sauerkraut in his mouth with his finger.

“You just sat there.”

“I liked it,” he said. Going to the movies had been her idea; he’d spent most of the time in the theater thinking about that mobile home bank out on Long Island and how to take it away.

“Tell me what you liked about it.”

He thought hard, trying to remember something he’d seen. “The color,” he said.

“A part of the movie.”

She was really getting irritated now, which he didn’t want to happen. He struggled and came up with a memory. “The elevator bit,” he said. The director of the movie had tied a strong elastic around a camera and dropped the camera down a brightly lighted elevator shaft. The thing had recoiled just before hitting bottom and had bounced up and down for quite a while before coming to rest. The whole sequence, forty-three seconds of it, was run without a break in the movie, and audiences had been known to throw up en masse at that point in the picture. Everybody agreed it was great, the high point of film art up to this time.

May smiled. “Okay,” she said. “That was good, wasn’t it?”

“Sure,” he said. He looked at his watch.

“You got time. Eight-thirty, right?”

“Right.”

“How does it look?”

He shrugged. “Possible. Crazy, but possible.” Then, to keep her from going back to the subject of the movie and asking him more questions about it, he said, “There’s still a lot of things to work out. But we maybe got a lockman.”

“That’s good.”

“We still don’t have anyplace to take it.”

“You’ll find a place.”

“It’s pretty big,” he said.

“So’s the world.”

He looked at her, not sure she’d just said something sensible, but decided to let it go. “There’s also financing,” he said.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“I don’t think so. Kelp saw somebody today.” He hadn’t known May very long, so this was the first time she’d watched him put together a piece of work, but he had a feeling with her as though she just naturally understood the situation. He never gave her a lot of background explanations, and she didn’t seem to need any. It was very relaxing. In a funny way, May reminded Dortmunder of his ex-wife, not because she was similar but because she was so very different. It was the contrast that did it. Until he’d started up with May, Dortmunder hadn’t even thought about his former wife for years. A show-biz performer she’d been, with the professional name of Honeybun Bazoom. Dortmunder had married her in San Diego in 1952 on his way to Korea — the only police action he’d ever been in on the side of the police — and had divorced her again in Reno in 1954 on his way out of the Army. Honeybun had mostly been interested in Honeybun, but if something outside herself did attract her attention she was immediately full of questions about it. She could ask more questions than a kid at the zoo. Dortmunder had answered the first few thousand, until he’d realized that none of the answers ever stayed inside that round head.

May couldn’t have been more different; she never asked the questions, and she always held onto the answers.

Now, they finished their heroes and left the Blimpie, and on the sidewalk May said, “I’ll take the subway.”

“Take a cab.”

She had a fresh cigarette in the corner of her mouth, having lit it after finishing eating. “Naw,” she said. “I’ll take the subway. A cab after a hero gives me heartburn.”

“You want to come along to the 0. J?”

“Naw, you go ahead.”

“The other night, Murch brought his Mom.”

“I’d rather go home.”

Dortmunder shrugged. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.”

She slopped away down the street, and Dortmunder headed the other way. He still had time, so he decided to walk, which meant going through Central Park. He walked along the cinder path alone, and under a street light a shifty-eyed stocky guy in a black turtle-neck sweater came out of nowhere and said, “Excuse me.”

Dortmunder stopped. “Yeah?”

“I’m taking a survey,” the guy said. His eyes danced a little, and he seemed to be grinning and yet not to be grinning. It was the same kind of expression most of the people in the movie had had. He said, “Here you are, you’re a citizen, you’re walking along in the park at night. What would you do if somebody came along and mugged you?”

Dortmunder looked at him. “I’d beat his head in,” he said. The guy blinked, and the almost grin disappeared. He looked slightly confused, and he said, “What if he had, uh, well, what if he was …” Then he shook his head, waggled both hands and backed off, saying, “Nah, forget it. Doesn’t matter, forget it.”

“Okay,” Dortmunder said. He walked on through the park and over to Amsterdam and up to the 0. J. When he went in, Rollo was having a discussion with the only two customers, a pair of overweight commission salesmen in the auto-parts line, about whether sexual intercourse after a heavy meal was medically good or medically bad. They were supporting their arguments mostly with personal anecdotes, and Rollo obviously had trouble breaking himself free from the conversation. Dortmunder waited at the end of the bar, and finally Rollo said, “Now, hold it now, hold it a second. Don’t start that yet. I’ll be right back.” Then he came down the bar, handed Dortmunder the bottle called Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon — “Our Own Brand” plus two glasses, and said, “All that’s here so far is the draft beer and salt. His mother let him out by himself tonight.”

“There’ll be more coming,” Dortmunder said. “I don’t know how many.”

“The more the merrier,” Rollo said sourly and went back to his discussion.

In the back room, Murch was sprinkling salt in his beer to restore the head. He looked up at Dortmunder’s entrance and said, “How you doing?”

“Fine,” Dortmunder said. He put the bottle and glasses on the table and sat down.

“I made better time tonight,” Murch said. “I tried a different route.”

“Is that right?” Dortmunder opened the bottle.

“I went down Flatlands and up Remsen,” Murch said. “Not Rockaway Parkway, see? Then I went over Empire Boulevard and up Bedford Avenue all the way into Queens and took the Williamsburg Bridge over into Manhattan.”

Dortmunder poured. “Is that right?” he said. He was just waiting for Murch to stop talking, because he had something to say to him.

“Then Delancey and Allen and right up First Avenue and across town at Seventy-ninth Street. Worked like a dream.”

“Is that right?” Dortmunder said. He sipped at his drink and said, “You know, Rollo’s kind of unhappy about you.”

Murch looked surprised, but eager to please. “Why? Cause I parked out front?”