Good Behavior

1

Dortmunder opened the door and a distant burglar alarm went CLANGangangangangang... “Hell,” Dortmunder said, and shut the door again, but the angangangangang went on and on and on. “Hell and damnation,” Dortmunder said, while from some distance away a police patrol car’s siren went whoop-whoop wiggle-wiggle-wiggle whoooooooooopp, the sound rising from the grid of New York City’s streets up five stories through the two A.M. air to this quiet blacktopped roof. The burglar alarm kept nagging: angangangangang. WHOOP-WHOOP; the patrol car wasn’t so very far away after all.

“Goodbye,” O’Hara said.

Dortmunder looked at his partner in crime; in this crime, anyway. “Where you going?”

“Florida,” O’Hara said over his shoulder. He was already halfway across the roof to the fire escape.

Raising his voice just a teeny-weeny bit, hoping O’Hara could hear him but none of the neighbors would, Dortmunder said, “Maybe you shouldn’t do that.”

“I’m gone,” O’Hara called back, climbing onto the fire escape. “It’s too hot around here, I’m going to Florida to cool off.” And he disappeared from view.

Dortmunder, as he replaced his burglar tools in the special inside pockets of his black sports jacket, dubiously shook his head. He just had the feeling O’Hara was making a mistake, that’s all, which would be his second of the night, it having been O’Hara who’d paused on the way up the fire escape to “neutralize” the burglar alarm. Either those jumped wires had failed to do their job or the proprietor of this importer’s warehouse had a second alarm system unknown to Mr. Chepkoff, the food wholesaler who’d commissioned this evening’s operation. In either event, it was clear now that the recent shipment of Russian caviar three stories below this roof, the object of Mr. Chepkoff’s current intentions, would not after all be removed from the premises this evening, which was a pity.

Quite a pity. In the first place, Dortmunder could use the money. And in the second place, he’d never tasted caviar, and had been looking forward to lifting one or two cans from the shipment — Mr. Chepkoff would never know — and trying them out in the privacy of his own home, swigged down with a nice bottle of Old Milwaukee Light beer. His faithful companion May had even brought back some imported crackers to try the caviar with from the Bohack supermarket where she worked, and was waiting up, butter knife poised, for Dortmunder’s return.

The WHOOP-WHOOP had stopped now, but the angangangangang just went on and on. It was too bad. Dortmunder hated to go back to May empty-handed. On the other hand, he’d hate it even more if he didn’t get home at all. O’Hara’s decision to go to Florida via fire escape had been a hasty and unwise one, but departing these premises in one fashion or another was definitely a good idea.

Dortmunder sighed. The caviar was so close he could almost taste it — if he knew what caviar tasted like. Resigning himself, he crossed the roof to a spot on the edge near the fire escape, from where he could look down at the sidewalk and at O’Hara, engaged in unsatisfactory conversation with two uniformed cops. Unsatisfactory to O’Hara, that is; even from here, the cops could be seen to be very satisfied. Soon they’d find the stolen truck backed up to the loading dock on the side street, and then they would begin to wonder if O’Hara had brought any friends along tonight.

In fact, as two more patrol cars — lights flashing, but no sirens — came to a stop at the curb down there, one of the original cops started up the fire escape. A young and agile cop — very unfair, that — coming up two steps at a time, flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other.

Time to go. This building was on the corner of two streets in a southwestern area of Manhattan recently rechristened Tribeca, which means “the Triangle Below Canal Street,” and whenever any section of New York gets a cute new name — SoHo for South of Houston Street, Clinton to replace the honorable old name Hell’s Kitchen, even NoHo for North of Houston Street — it means the real estate developers and gentrifiers and condominiumizers have become thick as locusts. It means the old handbag factories and sheet-metal shops and moving companies are being replaced by high-ticket housing. And it also means there’s a long transition period of years or even decades when the plumbing supply places and the divorced advertising executives coexist, uneasy neighbors, neither entirely approving of the other. When Dortmunder turned away from the cop-laden fire escape, therefore, he looked down a long block of rooftops over who-knew-what. All the way to the next cross-street the rooftops were at the same level, each with its telephone-booth-like structure on top like the one Dortmunder had so innocently opened, giving access to the stairwell. But down those stairs, what might he find? A tool manufacturer, his premises girdled with burglar alarms? A Wall Street lawyer with a pet Doberman pinscher?

Not a cop with a flashlight and a gun, anyway. Dortmunder loped away across the rooftops, a tall bony middle-aged man who ran stiffly, like Pinocchio before he became a real boy, and whose burglar tools went rattle-rattle and clank-clank in his jacket pockets.

First door, locked, no knob or keyhole, just a blank metal sheet. Drat.

Second door, similar. Third. Fourth. There wasn’t time now to jimmy a door, not with that cop on the way, and what were the odds on finding one of these doors unlocked?

Zero.

Last roof. Dortmunder looked back and saw the flashlight beam on the roof above the caviar, drawing white lines on the night, up and down, back and forth. The cop hadn’t seen Dortmunder way down here yet, but he soon would.

But this wasn’t exactly the end of the block. There was one more building, broad and square, between here and the corner. Unfortunately, it was only three stories high, its jumble of A-shaped roof sections a good twenty feet below where Dortmunder now stood.

Back there, the bobbing flashlight had started to move in this direction. “Oh, boy,” Dortmunder said.

What were his choices? (A) Prison. And, since this time he’d be classed as an habitual offender, it would be prison for all eternity. (B) A broken ankle. (C) If that cop’s flashlight and eyes were good, prison and a broken ankle.

“Might as well go for the whole thing,” Dortmunder told himself. The low wall at the edge of the roof was topped by arched slippery sections of tile. Dortmunder climbed over, clutching to the tiles, letting his feet dangle, his arms straight up, his nose and cheeks feeling the rough cool brick surface of the building wall. He could sense every single molecule of air in the vast distance between the worn soles of his shoes and the slanted top of that building down there. “I better not take the chance,” he told himself, changing his mind. Maybe he could hide behind one of those stairwell constructions, or find some other fire escape to go down. “Too dangerous,” he told himself, and pulled to get back up onto the roof, and his hands slipped.

2

Good heavens, thought Sister Mary Serene, it’s barely two o’clock, my vigil’s only half over, and my knees are killing me. But, mercy, think how much better off I am than all the people out in the world, forced to ride subways, talk to one another all day long, earn livings, watch television, eat meat, be distracted from contemplation of the One. For it is the One, the Eternal, toward Whom our thoughts should ever be directed, the One Who raises us above the mundane world through contemplation of Him, and Who, at the end, will lift us to eternal joy in the Bosom of His Peace and His Contentment. The mystery of the One who Is Three and yet One, Who created this world only for the purpose of renouncing it, Who created us in His image but Is Himself incomprehensible and unknowable, that One Who...

It was easy to get back into contemplation; like falling off a log. Sister Mary Serene was an old hand in the contemplation game by now, having renounced the world, the flesh, the devil and an efficiency apartment in Jackson Heights some thirty-four years ago, entering this convent as a troubled and uncertain young woman and finding at once within its portals, by golly, that peace that does surpass understanding. If only everybody could be a cloistered nun, she frequently thought, what a nice and peaceful world this would be. Still to be renounced, of course, but nevertheless nice. Though not to be compared with Heaven, with the Afterlife, the abode of that One Who...

And so on.

Here in the silent chapel of the Convent of St. Filumena on Vestry Street in downtown Manhattan there were at all times throughout the twenty-four hours of the day and night at least three nuns — four at the moment, being sisters Mary Serene, Mary Accord, Mary Vigor and Mary Sodality — on their knees and engaged in the primary task of their order, the contemplation of the Godhead in silence and veneration. The sacristy light above the altar and the sconced candles between the Stations of the Cross along both side walls were very subtly enhanced by indirect electric lighting on a dimmer switch — a contribution by Sister Mary Capable’s brother, a New Jersey contractor — giving just enough illumination to show the half-dozen rough wooden pews, the simple altar, the thickly mortared brick walls and the high cathedral ceiling criss-crossed with rough-timbered rafters. In this silent and medieval setting, one’s mind quite naturally and without urging turned to thoughts of the Church Militant here below, the Church Triumphant there above, and the Supreme Being over all, that Essence Whose spiritual effusion...

Of course, even for a pro like Sister Mary Serene, contemplation did occasionally pall. Fortunately, at such moments there was always prayer to fall back on, with the usual litany of requests: long life to the Pope, an early depopulation of Purgatory, the conversion of Godless Russia. And recently there was something of even greater urgency for which to pray; namely, the return of Sister Mary Grace:

Dear Lord, if it pleases You to return to us our sister, Sister Mary Grace, from out of the tents of wickedness and the skyscrapers of the deceiver, our little Sisterhood would be eternally grateful. Eternally, Lord. We know it is Sister Mary Grace’s ardent wish to return here, to Your dominion, to this life of contemplation and duty. It is our wish also that she return among us, and if it be Your wish and desire—

Klok. Sister Mary Serene turned her head, and on the pew beside her lay a screwdriver, fairly large, with rough black tape around its handle and most of its haft, leaving only the last inch of gleaming metal to reflect the candlelight. Now here was a distraction!

