Thieves' Dozen d-12 Read online

  "If you mean, John," Kelp said, "he's right here. This is him here."

  "That's OK," the cousin said. "You just tell him we'll forget all about it this once, and all he has to do is give it back, and we'll never say another word about it."

  Kelp shook his head. "I don't get what you mean," he said. "Give what back?"

  "The receipts!" cousin Bohker yelled, waving madly at his ticket office. "Two hundred twenty-seven paid admissions, not counting freebies and house seats like you fellas had, at twelve bucks a head; that's two thousand, seven hundred twenty-four dollars, and I want it back"

  Kelp stared at his cousin. "The fox-office receipts? You can't-" His stare, disbelieving, doubtful, wondering, turned toward Dortmunder. "John? You didn't!" Kelp's eyes looked like hubcaps. "Did you? You didn't! Naturally, you didn't. Did you?"

  The experience of being unjustly accused was so novel and bewildering to Dortmunder that he was almost drunk from it. He had so little experience of innocence. How does an innocent person act, react, respond to the base accusation? He could barely stand up, he was concentrating so hard on this sudden in-rush of guiltlessness. His knees were wobbling. He stared at Andy Kelp and couldn't think of one solitary thing to say.

  "Who else was out here?" the cousin demanded. "All alone out here while everybody else was inside with the play. 'Couldn't stand Shakespeare,' was that it? Saw his opportunity, by God, and took it, and the hell with his host!"

  Kelp was beginning to look desperate. "John," he said, like a lawyer leading a particularly stupid witness, "you weren't just playing a little joke, were you? Just having a little fun, didn't mean anything serious, was that it?"

  Maybe innocent people are dignified, Dortmunder thought. He tried it: "I did not take the money," he said, as dignified as a turkey on Thanksgiving eve.

  Kelp turned to his cousin: "Are you sure it's gone?"

  "Andy," said the cousin, drawing himself up-or in-becoming even more dignified than Dortmunder, topping Dortmunder's king of dignity with his own ace, "this fellow is what he is, but you're my wife's blood relative."

  "Aw, cuz," Kelp protested, "you don't think I was in it with him, do you?"

  And that was the unkindest cut of all. Forgetting dignity, Dortmunder gazed on his former friend like a betrayed beagle. "You, too, Andy?"

  "Gee whiz, John," Kelp said, twisting back and forth to show how conflicted all this made him, "what're we supposed to think? I mean, maybe it just happened accidental-like; you were bored, you know, walking around, you just picked up this cash without even thinking about it, you could. ..."

  Wordlessly, Dortmunder frisked himself, patting his pockets and chest, then spreading his arms wide, offering himself for Kelp to search.

  Which Kelp didn't want to do. "OK, John," he said, "the stuff isn't on you. But there wasn't anybody else out here, just you, and you know your own rep-"

  "The donkey," Dortmunder said.

  Kelp blinked at him. "The what?"

  "The guy in the donkey head. He walked around from the back to the front, and then he walked around again from the front to the back. We nodded at each other."

  Kelp turned his hopeful hubcaps in his cousin's direction.

  "The guy with the donkey head, that's who you-"

  "What, Kelly?" demanded the cousin. "Kelly's my junior partner in this operation! He's been in it with me from the beginning, he's the director, he takes character roles, he loves this theater!" Glowering at Dortmunder, exuding more fertilizer essence than ever, cousin Bohker said, "So is that your idea, Mr. Dortmunder?" Dortmunder had been "John" before this. "Is that your idea? Cover up your own crime by smearing an innocent man?"

  "Maybe he did it for a joke," Dortmunder said vengefully. "Or maybe he's absentminded."

  Kelp, it was clear, was prepared to believe absolutely anything, just so they could all get past this social pothole. "Cuz," he said, "maybe so, maybe that's it. Kelly's your partner; maybe he took the money legit, spare you the trouble, put it in the bank himself."

  But Bohker wouldn't buy it. "Kelly never touches the money," he insisted. "I'm the businessman, he's the ar-tiste, he's- Kelly!" he shouted through the entranceway, toward the stage, and vigorously waved his fat arm.

  Kelp and Dortmunder exchanged a glance. Kelp's look was filled with a wild surmise; Dortmunder's belonged under a halo.

