Bad News Read online

  “I know where to get it.”

  Dortmunder said, “I think I should find us some guns, too.”

  “Okay,” Kelp said. “And in the morning, I’ll go steal us a car.”

  “You know,” Anne Marie said, “Thanksgiving dinner conversation in Lancaster, Kansas, wasn’t at all like this.” And she smiled happily around at her guests.

  9

  * * *

  Little Feather knew she had to stay patient with these clowns. They were going to make her very, very rich, so all she had to do was hang in there with them until everything was taken care of, when she wouldn’t need them anymore. But right now, they were all indispensable to one another, she and Fitzroy and Irwin, so they had to get along together, so she had to go on being patient, no matter how irritating they might become, Fitzroy with his genius act and Irwin sniffing around her as though she couldn’t tell he didn’t really want her body, only wanted that money she was going to collect.

  Of course, now that Grandpa Elkhorn was installed in that grave out in Queens, she was the most indispensable of the three. Until then, Fitzroy could always have decided to replace her with another Indian maid, even though she was perfect for the job at hand. But now? Now it would take a hell of a lot for them to want to go dig up some third body somewhere.

  So, even though they were all still indispensable to one another, now that she had become the most indispensable of them all, she could permit herself to show just the tiniest bit of impatience, peeking around the patience she still maintained. She could permit her voice to rise just the slightest bit when she asked, “Tell them?”

  “It may be necessary, Little Feather,” Fitzroy said apologetically. “We’ll have to take that possibility into account.”

  They were having this discussion shortly after Fitzroy’s phone call to the one guy he’d managed to find, and the three of them were now seated around in the rather cramped living room of the quarters Fitzroy had picked up from somewhere to be their base of operations while they were in New York. The quarters were cramped, but they wouldn’t be staying in them much longer. Still, it was another reason that Little Feather was finding patience a difficult mode to hold on to. And now this.

  “Already I’m having to share with you guys,” she pointed out. “And now, how many more are gonna show up?”

  “In the first place, Little Feather,” Fitzroy said, “you aren’t sharing with us, we’re all sharing together. Don’t forget who conceived of this idea.”

  “You’re the genius, I know that,” Little Feather assured him, not for the first time. “I’m not taking anything away from you. But the idea was to deal with these guys the way you dealt with the guys in Nevada, and for a month now, you led me to believe you did deal with them, and now all of a sudden they’re not only alive but they’re gonna be partners?”

  “Only for a little while,” Irwin promised. “Believe me, Little Feather, I don’t like those fellows any more than you do. In fact,” he said, tenderly touching fingertips to the end of his nose, “I’ve got more reason than you have not to like them. But Fitzroy’s probably right.”

  “Thank you, Irwin,” Fitzroy said, with barely any irony at all.

  “They’re not as easy to handle as the ones in Nevada,” Irwin went on. “So there they are, they’re alive, they know about the body switch, and if we keep them out, don’t try to work some kind of deal with them, when the story hits the papers and the TV, they could make a lot of trouble for us.”

  “Out of spite, if nothing else,” Fitzroy added.

  “Exactly,” Irwin said. “But if we bring them in, sooner or later we’ll get a shot at them.”

  “You had your shot at them,” Little Feather told him, “the night they did the work.”

  Fitzroy said, “We underestimated them, Little Feather. I’m afraid I must admit to that. It’s my fault, I take full—”

  “All right, all right,” Little Feather said. “I’m not here to play the blame game. So we’re gonna have to see them in the morning. We gonna use this place?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Fitzroy said. “It would be simplest.”

  “And I could maybe set up a couple booby traps,” Irwin said, “so maybe we could get rid of them right away.”

  Startled, Little Feather said, “What, are you gonna blow it up? I’ve got all my stuff in here.”

  “No, no, no,” Irwin reassured her, “nothing like that. Just little things. If they work, there might be a little blood in here to clean up afterward, that’s all.”

  “Just so I don’t have to move out all my stuff,” Little Feather said.