Ker-chunk. A small canvas bag fell to the pew beside the screwdriver. It was gray and grimy, but neatly tied closed with a pair of canvas strings. Sister Mary Serene picked up this object, untied the strings, and opened out a kind of small toolkit with many pockets containing a number of well-oiled metal objects, some flat, some curved, one spiralled like a corkscrew. Here were tiny needle-nose pliers, here was an oblong of soft springy aluminum, here was a double-pronged electric line tester, here was a pair of wires ending in small alligator clips.

Here, in fact, was a rather good set of burglar tools.

Sister Mary Serene might be unworldly, but she wasn’t stupid. It didn’t take much to figure out the purpose for all this equipment. She raised her eyes and looked upward, and there was the burglar himself, high above, clinging to the rafters. Thank you, Lord, she thought. Our prayers are answered.

3

Dortmunder looked down at a lot of nuns. His ankle gave another twinge, and his grip on this rough-timbered rafter became less sure by the second, but what mostly bothered him was nuns. He had many reasons to be depressed by the sight of them all, scurrying back and forth down there twenty or thirty feet below, occasionally looking up in his direction, gesturing at one another, running in and out of this church or chapel or whatever it was, many reasons he had to be depressed, and all of them good.

Nuns, for instance. Well, just to leave it at that; nuns. Was that crowd likely not to call the law when some clown loaded with burglar tools comes through their roof? Not a chance. So, because it was nuns he’d fallen among — oops; almost fallen among, keep holding tight — it meant that among the choices he’d enumerated for himself up there on the roof he’d won the daily double: a broken ankle and prison for life.

Also, for a second reason to be depressed, nuns. Born in Dead Indian, Illinois, and abandoned at three minutes of age, John Dortmunder had been raised in an orphanage run by the Bleeding Heart Sisters of Eternal Misery, and when you mentioned nuns to him no sweet images grew in his mind of kindly penguins feeding the homeless and housing the hungry. No, what Dortmunder visualized when he heard the word nun was a large, bad-tempered, heavy-shouldered woman with a very rough and calloused right hand, usually swinging. Or wielding a ruler: “You’ve been quite bad, John. Put out your hand.” Ooo; a smack across the palm with a wooden ruler can create quite an impression. Just looking down at those black-and-whites — still in the traditional uniform, he noticed, not updated with the rest of the Church — just looking at them, even after all these years, could make his palm sting.

Like his ankle. Having decided not to drop onto that lower roof, having started to climb back up, he’d been in the wrong posture when his hands had slipped and he’d fallen any which way, landing heavily on an angled roof, bouncing, hitting various portions of himself, and rolling at last down into a trough, his head dangling over the edge, staring down maybe thirty-five feet at extremely hard sidewalk.

Had he yelled when falling, or when he’d hit? He didn’t know. He did know he had a whole lot of new aches and bruises and pains and stings all over his body, but he also knew that the sharp fiery twinges in his ankle made all the other pains pale in comparison. “Just like I figured,” he muttered, rolled over, managed not to slide off the edge of the roof, and looked back up at the dark mass of the building he’d just left. No cop yet, no flashlight yet, but there sure would be.

Scrambling up the steep slope on all threes — his left ankle hurt by now most of the way to the hip — he came to a small dormer, with a square wooden louvered shutter instead of a window on its front. This shutter was merely held in place by four small metal wings which could be turned aside, so Dortmunder turned them, crawled through into a small dusty black space and pulled the shutter closed behind himself. It kept wanting to fall away from the window, so he reached a narrow screwdriver through the louvers and put two of the little retaining wings back in place.

The space in which he found himself was absolutely black, and apparently quite small; not an attic, not a useful area, but merely a bit of waste between the outer and inner designs. Turning this way and that, trying not to hit his ankle against too many hard unyielding surfaces, Dortmunder blundered across the trapdoor, opened it, and found just below him the wide rafter far above the chapel. Having no choice, out he went.

At first, it had seemed as though he could crawl across this rafter to a pillar on the far side, then shimmy down the pillar (somehow), and thus make good his getaway, but this goddam rough-hewn timber was a little too rough-hewn; every time he touched it he got three more splinters. Trying to protect his hands and his ankle and everything else, he’d struggled along to just about the middle of the timber before he’d lost his grip and almost fallen. That’s when his coat fell open, and tools began to drop. And now here he was, stuck, above a sea of nuns.

Silent nuns. Even in his present difficulty, Dortmunder noticed that strangeness. The first little group of nuns, having spotted him up here, had run off to get more nuns, all of them seeming very excited, pointing at him, gesturing at one another, waving at him to remain calm, running back and forth, but never saying a word, not to one another and not to him. Robes whiffed down there, soft-soled shoes went pid-pid, beads and crucifixes klacked, but not a word did they speak.

Deaf mutes? Unable to use the telephone? Hope hesitantly lifted its battered head in Dortmunder’s breast.

And here came yet more nuns, with a ladder. Apparently, having a man in the rafters was quite an exciting event to this crowd, so they all wanted to participate, which meant there were so many nuns helping to carry the ladder that it probably assayed out to about one nun per rung. This labor-intensive method caused a lot of delay in transferring the ladder from the horizontal to the vertical — thirty or forty of the nuns didn’t want to let go — which made for a great flurry of hand-waving and head-shaking and finger-pointing before at last it was raised and opened to its tall aluminum A, and pushed over to where its top could poke Dortmunder’s dangling knee.

“Okay,” Dortmunder called. “Okay, thanks, I got it.” Hundreds of nuns held the feet of the ladder and gazed up at him. “I got it now,” he called to them.

Oh, yeah? Here he was on a rafter, and there next to him was the ladder, and the physical impossibility of transferring himself from the former rafter to the latter ladder gradually made itself manifest. There was absolutely no way to let go of anything over here, and equally no way to attach himself to anything over there. Dortmunder dithered, unmoving, and time went by.

Vibration in the ladder. Dortmunder looked down, and here came a nun, lickety-split, zipping up to his level. She was small and scrawny, ageless inside that habit, her sharp-nosed ferretlike face peering out of the oval opening of the wimple like somebody looking out of the porthole of a passing ship.

And not much liking what she saw, either. With one brief unsympathetic look at Dortmunder, she pointed briskly at his left leg and then at the first step of the ladder below the top. Nothing goody-goody about this one; she’d fit right in back at the orphanage. Feeling almost at home, Dortmunder said, “I’m sorry, Sister, I can’t do that. I think I broke my ankle, or sprained it, or something. Or something.”

She raised her eyes heavenward, and shook her head: Men; they’re all babies. It was as efficient as speech.

“No, honest, Sister, I did.” Old habits die hard; seeing the old habit of the nunnery, Dortmunder immediately started making excuses. “It’s all swole already,” he said, and shifted around precariously to give her a better look. “See?”

She frowned at him. Braced on the fourth step of the ladder, she raised the dangling end of her wooden-beaded sash and pointed at the crucifix on the end of it while raising her eyebrows in his direction: Are you Catholic?

“Well, uh, Sister,” he said, “I’m kind of, uh, fallen away.” He lowered his gaze, abashed, and looked at that stone floor way down there. “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

Again she shook her head, and let the crucifix drop. Coming up two rungs, she reached out and grabbed his right wrist — God, her hand was bony! — and gave it a yank. “Holy shit!” Dortmunder said, and she stared at him in wide-eyed disapproval. “I mean,” he said, “I mean, uh, what I meant—”

An eyes-closed brisk headshake: Oh, forget that. Another tug on his wrist: Let’s move it, fella.

“Well, okay,” Dortmunder said. “I hope you know what we’re doing.”

She did. She treated him like a collie bringing home a particularly stupid sheep at the end of the day, as limb by limb she transferred him off the beam and onto the ladder, where he clung a moment, half-relieved and half-terrified, covered with sweat. More vibration meant that his short-tempered benefactress was hurrying back down the ladder, so it was time to follow, which he did.

Awkwardly. His left ankle absolutely refused to support any weight at all, so Dortmunder hopped his way to the ground, holding on to the sides of the aluminum ladder with fingers so tense they left creases. Left leg stuck out and back at an awkward angle that made him look as though he were imitating some obscure wading bird from the Everglades, he went bounce-bounce-bounce all the way down on his right foot, and when he finally got to the bottom a whole lot of nuns reached over one another’s shoulders to push him backwards into a wheelchair they’d just brought in for the purpose.

Dortmunder’s fierce friend from the top of the ladder stood in front of him, gazing severely down at him, while all the other nuns hovered around, watching with a great deal of interest. This one must be the Chief Sister or Mother Superior or whatever they called it. She pointed at Dortmunder, then pointed at herself, then pointed to her mouth. Dortmunder nodded: “I get it. You’re all of you, uh, whatever. You can’t talk.”

Headshake. Hand waggled negatively back and forth. Disapproving scowl. Dortmunder said, “You can talk?”

Nods, lots of nods, all around. Dortmunder nodded back, but he didn’t get it. “You can talk, but you won’t talk. If you say so.”

The wiry little boss nun clutched her earlobe, then suddenly did a vicious right-hand punch in midair, a really solid right hook. She looked at Dortmunder, who looked back. She sighed in exasperation, shook her head, and went through it all over again: tug on right earlobe and punch the air, this punch even stronger than the first; Dortmunder believed he could feel its breeze on his face. As he sat there in the metal-armed wheelchair, frowning, wondering what in hell this old vulture was up to, she glowered at him and tugged her earlobe so hard it looked as though she’d pull it right off.