  Kelly came out to join them, wiping his neck with a paper towel, saying, "What's up?" He was a short and skinny man who could have been any age from nine to 14 or from 53 to 80, but nothing in between. The donkey head was gone, but that didn't make for much of an improvement. His real face wasn't so much lined as pleated, with deep crevices you could hide a nickel in. His eyes were eggy, with blue yolks, and his thin hair was unnaturally black, like work boots. Except for the head, he was still in the same dumb costume, the idea having been that the actors in bib overalls and black T-shirts were supposed to be some kind of workmen, like plumbers or whatever, and the actors dressed in curtains and beach towels were aristocrats. Kelly had been the leader of the bunch of workmen who were going to put on the play within the play-oh, it was grim, it was grim-so here he was, still in his overalls and T-shirt. And black work boots, so that he looked the same on the top and the bottom. "What's up?" he said.

  "I'll tell you what's up," Bohker promised him and pointed at Kelp. "I introduced you to my wife's cousin from the city."

  "Yeah, you did already." Kelly, an impatient man probably wanting to get out of his work clothes and into something a little more actorly, nodded briskly at Kelp and said, "How's it goin'?"

  "Not so good," Kelp said.

  "And this," Bohker went on, pointing without pleasure at Dortmunder, "is my wife's cousin's pal, also from the city, a fella with a reputation for being just a little light-fingered."

  "Aw, well," Dortmunder said.

  Kelly was still impatient: "And?"

  "And he lifted the gate!"

  This slice of jargon was just a bit too showbizzy for Kelly to grab on the fly like that; he looked around for a lifted gate, his facial pleats increasing so much he looked as though his nose might fall into one of the excavations. "He did what?"

  Bohker, exasperated at having to use lay terminology, snapped, "He stole the money out of the box office."

  "I did not," Dortmunder said.

  Kelly looked at Dortmunder as though he'd never expected such treatment. "Gee, man," he said, "that's our eating money."

  "I didn't take it," Dortmunder said. He was going for another run at dignity.

  "He's got the gall, this fella," Bohker went on, braver about Dortmunder now that he had an ally with him, "to claim you took it!"

  Kelly wrinkled up like a multicar collision: "Me?"

  "All I said," Dortmunder told him, feeling his dignity begin to tatter, "was that you went around to the front of the theater."

  "I did not," Kelly said. Being an actor, he had no trouble with dignity at all.

  So he did do it, Dortmunder thought, and pressed what he thought of as his advantage: "Sure, you did. We nodded to each other. You were wearing your donkey head. It was about ten minutes before the show was over."

  "Pal," Kelly said, "ten minutes before the show was over, I was on stage, asleep in front of everybody, including your buddy here. And without my donkey head."

  "That's true, John," Kelp said. "The fairies took the donkey head away just around then."

  "In that case," Dortmunder said, immediately grasping the situation, "it had to be one of the other guys in bib overalls. They weren't all on stage then, were they?"

  But Bohker already had his mind made up. "That's right," he said. "That's what you saw, the big-town sharpie, when you came out of this box office right here, with the cash receipts in your pocket, and looked through that door right there in at that stage way back there, and saw Kelly was the only rustic on stage, and the donkey prop was gone, and-"

  "The what?" Dortmunder had missed something there.

  "The donkey prop!"
Bohker cried, getting angrier, pointing at his own head. "The head! It's a prop!"

  "Well, you know, Jesse," Kelly said thoughtfully, "in some union productions, you know, they'd call it a costume."

  "Whatever it is," Bohker snapped, waving the gnats of showbiz cant away as though he hadn't summoned them up himself, then turning back to Dortmunder: "Whatever it is, you saw it, or didn't see it, when you looked right through there and saw Kelly asleep without his head, and none of the other rustics around, and right then you decided how you were gonna blame somebody else. And I'm here to tell you, it won't work!"

  Well, innocence wasn't any help-overrated, as Dortmunder had long suspected-and dignity had proved to be a washout, so what was left? Dortmunder was considering violence, which usually tended at least to clear the air, when Kelp said, "Cuz, let me have a word in private with John, OK?"

