Thieves' Dozen

In the introduction to this volume, I recorded that bleak period of time, some years ago, when it looked as though I might lose the rights to John Dortmunder's name to marauding bands of Hollywood lawyers. Fortunately, that threat did eventually recede, but before that happy deliverance I'd settled on a substitute name for John, in case he should have to go underground for a while and come back under an alias, with fake ID. That name, found after an extensive search and taken from an exit sign on the Saw Mill River Parkway in Westchester County, just north of New York City, was John Rumsey.

The only problem, I soon realized, is that John Rumsey is a shorter person than John Dortmunder; don't ask me why. Dortmunder's, oh, say, an even six foot. John Rumsey's five seven at best.

From time to time, I wondered if Rumsey would be different in any other ways, not through my conscious choice, but simply because of the changed indicator. And what about the other regulars in his crew? I didn't have to know the answer to that, happily, but the question just kept poking at me.

In assembling this volume, I realized that if I were to add just one more story, I could use the present title for the book. I'd had a story title, "Fugue for Felons," in mind for some time, and now I saw how it would play out, and also that it would be a great laboratory. Here was my chance for an experiment to solve that age-old question: What's in a name?

A lot, as it turns out. Halfway through writing the story, I realized it wasn't an experiment that could be reversed or undone. I couldn't simply put the original names back on the name tags, because these weren't the original people. In small but crucial ways, they were their own men. John Rumsey was not John Dortmunder, and not merely because he was shorter. Similarly, Algy was not Andy Kelp, Big Hooper was not Tiny Bulcher, and Stan Little was not Stan Murch. ("March," it turns out, is an obsolete medieval term for "dwarf" which I hadn't known until I looked in the OED in conjunction with writing the story.)

Names are important. And so, although "Fugue for Felons" is the most recent Dortmunder story, it is also not a Dortmunder story at all. In some parallel universe, where the sky is a little paler, the streets a little cleaner, the laws of probability a little chancier, where the roses don't smell quite the same, there exist John Rumsey and his friends, the closest that other cosmos can come to Dortmunder et al. And now I have visited them.

FUGUE FOR FELONS

John Rumsey, a short blunt man with the look of a one-time contender about him, was eating his breakfast-maple syrup garnished with French toast-when his faithful companion June looked up from her Daily News to say, "Isn't Morry Calhoun a friend of yours?"

"I know him," Rumsey admitted; that far he was willing to go.

"Well, they arrested him," June said.

"He made the paper?" In Rumsey's world, there was nothing worse than reading your own name in the newspaper, particularly the Daily News, which all one's friends also read.

"It's a little piece," June said, "but there's a picture of the car in the bank, and then his name caught my eye."

"The car in the bank?"

"Police," June told him, "came across Morry Calhoun last night, breaking into the Flatbush branch of Immigration Trust. A high-speed chase from Brooklyn to Queens ended when Calhoun crashed his car into the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust."

"Well, he's got brand loyalty anyway," Rumsey said.

"They're holding him without bail," June went on.

"Yeah, they do that," agreed Rumsey. "It's kind of an honor, in a way, but it's also confining. There's a picture of this car in this bank?"

June passed the paper over her plate of dry toast and his bowl of wet syrup, and Rumsey looked at a picture of the ass end of an Infiniti sticking out of the front of a branch bank that had been mostly glass until Calhoun arrived.

"The car was stolen," June said.

"Sure, it would be," Rumsey said, and squinted at the photo. "Bank's closed."

"Naturally," June said. "Until they fix the front."

"You know," Rumsey said, "it might be a good idea, wander out there, see is there anything lying around."

"Don't get in trouble," June advised.

"Me? I'll just call Algy," Rumsey decided, getting to his feet, "see would he like to take a train ride."

But there was no answer at Algy's place.

Algy, in fact, a skinny sharp-nosed guy, was already on the subway, heading back toward Manhattan from Queens after a night of very little success at breaking and entering. He'd broken, all right, and he'd entered, but everywhere he went, the occupant had just moved out, or had a dog, or didn't have anything at all. It could be a discouragement at times.

About the only thing Algy scored, in fact, other than half a liverwurst on rye in Saran Wrap in a refrigerator in Queens, was a Daily News some other passenger had left behind on the seat. He glanced through it, saw the picture of the car in the bank, recognized Morry Calhoun's name, got off at the next stop, and took the first train going the other way.

Big Hooper was called Big because he was big. You could say he looked like an elephant in sweats, or an Easter Island statue no longer buried up to the neck, but what he mostly looked like was the Chicago Bears front line-not a lineman, the line.

Big Hooper had just bent to his will the front door of a Third Avenue tavern not yet open for business, intending to give himself a morning vodka-and-Chianti before carrying away the cash register, when he realized he wasn't alone. The clinking and tinking from the back room suggested the owner was using this morning downtime to do inventory, having left his jacket and newspaper on the bar.

Big went ahead and made his breakfast, then leafed through the paper while trying to decide whether to deal with the jangling offstage owner or come back another time, when he could have some privacy. He saw the Infiniti impaled on the bank, recognized the name Calhoun, finished his drink, and left. He took the paper.