Parties. Dortmunder’s head lifted as a memory came to him. Party games, he’d seen people do— He said, “Cha-rades?”

A great heaving relieved nod flooded the room; the nuns all smiled at him. The head nun did one last earlobe tug and punched the air one more time, and then stood there with her hands on her hips, staring at him, waiting.

“Sounds,” Dortmunder said, the rules of the game vaguely floating in his head. “Sounds like. Sounds like punch? Like lunch, you mean.”

They all shook their heads.

“Not lunch? Munch, maybe.” (The lost caviar was influencing him.)

Everybody vehemently shook their heads. The boss did the charade all over again, more irritably and violently than ever, this time punching her right fist smack into her left palm with all her might. Then she stood there, shaking her left hand, and waited.

“Not punch at all,” Dortmunder decided. “Sock?” No. Well, that was just as well. “Hit? Bang? Crash? Pow? Thud?”

No, no, they all semaphored, waving their arms. Go back one.

“Pow?”

Many many nods. Several of the nuns did quick charades with one another and silently laughed; talking about him.

“Sounds like pow.” Dortmunder thought it over, and saw only one way to handle the situation. He said, “Bow? Cow? Dow? Fow?” The look they gave him when he said fow made him skip gow. “How?”

Several of the nuns were pointing at the floor or stooping down. Dortmunder said, “Start at the other end of the alphabet?” and they smiled in agreement and relief, and he said, “Zow? Yow? Wow? Vow?”

That was it! Thousands of fingers pointed at him in triumph. “Vow,” Dortmunder repeated.

The head nun smiled, and spread her hands: There. That’s the story.

“I don’t get it,” Dortmunder said.

A collective sigh went up, the first sound he’d heard from this crowd. While the rest of the nuns all raised their eyebrows at one another, the boss put her finger to her lips, then cupped her hand around her ear and leaned forward to make a big dumb-show of listening.

“Sure,” Dortmunder agreed. “It’s real quiet. When you’ve got nobody talking, that’s how it gets.”

The nun shook her head, did the dumb-show again, and spread her hands: Get it, idiot?

“Oh, it’s a clue.” Dortmunder leaned forward, holding the wheelchair arms. “What is it, like, sounds like quiet? Riot. Diet. No? Oh, you mean quiet. Something like quiet. A different word like quiet. Well, I mean, when it’s real quiet, it’s like, you know, it’s quiet, you can’t hear anything, you like it when it’s quiet at night, things get very quiet, you want some other word like quiet, when it’s quiet, when there’s no horns or anything, it’s real quiet and — I’m thinking! I’m doing my best!”

Still they glowered at him, hands on hips. “Gee whiz,” Dortmunder said, “I’m new to this, you people do it all the time. And I just had a bad fall, and— All right, all right, I’m thinking.”

Hunched in the wheelchair, not speaking, he thought and thought and thought. “Well, there’s always silence,” he said, “but beyond that I can’t— Oh! It’s silence!”

Yes! They all pretended to applaud, nearly clapping their hands together. Then more and more of them switched over to a pointing thing. Point here, then point there. Point here, then point there.

Dortmunder was getting into the swing of it now, gaining confidence from his successes. “I get it,” he said. “Put the two things together. Vow. Silence. Vow. Silence.” He nodded, and then he did get it, and loudly he said, “A vow of silence! You got a— One of those religious things, a vow of silence!”

Yes! They were delighted with his accomplishment, if he’d been a Maypole they’d have danced around him. A vow of silence!

Dortmunder spread his hands. “Why didn’t you just write that, on a piece of paper?”

They all stopped their silent congratulations, and looked briefly puzzled. A few of them plucked at their skirts or sleeves to call attention to their habits, suggesting it was just habit, but the chief nun stared at Dortmunder, then reached into her garments and came out with a three-by-five notepad and a ballpoint pen. She wrote briskly, tore off the note, and handed it to Dortmunder.

Can you read?

“Oh, now,” Dortmunder said. “No need to insult me.”

4

Mother Mary Forcible and Sister Mary Serene wrote notes back and forth with the speed of long practice. Here in the tiny cluttered office of the convent, with its barred window viewing Vestry Street, they sat on opposite sides of Mother Mary Forcible’s large desk, shoving their notes at each other with increasing vehemence.

It went on like that, the torn-off pieces of notepad piling up on both sides of the desk, until Sister Mary Capable stuck her head in the office door and rested her cheek on her pressed-together hands, eyes closed: Our guest is still asleep.

Mother Mary Forcible looked at the old Regulator clock on the wall; nearly seven. The sun was long since up, breakfast finished, Mass attended, floors scrubbed. Shaking her head, she looked at Sister Mary Capable and snapped her fingers forcefully: Get the lazy lout up. Sister Mary Capable smiled and nodded and left.

Meantime, Sister Mary Serene had clearly decided on a new tactic. Scrabbling through the scumble of used notes, she smoothed out one of her very first and pushed it across at Mother Mary Forcible:

Mother Mary Forcible wrote: Of course we do. Prayer and contemplation will lead us to the way.

Instead of writing further, however, Sister Mary Serene merely pushed the first note over again: We want Sister Mary Grace back!

Sister Mary Serene looked so cherubic and round-cheeked when she smiled. Nodding, she pointed yet again at that same unrelenting message. Mother Mary Forcible sat back, bony fingertips absentmindedly patting the surface of her desk, and brooded.

It was true the entire convent, every member of the Silent Sisterhood of St. Filumena, had been praying night and day for guidance and aid with this Sister Mary Grace problem, and it was equally true the convent had never before in its history had a burglar in the chapel rafters; but could the one actually have much to do with the other? Sister Mary Serene, having been the first to discover the fellow and therefore having an understandable feeling of proprietorship toward him, quite naturally argued that here at last was God’s instrument, but Mother Mary Forcible remained a skeptic. While certainly many of God’s messengers and instrumentalities over the ages had been unlikely sorts, it was even more certain that most crooks were merely crooks, without much of good or God about them.

On the other hand, the customs of a lifetime are hard to resist. Through almost her entire adult life, Mother Mary Forcible had kept her back firmly turned toward the outer world, had limited her temporal existence to this building, this group of women and this rule of silence, which the sisters were permitted to break only for two hours every Thursday. Her attention and desires had been exclusively directed Upward, relying upon the efficacy of prayer and the mercy of the Creator to answer every need. But with a problem as worldly as that posed by Sister Mary Grace, was it possible that a solution equally worldly was the answer?

Movement in the doorway distracted Mother Mary Forcible from her thoughts and, speak of the devil, here was the miscreant himself, left foot swathed in white bandages, Sister Mary Chaste’s cane in his left hand and a mug of Sister Mary Lucid’s coffee in his right. His hangdog expression was as it had been, and being unshaven had not at all increased the aspect of reliability in his countenance. “I’m supposed to come to the office,” he muttered, exactly like some Peck’s bad boy caught smoking in the lavatory.

If Mother Mary Forcible had wanted to teach grammar school, there were plenty of orders she could have joined. With an exasperated look at Sister Mary Serene, who was beaming at the fellow as proudly as though she’d invented him, she gestured briskly for him to sit in the chair to the left of the desk, which he did, putting one dirty-nailed hand on the desktop as he made a kind of Humphrey Bogart twitch around the mouth and said, “I can explain, uh, about last night.”

Mother Mary Forcible was already dashing off her first note, and pushing it across to him: You’re a burglar.

He looked pained. “Oh, now,” he said, but the second note was already well under way. He smiled back tentatively at Sister Mary Serene, then read note number two:

“Oh,” he said. “Police at the other end of the block, uh huh. You figure I, uh...”

Mother Mary Forcible looked at him.

“Well,” he said, and shrugged, and sighed, and thought it over. “Uh, thanks,” he said.

Mother Mary Forcible had the next note all ready; she slid it across the desk.

He frowned, studied the note, turned it over to read the blank back, shook his head. Then he stared around the office, looking for something, saying, “What, you got a safe you can’t open or something?”

Too bad this wasn’t Thursday; it took an awfully long time to explain the situation.

5

Andy Kelp let himself into the apartment with a credit card, looked into the living room at Dortmunder and May, and said, “It’s just me. Don’t get up.” Then he went on to the kitchen and got a beer. A wiry, bright-eyed, sharp-nosed man, he looked around the kitchen with the quick interested manner of a bird landing on a berry bush. An assortment of gourmet crackers were arranged on a plate on the kitchen table. Kelp took one with sesame seeds, washed it down with beer, and went back to the living room, where May was lighting a fresh cigarette from the tiny ember of the previous butt and Dortmunder was sitting with his bandaged foot on the coffee table. “How you doing?” he said.

“Terrific,” Dortmunder told him, but it sounded like irony.

May dropped the sputtering ember in the ashtray and talked through fresh smoke: “I wish you’d ring the doorbell like everybody else, Andy,” she said. “What if we’d been in a tender moment?”

“Huh,” Kelp said. “That didn’t even occur to me.”

“Thanks a lot,” Dortmunder said. He didn’t seem to be in the best of moods.

Kelp explained to May, “On the phone, John said he hurt his foot, and I didn’t know if you were home, so I figured I’d save him walking to the door.” To Dortmunder, he said, “What did happen to your foot?”

“He fell off a roof,” May said.

“Jumped off,” Dortmunder corrected.