  "That's all I ever asked," Bohker said, with false reasonableness. "Just talk to your friend here, explain to him how we do things different in the country, how we don't take advantage of the kindness of people who take us in when we're on the run, how when we're away from the city, we behave like decent, Godfearing-"

  "Right, cuz, right," Kelp said, taking Dortmunder by the elbow, drawing him away from the ongoing flow, nodding and nodding as though Bohker's claptrap made any sense at all, turning Dortmunder away, walking him back out toward the now

  nearly empty parking lot and across it to a big old tree standing there with leaves all over it, and Dortmunder promised himself, if Andy asks me even once did I do it, I'm gonna pop him.

  Instead of which, once they'd reached the leafy privacy of the tree, Kelp turned and murmured, "John, we're in a bind here."

  Dortmunder sighed, relieved and yet annoyed. "That's right."

  "I dunno, the only thing I can think- How much did he say it was?"

  "Two something. Something under three grand." And that got Dortmunder steamed in an entirely different way. "To think I'd stoop to grab such a measly amount of-"

  "Sure you would, John, if the circumstances were different," Kelp said, cutting through the crap. "The question is, Can we cover it?"

  "What do you mean, cover it?"

  "Well, Jesse said if we give it back, he'll forget the whole thing, no questions asked."

  Now Dortmunder was really outraged. "You mean, let the son of a bitch go on thinking I'm a thief?"

  Kelp leaned closer, dropping his voice. "John, you are a thief."

  "Not this time!"

  "What does it matter, John? You're never gonna convince him, so forget it."

  Dortmunder glared at the farmhouse, full now of actors, one of them with nearly three grand extra in his pocket. Probably looking out a window right now, grinning at him. "It's one of those guys," he said. "I can't let him get away with it."

  "Why not? And what are you gonna do, play detective? John, we're not cops!"

  "We watched cops work often enough."

  "That isn't the same. John, how much money you got?"

  "On me?" Dortmunder groused, reluctant even to discuss this idea, while out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kelly head-

  ing briskly toward the farmhouse. "Why couldn't it be him?" he demanded. "Partners steal from partners all the time."

  "He was on stage, John. How much money you got?"

  "On me, a couple hundred. In the suitcase, back at your goddamn cousin's house, maybe a grand."

  "I could come up with eight, nine hundred," Kelp said. "Let's go see if we can cut a deal."

  "I don't like this," Dortmunder said. "I don't go along with making restitution to begin with, and this is even worse."

  Running out of patience, Kelp said, "What else are we gonna do, John?"

  "Search that farmhouse there. Search the theater. You think some amateur can hide a stash so we can't find it?"

  "They wouldn't let us search," Kelp pointed out. "We aren't cops, we don't have any authority, we can't throw any weight around. That's what cops do; they don't detect, you know that. They throw their weight around, and when you say, 'Oof,' you get five to ten in Green Haven. Come on, John, swallow your pride."

  "I'm not gonna say I did it," Dortmunder insisted. "You wanna pay him off, we'll pay him off. But I'm not gonna say I did it."

  "Fine. Let's go talk to the man."

  They walked back to where cousin Bohker waited in the narrow trapezoid of shade beside the barn. "Cuz," said Kelp, "we'd like to offer a deal."

  "Admitting nothing," Dortmunder said.

  "Two thousand, seven hundred twenty-four dollars," the cousin said. "That's the only deal I know."

  "We can't quite come up with that much," Kelp said, "on ac-counta John here didn't actually take your money. But we know how things look and we know what John's reputation is-"

  "Hey," Dortmunder said. "What about you?"

  "OK, fine. The reputations we both have. So we feel we'll try to make good on what you lost as best we can, even though we didn't do it, and we could probably come up with two thousand. In and around two thousand."

  "Two thousand, seven hundred twenty-four dollars," said the cousin, "or I call the troopers."

  "Troopers?" Dortmunder stared at Kelp. "He's gonna call in the Army?"

  "State troopers, he means." Kelp explained, and turned back to his cousin to say, "That wouldn't be a nice thing to do, cuz. Turn us over to the law and we're really in trouble. Can't you take the two-"

  "Two thousand, seven hundred twenty-four dollars," said the cousin.

  "Oh, the hell with this guy," Dortmunder abruptly said. "Why don't we just go take a hike?"

  "I thought you might come up with that next," the cousin answered. He was smeared all over with smugness. "So that's why I sent Kelly for reinforcements."

