Thieves Dozen Read online

  That was last week. This week, on Tuesday, Kelp and Dortmunder and the old coot had driven out through the Holland Tunnel and across New Jersey into the Short Hills area in a Ford Fairlane the old coot had rented, and when they got to the place, this is what they saw. On a wandering country road through rolling countryside covered with the lush greenery of August was a modest Colonial-style sign reading YERBA BUENA RANCH, mounted on a post next to a blacktop road climbing up a low hill toward a white farmhouse visible some distance in through the trees. Kelp, at the wheel, turned in there just to see what would happen, and what happened was that, about halfway to the house—white-rail fences to both sides of the blacktop, more white-rail fences visible in the fields beyond the house—a nice young fellow in blue jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a horse on it came walking out and smiled pleasantly as Kelp braked to a stop, and then said, “Help you, folks? This is a private road.”

  “We’re looking for Hopatcong,” Kelp said, just because the name HOPATCONG on a highway sign had struck him funny. So then, of course, he had to listen to about 18 minutes of instructions on how to get to Hopatcong before they could back up and leave there and drive on up the public road and take the right turn up a very steep hill to a place from which they could look down and see Yerba Buena Ranch spread out below, like a pool table with fences. The ranch was pretty extensive, with irregularly shaped fields all enclosed by those white wooden rails and connected by narrow roads of dirt or blacktop. Here and there were small clusters of trees, like buttons in upholstery, plus about ten brown or white barns and sheds scattered around out behind the main farmhouse. They saw about 30 horses hanging out and watched a little cream-colored pickup truck drive back and forth, and then Dortmunder said, “Doesn’t look easy.”

  Kelp paused in taking many photos of the place to stare in astonishment. “Doesn’t look easy? I never saw anything so easy in my life. No alarm system, no armed guards, not even anybody really suspicious.”

  “You can’t put a horse in your pocket,” Dortmunder said. “And how do we get a vehicle down in there without somebody noticing?”

  “I’ll walk him out,” the old coot said. “That’s no trouble; I know horses.”

  “Do you know this horse?” Dortmunder gestured at the pretty landscape. “They got a whole lot of horses down there.”

  “I’ll know Dire Straits when I see him, don’t you worry,” the old coot said.

  So now was the time to find out if that was an idle boast or not. Using the photos they’d taken from all around the ranch, plus New Jersey road maps and a topographical map that gave Dortmunder a slight headache, he’d figured out the best route to and from the ranch and also the simplest and cleanest way in, which was to start from a small and seldom-traveled county road and hike through somebody else’s orchard to the rear of the ranch, then remove two rails from the perimeter fence there. They would go nowhere near the front entrance or the main building. The old coot would go with them to identify Dire Straits and lead him away. Going out, they’d restore the rails to confuse and delay pursuit. The old coot had rented a station wagon and a horse van with room for two horses— Dortmunder and Kelp couldn’t get over the idea that they were working with somebody who rented vehicles rather than steal them—and so here they were, around two A.M. on a cloudy, warm night.

  But where was Dire Straits?

  Could he be off partying somewhere, for heavy money? The old coot insisted no; his anonymous boss had ways of knowing things like that, and Dire Straits was definitely at home these days, resting up between dates.

  “He’ll be in one of them buildings over there,” the old coot said, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of planet Earth.

  “I can still hear some back that way,” Kelp said. “Now they’re going, “Floor-flor.’”

  “That’s a snort,” the old coot said. “Those old plugs stay outside in good weather, but Dire Straits they keep in his stall, so he stays healthy. Down this way.”

  So they went down that way, Dortmunder not liking any bit of it. He preferred to think of himself as a professional and for a professional there is always the one right way to do things, as opposed to any number of amateur or wrong ways, and this job just wasn’t laying out in a manner that he could take pride in. Having to case the joint from a nearby hilltop, for instance, was far less satisfactory than walking into a bank, or a jewelry wholesaler, or whatever it might be, and pretending to be a messenger with a package for Mr. Hutcheson. “There’s no Mr. Hutcheson here.” “You sure? Let me call my dispatcher.” And so on. Looking things over every second of the time.

  You can’t show up at a ranch with a package for a horse.