“Sorry I couldn’t come along last night,” Kelp told him. “Did O’Hara work out?”

“Up to a point.”

“What point?”

“The point where he was arrested.”

“Whoops,” Kelp said. “And he just got out of the slammer, too.”

“Maybe he can get his old room back.”

Kelp drank beer and pondered briefly on the accidents of fate that had led to his place being taken last night by Jim O’Hara. There but for the grace of God, and all that. He said, “Where were you while O’Hara was being arrested?”

“Jumping off the roof.”

“Falling off,” May corrected.

Dortmunder ignored that. “I spent the night in a convent,” he said.

Kelp didn’t quite get the joke, but he smiled anyway. “Okay,” he said.

“The nuns bandaged his foot,” May said, “and loaned him a cane.”

“They got this vow of silence,” Dortmunder explained, “so there’s no phone, so I couldn’t call May and tell her not to worry.”

“So naturally, I worried,” May said.

Kelp said, “Wait a minute. You spent the night in a convent?”

“I already told you that,” Dortmunder said.

“Yeah, but— You mean, you did? You spent the night in a convent?”

“It was the convent roof he sprained his ankle on,” May said, “when he fell off the other roof.”

“Jumped off.”

“So— I mean—” Kelp, stymied for words, gestured with the beer can, but that didn’t fully express his thoughts either. “What I mean is,” he said, “what did you tell them? I mean, there you are on their roof.”

“Well, they doped it out,” Dortmunder said. “The other end of the block was all police cars, and there was a burglar alarm going off down there, and all like that. So they kind of put two and two together.”

“These nuns.”

“The nuns, right.”

“Well—” Kelp was still having trouble phrasing himself. “What did they say?”

“Nothing. I told you, they have this vow of silence. They wrote a lot of notes, though.”

“Notes,” Kelp said, nodding, catching up. “Fine. What did the notes say?”

For some reason, Dortmunder looked uncomfortable. Also for some reason, possibly the same reason, May looked kind of steely and determined and grim around the jaw. Dortmunder said, “They offered me a deal.”

Kelp squinted at his old partner. “A deal?” he asked. “Nuns? What do you mean, a deal?”

“They wanted his help,” May explained. “They have a problem, and they were praying for help, and here comes John, falling onto their roof—”

“Jumping.”

“—and they decided he was sent by God.”

Kelp stopped squinting. Instead, he looked very round-eyed at his old partner, saying, “You? Sent by God?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Dortmunder said, sounding sulky. “They dreamed it up themselves.”

“Explain it to Andy,” May suggested. “Maybe he’ll have some good ideas.”

“I already have a good idea,” Dortmunder said, but then he shrugged and said, “All right. This is the story. It’s this bunch of cloistered nuns way downtown with this vow of silence, and last year they got this new nun joined up, the first new one they had in five, six years.”

“That I can believe,” Kelp said.

“Well, this girl, this new one, she has a very rich father, and he tracks her down, finds out she’s in this convent being a nun, and he kidnaps her.”

Kelp was astonished at this turn in the story. “Right out of the convent?”

“Right out of the convent.”

“How old is this girl?”

“Twenty-three.”

Kelp shrugged. “So she’s a grown-up, she can do what she wants.”

Dortmunder said, “Except her father’s treating her like one of those kids goes off with the cults, you know, the Moonies and like that. He’s got her locked up, and he’s got this deprogrammer in there, doing his number on her.”

Kelp said, “He’s deprogramming her out of the Catholic Church?”

“That’s the idea. She writes all these letters to the convent, they showed me some, and this guy’s just steady deprogramming, day after day. And what she wants, what she says in the letters is, she wants to go back to the convent.”

“And her old man’s got her locked up? He can’t do that, not if she’s twenty-three.”

“Well, he’s doing it,” Dortmunder said. “So the nuns went to a lawyer to see what can you do, and the lawyer came back and said this guy is very very rich, he has deep pockets like you wouldn’t believe, and if they try anything legal he’ll just tie them up in court until the girl’s seventy-three.”

“So she’s stuck,” Kelp said.

“So that was why they figured I was from God, being a burglar and all,” Dortmunder explained. “They figured I could sneak into the rich guy’s place and bust her out.”

“What kind of place?” Kelp asked.

“Penthouse suite on top of a building up in midtown. Armed guards all over. Access limited to one elevator, where you got to use a key. The guy owns the whole building.”

Kelp said, “No way you’re going to get into that penthouse.”

“Don’t I know it,” Dortmunder said.

“And if you did get in,” Kelp went on, “no way you’re going to carry any twenty-three-year-old girl out.”

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Dortmunder told him, and sighed.

“So what did you do? Sign something?”

“No. We shook hands on it.”

Kelp didn’t get it. “So what have they got on you? A confession?”

“No.”

“Your name? Home address?”

“Nothing. Just that I made the deal, I said I’d do it.”

“Well, you can’t do it,” Kelp said, and grinned, saying, “But that’s okay, because you don’t have to do it. You’re home free.”

“Well, maybe not,” Dortmunder said.

“I don’t see the problem,” Kelp told him. “You’re away and clean, and they can’t find you.”

“Ahem,” said May.

Kelp glanced over at May, and right now she looked like one of the statues on the Washington Square arch; unblinking, determined and made of stone. “Ah,” said Kelp.

“Now you see the problem,” Dortmunder said.

6

Hendrickson opened the door, then promptly stepped back and reclosed it, and the plate smashed itself to pieces against the other side. Opening the door again, entering the large, neat, plainly furnished living-cum-dining room, stepping over the burritos and the china shards, Hendrickson said, “Well, Elaine. Still at it, eh?”

The furious girl on the other side of the refectory table held up the sign she’d printed her third day here, on the back of a shirt cardboard, in angry red ink: Sister Mary Grace.

Hendrickson nodded pleasantly. “Yes, Elaine, I know. But your father would rather I called you by the name he chose for you, when you were born.”

She made an elaborate pantomime of throwing up, suggesting that mere mention of her father made her sick, while Hendrickson crossed to the highbacked wooden chair over by the windows, noticing that the Bible on the side table was closed today. Good. He should probably take the damn book out of here, but that would be too obvious an admission of defeat.

In the first few weeks of this assignment, Hendrickson had plied Elaine Ritter with selected biblical quotations, standard practice for a professional deprogrammer like himself, but it turned out the girl knew the Holy Word better than he did, and would top every quotation of his with one of her own. The Bible was left here all the time for her perusal — there were no other books in this apartment, there was no television or radio — but soon she’d started the practice of leaving it open, some scathing rejoinder circled in red ink, for him to find at the beginning of each session. As a result, in the last few weeks he’d ignored the Bible, whether open or shut, had refrained from quotation, and she was gradually letting up her counter-campaign in that department.

A small victory, that, but Hendrickson’s only one so far, and probably the only one forever. Privately, he didn’t expect to win this particular war. Sometime in the future, surely long after Frank Ritter had fired Hendrickson for non-accomplishment, Elaine Ritter would most likely simply go mad from rage and boredom and would thereafter be of no use to anyone, including her father and herself, but in the meantime the pay was excellent, the fringe benefits included a fine apartment in this same building and a chauffeured car always on call and a liberal drawing account, and apart from the occasional flung object the work was not unpleasant. Elaine Ritter was a good-looking girl, particularly since her hair had grown back, and except for Thursdays she was silent as the tomb; not a bad companion, all in all, on these long and drowsy afternoons.

It was almost three months now. “They tell me you’re the best in the business,” Frank Ritter had said, at their first meeting, when Hendrickson had been hired to save his youngest child from the toils of organized religion.

“They tell me I’m the best, too,” Hendrickson had replied amiably. A large stout man who dressed casually but not sloppily, Walter Hendrickson was forty-two years old and had been a professional deprogrammer for eleven years. Little surprised or baffled him anymore; but that, of course, was before he’d met Elaine Ritter.

“I hire the best,” Frank Ritter had said, “because I can afford it, and because I won’t accept anything less. Pour your Drano into my girl’s head; I want her unclogged and functioning.”

“Consider it done,” Hendrickson had said, with an airy assurance he now found amusing to remember. Consider it done. Lord, lord. There were times when Hendrickson almost felt like praying.

The fact is, Elaine Ritter was not at all the sort of person he usually contended with. His clients were almost always vague and confused, with very poor self-image and only a scattering of half-remembered education. Generally, they had left their homes and gone off with Swami This or Guru That mostly because they were looking for a parent other than the parents they’d left, feeling some need for a parent who was more strict, or less demanding, or more attentive, or less cloying. Different, that was the point. Different parents, a different tribe, the growth of a different self who would be so much more satisfactory than the miserable original. Religion and philosophy had little or nothing to do with those kids’ actions and decisions, and Hendrickson’s task, really, was not much more than to wake them up to the world around them and hold a mirror to their own potential for selfhood. Easy.

Elaine Ritter was something else. No self-image problem for her, and religion and philosophy had everything to do with her decision to renounce the world and join that convent down in Tribeca. On the religious side, she firmly believed in God and the Catholic Church. Philosophically, she just as firmly renounced the world that men like her father had made. Vocation was a fabulous beast as far as Hendrickson was concerned, but if the beast ever did live, it was in this girl. She knew her own mind, and she would take no shit from Walter Hendrickson.

Too bad. Shit was all he had for her.