Stan Little was a driver. If you've got it, he'll drive it. When he wasn't working for various crews around town on their little errands, sometimes he drove for himself, picking up an example of your better-quality automotive cream puff and tooling it to Astoria in Queens, where he would have business dealings with Al Gonzo, an automotive importer-exporter, who would eventually find the merchandise a good home somewhere in the Third World. This morning, while discussing with Al the probable offshore value of a loaded Saab with less than three K on the odometer, Stan took the opportunity of Al's strategic long silences to eyeball the Daily News.

"All right, four," Al said.

"Well, look at that," Stan said. "Morry Calhoun."

The reason Rumsey got off the F train early was because two transit cops went through his car and they both looked at him funny. Rumsey didn't like cops to look at him at all, much less funny, so he quick got off at the next station, even though it wasn't his but was in fact Queens Plaza, which is one of those giant bow ties in the bowels of the New York City subway system. There are 24 separate subway lines in New York, and four of them converge on Queens Plaza, distributing thousands and thousands of people this way and that every second. There's the F, the 6th Avenue local that Rumsey had been on, which begins in nethermost Brooklyn, wanders northward to run under 6th Avenue in Manhattan, then heads on to outermost Queens; the R, the Broadway local, which is similar except its part of Manhattan is lower Broadway; the 8th Avenue E, which only has to deal with Manhattan and Queens; and the poor G, the Brooklyn Queens Crosstown, which never gets into Manhattan at all but just shuttles back and forth between Brooklyn and Queens, full of people wearing hats.

Having got off the F, there was nothing for Rumsey to do but wait for another F, or some other letter, and so continue his journey in peace, but lo and behold, here were two more transit cops, and now they were looking at him funny. Maybe, he thought, he'd take the escalator upstairs to where the surface part of the bow tie was a lot of bus routes starting with "Q," but as he turned away, with millions of people rushing all around him in this great echoing iron cavern, this paean to 19th-century engineering at its sternest, a voice cut through the din and the roar to say, "You. Yeah, you. Wait there."

Now the cops were talking to him; this was very bad. Feeling guilty, even though he hadn't committed any crimes yet today, Rumsey turned about, hunched his shoulders in that automatic way that tells police officers everywhere that you are guilty, and said, "Me?"

It is impossible for two human beings to completely surround one human being, and yet these two cops did it. They were big bulky guys with big dark bulky uniforms festooned with serious extras like a gun in a holster and a ticket book and handcuffs (Rumsey didn't like to look at handcuffs) and a little black radio fastened up high on the black belt that angled down across their chests. Their very presence said authority, it said you're in for it now, Jack; it saidfuggedaboudit.

"See s' ID," one of the cops said.

"Oh, sure," Rumsey said, because, no matter what, you never

disagree when authority is this close into your personal space. He remembered he'd packed somebody's ID when he'd left the house, so he went to his hip pocket for his wallet, while the cops watched him very carefully, and as he handed over somebody's credit card and the same somebody's library card from the branch in Canarsie, he said, "Uh, what's the problem, officers?"

The cop who took the ID said, "How about your driver's license?"

"They took my license," Rumsey explained. "Just temporary, you know."

The other cop chuckled. "You were a bad boy, huh?"

That was cop humor. Rumsey acknowledged it with a sheepish grin, saying, "I guess so. But what's wrong here?"

The cop with the ID said, "We're looking for a guy, Mr. Jefferson."

So he was Mr. Jefferson today. Trying to feel Jeffersonian, Rumsey said, "Well, why pick me? There's a lotta guys here." Millions, in fact-on escalators, in subway trains, on platforms . . .

"The description we got," the humorous cop said, "looks like you."

"A lotta guys look like me," Rumsey said.

"Not really," the cop said, and all at once their two radios squawked, making Rumsey flinch like a rabbit hearing a condor.

Police radios are the aural equivalent of doctor's handwriting. All of a sudden, the little black metal box goes squawk-squawk-squawk, and the cops understand it! Like these two-they understood it when their little metal boxes went squawk-squawk-squawk, and this information they'd just received made them relax and even grin at each other. One of them pushed the button on his metal box and told his shoulder, "Ten-four," while the other one handed Rumsey Mr. Jefferson's ID and told him, "Thanks for your cooperation."

Rumsey said, "Huh? Listen, you don't mind, would you tell me? Wha'd they just say there?"

The cops looked surprised. One said, "You didn't hear? They got the guy."

"The one we were looking for," the other one addended. "Oh," Rumsey said. "Was he me?" "Move along," said the cop.

Algy came up out of the subway and started walking along the boulevard in the cool October sunshine. Three blocks from the bank he was headed for was another bank, on another corner, this one open for business. As a matter of fact, as Algy walked by its front door, a big-boned guy in a black topcoat, carrying a full grocery store plastic bag, hurtled out of that bank and crashed straight into Algy; this is because the guy wasn't looking where he was going, but leftward, off at traffic along the boulevard.