  Nor can you tap a horse’s phone or do electronic surveillance on a horse or make up a plaster imitation horse to leave in its place. You can’t drill in to the horse from next door or tunnel in from across the street. You can’t do a diversionary explosion outside a ranch or use the fire escape or break through the roof. You can’t time a horse’s movements.

  Well, you can, actually, but not the way Dortmunder meant. The way Dortmunder meant, this horse heist was looking less and less like what the newspapers call a “well-planned professional robbery” and more and more like hobos sneaking into back yards to steal lawn mowers. Professionally, it was an embarrassment.

  “Careful where you walk,” the old coot said.

  “Too late,” Dortmunder told him.

  Dortmunder’s ideas of farms came from margarine commercials on television and his ideas of ranches from cigarette ads in magazines. This place didn’t match either; no three-story-high red barns, no masses of horses running pell-mell past boulders. What you had was these long, low brown buildings scattered among the railed-in fields, and what it mostly reminded Dortmunder of was World War Two prisoner-of-war-camp movies— not a comforting image.

  “He’ll be in one of these three barns,” the old coot said. “I’m pretty sure.”

  So they entered a long structure with a wide central cement-floored aisle spotted with dirt and straw. A few low-wattage bare bulbs hung from the rough beams above the aisle, and chest-high wooden partitions lined both sides. These were the stalls, about two thirds occupied.

  Walking through this first barn, Dortmunder learned several facts about horses: (1) They smell. (2) They breathe, more than anything he’d ever met in his life before. (3) They don’t sleep, not even at night. (4) They don’t even sit down. (5) They are very curious about people who happen to go by. And (6) they have extremely long necks. When horses in stalls on both sides of Dortmunder stretched out their heads toward him at the same time, wrinkling their black lips to show their big, square tombstone teeth, snuffling and whuffling with those shotgun-barrel noses, sighting at him down those long faces, he realized that the aisle wasn’t that wide after all.

  “Jeepers,” Kelp said, a thing he didn’t say often.

  And Dire Straits wasn’t even in there. They emerged on the other side, warm, curious horse breath still moist on Dortmunder’s cheek, and looked around, accustoming themselves to the darkness again. Behind them, the horses whickered and bumped around, still disturbed by this late-night visit. Far away, the main farmhouse showed just a couple of lights. Faint illumination came from window openings of nearer structures. “He has to be in that one or that one,” the old coot said, pointing.

  “Which one you want to try first?” Dortmunder asked.

  The old coot considered and pointed. “That one.”

  “Then it’s in the other one,” Dortmunder said. “So that’s where we’ll try.”

  The old coot gave him a look. “Are you trying to be funny, or what?”

  “Or what,” Dortmunder said.

  And, as it turned out, he was right. Third stall in on the left, there was Dire Straits himself, a big, kind of arrogant-looking thing, with a narrower-than-usual face and a very sleek black coat. He reared back and stared at these human beings with distaste, like John Barrymore being awakened the morning after. �
��That’s him,” the old coot said. More important, a small sign on the stall door said the same thing: DIRE STRAITS.

  “At last,” Kelp said.

  “Hasn’t been that long,” the old coot said. “Let me get a bridle for him.” He turned away, then suddenly tensed, looking back toward the door. In a quick, harsh whisper, he said, “Somebody coming!”

  “Uh-oh,” Dortmunder said.

  Turning fast, the old coot yanked open a stall door—not the one to Dire Straits—grabbed Dortmunder’s elbow in his strong, bony hand and shoved him inside, at the same time hissing at Kelp, “Slip in here! Slip in!”

  “There’s somebody in here,” Dortmunder objected, meaning a horse, a brown one, who stared at this unexpected guest in absolute astonishment.

  “No time!” The old coot was pushing Kelp in, crowding in himself, pulling the stall door shut just as the light in the barn got much brighter. Must be on a dimmer switch.

  “Hey, fellas,” a male voice said conversationally, “what’s going on?”

  Caught us, Dortmunder thought, and cast about in his mind for some even faintly sensible reason for being in this brown horse’s stall in the middle of the night. Then he heard what else the voice was saying:

  “Thought you were all settled down for the night.”