He paused a moment beside the highbacked wooden chair and looked out the window at the towers of midtown Manhattan. Seventy-six stories down crawled the busy street. Up here, the gray towers were the only reality. Hendrickson no longer even saw the few faint scratches on the unbreakable windows where Elaine had beat on them uselessly with chairs and lamp bases the first few days she was here. She too had learned to accept the present impasse; he would not alter her into something her father could use and understand, and she would not in the foreseeable future be leaving this apartment atop the Avalon State Bank Tower on Fifth Avenue.

Hendrickson settled himself in the chair. The idea of the high wooden back, and the idea of placing it in front of the window so that his features would be harder to see, was that it depersonalized him, would tend to make his statements more authoritative. A parliamentary trick, and useless here, but there was also nothing to be gained at this stage by moving. “I understand your father’s coming home the end of this week,” he said blandly.

She curled her lip and pantomimed spitting on the carpet. She wouldn’t actually spit on the carpet, of course, she was too well brought up for that.

Hendrickson said, “What shall we talk about today?”

Elaine gave him an icy smile and pointed ceilingward.

Hendrickson’s smile was much warmer than hers. “God?” he asked. “No, I thought the topic I’d like to bring up today is filial piety, the duty each of us owes our parents. And the examples I thought I would dwell upon,” he said, as she started the pacing back and forth, glowering at nothing, which was her usual reaction to his sermons and which was beginning to wear a noticeable path in the carpet, “the examples I thought might be of clearest meaning to you, are your six older brothers and sisters, their roles and functions in Templar International, your father’s company, and their attitudes toward their privileges and responsibilities.”

While Hendrickson’s calm and confident voice went on, Elaine continued to pace and to glower, undoubtedly storing up various statements to whack him with this coming Thursday afternoon, when once again the monologue would briefly become a dialogue, with a vengeance.

Oh, well, what the hell, it’s a job.

7

Dortmunder stumped along Fifth Avenue with his cane and his bad temper while Andy Kelp jogged along beside, saying, “The problem is, where’s the profit in this thing? You try to put together a string, somebody to drive, somebody to lift and carry, somebody to show guns to the guards, these people are gonna want to know what’s in it for them. I mean, these are professional people, these are not people who’re gonna drive and lift and bust heads and unlock doors for free. I mean, you got to do this on account of May, and I’ll come along because we’re old pals and it’s kind of interesting, but other than us, I don’t see where you’ve got your manpower. I mean, that’s the problem.”

“That’s the problem, is it?” Dortmunder asked him.

“One of the problems.”

And here was another of the problems; the Avalon State Bank Tower itself on Fifth Avenue, just a couple of blocks from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The people who invent places like Tribeca don’t ever go to places like Tribeca; they come here.

The Avalon State Bank Tower rose up from the cement sidewalk like a cross between a massive old oak tree and a squared-off spaceship. The first four floors were sheathed in alternating rectangles of glass and black marble with little dots and strings of green in it, the rectangles edged with copper. Starting from the fifth floor and going on up, the building’s skin was gray stone, unadorned. No cornices, lintels, arches, gables or gargoyles interrupted the flow of stone. From poles jutting out at an angle over the sidewalk at the fourth floor level hung three large flags: the United States, New York State and Templar International, this last being, on a yellow field, a black stylized figure that might have been either a tree or the letter T.

Dortmunder stood by the curb, leaned back on the cane, and peered up as high as he could, his mouth open. The blue spring sky was half-obscured by running little puffy white clouds. Somewhere up there, the building stopped. “She’d have to let her hair down a hell of a distance, wouldn’t she?” he said.

Kelp said, “What?”

“Nothing. Let’s go in.”

The street level of the building was half bank and half garden, both with forty-foot ceilings, the garden being more or less open to the public though enclosed, with a small cafe among the birches and beeches and bamboo. The bank was modern and marble and full of the latest ideas in security. Between bank and garden was the entrance to the lobby and its rows of elevators. Dortmunder and Kelp went in there, and stood staring for a while at the column after column of the directory lining one long wall, like a war memorial.

“Lots of people in business,” Kelp commented, looking at all those corporate names.

“Mm hm,” Dortmunder said.

“Wonder how many are legit.”

“The dentists,” Dortmunder said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

There were elevators marked 5–21, elevators marked 22–35, elevators marked 36–58, and elevators marked 59–74. Kelp said, “I thought you said she was on seventy-six.”

“That’s what they told me.”

So they took one of the 59–74s, and Dortmunder pushed 74. Two messenger boys and a blonde in a red dress and a pair of lawyers discussing a tax deal — “They’ll take seven mil and go away, but will they come back?” — shared the long vibrating ride with them in this functional metal closet. A messenger boy got off at sixty. The blonde sprayed her throat with breath freshener and sashayed off on sixty-three. The other messenger boy got off on sixty-eight, and the lawyers — “Just so they don’t start talking felony, we’re basically in the same ballpark” — got off on seventy-one. Dortmunder and Kelp rode on up to the top.

Except it wasn’t the top. The helpful “you-are-here” map next to the elevators showed them where the stairwell was, just around the corner, and when they went there and opened the door the plain broad metal stairs, painted battleship gray, continued on up. However, a locked chainlink gate blocked the stairs in that direction. The stairs going down were clear.

“I figured,” Dortmunder said.

Kelp leaned his cheek against the chainlink gate and strained to see upward. “Two more flights,” he reported. “At least two more.”

“Well, it’s this,” Dortmunder said. “Or it’s the special elevator that needs a key, that I don’t even know where it is. Or we go up through the ceiling.”

“Through two ceilings.”

“Let’s look around.”

They wandered the halls and found they were in the shape of an H, with the elevators in the crossbar. Four companies stretched themselves up here, taking a lot of space. There was a firm of architects, with a golden bridge symbol on their main door. A law partnership simply had a list of names on its entrance, while an engineering company sported on its door a black and gold bee inside the huge capital B of its name. The fourth company, taking up one quarter of the H, had a plain white door with very small raised letters on it reading: MARGRAVE.

For five minutes or so they wandered the halls, looking at doors, most of them marked with arrows pointing toward that firm’s entrance. At one point, they watched a young woman, looking worried and carrying a handful of papers, come out of one office, cross the hall, and enter another office, but other than that they were alone. There were no windows anywhere, and the feeling after a while was of being underground rather than nearly a thousand feet up in the air.

“The thing to do,” Kelp finally said, “is bring May here, show her the proposition, let her make her own mind up.”

“She’s made her own mind up. Let’s look at one of those elevators.”

So they went back to the middle of the H and rang for an elevator, which arrived empty. While Dortmunder propped the door open with his back and stood chicky, Kelp dragged the sand-topped butt can in to stand on, stood on it, opened the trapdoor in the ceiling, shoved it out of the way, and looked.

“Well?” Dortmunder said. The elevator door kept bunking him in the back, wanting to close. His ankle was sore and wanted to be placed in a raised position on something soft for a while, like maybe a month. “What do you see?”

“Machinery.”

“How close?”

“Right here.”

“The shaft doesn’t go up to the top?”

“No,” Kelp said, peering and peering. “That might be a door there, so they can get to the motor and all, but that’d just get you into seventy-five. This thing doesn’t go to seventy-six.”

“Figures,” Dortmunder said. “Let’s take another look at the stairs.”

Kelp put the butt can back, Dortmunder released the now-buzzing elevator, and they went to take another look at the stairs. Dortmunder was brooding at the wall and Kelp was examining the lock on the gate when a man appeared in the hall doorway behind them and said, cheerfully, “Help you, gentlemen?”

Dortmunder leaned more heavily on his cane, in order to look inoffensive. “Trying to find the men’s room,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man said, smiling at them. He was about thirty, large, built like a football player with a neck wider than his head and hands made of balloons. He was neatly dressed in a dark suit and white shirt and slender yellow tie, but there was something bulky under the left side of his jacket. “There are no public restrooms up here,” he said. “You’ll have to go back down to the lobby, turn left, and go into the garden.”

“Okay,” Dortmunder said.

“It’s just around behind the ficus,” the man said helpfully, as they headed for the elevators, their tails between their legs. “You can’t miss it.”

“Really appreciate it,” Kelp said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t overdo it,” Dortmunder told him.

8

There’s so much unhappiness in this world. The strong prey upon the weak, injustice is rampant, evil succeeds everywhere and good is trampled in the dust. Ai, caramba, it makes you just want to piss!

Enriqueta Tomayo did nothing so crude or vulgar, of course, but contented herself with fiercely banging together the frying pans in the soapy water and glaring around at this antiseptic blond-and-chrome kitchen in the clouds, where she’d been working now for over a year. Back home in Guatemala the rich ladinos oppressed the Indians with the help of their armies, both public and private, and up here in Nueva York the rich still oppressed everybody they could get their hands on, even their own flesh and blood. By St. Barbara, this Frank Ritter man even oppresses his own daughter. He even defies God Himself!

Enriqueta whammed a frying pan into the drainboard and looked up to see the poor red-eyed little Sister herself coming into the kitchen, sighing, weary with grief. The little Sister gave Enriqueta a wan smile and crossed to the refrigerator for a glass of skim milk, while Enriqueta dried her hands on her apron and delivered herself, at top speed, of several dozen words in Spanish, the essential translation of which was, “You poor kid!”