Neither Algy nor his new dance partner went down, though it looked iffy for a second, and they had to grab at each other's coats. "Easy, big guy," Algy advised, while the guy, increasingly frantic, pulled himself free, waving that plastic bag around over his head, shouting, "Out of the way!"

Algy might have said a cautionary word or two about panic and its discontents, but at that instant a black sedan pulled in by the fire hydrant between them and the curb. The driver, another dark-coated big guy, leaned way over to shove open the passenger door and yell, "Ralph! In!"

Algy stepped back, gesturing for Ralph to go catch his ride, but all at once Ralph had a gun in his hand and a glower on his face and a cluster of Algy's coat sleeve in his fist, as he snarled in Algy's face, "Get in."

Algy couldn't believe it. "Get in?"

The driver couldn't believe it, either. "Ralph? What the hell you doin'?"

Over the approaching but still far-off screams of many sirens, under the surveillance of a pair of bank guards, goggle-eyed be-

hind the bank's glass revolving door, Ralph yelled at his partner, "He's a hostage!"

The driver also didn't believe that. With one scornful look at Algy, he said, "He's no hostage, Ralph. He looks like one of us."

"I do, you know," Algy said.

The driver squinted toward his rearview mirror, filling up with nearing patrol cars. "A hostage is a fourteen-year-old girl, Ralph," he explained. "Get in the car."

At last Ralph released Algy's sleeve and jumped into the black sedan, which lunged away into traffic, through the inevitable red light, and on around the corner, with all at once three gumdrops in hot pursuit, and more coming.

One cop car slid to a wheel-locked stop by Algy and the fire hydrant as the two bank guards came running out, both of them pointing at Algy and shouting, "That's one of them!"

"Hey," Algy said.

The two cops got out on both sides of their car to hike up their tool belts and give Algy the fish-eye. "What's your story?" the nearest one wanted to know. His partner was a woman, built low for stability.

"I'm walking by," Algy started.

"They were talking to him," a guard argued.

The woman cop, being the smarter of the pair, pointed at Algy and said to the guards, "Was he in the bank?"

"Well, no," both guards said.

The first cop went back to the first question. "So what is your story?"

"I'm walking by," Algy started again, "and the guy come out and run into me, and his car showed up, and he wanted me for a hostage, but the driver said no, a hostage is a fourteen-year-old girl, so they went off to find one."

Wide-eyed, the woman cop said, "They're on their way to kidnap a fourteen-year-old girl?"

Algy shrugged. "I dunno. That's what they said."

The woman cop hopped back into her patrol car to report this development, while her partner abruptly became surrounded by victims from inside the bank, both customers and guards. Over their bobbing heads, the cop called to Algy, "Stick around. You can identify them."

"Sure thing," Algy said, with his most honest smile. Holding the smile, he walked casually backward to the corner and around it, the way, as a kid, he used to sneak into movie houses by looking as though he was coming out. Once away from the sight lines of all that drama, he legged it on out of there.

Big Hooper did not take subways. The cars cramped him, and let's not even talk about the turnstiles. If he had to travel any distance (within the five boroughs, of course-where else is there?), he'd promote the cash he needed one way and another, then phone for a stretch limo, preferably black. The white ones were just a little flashy. He'd take the limo to somewhere near his destination, pay in cash, and if he needed a lift back, he'd call a different service.

Today he'd decided to give the limo driver an address just a few blocks beyond the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust, so he could eyeball the place before de-limoing, just in case it might seem like a good idea not to drop in after all.

So they were tooling along eastbound across Queens, maybe a mile, two miles, from their destination, with Big watching a soap opera on the TV in the back of today's (white, what the hell) limo, when it gradually occurred to him that they weren't moving, and they hadn't been moving for quite some little while.

When he looked up from the girl in the hospital bed trying to remember who she was, he saw a lot of stopped cars and the backs of a lot of gawking people. He could tell they were gawking because they kept going up on the balls of their feet, trying to see over the top of one another.

Big offed the TV and said, " 'S it?"

"Some kinda cop thing," the driver said, looking at Big in his interior mirror. He was apparently from some remote, probably mountainous part of Asia that hadn't started outbreeding until very recently. "They got the street closed," he went on.

"Well, take another way," Big told him.

"Can't," the driver said.

"Whadaya mean, can't?"

"Nothing's open." The driver ticked items off on his fingers. "Hunner twenny-third torn up by Brooklyn Gas, shut till Thursday. Prospect closed to ve-hic-ular traffic till eleven p.m., block party. Jay blocked by construction until April. Wheeler closed down, a demonstration about charter schools."

Big said, "For or against?"

"Who cares? Then there's Hedlong, they-"

"All right, just a minute," Big said. "Lemme see about this."

He got out of the limo, the driver watching with the look of a man who'd been here in New York City from far-off remotest Asia long enough to know nothing ever helped around here. Regardless, Big walked forward, slicing a V through the gawkers like a bowling ball through lemmings, until he reached the center of attention, beyond a line of blue police sawhorses.