  10

  * * *

  In the morning, Dortmunder walked over Nineteenth Street to Third Avenue and waited on the corner there. It was pretty full of pedestrians around that neighborhood, and about three minutes later, down Third Avenue came what appeared to be some sort of sonic wave that moved people to the edges of the sidewalk, opening up a vee behind itself like the wake behind a speedboat. Knowing this was Tiny arriving, Dortmunder turned the other way to look for a nice recent-model car with M.D. license plates.

  Andy Kelp always took doctor’s cars when he needed to travel, on the theory that doctors, surrounded as they are by the intimations of mortality, are always in favor of treating themselves well while here below, including the cars they choose to drive. “I trust doctors,” Kelp often said. “When it comes to cars, that is.”

  Seeing the approach of no Volvos or Lincolns with M.D. plates, Dortmunder turned back the other way, and yes, here came Tiny. He was dressed for the occasion in a bulky wool olive-drab greatcoat that made him look like an entire platoon going over the top in World War I. But what were those pink nylon straps curving over each shoulder to retreat into each armpit?

  Tiny stopped in front of Dortmunder and nodded his head. “Whadaya say, Dortmunder?”

  “I say,” Dortmunder told him, “the people we’re going to meet don’t know my last name.”

  “Gotcha,” Tiny said. “They won’t hear it from me.”

  “Thank you, Tiny. What’s with the straps?”

  Tiny turned around, and he was wearing a cute pink nylon backpack big enough for two grapefruit but not one pumpkin, the kind of fashion accessory that on most people just looks dorky but which, on that expanse of olive-drab wool, looked like a really bad pimple. Most men wouldn’t dare to be seen in such a thing because they’d be afraid people would laugh at them, but, of course, Tiny never had that problem.

  Having given Dortmunder a complete eyeful, Tiny turned around again to say, “Somebody left it in the lobby at J.C.’s building about a year ago, and nobody ever claimed it—”

  “Well, that makes sense.”

  “—so after a while, I took it upstairs and threw it in a closet because maybe someday it’d come in handy.”

  “Tiny? Why today?”

  “I didn’t want the grenade to stretch my pocket,” Tiny said.

  “I get it,” Dortmunder said, and Tiny looked past him to say, “Here’s the doctor now.”

  When Dortmunder turned, he saw approaching him up Third Avenue one of the larger suburban assault vehicles available, a Grand Cherokee Jeep Laredo, which isn’t quite enough name for such an imposing command car. This one was maraschino cherry red, with huge black waffle-tread tires, and yes, there was the M.D. plate, flanked by a number of bumper stickers recommending we all take great care with the fragile resources of our planet.

  “Now that,” Tiny rumbled, “is my kinda car.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Dortmunder agreed.

  Kelp, at the wheel, was grinning like Christmas morning. He braked to a stop at the curb, and Dortmunder opened the front passenger door while Tiny opened the rear one.

  “Watch out for that first step,” Kelp advised them.

  Tiny unhooked his itty-bitty backpack and tossed it casually onto the backseat, where it bounced once and fell on the floor. Then he lifted his massive self into all of the backseat while Dortmunder cl
imbed up to the seat next to Kelp.

  Kelp looked back and down at the pink pack on the floor. “What’s with that?”

  “The grenade,” Dortmunder told him.

  Kelp looked at Dortmunder. “Ah,” he said, and faced front, and when the doors were closed, he drove them uptown.

  Looking around at the plush interior and the dashboard like an electronic major-league scoreboard, Dortmunder said, “Andy, are you sure a doctor owns this? It’s more like a drug cartel would own it.”

  “When I saw it outside New York Hospital,” Kelp told him, “I knew I had to steal it. Even if I wasn’t going anywhere. Lemme tell you, this is a doctor, he doesn’t just want comfort, he doesn’t just want convenience, he wants to be immortal.”

  “I bet he’s feeling naked right now,” Dortmunder commented.

  “Six to one he won’t even leave the hospital,” Kelp said, and turned toward the Midtown Tunnel.

  It was a beautiful clear cold November day, and when they got out to the southern shore of Long Island, with the gray and quicksilver ocean sloping away from them down toward the distant horizon, the sky was a huge empty space, a bright but faded pale blue. There were a few distant cars on Ocean Parkway, but nothing in the day was quite as visible as the red Cherokee zipping along the pale concrete road past the ashy tans of sand and dead beach grass.