The little Sister smiled her gratitude, and drank milk. Enriqueta walked closer to her, lowering her voice and switching to English: “Another letter from the good Sisters.”

How the poor child’s eyes lit up; it was only these letters from the good Sisters that kept her spirit from breaking entirely. Enriqueta, who knew without doubt she would be fired and probably arrested and certainly beaten and undoubtedly deported if Frank Ritter and his minions ever found out about the correspondence she was smuggling between the convent and the little Sister, also knew it was the finest thing, and therefore the only real thing, she could do with what was left of her life. Her own children were grown now, dead or dispersed. The evils of Guatemala were behind her; please, Dios, forever. She had grown old and fat, she was here in this strange cold land working as a cook in a kitchen in the clouds for an evil monster and his poor imprisoned daughter — locked in a tower, just like in the fairy stories! — and she had a sodden husband sprawled in their nice apartment in public housing up on Columbus Avenue. What else could she do but help this poor mistreated child in the best way she could?

If only she could somehow smuggle the little Sister herself out of this tower, she’d often thought, but that was just impossible. Enriqueta was never permitted to ride the golden elevator alone, but was always “escorted” up at eleven in the morning and back down again at nine in the evening by one or more of Frank Ritter’s falsely smiling guards, those hard men in civilian clothes who looked so much like the men in army clothes back in Guatemala. All she could do was smuggle the little Sister’s letters out and mail them, and use her own address on Columbus Avenue for the convent’s replies. But even that little bit helped; it was worth it, to see how the child’s eyes lit up.

And how they lit up this time! With a great joyous smile on her face, the little Sister extended the letter to Enriqueta, pointing at it with her other hand: Here, read it yourself!

Occasionally this happened, the little Sister wanting to share some message from the convent, and though it was a difficult trial Enriqueta always agreed and did her best. She could read, though English was more of a strain than Spanish, and it was necessary to hold the piece of paper so close to her face it almost touched her nose. Still, though it took awhile, she did at last manage to make sense of the following:

Enriqueta’s immediate instinctive doubt of men named John — or men named anything else, for that matter — she kept carefully to herself. This letter had made the little Sister, at least for this moment, happy; what did it matter if at some later time John turned out to be false or incompetent? Enriqueta enclosed her skepticism in her heart, where it could do no harm. “Say!” she said, returning the little Sister’s letter and her elated smile, “that sounds pretty hokay!”

9

When May got home from the library, Dortmunder was in the living room, sitting on the sofa, poking at a lot of Polaroid prints on the coffee table with the end of his cane. He didn’t look cheerful. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“Could be worse,” he said.

Well, that was encouraging. “How?” she asked.

“I could have gone down that fire escape with O’Hara.”

“No, I meant saving the girl.”

“So did I.”

“Well.” May dropped her purse and a shopping bag of Xerox copies onto a chair. “You want coffee?”

“No, thanks. When Andy gets here, I’ll have a beer.”

“Well, I need coffee,” she said. “That library, there’s weirder people there than in the subway.” Shaking her head, she went on out to the kitchen.

Today was the fifth day of Dortmunder’s research into the girl-rescuing operation, and May’s day off from the Bohack, so she’d spent it up at the Mid-Manhattan Public Library, in the periodical rooms, reading about Frank Ritter and Templar International and Margrave Corporation and Avalon State Bank, and dropping dimes into the Xerox machine. Fortunately, Andy Kelp had one time showed her the quiet way to get dimes back out of such machines, so the day wasn’t as expensive as it might have been. But it was exhausting, much more so than her normal day standing at the cash register.

Back in the living room, May sat in the most comfortable chair, put her feet up on a puffy hassock, sipped her coffee, and watched Dortmunder poke at the pictures with his cane. “You don’t look happy,” she told him.

“Good,” he said. “If I looked happy, it’d be a bad sign. That guy Chepkoff phoned this afternoon.”

“Which guy was that?”

“The one sent me for the caviar. He paid three hundred on account, you know.”

“On account?”

“On account we wouldn’t do the job otherwise. So now he called, he wants his three hundred back. I told him, ‘We all take risks in this. You it cost three hundred, me it cost a sprained ankle, O’Hara it’s probably gonna cost about eight years.’ He argued with me, so I hung up on him. The guy’s crazy.”

May said, “John, do you want to hear about Frank Ritter?” Without waiting for an answer, she went on, “I just spent all day at the library, with a lot of people in overcoats and asleep and scratching their arms and looking at pictures of naked statues. I was learning all about Frank Ritter. Do you want to hear about Frank Ritter?”

Dortmunder looked at her in some surprise. “I’m sorry, May,” he said. “You’re right, yeah. I want to hear about Frank Ritter.”

May didn’t like to be short-tempered. Taking a deep breath, she said, “All right.”

Dortmunder said, “You aren’t smoking.”

“I gave it up.”

“You what?”

“I was thinking about it from time to time,” she said. “Remember how, whenever there was a letter in the New York Times from somebody with the Tobacco Institute, I always used to clip it out and keep it for a while?”

“Scotch-tape them on the mirror sometimes,” Dortmunder agreed. “Freedom of choice and all that.”

“Sure. Then did you notice, a while back, how I stopped clipping those letters out?”

“No, I didn’t,” Dortmunder said. “But it’s tough to notice somebody not doing something.”

“That’s true. Anyway, it occurred to me, I don’t write letters to the New York Times and you don’t write letters to the New York Times.”

“Well,” Dortmunder said, “we’re not in business with the public, like the tobacco people.”

“The ketchup people don’t all the time write to the New York Times,” May pointed out. “The beer people don’t, the pantyhose people don’t. All the people that write to the New York Times is South African spokesmen and the Tobacco Institute.”

“And people from out of town that lost their wallet in a taxi,” Dortmunder reminded her, “and the cabby brought it back to them at the hotel, and they never knew New Yorkers were such nice people.”

“Well, those letters,” May said. “What bothers me about those letters is, most cabbies aren’t New Yorkers, they’re from Pakistan. But the Tobacco Institute letters, what bothers me about those is, why talk so much unless you’ve got something to hide?”

“That makes sense,” Dortmunder said.

“So I kept thinking, maybe I’d give it up for a while,” May said, “but I could never seem to get a start on it. But I was in the library now, six hours steady in there, and there’s No Smoking, and I was so distracted by Frank Ritter and the Xerox machines and the people sticking matches in their ears and reading the encyclopedia cover to cover that I hardly noticed. I came out onto Fifth Avenue and reached for a cigarette, and then I said, ‘Wait a minute. I got six hours on it.’ So I gave it up.”

“Well, that’s pretty good,” Dortmunder said. “Probably a smart idea, too. And I guess that’s why you snapped at me before.”

“I didn’t snap at you!”

“Oh, right,” Dortmunder said. “Tell me about Frank Ritter.”

May took another deep breath. “Well, he’s rich,” she said, “but you probably figured that.”

“I did, yes.”

“His grandfather was rich, and his father got richer, and now Frank Ritter’s got richer than that. What he owns—” She gestured at the shopping bag of Xeroxes. “—I’ve got a lot of stuff in there about what he owns, and it’s mostly banks. But a lot of other stuff, too. Like, somebody starts a new oilfield somewhere, and then Frank Ritter becomes a partner in that company, and then one of his banks loans them the money to get started, and then they hire his construction company to do the drilling and everything, and they hire his laboratory to do the tests, and they hire his security company for the guards and all, and they lease some planes from his plane-leasing company—”

“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Dortmunder said.

“Then there’s a couple of South American countries,” May went on, “a couple of the little ones.”

“What about them?”

“Well, I’m not sure exactly how it works,” May said, “but I think Frank Ritter owns them.”

“Owns countries? You can’t own countries.”

May shook her head and reached for a cigarette, but there wasn’t one there, so she pretended she was just scratching. “What happened was,” she said, “one of his banks loaned these countries a lot of money. Then the countries went bankrupt and couldn’t pay the money back, so some people from the bank and the engineering company and the security company all went down there—”

“In a plane from the plane-leasing company, I suppose,” Dortmunder said.

“I guess. Anyway, they all went down there to help the countries reorganize their priorities, and they’re all still down there, so I guess Frank Ritter owns those countries.”

Dortmunder shook his head. “Now I’m up against a guy owns countries.”

“Somebody put him up to be Secretary of the Treasury down in Washington a few years ago,” May said, “but the Congress turned him down. One Congressman, they quoted him in Newsweek, he said, ‘Conflict-of-interest is Frank Ritter’s middle name.’”

Dortmunder sighed. “This is some fella,” he said. “He’s rich, he’s powerful, he owns countries, he has his own army and air force. If this guy wants to ground his daughter, I guess he figures he might as well just go ahead and do it.”

“She’s the youngest of seven children,” May told him. “Elaine Gwen Ritter is her real name. She’s got three brothers and three sisters, and they all work for the father. The oldest brother runs the Avalon State Bank here in the city, and one of the sisters with her husband runs the magazine company, and like that.”

“He’s got a magazine company, too?”

“He’s got all kinds of companies, John,” May told him. “I guess the daughter Elaine was supposed to grow up and marry a guy who’d fit in with everybody else, and then go to work for her father. Frank Ritter owns so many things, spread out so much, he likes to have relatives running the different parts. So I guess from his point of view, here’s a daughter that isn’t pulling her weight.”