The center of attention, in a cleared semicircle of sidewalk, turned out to be a loony with a knife. Maybe forty years old, in blue and white vertically striped pajamas, ratty maroon bathrobe, barefoot, hair all messed around like a shag rug after a party, unshaved, eyes full of goldfish. He stood with his back against the brick wall of a Neighborhood Clinic, whatever that is, and he kept waving this huge meat cleaver of a knife back and forth, holding off the half-dozen uniformed cops crouched in a crescent in front of him, all of them talking to him, gesturing, explaining, pointing out, none of them holding a gun.

Big knew how that went. Things rode along easy for a while, and whenever the cops met a loony like this on the street-which happens now and again in New York City, though most of them were crazy before they got here-they would just cheerfully blow him away, then explain in the report how the knife or the hammer or the postage meter had seemed at the time to be a serious threat to the officer's life, and that would be that. But then a few incidents would pile up, and the cops would decide to dial down for a while, so, when confronted with a prime prospect for the Off button like this one here, they'd do cajole instead, which never works, but which might possibly keep the loony contained until EMT could get here with the net.

Which hadn't happened yet, and who knew when it would. Big went sideways along this sawhorse to the end, stepped through the gap, and when a lot of cops reached out to restrain him, he said, "Yeah, yeah," shrugged them away, and walked straight to the loony.

The crescent of cops stared at him, not knowing what this was supposed to be. Big ignored them, kept walking toward the loony, stopped well within cleaver range, stuck out his left hand, and said, "Gimme the knife, bozo."

Now, we know this loony really was a loony because, when confronted by Big, he did not immediately say yessir and hand over the cutlery. Instead of acting like a sane person, he went on acting like a loony, lunging forward with the cleaver slicing around in a broad sidearm swing, intending to bisect Big at the waist.

The middle of Big's body curved inward as his left hand lifted out of the way of the slashing cleaver, then closed almost gently on the hand behind it. Hand and cleaver stopped as though they'd hit a glass door. With the loony's arm and body still thrusting forward, Big made a quarter turn to his right, like a partner in a very formal dance. His left hand flicked up-down. The crack of the loony's wrist snapping caused a flinch and a queasy look on every cop in the neighborhood.

The cleaver clattered to the ground; so did the loony.

Turning away from his good works, Big nodded at the assembled cops. Before strolling away, "Next time," he advised them, "try a little tenderizing."

Stan was a very law-abiding driver, since the cars he drove invariably belonged to somebody else. For that reason, he obeyed every traffic regulation everywhere, and if he'd had a license, it would have been clean as a whistle. So he was astonished, and not happy, when the county cop on the motorcycle up ahead on the Long Island Expressway suddenly pulled off onto the shoulder, stopped, hopped out of the saddle, and briskly waved Stan down.

No choice-hit the right blinker and pull in behind the bike. He'd always known this moment might someday appear, despite his precautions, and he'd worked out a game plan to deal with it. He intended to claim amnesia and let everybody else sort it out.

But there was something different about this traffic stop. In the first place, the cop, instead of taking that leisurely stroll around to the driver's window that's standard for such encounters, dashed for the passenger door, going klop-klop in his high leather boots, face strained with urgency. Yanking open that door, he flung himself backward onto the seat, hurling his left arm out to point, so forcefully he banged his gloved fingertip into the windshield as he cried, "Follow that Taurus!"

Stan looked at him. "What?"

The cop had himself turned around and completely into the car now. As he slammed the door, he aimed a very red face in Stan's direction. "Follow," he said, and thumped his leather-gloved fist on the dashboard, "that" and did the fingertip-mash against the windshield again, "TAURUS!"

"Okay, okay."

Stan didn't see any Tauri, but he figured, if he drove the direction the cop kept pointing, sooner or later a Taurus would present itself. It's a popular make of car. So he tromped the accelerator, and the car, a very nice BMW recently in the longterm parking lot at LaGuardia, leaped forward so as to multiple-g the cop backward into his bucket seat.

Taurus, Taurus. The cop peeled himself off the seat to say, "Good, that's good. See him? The green Taurus."

Then Stan did: recent vintage, pallid green, middle lane, moderate speed. "Got him."

"Good. Don't overtake him," the cop warned, "just keep him in sight."

"Piece of cake."

The cop had a little radio high on the angled strap of his Sam Browne belt. Flipping the toggle, he said into it, low but still audible to Stan, "Cycle broke down, commandeered a civilian vehicle, suspects in sight, still eastbound within city limits."

But not for long. Stan watched his exit go by, but he and the Taurus kept heading for Long Island, while the cop's radio made nasal guttural vomiting sounds the cop apparently interpreted as speech, because he said, "Ten-four," which Stan knew cops say because they can never seem to remember "Uh-huh."

Stan had never been commandeered before. He wondered if it came with benefits, but somehow doubted it. He said, "You don't mind my asking, wha'd the Taurus do?"

"Held up a jewelry store in Astoria."

Stan was astonished. "There's jewelry stores in Astoria?"

The cop shrugged. "Why not? Wedding rings, sorry-honeys. Your jewelry store's your universal."

"I suppose you're right," Stan said, and the cop tensed all over, like a sphincter: "He's gonna exit!"