  He’s talking to the horses, Dortmunder thought. “Something get to you guys? Bird fly in?”

  In a way, Dortmunder thought.

  “Did a rat get in here?”

  The voice was closer, calm and reassuring, its owner moving slowly along the aisle, his familiar sound and sight leaving a lot of soothed horses in his wake.

  All except for the brown horse in here with Dortmunder and Kelp and the old coot. He wasn’t exactly crying out, “Here, boss, here they are, they’re right here!” but it was close. Snort, whuffle, paw, headshake, prance; the damn beast acted like he was auditioning for A Chorus Line. While Dortmunder and company crouched down low on the far side of this huge, hairy show-off, doing their best not to get crushed between the immovable object of the stall wall and the irrepressible force of the horse’s haunch, the owner of the voice came over to see what was up, saying, “Hey, there, Daffy, what’s the problem?”

  Daffy, thought Dortmunder. I might have known.

  The person was right there, leaning his forearms on the stall door, permitting Daffy to slobber and blubber all over his face. “It’s OK now, Daffy,” the person said. “Everything’s fine.”

  I’ve been invaded! Daffy whuffled while his tail dry-mopped Dortmunder’s face.

  “Just settle down, big fella.”

  Just look me over! Have I ever had ten legs before?“Take it easy, boy. Everybody else is calm now.”

  That’s because they don’t have these, these, these. . . .“Good Daffy. See you in the morning.”

  Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, Daffy mumbled, while trying to step on everybody’s toes at once.

  The owner of the voice receded at last, and the old coot did something up around Daffy’s head that all at once made the horse calm right down. As the lights lowered to their former dimness and the sound of thumping boots faded, Daffy grinned at everybody as though to say, I’ve always wanted roommates. Nice!

  Kelp said, “What did you do?”

  “Sugar cubes,” the old coot said. “I brought some for Dire Straits, didn’t have time to give one to this critter before that hand got here.”

  Sugar cubes. Dortmunder looked at the old coot with new respect. Here was a man who traveled with an emergency supply of sugar cubes.

  “OK,” the old coot said, shoving Daffy out of his way as though the animal were a big sofa on casters, “Let’s get Dire Straits and get out of here.”

  “Exactly,” Dortmunder said, but then found himself kind of pinned against the wall. “Listen, uh, Hiram,” he said. “Could you move Daffy a little?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Hiram did, and Dortmunder gratefully left that stall, hurried along by Daffy’s nose in the small of his back. Kelp shut the stall door and Hiram went over to select a bridle from among those hanging on pegs. Coming back to Dire Straits’ stall, he said softly, “Come here, guy, I got something nice for you.”

  Dire Straits wasn’t so sure about that. Being a star, he was harder to get than Daffy. From well back in the stall, he gave Hiram down his long nose a do-I-know-you? look.

  “Come here, honey,” Hiram urged, soft and confidential, displaying not one but two sugar cubes on his outstretched palm. “Got something for you.”

  Next door, Daffy stuck his head out to watch all this with some concern, having thought he had an exclusive on sugar-cube distribution. Whicker? he asked.

  That did it. Hearing his neighbor, Dire Straits finally realized there was such a thing as playing too hard to get. With a toss of the head, moving with a picky-toed dignity that Dortmunder might have thought sexually suspicious if he hadn’t known Dire Straits’ rep, the big black beast came forward, lowered his head, wuggled and muggled over Hiram’s palm and the cubes were gone. Meanwhile, with his other hand, Hiram was patting the horse’s nose, murmuring, rubbing behind his ear and gradually getting into just the right position.

  It was slickly done, Dortmunder had to admit that. The first thing Dire Straits knew, the bit was in his mouth, the bridle straps were around his head and Hiram was wrapping a length of rein around his own hand. “Good boy,” Hiram said, gave the animal one more pat and backed away, opening the stall.

  After all that prima-donna stuff, Dire Straits was suddenly no trouble at all. Maybe he thought he was on his way to the hop. As Daffy and a couple of other horses neighed goodbye, Hiram led Dire Straits out of the barn. Dortmunder and Kelp stuck close, Hiram now seeming less like an old coot and more like somebody who knew what he was doing, and they headed at an easy pace across the fields.