Dortmunder shook his head. “I don’t know, May,” he said. “The more I hear — I know, I go along with you, I owe these nuns a little something—”

“Every day you’re not in prison the rest of your life, that’s what you owe them.”

“Yeah, I know that, I know that. But look at this place.” He poked at those Polaroids with the rubber-tipped cane, aggressively, the pictures sliding around on the coffee table. “I can’t even find the elevator.”

“You can’t?”

“It’ll look like something else, right? The special elevator, goes just to the top floor.” Dortmunder gave the photos a dirty look. “There’s the lobby, every bit of the lobby. There’s the garden, with all the skinny trees. I don’t know what anybody looks like that goes up to that top floor, so I don’t have anybody I can follow and see where they go that doesn’t look like an elevator but is an elevator. But even if I find the goddamn thing, May, what then?”

May nodded. “If you just ride it up to the top, that won’t help.”

“Not much. And it’s just me, with maybe Andy Kelp. I can’t put together a string on this because what’s in it for anybody?”

May watched Dortmunder brood at the pictures of the lobby and the garden and the exterior of the building and the top several floors as seen from a high floor in a nearby skyscraper. “It’s very difficult, isn’t it, John?” she said.

“That’s a terrific description,” he agreed, and poked a couple more pictures toward her, saying, “Here’s another thing. On the directory here. You know how companies of the same kind always hang out together in this city? All the garment makers in one place, all the diamond merchants in one place, like that. Well, what we’ve got in this building is a lot of importers and wholesalers from Asia, tons of them all over the building, people that deal in jewelry and ivory and jade and all this very valuable stuff, that they’ve got right there with them. Maybe almost ten percent of the tenants are like that, in with all the regular doctors and lawyers and accountants. So besides the Frank Ritter private army up on the top, we’ve got the whole building is security conscious.”

May sighed. “John,” she said, “you’ve been very conscientious about this.”

“Well, I said I’d do it.”

“You told me you’d do it,” May reminded him. “I know that’s the only reason you’re even trying, and I know you’re giving it every bit of your attention, but I guess I’m willing to go along if you say it can’t be done.”

Instead of smiling with relief, as she’d half-expected, he frowned more deeply than ever, glaring at those photographs. “I don’t know, May,” he said. “I hate to admit defeat, you know what I mean?”

“It’s been five days, John, and you aren’t getting anywhere.”

“I don’t like to believe,” Dortmunder said, “there’s a place I can’t get in and back out again.”

“John,” May said, “if you decide it can’t be done, all I ask is you go back and tell those nuns about it, so they don’t go on hoping.”

Dortmunder sighed. “Well, I’ve got to give them back this cane anyway,” he said. “I don’t really need it anymore. But I still don’t want to have to walk away from this thing, not unless I absolutely have to.”

“It’s your decision,” May assured him. “I won’t push at all.”

“I tell you what,” Dortmunder said. “Andy’s up there now looking into the question of burglar alarms, electronic responses, all that. If there’s a way to cut the building out from city services for a while, maybe, I don’t know, maybe I could figure something.”

May smiled at him in admiration. “You mean, take over the entire building,” she said.

“Yeah, for a while. Late at night.”

“I like it when you think big, John,” she said.

“Well, let’s just see—” Dortmunder started, and the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” May said, but as she got to her feet Andy Kelp appeared in the doorway, saying, “It’s only me, don’t get up.” He was in blue Consolidated Edison coveralls and white hardhat, with the words WILLIS, ENG DEPT stencilled on the hat and the very realistic laminated photo ID pinned to the left breast pocket. He said, “Beer, anybody?”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said.

“I have coffee,” May said, so Kelp went away and came back with two beers and May said, “Andy? You let yourself in again, and then you rang the bell?”

“Sure,” Kelp said. “On account of, you know, that tender moment you were talking about.”

May took a deep breath. She reached for a cigarette, scratched, and said, “Thank you, Andy.”

Dortmunder said, “What’s the story up there?”

Kelp took his hardhat off. “I take my hat off to those people,” he said, and sat down, and drank beer.

Dortmunder looked at him. “Which people?”

“The people who set up security in that building, some outfit called Global Security Systems.”

“That’s Frank Ritter’s company,” May said.

“Well, they know their onions,” Kelp said. “The entire building is wired for anything you could possibly want. Simple burglar alarms, closed-circuit TV, silent alarms that trigger in the building security offices in the basement and over at the police precinct four blocks away. Automatic time locks, heat sensors, sound-activated videotape machines. You name it, they got it.”

Dortmunder stared at him in angry disbelief. “The ad agencies have this? The travel agents?”

“No no no,” Kelp said, “what you’ve got is, the building is wired through the main stairwell to every floor. Every tenant taps in and rents as much or as little security as he wants.”

“Oh, fine,” Dortmunder said. “So maybe on such-and-such a floor there’s nothing at all, but maybe there’s everything in the world.”

“You got it,” Kelp told him.

“And no way to tell which.”

“Exactly. Also, they got their own back-up generator, so don’t think about knocking out the power.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Dortmunder said.

“The heart of it all is down in the basement and the sub-basement,” Kelp said, “and believe me it is very well guarded.”

“I believe you,” Dortmunder said.

“Good. You should believe me.” Kelp turned to May. “I don’t want to sound a sour note here, May,” he said, “but I wouldn’t send my boyfriend into that place, if I had one, if I wanted him back.”

May put two fingers to her mouth and drew on a non-existent cigarette. She could smell the nicotine on her fingers. “John,” she said, “Andy’s right.”

“I don’t know enough about the place,” Dortmunder complained. “That’s the problem. Every place in the world has little gaps, little corners not as strong as everywhere else, but I don’t know where they are in this place, and there’s no way to find out.”

“You did your best,” May assured him. “Tomorrow’s Thursday, isn’t that the day the nuns can talk?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go with you,” May offered. “I’ll explain you did your best.”

“My best,” Dortmunder said. He drank beer and slapped the Polaroid pictures with his cane.

10

You could hear her from the elevator. Welcome home, Frank Ritter thought, and clenched his teeth as he faced the bronze door, waiting for it to open and the onslaught to begin.

Bronze does not make the best mirror. The lone figure reflected in the four bronze walls of this small private elevator appeared to be soft, rounded and apish, none of which was true about the actual Frank Ritter. Sixty-four years old, six feet two inches tall, Ritter kept his body in fine trim with a combination of careful diet, professionally monitored exercise and occasional plastic surgery. In certain lights, he could look younger than his oldest son, Charles, who was just forty.

“In order to be vital, you must look vital.”

“Nobody wants to shake a shaking hand.”

“Think about tomorrow and today will take care of itself.”

“Work in the twentieth century; rest in the twenty-first.”

These were among the self-generated aphorisms included in the commonplace book which Frank Ritter carried with him always, in his left inside jacket pocket, over his heart. With a binding of hand-tooled leather over sheets of thin steel, the commonplace book also served as protection against a well-aimed assassin’s bullet; ineptly aimed assassins’ bullets Ritter had overcome in the past and was ready to overcome in the future. Most attempted assassins, working out of emotion rather than reason, were likely to be inept, but one might as well prepare for every eventuality.

“In a tough world, be tougher.”

Here’s how tough Frank Ritter was: One of the printed memo pads on his desk, in addition to From the desk of Frank Ritter and For your immediate attention from Frank Ritter, was one printed simply You’ll never work in this town again, with room above for the recipient’s name and address and room below for Ritter’s small tight signature. Frank Ritter (A) was not given to empty threats, and (B) was on his second hundred-sheet You’ll never... pad.

In all the world, it seemed, full of animate and inanimate objects, the only object he could neither buy nor destroy was his own youngest daughter, Elaine. “The sharpest thorns are in your own roses,” read another aphorism in that commonplace book, and he did mean Elaine. Now, as the elevator slid smoothly to a stop and the doors prepared to open, Ritter’s face became even harder and stonier and more unforgiving than usual, and his sphincter automatically clenched. The doors slid open; here it came.

She was in full cry, striding back and forth in front of the fat deprogrammer, Hendrickson, who merely stood there with hands folded, an amiable smile on his face like a father indulgently watching his small child sing “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Ritter’s eyelids half-closed, as though his daughter were playing a bright light on him instead of a piercing voice.

It would be easy, of course, simply to avoid the damn girl for the two hours every Thursday afternoon when her so-called vow of silence permitted her to speak, and in his weakest moments — which weren’t very weak — Ritter wished it were possible to take that easy path. But to avoid her during those brief intervals when she would permit herself to give voice would be to imply that she was a prisoner, that she was being merely stored here, which was definitely not the case.

As Ritter himself had told the recalcitrant wretch a million times, she was being saved here, rescued from childish folly and misguided emotion. She was here because he loved her, God damn her to hell and back, and that’s why, whenever he was anywhere near New York City on a Thursday afternoon, he made it a point to come up here and listen to the stupid, inane, ungrateful, infuriating little sweetheart. If she weren’t his daughter and he didn’t love her like his own flesh and blood — well, she was, of course — if his feelings toward her weren’t so basically paternal and tender he’d have the goddamn girl blacklisted on the planet Earth.