Stan too had seen the Taurus's right directional blink on. Keeping well back, he said, "I suppose these guys are armed and dangerous."

"Jeez, I hope not," the cop said. "I'm on traffic detail. That's why we don't wanna overtake them, make them suspicious, just keep them in sight." "Ten-four," Stan said.

"When they get stopped at a light," the cop said, "pull up next to them, I'll look it over, see if I can take them down without backup."

Stan knew he was just saying that to cover for what he'd said a minute ago, but what the hell: "You got it."

The cop took off his hat, to be in disguise, and sat forward, eyes tense, licking his lips.

Never had Stan seen anybody so lucky with traffic lights. The Taurus went this way and that way on the city streets, block after block with a traffic light hanging over every intersection, the Taurus steadily trending south by east, and every last one of those traffic lights was green when the Taurus arrived. Sometimes, particularly twice when the Taurus had made a turn at an intersection, Stan had to goose it to scoot through on the yellow, but he figured, he was under cop's orders here; he should be covered.

It bothered him a while, knowing he was part of messing up the day of a couple of fellow mechanics, but then it didn't bother him any more.

Meanwhile, the cop kept talking to his radio, giving it coordinates, progress reports, and the radio kept barfing back. Then the cop tensed again, putting on his hat as he said. "This is it. Next intersection-there!"

They were almost a full block back, a tan Jeep Cherokee between them, the green Taurus almost to the corner, when all at once cop cars came out of everywhere, left and right and practically dropping down from overhead, surrounding the Taurus, blocking it in good and, by the way, freaking out the driver of the Cherokee no end.

Stan slammed on the brakes. "Now what?"

"Wait here!" the cop barked, and jumped from the car.

Fat chance. The Taurus is a very popular car, and wishy-washy green for some reason is a very popular color. One of those moments when the cop had been busy giving coordinates and looking for street signs, Stan had managed to stop following green Taurus number one and start following green Taurus number two. Therefore, he was already backing to the corner, swinging around it, flooring that BMW out of there, even before the four little old ladies with the missals in their hands came stumbling out of their Taurus to stare at all that firepower.

What with one thing and another, Algy was the first to arrive at the Sunnyside branch of Immigration Trust. At first, he just walked past it, hands in his pockets, looking it over, trusting that nobody with a plastic bag full of loot would come hurtling out of this place.

The car had been extracted and taken away. Guys in mustaches and blue jeans and tool belts were slowly closing the facade with sheets of plywood. Streamers of yellow Crime Scene tape were wrapped around everything in sight as though the Easter bunny had been here, bored, nothing else to do in October. And speaking of bored, that's what the two cops were in the prowl car parked out front, the only official presence still here.

The bank was at the corner of a two-story tan-brick structure that ran the length of the block, shops downstairs-Chinese takeout, video rental, dry cleaner, OTB-and apartments above, most of them with window air conditioner rumps mooning the traffic on the boulevard beyond the skimpy plane trees. Each apartment facade was as individual as each store, one bearing rent strike! signs, one suggesting come to jesus!, one with windows painted black, one crying remember K with the rest of the paper torn off, one with what appeared to be curtains and blinds and drapes. The corner apartment, above the bank, expressed its individuality through paranoia; every window was as barred and gated as a maximum-security cell, and through those iron braces could be read no trespassing and beware of dog and no soliciting and keep out and private property.

Downstairs, the bank had been a bit less prepared for intruders. It had been a retail store until its makeover into a branch

bank-probably ladies' better fashions-and still retained the large windows along both front and side streets for the display of the merchant's wares; or at least had still retained them until Morry Calhoun had swung by.

The video rental shop was next door to the bank; go in through there? But the shop was open and staffed, and its entrance was very much in the bored cops' sight line.

Algy walked around the corner, to the side street where the bank's former glass had already been replaced by plywood, and at the rear of the building was a solid fence of unpainted vertical wood slats, eight feet high and six feet wide. Approaching it, Algy saw that half its width was a wood-slat door, inset into the fence, with a round metal keyhole but no handle. Behind it, from what he could see over the top of the fence, was an area way running the length of the block. At this end, it was between tin-rear of the bank and the blank brick side of the nursing home that fronted on the cross street. And above, a row of fire escapes.

Hmmm. Algy strolled on down the block, crossed the street at the corner, and strolled back again, getting a good look at the rear of the bank building, the fire escapes, the windows of the second-floor apartment, which continued the theme stated along front and side, barred gates, though without the warning notices. The interior behind those windows was dark.

Why not? the first step was to get inside the building, so why not into the apartment above the bank? From there, maybe Morry Calhoun had loosened some structural stuff, and an agile person could come down through the ceiling. Or there'd be a staircase, so the tenant could put trash in the areaway. Or whatever.

Algy next strolled all around the block, away from the bank, pausing on the next cross street over to sit briefly on a fire hydrant while he removed his left shoe, took a few flat flexible pieces of metal from inside the heel, put the shoe back on and resumed his walk.

Hearing the bank again, he held the flexible metal strips tucked into both palms and zeroed in on that wooden door in the wooden wail. He'd seen that kind of lock before; they were old friends, and this one didn't detain him long.