  The long stretch of Jones Beach was empty, frigid waves lapping ashore, looking for something to take home. From time to time, they passed the entrances to parking areas, mostly blocked by sawhorses, the parking lots themselves screened from the road by hedges and stunted pine trees.

  They’d been quiet inside the car for some time, but now Tiny leaned forward and said, “Dortmunder, you can give me a hand.”

  “Sure, Tiny.”

  Tiny had opened his pink pack and removed from it a standard U.S. Army hand grenade, known as a pineapple because it looks a little like a pineapple, its cast-iron body serrated to turn the body into many small pieces of shrapnel when the TNT inside goes off. Curved down one side of the grenade was its safety lever, held in place by a safety pin at the top, the pin attached to the pull ring. Pull the pin out by the ring, but keep holding the lever close against the grenade, and everything’s fine. Release the lever, and you have ten seconds to remove yourself from the grenade’s proximity.

  The other item in the pink pack was a small roll of duct tape. Tiny now handed this tape to Dortmunder and said, “Twice around. But under the lever.”

  “Right, I know.”

  Tiny held the grenade loosely in his left hand, the lever opposite the side against his palm. Dortmunder wrapped duct tape twice around Tiny’s hand and the grenade, leaving the lever free, then said, “Feel okay?”

  “Like a rolla nickels,” Tiny said. He seemed quite happy this way.

  And here was Parking Area 6, as the big Parks Department sign announced, and the sawhorses had already been moved aside. The dashboard clock, when you finally found it among all the tachs and meters, read 10:54, but obviously the others were already here.

  “Show time,” Tiny said, and they drove through the break in the hedge and out onto the big pale expanse of parking area. And out there in the middle of all that emptiness stood a pastel green and chrome motor home, one of the biggest made, top of the line, a forty-foot Alpine Coach from Western Recreational Vehicles.

  “Well, looka that,” Kelp said.

  “I guess we drive over there,” Dortmunder said as the bus door at the right front of the motor home opened and three people stepped out into the pale sunlight.

  Tiny leaned forward to peer past Dortmunder’s cheek. “That’s them, huh?”

  Kelp made the introductions: “The fat one in the three-piece suit is Fitzroy Guilderpost and the thin one in the wrinkled suit is Irwin somebody, or maybe somebody Irwin. We don’t know the babe.”

  The babe was tall and very well proportioned, with lustrous black hair in two long braids halfway down her back, almost to her waist. She wore a long white-fringed buckskin jacket and a short white-fringed buckskin skirt and the kind of tall red leather boots that are allegedly meant for walking.

  “Too bad I already know Josie,” Tiny commented. He was the only one in the world who called J. C. Taylor Josie.

  “I don’t know,” Kelp said. “She looks to me like you could strike matches on her.”

  And, as their red Jeep rolled closer to the trio at the motor home, it was true. The babe was a babe, all right, but she looked more like an action figure made out of stainless steel than an actual person. She stood with one hand on one hip and one leg cocked, as though ready to show her karate moves at the slightest provocation.

  Kelp drove up close and stopped, with his side of the car facing the three people, so that was the side Tiny got out. Dortmunder had to walk around the big red hood of the Jeep, and by then Kelp was already introducing everybody: “Tiny, this is Fitzroy Guilderpost, and that’s Irwin, and I don’t know the lady.”

  “I guess you don’t,” Irwin said.

  Guilderpost said, “Forgive me, this is Tiny?”

  “It’s kind of a nickname,” Tiny explained.

  “I see,” Guilderpost said. “Well, may I introduce Little Feather. Little Feather, that says he’s Tiny, that’s Andy Kelp, also sometimes Andy Kelly, and that’s John. John, I’m sorry, I don’t know your last name.”

  “I’m not,” Dortmunder said. “Go ahead, Tiny.”

  “Right.”