She was in mid-sentence directed at Hendrickson — something about soft being the way of the transgressor until God got His Hands on you, and then, oh, boy — when she became aware of this new target for her venom and spleen — not very saintly, eh? — and she swung about, yelling, “There’s the defier now! In the Middle Ages the barons thought they could defy God, they thought their puny temporal power made them God’s equals, God’s superiors, so they could beat and kick and torture God’s emissaries here below, and where are they now?”

“They’d be dead anyway, Elaine.”

“They’re in Hell! Burning and roasting endlessly in Hell! Their eyes boiling in their skulls, the charred flesh peeling back ever and ever from their melting bones, the flames clutching and clutching at their screaming tongues, breaths of fire drawn into their suppurating lungs—”

Ugh; whenever the girl got into one of her gloating descriptions of Hell it just made Ritter’s stomach churn. Well, that’s what the Tums in his pocket were for. Reaching for one, tuning the girl’s shrill voice out, he said beneath her diatribe, “Hendrickson, Hendrickson, when is this going to end?”

“Lord knows, Mr. Ritter.”

That redirected her fire at Hendrickson: “You dare call upon the God you defile with your every...” And so on. Sighing, sucking a Turn, Ritter said to Hendrickson, “Just how much progress do you think you’ve made so far?”

“Absolutely none, to be bluntly honest,” Hendrickson said, without embarrassment.

“You’re supposed to be the best.”

“Since there are none better at what I do, I am the best. If you’d like to try some people I can think of, Mr. Ritter, who’d take your money and sneak around behind your back and rape your daughter and claim it was sex therapy—”

“No no no no no,” Ritter said, shaking his head and both hands. “I just want to see some sign we’re getting somewhere.”

“This is, as I’ve told you before,” Hendrickson said, “by far the toughest case I’ve ever had.”

Elaine stood in front of her father, hands on hips, bent forward at the waist, thrusting her agitated face into his, screaming, “When are you going to give this up?”

“Never!”

“When are you going to let me live my own life?”

Ritter was astonished. “That’s what I’m trying for,” he said, in absolute sincerity. “That isn’t your life, down there with those scruffy nuns! Your life is fur coats in the summer! Your life is Gstaad and Palm Beach! Your life is as wife to a powerful, well-educated man and mother to his children!”

“Like my mother?” she demanded. “Is that supposed to be my life?”

“Be careful,” Ritter told her, raising a finger. “Never say a word against your mother.”

“You destroyed her!”

“She is not destroyed. She is an active and productive member of society, which is better than we can say for you. If you took any interest in this world, you would have seen a photo of your mother in the New York Times just last Monday, in connection with one of her innumerable charity functions, functions which I may say are a much more realistic use of finer instincts than this self-centered egotistic withdrawal and cowering away from the world which you claim—”

“My mother’s a drunk!”

Ritter raised that finger again, but his manner was calm and his voice almost remorseful: “And that was a sin against the fourth commandment, as well as against the ideal of charity. Your mother’s ailments are not to be bandied about as though she didn’t deserve our understanding.”

The fact is, Elaine’s mother Gwen was a drunk. Ritter’s second wife, she was like the first, tall and slender and ash blonde, the both of them having been chosen from that same northeastern mating pool which has furnished hostesses and helpmeets for so many of our better politicians and captains of industry. If there was one flaw with the type — it might have something to do, Ritter thought, with too close inbreeding — it was a tendency toward alcoholism. Generally, they remained for twenty or more years decorative and useful before this tendency made it necessary to replace them, and even afterward most of them remained tractable. One mustn’t blame the poor creatures, as Elaine seemed to be doing. It was just something in the blood; alcohol, usually.

Now, having successfully accused Elaine of sin — the girl’s stricken look told him his statement had struck home — Ritter pressed his advantage, or his luck, saying sadly, “The sharpest thorns are in your own roses.”

She gave him a look of scorn. “The rose grows from a dungheap,” she said.

If there was one thing this troubling child had inherited from her father it was a knack for aphorism, and yet somehow she had never yet come up with one he felt worthy of memorialization in his commonplace book. “Elaine,” he said.

“SISTER MARY GRACE!”

“ELAINE! When are you going to give up this nonsense?”

“Never!”

“Then you’ll never leave this apartment,” he said, calmer.

She was calmer, too. “Oh, yes, I will,” she said.

Her assurance was so total that he had to smile at her, and say, “Do you expect God Himself to come down from Heaven and escort you back to that miserable primitive convent down there?”

“In a way,” she said.

“He’s taking His own sweet time at it, isn’t He?”

She folded her arms. Her look was defiant, smug, infuriating; not at all what Frank Ritter would call holy. “We’ll see,” she said.

11

“You didn’t tell me they kept birds,” May said.

Dortmunder listened to the twittering from within the low stone convent building. “I didn’t see them last time.”

“Well, that must be nice for them,” May said. “Birds make a nice pet.”

Dortmunder pulled the thick old rope hanging beside the heavy wooden door and from far inside came a deep bong-bong. At once, the twittering stopped, then started again, redoubled. A moment went by, and then the door was drawn open by a buxom smiling older nun in full fig; not one of the ones Dortmunder had met his earlier time here. “Uh,” he said, “I’m—”

“Oh!” the nun said, delighted, and clapped her hands together. “You’re John! Yes, of course, I remember you in the chapel, you might remember I helped to hold the ladder, I’m Sister Mary Amity, I was almost the second person to see you, just after Sister Mary Serene, we were both in the chapel in contemplation, and she looked up, and then I looked up, and oh, I suppose this is your wife, do come in both of you, we’re just delighted to have visitors, it doesn’t happen very often, isn’t it lucky it’s just when we’re permitted to speak, be careful of the stone floor, it is uneven, I’ll go get Mother Mary Forcible, what was it I wanted to say? Never mind, it will come to me. Don’t go ’way now.”

“We won’t,” Dortmunder promised, and Sister Mary Amity bustled away down the long colonnade.

“Well!” May said.

“It’s their talk time,” Dortmunder said.

“I guess so.”

The twittering, now that they were inside the wall, wasn’t birds after all but conversation, lots and lots of conversation, much of it taking place in the open courtyard just to their left. The building itself was L-shaped, built away from the street corner, with the open section partly slate-floored and partly turned into flower beds, at the moment bursting with spring blooms. High stone walls separated this yard from the two street sides, while arched walkways or colonnades (or cloisters, actually) ran along the two building facades. Dortmunder and May stood under this walkway, just inside the main front door, and looked out through the stone arch at the chattering nuns, many of whom peeked back while maintaining their conversations with one another, pretending they weren’t dying of curiosity.

“Here she comes,” Dortmunder said, as Mother Mary Forcible came pattering down the walkway, elbows working as she hustled along. Sister Mary Amity, who’d let them in, jogged in her wake until, just before reaching Dortmunder and May, Mother Mary Forcible turned and said, “Thank you, Sister. I’ll take over now.”

“Oh,” said the sister. “Yes, of course, Mother.” She waved as she reluctantly receded, calling, “Nice to see you. Chat again sometime.”

“Sure,” Dortmunder said. Then he introduced May and Mother Mary Forcible, and extended the cane, saying, “I brought this back. Thanks for the loan.”

“Oh, Sister Mary Chaste will be very happy,” Mother Mary Forcible said, taking the cane. “She’s been using a hoe, not really satisfactory.”

“And I wanted to say...” Dortmunder said, hesitating.

“Yes, of course. Come along to the office, we’ll be comfortable there.” She chugged off, and as they followed her down the walkway she said, “Would you care for coffee? Tea?”

“Not for me, thanks,” May said.

“I’m just fine, Sister,” Dortmunder said.

“We make good coffee, as you know.”

“Oh, yeah, I know that, Sister,” Dortmunder said. What he didn’t say was, he didn’t feel right taking their coffee when he was just here to tell them the deal was off.

The whitewashed walls and scrubbed wooden floors and heavy-beamed ceilings led them to Mother Mary Forcible’s tiny crammed office, where she ushered them in, shut the door, put the cane in a corner, and said, “Now.”

“See, the problem is,” Dortmunder said, while Mother Mary Forcible walked briskly around him to her desk, picked up two thick looseleaf books with black covers, and turned with them.

“John has been trying,” May said.

“Before we go any further,” Mother Mary Forcible said, “I want to give you these.” And she extended the two looseleaf books.

Having no choice, Dortmunder took them and stood cradling them in his hands. They were large and bulky and fairly heavy. He said, “What’s this?”

“I think I told you,” Mother Mary Forcible said, “that Sister Mary Grace is enabled to send us notes from time to time, and we mail messages to her by the same route. We told her you would be coming to rescue her—”

“Oh, well, that was—”

“John did do his best,” May said.

“And so,” Mother Mary Forcible went on, “she arranged to have these two volumes smuggled out.”

Dortmunder looked at the looseleaf books in his hands. “Smuggled out? From there?”

May took one of the books from his hands and opened it. “John,” she said. “This is a list of all the tenants, and which security measures they’ve leased. And here’s wiring diagrams. John? Here’s the access code for the computer that runs the security!”

Dortmunder was turning the pages of the other book. Floor plans. Staff assignments. Names of vendors and scheduled days of delivery. It went on and on.

“Sister Mary Grace is such an unworldly little thing,” Mother Mary Forcible was saying. “She wasn’t sure if you’d want any of this, or if it would help at all, but she sent it along just in case, which I thought was very enterprising of her. Are they useful?”

Dortmunder looked up. His eyes were shining. “Let us prey,” he said.