Inside, as he'd expected, the concrete-floored areaway was garbage-can-strewn. There were doors spaced along the rear wall, but it looked as though the near ones were simply ground-floor access.

On the third leap, he hooked a hand over the bottom rung of the fire escape, which his weight then brought downward, making it easier to climb. At the top, the flexible metal strips worked very nicely -to unlock the gate over the nearest window, then slip through between upper and lower sashes of the window itself to gently elbow the window lock out of the way. Slowly, silently, he lifted the window, leaned close to the opening, listened.

Nothing. No TV, no snoring, no whistling teakettle.

Algy slid over the sill, paused to close the gate and window behind himself, then looked around at a small, spartan bedroom. Framed photos of old-time boxers in manly stances were on the walls.

Algy started across the bedroom toward the doorway, and was nearly there when he became aware of the eyes. They were in the hall beyond the bedroom door, they were at crotch height, and they were connected to the largest, meanest-looking, scariest dog Algy had ever seen.

He stopped. The instant he did, the dog started. It didn't bark, because it was more serious than that. It didn't want to make a fuss; it merely wanted to kill Algy, slowly, with its teeth.

Algy turned. Window closed and barred. No time.

A shut door was to his right. He leaped to it, yanked it open, saw clothes hanging on a bar, lunged in among them, pulled the door shut; the dog thudded like a locomotive against the door.

Now what?

John Rumsey's flexible metal tools were just as efficacious as Algy's on that wooden door, but then Rumsey chose to climb the inside of the fence, finding hand and footholds on the angle irons that held fence to building, and so reach the fire escape's upper landing that way. (He was too short to have caught the fire escape by jumping.) He was surprised, at the top, to find that both gate and window were unlocked though shut, but he thought this meant merely that even someone as security-conscious as this tenant appeared to be might eventually grow a little slack. He entered noiselessly, shut gate and window and started across the room, getting just about as far as Algy had before making that same dreadful discovery.

Rumsey wasn't quite as fast as his friend had been. He made it into the closet, but left behind a triangle of trouser leg clenched between the dog's teeth.

Slamming the door, hearing the dog slam into it from the other side, Rumsey became horribly aware that he wasn't alone in here. Someone-or something-rustled and slurfed right next to him. "What?" he called. Wham, went the dog against the door.

"I'm not here!" cried a voice. "I can explain!"

A familiar voice. Hardly believing it, Rumsey said, "Algy?"

A little pause. "John?"

Wham, went the dog.

Stan, being a driver, took a slightly different approach. That is, he looked for a means of access that would, in its early phases, include a car. He drove around the block, noted the storefronts, the varied second-floor window treatments, the workmen applying plywood, the bored cops in their cruiser, then the nursing home (barely glancing at the wooden door in the wooden fence); on around the block, coming up at last to the far end of the building holding the bank.

On this block, the space equivalent to the nursing home at the other end was occupied by an open-sided four-story parking garage. Stan made note of that, turned at the corner, drove on down past the cops and the bank and the workmen, took that next turn, and pulled to a stop just short of the wooden fence.

Plywood now covered the former windows on the side of the bank, but the blue police sawhorses were still there, swathed in gay yellow Crime Scene tape. Stan got out of the BMW; opened the trunk, and leaned in to open the small pass-through door between trunk and backseat, placed there because the kind of people who own this kind of car usually also own skis.

The sawhorses came in three parts: two A-shaped sets of legs and the ten-foot-long crossbar, a two-by-six plank. Stan rescued two of these planks from their legs and the yellow tape and wrestled them into the BMWJ having to fold the front passenger seat down as well to ootch them in all the way. Then he drove around the block again, turned in at the parking garage, and took his ticket from the machine.

He found a useful parking slot on the sloping third level, backed into it so the rear of the BMW was close to the waist-high concrete-block barrier that was all the building had for exterior walls, and slid the sawhorse planks out of the car and across the intervening space between parking garage and bank building roof, though down the block from the bank, closer to the middle of the building. The planks fit very nicely, with good overhang at each end. Stan went across on all fours-two per plank-then walked briskly along the roof to the final fire escape. He went down that, found the unlocked window, climbed in, saw the dog, the dog saw him, Stan bolted for the closet, and soon another reunion took place, though not an entirely happy one.

Big knew he was a memorable guy, and so shouldn't walk past those cops in the cruiser, no matter how bored they were, more than once. He strolled down the block, took in the scene, turned down the side street, saw a couple of blue sawhorse leg sets lying on the sidewalk, remarked to himself that cops were usually

neater than that, and noticed that where the next to last sheet of plywood overlapped the last sheet of plywood, there was a bit of a gap where the plywood might have been screwed down a bit more securely but was not.

With a quick glance around to note that he was alone out here, he stepped to the plywood, inserted a hand in the space, and tugged. He had to tug three times, finally, and then be a little careful of jutting screws, but with a small pivot like the hippopotami in Fantasia he curled around the opening he'd made, and entered the bank. Two tugs were sufficient to pull the plywood back to its original position, or at least to look as though it were in its original position, and then Big went for a stroll through the empty, and rather messy, bank.