  The fences along the way were composed of two rails, one at waist height and the other down by your knee, with their ends stuck into holes in vertical posts and nailed. On the way in, Dortmunder and Kelp had removed rails from three fences, because Hiram had assured them that Dire Straits would neither climb them nor leap over. “I thought horses jumped,” Dortmunder said.

  “Only jumpers,” Hiram answered. Dortmunder, unsatisfied, decided to let it go.

  On the way out, Hiram and Dire Straits paused while Dortmunder and Kelp restored the rails to the first fence, having to whisper harshly the length of the rail at each other before they got the damn things seated in the holes in the vertical posts, and then they moved on, Kelp muttering, “You almost took my thumb off there, you know.”

  “Wait till we’re in the light again,” Dortmunder told him. “I’ll show you the big gash on the back of my hand.”

  “No, no, honey,” Hiram said to Dire Straits. It seemed there were other horses in this field, and Dire Straits wanted to go hang out, but Hiram held tight to the rein, tugged and provided the occasional sugar cube to keep him moving in the right direction. The other horses began to come around, interested, wondering what was up. Dortmunder and Kelp did their best to keep out of the way without losing Hiram and Dire Straits, but it was getting tough. There were five or six horses milling around, bumping into one another, sticking their faces into Dortmunder’s and Kelp’s necks, distracting them and slowing them down. “Hey!” Dortmunder called, but softly. “Wait up!”

  “We got to get out of here,” Hiram said, not waiting up. Kelp said, “Hiram, we’re gonna get lost.”

  “Hold his tail,” Hiram suggested. He still wasn’t waiting up. Dortmunder couldn’t believe that. “You mean the horse?” “Who else? He won’t mind.”

  The sound of Hiram’s voice was farther ahead. It was getting harder to tell Dire Straits from all these other beasts. “Jeez, maybe we better,” Kelp said and trotted forward, arms up to protect himself from ricocheting animals.

  Dortmunder followed, reluctant but seeing no other choice. He and Kelp both grabbed Dire Straits’ tail, way down near the end; and from there on,
the trip got somewhat easier, though it was essentially humiliating to have to walk along holding on to some horse’s tail.

  At the second fence, there was another batch of horses, so many that it was impossible to put the rails back. “Oh, the hell with it,” Dortmunder said. “Let’s just go.” He grabbed Dire Straits’ tail. “Come on, come on,” he said, and the horse he was holding on to, which wasn’t Dire Straits, suddenly took off at about 90 miles an hour, taking Dortmunder with him for the first eight inches, or until his brain could order his fingers, “Retract!” Reeling, not quite falling into the ooze below, Dortmunder stared around in the darkness, saying, “Where the hell is everybody?”

  A lot of horses neighed and whickered and snorted and laughed at him; in among them all, Kelp’s voice called, “Over here,” and so the little band regrouped again, Dortmunder clutching firmly the right tail.

  What a lot of horses—more than ever. Hiram, complaining that he didn’t have that much sugar anymore, nevertheless occasionally had to buy off more intrusive and aggressive animals, while Dortmunder and Kelp had to keep saying, as horses stuck their noses into pants pockets and armpits, “We don’t have the damn sugar! Talk to the guy in front!”

  Finally, they reached the last fence, where Hiram suddenly stopped and said, “Oh, hell.”

  “I don’t want to hear ‘Oh, hell,’” Dortmunder answered. Feeling his way along Dire Straits’ flank, he came up to the horse’s head and saw Hiram looking at the final fence. Because this was the border of the property, on coming in Dortmunder and Kelp had left the rails roughly in their original positions, though no longer nailed in place, and now the press of horses had dislodged them, leaving a 12-foot gap full of about the biggest herd of horses this side of a Gene Autry movie. More horses joined the crowd every second, passing through the gap, disappearing into the darkness. “Now what?” Dortmunder said.

  “Apples,” Hiram said. He sounded unhappy.

  Dortmunder said, “What apples? I don’t have any apples.” “They do,” Hiram said. “If there’s one thing horses like more than sugar, it’s apples. And that”—he pointed his chin in disgust—“is an orchard.”