“Come on, Tiny,” Dortmunder said, “J.C. recognized my voice. I didn’t say my name at all, she did. And I said I wanted to get in touch with you right away, so that’s when she told me you were down there. So she did the right thing, okay?”

Tiny brooded about that. He shifted the half a cow from his right shoulder to the left. “Okay,” he decided. “I trust Josie’s judgment. But what about the truck?”

Kelp said, “The guy ran off, Tiny. What are we supposed to do, come down here with tranquilizer darts? The guy was very spooked, that’s all. We show up and that’s it, he’s gone.”

“Well, here’s the situation,” Tiny said. “The situation is, I agreed I’d come down here for a guy, with the guy’s truck and the guy’s driver, and I’d make my way in this place and pick up six sides a beef, on accounta I can do that quick and easy.”

“You sure can, Tiny,” Kelp said admiringly.

“And the further idea is,” Tiny said, glowering at the interruption, “I throw a seventh side in the truck and that one goes home with me. A side a beef for a half hour’s work.”

“Pretty good,” Dortmunder admitted.

“So the guy’s truck and the guy’s driver run off,” Tiny went on, “so that’s it for his six sides a beef. But”—and he whacked his open palm against the half a cow on his shoulder: spack! — “I got mine.”

“Well, that’s good,” Dortmunder said. “You wanna get yours, Tiny.”

“I always get mine,” Tiny told him. “That’s just the way it is. But now what do I do about taking this side home? Sooner or later, I make my way into some more populated parts a town, I’m gonna attract attention.”

“Gee, Tiny,” Kelp said, “I see what you mean. That’s a real problem.”

“And I think of it,” Tiny said, “as your problem.”

Dortmunder and Kelp looked at each other. Kelp shrugged and spread his hands and turned to Tiny to say, “I could argue the point, Tiny, but let’s just say I feel like helping you out. Everybody wait right here.”

He took a step away but stopped when Tiny said, “Andy.” He turned back and looked alert, and Tiny said, “None of your doctors’ cars, Andy.”

“But doctors have the best cars around, Tiny,” Kelp explained. “They understand the transitoriness of life, doctors, and they’ve got the money to make things smooth and even along the way. I always put my faith in doctors.”

“Not this time,” Tiny said, and whacked his cow again. “Me and Elsie here don’t want no cute Porsches and Jaguars. We don’t like that crowded feeling.”

Kelp sighed, admitting defeat. Then he looked up and down the street, thinking, his eye drawn to the light spilling from Florent. His own eyes lit up, and he grinned at Tiny. “Okay, Tiny,” he said. “What would you and Elsie say to a stretch limo?”

TWENTY-EIGHT

On the drive north, Kelp at the wheel of the silver Cadillac stretch limo with the New Jersey vanity plate—KOKAYIN—Dortmunder and Tiny on the deeply cushioned rear seats, the half a cow draped in front of them like the mob’s latest victim on top of the bar-and-TV console and the rear-facing plush seats, Dortmunder explained the job: “You remember Tom Jimson.”

Tiny thought about that. “From inside?”

“That’s the one,” Dortmunder agreed. “That’s where we both knew him. He was my cellmate awhile.”

“Nasty poisonous old son of a bitch,” Tiny suggested.

“You’ve got the right guy,” Dortmunder told him.

“A snake with legs.”

“Perfect.”

“Charming as a weasel and gracious as a ferret.”

“That’s Tom, okay.”

“He’d eat his own young even if he wasn’t hungry.”

“Well, he’s always hungry,” Dortmunder said.

“That’s true.” Tiny shook his head. “Tom Jimson. He was the worst thing about stir.”

Looking in the mirror, Kelp said, “Tiny, I never heard you talk like that before. Like there was a guy out there somewhere that worried you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tiny frowned massively at this suggestion that another human being might give him pause. “You’re lucky you don’t know the guy,” he said.

“But I do,” Kelp corrected him. “John introduced me. And I’m with you a hundred percent.”

“Introduced you?” Tiny was baffled. “How’d he do that?”

Quietly, Dortmunder said, “They let him go.”

Tiny switched his frown to Dortmunder. “Let him go where?”

“Out.”

“They wouldn’t. Even the law isn’t that stupid.”

“They did, Tiny,” Dortmunder told him. “On accounta the overcrowding. For a seventieth birthday present.”

Tiny stared at his cow as though to say do you believe this? He said, “Tom Jimson? He’s out right now? Walking around the streets?”

“Probably,” Dortmunder said. “He usually comes home pretty late.”

“Home? Where’s he living?”

“Well,” Dortmunder said reluctantly, “with me at the moment.”

Tiny was appalled. “Dortmunder! What does May say?”

“Nothing good.”

“The thing is, Tiny,” Kelp said from the front seat, “John’s agreed Tom can stay until after the job.”

Tiny slowly shook his massive head. “This is a Tom Jimson job? Forget it. Stop the car, Andy, me and Elsie’ll walk.”

“It isn’t like that, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.

But Tiny was still being extremely negative. “Where Tom Jimson passes by,” he said, “nothing ever grows again.”

Kelp said, “Tiny, let John tell you the story, okay? It isn’t the way you think. None of us would sign on a Tom Jimson job.”

Tiny thought that over. “Okay,” he said, “I tell you what I’ll do. I won’t just automatic say no.”

“Thank you, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.

“I’ll listen,” Tiny said. “You’ll tell me the story. Then I’ll say no.”

Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror. But there was nothing to do but plow forward, so Dortmunder said, “What this is, it’s a buried stash.” And he went on to explain the background, the reservoir, the circumstances and the split, which should be around a hundred twenty thousand dollars for each of the three in this car.

“Tom Jimson,” Tiny interjected at that juncture, “has a way of not having any partners left to split with.”

“We know that about him,” Dortmunder pointed out. “We’ll watch him.”

“Birds watch snakes,” Tiny said. “But okay, go ahead, tell me the rest of it.”

So Dortmunder told him the rest of it, and Tiny didn’t interrupt again until the part about going underwater, when he reared around in astonishment and said, “Dortmunder? You’re gonna go diving?”

“Not diving,” Kelp insisted from up front. “We’re not gonna dive. We’re gonna walk in.”

“Into a reservoir,” Tiny said.

Kelp shrugged that away. “We been taking lessons,” he said. “From a very professional guy.”

“Tiny,” Dortmunder said, getting the narrative back on track, “the idea is, we’ll go down in there, we’ll walk in from the shore, and we’ll pull a rope along with us. And there’ll be a winch at the other end of the rope.”

“And you,” Kelp explained, “at the other end of the winch.”

Tiny grunted. Dortmunder said, “When we get to the right place, we dig up the casket, we tie the rope around one of the handles, we give it a tug so you know we’re ready, and then you winch it out. And we walk along with it to keep it from snagging on stuff.”

Tiny shook his head. “There’s gotta be about ninety things wrong with that idea,” he said, “but let’s just stay with one: Tom Jimson.”

“He’s seventy years old, Tiny,” Dortmunder said.

“He could be seven hundred years old,” Tiny said, “and he’d still be God’s biggest design failure. He’d steal the teeth out of your mouth to bite you with.”

Kelp said, “I gotta admit it, Tiny, you really do know Tom.”

“Tiny,” Dortmunder said, “I’ll be honest with you.”

“Don’t strain yourself, John,” Tiny said.

“With me and Andy down there at the bottom of the reservoir,” Dortmunder told him, “and Tom Jimson up on the shore with the winch and the rope, I’d feel a lot more comfortable in my mind if you were up there with him. And not just to turn the winch.”