Morry Calhoun and his Infiniti had done a pretty complete job in here. He'd come angling through the plate glass, so that just by showing up he'd pretty well cleared out the front of the place, but then the Infiniti had also hit a couple of tables where people could fill out deposit slips and the like, and bounced them deeper into the bank, which is what took out the side windows as well as parts of the tellers' cages and all the frosted glass fronting the loan officer's separate cubicle. Shards of glass, slivers of wood, pens with chains attached, wheeled swivel chairs and wrinkled loan applications were scattered everywhere, all of it a bit hard to see, since Morry and his car had also taken out the electricity.

Big picked his way through the debris to the tellers' cages, where unfortunately there was no cash, since the bank had been closed when Morry arrived and all the money was in the vault for the night. The vault, when Big reached it, was undented but also unopened. It had a time lock, which Big had been hoping for, but with the electricity out, the vault thought it was still one-thirty in the morning, so forget that.

It was just too hard to see in here. Would the branch manager have a flashlight in his office? Why not?

The manager's office had also, at one time, been sheathed in frosted glass, which now went crunch-crunch beneath Big's feet. He opened desk drawers, pawed around, and in the bottom right found a small flashlight with a dying battery. By its dim light he saw there was nothing else of interest in the desk, but what was that underneath it?

The night deposit box. Morry's Infiniti had drop-kicked it across the bank, through the frosted glass, and into the manager's office, where it had come to rest partially under the desk.

And totally cracked open. In the flashlight's wan beam, Big saw the thick envelopes inside that metal box with the twisted-open door, and when he withdrew the envelopes every one of them was full of money. Only some of the money was cash, the rest being checks or travelers' checks or credit card slips (all of which Big left behind), but the cash was a nice amount, enough to make him look around the office for something to carry it all in.

And what have we here? A gray canvas bag, about a foot long and four inches deep, with a lockable zippered top. An actual money bag-what better for carrying money? Big filled it with the cash from the night deposit, then filled his pockets with the leftover, then decided to leave.

But. As he came out of the office, the flashlight weakly glimmering its last in his fist, he heard a sudden nasty whirring sound. It seemed to come from where he'd made entry, between the plywoods.

Yes. Apparently, the workmen were just about finished, and in making one last double-check of their work they'd noticed the same inefficient gap that had drawn Big's attention, which they were now correcting, with another complete sheet of plywood. The whirring sounds were their portable drills, and every whirr produced another screw spinning through sheets of plywood and into the bank, a full inch of leftover screw sticking through plywood every foot or so all around this area.

Never get through that. Big didn't like the concept of being able to get in without being able to get out, but this was looking very much like the concept he'd been dealt.

The whirring stopped. The workmen were gone. Outside, it was still a bright and sunny fall morning, while inside, in the dying of the light, Big paced the perimeter of his prison, looking for a way out.

When he reached the front of the bank, where the entrance door used to be, he looked up, and the ceiling looked funny. Damn this flashlight. But wasn't that a gap up there, between ceiling and wall?

What this required was to move a desk under that bit of ceiling, then put a second desk on top of it, then carry a chair- non-wheeled, non-swivel-up onto the top of the second desk, climb from desk to desk to chair, and there it was.

At this spot, directly above the original point of impact, the front wall had sagged down away from the ceiling, pulling a piece of ceiling after it. Big could reach that Sheetrock ceiling from here, and when he tugged, a big, irregular chunk of it fell away, missed him, hit both desks, and smacked onto the floor.

What was above? A two-by-six beam, also sagging down at this end, since the wall it had always been attached to wasn't in the right place any more. Big tugged tentatively at the beam, not wanting the whole place to come crashing down on him, and the beam moved in a spongy way, still firmly attached at other spots along its length but willing to angle down now if Big insisted.

He did. The floorboards above the beam popped free, not wanting to come down, but then, they would push up. And now Big needed more height.

The loan officer's four-drawer filing cabinet. He pulled out the drawers, dragged the cabinet to his desk-and-chair construction, lifted it up onto the second desk, then put the chair on top of the cabinet, climbed the open front of the cabinet, where the drawers used to be, climbed the chair, pushed some floorboards and some rug out of the way, then tossed the money bag up there. When it didn't come back, he used the dangling beam and the front wall of the building for leverage and worked his way up through ceiling/floor into a small, austere living room with not much more than a narrow sofa, a small TV and reproductions of race horse paintings on the walls.

A back way out. Big picked up the money bag, walked through the apartment to the bedroom, and there he saw a big, ugly dog seated in front of a closed closet door. The dog saw Big, curled his upper lip back over his teeth, turned and hurled himself at Big, who sidestepped, grabbed the hurtling dog by the throat, spun him around, opened the closet door, tossed the dog in, shut the door.

He was just turning toward the rear windows when pandemonium started in the closet: yelling, screaming, crashing around. Now what?

Big turned back to frown at the door, against which there was now a staccato rat-a-tat of frenzied knocking-wasn't there a handle on the inside? Apparently not, since muffled voices- more than one?-hoarsely begged from in there, "Lemme out!"