  Tiny stepped forward and showed all assembled the hand grenade taped to his left hand, then closed the hand to keep the lever pressed to the grenade’s side as he pulled the pin. Moving closer to Guilderpost, whose eyes had grown considerably wider, he extended the pin, saying, “Hold this for me, will you?”

  Guilderpost gaped at the hand grenade. All three of them gaped at the hand grenade. Not taking the pin, Guilderpost said, “What are you doing?”

  “Well, I’m goin inside there,” Tiny said, “look around, see the situation.”

  “But why—Why that thing?”

  “Well, if I was to faint or anything in there,” Tiny said, “I wouldn’t be holding this safety lever anymore, would I?”

  Irwin said, “Is that—Is that an actual—Is that live?”

  “At the moment,” Tiny said.

  Guilderpost, flabbergasted, said, “But why would you do such a thing?”

  Dortmunder answered, saying, “Fitzroy, we’ve got like a few reasons not to trust you a hundred percent. So Tiny sees to it, if something happens to somebody, something happens to everybody.”

  Tiny turned to the babe. “Little Feather,” he said, “you hold this pin for me, okay? Don’t lose it now.”

  Little Feather was the first of the three to recover. Grinning at Tiny, she accepted the pin and said, “This is awful sudden. Pinned on the first date.”

  “That’s just how I am,” Tiny told her, and said to the rest, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Tiny started for the motor home, but Irwin suddenly jumped in front of him, saying, “No, well, wait, why don’t you let me go in first? You know, it might be unfamiliar to you and all.”

  “We’ll go in together, then,” Tiny said, and turned to Dortmunder to say, “See? Plan B every time.”

  “I see,” Dortmunder said.

  Tiny and Irwin went into the motor home and Little Feather gave Guilderpost an angry grin as she said, “Temporary partners. We’ll take care of them. Fitzroy, you’re never going to outsmart these people.”

  “Little Feather,” Guilderpost answered, torn between anger and embarrassment, “we can discuss this privately.”

  Kelp said, “You know, Little Feather, I think you people need us, wouldn’t you say so?”

  “You may be right,” Little Feather said, and the motor home door opened and Irwin stuck his head out to say, “All clear.” Then he hurtled out among them, and it became obvious he’d done that because Tiny had given him a slight shove, and now there was Tiny in the doorway, saying, “
They had a couple cute things set up. The electric wire to the toilet, I liked that one.”

  Kelp shook his head at Guilderpost, saying, “Fitzroy, you disappoint me.”

  “That was Irwin’s idea,” Guilderpost told him. “All those booby traps were his idea.”

  Little Feather said, “And guess who turned out to be the boobies.”

  “All right, all right,” Irwin said. His nose appeared to be out of joint. “He’s happy now, so let’s go in.”

  “Nah, let’s not,” Tiny said. “That’s a very small living room you got there.”

  “Especially for you, I guess,” Little Feather said.

  “Right.” Coming out to join the rest, Tiny said, “So why don’t we just stand here in the sunlight and talk this over? But first, Kelp, you and, uh, John, whyn’t you put your guns on the ground by your feet?”

  “Okay,” Dortmunder said, and he and Kelp took out their pistols and put them on the concrete while Tiny said, “And you three, same thing.”

  Guilderpost said, “Why do you assume we’re armed?”

  Irwin was already taking two pistols out of his pockets, putting them on the ground as he said, “Oh, come on, Fitzroy, stop playing the fool.”

  So Guilderpost shrugged and brought out a cannon of his own and grunted as he bent to put it on the ground. “I must say,” he commented, “I don’t much care for this meeting so far.”

  “It’ll get better,” Tiny assured him.

  Little Feather’s pistol turned out to be a chrome Star .22 in a thigh holster. She looked both fetching and lethal as she drew it, and then she stood holding it, giving Tiny a speculative look.

  He raised part of an eyebrow at her. “Yeah?”

  “I’m wondering,” she said. “If I was to shoot Andy there, would you really blow yourself up?”

  “You wouldn’t shoot me,” he pointed out, “so it seems to me all you’d be doing was buy yourself some trouble.”

  “Very weird,” she decided, and did a nice Bunny dip to put the .22 next to her boots.