  Dortmunder turned, and there was Kelly back from the farmhouse, and with him were all the other rustics. Five of them, still in their bib overalls and T-shirts, standing there looking at Dortmunder and Kelp, getting a kick out of being the audience for a change.

  It's one of them, Dortmunder thought. He's standing there and I'm standing here, and it's one of them. And I'm stuck.

  Kelp said something, and then the cousin said something, and then Kelp said something else, and then Kelly said something; and Dortmunder tuned out. It's one of these five guys, he thought. One of these guys is a little scared to be out here, he doesn't know if he's gonna get away with it or not, he's looking at me and he doesn't know if he's in trouble or not.

  Their eyes? No, they're all actors; the guy's gotta know enough to behave like everybody else. But it's one of them.

  Well, not the fat one. You look at skinny Kelly there, and you see this fat one, and even with the donkey head on, you'd know it wasn't Kelly, having already seen Kelly in the first half, wearing the donkey head, and knowing what he looked like.

  Hey, wait a minute. Same with the tall one. Kelly's maybe 5'5" or 5'6", and here's a drink of water must be 6'4", and he stands all stooped, so if he had the donkey head on, the donkey's lips would be on his belt buckle. Not him.

  Son of a gun. Two down. Three to go.

  Conversation went on, quite animated at times, and Dort-munder continued to study the rustics. That one with the beard, well, the beard wouldn't show inside the donkey head, but look how hairy he is anyway; lots of bushy black hair on his head and very hairy arms below the T-shirt sleeves, all that black hair with the pale skin showing through. With the donkey head on, he'd look maybe a little too realistic. Would I have noticed? Would I have said, "Wow, up close, that's some hairy donkey?" Maybe, maybe.

  Shoes? Black work boots, black shoes; some differences, but not enough, not so you'd notice.

  Wait a minute. That guy, the one with the very graceful neck, the one who would be kept in the special block for his own protection if he were ever given five to ten at Green Haven, the one who moves like a ballet dancer; his bib overalls have a crease. Not him. He could cover himself in an entire donkey and I'd know.

  Number five. Guy in his mi
d-20s, average height, average weight, nothing in particular about him except the watch. He's the guy, during the first half, while I'm waiting for it to be over, trying to find something to think about, he's the guy with the pale mark around his wrist where he usually wears a watch, so it isn't tanned. And now he's wearing the watch. Did the guy who walked by me have a pale mark on his wrist? Would I have noticed?

  "John? John!"

  Dortmunder looked around, startled out of his reverie. "Yeah? What is it?"

  "What is it?" Kelp was looking frantic and he clearly wanted to know why Dortmunder wasn't frantic as well. "Do you think she could or not?" he demanded.

  "I'm sorry," Dortmunder said, "I didn't hear the question. Who could what? Or not?" And thinking, it's either the hairy arms or the watch; hairy arms or watch.

  "May," Kelp said, elaborately patient. "Do you think if you phoned May, she could send us a grand to pay off my cousin?"

  Hairy arms or watch. Nothing shows on either face, nothing in the eyes.

  "John? What's the matter with you?"

  "Well," Dortmunder said, and put a big smile on his face, and even forced a little laugh, or something similar to a laugh, "well, you got us, cuz."

  Kelp stared. "What?"

  "Yeah, we took the money," Dortmunder said, shrugging. "But it was just for a joke, you know; we never meant to keep it."

  "Yeah, I'm sure," Bohker said with a sarcastic smirk, while Kelp stood as though turned to stone. Limestone. In acid rain.

  Kelly, cold and brisk, said, "Where is it?"

  "Well, I don't know exactly," Dortmunder said. "I gave it to my partner to hide."

  Kelp squawked; it sounded exactly like those chickens that a neighbor of Bohker's kept in his back yard. He squawked, and then he cried, "John! You never did!"

  "Not you," Dortmunder told him. "My other partner, the actor in the cast here that's an old pal of mine. I slipped him the money and he went and hid it in the house." Hairy arms or watch; hairy arms or watch. Dortmunder turned and grinned easily at the kid with the pale band under his watch. "Didn't I?" he said.

  The kid blinked. "I don't get you," he said.

  "Aw, come on; the gag's over," Dortmunder told him. "If Bohker here calls his state troopers, I'll just tell them I gave you the money to hide and they'll go look in the house there and find it, and everybody knows I was never in that house, so it was you. So now the gag is over, right?"