It was curiosity that made Big go back to reopen that door, and out tumbled three men and a dog. "Not you again," Big said, grabbed the dog in the same throat hold as before, and tossed him back onto the pile of clothing now messed up on the closet floor instead of lined up neatly on hangers. Slamming the door yet again, he turned to the three men on the floor, flopping around down there like caught fish in a bucket, and said, "And what the hell is all this?"

Rumsey blinked like an owl in the wrong barn. Around him, everybody was in confused, chaotic motion. On his right, "I can explain!" Algy yelled, while on his left, "Who are you people?" Stan demanded.

Rumsey gazed upward. "Big?" He withdrew Algy's elbow

from his right eye, Stan's knee from his solar plexus. "Big?" It was like a dream. A very strange dream.

The big man who'd rescued them, whether he wanted to or not, looked around at the three doing their Raggedy Andys on the floor. "I know you birds," he said.

"Of course you do," Stan said, having recovered his memory.

Rumsey, climbing up Algy to get to his feet, said, "I saw this thing in the News about Morry Calhoun-"

Stan, climbing up the bed to get to his feet, said, "-great shot of the car in the bank-"

Algy, scrambling around on the floor until Big grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and set him upright, said, "-so I thought I'd come see, is there any spillage."

"There was some," Big told him. "Not much." He gestured at the gray canvas money bag on the bed.

They all looked at it. Unfortunately, they understood, that bag belonged to Big now.

Rumsey spoke for them all-except Big-when he said, "All this, for nothing."

"I got mine, anyway," Big said comfortably. "I always get mine."

Algy said to the others, "And Big did come in handy with the dog, you got to admit."

"And I got wheels," Stan told them, "anybody wants a lift anywhere."

Rumsey was not consoled. He said, "What I come out here for wasn't wheels, or to get saved from some dog. What I come out here for was a score."

"Well, you know," Algy said, "I happen to be aware"-he looked at his watch-"twenty minutes ago, a bank three blocks from here was knocked over by a couple not very skillful guys. They didn't get much."

Rumsey said, "I don't have to hear about other guys' scores, not even little ones."

"The point I'm making here," Algy said, "is twenty minutes ago. The plainclothes detectives didn't get there yet. You know, the victim interviews."

Rumsey's head and eyes and spirits lifted. "Everybody's rattled," he said. "They've shut the bank, but they're still there."

Stan said, "The security tape's been taken away for evidence."

Algy whipped a hand into and out of his trouser pocket, flashed at them a gold badge in a brown leather case, pocketed it again, said, "I always carry a little ID. You never know."

Big said, "Algy? What if a cop frisks you one time, takes a look at that?"

Algy grinned at him. "It says, 'Love Detective, Licensed To Kiss."'

Rumsey segued into a look that was very caring, very concerned, very earnest. In a voice like a funeral director, he said, "Mr. Manager, are you certain those felons didn't gain access to your vault? We'd better check that out."

Big laughed. "Nice to run into you fellas," he said.

Ten minutes after the apartment was empty, the dog finally started howling, but there was nobody around to listen.

When the vault door was at last reopened at three-thirty that afternoon to release the imprisoned bank employees, one of them, Rufold Hepple, had to be carried out by five fellow tellers, one at each limb and one at his head. (Fortunately, he was a skinny little fellow and didn't weigh much.) "I'll be all right," he kept telling everybody who looked down at him. "Just as soon as I get home, I'll be fine."

There were white-clad ambulance attendants in among the blue police officers and black-and-yellow firefighters, and they kept asking him, as he lay supine on the faux marble floor, head

cushioned by several empty money sacks, if he didn't want to go to the hospital, be looked at, checked over; but his fears of (a) hospitals, (b) doctors, and (c) people dressed completely in white, kept him saying over and over, "No, I'll be fine, I'll be fine. Get my strength back in a minute. I'll be fine as soon as I get home."

The nearly four hours in the pitch-black vault had been the worst experience of Rufold Hepple's life, calling into play simultaneously so many of his deep-seated fears, it was as though he’d been strapped into one of those machines for mixing paint. There was his fear of darkness, for instance, and his fear of crowds, his fear of unusual smells (several of his coworkers, when confined for a long time in a small, dark space, had turned out to have very unusual smells indeed), his fear of small, confined spaces, (It was his fear of long words derived from the Greek that kept him from even thinking the proper medical terms for all these fears.)

Lying there on the floor, with only his fear of being noticed by other people still actively searing him, Rufold Hcpple continued to give himself, as he had in the vault, the courage to survive this ordeal, by thinking only of his own little home, so near, so soon to protect him again. It was the great paradox of his life that only the comfort and security of his very own little apartment gave him the strength necessary to leave it every day, for his job here at the bank, or to shop, or to make his twice weekly visits to Dr. Bananen, just around the corner.

In just a few minutes now, he would be ready. He would stand, smile, show them all nothing, leave the bank, march the three blocks home and up the stairs and through the many locks, to be greeted by his only friend, his dear dog Sigmund. In just a few minutes. Just a few minutes, and he would be safe and sound.